My Farewell to Arms

I stood on the steel staircase landing and looked out over the river, which had seemed impossibly big when I first saw it. The brackish, heavy air stirred around me and carried with it the scents of heat, of humidity, of mud and gently decomposing vegetation. It was, for me, the smell of the Corps.

A trivial errand had brought me to DMO, which stands for "Distribution Management Office." It was one of those ever-changing acronyms in the Marine Corps--it had been TMO, or "Traffic Management Office" for as long as I could remember. It had the same function now as it did before, which was taking your military orders and translating them into a government contract for a moving company, so you could be moved as painlessly as possible. Perhaps at one time it was staffed by Marines, and moderately efficient. Now it was staffed mostly by civilians, which I viewed with a healthy distrust. Most, I'm sure, were diligent and hard-working...but the Marine spouse who I'd spoken to earlier, and who set up my move, had received me like a bad cold and lectured me in a voice both whiny and severe about the limitations of my particular move.

Unfortunately, I didn't have my check-out sheet--on which I was required to get her signature--when I had first seen her, which meant today's trip to this dilapidated brick building. The steel staircase felt like a patch, added recently to cover some defect in the original building. An apt metaphor for DMO itself: a sad, uneasy hybrid of the Marine Corps and the vast, suffocating apparatus of support that grows like fungus on the military organization.

The first time I saw the river, I stood on sweltering asphalt outside Bobo Hall. I had just stuffed some 1500 calories in my face while Drill Instructors screamed and strutted all around me. Terrified of their attention, I bolted my food and ran outside to the comparative safety of my place in formation and my "knowledge," the little read handbook I had to read in every spare moment not occupied by instruction. As I meditated intently on Lieutenant Bobo, who to cover the retreat of his Marines had jammed the severed stump of his leg into the dirt of Vietnam to stop the bleeding, and who won the medal of honor for it, I noticed that this "river" flowing past was tremendously wide. Wider than the Columbia River, by far. Nearly as wide as Lake Washington.

The pungency of the air contained many memories. There is a particular smell to Virginia--maybe just to Quantico--that is known to every Marine Corps officer. A smell that reminds of early mornings and aching chests after a run, or the slimy cool of the Quigley, or the itch and suppression of a flak jacket, vest, and pack in the treeline. It reminds of Drill Instructors with massive arms and veins popping out all over their neck and face as they scream, of taciturn Captains exuding contempt and disappointment at another failed attack, of the heavy numbness of pack and rifle and road and the back of the Marine in front of you, which sets in and carries you through the hours of a forced march.

The overwhelming feeling of being yanked back to the very beginning, of returning to where it all started, is gone. I am back in my car, and irritably searching for a parking spot near the IPAC (Installation Personnel Administration Center, a sweatshop of administration Marines struggling to handle all the administration problems of tens of thousands of other Marines assigned to Quantico). In the back of my mind, I'm wondering what other memories I've buried.

I'm trying to control my astonished wonder at the ghostly green nearness of the mountains. They slide by, fast and deadly, invisible unless I swing my goggles at them. Then they are dangerously close. But I'm conscious that it is my friend in the other jet, struggling to earn his qualification, and we need these attacks to go well. So I drop my gaze under my goggles, watching the displays. Weapons page, set. HUD to the left DDI. I glance to my left and see the other aircraft zip through two small mounds, level with us. I frown. I know we, the wingman, are supposed to stay above our lead for safety. But my pilot is also the flight evaluator, an experienced and outstanding pilot. I wonder, as I nervously flick my eyes between the HUD, the approaching desert floor, and the lead aircraft slowly rising above us, if my pilot is maneuvering to look at something, or to test the other aircraft, or simply is holding a more disciplined altitude than the relatively inexperienced lead. Am I imagining, or is the ground getting closer? How close are we? Wait, I can't tell. The altimeter says 2,160 feet. Without thinking I say, "RADALT to the HUD." Suddenly G-forces come on, and we angle upwards. The RADALT alarm sounds our proximity to the ground as the pilot adjusts it. The altimeter, showing 2,230, instantly shows 240. There's an instant of nausea, as I marvel that we were flying less than 300 feet above the deck with absolutely none of the safety precautions in place to a collision with the ground, if for but a few seconds we fail to pay attention. Then I realize we're coming up on the target, and I hurriedly bring up the Litening Pod display on the right. Over the ICS, I hear my pilot say, "RADALT to the HUD. Thanks."

I joined the Marine Corps chiefly to be free of my parents' financial support. But a latent streak of romantic adventurism awakened as I arrived on that hot, humid asphalt in the summer of 2003. There was the icy, nauseating fear of the drill instructors, but also this strange exhilaration in the company of my fellow candidates. We were doing great things, in our own way--hiking distances, and performing tasks, and learning things that only days before had been unimaginable. And the sea stories of the prior-enlisted, or the drill instructors (delivered in the form of harsh instruction) made me hunger to travel and take this wonderful, small world of right and wrong, good and bad, of exertion and mission to exotic places. There was the middle east, where the battle of An Nasiriyah had concluded. There were stories of the DMZ in Korea, the Central Training Area of Okinawa, and rumors of Afghanistan. There was more heat in Camp Lejeune, and mountains in Camp Pendleton, and I wanted to see it all. I was in love--and I have remained so until the very end.

One thing true of Marines everywhere is their consciousness of history and tradition, from leathernecks to cake ceremonies, Belleau Wood to Frozen Chosin, and always the revered names of our antecedents like Bobo and Barnum and Chesty. Marines, when prompted, will talk for hours on the lineage of the "blood stripe" on their trousers or the origin of the phrase "Gee-Dunk." I know all the old histories, too, and will no doubt repeat them more often as an veteran than I ever did as a Marine Officer. But I think the real well-spring and deposit of tradition lies in the time-honored Marine institutions that remain, virtually unchanged, into our modern times.

I shivered. The biting wind mocked both the desert-pattern windbreaker I wore as a "warming layer" and the magnificent desert mountains rearing all around. It was just before dawn, and the sky was beginning to lighten behind the ridges. Twenty-five yards in front of me, a row of man-shaped targets quivered, and between them and me strutted the campaign-covered marksmanship instructors. We waited for the sunrise, which promised warmth and would allow us to begin shooting. I wasn't looking forward, however, because there was something oddly familiar about this situation. It wasn't deja vu, but something more like finally seeing a building you've only before seen in pictures. I recognized this.

Then suddenly I remembered. E. B. Sledge had been here, had described it in his World War II memoir With the Old Breed. He had described this whole institution: the unspoken expectation of marksmanship, the cold, the weapons, the instructors, the targets, the pits. He might have been to this range, actually, for he described the remote Camp Eliot which still existed, a mountainous wilderness of hiking trails now sitting under the approach path to Miramar Marine Corps Air Station. Before the modern Marine Corps, before helicopter flight, before Iwo Jima and his own battles of Peleliu and Okinawa, before and Khe Sanh and "The March Up" in 1991, Private Sledge had qualified on the timeless ranges of the Marine Corps. Just as I was doing.

A study of history, too, shows that this legacy runs further back than 1942. The two regiments of Marines who went to France in 1918 were reluctantly included by the Army because Congress knew they were already basically qualified soldiers--they had essential marksmanship training, essential training that was reduced for the Army's conscripts in order to more quickly field combat units. It's likely that the Marine doughboys of Chateau-Thierry and Belleau Wood knelt on the same hard ground with their Springfield rifles, re-fought their grandfather's civil war battles just as today's Marines re-fight Vietnam and the early battles of the long war in the Middle East.

The general rubbed his hands briefly together in a nervous gesture that could have been his transition to a new topic, a physical equivalent to saying, "um." But I detected some glee in the movement, and so readied myself for a joke. And I was not disappointed. "When I was a young Lieutenant in the late seventies," he began, "my platoon lived up in Camp Margarita on Pendleton. And we lived in these really crappy barracks. There was a single squad bay, with a partition at one end for me and my platoon sergeant's desks. It was crumbling and dirty, no matter how many times we field day'd the place, and the showers were always backed up and the toilets never worked. And being a conscientious and enterprising lieutenant, I filled out the chit every Friday specifying the discrepancies and requesting maintenance to come to fix the plumbing. One day, as I was dropping the chit off in the Facilities section, the gunny who was there said, 'hey wait a minute, Lieutenant.' I turned back and said, 'yes, gunny?' He motioned me close--" the general made a comical beckoning motion--"and said, 'now I like you, Lieutenant. You seem like you're really trying to do the right thing here. But I gotta say, those barracks you're living in are condemned. They're scheduled to be replaced in the next five years, so nobody's going to spend any money to fix them at all.' And he pointed to a drawer, where I could see every chit I'd ever written neatly filed." The general paused as an appreciative chuckle swept through the Lieutenants. "Well, I went back and continued writing my chits, but I was a little satisfied to know that there would be new buildings soon." He paused for a second. "Fast forward to the early two thousands, when I became the CG of 1st Marine Division. Shortly after I arrived back on Camp Pendleton, I drove up to Camp Margarita to see the new barracks. By then I was wise enough not to be surprised when I saw the same old crappy, crumbling barracks standing there." A muted laugh from the audience. "But I parked my car and headed into the same old squad bay to find a Lieutenant sitting at the same desk behind the same partition, doing some paperwork. He jumped up quick when he saw mygeneral's star, but I calmed him down--" another muted laugh--"and asked him how the Barracks were. 'Well, sir,' he replied, "the toilets don't work and the showers are always backed up! I write a chit every Friday after field day, but I'm told...'" Here the general paused for dramatic effect, with the air of an impending punch line, "'that these buildings are scheduled to be torn down in five years and new ones built in their spot!'" The laughter was loud and long.

The amazing thing about the Marine Corps is this vital continuity of experience, the feeling of being part of something meaningful, with roots in the past and a mission for the future. Generations of Marines have field day'd crumbling buildings and ships, and written chits that were ignored, and felt the lash of a salty, scornful, authoritative tongue on their sincere efforts. Generations of officers have struggled to care for their Marines who are coping with substandard living conditions, and have with secret pride rejoiced in the Corps' preference to spend money on training rounds and field rations rather than cushy barracks with serviceable plumbing. The great work of the Marine Corps, to win battles and make good citizens, continues in the small details and virtues that are comical, and ridiculous, and the very lifeblood of the military.

In the gathering darkness I watched them line up in the LZ. The shouts and complaints, audible in the still air, told of their exhaustion. Steam rose from their necks and faces, and I shivered. Forcing myself to be still, despite the lack of warming layers (which I had conspicuously stripped), I waited until the student platoon commander told me they were ready "to step." Hoisting my pack smoothly I took my spot at the front left of the column, and started walking.

By now it was dark, and large flakes of snow were falling. I could feel their despair behind me. Despair is not too strong a word, because after their first wake-up-and-full day-of attacks in the field, they were beat down. Bad. I knew how they felt--the sweat, clammy and gritty with dirt but now freezing, the shaky legs and ankles, sore from walking up and down and alongside hills all day. It didn't help that I was marching them past their quarters in Graves Hall, whose windows shone with warm light. There was despair dragging behind me as the dark closed in, and the sad and terrible finality of falling snow extinguished any hope of warmth and light. I had been through it all before, and I knew why ancient people worshipped the sun.

But the despair was born of fear, and baseless fear at that. Soon, I knew, we would arrive at our next LZ, and the snow would keep our sleeping bags dry in the freezing air. I knew we soon would be happily bivouacked. And so I strode remoselessly on, swinging off the paved road on to gravel. Here the carefully constructed model officer I projected to the world fell apart, for I tripped on a pothole and face-planted, with 80-odd pounds of pack helping to drive the point home. Almost immediately, the students had picked me up and were asking if I was okay. I growled at them a thanks and continued to stride, angry and embarrassed but otherwise unhurt. After several paces I commented to my student platoon commander that at least I gave them something to use against me at Mess Night.

We tramped across the wooden bridge, and climbed raggedly up Cardiac Hill. As I strode away from the top, I heard murmurings behind me that swelled, slowly, until someone finally yelled, "stop!" I stopped, turned around, and asked who had fallen back. The students, in huddled postures, told me the name of the two Marines who hadn't kept up, and again I felt their despair clutching at me. The night was cold, the woods were close, and two of their peers were lost somewhere behind. Angry at their weakness, I told my student platoon commander to keep the platoon there, and I took a squad leader with me back down the hill. Eventually I found my Marines, struggling and slow, morale as bad as I'd ever seen. They were uninjured, however, so I told them to continue after us and I walked back to the main group.

Some packs were off, the quintessential expression of defeat for students. I ignored the questioning (pleading?) glances, took my place at the head of the column, and began walking. There was a sullen scramble behind me to pick up and begin again. But it was easy going from here, as the road was flat, and soon we'd turned in the treeline.  The slow Marines had caught up. The trail endd at another LZ, where there were other platoons and some vehicles, engines humming comfortably. I had my students take off their packs and sit on them, and talked briefly about the next day's event. Then I let them go make up their sleeping positions. Before lying down, I checked in with my firewatch Marines and chatted briefly with the Marines who were still awake.

From my sleeping bag, slowly warming up with my body's heat, I finally appreciated the beauty and the stillness of snow, delicately outlining every branch and quieting the world. After that night, I never felt any fear or despair in my Marines, and I hoped they learned the lesson: with a Mission to accomplish, and Marines to lead, they can get through anything--or rather, certainly through harder trials than a snowy night hike.

For nearly nine years (thirteen if you count my time in ROTC, which most don't, but which seemed quite military to me at the time) I have loved and served this institution. I have shivered in wet foxholes, and soaked in coffee to stay awake through the small hours while preparing some report or another. I have honed my skills at air-to-air combat and close air support in readiness for conflict, used some of the same Quonset Huts at Iwakuni as the Marines who occupied Japan in 1945. I have suffered the disappointment of my peers and superiors and (worst of all) my Marines, and have taken joy in our shared successes, and I have grown up. Grown to know that I could truly give to a marriage, truly give to my children, truly face danger and difficulty and uncertainty and yet do something constructive.

I have many sea stories to tell and re-tell in nostalgic moments to come. The Naval Service still holds sway over my heart and the thrill of new, dangerous places is only a memory away. But I have found a greater love in my wife and child, and a hitherto unknown desire for peace and quietude. So it is time to hang up my uniform. I taste, one last time, that particular air of the Marine Corps: brackish water and effort and heat and the joyful burden of scrutiny and responsibility. I look out at that river which started it all, the strange brown river as big as a lake and a visible sign that home was far away and I was, then, somewhere completely different. It was exciting, terribly exciting, and I followed that excitement a lover.

But now, with happy memories, it is time to go home.

Semper Fidelis.

Cross Country Memories

I woke up today thinking of Phoenix. Perhaps it was the weak, pale February sun streaming in my windows, filtered through gossamer white cirrus clouds. Only in the winter, with the cold sucking humidity out of the air and the thick trees bare, does Virginia ever approach the sheer visibility of the Southwest. And on a morning such as this, my mind went back to the crisp clarity of a Friday evening, the sun all coppery on the darkling sand, when my pilot and I passed a Southwest 737 on the approach path into Phoenix Sky Harbor airport.

I've had some occasion of late to reflect on the past, and one of the things that stands out the most is my need to keep busy. Well, busy is not the right word--distracted, more like. It's stood me in good stead, actually. In college, when I was finally shamed enough about mediocre grades to put in some effort, it drove me to a respectable finish. And when I entered the fleet as a mighty, world-famous Green Knight, it put me up for a lot of working weekends.

Now, the reality of a fighter squadron is, literally, training. Training to kill, in the air and on the ground. In the Marine Corps, the latter is much more important and it is additionally required that fighters be able to kill on the ground only one side of the battle--the enemy--while leaving the friendlies unscathed. Considering the proudly stated mission of the Marine Rifle Squad is "to locate, close with, and destroy the enemy by fire and maneuver, or to repel the enemy assault by fire and by close combat," well, some degree of precision in this endeavor is required from us carefree airedales.

So there is a secondary reality, and that is flight hours. As Malcolm Gladwell put it, the path to proficiency lies in hours spent (10,000 hours being the minimum requirement for mastery, and while we all strive for that, who has that much time, I wonder?), and so our individual and collective ability to kill our enemies without fragging that closing and destroying Marine Rifle Squad relied on flight hours.

Flight hours, of course, are expensive. Not just in fuel (2,000 or so gallons of which we used each flight), but more tellingly in maintenance. For it is axiomatic in the realm of physics, whose laws are inexorable for us as those of death and taxes, that maneuvering such as is required to arrive quckly and safely in the right spot of the sky, oriented the correct way, in a slightly negative-G dive (which helps the bomb fall more closely aligned to the aircraft computer-extrapolated ballistic path) to deliver some hundreds of pounds of hate and discontent upon the enemy, accurately, puts some necessary and occasionally violent force on the jet. All the computers, and hydraulic pumps, and hinges and joins and bolts and generators, all the structural fuselage elements--all of them subject to sudden loading and unloading of gravitational forces as we airedales, with joy in our hearts and laughter in our voices (it's true) yank and bank our way up from the safety of terrain masking and roll in aggressively to "the chute," that wonderful and terrifying flight path from which said hate and discontent would shortly be dealt, but also a dangerous prison of principle, for in "the chute" one is "on government time," a nice way of saying we are required by divers oaths, spoken and unspoken, to deliver the fire support so desperately needed by our comrades regardless of personal safety, and a jet scribing a predictable straight path through the sky toward an intended target for some five to ten seconds makes a juicy target for the foes and their air defenses, doesn't it precious?

Which is all to say that the airplanes, designed as they are for the Newtonian toll by wonderful engineers at Boeing, undergo quite a beating in everyday flight. And they are not, therefore, always working.

Now, fear not. Being nothing less than a professional organization, American Naval Aviation has instituted many safeguards to ensure that broken aircraft are diagnosed and healed quickly (for machines so complicated, which carry life in their austere and purposeful cockpits, act more like living things than cold machinery). The fine Marines who crawl all over the jet and learn it's most secret places, in rain and cold and heat and long, deadly sunny days, they diligently diagnose all manner of little issues, and even more diligently repair them. They are Marines, of course, and are deeply invested in doing their job correctly - something to which I've alluded before. And they certainly won't certify a broken aircraft for us airedales to fly.

That means we only have so many aircraft at any one time, and as each aircraft can only fly so many times per day (three), we only have so many flights. And with a squadron of 34 aggressive, type A, red-blooded aviators all clamoring for flight hours (for to reach eventually that 10,000, though I've only ever heard of one gentlemen do it, and he wasn't flying the Hornet's ful 13 tons of twisted steel, sex appeal, fully articulating leading and trailing control surfaces, and hydraulic and electric circuits, so I'll spare him my envy for his piston-engined, single-control-surface monoplanes), and more importantly all 34 needing training for to kill accurately, space on that flight schedule gets pretty precious. When you start factoring in that maybe only 10 of the aviators are qualified tactical instructors, and one of them is needed for every flight with an unqualified aviator trying to get qualified for to become officially more accurate at killing, well, Flight Hours are very precious indeed, and you can probably forget Mr. Gladwell's 10,000.

But. A brilliant solution. The United States having a vast and reliable network of airfields left over from the days they also enjoyed a comfortable technological and economic advantage over the rest of the world, due largely to the vision and enterprise of men and women like that 10,000 flight hour earner (and where did all of that go, we wonder), and airedales being professionals, well, why don't you go seek your 10,000 hours on the weekend, young WSO? However, you must not under any circumstances come back to the home field until you are scheduled to do so. Therefore you must seek your fortune elsewhere--in Las Vegas, or Phoenix, or Long Beach, or Palo Alto. If you can show good reason, you may go farther afield: Seattle, Portland, Boise, Lake Tahoe, Albuquerque.

Well. Unspoken was the fact that I, like many of my fellow "road warriors," was single. And though some were vocal about the "double standard," I had no desire to pull my peers from their families on the weekend. Also, I was conscious of the fact that in the competitive world of fighter aviation, it was rather well looked-upon if one showed uncommon dedication to flying.  And there were real benefits, too. Places to see, bars to visit, new airfields to experience, all while earning per diem getting a free hotel stay. Plus the advantage of progressing in qualifications faster than my peers, if I could entice an instructor along. And I didn't have to go home to my sparsely furnished one-bedroom apartment (seriously, my wife still teases me about my life with only a bed, dresser, and desk) and wonder what to do with my weekends.

So I became a consummate road warrior--during one two-month stretch, I did nine weekend cross-countries. Yup, if you're counting--that's every weekend. Plenty of distraction. 

They were days of work and wonder--sitting, hot, in the pits of El Centro with the engines screaming at idle, poring over a chart and scratching fuel and time calculations on my kneeboard to see what sort of Bingo we'd set to safely arrive at our next destination (Bingo being the term for the minimum amount of fuel required to get to base, with a specified safety reserve) while the sweat beaded under my visor and made the mask slippery on my face; knocking off 20 minutes of dogfighting, breathless and panting from the G forces and the strain of keeping one's head turned around and locked on the other aircraft, and keeping my voice aviator cool on the radio with center as I asked for IFR to Phoenix; nervously asking for a lower altitude VFR over the Grand Canyon, and receiving permission, and descending lower into the layered red rock walls while a sparkling blue river winked out of the depths; calling hotels and 1-800-Wx-Brief to file the next flight from the deliciously cool FBO in Palm Springs, giddy with freedom after deciding with the other aircrew that we were NOT going to Long Beach tonight, that we wanted to go to Las Vegas instead, and spending a half an hour 'making it happen;' scrubbing clean an ancient whiteboard with paper towels and the damp sleeve in a crumbling base operations building, wallpapered with squadron stickers, in preparation for a full debrief; and best of all, the sudden quiet at sunset, when the radios magically stop squawking and the light fails and cockpit cools off and the horizons become brilliant streamers of red and pink and orange--when it was time to find a new place, a new hotel and restaurant and bar, and the work is over.

And I remember one winter afternoon, awash in coppery sunset light, when at 18 miles from the field we were directed to turn left and intercept the approach path for runway 07C ('zero-seven-center'), and asked to slow to 130 knots. These instructions are to be followed to the letter, now, because there are many airplanes at any given time trying to get into that small little cone of airspace around Phoenix Sky Harbor, and land--many of them filled with innocent passengers, at that. Having them all moving at more than 100 miles an hour, and climbing and descending on there way out and in, complicates the problem immensely. The hardworking controllers at airports like that deserve a beer next time you meet once in your local watering hole, maybe, and they certainly deserved the utmost professional courtesy from the likes of me, whose ego was often close to writing checks his body couldn't cash, and nor could his airplane, at least not without upsetting the smooth flight of 150 odd southwest passengers, but that fortunately didn't happen but once, and it's a story for another time.

In any case, it was with some trepidation that I tapped the foot pedal, and transmitted back to the controller, "Combat 41 unable. Minimum airspeed 150." Which was putting my pilot and the controller in a pickle, and no mistake. For the former, well, our 13 ton aircraft with two tons of fuel aboard did not like flying at 150 knots, oh no precious, what with finite lift available even with the wings totally reconfigured for maximum lift provision. It requires an exceedingly gentle touch, I'm told, and a high power setting, which the aircraft greatly desires to turn into speed for to gain more lift and stability. A hundred seventy-five knots being preferred. For the latter it became immediately evident why our speed was a problem. Several miles ahead of us, nearly blending in with the desert floor (at 18 miles one is barely seeing the southwestern suburbs of Phoenix below), was a trundling Southwest Airlines 737, placidly and gently gliding in at about 130 knots. Not being designed, see, for the speed of heat, or for eight Gs, or for accurate delivery of death to all comers in the air, on land, and at sea, the Boeing 737 has nice large rigid wings that are uncongenial to the lift or drag requirements of, as one pilot once undelicately put it, "flying through your own a**hole." It is therefore also much more stable at slow speeds.

My pilot answered my radio call over the Intra-Cockpit Communication System (ICS) with a four-letter word unprintable on this family website. The controller, after a pregnant silence, said uncertainly "Combat 41, roger, traffic twelve o'clock, three miles, seven-thirty-seven." Which meant, of course, that he heard me about the 150 knots, and oh by the way there was another aircraft off my nose at three miles. To which my pilot replied via ICS, "Tally," and I was able to say "Combat 41, Tally that traffic," and then quietly wonder whether we'd have to do a turn of holding before we landed.

But this controller was smart and helpful, which made a nice change from all the rude ones who question your omniscience and try to kill you by flying you into either an airplane or a hill, true story, and both also for another day. He hopefully asked over the radio, "Combat 41, can you land on the right?" which of course that Phoenix has two large runways, the right-most one being shorter when landing on runway 07, and perhaps we could land on a different runway than that tortoise of a 737 quite safely. So I hurriedly thumbed to my airfield diagram, saw that the right runway was 7,800 feet long, which was about 200 feet shorter than we'd like but technically quite long enough for the Hornet, and doing a quick calculation on how much I trusted my young pilot's ability to stop from running us off the end of the runway, and exiting the airplane ungraciously through the door that Martin Baker provides, and quickly tapped my foot pedal to transmit cooly, "Combat 41, affirm," and save the day. Which, of course, I did, because the controller happily replied "Roger Combat 41, maintain visual separation that traffic and continue your approach visually to zero-seven-right." It wasn't exactly kosher because under IFR traffic rules he has to give me a heading, but it was quite an expedient solution. My pilot accelerated to a much smoother 175 knots and swung right to offset from the Boeing and line up on the right runway, which looked rather short compared to the two other 10,300-foot-generous runways provided by Sky Harbor. And, having a pilot's generous dose of ego, he batted no eyes at my quick brief about the 7,800 foot runway earmarked for us.

So I found myself with the setting sun at my back, beauty before my eyes and relief in my heart, passing a Southwest Airlines airplane in my hornet. We touched down about 15 seconds before he did, and ended up having to wait a while on the taxiway, worse luck. But it sure made the beers taste good that evening.

Thoughts on Boyd and Warfighting

The Marine Corps has, in my lifetime, always purported to be (in part) an intellectual organization. It has also purported to be a "dumb" organization of doers, not thinkers--encoded in Marine tradition is the encouraged image of a stoic, strong, dependable, and cunning team player. This curious dichotomy serves to point Marines at the desired result: physical leadership, endurance, and capability mixed with an intellectual passion for the pursuit of armed conflict. Marines are expected to perform well in the Combat Fitness Test, endure drudgery and deprivation, and read works listed on the Commandant's reading list all within the same career.

Nowhere is this mix more emphasized than at The Basic School, my current assignment and the cradle of Marine Corps virtue (with apologies, of course, to the recruit depots). The Basic School exists to teach officers leadership, the basic combat skills of an infantry leader, and Warfighting--the name given to the branch of knowledge (both art and science) concerned with winning wars. Within the cadre of instructors ideas bounce around amid the cheerful gossip about student buffoonery and always-flowing sea stories, ideas about the nature of warfare, the technicalia of conflict, and the best way to achieve a "product" which will ensure a continued line of Marine Corps victories in "every clime and place."

Some hold that instilling the proper mindset is the right product. As long as a lieutenant leaves with the initiative and determination both to solve any future battle problem and continue to educate himself, that is sufficient. Others argue that a collection of skills is the correct product. Lieutenants must have a basic set of infantry skills to graduate. The answer, acknowledged by all, is of course both. Fancy phrasing combining the two abounds: use the infantry skills as a "vehicle" to instill the correct mindset is the most compelling. But the real end result is to produce leadership that will maintain the Marine Corps as an aggressive, intelligent, creative armed force that is physically and morally ready to take on any kind of conflict, from the smallest insurrection to World War, and win.

Producing such leadership is the aim of the ideas bounced around from instructor to instructor. It is part of both the teaching and learning process, because eventually we instructors will re-enter the combat forces and--with the help of lieutenants--seek to transform and maintain the rest of the force along the same lines. But while it's all well and good to speak of "an aggressive, intelligent, creative armed force that is physically and morally ready to take on any kind of conflict, from the smallest insurrection to World War, and win," understanding what that means and making it happen is a complex and difficult task.

No man in the American military has so closely studied this problem, nor developed anything like a solution, as Col John R. Boyd of the U. S. Air Force. A brilliant, single-minded, and acerbic man along the lines of a Michelangelo, Col Boyd desired only one thing: to fight and win. His desire led him to revolutionize aircraft fighter tactics, then aircraft design as a whole, then general tactics and tactical thought, and finally overall strategy and force structures.

It was a conversation with a peer that introduced me to Col Boyd through his biography, Boyd. Our discussions have struck at the fundamental nature of conflict and victory, seen through Boyd's thought. Though I see his work as but through a mirror darkly, his work has engaged me singularly and I reproduce below an email I wrote back to my peer:

K------,

When you first asked what I thought about the F-22 and the F-35, I had very limited understanding of what Col Boyd's "fighter mafia" wanted to accomplish in developing an airplane back in the 1970s. The fact that the same group of people could produce the ungainly but powerful ground-attack A-10 and the elegant, nimble F-16 goes to show how they weren't "all or nothing" guys like you said; they were very acquainted with compromise. They wanted aircraft that would perform it's mission the best, no matter what compromises came along with such criteria.

The conventional "best," according to the authorities at the time, was traditionally that which could fly faster, higher, and farther while carrying more weapons. The swing-wing design such as is found in a B-1 accomplishes that perfectly--it permits extremely high speeds and high-altitude flight. Unfortunately the weight and mechanical complexity of a swing-wing design limit its flight ability in other regimes, such as low-altitude flight. A rough ground combat analogy would be an artillery system that could fire farther with heavier payloads, but which consequently took so long to transport or assemble that it was essentially useless.

Col Boyd's "fighter mafia" realized that the "best" from an engineering standpoint was almost certainly not the "best" in actual warfare--a conclusion stimulated and borne out by the dismal record of F-105s and F-4s over Vietnam. His developments allowed for a different kind of "best," as in, "best" fit for the job. His insistence, for example, of the F-16 having a 30% or greater fuel ratio ensured that it would have enough legs to be a viable aircraft--and because of his realization that it wasn't fuel capacity that determined range, but rather fuel capacity as compared with engine requirements, ended up with the F-16 having the longest legs of any Air Force fighter. More subtle distinctions are not identified in the book, but I think Boyd must have considered them. For example, the missiles of his day were very unreliable, and at some point in combat an aircraft would get in a dogfight. Hence, a true "fighter" had to be able to fire missiles and yet "turn" at the merge. So he insisted that the F-16 be able do both.

In the end, it was the compromises Boyd made that achieved his ideal. The F-16 is not as fast or high-flying as the F-15, and therefore cannot engage at as long a range. Yet it can effectively engage with missiles, because the fighter mafia wanted a high thrust-to-weight ratio, which assists fundamentally in acceleration and vertical maneuvers--but which also is critical when it comes to generating speed and altitude. The F-16 was a compromise between a lot of factors: fuel capacity, weight, engine power, armament, and ease of maintenance. In many of the above categories it was inferior to the F-15. But all together, it is (without any doubt) by far the superior fighter.

Where the F-16 excels, of course, is in maneuverability--what the book calls "fast transients." In fact, the "fast transients" piece set the YF-16 prototype far above it's immediate competitor, the YF-17. "Fast Transients" allowed a pilot to change his aircraft's regime of flight nearly instantly; for example a pilot might very quickly switch from a fast pursuit profile to a slow, tight-turn profile with a violent re-orientation of the aircraft or go from slow to fast by "firewalling" the throttle and taking advantage of a high thrust-to-weight ratio. The hat trick of "Forty-Second Boyd," where he could start a dogfight at the worst disadvantage and yet reverse the situation to kill his opponent within 40 seconds through such a quick, violent maneuver, proves the value of such ability in a turning fight. Certainly our own MCDP-1 indicates that a ground commander's ability to do the same thing with, say, a battalion actually generates the kind of fleeting opportunities and tactical advantage that allow one force to morally defeat another, even if it is numerically inferior ("morally", in this case, refers to the plane of conflict that occurs in the minds and souls of the combatants, and is concerned with morale will, instead of the physical or material plane which is concerned with weapons and numbers).

So, knowing that the Navy (and by extension, the Marine Corps) would be forced by Congress to by a lightweight fighter, you might reasonably ask why they didn't buy the F-16. The reasons are, I believe, the same reasons Boyd designed the F-16 in the first place. The Navy needed an ideal aircraft--one that would fit all its missions. But it only stumbled upon this realization by accident.

There is a legend that after losing the Lightweight Fighter competition, McDonnell-Douglas was in trouble. It had spent a great deal of money designing this aircraft, an aircraft that had the absolute best current aviation technology. But who would buy the aircraft if the U.S. Air Force had found it lacking? It could hope that by underbidding the F-16, foreign militaries would bite, but that wouldn't last for long. As the F-16 went into production, it's cost-per-unit would inevitably and inexorably decrease, quickly becoming a more affordable alternative. So they went wooing the Navy. And, pulling some strings, they achieved a demonstration for some top Navy brass. Now the Navy had already viewed the lightweight fighter competition, and so they knew the performance specifics and pilot feedback: the former nearly equal between the two airplanes, the latter much in favor of the F-16. So McDonnell-Douglass only demonstrated one thing. They showed a maintenance crew remove an engine from the YF-17 and replace it within 30 minutes. And the Navy was sold.

I don't know if that story is true, but it was the birth of another compromise that launched an immensely successful airplane. The Navy's needs are different from those of the Air Force: it doesn't have limitless hangar space to maintain aircraft, it doesn't have interior lines of communication on U.S. soil to guarantee quick and responsive logistical support, and it doesn't have two-mile runways on which aircraft can be babied during take-off and landing. Carrier aviation is brutal on equipment. The hangar deck is small, and there isn't much storage elsewhere for extra parts. The "runway" is 600 feet long, and aircraft are accelerated quickly to speed so they can get airborne then arrested sharply on landing, both of which require a much sturdier frame than usual. Navy pilots to a man prefer two-engine aircraft because there is usually no land beneath them while they fly, and so they'd rather a malfunction didn't condemn them to a long slow death of starvation, drowning, or shark attack. They also need an aircraft that is controllable at very low speeds to make landing on a carrier a reasonably safe proposition. And in the post-Vietnam years, I suspect the navy was getting tired of managing separate parts pipelines for their variegated fleet of F-14s, A-4s, A-6s, and A-7s.

What the apocryphal McDonnell-Douglass demonstration showed was that the Navy could meet its specific maintenance and aircraft requirements in a single airplane. And so the F-18 was born. It's two engines met the criteria for overwater flight. It's modular engine system made it easy to maintain, and additionally the redundancy that resulted made it an aircraft that could well sustain battle damage. Designed as Boyd's lightweight fighter, it had the ability to climb high and get fast to shoot missiles while also being able to slow quickly and maneuver in a close-in engagement. It also had sufficient power and size to carry about half the ordnance load-out of the existing A-6s and A-7s, making it a capable ground-attack aircraft. Knowing one of it's big missions was to support a Marine landing, Navy designers optimized the aircraft for low-altitude flight to further increase its ability as a CAS platform. It was a compromise, of course, from beginning to end. It is slightly worse as a fighter than the F-16, and slightly worse as an attack aircraft than the A-10. But it made the Navy more expeditionary and better able to accomplish it's assigned missions. The Air-to-Air, Air-to-Ground F-35C (unweighted by the lift fan), is a natural extension of this idea, but whether it's a better airplane than the F-18E/F (Super Hornet) is still up for debate. It lacks an internal gun, which would damn it completely in Boyd's eyes.

As an aside, the F-22 program adopted Boyd's approach, as far as I could tell: the contractor's mantra while developing the F-22 was "not a pound for air-to-ground." I suspect that installing two engines was a practical response to the stealth element's requirement for an internal weapons bay, which takes up a lot of space inside the airframe, as well as a way to maximize the thrust-to-weight ratio. But ultimately the F-22 achieved a perfect compromise: unassailable at a distance due to stealth and long-range missiles (made more so by the extreme altitude and speed available to the aircraft), unbeatable in a close fight because the large wings and thrust vectors make it incomparably maneuverable. The F-35, on the other hand, is exactly the compromise that Boyd hated: weighed down with air-to-ground gadgets and gizmos that provide (I predict) far too much information to really be of use to a ground commander, and in the case of the F-35B weighed down with a huge lift fan that drastically reduces fuel capacity and weapons carriage as well. In fact, one of the most contentious elements of the F-35 program is the contractor's inability to get the F-35B's weight within specs.

The story of the F-18 (and the F-35) has a great deal of applicability to the Marine Corps and Boyd's work on maneuver warfare. I don't yet fully understand the OODA cycle, but at the most superficial level it's merely a map of human experience. Applied to warfare as a discipline, it expands exponentially and speeds up. The "Observe-Orient" part is the most important, since both observation and orientation can be clouded by prejudice (leading to mistakes) or more readily understood by experience (leading to a faster cycle time). Hence we emphasize initiative and the freedom to make mistakes at TBS (and hopefully throughout the fleet) in order to gain experience. But the hard wall within the OODA cycle is the movement from "orient" to "decide." How often do you suppose that a commander orients and conceives of a bold move that will paralyze his enemy with confusion, only to to be stopped short by inability to realize his plan? Such inability can be the result of controlling commanders, or undisciplined units, or the limitations of equipment. Nevertheless I think we have to realize that as Marines we live in a system that puts a strong filter before the D in our OODA cycles.

I can't speak to the command limitation in our OODA cycles. It is composed, I think, of being collectively somewhat risk-adverse, careerist, and uncomfortable with decentralized execution (though much less so than our sister services). But the filter imposed by equipment is a big deal. Col A-----'s vision of a light-infantry force is a step towards fixing this problem. Focusing on a small logistics train and solid discipline--the kind that will bend a unit to its commander's will as a fighter is bent to its pilot's--would put the Marine Corps in company with Lee's Army of the Potomac, Rommel's Afrika Corps (and really the entire German Wehrmacht of the Second World War), and the Israeli Army's march to the canal in 1967. Equipment that complements this light-infantry mindset, such as the M777 or the IAR (it's usefulness pending) or even the EFV is to be desired. Such equipment will give a commander options. Options to cross the lake, rather than the expected river. Options to helibear lighter, fewer items to ground units in order to sustain a push. Options to maneuver around existing roads, options to disperse forces--ultimately options to Decide - Act in unexpected and decisive ways to morally defeat the enemy.

For Marine Corps fixed-wing aviation (and with apologies to Col Boyd), I think the F-18 literally provides this kind of flexibility best. It is expeditionary and capable and proven. I think, sadly, that it will be more flexible and more effective at all it's missions than the F-35 will be--especially if upgraded to the Super Hornet model, which incorporates some technical advancements, better fuel capacity, and more weapons load-out. On the macro level for the Corps, however, we must be able to protect our Marines from enemy air--even if our current enemy has none--and provide the close air support that will give our ground commanders options to deal with what will in the future almost certainly be a materially superior conventional enemy. Of course, to accept an aircraft that cannot depart and recover on a MEU means one has to accept certain other things--such as the need to depend on the Navy for carrier support, or the need to capture an airfield to support the operation, or the need to detail KC-130s for refueling support. But as the fighter mafia showed us, getting the ideal means making some compromises.

As Col Boyd demonstrated in "Patterns of Conflict," our job as military leaders is not to assemble a tinker-toy of statistical fillers and engines of war ready to be unleashed by the Pentagon wherever the president points his finger, but rather to build an "ideal" force for accomplishing our missions. This force will be focused, stripped of unnecessary capabilities, and responsive. It will be the F-16 (or perhaps with our expeditionary mentality, the F-18) of military forces. With such a force a commander may cycle through OODA fast enough to (as MCDP-1 teaches) "shatter the enemy’s cohesion through a variety of rapid, focused, and unexpected actions which create a turbulent and rapidly deteriorating situation with which the enemy cannot cope," and therefore win--just as we (along with Col Boyd) ardently desire.

The Happy Doldrums

Deployment is a strange experience in many ways, especially at the end. There's a letdown feeling that the mission is ending, where the 'mission' is a set length of time instead of a particular event, and some unspoken wondering if we (the unit) really left it all out on the field, if we could have trained harder, or experienced more, or made a little more of a difference. What exactly did we accomplish in these six summer months away from home, and did we make it worth the absence from family and friends?

I'm speaking of course of a UDP--Marine Corps slang for "Unit Deployment Program"--an institution that rotates units to Japan for six months. A tour to the fight in the middle east, I imagine, is different: the end of a deployment is filled with a desire to turn over the mission, hoping that the replacing unit can take successes and continue them or make up for any failures. The stakes are higher, and so are the passions. I don't know what that's like, I'm afraid.

But I'm two weeks from leaving Japan, and the relentless driving pressure has given way to a sort of limbo. Equipment is packed, and since our new mission is to get ourselves home, we are taking it easy on the aircraft. No more 'dynamic maneuvering' flights, no more concern with our combat-oriented avionics, no more studiously rehearsed tactical briefs or six-hour detailed debriefs. Much of our equipment is packed, and the squadron spaces are stripped down and sterile in accordance with the Marine Corps ethos on material goods instilled in basic training: leave the place better than you found it. All of a sudden, there isn't much to do, and the desire to be home lies heavy in our thoughts.

So we find new distractions. It's an old truism that we work harder during deployment because there aren't the distractions found at home--weekends in San Diego, families, and so on. But really, the hard work on deployment is the distraction: a way to protect against the feeling of separation and powerlessness regarding our loved ones and our homes. The other truism regarding deployment is that "Social drinking during WestPac is chronic alcoholism in the States," which is another form of distraction and really the chief source of bonding during these painful, non-combat deployments to Japan. And so, with nothing really to do at work, we begin to play.

One stereotype of Japan that has run through this deployment is Karaoke. A happy discovery we made this go-round was Club Niagara, a seedy one-room bar within walking distance of the main gate of Iwakuni. The owner is American, though of former military background, and one wonders why spends his life running a Karaoke dive in this small provincial town in southern Japan. It doesn't do to look to close, however--we're all running from something if we're in that bar, and there's a mutual respect to be payed between expatriates who, like Hemingway in Paris, are looking for something to make them feel free. Fortunately for all involved, Club Niagara offers only the relatively anodyne pleasures of beer and American songs for singing, both of which are easily recoverable after a night. I didn't tempt fate and ask for the absinthe, however.

As far as drowning one's sorrows, however, there's nothing quite like anonymous Karaoke. I say, 'anonymous,' because the arrangement of Club Niagara is ingenious: the monitors displaying the lyrics are behind the bar, facing the masses. So when your song comes up,  you take the mic and with everyone else in the bar face the televisions. No stage fright, no audience--just you singing with a bunch of friends, even if they're only friends for one night. And whether you're all belting along horribly to "The Winds of Change," or rapping to "Paper Airplanes" (or crooning sadly to something by the Red Hot Chili Peppers, which was my poison of choice), you can laugh the hilariously bad Japanese B-Roll of muscular guys on motorcycles, or melancholy lovers looking at lakes, or some other cliched scene set incongruously to the English words on the screen.

And at the end of the night you can brave the security patrols of Marines in the severely professional service uniform, and take the songs into the street, and try to find your way back to base in the dark, narrow, silent Japanese streets. Hopefully you're full of enough friendship and amusement--and beer--to fall asleep when you get into your dormitory.

The nice thing about finishing the deployment in late summer is that there are more things to do on base. For one thing, the nice weather makes nocturnal pursuits such as were just described much more pleasant. For another, the pool is open.

Oh, how we loved the pool. The single guys checking out the female lifeguards, who were mercifully college-age and not still in high school, the diving board cannonball competitions, the unashamed male tanning episodes in preparation to impress loved ones back home. It was the perfect meeting place, the perfect summer hangout, the perfect place to relax. Sometimes, since the days were long and there was precious little work do to, we could sneak over there after getting home from the squadron with a book and our iPod and catch some delicious afternoon rays. The best was when we could hit a workout (also preparation for impressing the loved ones back home), jump in the pool, catch some sun poolside until it closed, then hit our mandatory Friday night O'Club visit.

Now the Friday night visit to the club was a requirement all deployment, and a source of much debate. The junior officers (captains) hated it. The social ones had other plans: trains to Fukuoka or Hiroshima and the hotter nightlife there; the introverted ones simply wanted to go to their rooms, video-chat with their wives, and sleep. There seemed to be little point to go to the club and mingle with the same demoralized and ever-changing crowd of permanent personnel, DOD teachers, and those bad-news wives who were, ah, just a little too flirtatious with us (who were certainly not their husbands). Most of the time we ended up eating cartons of free popcorn, playing endless rounds of shuffleboard, and eventually starting up a game of Crud (a wonderfully violent and complicated game played on a pool table). Sound fun? It mostly wasn't.

But it paid off occasionally. During our time spent at Kadena Air Base, we could assert our collective man-hood against the Crud teams of other units, Marine and especially Air Force. The Air Force, it should be noted, prefers a 'finesse' game of Crud, where we like to dominate physically. Stereotypes, anyone? And, remembering our victories and ignoring our defeats, by the deployment's end the Friday night at a club was more like the senior stroll down a high-school hallway than a chore. Here at the end, we lazily tune up our game in anticipation of our relieving unit (due in several days) and talk about all the ways we're better than they are. Like those high school seniors who have proclaimed all semester that they can't wait to leave, we begin haunting the Club even on nights that aren't Friday, a little reluctant to depart.

Only a little. Because as we turn to hedonism with gusto in these last weeks of deployment, we are looking for distractions to carry us through this piece of limbo. Because what we really want, what I really want, is to get this thing over with and get home. A year and a half ago, I waited sadly to go home to San Diego because while I knew it was better than the wintertime Iwakuni I had just experienced, there was nothing really waiting for me there. My future was in doubt. Now I can finally cut the painful distance between my wife and I, and return to where I belong by her side.

It is a strange unfettered experience, here at the end of deployment, and our doubts at the utility of going to Japan instead of the Middle East gain strength as we belt ballads into microphones and beer bottles, spend an hour perfecting a can-opener, or swagger around the beat-up pool table in a Crud game. But there are no doubts about what's coming--home--and I happily do anything that compresses the time between now and my homecoming.

The Other Japan

Of the many places I've been able to visit as a United States Marine, rural Japan (at first glance) does not figure as a highlight. After all, when not deployed I often flew on the weekends for some extra training--training that included a look at unfamiliar airfields. "Unfamiliar Airfields" in this case usually meant Las Vegas, or Palo Alto, or Phoenix Sky Harbor, or Boise, Idaho. Though I haven't seen the entire country through the lens of aviation, I've fought the complicated airspace around the capital, I've despairingly landed in deep-south backwaters, I've taken the long and circling approach into Key West, and even attempted a fly-over of a Cincinnati Reds game. During my two deployments to Japan I managed to add Northern Australia, Guam, Wake Island, a good deal of Korea, and (of course) Hawaii to the list. So I was somewhat ambivalent about trading small-town Iwakuni for small-town Komatsu, especially after a blissful ten-day tour of international Tokyo and imperial Kyoto. But despite my ambivalence, duty called. So I joined with the squadron in packing ourselves up for the temporary detachment north.

Komatsu, in case one is unfamiliar with the geography of Japan, is a very small town on the west side of the main island. Actually, it faces north, since Japan generally lies east-west in the center of it's 1500 mile length. It is about 100 miles due west of Kyoto, and is blessed with a pretty beach and clear blue water. It is the location of two Japanese Air Self Defense Force (JASDF) F-15 squadrons who were eager to tear it up with some Marine Hornets. What with all the training was in it. So they graciously decided to pay for our trip and well, since the whole reason we were deployed to Japan was to maintain international relations, show American commitment to our allies in this part of the world, and build interoperability with allied militaries, it just made sense. It was our only really exciting assignment during this deployment, unless you count our delightfully chilly and miserable little field exercise in Korea. Besides, what fighter pilot (or WSO) doesn't want to test his or her skills against a foreign adversary?

The more I thought about the whole thing, actually, the more it seemed like a good time. A little bit of a good time, mind you. Nowhere near as exciting as Guam, or Thailand, or Australia would have been. But better than stewing in Iwakuni. Of course, the fun police were in full effect, warning us ever so severely that the poor unexperienced denizens of Komatsu were unfamiliar with Americans, especially Marines, and we wouldn't be able to count the sort of help often offered by the nice people of Iwakuni--rudimentary English, directions home if we happened to forget the way or were partially inebriated, or a charitable refusal to call the police if we created some sort of disturbance. In fact, our ability to travel off base was subject to many onerous restrictions and warnings indeed that we felt like there was a large and exciting world of forbidden fruit outside just waiting to be plucked! Or I should say the pluckiest of us felt. The rest of us nodded seriously, waited for our appointed betters to depart the area, and under the auspices of the blue light embarked on a veritable orgy of eye-rolling and muttering about the substandard entertainment provided by this deployment.

Well, we duly got the squadron packed up (and I was grateful now that I was not responsible for heavy and sensitive computer equipment of the MPC, but rather only required a work computer and some files) and flew into Komatsu. It was a clear, sunny Saturday morning and a very short flight. Still feeling surly, and curious, to see this pastoral Japanese town supposedly terrified of the crazy American Marines, I was awkwardly greeted by a Japanese dignitary of some sort, who smiled benignly and shook my startled hand, before I picked up my personal effects--stuffed in the ever-capacious, ever handy, well-used seabag--and strolled over to the large apartment block that was to be my home for the next two weeks.

This was my first real introduction to Japanese life. First, I had to take my shoes off before entering. Now I'd expected this--I'd been told countless times that it's forbidden to enter Japanese residences (and most restaurants) with shoes on. But until now I'd only ever visited touristy places, and lived in American quarters on an American base. In the simple act of unlacing my boots and throwing on some slipper-sandals for the trip to my room, I stepped into life as a guest of the Japanese. There was no great revelation to this, I caution. But it was very interesting and very enjoyable.

The first thing to mention is the food. Like many American bases, the Japanese have an on-base store and restaurant. The latter part of the structure was converted into a chow hall for Americans three times each day, and giggling polite Japanese ladies served the food behind the counter. I am sorry to say that the meals were awful. I should say here that I like Japanese food. But what they served us was a caricature of American food--exclusively deep-fried, unimaginative junk. I think they were trying to make us meals that we would like. They probably thought that all Americans eat nothing but french fries and assorted other fried food. It was a trial. The fruit, however, was delicious and fresh. We ate a lot of that.

The other big surprise was the Japanese bathhouse located on the top floor of our apartment block. We had been warned about this, too. Our prudish American sentiments might be offended, we were told, at the Japanese custom of relaxing in this bathhouse naked. Some among us refused to go at all costs. None of that male nudity for them! Others attempted to enjoy the steaming pools and saunas at off-peak hours, where their use of a bathing suit or a towel would not be subject to the affronted stares of our hosts. I decided if I were in for a penny, I might as well be in for a pound (or a hundred yen), and trooped up one evening with a towel, some shower sandals, and a bucket with soap and shampoo to see what this Japanese male bathhouse ritual was all about.

First of all, it was definitely a retreat. Compared to our spartan rooms and common areas, the wood panelling, sumptuous carpet, and gleaming generous faucets were luxurious. A little foyer provided cubbyholes for one to put clothes and shoes, and I surreptitiously followed the lead of some Japanese in stripping completely and heading off into the interior. Once inside, the first room was a carpeted living room with massage chairs and a television, in which clothed Japanese enjoyed the services of the chairs and some conversation. Further in, the floor turned to tile and the towels moved from the waist to the neck. On one side of a room running the length of the building there were three tubs filled with water of varying heat. The rest of the room was furnished with knee-high shower nozzles, under which men sat and scrubbed themselves. Their nakedness was, er, awkward...especially since they took no notice of it. In several parts of the room men carried on apparently normal conversations while thoroughly showering. As I was unwilling to experience quite that much Japanese culture, I repaired to the loneliest nozzle and quickly showered there. Then I walked over to the tubs in some unnoticed embarrassment at my nakedness.

The succession of hot water and saunas that followed was quite nice. There's something to be said for a good long soak; it clears the head and seems to purify the body. Some assert that a sauna causes the body to sweat out toxins, and I could almost believe it to be true. Fortunately my fellow bathers were too interested in their own conversations to pay me any attention, so awkwardness was kept to a minimum. In accordance with bathing protocol, I returned to the shower before dressing, and was just beginning to feel something like resignation to the surprising nudity around me when I caught sight of my naked self in the plate windows at the far end of the shower room. Realizing both that it was dark, and someone outside could see into the shower room, and that the shower room faced the flight line at the same instant, I wondered if any of our Marines working the night shift (of which several were female) could discern one of their own seven stories up. That was not a welcome thought. I dressed rather hurriedly and departed. From then on I ventured no more to the bathhouse--it was an interesting experience, and even a positive one (the saunas and the tubs, at least), but certainly not for me. I'm happy to admit my prudishness in this regard.

Trips off the base were spiced up by the obvious trepidation of Japanese locals and the constant presence of a Japanese plain-clothed policeman. The latter, we heard, was not there so much to keep tabs on us as to reassure the citizens of Komatsu that they weren't to be abandoned to our notoriously crazy ways. As regards to the attitude of the locals, well, it was decidedly odd to feel watched every second and in every action. Some places had signs declaring they refused to serve us. We were good-natured about it (after all, we were guests), and concentrated our forces on the places that welcomed our business--especially the Karaoke lounges. Those places might as well have been in a different dimension, since once inside we were almost encouraged to get drunk and bawl out songs to Japanese-produced music videos of American pop songs. In those smokey and close dens, the local patrons evinced hilarity at our antics and seemed not at all perturbed by our presence...especially as I recall we pretty much hogged the mike. After such nights the presence of our Japanese police shadow was quite useful in showing us the way back to the base.

During the one full weekend we were in Komatsu we were invited to field a squadron baseball team and play the Japanese base baseball team. Though meant as a fun bonding exercise, we regarded this as as serious challenge. The Japanese take baseball very seriously, and though their major leagues do not (in general) reach the caliber of American teams (except the Cubs, of course) they do field many players who are good enough to come and be stars in the United States. Also, on our various occasional jogs around the airfield we noticed many little league games in progress. So we figured we had the honor of America in our hands in a contest involving our national pastime. Accordingly, the day of the game we divided into four teams and played an elimination match that resulted in two teams being formed--basically a "varsity" team, that played the Japanese base team, and a JV team which played the Japanese equivalent JV team. The Japanese were very professional and showed up in uniforms, with uniformed umpires to call the game, and strong overhand pitching. It was a very sunny day and a great deal of fun--our JV team won narrowly (that was my team) while our "varsity" lost narrowly. So I'd say our national honor was maintained, though not by much.

The deepest glimpse into Japanese culture came, however, during our training flights. We have our own training requirements and they have theirs, but both sides required "red air," usually a section (two) of fighters to play the enemy. Normally the red air will act per the "blue air" flight lead's instructions, and die accordingly, until all fighters are within visual range (WVR)--at which point the gloves come off, and all players fight for their life in a melee until one side is completely killed. The last part, really, is why we were excited to work with the JASDF. Dogfighting. It is, as some say, the most fun one can have with his or her clothes on.

Now it's considered good manners that when one squadron provides red air, you provide it back on a later flight. A nice, professional quid pro quo. And so it happened that occasionally we would listen to the Japanese brief us and conform to their training needs, while other times we'd have to brief them. And it follows, of course, that after the fight the blue air flight lead would then debrief the full flight--arrows on whiteboards, sternly enforced etiquette of terms and speech, the whole nine yards. I should admit that we considered ourselves the master at this. The tactics and ethics of TOPGUN inform all we do, and as far as I know they are the grandaddy of such institutions in military aviation. With much sniggering we heard and repeated the story of one of our members, who had the misfortune to depart from controlled flight as red air during a 2v2 combat, then had the much greater fortune to recover more or less on the tail of a Japanese F-15. With admirable aggression said pilot smoothly selected an AIM-9 Sidewinder missile and pulled the trigger, calling his surprised foe out on the radio. In the debrief, the still-confused Japanese pilot neatly diagrammed out the flight, stopping the point where our comrade fell out of the sky and saying, "now here, Hornet pull SUPERMANEUVER. and shoot Eagle." He paused, then looked at the Marine and added pleadingly, "how does Hornet do supermaneuver?"

Needless to say, we were a little cocky.

The real difficulty, actually, was in the fact that the Japanese were very formal. It was unsettling to brief to an audience of stony faces, staring critically at the board. I'm sure we insulted some of them by sometimes speaking in the slow, simple tones usually reserved for dim children, but if they took offense they didn't show it. They also became very visibly embarrassed and apologetic if they made a mistake in the debrief. I should say here that it is very hard to keep the flight path of four highly maneuverable fighter aircraft in one's mind during the fight--generally you're lucky if you remember yours and the guy you happened to be fighting at one particular moment. So much for remembering all that after landing in bad weather! If you're a flight lead (and you're good), you might just remember your maneuvers and those of both enemies. But it's not unusual to have to ask your red air, "what did you do here?" on several occasions.

In one memorable debrief, a young Japanese pilot attempting to qualify for his section lead designation tried to diagram out an entire flight. In accordance with etiquette, he asked at each juncture, "Is this correct?" At one point he started drawing the maneuvers of his wingman (actually flown by his instructor) incorrectly, and three times the instructor made him re-draw the lines. After the third time--dismissed by a curt "no!" from the instructor--the poor Japanese pilot stood staring intently at the board for a very long several minutes that stretched unbearably for the sympathetic Marine red air. The red air, by the way, was forbidden from speaking at the debrief unless spoken to by holy edict from TOPGUN. So, awkwardness. Eventually, the instructor asked disgustedly, "do you...give up?" The student turned with slumped shoulders, bowed to the audience and stated sadly, "I give up." Then the instructor finished the debrief quite professionally. We joked afterwards (in sympathy, not cruelty) that we hoped the poor bastard didn't have to commit seppuku, but it was a revelation to see the stern instruction in the JASDF.

Funny stories aside, our adversaries were good pilots, and it was exciting to lead out a Japanese plane or two over the ocean to tangle it up in combat. They showed a great ability to maneuver the relatively clumsy F-15, and surprised not a few of us with their grasp of dogfighting tactics. Of course we had the best of it. Of course. All sea stories like this end with a victory.

And ultimately I felt like I caught a glimpse into day-to-day Japanese life: Not the wildly bustling Tokyo; or the professional kindness of Iwakuni residents; or touristy solicitation of Kyoto and Miyajima. It was just a chance to observe some Japanese recreation (baseball) and the stern, proud, highly professional attitude with which they conduct all their work. It was alien, and I was happy to get back to my comfortable room in which I could wear shoes. But it made me respect and love the real Japan--to my perspective, the other Japan--all the more.

Thoughts from Seoul, Korea

In my two Western Pacific Deployments, I have been to Korea multiple times. Without succumbing to banalities, I'd say cautiously that it is a place with particular entertainments, and particular headaches. The entertainments consist mostly of fantastic knock-offs of brand-name goods (purses, especially), exceedingly good clothing (from leather jackets to tailored suits), cheap and plentiful alcohol, and shady "juicy bars" where one may go and have the pleasure of purchasing a drink for some young ladies and enjoying their conversation. On the latter activity I've told you all I know, really. I assume that the young ladies are available for further services, too, but I don't know. I never desired to find out. And to my knowledge, neither did my comrades. But on the whole, in these three things a youthful, deployed, and perhaps lonely servicemember may find in Korea some solace. In my squadron, trips to Korea were regarded as good deals.

The one time it was a bad deal was Exercise Foal Eagle, which I have already described. Over those two weeks I experienced to a very small degree the legendary misery of Korea: the bad weather, the pervasive and light-killing haze, the cold. I say it was a very small degree, because there were hot showers available, and we did sleep in tents, and the food was passable. Really, the only missing "luxury" was laundry, but one can fit clothes for two weeks into a single seabag. It wasn't all that bad. And there were some benefits as well, such as character-building, some decent flying (including a chance to look over the Demilitarized Zone into North Korea), and a chance to live near actual Koreans. Shopping in their stores and using their facilities is a long step from the tourist-centered places we were used to visiting.

But the best glimpse I had of Korea was a visit to it's capitol, Seoul.

I don't pretend to understand Korea very well. From my time in Yechon (during Foal Eagle), I noted a determined aspect to Koreans--an America-like emphasis on success, fiscal and military. I'm sure there are regional differences between South Koreans, but to my occidental eyes Seoul is the center of the nation. Under the guns of the North Koreans it lies, threatened and defiant, and it has reinvented itself during the long years since it last was destroyed--1953--as a center of industry, finance, and culture. Hemmed in by Korean and American military bases and known for having the most exciting nightlife north of Bangkok, Seoul seems to represent the challenge and triumph of Korea. And so I was eager to go.

But before I continue, I should admit that I know embarrassingly little Korean history. Up until 1945, I know, it was traded between and influenced by various Chinese and Japanese empires, both of which hated. Upon the Imperial Japanese surrender which ended the Second World War, it was partitioned as Japanese territory (which it had been for the past 13 years) into two "administration zones," the north part overseen by the Soviet Union, the south overseen by the United States. Unsurprisingly, the Soviet Zone decided to set itself up as a hard-line Communist regime, while the South became a representative democracy. And in accordance with Communist ideals, which mandate that the remainder of the world be brought into the Communist fold by any means necessary, in 1950 the North Korean government decided to use force to unify the divided country. The Korean War began.

Most of what I just related I learned in the National Museum of the Korean War, a remarkable tribute to Korea's struggle for freedom. Monumental statues depict the Koreans who fought and the places they fought, with not a few reminders that the conflict was in essence a Civil War that split families and tore a people apart. Most poignant were photographs of students rallying in South Korea to ask American help in stopping the invasion from North Korea. The war was much more to South Korea than a political stand against an undesirable government, it was a life-or-death struggle for that highest human desire, freedom. This messy, brutal attempt at domination represented the true threat of Communism in that time and tested the American Exceptionalist perspective which promised to aid other nations in their quest for freedom.

Initially overwhelmed by Soviet-armed and organized North Korean military units, the small American units and the entirety of the South Korean military was pushed back to a small pocket in the southeast corner of the peninsula, dubbed the "Pusan Perimeter." It is hard to imagine today, and hard for me to express in words, how frightening this must have been for other small nations around the world abutting Communist states. With one greedy bite, a Soviet-backed state looked to crush a free people into submission to the Communist ideology. Anodyne statements to the effect that "communism is all right in theory" or that "we shouldn't interfere with others' rights to choose their own government"* forget the desperate struggle of South Korea to resist wholesale and brutal colonization by another power. I think it fortunate that the United States rose to the occasion and broke the pressure on the "Pusan Perimeter" with an amphibious landing at Inchon, where along with South Korean units the Marines encircled the invading armies and began pushing them north.

The rest is not quite just history. China came to the aid of international communism, attempting to help the fleeing North Koreans finish the fight they started. The battle of the Chosin Reservoir was fought against overwhelming Chinese reinforcements before the armistice was signed, splitting North and South Korea again into two countries. Wholesale destruction of Seoul and other cities in South Korea as well as hundreds of thousands of refugees strained national resources, and the constant (and vocalized) threat of further invasion from the north made recovery even more difficult because of the need to maintain a modern and powerful military. And yet in the years since the armistice, South Korea has rebuilt their land and their economy, they have hosted the Olympics, and they have sent troops to aid American campaigns in the Middle East.

Freedom in South Korea is manifestly not simply the state of affairs. It is not something that simply exists. They fight and sacrifice for freedom every day, serving mandatory enlistment and running an economy that can support the military they need to protect themselves and their choice of government. And yet they are still at war, for though the armistice is still in effect, a truce has never been signed.

We say often in America, "freedom is not free." We mean it, I think, and we intend to remember that the path toward human liberation has been contested each step of the way by people and entities that desire power over others. But the simple and stirring truth in the statement came upon me like a conversion as I toured through Seoul's national museum of the war. The bitter and appalling struggle to resist tyranny, the surprising gratitude which venerates those from other countries who fell in their struggle (in the case of the United States, the fallen are recognized by individual state), the triumphal development of modern arms to continue to protect this abstract concept of freedom--there, in Seoul, it is demonstrated just how costly and precious freedom actually is.

*I don't advocate the forcible reconstitution of other countries to American civic structures. I am making no statement here except that it's important to protect countries from any forcible reconstitution of their civic structures, especially totalitarian ones.

The Korea Deployment

Part 1 – The Arrival

“Hey man, I’m sending you on Wednesday.” I lifted my chin slightly, like I always do when confronting bad news or criticism. Wednesday was indeed bad news. I’d counted on having most of a weekend before leaving. “We just needed some guys to go early, to help set up. I wanted people familiar with all the systems.”

I cursed silently, looking the Major in the eyes. I hoped he couldn’t read my inner monologue. I replied, “Roger, sir. Make sense.” I had to admit, it did make sense. I did know the systems better than anybody in the squadron, really, except one person—and he was senior to me. Things being based on seniority and proficiency around here led to some cold, hard decisions. Oh well. As the recruiting poster said, nobody promised me a rose garden.

“Thanks Schrags.” The major turned to go.

And so I left early. Scheduled for the first C-130 out of Iwakuni, actually. I was going to Yechon Air Base, Korea as advanced party for exercise Foal Eagle 2010. It wasn’t a good deal.

Korea is usually a choice destination. Mostly, we go to Osan Air Base, known as a cushy, full-service Air Force Station. The kind of place where the Q (our term for the Bachelor Officer Quarters, abbreviated “BOQ”) is about as nice as an upscale hotel, there’s a Chili’s restaurant on base, a decent gym, and a chapel for guys like me. Religious guys. Also notable for the maze of streets outside the main gate, chock-full of shops hawking NFL jerseys, leather products, jewelry, custom suits, and handbags. Since most of those products are originally produced in Korea to be sold at a fantastic mark-up in the US, it’s a way to get authentic and fashionable objects cheap. Or it’s at least a way to get a pretty good knock-off. Naval Aviators like myself have been getting G-2 leather jackets manufactured to the original specifications in Korea for a quarter of the usual cost in the United States. Everyone usually gets excited about Korea.

Except for Yechon. Yechon is in the middle of nowhere, far from bazaars and amenities. A small Korean Air Force training base, its chief “amenity” of interest for our Marine higher-ups is a collection of three fields to which we can deploy. And by deploy, I mean set up tent cities from which we live, work, plan, brief, and conduct aircraft maintenance in a “field” setting. Just to show that we can. You know, if we needed to go to an empty piece of freshly-conquered territory and set up an airfield. Just in case. Because we’re “expeditionary,” like. We can operate from “austere environments.” Unlike, of course, those comfort-loving Air Force zoomies who prefer to live, launch, and recover from vast and luxurious airfields and waste the not inconsequential fuel and aircraft flight time of their uncounted tanker aircraft to get their fighters and attack jets to the fight. Or the Navy squids who come with a ready-built and fully-appointed airfield sitting just off-shore. Of course, one might say that six months in an enclosed, steel city is “austere” enough. It’s really the Air Force guys that get my goat. No hard feelings of course. But living in the field is hard and well, it’s hard to be hard.

So there I digress. It won’t be the last time, I promise. But there I was on Wednesday morning with a fully-packed ruck-sack and a fully-packed seabag. With every undershort and undershirt I owned, in case the laundry wasn’t available. I didn’t expect it to be available, as you might guess. The vagaries of an “austere” environment, and all. It’s funny, really—there’s nothing like the prospect of austerity to make you enjoy luxury. I swear a shower and a clean shirt meant more to me the night before I left than it ever had before. But there I go digressing again. In any case, a dear comrade was also scheduled to leave that day, on a second C-130 taking off an hour after mine. We hoofed our heavy luggage into the Passenger Terminal, which on Iwakuni is a spartan room not far removed from a Quonset Hut (and in fact is surrounded by several Quonset Huts that house offices of the Visiting Aircraft Line—Quonset huts, no doubt, that were originally raised in 1945 when the Marine Corps occupied the airfield after V-J day).

The Marines traveling with us had to be there much earlier than we did, worse luck, because their NCOs and Staff NCOs weren’t going to risk their being late. Because that would not do at all. Reflect poorly on the Marine Corps, like. Especially since zoomies were flying our transport C-130s. The C-130 Marines were apparently unavailable. Probably reluctant to leave their cushy hotel rooms. When my comrade and I arrived, the other Marines traveling with us lifted accusing eyes over their playing cards and cheap paperback novels and left an awkward question unasked in the air: “where the hell have you been?” Fair point that—they had been awake and present hours before us. So we dropped our bags in the pile and settled lowly into our seats. In the knick of time, of course. Irresponsible officers.

An hour later, the droning of a C-130 could be discerned through the paper-thin windows. A pushy young Marine in charge of the terminal organized us to “palletize” our luggage, which is a nice word to describe the mad rush of a working party that grabs all seabags and ruck-sacks in a given pile and slams them unceremoniously on a pallet, where they are crushed together with cargo netting to make them secure for transport. It’s old military wisdom that you carry anything breakable on your person. It can’t be too heavy, though, because after you’ve treated everybody’s valuable possessions as horizontal punching bags you get weighed with all your carry-on baggage. Apparently it’s important for airplanes to know how much cargo they’re carrying. Not really a factor in the ol’ F/A-18D hornet, as the 50-pound brains at Boeing and China Lake figure out what we can and can’t carry slung under the wings. We just know what we can’t carry. It makes things a little easier. Not so for these “tactical airlift” platforms, however—they could carry anything from much-needed combat supplies and equipment to a bunch of disgruntled Marines who got up too early to be carted to an “austere” environment for two and a half weeks.

We had a cargo mix-up between the two C-130s, of course. One of the Air Force crews decided that as they had landed early, they were damned well going to take off early, and to hell with the schedule. So for reasons unbeknownst to us poor devildogs, the original order of departees was reversed. Everybody scheduled on the first C-130 was switched en masse to the second, and vice versa. Not the luggage, however. Of course not. It was already palletized. No changing things now! So, ironically, we flew out with the other passenger’s personal items. The only thing that would make it worse is if one C-130 broke, stranding both crews without their pack-up. As we contemplated the odds of suffering that particular disaster, I remembered with a twinge of unease that our sleeping bags were packed also. And Korea was supposed to be cold. Awesome.

The plane ride, of course, was noisy and nauseating. There’s something about a long windowless aluminum tube that disrupts the inner ear—especially when it turns to and for, ascending and descending all the while. But like most of my brethren, I stuffed in some earplugs and went to sleep. I awoke to variations in the constant thrumming of the engine that told my aviation-sharpened senses that we were descending. A pale, dim gray light was visible in the cockpit, one story up from my seat in the cargo bay. I deduced that it was cloudy. And after we finally jolted to the runway and felt the sharp deceleration of the pilot reversing the thrust direction of the propellers, then waited as the aircraft taxied to the main building, then felt the sudden seep of cold air from the rear of the fuselage as the crew dropped the cargo gate, then shivered for twenty minutes as they offloaded the cargo (more important than a bunch of dumb jarheads, obviously), I saw that I was right. I stepped finally into the mist-shrouded and mountainous world of South Korea.

Vignette 1

Huddled slightly in the cold, he stares through his breath at the computer screen. Dim gray light from the late morning sifts in through the low clouds and the translucent plastic window of the “work” tent. It’s another dismal spring day in Yechon. Receding behind him are the sounds of activity: thumping of boots on floor boards, swift clicking of keyboards, voices raised in argument or laughter. He is, for the moment, forgotten. Now, if he's lucky, no one will call on him for a while, and he has some freedom.

Outside in the gathering dark engines whine as aircraft are started and taxied. The sound is loud and helps mask the presence of others; as his mind wanders the sound becomes a comforting source of white noise, the medium of emptiness and rest. His imagination, once filled with green formation lights glowing along the sides of aircraft and the lighted displays of the cockpits, flies off the airfield faster than any fighter. His thoughts alight in Southern California, eight thousand miles away. Home.

The tasks at hands slowly unstick from his consciousness and fall away completely. The plywood for walling off briefing rooms, the aircraft log-books for the plane with the right engine problem, the computer network set-up that cannot be completed until the aircraft arrive on deck, the Fitness Reports he has to review in his inbox, the need to exercise—they all fade slowly into that delicious white noise along with background chatter behind him. He exhales again and shivers as his breath wafts out over his work-station, then begins the email, "Dear Kate..."

Part II – The Camp

You know those stylized oriental prints? I’d call them Japanese prints, because that’s what most people call them. I dare say most of them are Japanese. But that’s not the point. They’re easy to recognize: sharp, impossibly steep and many mountains; plenty of ominous mist; a red sun or moon? Crazy art, of course. Usually with a pagoda, a samurai, or a kimono-clad lady in the foreground. Perhaps all three. Cartoonish. Well, it hit me as I stared around at South Korea that those prints were actually depicting more or less a real scene. I’d seen those saw-toothed ridges with far too many peaks, too close together; I’d seen that ominous mist; I’d seen that reddish sun (I couldn’t see the sun when I stepped off the C-130, but I would later). It was just like those prints. There were no samurai or pagodas, but maybe those are Japanese things. This was, after all, Korea. But the landscape was both pretty and alien.

I didn’t have much time to contemplate it, however, since our palletized luggage was sitting there and it wouldn’t unload itself. Of course, as an officer I didn’t really have to help—but it doesn’t do to say such things aloud. The essence of Marine Corps leadership is example, and it’s sort of the thing to do to get your hands dirty. Besides, I wanted to get things unloaded quickly and settle as best I might amidst all this austerity. And I don’t like watching other people work without lending a hand. So we conducted a palletization in reverse. The zoomies slung back the cargo net, and every Marine grabbed two or three seabags or rucksacks and amid much cursing humped them over to a waiting 7-ton, whereupon each Marine tossed each bag up to the cargo bed, eight feet above the ground. Not too gentle with our gear, we Marines. Sorta mirrors the way we treat ourselves. And each other. The zoomies watched incredulously. I’m sure they have luggage conveyor belts on their base.

After unloading all our gear we piled into rented minivans for the trip down to our living quarters. There’s apparently a single road on base that winds past the flight line, ducks down a slight incline, forks right as a dirt vehicle track, and ended up at the dusty field where all our tents were pitched. We filled an area the size of a soccer field—and the presence of two goals at either end confirmed that a soccer field was exactly what we’d occupied. In orderly rows the tents stalked, two per “block” with wide paths between. Inside there was wooden flooring that left open a single dirt walkway the length of the tent, while cots were arranged on the flooring every few feet. It looked deceptively neat when I first walked in, of course; there were no Marines there yet. But it was crowded. Even empty it was crowded.

Outside the newly-arrived Marines were roughly sorting the bags by squadron and tent. I picked up my dear comrade’s gear, wondering if he’d soon be here with mine or not. I found a cot in our tent for him, saving a slightly better one for myself. First come, first serve, and anyway we were both close to the heater and far from the door. For maximum warmth and minimum disturbance, of course. One must think about these things.

Fortunately, the other C-130 was delayed but not broken. It arrived after I’d toured the camp, and everyone was finally re-united with their warm clothes and personal effects. It was a happy reunion. Nothing like an austere environment to make you appreciate what luxuries you have...like a sleeping bag, for example. In any case, as he dropped my stuff in the tent I considered our situation.

The living area was right below the departure end of the runway. About 300 feet, actually. As aircraft took off they thundered scarce hundreds of feet above our heads in afterburner, sending deep vibrations through the metal tent poles and assaulting our ears. A little offset was an ingenious pair of “hygiene tents,” which had sixteen shower heads apiece and nine sinks. Behind those tents stood large bladders of water that would be heated and emptied three times a day when sinks and showers were available for washing and shaving and the like. Pretty chic for an austere environment, no? It didn’t matter, of course, that the sinks were small and cramped or that the mirrors reflected a distorted picture from their stainless steel surfaces. It didn’t matter that the shower stalls were communal and uncomfortably close, or that dirt tracked in quickly coated the stall floors with mud, or that they occasionally failed to drain and would become shallow, grimy pools. The great and wonderful news was that we wouldn’t have to shave with cold water from a canteen, or go without showering for days. Thank God for that!

The “services” were located about a quarter mile up the runway and consisted of a medical tent, a mess tent (for non-military types, “the mess” is where food is served), a chapel tent—with no Catholic services, of course—a little gym packed dustily into the sweat factory of a small tent, and an internet tent for those fortunate enough to have packed a computer (and kept it unscathed through the bag transport). The mess hall served freeze dried food in bulk, but it was hot and not too bad. It also provided fresh fruit and coffee almost every meal, which together neutralized the choking down of re-warmed eggs and chicken and made meals quite the red-letter occasion. Later in the exercise an exchange truck showed up along with a Korean Bazaar hawking cheap t-shirts and accessories, but that suffered but poor business at Foal Eagle, the reason for which will be explained shortly.

The work spaces were up next to the ramp, an aviation term for a vast expanse of concrete for which to park airplanes. As North and South Korea are still technically at war, and Yechon is a military base, the ramp was parsed by revetments into individual parking spots. A revetment is usually an earthen mound built up higher than the object it encloses, and serves to protect something from the blast and fragmentation of an explosion. The aren’t much use against precision weapons, of course, which generally will be guided inside the revetment and thus negates it’s defensive effect, but artillery and “dumb bombs” are usually nowhere near accurate enough. Long experience had shown me that the trappings of war are everywhere evident in Korea. The permanent revetments at Yechon were corrugated steel siding built up to about fifteen feet and filled with dirt. The maintainers set up their work tents in one of the unused revetments; the planning and briefing areas were with command post in a barbed-wire enclosure under the fringe of a small forest on base. Again, tents. Though things were a bit nicer here, as wooden boards were laid for walkways between the various spaces, field-mobile generators provided electrical power, and a ruggedized satellite piped in internet and telephone service. A cut above actual austerity, really. Not that I was complaining.

So yeah, it was camping. The tents were drafty and creaky and more than a few had visible pinprick holes through which the light shone in daytime, the roads were dusty and we walked them back and forth ceaselessly (occasionally stepping out of the way of a passing forklift or cargo truck), and the jets audibly assailed us at all hours of the day. But we had shelter, showers, hot food, internet, and phones. Things weren’t all bad.

Vignette 2

He made his way gingerly to the back of the long tent, stepping gingerly on creaking plywood so as not to disturb the line of cots running the length of the structure on either side of a center aisle. The cots were erected on floorboards, but the center aisle was nothing but dirt. Actually, tonight (like nearly every night) it was a soggy morass of yellow mud.

Were people sleeping, it would be a treacherous journey as, shielding the light of his flashlight so as not to wake his comrades he’d negotiate strewn seabags and backpacks, lines of cord on which hung wet clothing from the constant rain, and the occasional end of a cot sticking out farther than the rest. But fortunately the light was still on. Most of the Marines in the tent were reading or watching movies on laptops as the hours ticked onward. Sleep was on everyone’s mind—it was the only thing that made the time here pass quickly.

As he reached his cot, he knew something was missing. He looked blankly at his little area for a moment, balancing over the muddy aisle. Suddenly it hit him. His backpack! He cursed quietly, remembering he’d left it up at the work spaces. He needed it.

One of the few luxuries at Yechon was the Korean Gym. The Korean Air Force, of course, did not live or work in tents. They had normal dormitories and facilities that were probably pretty nice. Only the Marines were practicing “expeditionary warfare” by enforced austerity. The gym was really a sort of community center, for it had a small restaurant (irreverently called the “Yum Yum Chicken Shop”), a bowling alley, some pool tables, and—wonder of wonders!—a large shower and locker room. The reason he needed his backpack was because he kept his toothbrush and all the rest of his toiletries in the backpack in case he had an opportunity to sneak a shower in that gym during the day. Without it, however, he couldn’t hope to shower or shave the following morning. He’d have to go back to the squadron spaces and pick it up.

He cursed again. It was raining hard, as it had been all day, and the walk up to his backpack was a little over a quarter of a mile. It would not be pleasant.

He shuffled around in his seabag and extracted his gore-tex parka and pants. Cinching them both tight over his flight suit, he clapped a fleece beanie on his head against the forty-degree weather and pulled his hood down low. Carefully he made his way back to the tent entrance, paused for a minute as if having second thoughts, the plunged into the wet outdoors.

Outside was a world of falling water and slippery mud. The floodlights illuminating the tent city showed nothing but hard, driving rain, and the shadows of ruts and tire tracks in the mud gleamed treacherously under his lowered gaze. He walked carefully, so as not to slip, ignoring the rainwater rolling down his face and the gore-tex trousers he kept having to pull up.

After several hundred yards he made the road. The going thereon was easier, since he didn’t have to deal with the mud. He strode purposefully, eager to end his errand. He could feel the rain saturating and soaking through his parka. Away from the lights the world was dark and wet.

The squadron spaces were another illuminated wilderness of mud and falling water, only this time the spectral shape of concertina wire and rifle-toting guards stood out in sharp shadows. Presenting his ID and shivering in the cold brought on by his sudden stop, he ducked into the camp, found his backpack, and began home. By now his feet squelched inside his boots and it was harder to keep the gore-tex pants up as they were weighed down by water. But more than halfway finished with his task, he walked rather more quickly down the hill to the tent city.

After another slippery trip over the mud, he ducked back into his sleeping tent and brushed off the water near the door. Most of the lights were off by now, as his comrades began falling asleep. Making his way back to his cot he stripped off his wet outer garments and hung them up, did the same with his flight suit, and changed into a waterproof track suit for the quick trip back outside to the hygiene tent. All that for the ability to brush my teeth, he thought wryly. I hate this place.

Part III – Camp Life

Remember how I said that things weren’t all bad in Yechon? Well, they weren’t until the first night. Really, to be expected—you know what they say, “If it sounds too good to be true…” I was totally unprepared for the hard, implacable cold that set in when the sun went down.

This was no mere nightly chill such as we find in San Diego, laced with the fragrance of flowers and the softness of the sea. This was no crisp coolness, the delight of autumn evenings. This was continental, wintry cold, dead and dry and soul-sucking. I thought I was prepared. I had all three modular elements of my sleeping bag put together, making it as warm as possible. I was wearing a fleece over a t-shirt and undershorts. And yet I awoke at 3:00 AM by the crushing cold. I couldn’t escape it. With each movement my bare legs or arms would come into contact with some unwarmed patch of my sleeping bag, sending shards of pure, evil cold into my core. Shivering, I quickly sat up and struggled into polypropylene long underwear. Warmed by my struggle and by the added layer, I was able to fall asleep again. Yet I still woke up cold...and as I climbed reluctantly out of my sleeping bags I noticed that the water bottles next to our cots had frozen. Inside the tent. Next to the heater. It was apparently still winter in Korea despite the late April date.

The reason for the 3:00 AM wake-up became obvious the next morning. Our “field expeditionary” tent heaters were these little metal cylinders that burned kerosene like a jet engine (in fact, to make logistics easier they burned the same fuel as our aircraft). They didn’t feel very efficient, but that was mostly because they had a cavernous tent to fill with warm exhaust. They also ran out of fuel after eight hours of operation—hence, the 3:00 AM freezing wakeup. Standard. In any case, there were two cold hours spent in the sleeping bag that night before the requirements of nature and the inevitable dawn drove me shivering into the dread Korean winter (ok, spring really) for a morning shave and shower.

Being a prideful military organization, and mindful that there were foreign military personnel to impress, the rules on uniform wear were pretty tight. There was to be no hanging out or loitering, like, in anything less than appropriate civilian attire or full “uniform of the day” when in the camp. Otherwise we might embarrass ourselves in front of our warlike Korean hosts, what with the chained wallets, affliction T-Shirts, and high-end exercise gear that Marines like to wear these days. Though I can’t for the life of me think that we had much to be proud of in front of the Koreans—they probably thought we were crazy enough living in the tundra and mud of their soccer field instead of somewhere indoors. South Korea being a civilized country and all. But that’s neither here nor there; in fact that’s where the brass are. Far above my pay grade.

In any case, those clothing strictures did not apply the hygiene tent. So shivering into my running suit and clapping a fleece beanie on my head, I cobbled together a towel and shaving kit and headed to the sinks. The ground had frozen solid and was a warren of ridges and ruts under my sneakers. I would learn to love a solid ground beneath me in a few days, after the rain set in. There was a ten-minute agonizing wait in line outside the tent before finally, thank God! entrance into the warm moist environment of steamy showers and hot shaving water.

The hygiene tent worked with an admirable, if awkward, efficiency. A quick and self-effacing disrobe, five minutes at the sink, two minutes in the shower, a five-minute period of dressing and packing up (careful not to get more mud than necessary on our persons or gear), then a quick cold shuffle back to the tent. This would be my morning routine for two and a half weeks. Sometimes there would be a line, and the Marines running the tent would yell and belittle and threaten to cut off our water in an attempt to make us more efficient. But if there’s a right way and a wrong way to do such things, well, the yelling and threatening is one hundred per cent the Marine Corps way. Not that it was really necessary, as the cold does wonders for the efficiency of a morning toilette. From there it was a quick walk to the chow hall for freeze-dried eggs and hot coffee (which we’d make last as long as possible) and then a jaunt up the hill to work.

Vignette 3

"Hey, you want to burn one?" asked Mac. To no-one in particular, really, though it was directed at Red Bone.


"Yeah man," came the response.


"Anybody got extras?" I could tell Mac didn't feel bad about asking, since most time he provided cigarettes for the rest of the squadron.


"Yeah man," replied Red Bone, consciously echoing his last utterance. He smiled a little with his eyes to let everyone know his sarcasm was meant humorously.


Craving the company, I popped up from my position next to the computer screen, and made my way to my cot. Navigating the crossing wires, the mud puddles in the central path that stretched the length of the tent, and the clotheslines was almost second nature by now. I quickly flipped back my sleeping bag cover, fished my fleece wash-cap out from under my pillow, and jammed my feet into my sneakers. Their smoke would not entail enough time outside to require a polypropylene layer or anything.


Following them, I bent down to push through the tent flap and suddenly emerged into a monochromatic world. The cold dark night stood face to face with the cold bright night illuminated by the floodlights on the hill. The generators hummed loudly and the gas-powered heating units roared quietly, effectively masking the squelching footsteps of Marines walking to and fro between tents, picking their way carefully between the ruts of vehicle tires and the patches of slippery mud. Shielding my eyes against the floodlights, I followed the smokers into the shadows behind the tent. I paused briefly to let my eyes adjust to the sudden darkness when the floodlight disappeared behind a dumpster.

As I stood their smelling the unadulterated cold, two jets rocketed overhead in sequence from the runway, growing from a sudden roar to an unbearable crescendo of shaking noise, long blue afterburner flames, and flashing red anti-collision lights. My ears ringing, I watched in awe, never having gotten over the magnificent power of fighter airplanes casting off the earth for the freedom of the sky.


The smoke pit lay next to a gully, a tree, and was marked only by a metal pail. Instinctively we huddled into a tight circle, and passed the lighter around. They inhaled gratefully at their cigarette while I stood, hands in pockets, and enjoyed the familiar smell of secondhand smoke.

We were suddenly aware of two Marines walking toward us on the outskirts of the camp. This was not unusual. However, one of the Marines was dressed in a shiny silver overcoat. Our conversation hushed slightly as we watched him walk by. I pulled on my cigarette to avoid making a facial expression, noting that the overcoat was really more of a hoodie, and the silver material appropriate to a space-blanket.


He passed, walking stiffly. He was aware of our sarcastically amused scrutiny.


"That's an interesting garment" opined one dark figure, jovially.


"Hey, it's cold outside. It's like a space blanket" replied another. Captain Obvious, I thought.


"Is your name Marty McFly?" queried a third. There was a pregnant pause, and suddenly we couldn't help it. We laughed. It only made things funnier to watch my comrades involuntarily cough out mouthfuls of cigarette smoke in their merriment. The silver hoodie was too ludicrously like "Back to the Future."


Our tight circle momentarily fell apart as the laughter grew. "Dude! Where did you park your DeLorean?" asked one of us, drawing new gales of laughter.


Slowly, happily, conversation returned, but this time to skim-boards, flux-capacitors, and 88 miles per hour. One by one, they finished their cigarettes and we trooped quickly back to our tents through the mud.


That was a happy moment.

Part IV – Flying

He stepped out of the “work” tent into the cold rain. Shivering slightly at the sodden shrubbery outside the barbed wire and the ankle-deep mud within, he strode down the wooden boards towards the mission planning tent. Some planks had become so waterlogged they had split, leaving a hole that could eat your foot if you weren’t careful.

Ducking inside the mission planning tent, he joined with other aircrew to look at the day’s special instructions and code words, incorporating them into the planning for their specific flight. That was the hardest part, he thought—the missions out of Yechon weren’t particularly complicated except for getting around the battle-ready airspace of the peninsula. But part of the reason they were in this exercise was to simulate the complexity of flying within the intricate coordination measures required in a hypothetical conflict, all the while sharing the airspace with aircraft from the Air Force, the Navy, and the South Korean Air Force. The actual training was in the flight procedures, not the tactics.

An hour later, they had updated a common card with that day’s correct information and planned their mission on the computers. Grabbing their flight bags, they trooped through a gray drizzle to a cold tent, empty but for a table and several chairs. He sat down to hear his pilot begin the brief.

The brief mostly covered the procedures for flying. It was more of a rehearsal than an explanation, and it took nearly all the allotted time. Remembering he had yet to get his flight tapes, when it was over he hurried out and down to the intelligence tent, where he signed out several pieces of classified gear and received a pre-flight brief covering the simulated situation. The exercise made things as realistic as possible with daily objectives and a shifting enemy situation.

Armed now with all the paraphernalia required for the flight, he joined his crew members as they slithered through the mud to the maintenance tents. They signed for the aircraft, buckled on their flight gear, and strode out to the airplanes parked in the revetments. The canopies were closed against the rain, so he carried his bag with him on the preflight and was careful not to set it down on the wet pavement. After he looked at the exterior of the aircraft, he paused, waiting for his pilot to finish, and then when they were both ready, the maintainer in charge of the launch opened the canopy. They quickly scurried into their seats and closed the canopy before too much rain could fall. They started the jet a few minutes later, checked in with their wingman, and taxied out of the revetment to the end of the runway.

He called for takeoff clearance. Despite the thick Korean accent of the controller, he deciphered, "Combat six-three, cleared takeoff runway two-eight. Switch departure." He tapped the comm switch with his right foot, and holding it down responded clearly, "Combat six-three cleared takeoff two-eight, switching." The noise of the jet engines increased through the helmet and earplugs as his airplane began slowly tracking across the pavement on to the runway concrete. Reaching down to the radio control, he turned the knob to the pre-set departure frequency and pulled the knob out to check the frequency digits.


The jet lurched to a stop on the runway and he turned to look at his wingman taxiing out behind him. As his wingman pulled alongside, the pilot began the complicated exchange of hand gestures that sufficed for communication. First the two fingers wagged two and fro, indicating "run 'em up," which was followed by another engine surge from both aircraft. He glanced inside the cockpit at the engine indicators to ensure they were both operating smoothly, then flicked his glance up at the Flight Control System display. No error indications.


Quickly he looked over his wingman's aircraft, staring hard in turn at the panels and the control surfaces, then underneath the aircraft. Nothing was loose, no surfaces were binding, and no fluids were leaking. He saw in the other cockpit both aircrew doing the same for his jet. The other pilot flashed a thumbs up, and over his instrument cowl he saw his own pilot initiate the takeoff gesture: palm flat, rotating slowly down to the throttle. As it disappeared below the canopy, the aircraft lurched with brake release and the engines rolled up quickly. Both aircraft began moving.


He looked back at the engine indications. RPM increasing quickly, matched by engine temperature, fuel flow, oil pressure, and the needles that indicated the varying degrees of nozzle closure. A few seconds later, the just perceptible change in engine timbre as the afterburners lit off. Feeling pleasantly the acceleration pushing him back against his seat, he turned to look at the wingman, tracking along the runway beside him. The scenery was flying by now. Smoothly he felt the aircraft's nose lift off and he watched his wingman pitch up beside him. They were airborne. Out of the corner of his eye he saw his pilot give the first exaggerated head bob: gear up. Then the second: flaps up. He watched his wingman's gear retract into the jet and as he felt the three thumps of his own gear he checked his instrument panel. Three gear mounts up and locked.


Depressing the comm pedal with his right foot again, he intoned clearly "Departure, Combat six-three airborne passing five hundred for one-zero thousand."


"Combat six-three, roger. Climb maintain one-zero thousand" came the accented reply
.

“Combat six-three, one-zero thousand." Pulling his foot off the comm pedal, he glanced at the ground passing swiftly beneath him. In the sunlight he saw farms spreading out below him, fallow after the winter. It was a pretty and organized country, with industry and commerce centered on the obvious roads running through the valleys while the many steep hills remained undeveloped and beautifully stark.


Turning his attention inside the cockpit, he adjusted the navigation toward the anticipated point on their route. Bringing up the fuel management page, he saw the external tanks emptying back into the integral fuel tanks. A quick check on his wingman before he bought up the air-to-air radar and began seeking aircraft that might conflict with his flight path. He quickly noted the sun angle and elevation for later. Then he looked outside again.


Climbing quickly, the aircraft now offered a much wider view of the countryside. A scattered layer of clouds at eight thousand feet looked flat and solid from just above, and the valleys below were disappearing in the characteristic haze of the region. All around him he could see ridges marching in serrated lines away to the horizon.


Noting that they were still flying the runway heading, he keyed the radio again. "Departure, Combat six-three like to turn left to TAMBO and switch Cobra."


"Combat six-three, roger. Cancel IFR. Switch Cobra." He swore under his breath. He didn't want to lose Air Traffic Control flight following just yet. But that's how they do things out here. Sighing inaudibly, he replied, "Combat six-three, switching." He keyed the other radio to talk to his wingman. "Button 16 prime." He rolled the radio to button 16 and checked the frequency, then transmitted "Cobra, Combat six-three, VFR one-zero thousand feet, direct TAMBO for the R-110." The aircraft banked left as he waited for a response, and the flight began the transition to their actual mission for the day.

Epilogue

“Sir, the CO said I was to take you wherever you needed to go.” I looked incredulously at the Lance Corporal. He stood sheepishly beside the passenger-side door, through which I could see all my bags. It was a second before I replied, “That’s awfully nice of the Colonel.”

He smiled at that. “Yes, sir.” I got in the car and gave him instructions to my barracks.

Yechon was over. Finally. The familiar buildings of Iwakuni, drab though they might have been, stood over me. The prospect of a real shower and real fresh food loomed large in my mind. I couldn't wait to be able to talk to my wife twice a day again...and actually see her face! It was good to be back.

I got a good deal on the end, you see. The ol’ major was a good guy after all. I was the first aircrew sent into that muddy little hole, so I got to be the first one out, albeit while flying in the Colonel’s back seat. Though that was kind of a guarantee, actually. If that aircraft broke, well, the Colonel wasn’t staying. He’d just take another jet. Perk of the rank, and all that. I was just happily along for the ride.

It was an interesting and mostly painful experience, Yechon. I got to look over the treeless slopes of North Korea, marching away abruptly at the band of virgin forest that occupies the Demilitarized Zone, and marvel at a hostile nation so poor its denizens must cut down trees for fuel in the winter. I got to laugh with the Koreans while eating Yum Yum Chicken. I got to see my beloved Corps take half a Marine Aircraft Group and deploy it to an "austere environment." I got to endure two weeks of rain, mud and cold. I think I got to be a little wiser for all that, though my comrades will (in all probability) tell you otherwise.

It was a good experience, I guess. At least after the fact.