Greenland to Labrador and Vermont

We left Nuuk before dawn heading south by southwest for Goose Bay, Labrador, about 707 nautical miles away.  I'd never imagined a time when I would head south and travel hundreds of miles in that direction to get to Canada.  We encountered ice on the climb out, including on the windshield, but broke out of it as we passed through 6,000 feet on our way upstairs.  I wanted to get across the Labrador Sea as soon as possible -- I was sick of these long ocean crossings, deep down they made me anxious -- so I again set our cruise at 186 knots.  That would get us to Goose Bay with plenty of reserve and still provide a quick crossing.  There's no radar coverage between Nuuk and Goose Bay: the controllers rely on radioed position reports from the pilot and then keep track of the aircraft by hand-moving markers across a map. That must have been the way they did it back during World War II, when Goose Bay was a refueling stop on the North Atlantic ferry route to Britain.  Flying a World War II-era airplane over this sort of Oregon Trail of the air did encourage my mind to muse over that long-gone era.  I'd read that the loss rate of aircraft on this route was 10 percent, mostly due to weather-related accidents, which was not encouraging.  But then I recalled reading somewhere that the average new pilot assigned to a squadron back then had between 300 and 400 hours total flight time in his log, and it is well known that the danger range for pilot-error accidents is between 300 and 1,000 hours, apparently because pilots gain too much confidence after getting comfortable flying and get too cocky, thinking they are experienced and can handle whatever happens.  But after they've gotten a thousand hours under their belt and encountered a few moments of the legendary sheer terror, they become humble and cautious.  Me?  I was always figuring I'd lose the critical engine just as I was in a steep turn into it and planning what I'd do.  I also imagined what I'd do should both engines quit.
Looking down at that windswept sea, I could see white caps and patches of sea fog and now and then an ice berg, some with breakers tumbling against them sending spumes of foam and spray into the air.  It was kind of a relief when we flew over an undercast that blocked the view of the ocean below, and when it rose to near our height and we began flying in and out of clouds with the sunlight causing sparkling shadows (I know, a contradiction, but true) among the towering pillars and bulging battlements, I forgot all about the menacing deep below us.

Once we were well on our way, I noticed dad beginning to doze so I suggested he go lie down and have a snooze in the cabin. He patted me on the shoulder as he climbed out of his seat and stepped back into the cabin to settle in on the couch and wrap himself up in the wool blanket I'd bought in Iceland.  I turned on the cabin heat to get a little warmth back there for him and adjusted the trim a bit to account for the weight shift.  And then, once again, I was alone in the cockpit with the drone of the engines, my eyes in a routine scan of the instruments, listening to the radios for whatever traffic there was, watching our progress on the GPS,  keeping up the dead reckoning chart and comparing it with that, radioing position reports on the HF from time to time.  The minutes ticked away and my mind began to free wheel.

Gramps in England.

I wondered if my New England grandfather had flown this route on his way to Britain back in 1944 or had taken a troop ship.  He had been on a ship heading for the Philippines with his fighter squadron, which had trained on P-35s, when the Japanese attacked Pearl  Harbor and the convoy of the ship he was aboard was diverted to Australia.  He had been looking forward to meeting up with his brother, whom I've written about, who was already stationed in the P.I., also flying P-35s, but with a different pursuit group.  In Australia, the squadron was equipped with P-40s and sent to defend the Northern Territories against the Japanese bombing campaign, then sent up to New Guinea to fight the Japs there.  In late 1942, he was sent home and worked at a training command until, in 1944, being assigned to a fighter group flying P-51s out of England.  He participated in the first fighter-escorted daylight bombing raid against Berlin in March of that year.  I've written about the rest of his career in earlier posts.  My other grandfather, about whom I've also written, was also at sea when war broke out, aboard the Lexington (CV-2), and, flying an F4F, participated in raids against the Japanese in New Guinea early in 1942 and later flew during the Guadalcanal campaign, so my two grandpas at one point in the war almost had their paths intersect.  They also both fought against the Japanese Navy's Tainan Kokutai, probably encountering the same pilots, guys like Hiroshi Nishizawa, Toshio Ohta, and, famous thanks to Martin Caidin, Saburo Sakai. Of course, they didn't know each other at the time, or know that their children would meet and marry.  My New England grandfather, flying his P-40E  battling Betty bombers flying out of Timor to batter Australia, never got shot down but, as I've written about before, my other grandfather, his F4F torn apart by 20mm cannon fire from Zeros, was shot down at sea and not rescued for 37 days.  But not before he had put some hurt on Mr. Moto.  Well, that's what my men do -- fight. 

They are warriors.  Isaac Coates, General Winfield S. Hancock's surgeon, met one of my northern Cheyenne ancestors in the 1860s and wrote of him, "He is one of the finest specimens, physically, of his race. He is quite six feet in height, finely formed with a large body and muscular limbs. His appearance was decidedly military. A seven-shot Spencer carbine hung at the side of his saddle, four large Navy revolvers were stuck in his belt, and a bow, already strung with an arrow, was grasped in his left hand. Thus armed and mounted on a fine horse, he was a good representative of the God of War, and his manner showed plainly that he did not care whether we talked or fought." My boys are hellions, too, and will doubtless grow up to be just like all the other men in the family. 

From these thoughts, my mind drifted to Vikings and their voyages in open boats over these waters more than a thousand years ago, comparing their difficulty to that of the South Seas cruises of the Polynesians to discover lush, tropical paradises. They're often admired while the Viking explorations across a cruel sea to make landfall on forbidding shores girded with ice and backboned by active volcanoes tend to be taken for granted. I also thought about how the characters of nationalities change.  Scandinavians once were the terrors of Europe, looting and pillaging across the continent.  But today they are total patsies, victimized by so-called refugees, lesser breeds without the law, as Kipling would have called them, that their ancestors would have cleaved in half with broadswords.  And pretty much the same is true of Germans; only a few generations ago the saying in Europe was, I've been told, that one German was a tourist, two a factory and three an army.  No more. At least not the third part. 

 The weather cleared as we neared Goose Bay.  We dropped in on Runway 08 well before noon, wind 8 knots at 60 degrees, gusting to 15.  All routine. The airport is much smaller and much less used than that at Gander, with, concomitantly, fewer amenities.  But it did have customs, which we cleared quickly.  We had lunch at Le Airport Cafe.  I was surprised to see tonkatsu on the menu so ordered that. It was okay.  Dad ordered stirred-fried chicken and said it was good.  I was going to spear a piece to try but he smacked my hand away and told me if I wanted some to order my own.  Meanie! Then he relented and let me try a piece and I let him try my pork. We both said at the same time that we should have ordered what the other had and laughed.  The counterman smiled at us. After lunch, we took a walk to stretch our legs, and, having seen the vicinity from the air and feeling no desire to linger, we decided to take off for Burlington, Vermont, once the Beech was gassed up and the oil topped off.  So I took care of the planning and paperwork for that while dad went off to supervise the refueling, which took longer than expected because the service guys brought the wrong grade of oil and had to go back and find what we needed...always something.  While he waited, dad took the opportunity to give the plane a thorough once over.  When I had finished filing our flight plan and getting the latest weather, I went out to the flight line to see how things were going.  Dad didn't need my help for anything so I just paced around, expecting soon to be on our way.  It was in the 50s and the uninterrupted breeze on the ramp was cutting right through me. I finally decided to go back to the cafe and get a cup of coffee and wait there, telling dad to come and get me when everything was done.  I was glad I did, because I waited there for well over an hour. For much of that, I was the only customer. The counterman was French-Canadian and friendly, probably a little bored.  We chatted in a mixture of English and French, then switched entirely to French.  I thought it interesting that in Europe I'd had no opportunity to speak French, but in Canada, I did.  We talked about the current world situation and he said that in recent years Montreal had gone to hell and he had left to get away from...well, you know....  I told him that when I was in England I had been told that there was a game the natives played in London called "Spot the White Man."  He laughed, then shook his head and sighed.  About that time my dad came in and, chilled to the bone from being outside in a light windbreaker for so long, ordered a coffee.  It was getting late in the day, the weatherman said scattered thunderstorms in the Burlington area, with high winds and hail possible, and we had 730 nautical miles to fly, making it a very long day in the air, so dad gulped down his coffee and, leaving a generous tip in American dollars, we trotted over to our mechanical Pegasus, fired that mother up and launched into the wild blue yonder heading southwest at our usual 186 knots, so with climb and descent, figure total flying time around five hours plus and it was already past five p.m.  So we'd be coming into BTV after dark and I'd have my first night landing on this trip.  I knew it would be okay, but I still wasn't looking forward to it.

In the cockpit, we were much more comfortable because -- finally! -- we didn't have to wear those clunky immersion suits.  Aside from crossing the St. Lawrence River estuary, we'd be over dry land from now on.  I felt a great relief.  I hadn't realized just how anxious I was about crossing all that ocean, but now I felt a kind of elation.  The worst was over.  This night I would sleep in a bed in the good old Estados Unidos.  We were practically home! 

The flight was uneventful but interesting, seeing all that green for a change, forest and forest and forest. There's a lot of miles and miles of miles and miles in that part of Canada.  As we got farther south we began to encounter thunderstorms. We were able to steer  around the worst of them, but we did hit some turbulence. Pop stayed in the right seat and did good co-pilot work.  I was grateful that he did, especially once the sun set.  I think I was getting fatigued at a deep level, all the flying of the last days finally catching up with me.  I knew dad must be more bone-weary than me, having flown over to Europe as well as back.  With darkness came lights winking on below us as isolated farms, towns and crossroad stores lit up.  As we neared the international border a solid overcast slid over the sky above us and scattered clouds appeared at our altitude.  Without the instruments to guide me, it would have been easy to get vertigo because the lights below seemed like stars while the blackness above seemed like the earth. I had the weird sensation that I was flying upside down.  I banished it by keeping my eyes on the instruments and checking our progress on the GPS.  Once, when I stepped back into the cabin to make us coffee while dad took the wheel I peered out the window and saw St. Elmo's fire glowing blue along the leading edge of the wing and on the propeller making it look like a blue disc.  As I watched, it faded away.  When I got back to my seat, I mentioned it to dad and he said there had been some electrical discharges flickering across the windscreen while I was in the cabin.  Just as he said that, a brilliant flash of lightning lit up the cockpit like a strobe light.  There went our night vision.  After that we saw more lightning flashes, but they were always inside clouds and sometimes their light appeared to be green with tinges of red.  The old Beech got tossed around quite a bit but shortly we swept out of the storm into smooth air, leaving the lightning and St. Elmo's fire behind us.  Suddenly, I felt hungry.

As we approached BTV we dropped through a solid overcast at 6,000 feet, then scattered clouds at 4,000 but otherwise it was clear, visibility 10 miles, wind out of the south-southwest, 220 degrees at 11 knots, gusting to 21.  I set down on Runway 19, dad singing out the numbers and handling the landing gear and flaps as I call for them, drifting down gently into the pattern, turning on to base at 800 feet with 15 degrees of flaps and 100 knots on the dial, then 45 degrees of flaps as I turn on to final.  I pull the throttles back a tad, push the prop levers all the way forward, nudge the nose down slightly and we're crossing the threshold, dad calling 80 knots. I pull the throttles all the way back and we settle to earth, the  mains touching the runway with the tail slightly down. I push the yoke forward a tad and hold it till at 50 knots the tail begins to settle, then pull the yoke back all the way into my lap, adding a little power on the left engine to keep her straight. I unlock the tail wheel, turn off the runway and taxi to the ramp, the Wasps rumbling at 800 rpm, brake to a halt, pull the fuel mixture levers from full rich to idle cut-off.  The engines stutter, the spinning propellers slow to a stop, then silence. "Nice," my dad says.  We look at each other and smile.

We cleared customs and immigration briskly, then arranged to have the plane serviced, gassed up and ready to go first thing in the morning. We'd reserved a suite at the Hilton and thought we'd get something to eat at the airport restaurant before calling for their shuttle -- I was famished and dad said he wouldn't mind a bite -- but the restaurant was closed.  On the ride to the hotel, we asked the driver if there was any place to eat because the hotel only served breakfast. He said the good restaurants in the area closed by 10.  But he did know a "greasy spoon" along the way that closed officially at 11 but actually stayed open as long as there were customers.  It was a family-owned joint that had been in business forever and catered mostly to locals.  We offered to buy him a burger if he'd drive us there so we could order take-out. He said our wish was his command and off we went.

I ordered two pints of fries (they came in not small and large but pint and quart sizes), a milk shake and a cheese burger.  Dad ordered a pepper steak and fries.  I wanted a small salad as well, but they said they were about out of the fixings and were saving them for burger orders.  While we waited for dad's pepper steak I munched on my fries and drank my shake.  I was so hungry I couldn't wait to get to the hotel before eating.  But I was saving the other pint of fries for a snack if I got hungry during the night.  The driver and I chatted desultorily, he, hunched forward, one arm protectively around his meal, polishing off his root beer float, cheeseburger, quart of fries and pint of onion rings in double-quick time, as if he were afraid we'd change our minds and seize his grub for ourselves.  He asked where we had flown in from and I thought about saying Scotland, but instead said Canada.  He nodded, inquiring no further. He mentioned that the tourists were coming back now that the Covid scare was over and most of the hotels were booked through Labor Day and we were lucky to have gotten a room. I asked how the weather had been.  He said hot as usual, it being summer after all. It was a little more humid than a typical summer, he did believe. Then the conversation petered out. Dad was talking with the counterman and laughed at something he said.  I looked out the window.

The hotel was a pleasant change from the dumps we had been staying at, the suite like a two bedroom apartment. Dad's bedroom had a king-size bed and mine had two queen-size beds. There was a kitchenette and fully-stocked minibar, a honking big flat screen TV and some really comfy chairs.  The air conditioning was on and it was needed as it was around 80 degrees, quite a contrast with the weather we had been used to.  Dad and I sat down at the kitchenette table and chowed-down, microwaving our sandwiches and fries a few seconds to warm them up.  We talked about laying over a day to rest up and take a look around the town but we were so tired we couldn't decide.  So, after finishing up our meal, we said good-night.  I took a long hot shower and crawled in the sack. Oh, so comfy.  I closed my eyes. The next thing I knew, it was morning.

 

Born Too Late

 

If I ever get my time machine working (that darn fleem discronificator keeps shorting out), one time period I especially want to visit is the late 1950s -- 1957, '58 and '59 -- and especially the last -- 1959.   Those years may well be the acme of the American Century.  I could cite many reasons why I think that; some I have already in previous posts and I may highlight more in a future post. But, for one thing, just looking at 1959, consider the number of best-selling books of that year (many of which are still popular today) -- and what a variety! -- Man's Search for Meaning, A Separate Peace, Starship Troopers, Naked Lunch, The Sirens of Titan, A Canticle for Leibowitz, A Raisin in the Sun, Alas Babylon, Psycho, Hawaii, The Longest Day, The Manchurian Candidate, Good-bye Columbus, Henderson The Rain King, Time Out of Joint, Advise and Consent, Nexus, All You Zombies, The Hustler....  I could go on and on.  Does anyone even publish novels that ordinary people want to read today?  Does anybody even read novels?

I also adore the popular music of the day, especially the syrupy love ballads aimed at teenagers. So sweet and innocent.  I also like the cars of that era, in particular the Chrysler Corp. offerings.  My choice to drive on my visit would be a Dodge Custom Royal Lancer convertible.  The guys who designed it must have been drunk out of their minds on applejack and moonshine when they created it.

Oh, and how could I forget that the Barbie doll debuted in 1959!  My mom got one for her birthday. The original price was $1.29 (I looked it up!)  My mom watched Dick Clark's American Bandstand with her older sister when they came home from school and sometimes her mother -- my grandmother -- would watch with them.  They all had their favorite dance couples and were as much interested in them as the singing acts.  On weekends they would drop by the record store and buy their latest favorites. She recalls that her sister worked part-time as a waitress in a diner for 25¢ an hour plus tips and a 45 record cost 69¢, so she had to work an hour or so to buy one record that contained two songs. But she and her friends would share records, have record parties and that sort of thing so they always had access to the latest tunes from Fabian, Tab Hunter, the Diamonds and all their ginchy faves.

She was also crazy about horses and followed horse racing with a passion.  Her all-time favorite was Tim Tam, who won the Preakness and the Kentucky Derby in 1958 and almost won the Belmont but suffered an injury on the home stretch when he was leading and finished second, thus losing the Triple Crown.  His loss almost broke my mom's heart.  Little girls and horses, huh?  Her favorite book in those days was a Weekly Reader Children's Book Club selection, Old Bones by Mildred Pace, about the fabulous and beloved race horse Exterminator, who ran 100 races and won 50, including the 1915 Kentucky Derby, where he was a 50 to 1 long shot.  I've read that very same book that she did and loved it, too.  Who could not?  And about Old Bones, as Exterminator was nicknamed, author Abigail Anderson writes, "The great horse lived to the ripe old age of 30. A kind, gentle and charismatic individual, Exterminator was cherished by his fans throughout his long life. School children visited him on his birthday and a book was written about him for adolescents. He was part of the culture, part of what it meant to be American."  Over the top?  Not in the wonderful Old America that was and is now only a fading memory, to be reached out and grasped for in vain by those of us who have heard its siren call in myth and legend and do so long for it.

Iceland to Greenland

 I was talking with my dad about my mom and other things during the long hours of the flight from Iceland to Greenland.  Both of us were well rested, and I was not anxious and imagining all sorts of worst-case scenarios as I was during the flight from Scotland to Iceland.  Even though the crossing was far more remote than that from Scotland and at 892 statute miles or 775 nautical miles it was a long haul over a very lonely, forbidding sea and even more remote and forbidding land. I was relaxed and just enjoyed driving the airplane. I was again
PIC, dad saying that he preferred me to fly as his reaction times were slower than they used to be and he'd rather just take it easy and let me do the flying while he handled the radios and navigation and kept the dead reckoning plot.  So he occupied the right seat and helped keep an eye on things.  I set the cruise at 186 knots with a 48gph burn -- 1925 rpm, manifold pressure 28.8 inches -- and, despite a little rough weather en route that required altitude changes, reduced speed and tightened safety harnesses, we were dropping into the pattern for Nuuk a little more than four-and-a-half hours after wheels up at Reykjavik, thanks to a brisk tail wind.  There was a lot of cloud cover over Greenland, so there wasn't much to see, but I was surprised to note how mountainous it was.  I had expected it to be a flat, icy plain.

The approach to Nuuk grabbed my attention as the terrain, rising rapidly to over 5,000 feet in less than a mile, allowed only a circling approach to the airfield from over the fjord.   As I made our descent, dropping through overcast on instruments, we encountered ice that built up rapidly.  Thank God we had the original de-icing equipment -- many 18 owners have removed it for various reasons, but dad has kept our Beech as it was originally, an all-weather airplane.  So we had de-icing for the propellers, pitot tubes, wings and horizontal stabilizer which I employed with alacrity and relief. Great chunks of ice flew off the wings and ice flung from the propellers rattled against the fuselage.  I was glad to see it go.  I hated to imagine how we would have faired without our de-icers.   I shut the de-icing boots down as I made short final to runway 23 -- 3,100 feet long -- since they mess with the shape of the air foil as they inflate and deflate.  It's not a problem at higher speeds but once you approach stall speed, you don't want that happening. But we were getting ice even as I turned on to final, so I kept cycling them on when the ice built up, then off when it broke off, then on ... as long as I dared. There was only 2 knots of wind dead ahead and I came in at 2,000 rpm and 20 inches, 45 degrees of flaps, crossing the fence at 75 knots, settled in like a butterfly and rolled out in less than 650 feet.  My dad said, "Now that's the way it should be done!"  Oh, man, I was so pleased with myself.  Take a bow, Wanda!

It was still before noon and we debated whether we should just have lunch, gas up and be on our way to Goose Bay -- I had decided we'd go to the Goose rather than the Gander as it was a lot shorter distance to travel -- but since I figured that I would never visit Greenland again, I should spend a little time here.  In any case, there was some snafu with the avgas bowser and we weren't able to gas up until around four.  That gave dad plenty of time to go over the airplane and make sure everything was all shipshape and Bristol fashion while I found us a hotel and did a little sight-seeing. I was glad I had bought a nice comfy sweater in the Shetlands because boy did I need it. It was mos' def' chilly, in the forties, the air damp with occasional fine rain spitting down.  

Alas, the only accommodations I  could find had only one room left -- there was not a lot of choice -- so dad and I had to bunk together.  I was not looking forward to the snoring.  Heh.   We had a rather too Nordic-style dinner (oh, for a real cheese burger and some curly fries!) at a local joint that offered a live band (energetic Europop), where I got asked to dance by every example of Nordic maleness in the vicinity  -- and gladly accepted. Then we plodded back to our hotel and after planning our route for the morrow and me giving dear old dad a neck and shoulder massage, we hit the hay and, both tireder than we realized, immediately fell soundly asleep, each snuggled deep into our feather down comforters.

 

Lives II

Huan Nguyen

I talked to my dad about my mother's enduring reaction to her time in Viet Nam, which she left exactly 50 years ago this month.  He also served "in" Viet Nam, in a manner of speaking: flying  missions from an aircraft carrier in the Gulf of Tonkin, he never actually ever set foot in Viet Nam. So he really can't relate to her experience in that war. 
She also has the emotional burden to bear of her oldest brother, with whom she was very close, being killed in Viet Nam, at Dak To.  He was the only member of either my mother's  or father's families who was drafted and sent to serve in that war. All the others who served, and I think there were about half a dozen in total, joined the service voluntarily, none as far as I know, in order to serve in Viet Nam, but for various personal reasons including, I assume, a decision to join ahead of being drafted so that they could pick their branch of service and have better choices of occupation specialties and where to serve. 
Of these, only one was ever wounded, and he only slightly.  He had joined the Air Force and was assigned as crew to a U-6A "Beaver" that flew what were, I guess you could call them, a variety of ferret mission.  North Vietnamese unit headquarters used very low-powered Morse Code transmissions to communicate with other units during the night.  What the U-6A crews did was fly very low (within the range of small arms fire) and slow over the countryside listening for these transmissions. When they picked one up, they would maneuver so that they could get a triangular fix on the transmitter, pin-pointing its location.  Then they would call in artillery fire on that location.  On these missions, they were often subject to small arms fire.  On one, my relative's plane was hit and a bullet struck him in the heel of his foot.  Fortunately, its energy was largely spent, the round lodging jammed up against his heel bone.  But it was enough to end his deployment and get him discharged on disability.  To the end of his life (he died of cancer at the age of 66), he walked with a limp.  

The flag my grandparents received upon their son's death.

Other than his injury, none other of my relatives suffered so much as a scratch due to enemy action.  No, I take that back.  During a rocket barrage on her base, while assisting at an operation in a sand-bagged bunker, a splinter of wood from a shattered plywood board struck my mother and drew blood.  She pulled it out and continued on with her job.  The surgeon joked that she was now eligible for a Purple Heart.  Of course, she never put in for the medal, 'though, I suppose, she was technically eligible for it.  She believed such medals should be reserved for the fighting troops. After all, they were the only acknowledgment of their sacrifices they would receive from the government that had dragooned them into its war. That is, unless they were unlucky and didn't make it back home.  Then they would also get a flag.  Or, more accurately, their families would.

So from this dad and I had a discussion about the role of America in the world, and whether, overall, and especially compared to the actions of other countries, it has been good or bad.  It was then that my father recalled a man he had met when he was serving on board the Kitty Hawk when it was forward deployed to Yokosuka, Huan Nguyen.  He was introduced to Huan, who was the ship facility testing officer, as a very remarkable man it would be an honor and a privilege to know.  And so he was.

Huan's father was an officer in the ARVN when the Viet Cong attacked Saigon during the Tet Offensive of 1968.  He was targeted by the communists for execution as an enemy of the people.  And to inflict maximum terror on those who opposed the Viet Cong, so was his family.  The Viet Cong broke into Huan's home and executed his father, mother, his five brothers, his sister and his grandmother.  Huan himself was shot three times, including in the head and left for dead.  His mother lived for two hours after the attack and Huan stayed by her side trying to stop the bleeding from her cut throat until she died.  For some reason, the guerillas shot the father and sons but cut the throats of the mother, grandmother and daughter.  The man who cut their throats was Nguyen Van Lem.  He was captured shortly afterward and summarily shot dead by Nguyen Ngoc Loan, the execution caught in that famous photo.

Asan Beach Park on a recent Memorial Day.

Huan Nguyen, who was nine years old when he lost his family, lived with an uncle until the fall of Saigon when he was evacuated to Camp Asan, Guam.  The site of the camp is now a beach park. I've picnicked there many times. It's also the site of Memorial Day ceremonies, as it was the site of savage fighting during the liberation of Guam in 1944, with the Japanese attacking the field hospital there, bayoneting the wounded in their beds as well as doctors and nurses before finally being driven out by the Marines.

In an interview, Huan said, “The images that I remember vividly when I arrived at Camp Asan were of American sailors and Marines toiling in the hot sun, setting up tents and chow hall, distributing water and hot food, helping and caring for the people with dignity and respect. I thought to myself how lucky I am to be in a place like America. Those sailors inspired me to later serve in the United States Navy.” 

And that's what he did.  But first he went to university, earning masters' degrees in electrical and manufacturing engineering as well as information technology. He is an alumnus of  Carnegie Mellon.  He was commissioned as an officer in the Navy in 1993. Besides serving in Japan, he has also served in Iraq and Afghanistan while rising through the ranks to rear admiral, serving as deputy commander of cyber engineering at NAVSEA. 

Huan has said, "Growing up in the war zone, it is literally a day-to-day mental attitude. You never know what is going to happen next. The war is at your doorstep. Images of gunships firing in the distance, the rumbling of B-52 bombings on the countryside, the nightly rocket attacks from the insurgents—it becomes a daily routine. There is so much ugliness in the war and living through a period of intense hatred, I didn't have any peace of mind.

War, war, always war.

"It is not easy to get over the trauma of losing your entire family. It has been over fifty years, but it is something I will never forget. Every day I asked myself: 'Why me?'

"I thought of myself as a curse. In my mind, bad news was always around the corner; it was just a matter of time. I was afraid of building relationships just to lose the people I love. I was afraid of losing everything.

Tet Offensive, 1968.

"I have often thought of the actions of my father the day he died. Why did he make those decisions that ultimately led to not just his death but those of my mother and siblings? Would I have made the same choices?

"The message I have come to understand from his example is that it is about service before self and doing what is right with honor. What I experienced and learned from that event is about honor, courage, and commitment. The same ethos that the Navy I serve pledges today to uphold — honor, courage, and commitment."

When he was promoted to admiral, Huan said, “It is a great honor to attain the rank of admiral. I am humbled to become the first Vietnamese-American to wear the flag rank in the U.S. Navy. The honor actually belongs to the Vietnamese-American community, which instilled in us a sense of patriotism, duty, honor, courage and commitment to our adopted country, the United States of America. This is our America, a country built on service, kindness and generosity as well as endless opportunity. These values are what inspired me to serve.  And what a great honor and privilege it is to serve our Navy, to serve our country.”

God bless America. You may not say it, but they do.

So....  What...?

I guess what I'm thinking, what I'm trying to convey is that, as screwed up as America may be, as many mistakes as we make, as many things wrong that we do, we are still a worthy country, a worthy people, trying our best.  We often do not realize that, or grow cynical in the face of rah-rah phony shows of patriotism by contemptible politicians and their hangers-on, crooks and cowards that they are, but others who come to us from far different and far worse backgrounds see that it is true.  If we falter, feel the country is done for, they seize the flag before we let it touch the ground and run forward with it.  We're in a particularly bad time these days, with, it seems, psychopaths and lunatics, criminals and incompetents, in charge of just about everything.  But we must persevere somehow, abide and outlast while enduring the unendurable.

Here's Douglas Pike's analysis of the Viet Cong's deliberate use of terror against civilians:

The Viet Cong Strategy of Terror

The ad below was created at the behest of Admiral Huan Nguyen about a dozen years ago. Unfortunately, thanks to the deteriorating competence of American leaders, civilian and military, and in particular the implementation of Critical Race Theory in the armed forces, things are rapidly becoming not what they were.  But none-the-less....  Notice that at the end of this mini-video, the camera zooms out from Guam, where, in many ways, the admiral's real life began.  His love for America is profound and sincere.  If the descendants of those who founded this country, and others who came after, give up on it, men like the admiral will carry on and fight to force it back to its original ideals. 
I hope they win.

 

Lives

When I was rummaging around in some old storage boxes and suitcases a while back, I came across this empty cigarette pack.  I wondered why on earth anyone would save such a thing.  Normally, something like this would just be trash you would throw away without a thought.  So I asked my mother if she knew anything about this.  When I showed it to her, she paused, started to say something, stopped, took the package from me and held it in her hand, looking at it as if it was the relic of a saint.  She brushed a finger across it.  I waited.  She said nothing, but just kept holding the package, looking at it.  Finally, I said, "Well?"  Then she explained that this was a package of cigarettes that my aunt, the one I wrote about in my post Conversations with a Ghost, had discarded and that she, my mother, had retrieved and saved.  She had forgotten all about it and wanted to know where I found it. I told her and she spent an hour going through the worldly remnants of a life, not speaking, sometimes picking something out and holding it, pressing it to her heart, reluctantly putting it back.  Afterwards, we had a long conversation not only about my aunt, but about many, many things, especially how brief this life is, and how much we should treasure each moment, and each other, because soon enough we will all be gone and nothing will be left of us but a suitcase or cardboard box filled with old books, out of style clothing, empty cigarette packages and other useless junk that sooner or later will be thrown away by those to whom these things mean nothing.

The famous photo of Kim Phúc.

  I also found this little booklet that belonged to my mother. She bought it when she was a volunteer with the Barsky Unit of the Children's Medical Relief International hospital in Saigon in

Kim Phúc being treated in the Barsky Unit.

the early 1970s. The Barsky Unit treated burn victims, many horrifically burned by napalm.  You've seen the little girl running naked screaming.  That was Phan Thị Kim Phúc.  My mother treated her among many, many others. 

Kim Phúc (center) recovering in the CMRI burn ward.*

Glancing through the book, the phrases it taught don't seem like they would be of much use to a burn care nurse.  Before volunteering with CMRI, my mother was an army nurse serving in Viet Nam, based in Cu Chi.  She wouldn't have had much use for a Vietnamese phrase book then as her patients were American soldiers.  She won't talk about that time of her life and only reluctantly talks about her time with CMRI. Outwardly, the only sign she ever reveals that shows she was in Viet Nam is that she hates the sound of helicopters and she can detect the sound of a Huey or Chinook before anyone else can hear anything.  If she is outside when she does, she goes into the house.  If she is inside, she goes into the bathroom and turns on the exhaust fan.

*The grease pencil marks on this photo are because it was used by my mother's home-town newspaper in a story about her service as an Army nurse and volunteer with CMRI shortly after she returned to the States.

The Japanese woman who emigrated to the States back around circa 1980, whom I've written about before (Next Generation), seems to be losing her English. Having learned English at an adult school when she was in her thirties, she always had a heavy accent and vocabulary largely limited to business and commerce -- she would "issue" a check, never merely write one, for example -- but now sometimes her English is unintelligible.  When I ask her to repeat what she has said, she grows peevish and barks, "Listen!"  I'm the stupid one because I can't understand; it's my fault.  So I listen more intently but all I hear is gibberish. Her mind is retreating into her earlier life.  She's growing old.  That's all.  

These days, she often reminisces about her life in Japan.  Among other things, she talks about when she graduated from a commercial high school -- one that taught employment skills for those not college-bound, and applied for work. She thought if she worked hard and was loyal to the company she would advance, but she discovered that in ultra-sexist Japan that was not going to happen.  In fact, in one job, her boss told her that she would never be promoted because she was too ugly.  The only women who got raises were the tee-hee tootsies who giggled at the boss's jokes.  On a trip to the USA, she was astonished to see female department heads bossing around men.  From that moment on she was America-bound.  And, indeed, once here, she did very, very well for herself, as I've written.  I also wrote about her mother (A Life), who dearly loved America and Americans, owing her life to them. (I wrote in her profile that she is still alive, but since I wrote that, she has passed away.)

“There is not one big cosmic meaning for all; there is only the meaning we each give to our life, an individual meaning, an individual plot, like an individual novel, a book for each person.”
~ Anais Nin.
 

Over the Atlantic

The flight back from Old Blighty was enjoyable and interesting.  My dad flew left seat on our excursion to the Shetlands but he had me fly most of the time, including take-offs and landings.  He was evaluating my piloting skills, determining whether they had eroded, and

I didn't land like this! The old man lies!

my ability to still handle the big tail-dragger, especially in crosswind landings, and even just in taxiing: the Beech has a reputation for ground-looping if you let it get ahead of you. It has a non-steerable, castoring tail wheel.  You steer with differential braking and throttle -- carefully!  You lock the tail wheel for take-off and landing, otherwise you could totally lose the airplane.  I read an accident report of a Beech 18 crash at Van Nuys where the pilot lost control while taxiing and slammed into a hanger. The plane exploded and burned killing all on board and also burned down the hanger, destroying the three  planes inside.  So taxiing the 18 is nothing to be casual about.

As part of our preparation for the Atlantic crossing, we checked out our survival gear: a life raft, immersion suits and an EPIRB for the raft. (The ELT would go down with the plane if we ditched.)  I also bought a PLB when I bought my immersion suit in Glasgow.  Dad and the crew had already bought theirs in Gander. I hadn't even thought about the need for survival equipment when I let the two big oafs talk me into letting my little boys fly with them across the North Atlantic.  If I had, and genuinely realized the extreme danger they could face, I would have screamed No!  But I never thought about it.  The next time I want to know what an idiot looks like, I'll go find a mirror.

We left Glasgow at night, with me in the left seat as PIC and the popster as co-pilot.  The decision to depart at night was mine, as I wanted to arrive in Iceland in the morning with the sun behind us, and I wanted to have the full day to settle into our hotel in Reykjavík and get the Beech refueled and serviced.

The Beech has positive stability around all three axes and is very easy to fly, even in turbulence.  Trimmed up, you can even fly hands off, and it's very friendly for instrument flying.  As the engines droned steadily and the hours passed not much was happening.  My dad began to doze so I suggested he go back into the cabin and lie down on the couch and nap.  He did that without protest, which I thought a good sign of his confidence in my piloting abilities.  Soon enough he was snoring like Don Ameche in "The Bickersons," the old radio comedy routine.  It sounded like he was sawing through a steel pipe with a hacksaw.  And just who was Gloria Gooseby anyway?

So I had the airplane and the vast canopy of stars all to myself, the drone of the engines a comforting background noise that I soon didn't even notice -- I would only have noticed it the sound stopped.  I put the plane on autopilot when I went back to the little girl's room and when I fixed myself something to eat, made fresh coffee or just to stretch my legs, otherwise I enjoyed the feel of the plane through my feet and hands.  I kept a dead-reckoning plot of our position which I compared to our GPS reading, so should our electric gizmos go on the fritz I would have some idea of where we were and where I should point the scareplane.  I was please to see how closely my dead reckoning positions matched what the GPS was telling me. 

Overlaying the tension of flying hundreds of miles across the North Atlantic at night, I felt a sort of contentment, for want of a better word, sitting in the cockpit alone with the soft glow of the instruments and the blackness of the interior of clouds, broken suddenly by the startling emergence into starlight, auroras and meteors as the clouds fell away, tumbling down like a snowy staircase in the starlight and the light of the waning crescent moon soaring up behind and to the right of us as it rose after midnight.  Some of the meteors streaking across the night sky left persistent smoke trails, clearly visible. Others popped like flashbulbs at the end of their runs. The auroras shimmied across the sky in wavering curtains of aqua blue and green. I felt like I was seeing things a human being was not meant to see.  The overwhelming impression I got was indifference: the earth, the entire universe, was wheeling through an eternity measured in billions of years while we puny humans measured our brief lifespans in tens of years.  If we existed or didn't exist it was nothing to the universe. 

I did not land like this. Don't listen to that old geezer!

Approaching Reykjavik, dad was still sleeping.  He seemed really tired and I thought this whole trip must have taken a lot out of him.  I was pleased that he felt so comfortable with me driving that he could completely relax and let his poor old body get the rest it needed.  Of course, he had taught me to fly, as he did all his chil'ens, so he knew I could handle the plane no matter what situation might develop.  I decided to let him sleep as I got on the horn with Keflavik, Reykjavik's international airport. I dropped through some broken clouds but otherwise flew through a beautiful, clear morning (CAVOK), eased the Beech onto Runway 1 with a 19-knot crosswind (070 degrees).  Piece of cake. Well....   the demonstrated 90-degree crosswind component of our model Beech 18 is 16 knots so I definitely sat up straight and paid attention as I sat that little puppy dog down on the centerline and held it there.  Really not a big  deal: at our weight I came in over the threshhold, windward wing down, a little faster than I normally would have at 95 knots and, with a long runway ahead of me, didn't drop the flaps (they reduce rudder authority), set it down on first one main, then the other, and eased forward on the yoke to plant them firmly -- you don't continue to flair a taildragger like you do a trike; if you do, the plane will go airborne -- and added a bit of differential power and some rudder.  When we slowed to 60 knots and the rudders began to lose effectiveness, I dropped the tail with no delay, as I wanted to get that locked tail wheel down on the ground quickly to help maintain tracking, and pulled the yoke all the way back.  At the end of the run, I unlocked the tail wheel to taxi, using braking and differential power to steer. All routine for this airplane: no fuss, no muss, no rough stuff. But it's definitely no Land-O-Matic Cessna.

 Dad didn't wake up until I parked and shut down the Wasps.  The sudden silence brought him bolt upright, groggy but ready for action.  
"Relax, pop, we're here." 
"You should have wakened me and let me help you." 
"Nah, you were pooped and no help needed.  And look!  Such a beautiful day in such a beautiful land.  We made it!"
"Well, hallelujah, so we did.  Will wonders never cease?"

Truth be told, I was enormously relieved to have crossed what in my mind had been a vast and forbidding sea without incident. My ear had been attuned, hour after hour, for the slightest change in the sound of our engines. I stared hard at the instruments, never letting more than a few moments pass before I checked them again.  The immersion suit I was wearing was a constant reminder of potential disaster.  And why were we wearing our immersion suits?  Because should we need to ditch, there would be no time to put them on.  I rehearsed again and again in my mind what I would do in case of a ditching, opening the rear door, or if that wasn't possible, kicking out the escape hatch, grabbing the raft and manhandling it into the water -- I could do that, couldn't I?  I would have to.  What if dad were injured, could I get him out before the plane sank?  What if I were injured? What if we were both injured?  What if -- ?

But nothing happened at all.  The Wasps are long-proven, very reliable engines, with a failure rate of 11 per 100,000 hours according to the NTSB, and the Beach 18 itself was designed when they weren't sure how strong they needed to make an airframe for it to be safe, so they made it as strong as they could.  So the airframe, like that of a DC-3, has no lifespan. 

The folks at immigration thought it quite charming that a father and daughter had flown across the ocean together in their own plane, and such an old-fashioned one at that.  So we had a nice, if brief, chat.  Ground crewmen had also come over to check out the old bird -- the airplane, not my dad!  They promised to take special care of it.

We got a hotel a short walk from the terminal and next to a car rental place. I wanted to drive around the island a bit and see what it looked like and do a bit of shopping in the city, which I was told was about an hour's drive away, but dad said he would see to the airplane and get it ready for the flight to Greenland, then sack out.  Apparently, you had to make a special request to get a bowser of avgas rather than jet fuel, and there were other issues to deal with, from getting the right grade of oil to pulling the engine cowlings and going over everything to make sure nothing was loose, cracked, worn or leaking.  Dad was nothing if not careful and he didn't trust anyone but himself to either do what needed to be done or supervise those who did it.

We had dinner in the hotel that evening and chatted about the flight from Scotland and discussed plans for the crossing to Greenland.  A couple of men at the next table overheard us and joined our conversation.  It turns out they were British Airways crew and had seen our Beech 18 come in.  They complimented my father on the smooth job he had done landing the big tail-dragger in that strong crosswind -- they knew the reputation of the 18 for making fools of indifferent pilots on landing -- and when he said he was actually asleep in the cabin and that his little girl (meaning me, lol) had set the plane down, they were dumbfounded.  I don't think they really believed it.  I didn't care if they did or didn't.  My vanity is not tied up with how well strangers think I can or can't drive an airplane.  Okay, I was annoyed a little bit, but then I saw the funny side of it and under my breath began to scat sing "Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better," the Irving Berlin tune from the musical Annie Get Your Gun.  My dad gave me a sideways glance.  I stuck my tongue out at him.  The Brits had no idea.  

Thereafter I sat back and let the menfolks chat about their various astounding adventures.  Dad let the bus drivers do most of the yarning, and, boy, could they tell some tall ones. I felt like saying, hey, pop, tell them about the time over Haiphong and ... or that time in the Gulf of Sidra when ... or in the Straight of Hormuz when those ... or over Baghdad the time that .... but nah.  If I had, dad would have shrugged and said they were just typical days at the office.  You'll never get anything out of him about that stuff.  He's not interested in impressing other men.  He's interested in seeing if other men impress him.  If they do, they might be worth getting to know and be friends with.  The rest?  Just part of the passing parade.

Très sexy, non?

 Addendum: El jefe wanted to take some retro 1940s-style plane-and-dame "cheesecake" snapshots with the Beech.  I didn't bring anything that would work for that, not expecting to be posing like a Petty girl.  We went shopping for some Forties-looking glamor rags but the would-be Ewing Krainin wasn't satisfied with anything the local shops offered. The closest get-up I could put together was cut-off jeans and a tee shirt. I hadn't brought any heels so had to buy a pair and the only size that fit from the limited selection available was not something I would have chosen if I had my druthers.  Jef had me pose standing leaning against the fuselage with a hopefully seductive, come-hither look (rather than appearing like someone who's about to  sneeze),  then wanted me to lie down on the wing and do the same, and while trying to do that I almost lost my balance and fell on my heinie.  Ah, the things we do for love.

Art originally on an Okinawa-based B-24.

Of course, the usual hanger flyers were lounging around the aerodrome and moseyed over to gawk as jef clicked away.  They opined freely on what we were doing.  The kibitzers good-natured comments made me smile, sometimes laugh.  I enjoyed basking in the male gazes of some half-dozen members of the patriarchy, loafer division, 3rd class. Alas and alack, they were more interested in the bodacious Beech than my bodacious bod.  They all wanted to climb aboard and go for a ride -- in the Beech!

Reprobates and scoundrels!

And here we have two of the grand instigators and culprits of this mad adventure, both looking innocent and happy as clams.  And ready to do it again.  My mother brought the boys home safe and sound and wildly excited to tell their mom everything they had seen and done, from firing a Spencer carbine light-loaded by a park ranger at a Civil War battlefield to gazing at an erupting volcano in Iceland to visiting the dungeon in the Tower of London.  They also saw the Spirit of St. Louis at the Smithsonian, toured the USS Constitution, took a boat ride on Loch Ness and visited the Normandy D-Day landing beaches.  They had so much fun and did so many things without me that I regretted turning down the offer to go with them.  I was happy for them but also began to feel kind of sad, realizing what a memorable part of their lives I had missed.  It was a portent of the days ahead when they, invested in their own lives, will forget to send mom a Mother's Day card and will want to be with their own families on Thanksgiving and Christmas and they'll promise to come and visit next year, for sure.  Oh, well.  Just another dumb decision to add to the ever-growing list. But maybe I am being selfish.  Maybe my original decision, that the boys should spend time with men doing man things, was best -- for them, if not for me. And, on that note, I shall close for now and write about the rest of the trip later.

      

         

 

 

 

 

Next:  On to Greenland

 (To be continued...)

Eighties Interlude

 Busy, be back soon. but in the meantime enjoy the grand era of bubblegum pop.  Frivolity, thy name is the Eighties. Plus it's great music to dancercize to and keep in shape while having fun and enjoying yourself.