In the darkness he saw little, even though his eyes were well accustomed to moonless nights: The Slopes aren’t risking much this time.
Like many pilots, he referred to the enemy in impersonal terms. Slopes. Asiatics. Kimchi Kings. K-22 employed many able South Korean workers, and large segments of the front line were defended by Republic of Korea forces whose endurance under attack was legendary, and the pilots maintained amiable relations with these allies. But the North Korean enemy were Slopes.
He made six long sweeps, then reported in code: “Nothing visible.” Occasionally he inspected the western alleyway leading from the Chinese border to Inchon, hoping to find one of the wooden Slow Boys sneaking south, but he detected nothing. He kept well away from Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, where antiaircraft fire was [185] concentrated, and he maintained a prudent watch for Russian MiGs, which had recently been attacking the American night fighters, for as an aviation expert he was aware that the Russian plane was many times faster than his, better armed and capable of flying much higher. He was brave, but not foolhardy, and he recalled the doctrine of his squadron: “If you meet a MiG one-on-one, run like hell, because you’re outnumbered.” It was the job of Air Force F-86s to tackle the MiGs, and he was quite content to have them do it.
He realized that in his F4U he had a limited time in the air, and it seemed that on this night he would find nothing, but as he checked his fuel and thought about heading home, he saw in the starlight a moving object, deep in a valley, and when he roared down to inspect he found to his delight that it was a Communist engine pulling at least sixty boxcars. But it was heading at top speed for the safety of a tunnel.
With restraint he ignored the splendid target, so vulnerable to his guns, and disciplined himself to put into effect the strategy his men had agreed upon. Leaving the train with its antiaircraft guns popping away, he wheeled and sped toward the entrance of the upcoming tunnel. There, with fine precision he dropped one of his large bombs, tearing up the track and blocking that tunnel.
Still he ignored the train, swinging around to the other tunnel from which the train had just emerged. There he laid another heavy bomb smack on the tracks, blocking that escape.
Gunners aboard the train, realizing what he had done, fired into the night with fury, accomplishing nothing but the clear outlining of their train, which now stood trapped in open space.
Flying well to the west, Pope turned in a great circle, spotted the train, and roared back at low level, blazing his guns directly at the engine, which he seemed to miss.
Undaunted, he whispered to himself, “Better luck this time.” He took a wide sweep back toward the west, came in purposefully ignoring the antiaircraft fire, and struck at the engine again. This time his aim was good, for there was an explosion and a vast release of steam, but he suspected that this might be a stratagem calculated to deceive him, and he remembered what the old-timers at K-22 had [186] warned: “The best railroad men in the world are those Slopes. They know trains. They can trick you a hundred different ways.”
Again he flew west, turned and came back, but this time when he lined the engine up he saw that the steam had been no ruse; the train was badly wounded but by no means destroyed. So, ignoring the flak, he came in hard and low, releasing a bomb at the right moment. With a gigantic flash, metal hit metal, the engine teetered, and the first three cars followed it off the track. This train was wrecked.
Pope wanted to stay on the scene to shoot up the fifty or sixty stranded boxcars, but he knew he had no fuel to spare, so he called K-22, giving other pilots the coordinates of the waiting target: “Finish it off!”
But now, as he headed south, satisfied that he had performed well, he had two burning concerns: he wanted to find that Marine who had come to K-22 with his photo Banshee and he wanted desperately to see Altair come rising from the sea, his star, his omen to bless this night.
Just as he approached K-22 from the west, with his nose pointed out to sea, he saw bright Lyra dead ahead and then, low on the horizon, as its eagle wings dropped water, came Altair. He saluted.
The Marine captain who had brought the photographic plane to K-22 on temporary duty was two years younger than John Pope but some twenty years more experienced. A real football hero from a small Texas town, and not an ersatz underweight like Pope, Randy Claggett had gone to Texas A & M and had fought the entire establishment to get into the Marines rather than the Army, which A & M boys were expected to join. He was taller than Pope but riot noticeably heavier, for in high school he had been a fleet end, adept at confusing the opposition. In college he had been too light for the varsity, but as a scrub he was outstanding because of his willingness to tackle even the biggest regulars.
He was profane, tough and make-believe illiterate. A first-team fullback had knocked a small corner off one of his big front teeth and the dentist had ground down its mate for symmetry, which gave him a raffish gap-toothed grin, which he delighted in flashing in the heat of any [187] argument. His logbook showed that he had piloted fifty-nine different aircraft types and was expert in sixteen, including the best Navy types: F4U-4, AD-2, F9F-4 and the heavy F3D-2. He had a mania for airplanes, and if sober men like John Pope could justly be considered experts, he was three or four magnitudes more advanced, for in some strange way he was an airplane. When he sat in his cockpit he became attuned to its set engine, a part of its guidance system, an extension of its flaps; he did not fly the plane, he flew himself.
It was therefore a humiliation that he had been diverted into reconnaissance work: “Goddamn baby-sitting, that’s what it is. Y’all know that when I go up there, I got no guns, no bombs, no nothin’? Takin’ pitchers like some clown at a carnival.”
The Marine brass had not been stupid in assigning Claggett to the Banshee, for it was a major asset in the American arsenal. Stripped to essentials and with no armament of any kind, it could ascend to 52,000 feet, and with miraculous cameras, photograph large sections of enemy terrain with an accuracy that seemed incredible: “I can drive this bucket of bolts so high I can take a snapshot of God at work.” He had taken photographs from maximum altitude which showed North Korean soldiers working at a transport depot and he swore that a good photo interpreter with proper microscopes could determine the make of the automobiles, and certainly whether they were cars or trucks: “Don’t you bastards try nothin’ down here, because I’ll be watchin’ you from up there.”
He was in bed when Pope broke into his quarters a few minutes before sunrise. “Are you Claggett? The photopuke?”
“Who in hell are you?”
Like many serious pilots, Pope never swore and it startled him sometimes when a fellow officer let loose with a chain of profanity, but he needed Claggett, so he said, “I’m John Pope. Temporary duty off the Brandywine.”
“I’m Claggett. Perpetual temporary duty.”
“I just destroyed a train. We’ve got to have good photographs.”
“I know, I know. You destroyed a train. I fly my ass off to get a pitcher, turns out to be a two-wheel manure cart, shit all over the landscape.”
[188] “This was a train ... with at least sixty boxcars.
“It’ll be the first.”
“It is the first. We devised a new tactic. Block up the tunnels to prevent escape ...”
Claggett sat up, running his thin fingers through his heavy, matted hair. “You blocked ‘em off?”
“I did.”
“That I must see. Those goddamned Slopes bombed our dump the other night.”
“One of the wooden Slow Boys?”
“The same.” He twisted his scrawny body out of bed, worked his shoulders as if they had recently been broken, and looked at himself in the mirror with disgust: “I better shave.”
In the morning twilight, as Altair faded from view, the two pilots shaved, Pope heavy from sleeplessness, Claggett drowsy with too much, one ready for bed, the other for enemy skies. With precision Pope designated where the train must still be, unless the in
credible North Koreans had cleared one of the tunnels and muscled the undamaged boxcars inside.
“I can find it,” Claggett said, and when the two men reported to operations they found great excitement because the dawn patrol had located Pope’s train and had shot up the stranded cars.
“Everything’s ablaze,” an intelligence officer said. “Claggett, we want pictures.”
“You got ‘em,” Randy said, and within minutes he had his Banshee in the air, headed northwest toward the valley where the boxcars were aflame, but the Russian pilots who flew some of the North Korean MiGs had anticipated that when the train was set afire, other American planes would stop by to confirm, and they were waiting.
They came at Claggett from due north as he was heading west, four of them with powerful armament and great speed.
It seemed that he was doomed. “Jesus Christ!” he called to base. “Four MiGs right at me. I’m headed upstairs.” Pulling the nose of the Banshee almost straight up, he poured on the juice and took off like a purposeful hawk. 24,000 feet with the MiGs closing fast. 28,000 and no escape. 32,000 and the first MiG makes a pass with tracers decorating the sky just ahead. 35,000 and three MiGs [189] hammering at him. 37,000 and he has a fleeting suspicion that one of the MiGs has fallen behind. 40,000 and he breathes deeply, for all the MiGs are trailing. Up, up he goes, to well above 45,000 feet above the frozen hills of North Korea, and as he rests there for a moment, in absolute safety, for no other military plane in the world can fly so high, he watches a most beautiful sight.
Out of the morning sky to the east come three Air Force F-86s. For the moment they are well below the capable MiGs and they are outnumbered, but by the time the Russian pilots realize that they will soon be under attack, the F-86s have gained altitude, so that the battle will be an even one, and Claggett sees that the powerful American planes will have a good chance of bagging a couple of MiGs.
Before the battle can be joined, the Russians, under strict orders to bring their precious planes back safely, withdraw, retiring speedily and in good formation to their sanctuary north of the Yalu. Claggett can come down and finish his job.
The F-86s, suspicious of the Russians and aware that they might sweep in unexpectedly to down the photographic plane, signal to Claggett that he must stay with them, which he is quite willing to do: “Don’t want no MiGs up my ass.”
And so the four American jets fly out toward the Yellow Sea, drop low and come in at a perfect angle so far as sunlight is concerned. The sixty photographs, when developed, will show a T-69-type Chinese engine, heavily armor-plated, blown off the tracks near the entrance to a tunnel, followed by sixty-seven loaded boxcars, three off the track, twenty-one aflame, and all seriously damaged.
For this episode Lieutenant (j.g.) John Pope will receive his monthly pay of $263.63, a medal with ribbons, and a recommendation for promotion to full lieutenant, and the squadron will be satisfied that it has at last devised a tactic for knocking out Communist trains.
Randy Claggett, Marine captain, was a new experience for Pope, who had watched many braggarts wilt when demands were great, and many quiet men display great talent when called upon, but he had never before encountered a military man as loud-mouthed as Claggett who was in every respect a better flier than himself. At the [190] bar, after the wrecking of the train, Claggett was especially effusive: “Boy, I have seen many trains knocked on their ass, but never one better than this. Whoever hit that baby made the crap fly. I came in low and sweet to get the pitcher, when I see four MiGs comin’ right up my bucket. What do I do? I shift gears and say, “Randy, son, you better get to Dallas before they do.” At 40,000 they drop off. Remember that, fellows, you get to 40,000 they call it quits.”
He laughed rather noisily at this suggestion, because few American planes except his could approach that altitude. “There I am at 50,000, eatin’ gas like it was popcorn, with them four MiGs jess awaitin’ for me, and I say, “Randy, you fart, them foxes down there got you treed and they gonna chew you up, if’n you come down.” And then I see the sweetest sight ever, three F-86s comin’ out of the sunrise. Bartender! Give every Air Force man in this bar a free beer.”
Claggett was not always so kind to the Air Force: “This K-22, it’s a cesspool. You ought to see K-3 down at Pusan. We live down there. We got Jo-sans.”
“What’s a Jo-san?” Pope asked.
“Korean girls. They wait in the mess. Best screwin’ this side of Fort Worth.” He rummaged in his wallet for a photograph of a Korean Jo-san, but came up instead with a fine color photograph of his wife, a handsome blonde.
“That’s Debby Dee,” he said. “Married her the day I got my wings and been flyin’ ever since.”
The pilots drinking Randy’s beer passed the photograph around and each man appraised Mrs. Claggett with professional skill. She was beautiful, no question about that, in a cheerleader way, but she seemed older than Claggett, perhaps because her beauty was the florid type that fades quickly. Pope wanted to ask how old she was, for she seemed infinitely older than Penny, but he said nothing.
In the days that followed he often found himself in Claggett’s company, which was surprising in that Pope flew at night, Claggett in daylight, but Randy required so little sleep that he often went along on Pope’s ground duties, talking incessantly: “How did I get stuck with photographic duties? Man, you know I could fly fighter planes better than them Air Force clowns we have to put up with.”
[191] “You spoke rather well of them the other day. After they saved your tail.”
“In an emergency they’re useful. But to answer your question. I gave the Marines all sorts of hell till they allowed me to opt for flight training. You know, as a kid I used to take cars apart. Father came home one day, his whole Packard was strewed acrosst the lawn. He like to died. I got a real feel for engines, Pope.”
“Why aren’t you in fighters?”
Claggett ignored the question. “When I left Pensacola, I reported to VC-4 in Atlantic City. You ever fly off that field? Telephone wires right acrosst the end of the runway. We ast the government four times to take them down or we were gonna crash into houses. Said it was too expensive. So one night we cut ‘em down.”
“We?”
“Well, I did. Everyone at the base knew who did it, so I got some fryin’, but the command was glad to see them down. Only next day they put ‘em up again and fined the squadron. Who gives a damn?”
Pope never did discover just how his rambunctious colleague had found his way into Banshees, but an older Marine who flew in from one of the carriers said, “The Banshee requires the best judgment in the business. Or it did when we were testing it. And they chose Claggett because-”
“Were you in flight test?”
“Two years at Patuxent River.”
“Good duty?”
“Best in the world. I flew forty-seven different planes. Invaluable.”
“How do you get that duty?” Pope asked.
“One morning the Angel Gabriel knocks on your door. Strictly luck.”
“But don’t you have to know airplanes?”
“Everybody knows airplanes. What you have to know is Gabriel and his cockamamie horn. Toot, toot, we shoot.” And he waved his right hand high in the air.
A few nights after this, when planes were grounded, Pope accompanied Claggett to a movie on the base. It starred an actress John had enjoyed in Gone With the Wind, Vivien Leigh, and an actor with whom he was not [192] familiar but of whom he had heard much favorable comment. Claggett said, “You’ve got to see this guy Brando. Terrific!”
The film was called A Streetcar Named Desire, which Pope thought ridiculous. His opinion worsened when he found that Brando played a sloppy, profane ignoramus who went around in a dirty T-shirt. “This Kowalski is a bore,” he told Claggett during the first intermission when the reels were being changed. “I’d kick him out of my house.”
But when Blanche DuBois began to act the irresponsible, addle-pated sister-in-law, Pope becam
e uneasy and wondered why Kowalski didn’t kick her out. As the seamy details continued to unfold, Pope became actually nervous, for the picture of family life being offered was not at all what he wished to see. “That woman’s impossible,” he mumbled.
“You’d kick her out, too?”
“Wouldn’t you?”
“All she needs is a good screwin’.”
Pope never responded to such talk, not because he was prudish, but because he believed that when he married Penny Hardesty in his Annapolis days he settled once and for all any problems relating to sex, and he was always vaguely disturbed to find that other officers felt otherwise. He was extremely happy with Penny and was repelled by the harsh view of marriage being presented in this movie, and when the Brando-Leigh relationship became downright ugly he could not stay to watch.
“I’ll see you at the hall,” he said as he slipped uneasily from his seat. Claggett could not understand his friend’s behavior, but when half a dozen other pilots rose to leave the improvised theater, he grabbed one by the arm and whispered, “What’s going on?”
“I don’t fly all day to see this crap at night,” the Air Force major snapped.
“What crap?”
“A dame like that.” The Air Force man pulled his arm free and stalked out of the shack.
Later, Claggett realized that this film had struck too close to the lives of the fliers, for as he heard them talk about it he learned that some had wives who were as flighty as Blanche DuBois; others had homes which were [193] threatened by circumstances not unlike those that separated Kowalski and his wife. These pilots, who were risking so much against the MiGs and the darkness and the upreaching mountains and the watered gasoline, wanted films that showed placid family life: contented wives in picket-fenced gardens watching over well-behaved boys who were playing Little League baseball.
He sought Pope and asked, “Did the movie really hit you so hard?”