Letters From War—The Thousand Yard Stare

By Don Harward

I know what it is like to love a woman so much that it physically hurts to walk away from her. I know what it is like to have a deep and abiding respect for my father and to admire him for the sacrifices in his life. I know what it costs to be honest—and the price you pay when you aren’t. I know what it is like to see my reflection in my son’s tear-filled eyes when I turn to leave to go off to war. I know what it is to be so scared that you bite through your tongue and taste your own blood. I have had my last and final thought, only to survive a minute more and experience the elation of knowing I’m still alive, and I know what it is like to love my country even though some of my countrymen don’t have a clue. I have learned of honour, loyalty, dedication, tradition and sacrifice. I have met great men who knew no fear and I have watched lesser men run from danger. I have learned that the only real limits we have are self-imposed, that one’s fears are one’s greatest enemies, and to conquer them is to find freedom. And I have come to know my creator in a personal way.

I learned all these lessons along the path of being an army aviator and soldier—a path that certainly wasn’t easy or profitable. Most people miss the lessons that such experience offers; they miss it by pursuing safer and more traditional paths, and I guess that’s OK. But for me, there was only one course to take, and in doing so, I learned the most valuable lessons of all.

I think it all began with my father, who was a B-17 pilot in World War Two. He was shot down, shot up and frozen nearly to death in an unheated, unpressurised aluminium war machine while lumbering along at twenty-odd thousand feet. Flak exploded all around him at times, and fighters searched for him and his fellow aviators—and sometimes found them. The losses of the US 8^th Air Force were amongst the highest that any US Army unit ever sustained.

My father had a quiet confidence about him, and when he met another warrior, I noticed a special bond. It was the direct eye-to-eye contact, the firm handshake and the slap on the back. It was further evidenced by an occasional tear and hearty laughter. They spoke the names of others who had flags posted by their headstones; those names were always spoken about with the deepest respect.

Only occasionally would my father mention anything about the war; one really had to listen, and it always captivated me. Once, as I rummaged through a cedar chest of my Mom’s, I found some black and whites of old aeroplanes. One was of the tail of an aeroplane taken in flight and even my youthful eyes could tell something wasn’t right. The metal was torn and jagged, and a lot of it looked like the grid in my bedroom window. During supper that night, I presented the photo to Dad and asked him about it. He glanced at it and then went back to eating; it was his custom to never answer anything directly without first thinking about what he might say.

After supper, he took me into the living room and explained that the photo was one of his aeroplane taken in flight during the war. I remember it well because he stopped looking at me and adopted the same stare—fixed at infinity—that he sometimes adopted when talking with his veteran friends.

He talked as if I wasn’t there. “If you see flak, you need to be ready to feather the prop. If it is black, you just fly right through it. If it is red, you’d better check your engines right away; you are probably hit somewhere and if you lose oil pressure, you’re in a little trouble. But, if you see orange, you are hit and you may only have seconds to get the prop feathered. If you don’t and you lose all the oil, then that dead engine will create enough drag to cause you real trouble.”

“Dad, did you ever lose an engine?”

“Son, I have lost many—far too many…”

Not all of my father’s recollections were gloomy, but one never really knew how they were going to turn out until the end. He spoke of one mission when the flak had found him. German gunners had destroyed an engine over Germany and Dad’s plane could no longer keep up with the formation. Two P-51s escorted his straggling bomber safely all the way back to England and the small airfield where the 351st Bomb Wing was stationed.

With the weather deteriorating as they arrived, the two P-51 pilots elected to land and spend the night and fly back to their own base in the morning. Dad put them both up in his building—a Quonset hut with a few spare bunks. They shared dinner and some drinks at the officers’ club and traded stories, as is a common custom amongst aviators. The next morning, after listening to the Mustang pilots bragging about the performance of their sleek fighters, Dad watched them lift off from the runway. The first aircraft pulled up into a climb, but for no apparent reason, as the second fighter lifted off, it rolled inverted and crashed in a nearby stand of trees. That was the way a lot of his stories went—one minute a story might be of new-found friends and high adventure, and the next instant, it could change and leave one faced with stark reality and confronting the brevity of life.

That’s how it is in combat. During the invasion of Panama—Operation Just Cause (we all called it “just-cos”)—I had the same kind of experience for the first time. It was either day two or three of the operation—it escapes me now—but US Forces were moving close to the gulf side of the Panama Canal. The night before, I had flown two of a number of Special Operations missions by helicopters in preparation for the upcoming attack. As the battle for Colon began, our Little Birds (AH-6) began hammering Panamanian Defence Forces’ targets with their mini-guns and 2.75-inch rockets. The Chinooks that I was flying were ferrying ammunition, troops and fuel, and had set up a FARP (forward area refuel point) nearby. The Little Bird gun ships made frequent trips to the FARP to re-arm and occasionally take on fuel.

I flew my Chinook to Howard Air Force Base on the Pacific side to get some more of everything and returned around two hours later. When we got back, the Little Birds were no longer flying. At first, I thought we must have dispatched the enemy already, but I was very wrong. When I asked for an update, somebody told me that Sonny and Lieutenant Hunter had just been shot down and thought they were dead! The words hit me like a Mack truck. I remember looking at the soldier and saying, “Don’t f**k with me; where are they?” The answer was unequivocal: “They’re dead; they’re just dead.” That was it—that’s how it is. One minute you’re on top of the world, everything is going well, and the next, something terrible happens.

Many years later, when I came back from my next war, I, too, had developed the same stare I had seen in my father. After much soul searching and rehashing of missions, it was my father who finally brought me home. With kindness and understanding, he talked me down and shared with me for hours in the shade of the old chestnut tree in his back yard. Finally, he told me of his war. He spoke openly about men—his friends—dying, of the terrible destruction and the tumble of emotions one goes through after something like that. My Dad died a couple of years ago—an unsung American hero and part of what I think was our finest generation.

Occasionally, I see the same stares in Afghanistan, and I saw them in Iraq. There is a whole new generation of warriors taking its place in today’s battles; some yearn to hear the sound of the big guns and some others really don’t want to—but they all serve honourably, none the less.

This newest generation will also go home to raise their families quietly just like my dad did, even after learning the same difficult and sometimes traumatic lessons that my father’s generation learned. Their children might also stumble across pictures—perhaps of burned out Humvees or crashed aircraft—and ask their fathers to explain them. They will look into innocent eyes and struggle for ways to explain the unimaginable to innocent minds. They will fight back the emotion as they struggle with memories of losing friends and force smiles as they try to put such things into words in ways that don’t really say what happened.

When my Dad was still around, he had always liked one of my best friends, Gerry Izzo. When my second son was born, my Dad called from Maryland and asked who was with me. When I told him the girls, my pastor and Gerry, he had asked me, “Do you mean Gerry Izzo? You know, I think he has always been there.” It was true; Gerry always seemed to be around whether things were good or the chips were down.

Gerry was another American hero. He and I first met in 1980 in Kitzingen, Germany, and often flew together during our Army careers and on special operations. One day, in 1993, I was driving home from Fort Campbell and stopped at an intersection. As I watched for a break in the oncoming traffic, as the last car approached, I could clearly see the driver had the thousand-yard stare of a man who has seen some really bad stuff—it was my friend Gerry. I waved, but he was lost in whatever thought he was having and he drove right past me, immersed in his private world.

A couple of weeks earlier, Gerry had taken part in a battle in Mogadishu, Somalia, that was made infamous when enemy forces successfully shot down several of my unit’s helicopters. CNN had repeatedly played footage of my friends being dragged in the streets of that city while their families had tried to deal with the loss. That combat had been some of the most intense ever seen by the US Army. Gerry had survived that day but, like my Dad, was changed forever. I don’t know how many times he and I have talked about that time. Were the decisions right or wrong? Could things have turned out differently? Man, I hate the second-guessing.

Allow me to tell a funny story about Gerry and me. As new pilots, we found ourselves assigned to the same unit in Germany—Alpha Company, 3^rd Aviation Battalion, Combat, of the 3^rd US Infantry Division. I flew the OH-58A Kiowa, which we used as an aero-scout platform, and Gerry was a command pilot in UH-1H Huey and had a rock solid reputation. It was a great first unit to be in; it boasted forty aircraft and had a seemingly unlimited flight hour programme. I had become a border-qualified scout and was authorised to fly right up to the sensitive border between East and West Germany.

On this particular day, I was flying as a co-pilot for Gerry in a Huey. I was not current in the Huey, but the fact that I was “border qualified” put me in the right seat on a reconnaissance flight of the border. While flying near Checkpoint 23, we heard a mayday call on the guard frequency. The mayday call was surreal, “Mayday, Mayday, Red Catcher 55 is under attack.” (Red Catcher was the call sign for all 2^nd Armoured Cavalry units).

The controlling agency radioed back asking for his position and a situation report. Gerry and I looked at each other and continued to listen. “This is Red Catcher 55. I am in the vicinity of Checkpoint 25. I am being attacked by a Mi-8 Echo.” Hearing that, I cranked the Huey over, and accelerated to VNE and headed directly towards Checkpoint 25.

From the back of our helicopter, the cavalry squadron commander, Lieutenant-Colonel Steel, yelled at us to get over there as quickly as we could. Gerry asked me what my plan was and what I intended to do. Without thinking it through, I told him: “We’re going to draw his fire and give Red Catcher a chance to escape!”

It took Gerry a couple of seconds to reply, but his reply was classic: “We’re going to do what?” You should have seen his face! Yes, I know it was not the best of plans, but that’s how it played out. As we approached the area, we saw an Mi-8 making slow passes over the OH-58. It looked like the East German was just playing around, but I can appreciate that it must have been pretty scary for the Cav pilot, not knowing if the Hip was going to shoot.

Thankfully, before we had to do anything, Gerry saw two F-4 Phantoms smoking up the valley so we cleared off. The Air Force had launched the Phantoms out of Ramstein to either intercept the Hip or shoot it down. After seeing those Phantoms come streaking by, the Hip pilot popped back across the border into East Germany and ended the incident.

Such is every military aviator’s life—one of constantly mixed emotions. He will experience the highest of thrills and the lowest of lows. He will be scared, happy, lonely, unsure, tired, hungry, angry and have a hundred other feelings. Over time, he will become part of an elite group who place their personal wants and desires second to the needs of their nation. However tough the life might be, no military aviator ever wants to walk away from it. I think the best description I have ever heard of a military aviator’s thinking came in the closing of a recent letter from a friend. It said:

There are only two things an Army aviator really fears. The first is taking off not knowing if it might be his last flight, and the second is taking off knowing it is to be his last flight.