Burning the Days (20 page)

For us it was simple and always the same: Who was scheduled, what was the weather, what had the earlier missions seen?

——

The first morning light over the top of the wing. The first, easy missions. Out of the dust of memory, with a faint coating of dust himself, childlike, shrewd, comes Amell, the squadron commander.

A name is a destiny. It is the first of all poems. Even after death it keeps its power; even half-buried in newsprint or dirt, something catches the eye. Paavo Nurmi had such a name. So did Jean Genet; a stunt pilot named Lamont Pry; the Swedish Match King; a small-time fascist, Adrian Arcaud—I am beginning to portray an era—and in the huge graveyard my toe kicks up another: Zane Amell.

I don’t remember how I first saw him. He remains fixed, in any event, as in a photograph, with a fur hat like a cossack and a navy revolver in a holster under his arm. He had a husky, somewhat thespian voice. As an actor his speeches tended to be slightly long, although he could be succinct on occasion. One morning on leave, arriving back in Tokyo in a staff car, in a wrinkled uniform and reeking of alcohol, he was awakened by the Japanese driver and asked if there was some particular place he would like to be dropped. “Yes,” Amell answered hoarsely.

“Where?”

“Anywhere,” he muttered and fell back asleep.

His first words to me that I recall were at a briefing. I was flying as his wingman on my second combat mission. The task of a wingman can be easily described: it is to stay with the leader and to look, especially behind—almost all danger comes from there. I knew I was being tried out. I was ready for advice or words of warning. As the aircraft numbers were written next to our names,
he commented genially, “Great. You have old No Go, and I’ve got the Guzzler.” They were two of the oldest and slowest airplanes, but he didn’t have them changed.

I was fearful as we climbed in the cold air, the planes bobbing slightly. Perhaps it was the day I saw my first MIG, silver, passing above us, complete in every strange detail, silent as a shark. There were many in the air that day. They were coming from the north in flight after flight, above us. I remember how helpless and alone I felt. My throat was burning as I breathed.

His eyes were bad. They used to say that if anyone had the chances Amell had, they would have shot down ten airplanes—he ended up with three victories and a wingman drenched in flame who went down one day near Sinuiju. As I think now of his eyes, they seem to me small but like those of traders or old policemen, wise. In the air you heard his grating voice and assurance, like a man stepping blithely into traffic looking the wrong way. He liked to drink and was given to extravagant gestures.

Perhaps there is a price for insouciance, but I did not see him pay it. A few years later, in Michigan, he swerved off the runway while landing to avoid planes coming the other way. The ground was soft, however, and he flipped over and was killed.

——

Speed was everything. If you had speed you could climb or overtake them and, more important, not be easily surprised. You could rid yourself of speed quickly in a number of ways, but to obtain it, especially in the instant it was needed, was impossible.

By subsequent standards these were uncomplicated airplanes, but they could fly above forty-five thousand feet and, going straight down, flirt with the speed of sound. There was a second red needle on the airspeed indicator that moved to mark the limit beyond which you were not supposed to fly though we often did,
the needles crossed by thirty or forty knots, usually at low altitude or in a dive, the ship bucking and trying to roll. “On the Mach”—the absolute limit and a favorite phrase.

The difference between our planes and theirs was in most ways insignificant, but in one, crucial. They had cannon—the maw of a MIG seemed swollen and menacing. We had machine guns, which were almost feminine in comparison; the skin of the ship had faint gouges, like the imprint of a spoon, near the nose where the guns poked through. There were six of them. The cannon shells were as big around as a drinking glass and the damage they could do was severe. Machine-gun bullets, on the other hand, were the size of a finger or wine cork. It was the sledgehammer versus the hose. The hose was more flexible and could be adjusted quickly. The slower-firing cannon could not; you could almost say, Oh, God, between the heavy, glowing shots. Once machine guns had their teeth in something, they chewed rapidly.

We test-fired on the way north, a brief squeeze with the switches on. The trigger was on the stick and the safety pin for it, with a red streamer attached, in one of your pockets. Now it was all real; it had only been a picture before, the familiar one of a formation hung in vacant sky. There were only eleven seconds’ worth of ammunition altogether. A burst in a fight might last two or three. The secret was simple: get in close, as close as possible, within fifty feet if you could, so close you could not miss.

——

Often at dawn, drifting across to us was a great, swelling sound, the running up of engines. It reached a climax and stayed there, this roar that devoured our lives. Then slowly it would diminish, down unseen runway, fading as the flight became airborne. After a moment it began again: first-light reccey, off to the Yalu.

The names that appeared on the mission board three or four times a day were not a list of the most able. They included laggards
and incompetents as well as men whose only failing was prudence. The war had swept up and reclaimed former pilots who had returned to ordinary life and become stockbrokers or schoolteachers, and there was one veteran captain—I’ll call him Miles—who had been badly burned in a crash and never recovered his nerve. He was a man for whom things went wrong. Dishonor was always staring him in the face, or worse, another crash. On a mission his engine was always running rough, it seemed, and he would call that he was turning back. I flew with him several times, once in early March, in my first real fight.

The sky that day was clear and deep. Heading north at forty thousand feet, there were smooth, straight contrails streaming out for miles behind us which could be seen from far off. The spares, unneeded, had already turned back and were somewhere near Pyongyang. They were talking calmly. “There are bogies at twelve o’clock,” the wingman observed routinely.

“Roger.”

After a few moments the wingman added, “They look like MIGs.”

“They
are,”
the other said. He began calling us. “Lots of them. They’re turning north,” he advised.

There were twelve of us. We began a slow turn to the south while the conversation went on; we were trying to find out more, how many of them there were. The sky was empty but my hands were tingling. Then we saw contrails, faint and distant. “Drop tanks, everybody,” I heard.

We carried external fuel tanks, large as bathtubs but more gracefully shaped, beneath the wings. At a touch of a button they could be jettisoned. The plane jumped slightly, became lighter, as the tanks fell away. The hostile contrails turned slowly towards us.

For an interminable time nothing changed, we drew no closer. Then there were specks that were making the contrails. Suddenly we were almost in range. “Everybody pick one of them,” I heard.

It was almost impossible to hold the gunsight on something so small but we fired as they shot past. It was at a slight angle and we were on the side closest to their course when, instead of turning after them, Miles rolled over and started down. Fifteen thousand feet lower, in some haze, he pulled out. His aileron boost had gone out, he called. Was I still there, he asked brusquely? “Do you have me in sight, Four?”

I was at three o’clock, I told him. There was a pause, “My boost seems OK now,” he announced. Then, for the benefit of anyone who might be listening, “Let’s climb up and get back into the fight.”

Far above, like the surface after a deep dive, were scrawled and broken contrails. We could hear the calls: the squadron leader that day had gotten one, the pilot of the MIG had just bailed out at thirty-two thousand feet.

At debriefing I heard Miles explain that he thought he might have hit jet-wash and been thrown out of control. He had a tight, embarrassed expression on his face. The skin of his neck was unnaturally smooth from the ancient scars. His back and arms were burned too, I knew. I couldn’t bring myself to look at him.

At the same time, however, there were acts of aplomb. Most were things of the moment and lost in the huge tapestry of war. In a day or so they were forgotten, but a few were passed down. “Lead, they’re shooting at us!” “That’s OK, they’re allowed to do that.”

——

Colman’s arrival in the wing—in fact, there were two arrivals, the first having gone unnoticed—made him famous. He often told the story himself, in an awkward sort of way, laughing and revealing cigar-stained teeth.

He had been in a National Guard wing at a base in northern Japan—Misawa, I think. I have never been there but I know the
drabness, the cold of the mornings. They were flying dangerous, repeated raids on enemy supply lines. One day he caught a ride to Korea, to our base, and made his way to wing headquarters, which was not far from the flight line. There he asked to see the wing commander. For what reason, they said, and who was he? It was about a transfer. He was Captain Philip Colman.

The wing commander looked like a fading jockey and had the uncommon name of Thyng. He had piercing blue eyes and wore eagles that because of his smallness seemed doubly large. I can hear his voice as his plane suddenly whips over on its back. “MIGs below us, fellows,” he cries. Down we go.

Colman stood before him with a respectfulness untinged by the least subservience. He was, after all, only tossing the dice. He was that dauntless figure, a free man. Soldier, yes, but only occasional soldier; it was all somehow implicit in the crispness of his salute, his effort to be unsmiling, his stained flying suit. He was an experienced fighter pilot and had been an ace in China only seven years earlier. At the moment, he explained, he was in fighter-bombers, which was a waste of his talent; he would like to come to the Fourth.

Thyng was always on the lookout for able men. Did he have any time in the F-86? he asked Colman. Yes, sir, Colman said, about two hundred hours. He actually had none and had merely picked a figure that seemed probable. Thyng, interested, told him to leave his name and other details with the adjutant and he would see what could be done.

A few weeks later orders for the transfer came through and Colman left for Korea carrying, he said, at his own suggestion, his flight records with him. These records, sometimes sent separately, are a pilot’s full credentials and are sacred. They list everything—every flight, date, weather, type of aircraft. En route to Korea, Colman slid open the window of the transport plane and casually dropped this dossier into the sea. The pages, torn apart, slid under.

Fishes nosed at the Japanese planes shot down, night flights in Georgia and Florida, rail-cuts near Sinanju, the entirety.

In the new squadron, the one I was soon afterwards to join, he was asked for his records. They were being mailed, he said blandly. In the meantime, for convenience, he offered a rough breakdown of his time, very close to the fact but including several hundred hours in the F-86. Like the bill in a fine restaurant it was an impressive sum.

Airplanes are the same in the way that ships and automobiles are the same; they are similar, but there are also specifics. On his first flight Colman climbed into the cockpit and after a few minutes beckoned the crew chief to him. It had been a while since he’d flown this model and he didn’t want to make a mistake; why didn’t the crew chief show him the correct way to start the engine? he asked. The rest was easy—radio, controls, instruments, all these were the usual. He taxied out behind his leader and off they went on a local flight. They were carrying drop tanks but Colman hadn’t found out how to turn them on. As they were flying along about forty minutes later, he saw every needle suddenly wilt. His engine had stopped.

He had a flame-out, he reported.

“Roger,” the leader said. “Try an air start.”

This was another gap in his knowledge. “Just so I do it right,” Colman said, “read it to me off the checklist, will you?”

Item by item they went through the procedure. Nothing happened. The engine was all right and there was plenty of fuel, but it was all in the drop tanks. They tried a second time and then declared an emergency. Colman would have to try and make a dead-stick landing.

He might have done it easily except he was a little short of altitude. Nothing can amend that. At the last, seeing he was not going to make it, he picked out the best alternative he could, railroad tracks, and landed on them wheels-up, which was the right way.
He went skating down the rails as if they were a wet street, finally coming to a stop just inside a wire-mesh gate which happened to be the entrance to the salvage yard. The plane, damaged beyond repair, would have ended up there anyway. Eventually the fire trucks came, and an ambulance, and Colman, who had injured his back slightly, was taken to the hospital.

One of the first things noticed in the wreckage was that the drop-tank switches had not been turned on. Amell was in a very unfriendly mood when he arrived at the hospital. As soon as he entered the room, Colman held up his hands defensively. “Major, you don’t have to say it,” he began, “I fucked up. I know I fucked up. But you have to admit one thing.
After
I fucked up, nobody could have done a better job.”

Impudence saved him. He was in disgrace but at the same time admired. You could not help liking his nerve.

——

He was, in many ways, incomparable. I was a member of his flight and we flew together many times. In place of a hard plastic helmet, he wore an old leather one he had brought with him, probably from China days. His head, as a result, looked very small in the cockpit. Like rivulets feeding a stream the planes would join the main body as it moved towards the runway. The mission was forming. One of the ships seemed to have a mere child piloting it. Who was that? the colonels asked. “Colman.”