Maybe the Luckiest Man Alive

I have a very clear memory of where I was and what I wanted to be when I was 15. I wanted to be in the Navy but could not decide if I wanted to be a sailor, an aviator, a submariner or an intelligence officer. Read on....

As I came down the ladder leaving the EP-3E from what I knew was probably going to be my last operational flight in the Navy there at Naval Air Facility, Atsugi, Japan, I was feeling a bit sad as well as nostalgic and proud. It was late June, 1978 and I was completing my 27-month tour as Officer-in-Charge, Naval Security Group Detachment Atsugi. I had been in Japan for almost seven years and it had been quite a run, both professionally and personally.

As I reached the bottom of the ladder on that very hot and sticky day I suddenly had a flashback to another very hot and sticky day nearly 20 years earlier. That day in late July 1958 had changed my life even though nothing momentous happened then, but there on the airfield in Japan I suddenly remembered that earlier similarily very hot day in Texas with crystal clarity. I was coming back from having visited the very small grocery store on Lawn View between Texas and Ohio Streets in Corpus Christi, Texas, about 4 blocks from our home at 338 Atlantic. As I crossed Ohio Street that day I suddenly realized I was really, really bored. Not an unusual feeling for a nearly 15-year-old boy, but what I did to relieve it, I now realize many years later, was.

In May of that year I had been awarded Eagle Scout, something I am still proud of all these many years later. It had taken nearly 3 years of focused effort. I worked on some aspect of the many requirements nearly every day, especially during the last 20 months when I changed to Troop 216 under a great scoutmaster, Mr. Herb Noakes. In June I had gone to scout wilderness camp in the West Texas mountains as a junior leader, something I thoroughly enjoyed, and then in July had gone to Camp Capers, an Episcopal Church camp in the beautiful Texas Hill Country, where my team had won the “Square C”, the award for being best “cabin” (team). It had been a great summer until mid-July but now after two weeks with no goal or anything specific to focus my energy on I was bored.  

As I walked down Lawnview, a dusty little side street with crushed shell sidewalks, I realized I needed a new goal, but what?  As I pondered what to do next I recalled listening every day to my older brother Bob (I thought he was a god in those days. He was 19 at the time and a sophomore via a very generous complete scholarship at the prestigious University of the South, Sewanee, Tennessee, as he and his friends discussed how they were going to fulfill their military obligation. It was their major subject of discussion. Back in those days all “able-bodied males” had a 2-year obligation to serve their nation.  (Still a good idea to me, except I would include females as well and offer service in such things as the Peace Corps and Volunteers in Service to America, as alternatives to service in the military!) If they were not a full-time college student they could wait to be drafted or visit the various recruiters, take aptitude tests and, determining how well they placed, agree to go in the military for more years in exchange for technical training…jet engine mechanic, nurse, heavy equipment operator or maintenance, pipe-fitter, welder, electrician, policeman, fireman etc. Of course, each service had differing needs and there was much discussion among all young men in those days as to what was the best deal, and what was the best service. 

With those discussions in mind and influenced by my substantial reading on naval and maritime subjects, my favorite reading material by a long way in those days, I decided then and there on Lawnview that I was going to go in the Navy, probably for a career. An immediate second question popped up. What did I want to do in the Navy?  I had read “Navy Wings of Gold” and other stories of the carrier air war in the Pacific and immediately thought of being a naval aviator. Then I recalled reading “The Boy’s Book of Sea Battles” (the first book I ever read on my own!) and C. S. Forrester’s books on surface warfare both in wooden and iron ships and thought it would be grand to serve in destroyers and cruisers. Finally, I recalled reading “Run Silent, Run Deep” and other books about submarine warfare in World War II, which most of my uncles had served in, and I clearly remember bits and pieces of it, and thought it would be really cool to be a submariner. In many of the books had I read on naval warfare the role of the naval intelligence officer was pointed out as being of high importance. So, I also added that role to my list for consideration. Finally, tales of living overseas and the value of learning a foreign language and culture were also interspersed in many of those stories, so I added “Live overseas for a significant amount of time and really learn a foreign language” to my short list.

I did not know all that much about the Navy as a career at that moment, but I suspected that I was looking at four mutually exclusive sets: Aviator, Submariner, Surface officer, Intel. I guessed that I might be able to combine one of the warfare specialties with being an intel officer, but that would be about the extent of it. I decided then and there that I would join the Sea Scouts to start learning the basics of seamanship and put the final decision as to what my career in the Navy would be in God’s hands. Now, I am not an overly religious person, but I do acknowledge a supreme being and what happened in the next 20 years is a clear testament to me that there is one.

As I stepped off the ladder for the last time of that EP-3E, the newest airplane in the Navy’s inventory and the first aircraft in the world to use a central computer to run its primary mission system (which I had been responsible for wringing out and bringing into service) I was stopped dead in my tracks as my mind flashed back, unbidden, to that hot late July day in Texas nearly 20 years earlier.

“Holy S----! I have done everything I dreamed of nearly 20 years ago.” I had just finished nearly seven years forward deployed to Japan operating on the ragged edge of the Cold War. Indeed, in the reconnaissance/intelligence business the Cold War was always just a short step away from going hot and we all knew it. Over 200 men in my specific part of the Navy, signals intelligence and reconnaissance, had been killed or captured since I joined the Navy doing what I had just finished doing for more years than most officers. (Two ships, USS Pueblo and USS Liberty, and one aircraft, an EC-121 from my squadron, Fleet Air Reconnaissance One (VQ-1), had been captured, seriously wounded or shot down since I joined the Navy.) But that was what not what gave me pause, it was the fact that I had served in three cruisers, USS Horne (DLG-30), USS Worden (DLG-18) and USS Chicago (CG-11) in combat, and two submarines, USS Pintado (SSN-672) and USS Pogy (SSN-647) on classified missions that could have, and very nearly did on several occasions, turn into actual combat, and three Navy reconnaissance aircraft, the EC-121M, EP-3B, and EP-3E, involved in very important and dangerous missions in hostile airspace well within range of potential enemy weapons systems. Finally, I was now a designated technical intelligence officer certified in several systems, and spoke reasonable Russian and Japanese.  I HAD DONE EVERYTHING I CONCEIVED OF DOING 19 years and 11 months earlier! Thank you, GOD!

Then I said something that, in looking back, was very foolish, but I did not know it then. “God, realize the rest of my life is going to be pretty tame, but I acknowledge that I owe you a Big One and I will not complain. Thank you very, very much!”

I believed at that moment, and still do, that I was possibly the luckiest man alive. My life previous to that moment had not been a complete bed of roses, but clearly on balance “the prize was worth the game”.

A month after that flashback on the airfield at Atsugi I reported to the US Air Force Security Service Headquarters, Kelly AFB, San Antonio, Texas and my professional life really took off in many ways.

I had reported there to take a desk job but my boss's boss, CVol Ed Berry, took one look at my record, especially the part about bringing the EP-3E online and called me into his office both to say hello and to offer me the golden opportunity of being placed on USAF flight orders, sent to a couple of USAF unique short training courses, and then given the task of flying of EVERY reconnaissance mission track in which the Air Force and the Navy share the same airspace. At the end of this substantial assignment, I was to write a paper on how the USAF and the USN could better cooperate and collaborate. ""What do you think of that idea?" My reply leaped out of my mouth: "Sir, I don't think I have the imagination to write myself that good a set of orders!" And things just got better and better from there....

The orders did have their downside. Less than 2 months later I was almost shot down in a US Air Force RC-135M over the northern Gulf of Tokin by four MiG-21Hs and, in diving to avoid them we almost crashed into the sea, leveling out at 200 feet, rather than the planned 500 feet. My anticipated “boring life” had been put on hold, but I am getting ahead of myself. Let me just say that a “boring life” never fully materialized…still has not.  I may indeed be the luckiest man alive in many ways ...