A Bucket of Prop Wash

“There you are, Colonel,” he said, with what he must have fondly believed to be friendly camaraderie.  “All of your retirement papers are in correct order.  And my congratulations to you on the completion of your career in the United States Air Force.”

I stared coldly at this monumental prig who had galled me like a parachute callous for so many years.  And that was exactly where he had galled me, where the seat makes contact with a seat-type pack harness.  He was older than my forty-nine by at least ten years.  He had entered the service directly from civilian life as a non-flying captain when I was still a second lieutenant, and, of course, far out-ranked me.  It had been my duty to give him his school of the soldier, teaching him the veriest fundamentals.  My worst fear then was that he would break a leg trying to learn to do an about-face.  I never did succeed in breaking him of his exaggerated British manner of saluting, a holdover, no doubt, of having viewed too many war movies.  He was not a soldier, nor, in my opinion, would he ever be one.  I am sure that it was thereafter his mission in life to harass and, when he dared, to lord his rank over every young flying officer who was so unfortunate as to come in contact with him.  In all ages every king or ruler has had his fool to amuse him and his knave to spy for him and do his dirty work.  In any age Fred Christie would have filled the bill as the king’s jackal to perfection.  In my age he was, wherever he might be, the commander’s spy and informer, and we all knew it.

For a few moments I looked him up and down, from the top of his scraggly graying hair to his well shined shoes.  Like myself, he wore the uniform with its silver eagles and he had two campaign badges on his chest, one a Victory ribbon and the other, the American Sector, World War Two.  In contrast, the silver command pilot’s wings gleamed on my chest, together with the four rows of medal and combat ribbons, with seven battle stars on my Afro-European Sector ribbon.  For the first time I let my eyes speak my contempt for this arrogant paper jockey.  He chose to ignore my hostile stare and continued.

“And, now that you are retired, what are you going to do?”

Before I could answer, he went on snidely, “Get a job with Douglas Aircraft, on the strength of your engineering experience gained in the Air Force and the fifty thousand dollars worth of stock you own in the company?”

He couldn’t have given me a better opening.

“No,” I said sweetly, “I’m going to spend the rest of my life writing.”

For a moment real surprise wiped the vinegary smile off of his face.

“Writing!  I must say that does surprise me!”

Then the old sour sneer came back to his face and he said, “What are you going to write, your memoirs?”

“No,” I replied, with all of the innocence my round face and blue eyes could summon, “I’m going to write obituaries.  I’m going to keep in touch with every old horse’s ass that I have ever known or served under, and when he dies I’m going to write his obituary.  It will be a labor of love and there will be absolutely no charge for my services – provided I am free to write the truth about him.  And I hope you will be my first client.”

His mouth opened and shut several times, like a fish short of oxygen, but he couldn’t get any words out.  So I picked up my papers, gave him a sloppy salute, British style, and walked out of the office and out of my beloved Air Force forever.

But now that every World War Two general has written his own self-eulogy, and given the back of his hand to his contemporaries, and set himself up in some tower, Waldorf or ivory, I wonder if it really wouldn’t be a good idea to write my story.  Of course, I couldn’t compete with the stellar grandeur of those old boys.  Mine would be mostly a tale of a few battles where the acrid odor of cordite bit the nostrils, where the smell of burnt aviation gases and oil prevailed, or the sharp acetate scent of airplane glue and dope, wooden and linen wings.  The thrum of the wind in the streamline wires of airplanes long since gone and forgotten, or the roar of half a hundred or more engines warming up on the line at dawn.  The high pitched scream of tortured wires, wings and propellers in a flashing dive from twenty thousand feet down to the deck at treetop level.  Or possibly the battle may have been fought in a more intimate place, such as a cushioned and pillowed divan or boudoir, and perhaps the scent would be redolent of the perfume of a woman, or reminiscent of the sound of her laughter or tears.  But it would be my story, and, in a sense, the story of every inconsequential pilot and obscure flying officer who had a part in building up the vast war potential and power structure of our present day Air Force; and of the men and women of the Air Force who have lived and died, been maimed and widowed, and who have wept and gloried since that day in the spring of 1920 when I first entered what was then known as the Air Service, United States Army.