Robert Mason - Chickenhawk

I taught flying again. I showed students how to get into and out of confined areas, how to take off when you couldn’t hover, how to fly formations, and I even demonstrated night autorotations. Leese would’ve been proud.

At the end of the cycle, the students, whom we had put through hell, were so happy that they usually gave their instructors gifts. The traditional gift was a bottle of whiskey. I did not drink at the time, so my gifts accumulated in a cupboard at home.

My days were good; my nights were hell. I had been back from Vietnam for over a year. The dreams still oppressed me, and the unseen fear kept me bouncing out of bed. On one of my late-night wanderings around the house, I decided to have a drink. Three drinks later, I climbed into bed and fell asleep. I tried it again the next night. It worked, though I had to drink a bit more to do the job.

After I’d taught two more cycles, the dizziness returned. I was flying cross-country with a student when I felt the ship rear back.

I was grounded again. This time it would be permanent. That was when I started seeing Doc Ryan.

While the school was trying to find a job for a nonfly ing pilot, I spent two weeks taking psychological tests. For one set of tests I had to go to Fort Sam Houston for a consultation.

In the parking lot at Fort Sam, I met Niven, the Prospector who had caught the wire in the minefield. He was now a major.

“Well, how do you feel about your DFC?” asked Niven.

“What DFC?”

“For the night we dropped that ammo, remember? You tried it once, started to fall through, and went around and did it again.”

“Yeah, I remember that.”

“Well, the grunt commander on the ground that night put us in for DFCs. I’ve got mine.”

“I never heard a thing about it.”

“I can’t understand.” Niven frowned. “It couldn’t have been because I was logged as the aircraft commander?”

“That sounds typical.”

“Well, you should check it out, anyway. It can help your career.”

“It doesn’t matter. I’m leaving the army.”

“Why?”

“I’m grounded. Without flying, the army gets old quick.”

“Why’d they ground you?”

“I’m nuts.”

I walked through a hallway at the Hospital. Fort Sam Houston is the burn center for the military. I saw eighteen-year-old boys with their faces burned away, bright-pink skin grafts stretched over strange, stunted noses. Had someone photographed the men there, twisted and deformed with featureless faces, by the hundreds, the war might have ended sooner. But probably not.

With the results from my various tests, the army gave me a new medical profile. A sentence in the profile reads, “Aviator may not be assigned to duty in a combat zone.” At a time when the army was shipping pilots back to Vietnam after only a few months in the States, this no-combat restriction was known as the million-dollar ticket.

People who knew me knew that I wrote stories. The head of the faculty-development branch found out and interviewed me. He asked if I’d like to try writing lessons for ground school and be a platform instructor. And that is what I did during my last six months in the army.

As a platform instructor I taught incoming pilots from Vietnam how to train students effectively, I stood on the stage, a has-been, and gave expert advice on how to do it. If you can’t do it, teach it. I was witty. I was popular. I was a closet basket case.

I was drinking half a bottle a night to get to sleep. Even though I could never go back to combat, the war enraged me. I watched television. The war was going stronger than ever before. The scores were always ten to one, proving that we were winning. Only a few people seemed to realize that the war was wrong. To the rest of the people, the war news droned on every newscast and had become an annoyance. People didn’t want to stop it; they wanted it to go away.

Meanwhile, pilots were being sent back for their second tours.

At the officers’ club one night, a pilot I knew came through to say hello. He was visiting his wife on a leave from Nam. A week after that, we read his obituary in the Army Times. The pilots read the obits and calculated their odds of surviving the second time around. The joke about going on the second tour was “If they try to send me back, they’ll have to have a door on that plane big enough for me and my telephone pole.” That was so much bravado, for almost all went. It was either that or end your career.

For a year and a half, Patience and I had been going to the mandatory monthly cocktail party at the club. Patience hated army etiquette. We went through a receiving line each time, shaking hands with the post VIPs. One night she told a colonel that his sunglasses made him look cool. He took them off, glaring. Luckily I was leaving the army anyway.

After one of these receptions, I wandered around the club looking for old friends. Some of the instructors at Wolters were former classmates or guys I had flown with in Nam. I heard a familiar voice.

“Mason, I’ll be damned.”

I thought I recognized the voice.

“It’s me. Hawkins,” he said.

“Lady Killer Hawkins?”

“That’s it.”

Some people moved behind me, allowing more light to shine on Hawkins. Something was wrong. That was definitely his voice, but his face…

“Just got here,” said Hawkins.

“How come? I’ve been here a year and a half.” The first thing I noticed was that Hawkins had no eyebrows. Or ears. His hair was patchy from implantations. His nose was shiny and deformed. Hawkins? The handsomest guy in our class?

“I’ve been in a hospital. For a long while.”

“Jesus. It is you. What the hell happened?”

“Crashed and burned,” said Hawkins. “I got knocked out in the crash. I was unconscious in the fire for quite a while.”

“You’re lucky to be alive.”

“That’s what they tell me….” Then his voice trailed off. “I don’t feel so lucky.”

“They’ll get you back in shape. Don’t worry about that. The army has the best—”

“They’ve already done their best.”

Patience and I went to New Orleans for the weekend with another couple. It should have been fun. Instead, I collapsed while touring a catacomb. I sank to my knees, feeling death. I felt like I was going to roll over and die on the grass. The tombs seemed to beckon me.

Later, when we got to a bar, I anesthetized myself. That helped. If I stayed drunk, I could cope. When I was sober, life was unending anxiety with no focus.

I did so well as a platform instructor that when I told the head of the department I was leaving the army, he offered to get me a direct commission as a captain if I would stay. But I would be a captain who walked. I could wear my wings and walk to the flight line and watch the ships fly away. So, when I left the army in 1968, it was as an ex-pilot and, in my mind, a failure.

A lot has happened since then. I have followed a pattern of behavior that is typical of many Vietnam veterans. The funny thing is, I wasn’t aware of the pattern until I wrote it down. It has taken a very long time for me to see it.

I returned to the University of Florida to complete the education I had begun in 1960. I saw student demonstrations that accused veterans of being fools for going to Vietnam. I felt like a double loser; some internal flaw had caused me to lose my flight status, and now I learned how dumb I had been for having gone to Vietnam.

I studied art, mostly photography. I tried to learn a new career and rejoin society. I could not sleep without having nightmares. I arrived at my eight o‘clock morning classes only after at least two stiff drinks. If I drank all day, I could sleep at night. I could not face a campus filled with young, smiling faces while guys still leapt screaming out of helicopters, killing and dying for a cause unworthy of their bravery. They deserved to be heroes, but they were fools.