Fourth and Forever

by Bert Carson

  To master hovering, an Instructor Pilot flew each student to a 10 to 50 acre field, and let us control only the pedals (for left and right turns) for a few minutes. Then he would take the pedals and let us operate the collective (power to go up or down). After a few minutes of that, he would take the collective and the pedals and let us operate the cyclic (movement forward, backward, left and right).

  From that initial single control experience, we moved to two controls and finally all three. In the beginning we needed every available bit of land, but we quickly got the hang of it and moved on to other basic skills, always focused on our ultimate objective, soloing.

  Coordination has never been an issue for me. That coupled with a year as crew chief under my belt, gave me a leg up on most of my classmates. I was the first to solo, which meant I was the first to be thrown into the pool at the Holiday Inn, but I didn’t mind.

  Kathy and I knew the primary flight training would be intense, so we agreed that she wouldn’t join me until I completed it, and was reassigned to FortRucker for advanced flight training. Two weeks before graduation she called the bank manager she had worked for at Fort Rucker. By the end of their conversation, she had been rehired.

  Kathy took the long way to Fort Rucker, Alabama. She went by way of Fort Wolters, Texas. She drove 840 miles, with all of our belongings, once again in a U-haul trailer, behind the car. We often joked that our bed had more solo trailer time than time with us in it.

  Kathy sat on the front row at my graduation. When I looked at her, I knew I was more proud to be her husband than I was of anything else I’d ever be or do.

  We had a week before I was to report to FortRucker and it took every minute of that week for us to travel the 750 miles from Fort Wolters to Fort Rucker. Two things seemed to slow us down. First we had to stop at every opportunity just to hold each other, and second, for some reason, we couldn’t go over two hundred miles before we had to stop for the night, no matter what time of day it was.

  At Fort Rucker, thanks to an understanding First Sergeant and Company Commander, those of us with wives living off base were able to get home almost every night, as long as it didn’t interfere with our training. We made sure that it didn’t. Seeing Kathy at every opportunity meant more than anything else. That’s the primary reason for my being first or second in the class at every reporting period.

  Ten months after coming home from my first tour in Vietnam, I was an Aviation Warrant Officer, fully qualified to fly a Huey and on orders to go back to Vietnam. We had known that would probably be the case, but knowing didn’t make leaving any easier.

  Chapter 4

  During my first tour of duty, I had been stationed at CampBearcat, the home of the 9th Infantry Division. I returned to Bearcat for my second tour. This time the 9th Division was gone, reassigned further south in the delta. In their place, the 25th Infantry Division was headquartered at Bearcat. I was assigned to a 1st Aviation Brigade Battalion whose mission was flying support for the 25th. Our primary duties were moving troops in and out of the field. Normally it was routine, but occasionally, just to keep us alert, the Viet Cong would show up at a landing zone.

  I had spent a week in transit from the states to Vietnam. When I signed in, Corporal Webber, the company clerk, laughed and said, “Mr. Edwards, you are the first person who has ever had mail waiting for him when he checked in.”

  I grinned and said, “Corporal, my wife knows the drill. We’ve done this before.”

  ********

  I flew over 1,500 hours on my second tour and was promoted from Warrant Officer to Chief Warrant Officer. I lived in a two-man tent rather than an open barracks and I was the helicopter driver rather than the mechanic. Those were minor changes as far as I was concerned. I was a professional soldier no matter what my job was. I learned more about flying during that tour than I had learned at flight school. The difference between theory and experience cannot be measured.

  At the end of my second tour, I was reassigned to FortRucker as an Instructor Pilot. I knew I would be on the staff of the school for at least a year and then, if things weren’t wrapped up in Vietnam, chances were good that I’d go back for a third tour. My estimated timeline was close. We were at FortRucker for a year and a half.

  One night, we were lying in bed when Kathy said something that turned out to be prophetic. “Josh, I’ve been thinking about what will happen after Vietnam.”

  In a flash, I realized that I hadn’t given it any thought at all. She read my mind, laughed and said, “Well, one of us had to think about it.”

  I agreed and she continued. “There is no way to know how many helicopter pilots the Army has right now, or how many it will have when Vietnam is finally over. Every one of you loves to fly or you wouldn’t be doing it. However, a whole lot of you aren’t going to be able to fly for the Army after the war is over.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Face it, Josh. The Army is going to cut back on both helicopters and pilots. Only the very best are going to stay and I know you want to be one of them. Right?”

  I nodded my head.

  She smiled, “Then here’s what you have to do.”

  I listened as she laid out a plan that included physical fitness, study, and being checked out on as many types of aircraft as I possibly could. Later I realized that if she hadn’t figured it out, I would have probably been one of the first pilots rifted.

  I started running and weight lifting the next day. With a lot of fast-talking, and off-duty training, I managed to get my CH-47 certification. The CH-47, better known as the Chinook, is the Army’s twin-rotor, troop-carrying helicopter. With the Chinook certification, it was easy to get checked out in the CH 54 Flying Crane and its smaller brother, the CH 64 Skycrane. However, because I had no fixed wing time, I couldn’t wrangle a fixed wing certification, so I signed up for private flying lessons at the airport in Dothan. With 8 hours of dual instruction, I soloed in a Cessna 150. Six flying hours later, I had my private pilot’s license. With the civilian fixed wing certification, I managed to talk a fixed wing Army Instructor Pilot into checking me out on the Army L-19 Birddog, the closest airplane the Army had to a Cessna 150. From the Birddog I graduated to the Otter, and finally the Mohawk, a twin-engine photo recon plane.

  Early in May, 1972, I returned to Vietnam for my third tour. This time Kathy stayed at FortRucker. She had become the assistant manager of the bank and we’d bought a small house, two blocks away. However, the main reason she stayed was, she was confident that I would be reassigned to FortRucker after my tour, and she was right.

  *******

  When I signed in at my new company in Vietnam, I found three letters waiting from Kathy. I lined them up according to their postmarks, and numbered them in the lower right hand corner of the envelope. Only then did I open number one. I read:

  Dear Josh,

  As I write, I know you are still traveling but I don’t want to wait to share this news with you. Today Doctor Isabel confirmed what I had suspected but didn’t want to mention until I knew for sure – I’m pregnant. Honey…we are going to have a baby…

  I put the letter aside and sat staring at the side of the tent. I was still in that position, when someone walked in. I looked up and saw a tall, lean, CWO (Chief Warrant Officer) with a handlebar mustache and sparkling blue eyes. “You must be Edwards,” he said, heading in my direction with his right hand extended.

  I jumped to my feet, grabbed his hand and said, “That’s right, I just signed in.”

  He pointed at the letters, “How did you get mail that quickly?”

  I explained, “My wife didn’t waste time. She started writing the day I left home.” Then without intending to, I said, “I just found out that I’m going to be a father.”

  *********

  With the help of my Company Commander and some fancy maneuvering by the Company Clerk, I received a thirty-day compassionate leave that began a week before the baby was due. Two days after I got home Kathy woke me at 2 A.M
., “Josh, I think it’s time.”

  We set a speed record from our house to the base hospital. An hour later Bobby Carlton Edwards was born. He and Kathy were fine, and I was happier than I’d ever been in my life. When I headed back to Vietnam, I had two picture albums full of photos of Bobby and Kathy. When I signed back into the unit, there were three letters and more photos waiting for me.

  I finished my third and final tour in Vietnam in May 1973. I saw Bobby take his first steps and I heard his second word, “Da Da.” His first was, “Ma Ma.” The kid was smart from the beginning.

  It was magical being home with my family, watching Bobby grow up. I had always known Kathy would be a great mother so I wasn’t surprised as I watched it happen. The war was finally winding down and the rift of helicopter pilots was underway. Thanks to Kathy’s plan, I never came close to being included in the cut that eventually dropped thousands of pilots from active duty status.

  For the next nineteen years, I was stationed at Fort Rucker. Generally speaking, that is unusual in the military, however in Army aviation, it isn’t unusual at all. FortRucker is not only the home of Army Aviation; it is the only base that teaches it. Thanks to my Vietnam experience and being both rotary wing and fixed wing qualified, I became a permanent fixture on the staff of the school.

  We bought a larger house when Kathy became the manager of the bank. Through the years, I was promoted to CW4 (Chief Warrant Four), the highest grade of Warrant Officer at that time. We went to PTA meetings and little league baseball games. The three of us became as close as the two of us had been. Every day was an experience of love of which I never tired, or took for granted.

  Kathy and I planned to see the world after my retirement. Originally, I’d planned on staying in for thirty years. However, when Bobby entered high school, we began retirement planning in earnest. Bobby would graduate from high school in 1992. We knew he intended to go to college, so it seemed the perfect time for me to retire from the Army, Kathy to retire from the bank, and for us to start seeing the world. That was the plan.

  Chapter 5

  I slipped into running shorts and low cut socks, then I pulled on a pair of worn running shoes, laced, and double-tied them. I did that without conscious thought. I had done it so many times in the past seventeen years that it needed no thought.

  I spent ten minutes stretching. First, my hamstrings by leaning against the wall of the bedroom with my right foot stretched behind me. I put all of my weight onto my right leg and held that position for almost a minute as my hamstring stretched. Then I repeated the exercise with my left leg. I straightened, turned from the wall and, with both legs locked at the knees, slowly bent at the waist, until my palms were flat on the floor. I held that position for 30 seconds, and then began another series of stretches.

  My stretching routine was more exercise than the average forty-four year old man engages in during a week, but that was just the beginning. In fact, the stretching was just a warm-up for the run that was to come, in this case, a routine fifteen-miler.

  I ran six days and over fifty miles every week. A fifteen-mile run is long, but I completed a run of that distance, or more, once a week, every week, so it was not unusual.

  ********

  I didn’t think of any of that though. I didn’t think about it because it was routine, and because my mind was far away from both the stretching and the run.

  My thoughts, as they had been for two weeks, were on Kathy. After more than twenty years of marriage, she was gone. I still couldn’t believe it. In fact, I refused to believe or accept it, but I was losing that battle and I knew it.

  I had lived with death for more years than I could easily count, first, as a helicopter crew chief, then a pilot and finally as an Army flight instructor. I served three tours in Vietnam, one as a crew chief and two as a pilot. In Vietnam, I lost crewmembers and friends. I knew how to deal with those deaths, but not Kathy’s death.

  I had never considered death as a possibility for her. I had never thought of living without her, not since that day in 1960 when I’d first seen her. Through the years, we had become, in my mind, one individual, not two. I never thought of myself without thinking of Kathy. Moreover, we had so much to live for.

  Bobby was a high school senior. In the fall, he would be going to college and Kathy and I were going on the road to see the country. There was so much ahead of us.

  Those plans vanished in seconds the morning I woke and found Kathy’s lifeless body lying beside me. Her eyes were closed as if she were asleep. Her face was perfectly peaceful. She could have been asleep. Only the impossible coolness of her body told a different story.

  The medical examiner told me that she had died when an aneurysm in the primary artery to her brain had burst. He said that her death had been instantaneous and painless. She hadn’t made a sound. There was no enemy to blame, no one to attack, no accident to fault, nothing at all to strike back at. And, worst of all, there had been no opportunity for me to help. I hadn’t even known that it happened, until I woke up.

  The Chaplain, in an awkward and futile attempt to console, said, “Josh, it’s just one of those things we will never understand.” His empty words hung in a cold void. I not only did not understand; I didn’t want to understand. I just wanted Kathy.

  ********

  With the stretching done, I opened the front door and walked out into the afternoon sunlight. The heat came off the asphalt in waves. It felt good after the coolness of the house.

  At 6’2” and 180 pounds, I guess I give a first impression of a man on the verge of starvation. That’s what seventeen years of running had done. Despite my appearance, after my last physical the flight surgeon said, “Josh, you are hard as a rock, strong as a water buffalo, and as fit as a nineteen-year-old track star. If all of my patients were in your condition, I would be out of business and lying on a beach somewhere.”

  I’ve always been well-coordinated. Kathy said I was graceful but I told her that was a word for sissies. She laughed and said, “Mr. Edwards, you’re no sissy but you are graceful,” and she added, “You could pass for a twenty-year-old, at least at a distance. But up close you’re much too distinguished to fool anyone, and besides, there are all of those little lines around your eyes.”

  That was all I let her say. I threw a dishtowel in her direction; she squealed and ran from the kitchen. The chase ended in the bedroom. We were still there two hours later when Bobby came home from school.

  Neighbors stared as I ran down the street. I could feel their looks, but I didn’t acknowledge them. My mind was far away, as I shifted into a mindless mile-consuming pace that I thought of as “auto pilot.”

  ********

  The easy pace quickly moved me out of my neighborhood and into the sparsely populated countryside. The effort and the warmth of the sun combined to take all stiffness from my body as I unconsciously lengthened my stride and picked up the pace. I was no longer aware of my body and its effort. My mind wandered far away.

  For the past week, I had considered withdrawing my application for retirement. I knew there would be no problem with the Army, since there was always a shortage of qualified flight instructors at the school. In fact, my commanding officer, Colonel Harrison, suggested that I reconsider my plans because of my “new personal situation.” But I knew I was kidding myself to even consider it. I couldn’t stay in the Army. That wasn’t my career, it was our career, mine and Kathy’s, and it had been since the night I came home after my first tour in Vietnam and told her that I had reenlisted.

  I knew I couldn’t retire and travel as we’d planned to do. That wasn’t my plan. It was our plan. As the miles unrolled, I finally faced the reality that Kathy was gone and nothing was going to change it. That didn’t stop me from crying as I heard her words, “I will always be here for you.”

  ********

  I continued to run at a faster than normal pace, thinking, “It isn’t my Army career, or my retirement, or even my town and my friends. Everything w
as ours. What I have left is Bobby and we have to build something together.

  I stumbled, recovered quickly, and kept running.

  At the seven and a half mile mark of the fifteen-mile run, I turned for home. The tears were gone, replaced by a new resolve to live, and build a new life. I slowed the pace, straightened my back, and raised my head. A smile crossed my face for the first time in two weeks.

  I still wasn’t thinking of the run. I was focused on how to build a new life for the two of us. A life that would have meaning, though it would not include the woman we both loved. The woman we would never forget. The woman we would never see again except in our dreams.

  ********

  As the final miles unfolded, an idea began to take form and grow in the back of my mind. Some of my best ideas come to me while I run and I knew that this would be one of them. As it grew it filled my thoughts, pushing all else aside.

  The first spark of the idea became a roaring bonfire in what seemed like seconds. Unconsciously, I again picked up the pace as the plan took on a life of its own.

  I thought about Bobby’s graduation from high school, and that he hadn’t chosen a college yet. His considerations in choosing a school were that he wanted to be near home, and he wanted to attend a small college with a football program.

  Bobby had been a second-string wide receiver his last two years of high school. He was good, but he was the backup to a superstar, so he saw only limited play. In addition, he, like me, has a slight frame. Soaking wet Bobby weighs less than one hundred and sixty pounds.

  The combination of limited playing time and lightweight kept him from being the recruiting target of a big college, yet he believed that he could play college ball. We supported his dream of playing college football as we had supported his goal to play football from the beginning. Though, in the beginning, his chances of playing high school football were bleak.