of glasses from his trouser pocket. The glasses were a prop Chama had slaved on for hours in the air wing office. The bottoms of two Coca-Cola bottles were inserted in the frame in place of lenses. Chama had had to heat the plastic frame and bend it to make it hold. He had destroyed three frames in the process. Now he carefully placed his masterpiece on his nose, hooking the earpieces behind each ear.
As the laughter rose to a roar Chama started the list at arm’s length again and slowly worked it inward. When it reached his nose, he shouted, “Third place, squadron boarding average, the Red Rippers.” The VF-11 skipper stood up beaming while his officers cheered and clapped behind him. Everyone else hooted derisively.
The LSOs graded every approach to the ship, and a running score sheet for every pilot was posted in the ready rooms. A squadron average was an average of the individual scores of every pilot attached to that squadron.
Chama handed out the second- and first-place squadron awards, then began on individual awards. After third and second were handed out, he motioned to Jake. “Sir, maybe you better give this last one out, I don’t have the stomach for it.” Jake stood and looked over Chama’s shoulder at his list.
“Him?”
“Yessir.”
“Couldn’t you have fudged it up or something? Everyone knows you guys rig the scores, anyway.”
“Sir!” Chama feigned outrage.
“This is very painful,”
“You must do your duty, sir,”
“I suppose.” Jake sighed and looked through the faces in the crowd for the one he wanted. When he found it, he said, “Okay, Wild, get up here and collect your award.”
A storm of applause followed as Major Wild Blue Hickok, an exchange pilot from the U.S. Air Force, made his way through the crowd. By the time he arrived beside Jake, his face was flushed.
“Wild here, in his grungy air force flight suit, had a boarding average for this at-sea period of 98.2. That’s figured on ninety-two passes over almost four months. Gentlemen, that is one hell of an accomplishment and, so far, stands as a record for
“No, sir. Not since the air farce announced it’s going to issue leather flight jackets again,”
Howls of glee greeted this remark. After forty years of nylon and nomex, the air force had recently announced leather jackets would soon be issued to combat-qualified flight crewmen as a career retention measure. The navy men were suddenly extremely proud of the fact that the navy — their navy — had never abandoned its World War II policy of issuing leather jackets to its aviators. Wild had been ribbed unmercifully by his navy comrades, many of whom had taken it upon themselves to personally inform Wild that anyone who would stay in any military service to get a leather jacket was a damned fool.
When Wild Blue and the LSOs were finally seated, Jake had the floor to himself. He waited until the crowd was silent. “We’ve been at sea for almost four months, flying every day but three, and you guys have done an outstanding job. You’ve kept the airplanes properly maintained and in the air. We’ve met our commitments. We’ve done the job the navy sent us here to do. I’m proud of each and every one of you.”
He faced the squadron skippers. “I want you gentlemen to let every enlisted man in your squadrons know that I am equally proud of them. Without our troops the planes wouldn’t fly.”
He directed his attention back to the faces in the crowd, the bulk of whom were young pilots and naval flight officers on their first or second cruise. “This profession of ours requires the best that we can give it. Three men who were here for our last little soiree aren’t here tonight. Sometimes your best isn’t good enough, and you have to live with that. Sometimes nobody’s best is good enough. Those are the hazards.”
Out of the corner of his eye Jake saw Bull Majeska staring at the floor. Jake picked out a young face he did not recognize about ten rows back and tried to talk to him. “In wartime officers are promoted due to their ability to lead in battle. In peacetime, too often, they are promoted because they are good bureaucrats. In case you guys haven’t figured it out, the navy is a large bureaucracy.” Chuckles stirred the crowd.
“Pushing paper isn’t enough. And driving an airplane through the wild black yonder isn’t enough. There is something else, something that’s a little difficult to put into words.” All this had seemed so simple this afternoon in his office as he doodled and thought about what he wanted to say.
He put his hands in his pockets and walked to a new position, then searched again for that anonymous, smooth young face he had been talking to. “You have to have faith — faith in yourself, faith in the guy beside you, faith in your superiors, and faith in the people who work for you.
“You see, a military organization is a team of people who have to rely on each other. The more complex our equipment becomes, the more intricate our operations, the greater the reliance has to be. We can’t function unless every man does his job. We must all do the absolute best we can, each and every one of us. We’ll each do our part. We’ll stick together. We’ll accept responsibility. Not for personal gain, not for glory, not for promotion, not for …” He ran out of words and searched the faces looking at him.
Did they understand? Could they understand? It sounded so trite when he said it aloud. Yet he had believed it all his adult life and had tried to live it.
“You must have faith. And you must keep the faith.” The faces, these faces, tan, black, brown; he had been looking at these faces for twenty years. Even the names were the same, American names, from every dusty, weary corner of the earth. And the nicknames — Slick, Box, Goose, Ace — all the same. He felt old and worn. He walked toward the door and a lieutenant standing near it called the room to attention.
12
Jake Grafton hurried to keep up with Captain James as he loped along over the knee-knockers and down the ladders. Behind Jake trailed the ship’s Damage Control Assistant — a lieutenant commander — and a first-class petty officer with a clipboard. The captain’s marine orderly followed them all.
The official weekly inspection of the ship for cleanliness and physical condition was accomplished by junior officers — lieutenants and below — who each received a group of twenty to thirty compartments, a “zone,” which they toured and graded and commented upon. But Captain James liked to inspect random compartments from several zones, then compare his observations with the written comments of the junior officers assigned those zones. When the official inspectors missed serious discrepancies caught by the captain, or gave a satisfactory or above-average grade to a compartment the captain judged unsatisfactory, lively, one-sided discussions ensued on the bridge near the captain’s chair, with the offending young officer standing at nervous attention and saying “Yessir” or “Nosir” at the end of every one of the captain’s sentences. Consequently, aboard
The air wing commander didn’t usually participate in these weekly exercises in high-stress, power leadership. Today, however, Captain James had requested his presence and was leading him through compartments assigned to the air wing. Jake felt like a parent being shown damage his children had caused.
The captain stopped outside a closed door and rattled off the compartment number from the plate near the door as he seized and held the doorknob.
“VF-143 airframe shop, sir,” chirped the petty officer with the clipboard.
The captain twisted the knob and shot through the door as it opened. Someone inside called a hasty “attention on deck.”
James ignored the sailors rising clumsily to their feet. “Deck’s dirty. Lightbulb out.” He stopped beside a desk and examined the top. He brushed the paper aside. There were gouges in the soft material that formed the writing surface. “See that?” He looked at the nearest sailor, a third-class petty officer. “See that? That’s an expensive desk and it’s damaged. You people will want another one pretty soon and you won’t get it. I won’t approve it. You’ve got to learn to take care of this equipment. Move the desk.”
Two sailors picked it up and moved it away from the bulkhead. The linoleum was discolored. The captain bent down and scraped at it with a fingernail. “Look here, son.” The third-class bent down obediently. “This stuff comes
