begins to move, far more easily than I expected, and I complete my three revolutions, adding half-again as insurance.
Leaving the building, passing from its darkened, cool interior, to the warmer light of day, I feel an indefinable, yet convincing, something… I sense that I am now secret heir to some mystical wisdom.
As is my custom, on my last visit to the temple grounds, I head for a building I’ve not yet visited. Getting closer, I pick up sounds, Japanese voices, strange and high-pitched. “What fascination will be revealed to me today?” I wonder, almost at the building itself. Removing my shoes, entering with deference, I am facing a magnificent shrine of golds, reds and burnished wood. A light trace of incense delicately registers, as I turn now towards the sounds. Seated in a row, are three monks, their heads shaven. On a shelf in front of them is a color television, at which they stare transfixed, watching Disney cartoons, dubbed with Japanese voices. Elmer Fudd, his shotgun at the ready, is chasing Bugs Bunny. On the counter, nearby, is the slot for donations.
“I never went back,” I conclude.
Guam
“It’s called the ‘brown tree snake.’ It started off in Indonesia actually. Most likely island-hopping on freighters.” The herpetologist has been expounding on the problems caused on Guam by these climbing snakes. The young scholar has been brought in by the U.S. Navy on Guam, as a favor to the Chamorro people of Guam. “The snakes cause power outages, brown-outs. They climb the electrical poles and slither from wire-to-wire, that shorts out the system. The bird population is disappearing as well.”
Captain Bubba, ordering us another round of beer, says “Snake-suicide, is that it?”
“Well, kinda’'’ admits the snake-man.
“I’ve been coming to these islands for thirty-years off and on, and I’ve never even seen a snake, brown or otherwise.”
“Well, that’s not unusual,” explains the expert, these snakes are nocturnal, only active at night.”
“So’s Bubba,” I tell him, sipping the last of my Kirin.
Chuckling, Bubba tells us he knows that the snakes are nocturnal. “Last snake-man they brought in didn’t know shit, though. Know what he done? Brought in Mongoose… mongeese… is it mongooses or mongeese?” asks Bubba, suddenly concerned with his grammar.
“Mongoose is the singular as well as the plural, like fish.”
“I say ‘fishes’,” says Bubba, “Anyway, this last expert, your predecessor, brought in mongooses to fight the snakes. What he didn’t know was that mongooses, they’re ‘di-urinal’ like us, the snakes being nocturnal, they never meet.”
“No,” Bubba says, “your electrical problem is the “Chamorons,” don’t know shit about power plants. They’re just blamin’ the snakes for their own stupidity.
“What about the declining bird population?” the professor asks. “guess what a mongoose’s favorite meal is?” chortles Bubba.
“You sure don’t think much of the indigenous population, Bubba.” I muse, wondering why Bubba believes that the Chamorros are “Chamorons.” I always thought these slurs were said in jest.
“Any morons that celebrate ‘Magellan Day’ as their biggest holiday of the year after what Magellan did to them, they’re just plain stupid!”
“What?”
“Keshy, when Magellan sailed into these Marianna’s Islands, with his entourage of those good old boy Jesuit priests, there was millions of Chamorros on these islands. After those holy-rollers got through with ‘em, only a few thousand were left alive, and I’m not talkin'bout any fancy, European disease germs, neither! Nope, ain’t for no reason that these islands are the most shark infested waters on Earth. It was accept Jesus or off the cliffs they went.”
“Jesus!”
“Just so,” he says.
Radio check is coming due, as we approach the F.I.R., the air boundary between Cairo and Jeddah control.
“Roger MAC 3-1-3-1, radar identified, flight level 350, contact military control on 128.2.”
“Roger, MAC 3-1-3-1.”
We’ve been flying MAC support for Desert Shield and Desert Storm, ferrying doctors, supplies and Marines into Kuwait City and bringing troops and equipment home.
The war has been over a few months, and tonight we will bring home the “lost battalion,” so dubbed in the editorial pages of the New York Times, and the Washington Post. This Marine Corps reserve outfit is a troop of infantry, ‘grunts,’ who are primarily civilians with a monthly military obligation. Cooks, teachers, bottle washers, playing soldier. This battalion, from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, is the only ground reserve unit to see combat, suffer casualties and dead. Their mission was to dash north from Western Saudi Arabia to a crossroads in Northwestern Kuwait, and to hold that roadway.
Somehow, in the mysterious way of these things, they’ve been forgotten out in the desert. After months of maintaining their position, nursing their wounded, and grieving for their dead, they’ve dropped through the cracks. Nobody knows that they are still out there. Calls to H.Q., calls to wives begging assistance from local politicos get no results. Finally, a company clerk writes letters to the editors of some big city news papers. “The Lost Battalion” has been found, and with the speed of a white house scandal, they are packed up and ordered home.
D.B. asks, Who said it’s easier to make a million dollars than it is to steal it?”
“Willie Sutton?”
“No, Keshy,” that was Mr. P.T. Barnum, and he was right.”
“Okay, D.B., so how come we’re always broke?”
Jerry Lovell adds, “You know, W.C. Fields hated Philadelphia. Back then, Vaudeville traveled city to city putting on shows. For one reason or another, W.C. Fields hated going to Philadelphia, something about the city…”
“Top of decent fuel is 41.5…” I don’t even bother to write that number down. “…Anyway, know what’s on W.C. Fields tombstone? His epitaph?… ‘I’d rather be in Philadelphia’… it was his last prank, and he played it on himself.”
I’m trying to decide what that has to do with anything, as we start our descent towards the Kuwait airport.
On the ground now, we’ve a few hours to kill, waiting for refueling, unloading, reloading and paperwork. We will be operating the first leg, Kuwait City to Cherry Point, N.C. Some other crew will fly our ‘lost battalion’ the rest of the way to Baton Rouge.
“Hey MAC 3-1-3-1, what are you carrying tonight?” asks Shannon Oceanic Center, as we coast out west, out over Lands End.
“We’re carrying the ‘Lost Battalion,— I respond. “Standby 3-1-3-1.”
Minutes go by, as we wait for our oceanic clearance. Finally, “MAC 31-3-1, cleared present position direct Cherry Point, North Carolina.”
“Holy Shit, we’re famous, this is a first for me. Maybe Air Force One gets clearances like that,” D.B. says.
On a MAC flight, the rules don’t apply, so it’s open cockpit, and the Marines come and go freely, sharing their stories, sharing their lives. A bizarre unreality washes over me as my mind drops back twenty-five years. Then, I was a twenty-four-year old marine grunt, being brought home from another war, at a time when flying planes had never occurred to me, now I’m the pilot flying these Marines home from their war.
…so these tractors with these huge tires on ‘em, they’ve got these snow plows welded to their front-end, they just drive along on either side of the trenches, filling them in with sand.” The lieutenant grins as he explains,
