Ian Slater - World in Flames

The bluish-white blot of the deck suddenly became a blur of lights, the narrow deck widened, the orange ball centered, the twenty-five-ton fighter hitting the deck with a force of over forty tons. Below the flight deck, the cable housings crashed like two freight trains. Shirer felt the harness jerk, his body slammed back into the seat with a force of over seventy tons. He cut power and left it to God.

The Tomcat skewed, and halted abruptly, the wire’s “pullback” failing to release the hook so that Elmer Ventral and two other green shirts following a brown-shirted plane captain raced to unhook the plane, but the three wire snapped. The cable whipped through the air. Ventral disappeared, two men near him smacked clear off the deck. As the petty officer and two other men attended the plane’s chocks, another sounded the “man overboard” alarm of his fiber mike, the Klaxon wailing throughout the enormous ship. Immediately the Sea King helo hovering a quarter mile astern moved in.

Ventral’s top half continued writhing close to the island, slithering in its own entrails, the green jackets helping Shirer unstrap, leading him quickly off to flight deck control and debriefing.

The Sea King’s searchlights crisscrossed the sea, the helo hovering above the wide, bubbling wake, whose luminescent plankton made it look like wild, undulating hills of cream.

Neither of the two men were found.

As both the captain’s and the flight deck controller’s investigation would reveal, the oil rag should have raised the alarm that the big one-and-a-half-inch “braking” cable, to which the arrester wires were anchored, had been strained — a loose strand hooking the oil-stained cloth, the worst section of frayed cable hidden from view in the cable’s housing.

Shirer, sitting exhausted in his cabin, knew it wasn’t the first time a wire had gone, and it wouldn’t be the last. He felt bad about it but not guilty. If you went “into guilt,” as the air boss often repeated, you’d soon be “out of” flying.

It was announced on all three of the carrier’s TV channels that there would be a service for Leading Seaman Ventral and the other two flight deck crewmen at 1400 hours next day— “Air Ops permitting.”

Most of the five thousand men aboard Salt Lake City had never heard of Ventral or the other two men, but this made it all the more important for those who could to attend.

“Shirer?”

It was the air boss’s voice outside his cabin. Shirer found the effort of getting up off his bunk and going to the door as tiring as if he were dragging a bag of cement. “Yes, sir?”

“You okay?”

“Yes, sir.”

“No you’re not.” The air boss slapped him on the shoulder. “You’re off to Pearl in the morning. Then San Diego and Washington.”

“What’s the scuttlebutt?” Shirer asked.

“Don’t know. Haven’t got a clue.”

“Guess I’ll find out soon enough, sir.”

The air boss smiled and turned to go. “Need anything tonight? We can lay on room service if you like.”

“No, thanks, sir,” replied Shirer. “D’we know what screwed up on that nose wheel?”

“Not as yet. By morning.”

“Yes, sir. Ah — I’d like to attend the burial service for…”

The air boss was shaking his head. “Sorry, but Washington wants you ASAP. Don’t worry — I’ll explain it to the men.”

“Appreciate that, sir.”

“You get some shut-eye.”

Shirer didn’t need an order to sleep. He hadn’t been as tired as this since the dogfights over Adak, when, after three or four sorties, you were ready to sleep on the tarmac. Lying on the bunk, he looked down at his boots. He’d have to undo them before he— His head lolled and he was fast asleep.

David Brentwood had never dreamed that he would get fan mail as a soldier, and yet here it was: over two hundred letters from admirers waiting to touch, however indirectly, one of the few who had won what General Freeman, in the manner of congratulating an Olympian, had called the “gold and silver”—the Congressional Medal of Honor for David’s single-handed destruction of the Russian fuel dump at Stadthagen, the silver for “conspicuous bravery above and beyond the call of duty” during the assault on Pyongyang.

The letters depressed him. Their writers trusted him so much. They didn’t know, unless they’d been in combat themselves, how thin the line could be between cowardice and bravery, between “thumbs up” and “screw up.” David had seen men, officers like Freeman, who, though they could understand fear, were able to disdain it. For them the adulation of the public was fuel for their fire. For David, adulation only did what high marks did for him in college — drove him on not because he wanted to but because it was expected — had been expected by generations of Brentwoods in the armed services. Personal achievements were nothing for a Brentwood if they weren’t surpassed the next time around. The pressure was enormous. Dutifully he opened the next letter without having taken any notice of whom it was from. Only when he unfolded it did he recognize the handwriting — Melissa Lange’s.

“Hey, Yank!”

David turned around and saw it was the mad British sergeant, perched high in the back of a lizard-camouflaged Humvee, using its swivel-mounted.50-millimeter machine gun as an armrest. “Got you a seat on the hospital train to Brussels. Ten minutes. Better get a move on.”

“Right,” answered David, quickly folding the letter, slipping it into his top breast pocket as he headed toward the Humvee.

“ ‘Ere, ‘ere!” bellowed the sergeant, albeit good-naturedly. “Where’s your gear?”

David stopped, feeling as foolish as he had in the first terrible hours at Parris Island. He’d forgotten his kit bag in the excitement of receiving Melissa’s letter. As he climbed aboard the Humvee, he saw the sergeant pointing toward the administration building. “Hear about your little sweetie?” The sergeant was talking again about the young admitting clerk, Lili, who had flirted with David when he’d first arrived at the Belgian hospital on convalescent leave after Stadthagen. “She’s coming along, too,” the British sergeant informed him. “Which reminds me. You ever see that old cartoon — barrack room full of birds all stripped down to their waists. Tits sticking out all over the place. Sar’ major comes in, beet red. ‘Good God!’ he says. ‘I said kit inspection!’ “

“That’s terrible,” said David.

“Never mind, lad. I’ll ‘ave another one for you when you get back.”

David never liked people saying things like “when you get back.” Always made him nervous.

Lili was helping some of the nurses load the last of the abdominal cases that were being transferred to Brussels on the train. She waved, smiling at him.

“ ‘Ello, ‘ello,” the sergeant teased David. “Bit of the old in-out for you, Jack. Eh?”

Before David could answer, the Humvee jerked to a stop at the gate, throwing them both against the driver’s cabin. The guards were demanding ID. “This man’s got a train to catch,” the sergeant informed the corporal of the guard.

“We must check all passes,” said the Belgian sentry in impeccably stilted English.

“We much check all passes,” said the sergeant, mimicking him to David.

“What for?” the sergeant asked the corporal. “Think I’m a bloody spy?” He dug David in the ribs, sending shooting pains down to the scar tissue.

“No, I do not think so,” replied the Belgian corporal, un-fazed. “You are too fat, I think.”

“What? You cheeky bastard!” said the sergeant, passing his and David’s ID down. “Don’t give me any of your lip. I’m responsible for this hero, see. And if we don’t catch that train—”