Collateral Damage

This last week I spent a lot of time eating, visiting with friends and family and thinking about my blessings. Last night, one of my blessings breathed deeply next to me: my husband. Twenty-two years a Marine aviator, as many landings as takeoffs, no POW experiences, no visions of war keeping him awake. I fell asleep thinking about some of my friends and family whose lives had changed because of the military service of others close to them. They were collateral damage.

Some of you know part of my story. My brother was killed in a mid-air as a Marine fighter pilot. His son, then eight, has just turned forty and had a party. His brother and sister came to celebrate with him. Bittersweet. My brother would have loved the people they grew into. They would have loved to know my brother as adults know their parents. They all show wounds from an explosion they never saw coming thirty some years ago.

Five years ago, my husband and I attended the marriage of my niece to her twenty-two year old Marine corporal at the County Clerk’s office. He’d already had two tours to Iraq and was about to leave for the third. Their daughter is now four years old. Their marriage has ended in the rages of PTSD and TBI. I asked him if the military makes it easy to get help. He said he didn’t want help, he just wanted to go back to what he knew how to do--fight a war and protect his buddies. He doesn’t want to know how to get the oil changed on the car, talk to his wife, or shop for groceries. Those everyday activities are difficult and full of tension. My niece wanted a husband who talks softly, with respect, sleeps at night, never raises his hand against her. She doesn’t want her daughter to grow up seeing her daddy yelling at mom. His explosions here reflect the explosions he can’t talk about over there.

A fighter pilot’s wife from Korean War vintage has become a friend. She’s shared how her husband never really knew what to do with himself as a civilian, so he drank. He was not a good drunk or an easy husband to have and to hold. She stayed with him. The shadows in her eyes remain even though he died a few years back.

The receptionist at my hairdresser’s is married to a Marine in Afghanistan. He’s only been gone a month, she has five more months to get through. Her struggle? Getting used to not talking to him everyday. He’s in a remote area, no Skype, no realtime emails. She can send him letters that get to him pretty quickly through some sort of email to print option. She asked, “What am I going to do with myself? I’ve already redecorated the whole house!” I hope she learns how to be herself and then find joy in his return. I hope he returns without leaving who he used to be in the Afghan hills.

“Close is only good in horseshoes, hand grenades and pattern bombing,” is a gallows humor saying in the aviator world. Being close to those in military service results in collateral damage often coming as a sneak attack.

In this holiday season, I continue to count my blessings and look for ways to reach out and help out those who strayed into the bombing pattern inadvertently.

Aviation Brief XXIII: Landing

1.    Take turns coming into the break to land.
2.    Open canopy with canopy lever when entering fuel pits; in case of fire, get out quickly.
3.    Hot refuel.
4.    Taxi to flightline.
5.    Wait while plane captain chocks airplane.
6.    Wait until plane captain signals, ‘Cut engine’
7.    Cut engine.
8.    Get face curtain pin out of pin bag and put it in to ‘safe’ seat.
9.    Climb out of plane and on to deck.

Aviators brief hops so the unexpected is expected. All involved know who comes into land first--usually the flight leader. An emergency such as bingo fuel might change that, but other routines prepare for anything not routine.

The canopy is opened before going into the fuel pit because the risk of fire exists and someone somewhere wasn’t able to get out of a burning plane on the ground.

The plane captain chocks the plane then signals to cut the engines because it helps to have hands and eyes on the ground to do and see what the strapped into the seat cannot.

The aviator turns off the engine and makes sure the one very important pin safes the ejection seat from ejecting an aviator too close to the ground. Good to have control of your own life and power.

In marriages we need to brief each other on the expected and be prepared for the unexpected.   Who’s the flight leader? Are there any emergencies? Are there fires in the fuel pit? Do we need to make sure the plane doesn’t run over our plane captain?

I confess I tend to take care of a lot of our life missions. Somedays I believe I briefed the hop as the flight leader only to realize Andy didn’t get the brief. He wants to take care of everything. Tension.

Except when he doesn’t. Sometimes he wants someone else to take charge. Tension again.

 When it’s tough--the kids are misbehaving, the money’s tight, work is frustrating--then I want him to take charge and he wants me to be the flight leader and lead the way to a safe landing. I want to be refueled without fires and explosions. I want someone else to chock my plane and let me know I can cut the engine. So does he.

The hard part is making sure we don’t just brief each other once--like 36 years ago when we married and I thought he was the next best thing to a god on earth. We have to keep briefing and re-briefing and looking out for our wingman.

We all want a safe landing and to be able to climb out of the high-performance fighter jet that is our life on to solid ground.

Liar

Military Writer’s Society of America has an award each month called The William E. Mayer Prize for Literary and Artistic Excellence. I thought I’d give it a shot back in December. The word prompt was “Deceit”. Sometimes I struggle with my writing. This wrote itself from my heart.
    

I wanted to marry my love. I had no intention of marrying the Marine Corps--so love mixes with anger and anguish.
        

I’m still glad I married my guy--now 36 years! I’m so proud of him and so proud to be a Marine’s wife. That doesn’t mean I don’t remember being mad about it all.

LIAR

You lied. 

Even the uniform all starched,

And pressed with red stripe

For the blood of others,

While you promised forever,

In sickness and in health. 

True blue. 

Honor. 

Leadership.

You led me down the path

Of believing while I

Scattered rosebuds where I may. 

No more.

Only Decembers and Januaries

Gripped by cold.

Gripped in cold empty arms.

My white knuckles tighten. 

You take up arms,

You swore,

To hold me in your arms.

Gunmetal arms, mortars, bullets,

Rotors and turbine jet engines,

Take you from me.

I swear. 

I have issues with

Not being issued,

Being left behind

With our children

Who cry

Their worry. 

I worry. 

We miss you.

I miss you. 

Come home.

Aviator Brief III: Squadron Jobs (#3)

The Administration Officer worked for the XO doing all the grunt work of the picayune details of filling out all the paperwork a military bureaucracy can generate--and then taking the shit dished out when it wasn’t done right. Admin was a thankless job even when the pilot liked the XO he worked for.

What was the worst job in the squadron? Call it the Voting Officer. The pilot holding that ‘esteemed’ position had to make sure everyone had absentee ballots if needed. Later, when drug tests came into vogue, the VO made sure guys peed in the bottle. Why was that the worst job? Well, part of an aviator’s mystique and power was tied to the importance of the job he had in the squadron and the excellence in which he performed it. Absentee ballots and drug tests were completely non-essential to flying, with no opportunity for excellence. In fact, being excellent at getting your fellow pilots to pee in the bottle pissed them off in more ways than one.

The main job an officer had in the squadron was to be a pilot or RIO. Pilots were judged on their competency in the air, whether they were ‘a good stick’. This ranking went on a scale from “a damn fine stick’ to ‘unsafe at any speed’. Pity the pilot in VMFA 314 known by the call sign Unsafe-At-Any-Speed. Pity him, but don’t respect him--and if you’re a RIO, try not to fly in his backseat.

RIOs lacked control in the air--except through the radio yelling at their front-seater to land before they ran out of fuel and through a RIOs capacity to command eject. They could decide to eject both seats if the pilot was incapacitated--or too stupid to realize he had reached the point of no return to controlled flight. Since some pilots would rather be dead than look bad at the field, that ability to make the decision to abandon a multi-million dollar airplane often rested on a RIO’s realization that staying alive allowed for redemption, while a smoking hole in the ground did not.

Control. Woo-eee. Some people want to control everything. Some people spend years trying to set the boundaries for a controller--parent, friend, spouse, child, or sibling.
Try to control the world and the world/life/God eventually gets around to giving a lesson and whomping you upside-the-head.

One thing I’ve learned in my lessons: I don’t control everything. I can’t control everything. I don’t want to control everything. That’s the Big Guy’s job. I can only control how I act, not how it is perceived by others. I can only control my words, not how they’re heard and interpreted. I can only control the gifts I give, not how they are used, squandered, rejected, or loved and appreciated.

And staying alive allows for redemption.

One other thing--the wife job has no designator. There is no alpha-wife job versus low-life job. Well--I guess some wives could be designated a ‘good stick’.