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THE ACCIDENTAL AVIATOR

COVINGTON, KENTUCKY ■ FEBRUARY 1968

The posters showed a young man of the classical All-American type, clean cut, moderate length dark hair, brown V-neck sweater, sitting on the steps of what appeared to be a high school. His hand was resting on his chin and he looked upward, off upward toward a clear blue sky. Below him, printed in large letters were the words, “1, days between you and the sky.” In smaller type below that, the poster announced the US Army would take a young man with a high school diploma or a general educational development (GED) certificate, 20–20 vision (or correctable to 20–20), and who would be at least-1 years old upon completing the program and make him into a helicopter pilot. If you could meet these minimal requirements, pass a flight physical, and complete the training, you could become an Army Aviator and find the freedom of the sky. And, although the ad did not say it, in -1/0 you would also find the Vietnam War.

I received the notice from my local draft board to take the draft physical in early March, 1968. I would turn 19 in May and had been relatively certain that this letter would be forthcoming. In March, 1968 there were no draft numbers, only the near certainty of being drafted if you did not have a ready deferment, like college. The physical itself was a long boring day of lines and forms and being herded from one room to another for tests of one sort or another in the big downtown Cincinnati Federal Building. As I walked into the building that morning, an anti-war protester about my age standing just outside the door handed me a flyer. I glanced at the words just long enough to see what it was, and then I wadded it up and bounced it off his forehead as I continued inside. At the end of the day, I was certified mentally and physically qualified for military service. After passing the physical, I knew the “Greetings” letter would soon come to the two-room apartment I shared with my wife of six months. We rented it from one of her cousins and, both of us being 18, kept their kids entertained through the walls, or must have since they always giggled for some reason whenever they saw us.

In ‘68, being a high school dropout with a GED certificate, 18, married with no children, not a student or an objector or a sole-surviving son, completely settled the issue. A week after I got the letter confirming I had passed the physical, I called the draft board. “Yes, you will be drafted, probably in July; unless, of course, you want to volunteer to be drafted, in which case you could leave next month.”

There were other choices: objector, Canada, immediate entry into school (if I could find one that would take me and that I could afford, both doubtful) but I really did not see any other choices except one. Instead of waiting for the draft I could enlist and gain some small measure of control over my fate. The other alternatives, if I thought of them at all, which I didn’t, were unacceptable, not because I was a burning anti-Communist, or believed “my country, right or wrong,” or because I pretended to understand the war one way or another. My people were from the mountains of Kentucky and there were some things the men always did. Going into the military was one of them.

All my life I played among the dusty uniforms hanging in the closets and looked at the fading photographs of my dad and my uncles from their military times, war and peace. I played in their old “Ike” jackets from the 40’s and 50’s and treasured the spent cartridge cases and old unit patches they had given me. I had my “science cabinet” (an old china cabinet) full of these things and others, patches from various Army units, a Nazi party pin one of my uncles brought back from the war, a WWI Victory medal given to me by an old veteran neighbor, an empty ammo clip from an m-1 rifle, all displayed next to the buffalo skull I brought back from a visit to relatives in Oklahoma, plus the dead tarantula sent me in a match box by my Uncle Bill, a veteran of the war in the Pacific who lived in Texas.

All my life, too, I saw the well-oiled and cleaned rifles and shotguns hanging on the walls of the houses in the Kentucky hollers (mountain valleys) of my childhood. No matter how poor the family, the weapons were always there along with pictures of the men in uniform. Few men were drafted out of the hollers because most enlisted when their war came. In fact, in Breathitt County during one of our wars, no one was drafted because all the men enlisted. Again, not from burning patriotism, although patriotic they were and still are—it was just what the men in their families had always done. The hardships of military service were often a rest from the reality of the true hardships of mountain life, coal mines and small farms. After all, in the military you always had clothes and food and a paycheck, small perhaps, but more than welfare.

My then wife’s people were of the same mountain stock as mine; in fact, we were distant cousins. But for her, it was not so simple. At 18 her life as a woman had just begun. She was only now becoming adjusted to our life together and she saw clearly that it could end all too soon. One of our high school teachers even told us, as we sat in the cafeteria before I quit high school for the second and final time, that we would get married; I would then get drafted and would be killed in Vietnam. But running away never occurred to her either.

The next day I drove our first new car, a blue ‘68 Mustang that my factory laborer’s job allowed us to buy, across the bridge from Newport over the Licking River to Covington, to the nearest recruiter’s office. The street the recruiting office was on had been the center of town—you could still see the streetcar tracks in between the cobbles laid down by the German immigrants—but in ‘68, Covington was fading fast. Empty storefronts displayed “for lease or sale” signs in the windows and the streets were not swept as often as they once had been. The litter of city trash sat in the curb and on the sidewalks and made everything feel even more rundown than it was.

The recruiting office had once been a restaurant, but as the businesses that provided the customers for the lunch trade folded, the restaurant joined them. Where the tables and chairs of the diner had been, were the desks of the three service’s recruiters, Navy, Marines, and Army, all in a row. The tiles on the floor still spelled out the restaurant’s name. During the race riots of the year before, I had worked at a very similar restaurant, just down the street from the recruiter’s office. The restaurant’s owner hid guns throughout the place—a rifle and a shotgun in the kitchen and a pistol under the counter, and told me, “If they start breaking in, just grab the first gun you are close to and open up.” my plan was simpler—“they” break in the front, I am out the back and gone. It’s all “theirs.”

When I walked in, the Army recruiter was talking to two other young men, which was fine—I didn’t want to talk to him anyway. One of my uncles was a marine gunnery sergeant, a “Gunny.” Because of him, I had wanted to be a marine since I was a little boy. The marine recruiter was sitting alone reading a western novel when I walked to the front of his desk and stood there, waiting for him to look up. When he did, the marine smiled.

Motioning me into a chair by the desk, the marine introduced himself as the Gunny, non-commissioned officer in charge, NCOIC, of the Marine Corps portion of the recruiting station. What could he tell me that was not already common knowledge? “The greatest fighting outfit the world had ever seen and after boot camp, you become one of us, you become a Marine. A two-year enlistment in the infantry would be the perfect start on life and an experience that you could tell your grandchildren about.” Still with a smile the Gunny said, “Boy, we’ll put you in the rice paddies and you can kill all the Cong you can find.”

As the Marine talked about his own infantry experiences in “the Nam” I looked at the three rows of ribbons on his chest and the hardness of his smile. My Marine uncle’s experiences from boot camp, Korea, and Vietnam came back to me, and the Gunny lost his recruit. Rifles and rice paddies would be only a last resort. I would not voluntarily sign on for what the draft promised anyway. After listening politely for a decent interval, I thanked the marine and told him I would think about what he said. As I turned to go I saw the Army recruiter was now free.

As I walked toward the Army recruiter he turned his head slightly and gave the marine a little grin. After a few questions about my background the recruiter asked, “How would you like to be a helicopter pilot?” Leafing through the pamphlets on his desk, he selected one, and laid it in front of me. The leaflet began, “90 Days Between You And The Sky.” As I read, the thought came to me that if I were to die, it would be better to fly to the spot rather than walk to it. Six months later I reported to Fort Polk, Louisiana. Nearly all warrant officer candidates (WOCs) went through Fort Polk and it was exactly what you would think it would be with the Vietnam War in full swing. Everyone smart enough to get out of military service had, leaving mostly National Guard and reserve enlistees, draftees and those of us who enlisted to “beat the draft.”

Twelve weeks later, a couple hundred candidates-to-be boarded Greyhound buses immediately after graduation from basic training and traveled to Fort Wolters, Texas, for a month of pre-flight training and then primary flight training. The demand for pilots was so strong that the Army had ten companies of WOCs under training at once for many years. I joined 9th WOC, the Tan Hats.