As they lined up on the runway, Harry glanced around his cockpit. The area was covered with strange gauges, instruments, and switches. He was being very careful. He didn’t want to accidently touch anything that could blast him and the pilot out of the plane. He watched the pilot in front of him turn and query with a thumbs-up. Harry smiled and returned the thumbs-up gesture. He was ready for the best ride on the midway.
Harry watched over the colonel’s shoulder as he flipped a switch and advanced the throttles. He heard the tower instructions over the radio receiver in his helmet. They were cleared for takeoff.
The noise increased and then the afterburners roared. They didn’t explode like those of the F-105. They just snuck up on you until the whole world seemed to be vibrating in resonance with them. Then the pilot popped the brakes loose and the jet leaped forward.
Before he could breathe or think, the huge warplane was airborne. Harry felt the acceleration like a giant hand pressing him deeper and deeper into the seat.
“How you doing back there, GIB?”
It took a minute for Harry to remember that he was the GIB, the guy-in-back. It took a couple of more minutes for him to remember to talk. When he did he could only stammer out “Great!” Wonderful. Here he was getting the biggest thrill of his life and he sounded like a cartoon character selling breakfast cereal.
But the colonel just laughed and said, “Okay, hold on to your socks.”
Harry stiffened as the world suddenly tilted to the right. For an instant he felt that he was going to fall out of the aircraft. Then, as they rolled past sideways toward inverted, a funny thing happened. Harry started to like it. This time he was much more articulate when he spoke to the colonel. Over the interphone he calmly and clearly stated, “Wheeuh!“
Time flew as they flew. The commander put the big jet through its paces and seemed to be having as much fun as Harry. He was delighted that the young man was enjoying all the radical maneuvers. He pointed out the beauty of the jungle from the sky. It was a different world when they flew over it rather than walked on it. Then, much too soon, it was time to head for the base and the mundane earth.
They flew over the runway too high to land. The colonel explained that it was part of the routine to get clearance to land. The tower answered their radio request for landing and the colonel banked the jet sharply to the right. As they headed back to line up for a landing, the colonel was telling Harry that he thought he must be a born flyer. He was in the middle of a sentence when he stopped abruptly.
Harry was looking at the runway from above and abeam it so he didn’t notice at first. He looked up and saw that the colonel seemed to be slumped to the right. His helmet rested against the canopy window.
“You okay, sir?” he asked over the interphone.
There was no reply. The F-4 sailed calmly ahead. The stick between Harry’s legs remained steady. It was tied to the colonel’s controls and mimicked his every move.
Harry tried to talk to the colonel again and again received no reply. Maybe the interphone is broken, he thought. He recalled the abrupt way the colonel’s voice had stopped right in the middle of a sentence.
The colonel’s head continued to rest against the window and seemed to rock gently with the motion of the jet. They passed far beyond the end of the runway. Harry was about to try and reach the colonel with his hand to see if everything was all right when the stick moved to the right and the F-4 banked gracefully to return to the runway.
Harry knew that landing was the most critical phase of any flight. Pilots had explained that the jet that flew so well in high-speed combat was a real handful to land. It didn’t go slow gracefully. Harry didn’t want to bother the colonel while he was making all the careful adjustments to the controls to bring them safely back to earth. He sat back and watched the show.
They seemed to glide down final approach. The pilot’s touch was so good that they were rolling down the runway before Harry knew they had landed.
The roar of the big jets receded as they coasted to the end of the long concrete strip. The colonel guided them expertly off the taxiway at the end of the runway. Harry watched as his pedals went to the floor as the colonel pressed his to lock the brakes. The Phantom came to a complete stop. Harry’s dream flight was over. It was now one of his favorite memories. He waited for the colonel to turn and tell him how to climb out of the big bird.
But the colonel didn’t turn. He didn’t move. He sat slightly forward in the seat with his head resting against the cockpit glass.
Harry waited and waited. Then he grew anxious. He pulled off his flight glove and fiddled with the parachute harness. He finally freed the chest strap enough to reach forward and touch the colonel’s shoulder. One touch told him something was wrong, dreadfully wrong.
“Hey, Colonel, hey sir, what’s wrong?” Harry shook the colonel. There was no response. The vice commander remained where he was.
Harry started to panic. He was sitting in a jet with the engines running and the hatch closed and he had no idea how to open the door or call for help.
He looked frantically around the cockpit, trying to find something that looked like a radio switch. He was afraid to touch anything. Somewhere in that maze was a switch that would send him rocking out in the ejection seat. He heard the tower ask if anything was wrong and he heard another voice. It took him a while to realize it was his own voice. He was babbling, trying to wake the colonel, trying to find the switch. Finally he got enough courage to press the button by the throttle switches.
“Hey help. Something’s wrong with the pilot. I’m stuck in this F-4 and I can’t get the colonel to wake up. You better send for a doctor or get an ambulance.”
“Okay, friend, just sit tight. Help’s on the way.” The tower message in his radio receiver was like the word of God to Harry. “Oh, and maybe you better not touch anything until they get there,” the angel added.
Harry sat on the raised bed in the doctor’s office. He couldn’t stop shaking. He didn’t really feel the needle when the medic gave him the shot.
“Hang in there, buddy. This’ll make you feel a whole lot better. Really good drugs.”
Harry smiled a weak smile. He felt a warmth spreading from his arm and he seemed to be able to control his shivering a little better.
“You must be some natural pilot. The tower guys said you made a perfect landing. Just like a pro. You must have had some lessons or something, huh?“
“What are you talking about?” Harry looked at the young intern in confusion. “I didn’t land the plane. The colonel did.”
“Uh-uh. Couldn’t have. Doc said he was dead long before touchdown. Must have been a really severe heart attack. You should have seen his face. We didn’t even know it was the vice commander until we checked his ID. He had to have been dead for about twenty to thirty minutes.”
In spite of the drug coursing through his veins, Harry started to shake again. All of the blood drained from his face. The young medic was startled.
“Hey somebody give me a hand here,” he yelled. “This guy’s going into shock.”
Well, yes, Harry thought as strong hands laid him on the bed. I guess it is shock. But it’s probably a different type of shock than they think. It was the shock of recognition. Harry had just realized who had landed his airplane.
The colonel must have earned another set of wings… in another kind of air force.
SCHOOL SPIRIT
I’VE been through combat and flight training and long late missions in an old aircraft in bad weather but none of these experiences ever affected me as much as trying to help out in my wife’s preschool class. She’s a good teacher. Hell, she’s a great teacher. Just ask her students. Some of them may be a little more difficult to communicate with than others. But she seems to get through.
There are many things that abound on military bases. Everyone knows they have a lot of weapons. They also have a lot of cars and trucks and aircraft and tanks. Bases have a lot of signs and fences and loc
ked doors. And they have a whole lot of serious, efficient men and women in many different uniforms.
But military bases also have a lot of something else that you may not have thought of. They have a whole lot of children.
Believe it or not, military kids, or military brats as they refer to themselves, are really a lot like kids everywhere. They go through the same feelings and foibles and fads that civilian kids do. They’re just like the kids on any block, with one difference. They have probably been around a whole lot more blocks than most kids.
Military kids learn a few things that others kids don’t get exposed to. They learn that you never write your friend’s address in your book in ink. They learn how to memorize a new phone number in record time. They learn how to find their way back home even if they aren’t sure exactly what home is. They learn how to avoid the new kid syndrome or at least how to get over it quickly. They can learn a new teacher’s name, a new street number, and a new zip code with relative ease. And they learn that you don’t die from being homesick.
When a person enters the military, he is told time and time again that you have to be flexible to get ahead. But it’s the kids who really learn the lesson. And they have to learn to be flexible not just to get ahead but to survive.
This is not to say that military people treat their kids poorly. Quite the contrary. The military family goes out of its way to provide for its children.
When it comes to education, the military is in the forefront of involvement and innovation. The modern military has discovered the importance of education. And as the mothers and fathers in the military come to understand how important education is for themselves, they can easily deduce how important it is for their children.
They demand only the best for their kids, and in most cases the military is happy to oblige. When kindergarten classes were not mandatory, they were available on military bases. Now that preschool education is considered optimum but not mandatory, military bases go out of their way to provide preschool for military kids.
Minot Air Force Base in upper North Dakota was such a base. It was isolated by both distance and extremes of weather. It was not regarded as a dream assignment. And it gave the Air Force a real chance to shine. If the brass could make Minot a comfortable base for its working families, they would have really accomplished something. And they did. It became a good place to live. When it came to schools, the base excelled. North Dakota was proud of its high rating in the education of its young people. The air base schools continued the tradition.
When the best minds in education stressed the need for an early start in school, the base was right there to establish a well-equipped and modern preschool.
Base schools benefit from a resource that is often overlooked by outsiders. Husbands and wives of well-educated professional military personnel tend to be likewise well educated and professional. Many are teachers with a wealth of experience to draw on. They become the core of teachers for the base schools. Such was the case for the new preschool.
A dedicated and knowledgeable staff was chosen and presented with the task of turning a former office building into a four-star preschool. The task was not too difficult. The building was large with several spacious rooms. It had been used for many purposes in the past and had amenities that preschools didn’t usually offer. The base provided as much support as it could squeeze from the budget and the dedicated teachers and their spouses provided even more.
In no time the preschool became a reality. One class grew to two classes that split to four classes that led to morning and afternoon classes and on to a waiting list and an obvious need to enlarge the drawings of the proposed permanent facility.
The teachers worked hard to make the school the best in the area and it became a magnet for base parents. And as the hardworking teachers found out, the building became a magnet for something else.
Preschool teaching looks like an easy job. An outsider would look in and see what appears to be an adult playing with the kids. The classroom is a cheery place to work and the classes usually only last two to three hours a day. Nothing but fun and games.
But nothing could be farther from the truth. Ask the husband or wife of a preschool teacher. They’ll tell you how much hard work and time goes into teaching the little ones.
The teachers of the Minot Air Base preschool worked long and hard to make their program the best. It was not unusual to drive past the school early in the morning or late at night and see the lights on. The janitor would invariably find one or more teachers still hard at work when he got there in the evening. And more times than not they would still be there when he left at night.
The first hint that the school might house more than the registered students came one night while a teacher worked in her room to change a bulletin board. She had found some brilliant prints from a publication about exotic fish and was anxious to share them with her class. The janitor had said good-night over an hour ago and she was alone in the building. Or so she thought.
As she worked, she became aware of a feeling that had slowly intensified. She couldn’t put her finger on it but it was an uneasy kind of feeling that made her lose her concentration. Slowly, bit by bit, she realized what it was. Someone was watching her. She couldn’t see anyone and she couldn’t hear anyone, but the feeling persisted. Someone was watching her. It was that prickly feeling you get on the back of your neck when you know someone is staring at you from behind. She caught herself several times, jerking her head around to catch the voyeur. But of course there was never anyone there.
It was silly, she knew. Must have worked too hard, she told herself. Silly. But the feeling kept getting stronger and stronger until she finally found herself just watching and no longer working.
She resolved to do something about it. She would tour the building. If she could convince herself that there was no one else on the premises, maybe the feeling would go away.
She went from one end of the building to the other, checking each classroom and every closet and storeroom. Just as she had known before she started, there was no one here but her. All she found was a light that the janitor had left on in the office. She turned the light out and locked the office door while she puzzled over the strange feeling. Where had it come from?
She felt better until she reentered her classroom. Suddenly she was overwhelmed by an even stronger feeling of being watched. It was overpowering and suffocating. She couldn’t handle it. She grabbed her coat and rushed from her room. The minute the door was shut, the feeling went away. Her pounding heart stopped racing and her breathing slowed. And, of course, she felt silly again. But she didn’t feel like going back in the room. Not that night.
As she walked to the front of the building she noticed that the office room light was on. She thought she had turned it off but she must have been mistaken. How funny. She had locked the door but left the light burning. Must be more tired than she thought. She turned the light out and relocked the door.
She locked the outside door of the school and started for her car. As she turned from the building she heard a sound. It was indistinct but still recognizable because she heard it so often during the day. It was the sound of a child giggling. She wanted to turn back to the building and search it once again, but she kept walking resolutely to her car. She resisted every impulse to turn and look at the building, afraid of what she might see. She started the car and put it in gear, then, without thinking, glanced in the mirror at the building. She saw nothing—nothing but the light in the office.
Several days later, the secretary arrived early to unlock the building. She was as dedicated as the teachers, handling many jobs that were not normally part of the job description for a secretary. As she opened the door she heard a sound that can send chills through a school worker. It was the sound of running water. Somewhere in the building a tap had been left on full blast. She raced through the building, with thoughts of flooding and damage haunting her mind. As she opened each door she just knew that the water
would be on behind it. But she couldn’t find the source of the sound.
Several times, as she made her panicked inspection of the building, she heard faint laughter. It was as if someone, someone young, was amused by her distress. She searched the building from top to bottom but was unable to find the expected waterfall. Finally she stood in the office, listening to the water cascade, somewhere. She was about to call the civil engineering office, when the front door opened. The morning teacher walked in.
She ran to her.
“You hear that? You hear the water? Where do you think that’s coming from?” she blurted out.
“Hear what? I don’t hear anything.”
The secretary stopped. She listened hard. There was absolutely nothing to hear. The phantom water leak had stopped abruptly with the entrance of the teacher.
In spite of a lack of evidence, she did call CE. They went over the building and under the building and checked all the pipes and valves and finally left muttering about hysterical women. They had found nothing.
As the days passed, and the year waned into winter, each teacher and worker in the preschool found something unusual about the building. The classrooms, so filled with light and sound and joy by day, became strange, uneasy places at night.
One teacher became accustomed to the sound of running and skipping feet in the hallways as she worked in her room. Several investigations had yielded no human origins of the sounds.
Another teacher learned to look for small items from her desk and tables in the most unlikely places. She found that if she thought first where her pencil or key ring shouldn’t be, it was usually there. It was as if someone was playing a nonstop game of hide-and-seek.
The secretary learned to disregard the sound of rushing water so well that when a hydrant broke outside the building she didn’t investigate until an excited parent rushed in to tell her to call the fire department. The parking lot was being flooded. As she dialed the number, she heard childish laughter that might have come from one of the classrooms, but didn’t.
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