Robert Mason - Chickenhawk

“Beautiful!” said Fisher. He was grinning.

“Just remember, keep yourself low when there are trees, keep moving as fast as you can, and never use the same route twice.” I grinned as I said that Leese had told me the same thing a year ago.

When I was flying, my life was in my own hands. When I was back at the camp, the army was in control of my destiny. And the army still hadn’t found my orders

“This is a hot one,” said the operations officer, Major Ramon. Every pilot in the Prospectors was at the briefing. The major droned on with battle plans, frequencies, ship numbers, crew assignments, and suspected enemy locations. It was so much noise to me. My hand was writing information down on my pad, but my mind was in shock. Two days to go, said my mind. Two fucking days to go and I’m going on a hot one. “We will make a total of three lifts this morning,” said the major. Three chances. Step right up. Three, count them, three Huey rides in a combat assault absolutely free. Win yourself a body bag. Become a hometown hero. Become a memory early in your life. “Okay, you’ve got everything you’ll need. Let’s go.”

I walked across the quarter mile of sand with Fisher. I kept checking my gear, like a novice. Pistol, flak vest, maps, chest protector. Oh, yeah, the chest protector is in the ship. Helmet. Courage. Where is my courage? Oh, yeah, my courage is in the ship.

“Lose something?” asked Fisher. He had been watching me check myself, patting my pockets and gear.

“No, I’ve got everything.”

“This is really exciting,” said Fisher.

“Yes. It’s very exciting.” You dumb shit. I hated Fisher when he said that. Exciting? Is that like excitement at the old football game? It’s exciting to get killed? Fool. Wait a few months and then tell me it’s exciting.

Fisher climbed up to the rotor head, and I checked the air frame. As I opened the radio hatch at the nose, an orderly ran up to me and said, “They want you back at ops, sir.”

“For what?”

“I don’t know, sir. Major Ramon told me to tell you they have something for you at ops.”

“Right.” I looked up at Fisher. “I’ll be right back.” Fisher nodded.

I pushed the flap aside and walked into the ops tent. Ramon wasn’t there. “Where’s Major Ramon?” I asked the sergeant.

“I don’t know, sir.”

“Well, what did they want me for?”

“Who wanted you, sir?”

“Ramon, I thought. I was just told that somebody had something for me here, and I’m here. Is this some kind of joke?”

“I don’t know, sir. I don’t know anything about it.”

I heard the turbines winding up to shrills behind me. The Prospectors were cranking up. I turned and left. If I didn’t hurry, I’d hold up the mission. I ran across the sand. A hundred yards away the lead ship took off. What the fuck. I waved. “Hey, wait. There’s only one pilot in my ship!” I ran faster. Then the whole flight took off. I stood in the sand, watching the flight cruise west, completely confused. A Jeep I hadn’t noticed before drove back from the flight line. The driver stopped next to me. “Want a ride, sir?” The driver was the orderly that had come with the message. All my flight gear was in the Jeep. I got in.

“What the fuck is going on? Where’s Major Ramon?”

“Major Ramon is flying your ship, sir.”

I wasn’t the only one who thought I needed a break.

The next day, August 10, I was called into the operations tent and handed orders. I was to proceed to Saigon to catch an eleven o‘clock morning flight on the fourteenth. I was exhilarated.

That afternoon, I was flying a Huey back to Phan Rang. The ship was due for a major overhaul, and so was I. I flew along the coast and went through a notch in a tall hill next to the ocean. As we crossed the ridge, the crew chief, a new guy, called me. “Sir, we’re being shot at from that hill. Shall we engage?”

Shall we engage? I couldn’t believe what I heard. Shall we engage?

“Not today, Sergeant.” I turned to Staglioni, the copilot, and grinned. “Not today.” I laughed so hard that I cried.

Sitting in the soft airline seat, I savored the air-conditioned crispness of the air and breathed in the scents of the passing stewardesses. I had a grin on my face that wouldn’t quit. I was the Cheshire cat. The man who sat next to me was Ken Klayman, a guy I had met on the Croatan. We were both aboard a chartered Pan American 707 going to the land of the big PX. We were no longer in-country.

“I suppose now we could say we’re out-country?”

“Yes. Definitely out-country,” said Klayman.

“It seems like a dream.”

“Yeah: It is nice to wake up from a bad one. And just when you thought they had you.”

Since I had left Phan Rang, every time I checked the time I remembered that the maid had stolen my watch. The maid who neatly arranged my gear for me, who’d never steal a thing—until the day you left. I had considered the watch a charm.

It had been lifted once before—the first night I tried out the new shower we’d built in the Preachers. I hung it on a nail, took the shower, and it was gone.

“I’ll get it for you,” Rubenski had said.

“You know who took it?”

“Not yet. But don’t worry. I’ll find the fuck. Stole your grandfather’s watch. What slime.”

An hour later Rubenski walked into my tent carrying the watch. “Here ya go, sir. And don’t worry; it won’t happen again,” Rubenski said.

“Hey. Thanks a lot. You’re amazing.”

“It was nothing,” he said. “Just remember, Lake Tahoe…”

Klayman and I reverted to early adolescence during the flight back. Neither of us could sleep during the twenty-hour trip. Instead we cracked jokes and pretended we were flying the plane. The pilots we played didn’t know much. “Compass? What’s that?” “Holding pattern? Are you crazy?” “I can’t put the gear down. We’re too close to the rooftops.”

We landed at the Philippines and then headed for Hawaii. At Honolulu, we were invited to get off the plane to stretch our legs, buy gifts, and such. Klayman told me to pick up a small chess set so we could play on the long nonstop flight to Fort Dix, New Jersey.

I found a small traveling set at one of the airport gift shops. I also grabbed a Newsweek and went to the counter to pay. The clerk, a young woman, took my money and asked if I was returning from Vietnam. I said yes, proudly. She suddenly glared at me and said, “Murderer.” I stared at her for a long minute, feeling confused. Then I smiled. I realized that she was talking about someone else.

“I made it.” I smiled as Patience ran toward me. She was crying. Jack toddled across the parking lot at the bus station, holding my sister’s hand. He looked bewildered; I had been away half his life.

“I thought you’d never get here,” said Patience.

We spent our first week in an apartment my father had rented for us near the beach. We spent the days at the beach, which I enjoyed. My nights were troubled. I kept waking up three feet in the air above the bed, frightening Patience. The dreams continued relentlessly, though the dreams were not what woke me.

Back at Fort Wolters, Texas, I began training to become an instructor pilot. During this training phase, my sister asked me to come to her wedding. She wanted me to wear my uniform.

“I don’t think people would like to see me in uniform, Susan.”