When I got to Spriggs-Payne, Mike had a surprise for me. He had, without anyone’s knowledge, agreed by contract to train selected Liberian candidates to fly. Since I was the only one of his pilots with a US government-issued flight instructor’s certificate, the task was given to me. The program was funded by USAID, as were a great many programs in Liberia at the time. The Cold War was raging, and both the Mali and Guinea governments were known to have strong communist leanings. Through USAID, the US was able to pour a huge amount of money into Liberia in the belief that it would establish a US democratic stronghold in Africa.
It was an interesting concept to take someone who had probably grown up with little knowledge of machinery and teach him how to handle something as complex as an airplane. Nevertheless, I assumed the prospective students could drive. They were in the national army, so somebody selected these young men for training. I was given four students, and four weeks to get them soloed and ready for more advanced training.
I started out with five days of ground school. We met in the hangar and, using a blackboard and chalk, I drew and explained the theory of flight, aerodynamics, vectors, weather, and load factor. The next week, we got into the airplane. That was when I was able to see how much of my instruction had failed. Three of the students had no understanding as to how a compass worked or, more importantly, what its significance was. What does the polar magnetic field mean to someone who has grown up in the tropics, lived within a ten-mile radius of his remote village and, if lucky, taught the rudiments of reading and writing?
I worked with these young men for two weeks every day, all day, but out of the four candidates I was only able to solo one. I later discovered that these men had not been specially selected at all; they had been picked completely at random. None had ever expressed any interest in becoming a pilot. Their officers worked on the military principle that when a subordinate is ordered to do something, that person will do it.
My one success, Septro, turned out to be a reasonably decent pilot with a lot of natural talent. After his solo flight, the army then sent him to the US for additional training. He was supposed to come back at the conclusion of his flight training and be what they referred to as the presidential flight pilot.
The president had an airplane, but he never used it. It was a Cherokee 180, a single engine, low wing, light airplane manufactured by Piper. He was afraid of flying. A local witch doctor had told him that he would die in the airplane.
When Septro returned a year later from the States, he strutted around with a new sense of importance because he had a US commercial pilot’s certificate. He was the first Liberian charter pilot. We were all very proud of him as he passed his new certificate around for everyone to see. It was marked “not valid within the continental United States of America.”
He found that his duties were limited to flying the president’s girlfriends around and the occasional official visitor. I was happy for him since I knew that these trips were well within his capability. Septro’s aviation career was short, however. He was told to take a couple of government officials down the coast to the town of Harper on Cape Palmas. The passengers were Americo-Liberians and fairly high ranking in the government. To go down the coast you keep your left wing over the land and your right wing over the water—pretty simple. On the way back, apparently he forgot which way he was going and continued heading south. He ended up in the Ivory Coast. When they landed at the airport, he realized his mistake—all the signs were in French. So he took off and went back the other direction. He managed to get back from where he started, but by then it was starting to get dark. It began to rain. The visibility dropped, and his passengers were getting nervous. According to Septro, one of the passengers tried to take the controls away from him, but he yelled and fought back, eventually regaining control of the airplane. He tried to keep going up the coast but soon lost sight of the coast altogether. The airplane finally crashed, ending upside down in the jungle.
Miraculously, everyone lived and walked to the nearest village on the coast. During the post-accident investigation, the passengers swore that Septro had gone insane and foamed at the mouth. They said they had told him, “De watta ee ova dere!” and he’d said, “No, no, no, das no right!” Given the military’s intolerance of mistakes or embarrassments, this abruptly ended Septro’s aviation career. In addition, the army decided they didn’t need to train anymore pilots.
Since all of my company time up until Christmas was involved in training these young men, I had weekends free. So I threw my resolution out of the window and spent every weekend with Ana. We took advantage of every minute we had together. I simply tried not to think of her leaving and focused only on the moment. I savored it like one would good food or a favorite drink after a long abstinence.
She wanted to see Monrovia from the air, so I rented a Cessna 180 from Mike, packed a picnic lunch, did a preflight inspection of the airplane, and waited. She arrived exactly on time. It turned out to be a beautiful day, no rain showers, and hardly a cloud.
I flew her over Monrovia. She was thrilled to see the embassy from the air. I circled it a couple of times, then flew out around West Point and back over the city, passing over the football stadium. I then turned to fly over the beach. Ana was transfixed with the sight of the surf rolling up onto the beach as we flew along it. After about ten minutes we were at a relatively empty stretch of the beach. I did a quick scan for obstructions, turned, slowed to flap speed, put the flaps down and landed the airplane on the hard sand. It was a little nerve-wracking at first since the beach had a little slope to it, but it was controllable. The thought flicked through my mind of just how quickly Mike was going to fire me if I damaged the airplane.
I got the airplane stopped in a reasonable distance. Ana was smiling with pure joy. And so was I. We had just enough time for a picnic lunch and a few moments to enjoy the beach before we had to throw the remains of the lunch back into the basket. We jumped in the airplane and started the takeoff run. Since the beach slopes a few degrees down to the surf line I had to manage the takeoff so that we would not run into the surf. I succeeded with some difficulty until I knew I had flying speed, then pulled the airplane gently into the air and in an instant swept out over the breaking surf.
When we got back I did one last turn over Monrovia for Ana then on to Spriggs-Payne. Once back at the operations ramp, I saw Ana to her car. I could tell she had enjoyed herself. She smiled brightly and her eyes shone with delight. I kissed her through the open driver’s window and waved goodbye.
Mike was in a spin that I had kept the airplane longer than agreed and promised to take the overrun out of my salary. I shrugged and waved my hand in the Liberian way, which is a nonverbal way of saying “I don’t give a fuck.”
That evening Deet stopped by my room. He said he wanted to talk to me and could we go to Heinz and Maria’s for dinner and drinks. I knew Deet well enough to know there would be very little dinner and lots of drinks. I didn’t want to take a chance on not getting back to my room, so I said I would go on the condition that I drove. He agreed.
As we walked to my car, Deet wanted to know what I had named it. I told him that I had decided on Junebug after the first modern airplane designed and built by Glenn Curtiss.
“It looks more like a dung beetle,” he said in his typically irreverent way.
We got a good table at Heinz and Maria’s. Deet ordered a scotch and soda and told the waiter to keep them coming until he could not say stop. I decided not to drink since I had an early flight the next day. I had been drinking too much in the last few days and I could feel its cumulative effect, and I wanted to shake it off. I wanted to feel alert and normal again. Deet was into his second scotch and soda when he started telling me his suspicions about Mike.
“I’m sure he’s planning to dump de business und go back to de States. Vhere ist dat fucking place he comes from? Taxes?”
“How do you know?” I asked.
“He’s got de look of a man getting ready to run. Believe me, I have seen dat look before. He’s on de phone a lot. Paterson, who sometimes stays late to tidy up, told me dat he saw Mike taking some boxes out to his car. If he’s planning somezhing like dat, you’d tink he would have de decency to say somezing to us.”
“He may,” I suggested. “Let’s wait and see.”
“I tink I should get the fuck out of here. I tink Brazil would be nice. I know people there. I have connections. It’s a developing country—lots of opportunity.”
“No extradition?” I asked.
Deet did not take it humorously. For an instant I saw that look of the wolf in his eyes, that same momentary stare that I have seen in all successful fighter pilots’ eyes.
“You’re new in dis country. You’d do well to pay attention to vhat I’m telling you.”
We were joined by several German pilots who worked for another company on the field. It didn’t take long for the singing to start and the toasts to the fatherland and der Fuehrer to begin. It had the same discordant ring as the conversations that I had had with some of the Southern students at Cornell—the South was constitutionally correct and the federal government was the aggressor. They saw the South as a virtuous woman that had been violated by brutes.
Coca cola was no substitute for a good beer, but I was determined to stick to my resolve and stay sober. I was not in the mood for old Nazi antics, so I decided to leave. I asked Deet if he could get a ride home. He said not to worry about him, that he would be okay. I left, intending to stop by the Gurley Street Bar just to see who was there—still vowing not to drink. It wasn’t too far to walk.
The sun had set hours before, but the oppressive heat remained. The night air seemed thick and unusually dark. I hadn’t walked very far when I noticed a young woman standing near a doorway. In the sparse street lighting she seemed more like a shadow than a person. Nevertheless, I was sure that I recognized her.
“Sarah, is that you?” I asked, coming closer.
She stared at me. She had changed. She was dressed like a prostitute, her face heavily made up.
“Sarah, don’t you remember? I was the pilot who flew you and your daughter down from the mission. How is your daughter?” She glanced away for an instant. Her lower lip began to tremble slightly.
“Ma daughta Mary, she die. She die at hospital. My uncle, he not got good way. He say she be better off wit de voodoo man.”
“Then what are you doing here? Why didn’t you go back to the mission?
“Ma uncle, he say I mus’ pay him back. He say I owe ’im. I owe ’im for hospital and for funeral. He say I mus’ earn money. Dis is de only way I get nuff money to pay him. I should be grateful, he say.”
“Sarah, do you want to go back to the mission?”
She hesitated for a long moment. Her lips tightened.
“Ma uncle, he say de mission not accept me now. He say dat I am disgraced. He say no one would look at me now.”
“Sarah, I think your uncle only wants you to earn money for him. A good uncle should not make his niece do such things. A good uncle gives; he does not take from his niece. How much do you earn in a day?”
She shrugged. “Twenty, twenty fie dolla maybe.”
“Here,” I said, handing her a twenty-dollar bill. “Go back to your uncle. Give this to him and don’t tell him that you saw me. If you want to go back to the mission, I will fly you there. Your uncle did not tell you everything. The people at the mission are Christian people, are they not?” She nodded. “Then they will forgive you, whatever you’ve done. They will accept you back. Do you remember the story of the prodigal son?”
Her eyes searched mine.
“You will be the prodigal daughter and they will welcome you back as the prodigal son was welcomed back.”
A flash of excitement, or maybe it was hope, came into her eyes.
“This is money for a taxi to the airport.” I said, giving her another five dollars. “Do you need more?”
“No,” she said. “I save ten dolla.”
“Good. Come to the airport tomorrow morning. Do not bring anything with you and, this is most important, do not tell your uncle where you are going or what you are going to do. If he finds out he will keep you here, and you will never be able to leave him. This may be your only chance to free yourself. If you stay and continue to do this, I promise you that you will get sick, very sick.”
A look of fear swept over her face. “Ah mus’ go,” she said. “Ah mus’ go.” I watched as she disappeared into the night. I thought that I would never see her again.
I didn’t feel like going into the Gurley Street Bar after that. I didn’t want to listen to a bunch of old, drunken, washed-out World War II pilots airing out their grudges and feeding their self-delusions with the cheapest booze they could find. I went back to my Junebug and drove home to Lilly’s, took a much-needed shower, and climbed into bed.
The next day I was a little surprised, but happy, to see Sarah in the waiting room of African Air Services. She was very frightened. I had some light cargo to deliver to the mission and I paid for Sarah’s fare, telling Mike that she had given me the money. Paterson’s boys finished loading the airplane and I put Sarah in the front seat.
She seemed not to notice the takeoff or the flight up to the mission. She was silent throughout the journey, and for most of it she stared straight ahead, hardly seeming to notice anything. Her initial fear of flying had been wiped away by something much more terrible.
We landed at the mission where the usual crowd stood waiting. Sarah looked up at me.
“No one knows anything,” I said to her directly. “You simply tell them that your baby died, and that’s it—nothing else. Let the truth come out later.” She nodded slightly.
The village Head Man was there to meet me. I jumped out of the airplane and greeted him in the usual way and said that Sarah had returned. Several of the women, seeing her sitting in the airplane, came to help her out onto the ground. The Head Man looked at her curiously.
“Her baby died,” I said. A momentary expression of concern swept over his face. “Please treat her kindly. It was not her fault. She has suffered much.”
“Be it so,” the Head Man said. Then in a voice heavy with authority, he spoke evenly to two of the young men standing behind him. They immediately ran to the airplane and started unloading it.
He must have also said something of Sarah’s condition because the women standing with her began to rub her shoulders and say things to her in soft voices. They then quickly led her away toward the center of the village.
Although now she was relatively safe from her uncle, I knew as I watched her walk away that she was walking into a life of backbreaking labor, another pregnancy, and probably an early death. Such was the normal cycle of life and death for young women like Sarah in Liberia. But I consoled myself thinking I may have made a positive difference in someone’s life—maybe she would beat the odds.
I had been in Liberia for a couple of years now and had learned where all of the airfields were along the coast. I made a habit of visually locating them just in case the trusty Continental engine decided to cough and sputter. They were not marked on the chart—hardly anything was marked on the chart. We would often draw a circle where we thought they were, but that was only the general location. These airfields were usually a part of a village or mission, neither of which was indicated on the chart. In fact, our charts were really maps with no reference at all to latitude or longitude.
One time, as I was passing over one of these airfields, I noticed a large white flag waving. This was a request to land—someone needed air transportation, and it was the company’s policy to comply with such a request. After all, I told myself, that’s why I’m here—to provide air transport. I circled the field a couple of times to check it for wet spots and obstructions. It looked good, so I set the airplane up for landing, which went smoothly. I taxied to a stop in the cleared area off the runway and shut the engine down. As always, there was a group of people gathered there to meet me. I stepped out of the cockpit and was approached by an elderly man and woman.
“Suh, please, ma sista, she mus’ go to Monrovia. Her son, he no be fine self; he be hurt bad an’ is in much need.”
The woman came up to me and gently, almost reverently, removed the cloth that contained her money and held it toward me. I could see that she didn’t have enough.
“The fee is fifteen dollars,” I said to the man.
“Suh,” he said getting down on his knees and taking my right foot in his hands. “Yah mus’ take her. I hold your foot, suh. I hold your foot!” This is an expression of extreme humility.
I looked at the woman. Her lips were trembling as she clutched the folded cloth over her few coins.
“Ohhh, my,” she said softly. “Da way too many!”
“Okay, mama.” I used the term of affection for older women in Liberia. “Okay, get in and I will take you to Monrovia. Keep your money. You will need it there. Where in Monrovia is your son?”
“He in hospital,” she said.
As we taxied for takeoff, I looked back. Her brother was still on his knees, his hands held out, cupped, as though to hold my foot in case I changed my mind.
A few days later I had my first accident in a company airplane. It happened at one of the iron mines in the interior and, as with most engine failures, it happened during takeoff. I was flying a Lockheed AL60, a large single-engine airplane great for hauling large volume cargo. I had just lifted off from the runway. Everything was running on max. Without warning, the turbocharger blew up, causing the engine to seize. I put it down on the airfield but the airplane nosed over and went onto its back. When that happened, my shoulder strap failed, sending me face first into the instrument panel. I was still strapped in my seat at the waist, hanging upside down, when they got to me. My face had swollen so much I could hardly see, and I was covered with blood.
Nearby workers were quick to get to me and took me to the mine’s medical clinic. The facility had been set up primarily to treat mine worker injuries, and it was the only clinic for miles. A Swedish first-aid worker cleaned my face and sutured the gash on my forehead with the deftness of one sewing up an old leather bag. He stripped me of all my clothes, handed me clean garments, and led me to a room with four beds set end to end around the room. I chose one and fell asleep instantly.
I awoke the next morning to the sound of children playing in the yard outside. The heat of the day had settled in, and my gown was soaked through with sweat. My head and face throbbed and I felt an immense pressure in my lower abdomen where the seat belt had held me upside down. I tried to sit up. Then decided to lay back down. I stared at the corrugated tin ceiling above and the concrete walls and tried to remember where I was.
“You have been asleep for eighteen hours.”
I looked up to see a young Swedish woman smiling at me.
“You have a significant cut on your forehead and two cracked ribs, but other than that, you are fine.”
Memories of the crash came flooding back. “Does African Air Services know what happened?”
“Yes,” she said. “They wanted to know how badly the airplane was damaged.”
I smiled and laid my head back on the pillow.
“I will bring you something to eat and some more medicine for your pain,” she said on her way out the door.
I stayed in the clinic for a few days. Then the company sent a plane for me and a truck to haul away the Al60, which was repaired and back in service within a month. It took about the same amount of time for me to feel myself again, though after a couple of weeks the doctor declared me fit for flight, and I was back at it.