Friday, March 3, 2023
Serving with Uncle Mel
Friday, February 24, 2023
Yellow Footprints: An Anniversary Reflection
Hurry Up and Wait...
I grew up in a small community in southern Illinois–Newton, Illinois–where people generally knew each other or at least knew of each other. It was–and still is–a nice town. It’s the kind of town that still holds a fall parade where tractors and marching bands own the streets. People sit along the curb in their chairs while the kids play along the street. The people there cherish the tempo and lifestyle, quietly aware that if everyone lived that way, it would be a much better world.
I wasn’t exactly setting any academic records in high school, so I needed a change of pace and some way to transition to a successful track somewhere, somehow. I had thought about the military, but I hesitated to follow through. I wasn’t sure I would be cut out for the military life, and I didn’t know which branch of the service to enter. I was very certain that if I did join the military service, it wouldn’t be the Marines because I was pretty sure I couldn’t make it there.
However, when the Marine recruiter called and asked if he could come over for a visit, I said yes. Almost as soon as he stepped through the door, I was in awe. I was still pretty sure I couldn’t get there from where I was in my life, but I was willing to listen. After some kind of black magic and other maneuvers, he had me thinking I could make it and I decided right then that I wanted to become a Marine. I was caught up in all of it and had apparently separated myself from my sense that there was no way I could make it through Marine Corps boot camp. I wasn’t a very big or fit guy at the time. I didn’t run, I wasn’t strong, and I wasn’t very focused. All of that was going to change soon enough though.
I signed the papers in September of 1974, just after my seventeenth birthday and finished my high school work in January. The following month, on Monday, February 24, 1975, my family took me to the Greyhound bus station in the nearby town of Effingham where I boarded a bus headed for the recruiting center in St. Louis.
I boarded that bus 48 years ago on February 24, 1975, with the love, support, and confidence of my loved ones and friends; it turned out that not wanting to disappoint any of them was a powerful motivator.
I spent the night in a so-so hotel in a not-so-good part of town. I didn’t get a lot of sleep because I was afraid of missing my wake-up time. It turns out I couldn’t have missed it because the hotel invested in a wake-up ringer that could have awakened the dead. They obviously housed a lot of recruits because it wasn’t quite a gentle wake-up call. That was okay. I didn’t have another gentle wake-up for three months.
My instructions were to get up early at a time they gave me and report to the recruiting center for processing. I had the sense that it would be a pretty quick evolution since I already had a physical and had signed a bunch of papers. After all, this was the military, known for its rapid efficiency. But I was wrong. I got there early and waited and waited. Then, we did a little something and waited and waited some more. That happened all day long until suddenly near the end of the day everyone flew into action to process us out of there and get us to the airport for a flight to San Diego. What appeared to be wasteful inefficiency turned out to be a well-conceived plan. Very clever.
The staff at the recruiting center in St. Louis gave me all of the paperwork for the group in a large yellow envelope because my last name came first in the alphabet among those headed from St. Louis to San Diego. There was probably a dozen of us. It turns out where my last name fell in the alphabet dictated a good bit of my vantage point over the next three months since we did almost everything in alphabetical order. We lined up for shots in alphabetical order and we even slept in alphabetical order. I got a good look at the back of Private Dibble’s head over that period.
We took off out of the airport in St. Louis en route to San Diego. I wasn’t nervous, mostly because I was too clueless to be nervous. However, as we made our approach into the airport in San Diego, the flight attendant got on the intercom and pointed out the Marine Corps Recruit Depot and the Naval Training Center which bordered the airport. As I looked down on the base which looked eerily serene and darkened except for the street lights, I suddenly felt a little bit of anxiety. As we filed off the airplane, the flight attendant told us recruits, “good luck,” and she seemed to mean it, almost as if she was in on some secret that we were about to learn for ourselves. Those were the last kind, warm words I heard for three months, except for the letters I received from friends and loved ones at home.
To the Wolves...
We got out into the airport and went looking for the Marine Corps liaison. It was after 10 PM and there weren’t very many people in the airport, so the Marine wasn't hard to find. We found him standing behind a podium near some exit doors. I took my large envelope of documents to the podium to let the liaison know we had arrived.
As I walked up, the Marine was looking down at some papers he was working on. I rested my elbow on the podium and told him the group from St. Louis was there. The Marine barely lifted his head as he looked at my elbow. Then, without raising his voice he told me to get my @#$% elbow off of his @#$% podium. As quietly and calmly as he said that, he nonetheless left no doubt in my mind about my need to get my @#$% elbow off of his @#$% podium. I got my elbow off of his podium. I suddenly wished I had heeded my dad’s words to stand up straight and “don’t lean on that.”
He told us to wait outside, and the bus would be along shortly. Groups of recruits from other parts of the country arrived and waited with us. Almost on cue once we had a busload, a white school bus with, “U. S. Marine Corps” stenciled in small letters on the side pulled up.
When a sergeant came flying out of the bus yelling and screaming at us, I thought, “What am I doing here?!” Years later when I watched the movie Shawshank Redemption and saw the guy who, on arriving at prison, cries out, “I don’t belong here…”, I understood his anguish. I didn’t cry like he did, though. In fact, I didn’t say a word. I was all ears, and my eyes were wide open.
The sergeant yelled at us to fill the bus from back to front, from left to right. He said it so fast, you really had to be listening to get it all.
One of the guys from St. Louis was a red-headed kid who must have been somebody important in his high school JROTC unit because he couldn’t stop talking at St. Louis, on the plane, and at curbside while we were waiting for the bus about how he was going to breeze through boot camp. Well, his fantasy quickly eroded when he jumped on that bus and promptly sat in a seat in the middle of the bus. That’s not what the sergeant told us to do, so the sergeant went tearing through the cluster of recruits, boarded the bus and lit into the red-headed kid. All you could hear was the sound of that sergeant barking in this guy’s ear, then the red-head quickly shuffling to the back of the bus. Welcome to boot camp.
The rest of us got on the bus. If there were any doubts about how we were supposed to do that, the red-headed guy’s experience clarified it for us nicely. The bus started rolling and we made our way over to MCRD on what was probably the loneliest bus ride of my short life. I had never felt more like I was being led to the wolves. "Wolves" was an understatement.
We arrived at MCRD, and just as there were instructions about how to get on the bus, there were instructions about how to get off the bus. This time, we were to stand on a column of yellow footprints. These yellow footprints were painted with feet at the position of attention–heels on line and touching, toes pointed at a 45-degree angle–because although we didn’t know what the position of attention was, we needed to be at it.
We got on the yellow footprints and the place was swarming with DIs, or at least it seemed to be. The time was around midnight, and they told us to drop everything we had in our hands. I had that envelope with those papers, but I dropped it and never saw it again. One poor soul brought a beach ball. He must have had a recruiter with a sense of humor who gave him the idea that since he was coming to San Diego, he was going to get some beach time. That got him some unwanted attention right away.
The yellow footprints were located in the heart of the recruit reception activity. Just to our right was the barbershop and it was open for business. The very first thing we did after getting on the yellow footprints was file into the barbershop for a haircut that couldn’t have lasted longer than 15 seconds. There were half a dozen barbers, and they took no time at all to cut all of those heads of hair. Everyone in that column had their own look, their own appearance, but that was about to change. I was standing behind a guy who had long hair and a beard. While I was pretty fixated on not being the next red-headed guy, I couldn’t help thinking that his haircut was going to leave him with an interesting look.
A short while later, though, he returned with his hair cut off. He still had his beard. He received the same express haircut I got, but as he stood in front of me, I could see he had these remnants of his long hair here and there that the barber missed. He looked like one of those old dolls that most of the hair had fallen out of (with a beard). He was very pale and not looking good at all. I remember thinking this guy’s not going to make it. It turns out he graduated from boot camp in my platoon as a squad leader with a meritorious promotion. Shows you what I knew.
So, whatever you looked like on the bus was not what you looked like back on those yellow footprints after that haircut. The red-headed guy from St. Louis was an exception.
The red-headed guy was still the red-headed guy and he was proving to be quite a DI magnet. He wasn’t doing anything right and they absolutely were on him the entire evening. Our next stop was an issue line where we were given our toiletries. Somehow, he messed that up too and the DIs hauled him outside where we could hear them giving him the business. I couldn’t understand what they were yelling, but I thought they were going to send that guy out of there that night the way things were going. I, on the other hand, suddenly found the focus that had eluded me all of my seventeen years.
My Marine Corps Everything...
I got to sleep immediately, but it seemed that almost as soon as my eyelids hit my cheekbones, the lights came back on, and someone was throwing a 20-gallon galvanized steel trash can down the aisle. There’s nothing quite like that sound, and it sure gave the impression they really wanted us out of bed and standing at attention at the foot of our bunks right away. They counted us to make sure we were all still there then they gave some instructions for us to go to the head (restroom) to shave. We did it in shifts. Half went to the head while the other half stripped bunks of the sheets and blankets. As soon as the beds were stripped, it was time to rotate: the guys in the head came shuffling out (but not fast enough) and the other half went shuffling in (also not fast enough).
We ran back out to our bunks and put our civilian clothes back on and ran outside. We assembled in sort of a military formation and walked–because we didn’t know how to march–in that formation. It was still dark outside, but as we made our way over to the mess hall–now called a dining facility in the military, unfortunately–we could see other recruit platoons who had obviously been there a while. When they marched, it sounded like one heel: thump, thump, thump, thump. That was something. That might have been the only time the DIs let us gawk. Everything they did was as though they were one, in perfect unison. Everything we did was evidence that we had a long way to go. The DIs had a colorful way of telling us how far we had to go yet and whether they thought we had any chance of getting there.
We filed into the mess hall, and it was all business in there too. Once we got to the serving line and grabbed a tray, the mess men behind the serving line kept saying, “keep the chow line moving, privates, keep the chow line moving.” If the chow line stopped moving, there was trouble because the DIs saw that too. Of course, the yelling of “not fast enough,” “what are you looking at,” and “no talking” were echoing throughout the mess hall. I was near the end of the chow line, so I was one of the last to get my breakfast. That didn’t work out so well.
Thinking I should get a decent meal that morning so I would have enough battery juice to make it through the day, I grabbed some scrambled eggs, some hash browns, and a pastry. I should have stopped at the scrambled eggs and hash browns. I shoved that stuff in my mouth as fast as I could because almost as soon as I sat down, we were getting a countdown for when we needed to be finished. By the time we were told to get out of the mess hall, I still had that pastry sitting there. I started to get up, but one of those all-seeing DIs spotted that pastry on my tray.
He told me I wasn’t going to waste his Marine Corps chow. Everything seemed to belong to these DIs, and they seemingly took everything personally–my Marine Corps chow, my Marine Corps barracks, my Marine Corps dirt, my Marine Corps formation–and we seemed to always be messing up their Marine Corps things. In fact, they seemed to be convinced that we were there to destroy their Marine Corps and it was their mission to keep that from happening.
So, I was not going to waste his Marine Corps chow because doing so would lead to the demise of his Marine Corps. I dropped back down in my seat and my new shadow, the DI, was right on me yelling at me to get this thing eaten. I stuffed as much of that pastry in my mouth that I could–the proverbial ten pounds in the five-pound bag–and tried to chew, but it wasn’t going anywhere. It just seemed to get larger and mushier and more impossible to do anything with. I finally got the whole thing in my mouth and was still trying to chew it when he yelled at me (with his outside voice) to get out of there. I must have chewed that ball of grease and dough for an hour, but I finally got it down. That was the last pastry I ate in boot camp.
We got back to the barracks and cleaned the place up then went to get our uniforms. Once again, we became someone different (except for that red-headed guy). We looked nothing like Marines in those green uniforms though. It was pretty clear that we were just civilians dressed up–poorly, I should say–in Marine Corps uniforms. The uniforms smelled like mothballs and were dark green because they’d not yet been laundered. We looked terrible, but at least, in our eyes, we were starting to look like we belonged there.
A little while later, we went to a place where we boxed up all of our personal belongings and shipped them home. The Marine Corps would issue to us anything we would need from that time on.
Then, we went over to the phone center where we were allowed to make a quick phone call home. There was a script taped next to the telephone that went something like this: “This is Recruit Doss. I have arrived safely at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot in San Diego. Please do not send me any food or bulky items in the mail. I will contact you in 3 to 5 days by postcard with my new address. Thank you for your support. Goodbye for now.”
That’s when it really settled on me that I now belonged to the United States Marine Corps. What happened from that time forward was entirely in the hands of a few drill instructors and what I was able to make of it. Every day presented a new challenge and produced more growth. It's interesting that as uncertain as I was about whether I could make it through boot camp before I arrived, once I got there, it never occurred to me again that I couldn't handle it. As much as I missed all that I left behind when I went to boot camp, it turned out that boot camp was what I needed to get on track.
Somehow, in three short months, they took us from raw recruits who needed yellow footprints painted on the ground to show us where to stand and turned us into Marines.
Monday, February 6, 2023
Fuji
I think we all have had times when we did something, or thought about doing something, that didn’t seem like much of a big deal at the time, but then later its importance grew over time, and the decision you made to either do that thing or not turned out to be more meaningful than we had imagined at the time we made the choice.
One such time for me was the time some friends and I climbed Mount Fuji in Japan. We were deployed to a camp at the base of the mountain from Okinawa. It was July 4, 1976 and we had a military parade in honor of the 200th birthday of our Nation and about a dozen of us thought it would be cool to climb it to celebrate the day after the parade.
Mount Fuji isn’t a difficult mountain to climb, there’s just a lot of it: a little more than 12,000 feet of it. A lot of Japanese successfully make a pilgrimage of the climb every year. You can climb it in about eight hours if you follow a trail. It’s certainly no Denali.
We wanted the climb to be special though, so we didn’t want to follow a trail. Instead, we just started from our camp and walked straight up. We started right after the parade was finished—about mid-morning—and trudged up the cinders all day long. As the end of the day approached, we ran into some weather; it was mostly hail, rain, and wind and it pounded down into our faces as we looked up to climb.
We didn’t quite have a plan for that. About half of our group decided to head back down the mountain, but the rest of us continued on. Not long after we split up, we came across an abandoned building that appeared to be intended as a shelter. It had three walls and, of course, the one that was missing was the one the weather was coming through.
There was an elevated platform inside that seemed to have been designed for sleeping on so we huddled up on that.. We didn’t have blankets so we slept in the cold and wind. It was just cold and windy enough to make sleeping difficult, but it was better than being outside.
We woke up early the next morning and continued the climb as the cinders turned to a little bit of snow resting on top of the cinders. We reached the summit – the crater – at about mid-morning. Looking back down on Japan on that clear day was quite a sight. We walked around and took some photos before heading back down. The trip down was much faster.
Like I said, the climb wasn’t a major feat, but it was one of those things you don’t get many chances to do. I’m glad we did it. More importantly, I’m glad we didn’t turn around and head back down the mountain when we ran into the bad weather. If we had, that might have been the last time I ever talked about Mount Fuji. It doesn’t seem likely I would have been fond of remembering the time I climbed half a mountain and gave up on the other half.
I suppose avoiding regrets like that has been a big motivator for me in negotiating the challenges and obstacles I’ve encountered over the years. I think I’ve recognized for a long time that failure sometimes comes with taking risks, so I’ve not spent as much time worrying about or fearing failure as I’ve thought of ways to overcome those challenges and obstacles. I think I’ve been more afraid of quitting or giving up, and what it might turn me into if I headed down that road (or mountain).
There’s a lot to be said for climbing the other half of the mountain. We do it—or face the decision to do it—all the time. Oftentimes, the consequences that lay beyond the decision not to press on are more lasting than the effects of having tried and failed.
Monday, January 23, 2023
The Silent Legacy of James Henry Harris
Harris then moved to Terre Haute, Indiana where, in 1863, he was asked by Indiana Governor Levi Morton to help raise a regiment of U. S. Colored Troops for service in the Civil War. After the war, he returned to North Carolina where he became a teacher for the New England Freedmen's Aid Society.[2]
Harris soon saw a need to ensure that freedom for blacks included legal and political equality, so he entered politics. In 1865, he was elected to the North Carolina Freedmen's Convention where he advocated moderation and reconciliation with whites and education for blacks. That same year, he became vice president of the National Equal Rights Convention. By the time he became president of the Freedman's Convention the following year, he had become increasingly more forceful in his insistence on equal rights for blacks.[3]
As post-war Reconstruction progressed, Harris developed as one of the most influential black politicians in North Carolina. He was a charter member of the North Carolina Republican Party, was a delegate at the 1868 North Carolina Constitutional Convention, and was elected to the North Carolina General Assembly three times and to the North Carolina Senate once. He also used his influence and oratorical skills to urge President Ulysses S. Grant to press Congress to pass legislation that would ensure equal rights for blacks. He attended the 1868, 1872, and 1876 Republican National Conventions and was a presidential elector in 1872.[4]
In 1870, while he was a member of the North Carolina legislature, Harris joined with 11 other legislators led by Senator John Pool and met with Governor William W. Holden to devise a plan to suppress the Ku Klux Klan which had been on a terror campaign to keep recently freed slaves from exercising their right to vote by intimidating them and white Republican officials. They decided to form a militia to stop the Klan; that move resulted in the Holden-Kirk War. After several bloody clashes with the Klan, Governor Holden disbanded the militia. Later that year, however, the Democrats gained the majority in the North Carolina legislature and impeached Governor Holden on a straight party-line vote. (140 years later, in 2011, the North Carolina Senate voted unanimously to pardon Governor Holden.)[5]
In the 1880s Harris edited and published the North Carolina Republican, whose slogan was “Firm in the Right,”[6] and whose work was focused "in behalf of the Republican party and the advancement of the negro.”[7]
During his career, Harris was an advocate for education for blacks, prison reform, aid to laborers, protection for women and debtors, and care for orphans. He also helped create and became one of the first trustees of the Colored Institution for the Deaf, Dumb, and Blind in Raleigh. Since even before he began his political career, Harris believed that white and black interests were interwoven, but along the way he maintained his insistence that blacks fight to keep their political rights and to gain equality before the law.”[8]
1 Ijames, Earl “Constitutional Convention, 1868: ‘Black Caucus’.” NCPedia. Reprinted from the Tar Heel Junior Historian Fall 2008. https://www.ncpedia.org/history/cw-1900/black-caucus
2 Alexander, Roberta Sue “Harris, James Henry.” NCPedia. 1988. https://www.ncpedia.org/biography/harris-james-henry
3 Ibid.
4 Ibid.
5 Barnett, Ned “N.C. state senate pardons governor who stood up to Klan.” Reuters. April 12, 2011. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-northcarolina-pardon/n-c-state-senate-pardons-governor-who-stood-up-to-klan-idUSTRE73B80V20110412?feedType=RSS&feedName=domesticNews
6 Ijames, “Constitutional Convention, 1868: ‘Black Caucus’.”
7 Alexander, Roberta Sue “Harris, James Henry.”
8 Ibid.
9 “Representative George White of North Carolina.” History, Art, and Archives, United States House of Representatives. http://history.house.gov/HistoricalHighlight/Detail/35244?ret=True
Tuesday, January 17, 2023
Sometimes Better To Ask Forgiveness...
In early 1996, I was a member of Marine Medium Helicopter Squadron 162 (HMM-162), the aviation element of the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit (Special Operations Capable) on board the USS Guam (LPH-9). We were operating in the Adriatic Sea and ashore in Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Albania as part of the peace enforcement force, the "implementation force" (IFOR), during Operation Decisive Endeavor.
We were wrapping up our work in the Adriatic in early April, preparing to head to Israel for some exercises, when we received an order to prepare to redeploy to the west coast of Africa for potential operations in embattled Liberia. As we steamed toward the southern end of the Adriatic, we were either going to turn left toward Israel or right toward Liberia. By the time we reached the Mediterranean, it was a right turn. We arrived at "Mamba Station" off the coast of Liberia early in the morning of April 20th.
When we arrived, fighting around the U. S. Embassy was pretty intense as warring factions fought in the street in front of the Embassy and along several blocks nearby, so our first priority was to reinforce the Embassy with Marines. Our next priority was to fly non-combatants out of Liberia. In some cases, we flew them to the Guam; in other cases, we flew them to neighboring Freetown, Sierra Leone where they would catch an international flight out of the area.
As we continued operations in and out of Liberia over the next few months, we took time to train at the airport in Sierra Leone, away from the mayhem in Monrovia, although Sierra Leone had plenty of problems of its own. Armed soldiers were all throughout the airport keeping a menacing eye on the people there.
I remember the first time we landed in Sierra Leone, I had trouble reaching the control tower for permission to land. I had been calling them beginning at 25 miles out, but got no answer on the radio. I flew closer and closer and kept calling until finally on short final to the runway I simply said, "Lungi (the airport's name), this is Wombat 05, flight of two U. S. Marine helicopters. We're on short final and we'll be landing on runway 12. We have passengers and we'll need fuel." Normally, that would have been phrased as a request, but not in that case. Finally, the control tower answered and cleared us to land.
We hoped that the airport would have telephones so we could call home, so we left one Marine in the aircraft so no one would run off with the aircraft or more likely, the 50 caliber machineguns and ammo as we walked into the airport to see if there were phones. It was probably a curious sight for those in the airport because we were still wearing our flight gear and were carrying 9mm Barettas into the airport. There were enough American flags on flight suits that everyone probably figured out who we were pretty quickly. There wasn't going to be any trouble for us there.
What was interesting was that as the soldiers stood over the people in the airport, we walked past them and gave candy and cookies to the kids. I doubt they had seen friendly military people before, but it was good for them and the soldiers to see a little friendliness coming from the Americans.
We dropped off our passengers, made our phone calls, got our fuel, and headed back to the Guam sitting off the coast of Liberia.
Once we shut the aircraft down, we walked over to the Mi-8 to look it over. I tapped on the aircraft skin and it was as solid as an old Buick. Our aircraft had aluminum skin to cut down on weight, so the Hip was quite a bit heavier and likely less maneuverable than our aircraft. A few minutes later, the pilot came out of the airport and walked over to us. He was a South African mercenary hired by the Sierra Leone government.
He asked if we wanted to go up in the aircraft. I was the senior Marine there and this was a situation that we had never discussed before: Would it be okay for us to go up in a Soviet-made helicopter flown by a South African mercenary? There was no one to ask for permission other than me, so I said, "sure." The answer, if I had asked, might have been "no," but if I didn't accept the offer everyone would have said I should have. That's the way that sort of thing works. It was such an opportunity, I couldn't pass it up.
So, we boarded the helicopter and as I prepared to take a seat in the back, the pilot directed me to the cockpit. He was actually going to let me fly that thing!
I climbed into the cockpit and strapped in and put the helmet on that was sitting in my seat. As I did, I looked overhead at the circuit breaker panel and saw that the circuit breaker labels were all written in Cyrillic from when it was Soviet-owned. Some of the labels were replaced by bits of paper with words in English taped to the panel identifying what the circuit breakers and switches were for. I asked the mercenary pilot what they did about the ones still written in the Russian language and he said, "We don't know what those are for so we don't touch them." Good idea.
The pilot started the helicopter and asked me if I wanted to fly it. I was a little surprised that he was going to let me take off since takeoffs and landings are not always sure things, but I took the controls and got ready to lift off.
The Soviet helicopter main rotor systems rotate clockwise whereas American helicopter main rotors spin counter-clockwise. The reason that's important to know is that torque generated by the main rotor makes the fuselage want to spin in the opposite direction, which is part of the reason you have a tail rotor, technically known as a "counter-torque rotor." As you increase power to take off you need to manipulate the pedals which control the tail rotor to keep the helicopter from spinning when you increase or decrease power. After a while, American pilots who fly tail rotor helicopters apply left pedal input when they increase power to take off without even thinking about it. The problem with jumping into a Soviet helicopter is that if you apply left pedal without thinking about it like you would in an American helicopter, you'd make the helicopter spin badly. Fortunately, I didn't fly a tail rotor helicopter, so I didn't have to fight the temptation to put left pedal in. When I added power, I felt the fuselage want to spin left, so I added right pedal to counter it.
The takeoff went fine and I flew around the traffic pattern and set up to land at the helicopter pad on the north side of the runway. As I reduced power and pulled back on the nose to start my decelerating descent, the helicopter barely responded so it mushed right through the normal landing profile. I noticed that the South African sort of leaned forward to get a look at the pad which was getting more difficult to see as we creeped up over it, so I--as cooly as I could--said "I'm going to make a steep approach," as if that was my plan all along, which it wasn't. Doing a steep approach in an unfamiliar aircraft would have been kind of a bold thing to do, so he must have thought I was pretty confident in my ability. Fortunately, that pig slowed down enough that I was able to stay on a steep profile and put it on the pad with no problem. I climbed out of the cockpit to give another pilot a go at it, but I did warn the next guy on my way out that it was pretty mushy.
Still not sure that news that we had flown the Soviet aircraft was going to be well-received when we returned to the squadron, I told my CO about the great opportunity that we couldn't pass up, and he thought it was great and was glad we did it.
Monday, January 16, 2023
Birds of Paradise
As I landed on my first platform after that long overwater flight, my passenger said that he would be only a few minutes so I decided to delay a needed refueling until I could take him to his next stop. If I took off to get fuel on another platform right then, I'd need to shut the helicopter down to refuel and wouldn't be able to return for a half hour or more. I didn't want to keep him waiting if it wasn't necessary.
It turned out that I waited on the deck at idle for about half an hour for him to return to the aircraft, so I was really needing fuel by the time he was back on board.
I found what I thought was the platform that I was looking for, but I couldn't see the number because the platform deck was all white with no number in sight. On closer inspection, mostly because of the number of sea birds that I scared off when I flew over the deck, I figured out that the deck was white because it and the platform number were COVERED like a sheet in bird droppings.
Friday, January 6, 2023
Rescue from Mogadishu (Part 9): "Muscat"
The evacuation in Mogadishu ultimately extracted 281 people from 30 nations, including sixty-one Americans, thirty-nine Soviet citizens, seventeen British citizens, twenty-six Germans, and various numbers from twenty-six other nations. That included twelve heads of diplomatic missions: eight ambassadors and four chargés d’affaires.[3]
U.S. Embassy Public Affairs Officer Karen Aguilar later observed, “We couldn’t save ourselves. Either we were going to get blown away or somebody was going to have to save us.”[4]
Before leaving the ships in Muscat, Oman, Ambassador Bishop addressed the sailors and Marines aboard the Guam via the ship’s television system:
“Subsequent events made it clear that the Marines and SEALs came just in time, as looters came over the wall as the helicopters left. We were very impressed by the professionalism of EASTERN EXIT. The Marines and SEALs appeared at all times the master of the situation. The best indicator of their competence is the mission’s success: the evacuation of 281 people from an embattled city without injury to either evacuees or military personnel. The actions of those protecting the Embassy and evacuating evacuees was indeed heroic. And the actions aboard Guam were indeed compassionate. Few of us would have been alive today if we had been outside your reach. It was only due to your extraordinary efforts that we made it. We will take a part of each of you with us the rest of our lives.”[5]
With the evacuees ashore in Muscat, the Guam and Trenton headed to the Persian Gulf, back to another “clime and place” where, six days later, another mission began: Operation DESERT STORM.
*****
[1] James K. Bishop, “Escape from Mogadishu,” Foreign Service Journal (March 1991), p. 31.
[2] Interview with Tommy Sheffield, December 6, 2020.
[3] Adam B. Siegel, “Eastern Exit: The Noncombatant Evacuation Operation (NEO) from Mogadishu, Somalia in January 1991,” (1992), Center for Naval Analyses, p. 38; Gary J. Ohls, “Eastern Exit–Rescue ‘…From the Sea’,” Naval War College Review, vol 61, no. 4, article 11 (2008), p. 141.
[4] Barton Gellman, “Amid Winds of War, Daring U.S. Rescue Got Little Notice,” The Washington Post, (January 5, 1992).
[5] Siegel, “Eastern Exit,” p. 39; Adam B. Siegel, “An American Entebbe,” Naval Institute Proceedings: Naval Review (1992), pp. 99-100.
© Robert A. Doss
Thursday, January 5, 2023
Rescue from Mogadishu (Part 8): "An Eastern Exit"
The plan called for the mission to be completed in four waves of five aircraft. Five of our HMM-263 aircraft—callsign “Thunder”—would go in for a load of evacuees first. As we departed the Embassy grounds and headed back to the Guam, mission commander LtCol Wallace would radio a code word that would signal the five HMM-365 aircraft—callsign “Rugby”—under flight leader LtCol Bob Saikowski to launch toward Mogadishu. That would happen twice.
As we walked across the dimly lit flight deck toward our aircraft, the Guam’s flight deck speaker system, which was normally active with calls and instructions dedicated to controlling the movement of aircraft, instead grabbed the attention of the Marines and sailors on the flight deck with the familiar strains of Lee Greenwood’s God Bless the USA. We stopped and took in the moment. As aware as we already were of the mission’s importance, the song brought to mind what the more than 200 hopeful evacuees from 30 nations standing by at the U.S. Embassy in Mogadishu already knew: there was something special about the USA that made even our adversaries look to us for help in times of distress.
The five Thunder aircraft from HMM-263 were lined up front-to-back on the flight deck spots along the port side of the ship when we boarded them. Pilots climbed into their cockpits, connected their helmets to the radio and intercom systems, fastened their harnesses, and began working through their checklists. I flew from the right seat of the fifth Thunder aircraft.
While we worked through our checklists, our crew chiefs connected their helmets to their radio and intercom long cords, confidently whipping the cords away from their feet as they walked to their positions for the aircraft start sequence. Meanwhile, our gunners double-checked the .50 caliber machineguns mounted on each side of the aircraft and the ammunition.
All of us were armed with 9mm Beretta pistols and some of us had M-16 rifles stashed within reach.
Over the next 15 minutes, the Thunder CH-46Es roared to life on the flight deck. As the crews waited for the signal to take off, pilots adjusted their heavy Vietnam-era ceramic armored chest plates—so-called “chicken plates”—that rested in their laps. Crew chiefs and gunners had them strapped to their torsos to cover their chest and back.
Once our five Thunder aircraft were all running and ready for takeoff, a member of the Navy flight deck crew, in a manner reminiscent of World War II flight deck operations, went from aircraft to aircraft with a white board. The board advised pilots of the ship’s course, the wind direction and speed, the barometric altimeter setting, and “pigeons” to the beach. (“Pigeons” are a reference to homing pigeons. That night, they were the compass heading from the ship to our initial point (IP) on the Somali coast.)
Radio transmissions would be kept to a minimum throughout the mission. Most radio calls would occur using pre-planned brevity codes between the two flight leaders and between LtCol Wallace, the Embassy, and the Guam. The absence of radio transmissions would mask our intentions and limit the ability of adversaries to use direction-finding equipment to locate our aircraft. Everyone in the flight knew what to do anyway, so discussing it further on the radio was unnecessary.
On signals from the landing signalmen on the flight deck beginning at 11:43 PM, our five Thunder aircraft lifted off from the deck of the Guam in sequence. As soon as we were in the air, five tow tractors which had already been attached to the Rugby aircraft, pulled them onto the deck spots where they would begin their own start sequences and prepare to launch.
For the next three hours, each of the aircraft in the two flights would operate as one, yet the experiences of the crewmembers in those aircraft would be quite unique. The positions of their aircraft in the flight, their roles as members of the crew, and even their interactions with the passengers they transported would yield dozens of experiences and stories.
Once the Thunder flight was joined in the air, we proceeded toward Mogadishu. We were still 30 miles at sea, so we were able to arm our missile decoy systems and test-fire our machineguns without our tracers being seen from the distant shore.
We would be in Somalia in less than 20 minutes.
As we approached the coastline, Mogadishu was easy to see through the NVGs. While the sky at sea was clear, the city itself was blanketed by a layer of smoke and haze which held what light there was in the city near the ground. The city still had some electrical power, and we could see flashes of a gun battle and occasional tracer ricochets as we got closer.
The IP where we wanted to cross the coastline wouldn’t be easy to find, but the importance of flying over it on the first crossing wasn’t lost on anyone. A thousand meters to the right would take the flight directly over known surface-to-air missile (SAM) and anti-aircraft artillery (AAA) sites (and presumably troop concentrations). A thousand meters to the left would take the flight off the edge of the map.[1]
The terrain in coastal Somalia would give few navigational clues so we relied primarily on dead-reckoning to get us where we needed to go. That meant that once we hit the beach, getting to the Embassy would be a matter of flying a heading for an amount of time that we had already computed, and making two turns with more timing to our LZ, assuming we had crossed the coastline at the right location in the first place.
As we crossed the beach, we descended to 100 feet above the ground, slowed to 80 knots (92 mph), and made our first turn.[2] Cockpit stopwatches were started for the timing to the next checkpoint. Gunners were at their weapons while eyes were peeled for trouble all around. The next and final turn was rapidly approaching, and it would determine if our navigation to that point was on track. If it was, we would immediately begin our landing transition and be on the ground within seconds. If it wasn’t, we would be in the situation we didn’t want to be in, meandering around the city making for easy targets for gunmen below.
In our planning, we asked the forward air controller (FAC), Captain Spasojevich, now on the ground at the Embassy, to assign a Marine to climb the Embassy water tower that we spotted on the satellite image and place an infrared (IR) strobe light on it. The light would be visible to pilots wearing NVGs but not to the naked eye. With the light on the water tower, we would be able to verify that we were in the right place while we were beginning our landing transition.
As we made our way inland, we weren’t sure that the strobe light had been installed or that it was working. Nonetheless, as we made the last turn to what we hoped was our final landing course, more than a dozen pairs of eyes strained to see if a water tower came into view and that an IR strobe light was flashing on it. Halfway through the turn, we saw the tower and the light and continued our turn until they were on our left. Fortunately, the heading to the IP that the Guam gave us was right on the mark.
It was time to land.
Pilots reduced power and pulled back easily on the noses of their aircraft. As expected, the LZ was barely discernible, even with the help of the NVGs. Initially, we could make out the outline of the LZ, but it quickly became lost in the blowing sand as LtCol Wallace descended into the zone. The decision to put a little bit of separation between aircraft during the landing phase proved to be a good idea as each aircraft was swallowed up and disappeared in the swirling sand, what we called “brown-out.” As the four aircraft followed LtCol Wallace into the zone, all we could see of the aircraft in front of us were the lights on the rotor blade tips and the static electricity-charged sand particles swirling through their rotor systems. Pilots stayed on their approach paths into the zone and quickly found landing spots. Once crew chiefs and gunners cleared the rear of the aircraft of obstacles, we all landed. I was at the flight controls of the fifth aircraft so it was a relief to confirm that our interpretation of the satellite photos was correct and we could actually fit five aircraft in the LZ.[3]
Thunder was on the ground at the Embassy one minute ahead of schedule.[4]
After we landed, we flattened the pitch of our rotor blades to settle the dust and once we did, we were rewarded with a view of what we were there for. Through our NVGs, we could see groups of civilians huddled near an Embassy building. They had already been organized in “sticks” of 15.
The evacuees moved quickly in their designated groups to board the helicopters. It took 20 minutes for them to board and get seated, but once they did, we took off and turned right out of the LZ toward the sea. As soon as we were airborne, LtCol Wallace made the radio call for the second wave to begin its ingress. At 21 minutes after midnight, the second wave of five helicopters from HMM-365 lifted off from the Guam.[5]
As we headed out to sea, we passed the Rugby flight headed towards Mogadishu, five Thunder aircraft from HMM-263 returning to the ship and five Rugby aircraft from HMM-365 inbound to Mogadishu.
Fifteen minutes after leaving Mogadishu, our five Thunder aircraft entered the Guam’s landing pattern, took our separation from each other, and watched for a green light and a landing signalman for clearance to land. Once we were on the deck, the ramps at the rear of the aircraft came down and the evacuees were escorted off the aircraft and led down to the hangar deck where they could be watched and processed. Protocol called for evacuees to be eyed with some caution and suspicion at first, even as they were treated to a warm welcome. To that end, they were searched while armed Marines and sailors were perched in the catwalks to guard against any unexpected trouble as scores of sailors assisted them.
On the flight deck, the Thunder aircraft were refueled while crews discussed the first trip into Mogadishu. I had about decided that I didn’t need the bulky armor plate that was in my lap and turned around partially in my seat to hand the plate to one of our crewmen. However, as soon as I did, the silence on the radios was broken by a call from the Embassy advising us that we’d been ordered to cease the evacuation and leave Somalia or be shot down. Since we had begun the evacuation with the understanding that the environment would be hostile, this new threat didn’t change our mission or our determination to accomplish it. Still, I did turn back around and ask to have that armored plate again. With it in place, we reviewed procedures for the transfer of flight controls between pilots in the event of a casualty and the rules of engagement for our gunners.
As it turned out, the threat to “leave Somalia or be shot down” came from a Somali major who arrived at the Embassy gate, grenade in hand, with two truckloads of troops and said he would order the helicopters to be shot down if the “illegal operation” didn’t end immediately. Ambassador Bishop met with the major and stalled him while the evacuation continued.[6]
When Rugby passed the signal to us at 12:51 AM that they were coming out of the LZ,[7] the chocks and chains were removed from our Thunder aircraft and we lifted off again from the Guam.
Then, moments after our departure from the ship, the overhead Air Force AC-130 reported that his radar warning receiver detected an active surface-to-air missile (SAM) system to the west. We continued to the Embassy; the situation would only worsen if we delayed. Near the LZ, the helicopters received SAM radar search indications from the northeast, but our flying at such low altitudes and airspeeds made it difficult for the radars to acquire our helicopters.[8]
While our helicopters could fly beneath the SA-2 and SA-3 SAM threat, the AC-130 orbiting overhead could not. After some anxious moments, the AC-130 was repositioned over the ocean where it was less vulnerable[9] yet still capable of covering the evacuation ashore.
The new missile radar activity indicated an increased awareness of our presence, but we believed that flying darkened without exterior lights would reduce our exposure to small arms, shoulder-fired SAMs, and rocket propelled grenades. According to evacuees, the helicopters were almost invisible until they were on the ground.[10]
The third wave, now inbound to the Embassy, included the helicopter that the Ambassador and his immediate staff were supposed to leave on. However, Ambassador Bishop was still negotiating with the Somali major while the third wave landed at the Embassy and passengers boarded their assigned helicopters. As a result, only four of the five aircraft in that wave had full loads when it was time for them to leave.[11]
Our aircraft was that fifth aircraft, so LtCol Wallace directed us to remain behind until the LZ was cleaned out and everyone was accounted for. He led the other four aircraft back to the Guam and signaled the Rugby flight to return to the Embassy for the fourth and final wave.
Once the other four Thunder aircraft left the Embassy, we moved as far forward in the zone as possible to allow the five Rugby aircraft to fit into the LZ behind us. That put us in front of the soldiers who had massed at the Embassy gate, which drew the full attention of our gunners who were ready to repel an attack if one materialized. We watched the gate and the area around our aircraft closely while we waited for the radio call to leave.
About 15 minutes later, blowing sand from behind us announced the arrival of the five Rugby aircraft. They landed behind us and took on passengers, but the confusion caused by the Ambassador’s decision not to leave on the third wave created an accountability problem. In the disarray, two members of a communications team failed to board their aircraft to return to the Guam so as we waited for a final accounting of personnel, the two communicators waited nearby for a signal to board an aircraft. Finally, a crewman spotted them and ran out to help them get on the aircraft.[12]
It turned out that LtCol Wallace’s sense that there might be a problem accounting for the entire security force and his decision to have someone remain in the LZ until everyone was accounted for was a lifesaver.
Once the Rugby aircraft were loaded, they left the LZ. We stayed and waited for the radio call that confirmed that everyone was accounted for. We expected that with the two radio operators accounted for, it wouldn’t be long.
Finally after several minutes, we received the code word to “return to Mother”—“Mother” was the Guam—as LtCol Wallace flew toward Mogadishu to escort us to the ship. We were the last Americans in Somalia.
In our aircraft, we had already discussed the fact that we didn’t want to give the soldiers at the gate much of a chance to send an RPG round our way as we left, so we agreed that I would lift off abruptly without pausing for a hover check, give a little feint to the left toward where the soldiers were gathered, then bank hard right and descend below their line of sight toward the sea. I don’t know if it made a difference, but it didn’t hurt either. Within just a few minutes, we were at the coastline where we met LtCol Wallace and joined on his wing.
We later learned that as we lifted off, a large mob of armed looters scaled the walls of the Embassy compound, looting and destroying everything in sight.[13] The State Department reported that the Embassy was sacked, its doors blasted down with grenades soon after the evacuation was completed.[14]
We landed on the Guam at 3:00 AM and Operation EASTERN EXIT was finished. The Guam and Trenton turned north and headed out of Somali waters, back toward Oman where the evacuees were put ashore on January 11th.
<< Part 7 - "Situation Well In Hand"
>> Part 9 - "Muscat"
*****
[1] Ronald J. Brown, “U.S. Marines in the Persian Gulf, 1990-1991, With Marine Forces Afloat in Desert Shield and Desert Storm,” (Washington, DC: History and Museums Division, Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps), p. 92.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Adam B. Siegel, “Eastern Exit: The Noncombatant Evacuation Operation (NEO) from Mogadishu, Somalia in January 1991,” (1992), Center for Naval Analyses, p. 33.
[5] Siegel, “Eastern Exit,” p. 34.
[6] Siegel, “Eastern Exit,” p. 33.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Siegel, “Eastern Exit”.
[9] Siegel, “Eastern Exit,” p. 33.
[10] Siegel, “Eastern Exit,” p. 4; Adam B. Siegel, “An American Entebbe,” Naval Institute Proceedings: Naval Review (1992), p. 98.
[11] Siegel, “Eastern Exit,” pp. 33-34; Siegel, “An American Entebbe,” p. 98.
[12] Siegel, “Eastern Exit,” p. 34.
[13] Siegel, “Eastern Exit,” p. 34; James K. Bishop, “Escape from Mogadishu,” Foreign Service Journal (March 1991), p. 31; GlobalSecurity.org, “Operation Eastern Exit,” https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/eastern_exit.htm.
[14] Bishop, “Escape from Mogadishu,” p. 31.
© Robert A. Doss