Once, when I thought I was about to flunk out of the Academy, I had contemplated joining the French Foreign Legion. I wrote to an address in New Orleans for information about how to join the legendary force. I received a nice brochure. While reading it, I discovered that the Legion required nine years of obligated service. I decided to try to stick it out in the Navy. Now I accepted that any adventure that might come my way would almost surely be found while I wore a Navy uniform. The Navy was stuck with me, and I with it, and I decided to make the best of my circumstances.
Remembering the satisfaction of my days on Commander Ferrell’s bridge, I volunteered for bridge watches and qualified as an “officer of the deck under way,” proving capable of commanding a carrier at sea. Already enjoying a reputation for large living as colorful as that of my legendary forebears, I began to give my superiors some reason to think I might eventually prove myself, if not as gifted an officer as my father and grandfather, perhaps competent enough not to squander my legacy.
As I was one of the few bachelors in my squadron, I volunteered on three occasions to spend my leave attending escape and evasion school to prepare myself for the possibility of being shot down in combat. I also volunteered because I found the course to be a pretty good time.
One course took place during a large Army exercise in Bavaria, Germany. A number of other pilots and I were released at night in the middle of the Black Forest. We wore our flight suits and were allowed only those belongings that a pilot would normally possess when he ejected during a combat mission, which amounted to a few C rations.
We were given a map and instructed to find our way, undetected, to a designated safe area. Soldiers participating in the exercise were ordered to hunt us down. The Army also broadcast over the radio a reward offer to any German civilians who found us and reported our whereabouts to the authorities. An Air Force pilot and I teamed up and began a careful trek through woods filled with eager soldiers.
It took five days to reach the safe area. There was plenty of water around, and although we were hungry, we enjoyed ourselves. The forest was beautiful, and the summer weather was pleasant. Several mornings we awoke under the shelter of a large fir tree to the sound of German families out for an early-morning stroll through the woods (Germans are great walkers). We hustled quickly and quietly away lest some lucky, unsuspecting German seize the opportunity to add to the family’s wealth.
My Air Force friend and I were the only pilots to avoid capture and reach our designation. When we arrived, Special Forces soldiers picked us up and took us to a lovely inn on a lake in a small German village called Unterdeisen, where we remained until the exercise was completed two days later. The inn was run by a former Luftwaffe pilot, who took us flying in glider planes. We whiled away the rest of the time drinking beer, admiring the scenery, and watching deer come down to the lake to drink.
As we had not been captured (nor was I captured during two other similar exercises I participated in), we were not subjected to simulated interrogations or any other unpleasantness associated with being captured in war. When the exercise was over, we were taken to Special Forces headquarters in Bad Tolz, where we were debriefed and attended lectures and films about what we might expect were we ever to have the bad luck to be prisoners of war.
In those days, the military emphasized escape and evasion more than it dwelled on life in a prison camp. However, an Air Force major who had been a POW in Korea was brought in to brief us on his experiences, and I shared quarters with him for the two days I remained at Bad Tolz. He told us that while he had not experienced a great deal of torture as a POW, American prisoners in Korea had been kept isolated, and on near-starvation rations.
What I remember most from my conversations with him was my astonishment at learning that this congenial, well-adjusted former POW had been kept in solitary confinement. I commended him for his physical and mental courage, and remarked that I seriously doubted I could have survived such a long stretch in solitary. He told me I would be surprised what suffering a man could endure when he had no alternative.
While at Bad Tolz, I and the pilot I had escaped and evaded with met two college girls from the States who were spending the summer in Europe. Since the Intrepid wasn’t due in port for another ten days, we joined them on their drive through southern Germany to Italy, ending our brief time as fugitives with a very pleasant holiday. There was little we had experienced during our Bavarian excursion that approximated the experiences of pilots who were hunted and captured in a real war.
There were occasional setbacks in my efforts to round out my Navy profile. My reputation was certainly not enhanced when I knocked down some power lines while flying too low over southern Spain. My daredevil clowning had cut off electricity to a great many Spanish homes and created a small international incident.
While I was stationed at Norfolk during my service on the Intrepid and Enterprise, a few pilots in my squadron and I lived in Virginia Beach in a beach house known far and wide in the Navy as the infamous “House on 37th Street.” We enjoyed a reputation for hosting the most raucous and longest beach parties of any squadron in the Navy. On the whole, however, I made steady, if slow, progress toward becoming a respectable officer.
In October 1962, I was just returning to home port at Norfolk after completing a Mediterranean deployment aboard the Enterprise. The air wing of a carrier always leaves the ship just before she comes into home port. My squadron had flown off the Enterprise and returned to Oceana Naval Air Station while the ship put in at Norfolk. While at Oceana we would train out of land bases until the Enterprise’s next deployment.
A few days after our return, we unexpectedly received orders to fly our planes back to the carrier. Our superiors explained the unusual order by informing us that a hurricane was headed our way. The explanation only aroused our curiosity further, since none of us had heard any forecast of an approaching storm, nor did putting to sea strike us as a reasonable course of evasion.
Nevertheless, we flew all our planes back to the carrier within twenty-four hours and headed out to sea. In addition to our A-1s, the Enterprise carried long-range attack planes, which typically had a hard time managing carrier takeoffs and landings. We embarked on our mysterious deployment without them.
As the Enterprise passed Cherry Point, Virginia, a Marine squadron of A-4s approached and attempted to land. I watched the scene from up in the air tower. Several of the Marine pilots experienced considerable difficulty trying to land. Our air boss turned to a representative of the Marine squadron and said we didn’t have time to wait for all their planes to land; some of them would have to return to their base. The Marine replied that his planes were already below bingo fuel, which meant that they did not have sufficient fuel to return to base and had to land on the Enterprise.
I was quite puzzled by the apparent urgency of our mission—we’d been hustled back in one day, leaving some of our planes behind; the Marine squadron had been ordered to join us with only enough fuel to land or ditch. The mystery was solved a short while later when all pilots were assembled in the Enterprise’s ready room to listen to a broadcast of President Kennedy informing the nation that the Soviets were basing nuclear missiles in Cuba.