The same can be said for what I once thought about being a flag officer. I had power, the power to do good. The power to affect the outcome of conflicts, to shape the squadron ― and later a carrier battle group ― in the way that I thought most effective to form a cohesive fighting force.
Much of that happened. I had had command of the superb fighting squadron, VF-95, the best Tomcat squad that ever existed. And command of Carrier Battle Group 14, one of the most grueling, challenging tours of my entire career. I had learned it was much easier to do the fighting and dying yourself than to order other men and women out to do it at your command. I hadn't expected the feeling of helplessness watching them launch, knowing that some of them wouldn't come back. Nor had I known then that so much had been kept from me, that the government had failed to live up to the promise that I made to every aviator who flew combat missions at my command that we would get them out. How could I make them believe me, when I knew I had believed ― and been lied to.
The cockpit that was once as familiar as my childhood bedroom was now just the smallest bit disconcerting, at least in the first few seconds after I strapped in. I had to make a conscious effort to readjust my way of thinking, to once again become the fighter pilot that I was. But in as few odd, painfully nostalgic moments, I stripped off the outer veneer that circumstances forced me to wear, and within seconds was as at home with the knobs, buttons, and flight controls as I ever was. In a way, it was like being born again.
But would I have changed my career path if I could have? Probably not. Competition is ingrained in every pilot from the moment he or she steps into basic training. You claw your way to the top of your class, knowing that if you are the best, the very best, you will have your choice of aircraft when you graduate. Later, as a junior officer, you learn what the checkpoints are ― what tours of duty are considered desirable for promotion competitiveness, what assignments spell out a dead end to your career. We scramble and scratch for the former, and to avoid the latter, fully indoctrinated in the quest for power we call building a career in naval aviation.
No one ever tells you, though, that getting what you think you want will strip you of the one thing you truly desire, the reason you chose this odd, demanding career path in the first place. It's gradual at first, the way you find more and more of your time taken up with leadership, paperwork, and developing new subordinates. These duties etch into your flight schedule time, until you finally find yourself putting notes in the Snivel Log, asking the schedulers not to assign you to flights during particular times. The transition of turning into a desk jockey is a gradual slippery slope.
Batman was one of the few men I knew who managed to alternate tours in Washington, D. C., while still maintaining his cockpit proficiency. True, a number of his shore duty tours had been squadron, or attached to the naval test pilot facility in Maryland, but he managed to put in his fair share of time in the Pentagon. Now, in command of CBG14, he was back at sea.
So when the inevitable invitations to tour other Russian facilities in the area came, I was not surprised. Not even dismayed. I accepted as many as I could, feigning good grace and eagerness to see the latest in Russian technology. But in truth, I would rather have been flying every second, and considered those political necessities a complete waste of time.
Not that we would have been doing much flying anyway. A storm had blown in from the north with a vengeance, grounding all but the most determined or critically necessary flights. There was no justification, not in my mind or in the Russians', for allowing either my Tomcat or their aircraft into the air.
According to their meteorologists, the weather would linger for three days. My calendar quickly filled with a host of social and political obligations. Gator, Skeeter, and Sheila would probably spend the entire time drinking vodka and getting to know their counterparts. I just hoped they'd keep their mouths shut. I'd rather have kept them with me, kept their collective mouths under close control. Whatever was going on with the Russians tinkering with scheduled competition evolutions, we were best off keeping it to ourselves now.
I had a host of possible bases to visit, but one in particular caught my attention. There was a naval aviation training facility located far to the south ― in Ukraine, actually. Kursk, a city located in the center of Ukraine, and one with a long military history.
Kursk had been a bloody, brutal battlefield during World War II. The Germans, plowing north in their tank battalions, had met a grim and determined Russian force there. It was winter ― cold and brutally harsh.
And German troops, unprepared for the snow and ice and frozen mud, floundered and stalled. The small, determined Russian force met them.
Met them and killed them.
Tourists could still see the old gun emplacements, rings of stone now grown over in the fertile soil that had earned the Ukraine the name of "Breadbasket of Europe." But underneath the inches of lush red topsoil, the blood of Russians and Germans ran deep.
One in ten Russians had been killed during that war. It was a price Americans have never paid on their own soil, and the results of it they will never really understand. It makes a nation rabid over the prospect of enemy boots on home soil, scars the nation's psyche in a way that the Vietnam conflict just barely scratched ours. Their experiences in World War I and World War II did much to shape the Russian ― or Soviet, if you will ― mentality, and I think that in our years of foreign policy, in shaping our nation's conduct toward them back then, we never fully understood the impact. America, splendid in her geographic isolation, has never known enemy soldiers on her land, has never seen brother, son, and neighbor cut down by foreign troops, has never known the rumble of enemy tanks on Main Street, U. S.A.
Not that I am advocating it as a national experience. But we have been blessed, and I wonder sometimes how much of our population truly understands how great that blessing has been.
Like many senior military officers, I am an avid history buff. It is true that those who know history are doomed to repeat it. Technology simply puts a different face on old tactics and strategy. Kursk has always been of particular interest to me, and I welcomed the chance to get to see it up close and personal.
But there was another reason that Kursk fascinated me, one that I had not shared with my Russian hosts. I would not have been surprised to learn that they already knew about it, but I had no intention of confirming their intelligence. If their intelligence network was worth anything at all, then they knew most of what had occurred to me in the last year.
It had been an opportunity I could not pass up. I was between tours, awaiting an available officer billet, and even contemplating the possibility of retiring. My wife, Tomboy, had pointed it out to me first.
It was my father. As I grew older, and contemplated starting a family of my own, his loss became more and more of a void in my life.
Within the Pentagon, my increasing obsession with the fate of my father was a well-known secret. Only my uncle really understood what it meant to me and had understood my sense of outrage and betrayal.
Russia ― in the last year, it had become an obscenity to me. I had nightmares about it and woke up yelling. That he could have been shot down I understood. That's the risk you take when you fly combat air. But Russia! Being here myself ― making pleasantries with men who might have interrogated my father, finding that I had something in common with the aviators ― — was a difficult path to walk. I wanted to hate them all, to make them pay the price for what their predecessors had done. But I couldn't, not now. Finding out the truth meant playing the role I'd chosen, and I was determined to do it well.