We headed up to the deck, and there was the beautiful Hawaiian island of Oahu. A helicopter waited to take us the short journey to Hickam Air Force Base. Touching down, I stepped off the helicopter and onto solid ground for the first time since I had made my way to the launchpad in Florida. It felt good to truly be back on earth once again.
A crowd of thousands awaited us, along with some local dignitaries, so we gave some more brief speeches and thanked them. But there was no time in the schedule to enjoy Hawaii. After some hurried farewells, we were stuffed into a C-141 cargo plane for the long flight back to Houston.
By this point in the mission, I had forgotten all about the space covers deal Dave had arranged. Until we were back on earth, I’d had no reason to think about them for months.
But now here they were, as Dave pulled them out in the C-141. He’d not only had them stamped and postmarked to note the day of launch, he’d also managed to get them postmarked on the ship the day we splashed down. I looked at them with interest. I’d never seen one before. I’d never even seen the design.
While aboard ship, Dave had mentioned that he would have his covers stamped on the Okinawa with the splashdown date. Good idea, I thought. We hadn’t gone back into Endeavour after splashdown, but a team of technicians had removed all the important items ready to transport to Houston. They returned our PPKs to us, which was standard procedure. So I had my covers postmarked. Mine were not postmarked on launch day because they had been stowed in my PPK inside the spacecraft, as per regulations.
Then there was another surprise for Jim and me. We’d agreed with Dave to carry a hundred covers for Eiermann. But Dave unexpectedly pulled out a pile of about four hundred.
Don’t worry, Dave explained. He’d had another hundred made for each of us. We should keep them for ourselves until we were all out of the space program, and until Eiermann and Sieger had concluded their business. Otherwise we’d be undercutting them.
Dave was well prepared; he pulled out special pens for us to sign all of the covers. It was a smooth flight, and a long one, so we had plenty of time to sit there and sign away. I thought nothing of it. Once we landed I took my hundred covers with me to put in my safety deposit box. Jim took his, and Dave kept about two hundred, his own and the covers to send to Eiermann. It was done. I forgot all about them once again. In retrospect, I should have opened the door and thrown them out of the plane.
Perhaps it was an ominous sign of things to come with those covers, but it was dark and rainy when we touched down at Ellington Field. Despite the weather a crowd of thousands had turned out, dressed in raincoats and carrying umbrellas. It was time to give another quick speech. “I’m on the last leg of a trip from Cape Kennedy to Houston,” I joked, “and I saw some interesting things along the way!”
“We went as Americans,” I summed up, “but we really did it for all mankind.” These weren’t just PR words—I really meant them. It was also my opportunity to begin to thank the tens of thousands of people in Houston and around the world who had helped us with our flight. We got the glory, but we couldn’t have done it without an enormous team. I was—and I remain—very grateful to them.
Deke Slayton also welcomed us and added his congratulations for a great job. To know I had pleased him meant more than all the other praise showered on us. He was usually sparing with congratulations, which was a good thing. When he gave it, you knew he meant it.
At last I spotted Merrill and Alison, my beloved daughters, who ran over to give me an enormous hug. They had been caught up in the excitement of Dad flying to the moon and were thrilled to see me again. I had missed them a lot—and boy, did I have some stories to tell them.
My parents were still in town. My father, so teary-eyed and emotional when I launched, was back to his normal self. “You’re back safe,” he whispered to me, “and I’m glad.”
Have you ever been away on a long vacation? You’ll know the feeling when you first put the key in the door of your home and then close it behind you. After such an eventful time, the apartment seemed so quiet. Everything was where I had left it. I had mail to sort through, chores to do. It was time to get back to normal life.
I had a strange experience the morning after I came home. When I walked out of my apartment door in the early morning to grab my newspaper, I saw the moon in the sky. It shocked me to see it. It was bizarre to think that I was there just a few days before, flying across its peaks and valleys. The moon looked so different now: so very far away. It really gave me a new perspective on how far we had traveled.
I’d been asked to skip breakfast that morning, as I headed back to my workplace for some more medical tests. Then we began many, many days of debriefings. The mission planners wanted to go over every detail of our flight plan while it was still fresh in our minds. So we sat around a table and talked through every moment of the mission, reliving it for the engineers. We spent about as long debriefing as we had flying the mission. It also took us that long for our bodies to get back to normal.
For several days I had to really watch how I walked and how I reached for something. It felt harder learning to adjust to Earth than it was to adjust to space, something mentally to do with coming home. In space, I was very aware of learning new ways of moving. Returning to Earth, everything felt familiar, so I relaxed and didn’t think about it. I would subconsciously push on a table to float away or try and leave an object hanging in midair. I had to teach myself how to live in Earth’s gravity again.
Of the three of us, Jim was in the worst shape. He was still unsteady on his feet and felt off balance when he lay down to sleep. I’d always thought of him as the weight-lifting, exercise-conscious guy, so I was surprised to see him so worn out.
Then, in the debriefing period, I was finally told what had happened to him during the flight. I felt confused, more than anything else. Why hadn’t they told us during the mission? There were ways we could have talked about private medical matters with the ground without the whole world listening in. I never got a good answer.
Dave was also having trouble sleeping because of an ache in his shoulder, something which our flight surgeons dismissed. But Dee O’Hara arranged for some private treatment and he improved. I had trouble sleeping for a different reason. I couldn’t get all the damn people out of my apartment.
Unlike the crews of earlier moon missions, we did not enter any medical quarantine, because the doctors had decided there was no risk of any possible moon germs returning with us. I would almost have welcomed the quarantine, because we could have debriefed without any distractions.
As it was, I would go to work, debrief all day, and there was always something going on when I got home at night. Many of the people in my apartment complex would drop by for a drink and a talk. They just wanted to be around somebody who had returned from the moon. I’ve always been a social guy and enjoyed their company, but eventually I had to kick them out every evening.
Then I would sit in my living room, turn all the lights out, and still not feel sleepy. I was overtired. I would finally get around five hours’ sleep, drag myself out of bed, and shuffle back to the debriefings day after day.
With three worn-out astronauts, the debriefings soon became dull. At first, I felt proud to talk about what we’d done. Under Dave’s excellent command, we’d really done our jobs, and felt delighted with the way things had turned out. The mission had been what Apollo was truly all about.