visit down here in the dungeon.”
Jake grunted. Doctor Hartman was assigned to Jake’s staff and liked to while away off-duty hours in the air wing office, yet whenever anyone suggested he look at a sore throat or toe, he told them to come to sick bay. This was his turf.
“Strip to skivvies and socks, please, and take a seat on the table.” As Jake hung his khakis on a convenient hook, the doctor pored over the notes the corpsmen had made when they ran Jake through the routine tests.
At last he left his desk, arranged his stethoscope in his ears, then held it against Jake’s chest. “You failed the eye examination, you know.” The doctor was about thirty-five, had a moderate spare tire, and a world-class set of bushy eyebrows. When he looked at you, all you saw of him were the eyebrows. Then the nose and chin and all the rest came slowly into focus.
“Please cough.” Jake hacked obediently. “Now turn and let me listen to your back.” He thumped vigorously. “You need to quit smoking.”
“I know.”
“How much do you smoke?”
“A pack or so a day.”
“Your lungs sound clear.” Hartman turned to the X rays on a viewing board and studied them. “No problem there,” he said finally and came back to Jake. “Stand up and drop your drawers.” After the usual indignities were over and the doctor had peered into all of Jake’s bodily orifices, he told him to get dressed and resumed his seat at the desk.
“Your eyes are twenty-forty,” the doctor said as he scribbled. “You need glasses.”
“Okay.”
He flipped through the medical file. “You’ve gained ten pounds in the last ten years, but you’re still well within the weight standards. Have you been having any headaches?”
“Occasionally.”
“Probably eyestrain. The glasses will cure that.” Doctor Hartman laid his pencil aside and turned in his chair to face Jake. “But you’ve been having some other vision problems.” Jake said nothing. Hartman cleared his throat and toyed with the papers in the medical file. “Captain, I know this is going to be damn tough for you. It’s tough for me. I’m sorry I have to be the one to tell you this, but your flying days are over.”
“Bullshit.”
“Captain, you flunked the night-vision tests. Glasses won’t cure that. Nothing can. Your eyes are aging and you just don’t see well enough to fly at night.”
“Gimme some pills or shots.”
“I can give you some vitamin A that may help. Over time.” He shrugged. “Everyone’s vision deteriorates as they age, but at different speeds. Yours just happens to have started faster than most people’s. The nicotine you have been poisoning yourself with for twenty years may also be a factor. Sometimes it has an adverse effect on the tissues inside the eye.” He found an envelope on his desk and sketched an eye. “When light stops stimulating the eye, the tissues manufacture a chemical called liquid purple, and this chemical increases the sensitivity of the rods inside the eye. In your case, either the chemical is no longer being manufactured in sufficient quantity or the rods are becoming insensitive….” He droned on, his pencil in motion. Jake thought he looked like a flight instructor sketching lift and drag vectors around an airfoil.
“Listen, Doc, most people don’t command air wings. I do, and I have to fly to do my job.”
“Well, I’ll have to send in a report. My recommendation is that you be grounded, but maybe we can get permission for you to just fly during the day.”
Jake finished dressing in silence and sat in one of the molded plastic chairs. “That won’t hack it,” he said at last. “I have to fly at night and I’m going to continue to do so. This cruise will be over in four months and I can turn in my flight suit then. But until we get back to the States, I have to fly at night to do this job.”
“They could send another officer out here to replace you.”
“They could. But even if they do, he won’t be here for a while, and I’m the man with the responsibility.”
Hartman toyed with his pen. “Are you ordering me not to make a grounding recommendation?”
“No. I’m telling you I am going to keep flying at night and I don’t give a damn what you do.”
“You can’t fly if I recommend you be grounded,” Hartman said aggressively. “I know where I stand.”
“You know all about sore throats and clap and which pills are which. But you don’t know a goddamn thing about the navy. How long have you been in? Three years?”
“Three and a half. But that’s beside the point.”
“No. That
“I’m going to send a message to BUMED.”
“Before you do, I want you to talk to the admiral. You give him your opinion. I. work for him.”
“And you’re going to keep flying?”
“Unless Parker says not to, that’s precisely what I will do. You whip up some of those vitamin pills. Order the glasses and call me when they come in.”
Toad Tarkington was standing by the wardroom door when Jake approached carrying a helmet bag. Toad stepped through the door and announced, “Attention on deck.” The men were still rising when Jake went by Toad and said loudly, “As you were.” He still couldn’t get used to officers snapping to attention when he entered a room.
By the time he reached the portable podium placed on a table at one end of the room, most of the men were back in their chairs. Jake waited until everyone was settled before he spoke. It had been over three hours since he had a cigarette. He noticed that there were ashtrays on the tables and several people were stubbing butts out.
“Good evening.” He looked at the eight squadron skippers sitting in the front row. “Have we got about everyone?”
“Except for the guys flying, sir.”
“Fine.” Jake took an envelope from his hip pocket on which he had made some notes. He looked at the sea of faces looking at him. Most of the faces were young, in their twenties. Just looking at them made him feel over the hill.
“How many of you guys are on your first cruise?” Almost a third of the men raised their hands. “Well, this is my ninth one, and I have never before been at sea for three months straight. We didn’t stay out like this during that little fracas in Vietnam. Ain’t peace wonderful?”
Titters.
“I’m not here tonight to give you any little patriotic pep talk. The politicians that drop in do it a whole lot better than I could.”
More chuckles. The ship had recently been visited by several congressmen and a senator, and those worthies had insisted on addressing the sailors from their home states. As they told it, the sailors were the equals of Washington’s troops at Valley Forge.
“A couple of guys died last night. We don’t know why they died, and we may never know. But they are indeed dead, and dead forever. No one shot them out of the sky. The hazards inherent in naval aviation killed them.
“Now that doesn’t mean that we are not going to try to find out why they died, or that we are not going to do everything humanly possible to prevent further accidents. We are going to do both. I had a discussion with the squadron skippers this morning, and they tell me they are going to conduct safety reviews in every squadron.” Jake had ordered them to do so. “We’re going to ensure these planes are being properly maintained and you guys who fly them haven’t forgotten how.
“But what I can’t do is give you and your sailors some time off. We’re going to have to keep our noses to the grindstone. We’ve got to keep the planes up, to guard this task group.”
A hand shot up several rows back. Jake pointed and a lieutenant he didn’t recognize stood up. “Sir, we wouldn’t have to keep flying around the clock if we pulled off a couple hundred miles and gave ourselves some sea
