I nodded. “Well, I have to say that I am very disappointed that Mister Hawkins, or General Hawkins if he insists…” Hawkins’ eyes flashed angrily at that, but I continued. “… doesn’t recognize me. We met before in the fall of 1981. Back then the General was known as Brigadier General Hawkins, and like I said, I was known as Captain Buckman.”
“This is ridiculous! I’ve never met you before in my life!” he protested.
“Not true, General, not true! It was in November of ’81, and we were in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, during Exercise Southern Shield ’81.” I turned to the others and explained, “I’m not sure if you gentlemen would have ever heard of this, but it was a pretty typical training exercise. At the time I was a captain in the 82nd Airborne, commanding a battery of 105s. The Sandinistas had just taken over in Nicaragua and were being a pain in the butt, so the Army decided to send an airborne battalion task force down to Honduras to show the flag and do some training.”
Hawkins looked like he wanted to speak out, but Baldwin silently held him back. Hawkins simply glared at me.
“Brigadier General Hawkins was in charge of this whole thing. It was a pretty typical sort of training exercise, with us training the Honduran paratroopers and doing joint drops and exercises, that sort of thing.” I looked at the Senators for any glimmer of understanding. I knew that Gingrich hadn’t served, but I hoped that at least one of the Senators might have.
“I know what you’re talking about, Congressman. I was in the Coast Guard, but I’ve seen these sorts of training exercises. They’re pretty normal.” Pell made the statement and looked at his colleagues, all of whom nodded in understanding.
“Yes, sir, they are. Anyway, there we were down in Honduras, and putting up with Brigadier General Hawkins, who really didn’t have a clue what we were doing. The General was what we called a ‘five jump chump’, somebody who had done the minimum five jumps to qualify for his jump wings and never did it again. Still, that wasn’t all that big a problem, since we were pretty used to jackass generals.”
Hawkins looked like he was about to come after me, but Baldwin kept a hand on his arm and a smile on his face.
“All that changed during the last jump. Now, before I go any further, I have to say that the rest of the discussion must be considered Top Secret. It was classified afterwards…”
“Then we’re done here! I won’t sit here while this traitor leaks classified information!” barked Hawkins. He turned to Baldwin and said, “We’re out of here!”
It was Wendell Ford who ordered, “Sit down, General. The rest of us all have a security clearance of one sort or another, and I really doubt that Mister Baldwin here would want it known if there actually was a problem. I want to hear this.”
Hawkins gave me a hateful look but made an exasperated gesture to continue.
“Thank you. As I was saying, everything was going fine until that last jump. General Hawkins here decided that it would be a great idea to have the Honduran paratroopers jump from the American planes, while the Americans would jump from the Honduran planes. Mind you, this alone violated about a half dozen safety regs all on its own, but that was the order. Then it got better when we learned that the Hondurans were jumping us from surplus C-47s we had given them after World War II. None of us had even seen airplanes that old, let alone trained to jump from them. Despite our complaints we were ordered to jump from them regardless of the fact we had never trained to do this.”
A couple of the Senators looked over at Hawkins, but now he was sporting a poker face. I kept going. “It got worse after that. We were ordered to do a night jump. Night paratroop jumps are just about the most dangerous thing a soldier can do. You don’t do night drops unless you’re at war and only then as a last resort. Hawkins ordered us to drop anyway. We loaded up in the Goony Birds and off we went in the middle of the night.”
“It ended up a disaster! The Honduran pilot of the plane I was in got lost and flew south into Nicaragua. After awhile, he just turned on the drop light and dumped us out over Nicaragua. Out of twenty of us, two men died and a third was crippled. That was where I blew my knee out. Then it got better. The commanding officer of the group I jumped with was one of the dead, and I had to assume command. It took us two days of hiking north, hiding from the Sandinistas and drug lords, to get into radio range. Hawkins personally refused to order an evacuation and made us keep hiking. We kept marching until we ran out of food and water, and then I told Hawkins that if he didn’t order an evac I was going to surrender to the Sandinistas.”
All three Senators were staring at Hawkins by now, and Newt had a fascinated look on his face. Hawkins ignored them all.
“So, the helicopters needed to land at what was called an abandoned airstrip. Abandoned, my ass! It was controlled by whoever the local drug lord was, and we had to do a nighttime combat assault on the place to secure it and call in the Hueys. By then we were more walking wounded than combat troops, but we did it anyway, because we were American paratroopers and the toughest sons of bitches on the planet! I had men who volunteered to be left behind so as not to slow us down, but I told them we were all going home, dead or alive. We got back to base, at which time Hawkins had me arrested for disobeying orders and mutiny. When I refused to cooperate, his pet Provost Marshal had me dragged into a basement and beaten into unconsciousness.”
“This is all a lie! A damned lie and I won’t stand for it!” Hawkins roared.
I smiled at him, as the others looked at me. I replied, “You want witnesses? It’s been eleven years, but I can pretty much guarantee that if I call over to the Pentagon I can get the current addresses of the rest of the guys that dropped. Some of them are probably still in, but I know of at least one guy who got out, and the odds are there were others. If it comes down to it, we can track down the JAG lawyer who got me out of that basement and into Walter Reed.”
“And this was all classified Top Secret afterwards?” asked Gingrich.
“Following my thumping in the basement, I woke up in a hospital bed in confinement. I was informed everything was classified Top Secret and that I was to keep my mouth shut, take a Bronze Star for getting my men home, and not to let the door hit me in the ass on my way out of the Army. I was cashiered along with every other officer in the chain of command, those still alive at least, all except for one Brigadier General Anthony Hawkins, who got himself promoted.”
I got to my feet and took my cane and limped over to the window. I turned back and said, “I didn’t need this before that jump or before I had to hike the better part of a hundred klicks through an enemy army. The only reason I kept my mouth shut was because we didn’t need the Nicaraguans to know that an American General had decided to invade their peace loving country with armed American paratroopers, or that an American General could get away with ordering an officer beaten unconscious for defying him! Any of you gentlemen care to contemplate the shitstorm either would have caused?”
“This is preposterous! You can’t prove any of this!” barked Hawkins.
I looked over at Pell. “Senator, you’ll be the guy running the confirmation hearings on the General. Do you really think I can’t find one Republican Senator with an axe to grind who won’t invite me to testify?” I turned back to Hawkins. “You know, aside from the running, I can still pass the physical to qualify for jump school. I miss that, the running, I mean. I used to run five miles a day.” To the others I explained, “That was actually the minimum, five miles, which all paratroopers had to be able to run. Sometimes we ran longer distances.” I turned towards Hawkins and slapped my cane against my right leg. “I’ll never run again, General. I was a damn good combat officer, General. I was already scheduled for a research command and a stint at CGS. All gone. Payback’s a bitch, ain’t it!”