With his lanky six-foot, five-inch frame sprawled in a swivel chair and his feet propped up on the edge of the picture window that separated the command group booth from the operations room below, Lowery vacantly stared at the activities of his staff. Seated at rows and rows of desks arranged like a dark, sinister amphitheater, those junior officers, mostly majors, captains, and lieutenants, sat staring at either their own computer monitor or at the large tote board at the far end of the operations center that showed the status of the airfields, squadrons, and a host of other facilities that made up the United States Air Force's European Command. Though Lowery, commander of all Military Airlift Command units and personnel in Europe, normally confined his interest to the missions and needs of his command, tonight he was interested in everything that was happening in the European Theater of Operations, or ETO.
Not much was happening, nor was anything, at that time, supposed to be happening. In accordance with the Air Force directive covering the current operation, Desperate Fumble, airlift operations from Sembach would not resume until after daylight. Only then would Lowery and his command be able to get rid of the nuclear devices flown in from the Ukraine during the previous day. Until then, "The Devices'' sat in three hangars under heavy guard.
It was while he was inspecting the devices in the hangars earlier in the evening that Lowery was struck, as soon as he walked in the door of the first hangar, by how similar the heavy metal protective shipping containers were to aluminum military coffins. Stopping short, he looked about the room at the rows and rows of containers, each separated from the other by several feet. The air security personnel, rifles slung but ready, walking solemnly up and down the rows could just as easily have been an honor guard. Startled by this comparison, Lowery stood there for several seconds unable to think about anything other than his first real mission as a newly assigned C-130 co-pilot. Lowery, out of the Air Force Academy for less than a year and just finished with flight school, was sporting shiny new first lieutenant bars on his shoulders when he went to Viet-Nam in the late spring of 1968. Dispatched to Da Nang from Bien Hoa, the glamour and excitement of being a serving officer in an active theater of operations was turning out to be all he had imagined. Even his normal dour Oklahoma demeanor couldn't hide the enthusiasm he felt at finally being part of the action.
That enthusiasm soon evaporated when he received his first cold slap of reality. Instructed by the pilot to go over to the hangar where the cargo for their return trip was being processed, Lowery had walked into a large hangar very similar to those at Sembach to find the loadmaster. He found the master sergeant standing in the center of rows of aluminum shipping containers inventorying them with an Army sergeant. Lowery all but skipped over to the two sergeants, occasionally tapping some of the containers with his hand as he went by. When he reached the sergeants, smile on his face, Lowery asked how things were going.
The loadmaster looked up from his clipboard and gave Lowery a condescending smile. "Oh, pretty good, pretty good. Sergeant Johnson and I were just making sure that everything was in order. After all, the last thing we want is to give some gray-haired old lady the wrong box."
Lowery, not understanding what the loadmaster was talking about, asked him what he meant. Realizing that the young lieutenant didn't know that the metal containers he was about to load on their aircraft were coffins, the loadmaster decided to introduce the new lieutenant to the reality of war. With a grin on his face, the loadmaster announced, "Well, sir, for your very first mission, you are being given the rare privilege of granting the fondest wish that every GI and airman in Nam harbors. You are going to fly home, at no expense to the families, ninety-six fathers and sons." Then the loadmaster allowed his grin to change into a feigned look of concern as he looked about the hangar. "Of course, I really don't think this was what they had in mind."
Only then, as he too looked about, did Lowery understand what the sergeant was saying. In a flash, the jaunty, almost childish grin on Lowery's face was replaced by a look of horror. When the loadmaster saw this, he grinned. After having listened to Lowery harp on the virtues and benefits of his strong Baptist upbringing all the way from Travis Air Force Base in California to Bien Hoa, the loadmaster saw his chance to get even. Patting Lowery's shoulder, the loadmaster looked about the hangar. "Oh, don't worry, sir. Sergeant Johnson here assures me that there will be no second comings from this group."
Equally appalled by the idea that he was surrounded by the bodies of so many of his countrymen and the ease with which the two sergeants made fun of the dead, Lowery turned and fled from the hangar. It would be a long time before he could forget the ring of the sergeants' laughter echoing in the hangar filled with coffins as Lowery tried to run away from the reality of his profession.
Lowery watched in silence as his young staff officers in the operations room below went about their duties. Pulling his long arms into his sides, he linked his bony fingers together over his stomach, keeping his own counsel as the images of that day in Bien Hoa ran through his mind. Behind him, his senior staff officers sat, like Lowery, watching the comings and goings of the officers in the ops center. A few gave in and nodded off to sleep at their desks. None of them really knew their commander on a personal level, since he kept to himself, and his laconic manner and fundamentalist religious beliefs let few people past his professional side, but they did know of his reputation, which started in Viet-Nam during the height of the siege of Khe Sanh. It was rumored that Lowery, unable to stay out of the action, requested and was granted a transfer out of the C-130 squadron at Bien Hoa to one that was resupplying the Marines at Khe Sanh. It was during this assignment that Lowery made his mark. For in the spring of 1968, Lowery flew every mission he could, day and night, into Khe Sanh during the height of the siege, bringing in desperately needed supplies and hauling out the wounded. He stood out from the many pilots who made that run, because he was one of the few pilots who always brought his aircraft to a full stop, even when in the middle of NVA artillery barrages, to allow the corpsmen and litter bearers of the besieged garrison to run out to load the wounded. This single-minded, almost obsessive drive to deliver the goods to the troops in forward areas, whether in war or in peace, made him very popular with Army and Marine commanders and a demanding taskmaster. From their first introduction to him, new officers in his command were told over and over again, "We make a difference, through hard work and dedication to duty. And if we don't get it right the first time, those poor bastards on the ground will pay for it." Though his senior staff officers, like Lowery, could do nothing at the moment, the apprehensions and uneasiness of a commander can be as contagious as confidence. So they sat there watching Lowery sit where he was, wondering what heinous new missions he was pondering that would task them to the limit.
The buzz of a phone, though muted, startled several of the senior staff officers who were close to dozing off. When they saw that it was not their phone ringing, everyone in the command booth turned this way and that to see whose phone was ringing. Only after they saw Colonel Horst Maier, the Luftwaffe liaison officer to the Military Airlift Command, pick up his phone did everyone, including Lowery, go back to their own thoughts.
Seeing that it was the encrypted direct line to the Luftwaffe's own military airlift command, Maier answered in German, "Maier here."
On the other end of the line he heard the familiar voice of an old classmate and fellow officer. "Hello, Horst. This is Rudi, Rudi Poersel. Do you recognize my voice?"