The big three-star general was having a great day. It had started with his weekly two-mile morning jog with about one hundred senior officers and NCOS, which he hoped would serve as a motivational fitness incentive for all base personnel. That was followed by a breakfast meeting with local businesspersons to suggest ways in which the Air Force could help improve and revitalize the community and cut down on crime; a rather productive morning in the office answering mail and reviewing paperwork; and an informal Q-and-A lunch with the students at the current session of Eighth Air Force’s Non-Commissioned Officer Leadership School. Now, Samson, forty-six years young with the heart of a twenty-year-old and with a cleared-off desk and calendar, was going to goof off this afternoon and do something he rarely had time to do these days—go flying.
Actually, this wasn’t going to be a purely fun flight—there was little money in anyone’s budget these days for taking a $2 million dollar jet just to punch holes in the sky. Samson had called up the Second Bomb Wing, found a young B-52H Stratofortress instructor copilot sitting around with nothing on the schedule, and asked him to give him a proficiency check. Every flying-qualified officer had to log so many hours, so many takeoffs and landings, so many instrument approaches, etc., every quarter, and Samson was woefully behind—this was a good day to get caught up. Scheduling had found them a plane, Samson had found his flight suit and boots in his office closet, and the checkride was on.
Normally rank has its privileges, and check rides for three-star generals are “pencil-whipped” to a great extent—do a couple of landings, maybe shoot a couple of no-brainer ILS approaches, and get signed off in just a few minutes—but the young IP Samson had tapped wasn’t going to “pencil-whip” the commander of the Eighth Air Force, and Samson wouldn’t stand for it even if the IP tried.
As with any check ride, the IP started Samson off with a fifty-question emergency-procedures written test, including space to write down all sixty-seven lines of “bold print” emergency procedures for the T-38 Talon jet trainer, the steps that were required to be committed to memory word for word. No one was allowed to step inside any Air Force aircraft without demonstrating thorough knowledge of all aircraft systems. With three amused young officers looking on, the big three-star general bellied up to the flight planning table at base operations and got to work.
Samson had more combat flying time than total time for all three of these young bucks put together, and had forgotten more than they would ever know about flying, but now he had to dig deep and pass a damned written “multiple-guess” test. But without hesitating, Samson got down to it—no compromises, no whining, no shortcuts.
That was the way it had always been for him. Having risen through the ranks from airman basic to three-star general over his thirty-year career, Samson’s entire life had been a series of challenges and successes.
In 1968, Terrill Samson, just seventeen years old, had been a high school dropout looking to beat the draft and avoid going to Vietnam and dying in the fields like many of his Detroit gang-banging friends. His parole officer had told him to enlist or face a certain draft notice the minute he turned eighteen; he’d enlisted in the Air Force simply because the Navy’s recruiting office was in a rival gang’s neighborhood. His mother Melba cried as she signed the enlistment papers for her youngest son, and Terrill was made to promise that he would write. He would never even consider disappointing his mother.
Samson had spent most of the early 1970s carrying buckets of hot tar across griddle-hot construction sites, repairing roads and runways all over southeast Asia in the closing years of the Vietnam War. He’d sent all but five dollars of his monthly military paycheck home to his mother, who would write and ask him if he was safe and if he was making anything of himself. He’d become obsessed with finding opportunities to complete school, volunteer for a job, upgrade his skills, or learn a new specialty, just so he could send his mother a new certificate or document chronicling his accomplishments and proving he wasn’t wasting his time.
Since Terrill had no money to do much socializing, he’d spent a lot of time in the barracks, which made him susceptible to a lot of “line-of-sight career development.” His squadron first sergeant had ordered him to get his high school diploma so he could raise his squadron’s education average; Samson had dutifully complied. Another first sergeant had ordered him to reenlist so his own recruitment figures would look good. Samson had complied again. The tall, good-looking, hardworking, successful black soldier had soon become the Air Force’s “poster boy” as the ideal enlisted man; he’d been promoted to staff sergeant in record time, then received an offer to attend Officer Candidate School at Kelly Field in San Antonio, Texas. Anywhere was better than southeast Asia, he and his mother figured, so he’d accepted.
By the end of the Vietnam War, Samson had a bachelor’s degree, an earned commission, and an undergraduate pilot training school slot.
Four years later, as a young captain and B-52 bomber aircraft commander, he had a regular commission and an instructor training slot; twelve years later, he’d earned his first star as the commander of a BIB Lancer bomber wing.
Now Terrill “Earthmover” Samson, often mentioned in the same breath as Colin Powell and Philip Freeman, commanded Eighth Air Force, in charge of training and equipping all of the Air Force’s heavy and medium bomber units. He was widely regarded as one of the most successful and intelligent officers, of any race or background, ever to wear a uniform.
He proved that fact again by scoring a respectable 90 on the EP test and a 100 on the bold print test, then submitted himself to a complete review of the missed questions by the instructor pilot, undergoing free-fire questioning until his IP was satisfied that Samson really knew the answers. Again, no compromises. Samson ran through a quick review of formation flying procedures with another T-38 crew that would be flying with them that afternoon, and after a formation briefing, a review of the “Notices to Airmen” and the weather, Samson filed a flight plan to the practice area, suited up, and got ready to go.
Snug in the rubber G suit secured around his waist and legs, with his backpack parachute slung over one shoulder, and his helmet and a small canvas bag holding approach plates, charts, and the T-38 checklist on his other, he headed out from base ops toward the flight line, waving off the supervisor of flying, who offered to give him a ride out to the jet—it was too beautiful a day to waste in a smelly old runway car. He chatted with his instructor and the other T-38 crew members on the way out to the ramp, talked about what was happening around the world and around town and around the squadron—it wasn’t often that regular crewdogs got to shoot the shit with a three-star general. No pressure of rank here, no official business, no politicking, no “face time” with the boss—just a bunch of Air Force fliers getting ready to do what they loved doing.
Samson had almost made it to his sleek white jet when another car pulled up alongside. “General …”
“I don’t need a ride, thanks,” Samson said for the sixth time in that short walk.
“Yes, you do, sir,” the driver said. “Flash priority-red message waiting for you at the command post.”
Just like that, Terrill Swnson’s idyllic day was over. Messages coming into the Eighth Air Force command center all had priorities attached to them, ranging from “routine” on up. Samson didn’t know what was exactly the highest-priority classification, but the highest he had ever seen was a “flash red”—and that was in 1991, when the world thought the Iraqis had launched chemical weapons at Tel Aviv and the Israelis were getting ready to retaliate with nuclear weapons.