Playing Fair and Being Kind

NO HELICOPTER JOB FOR ME!

 

Or, take this whirlybird and shove it.

 

Some time during my trip around this great country I shopped for additional camping equipment at Dick’s Sporting Goods in Palm Desert, California. Dick’s has a large selection of camping and tenting items and I find their prices comparable to elsewhere. One of the items I bought that intrigues me is a fire starter device made by Coughlan’s, an outdoor equipment company. The device is called “Magnesium Fire Starter”. It is item number 7870 in their on-line catalog. It works by using a sharp object to shave particles from a small block of magnesium into a pile of tinder or kindling and then using the same sharp object to scratch an attached flint to cause sparks to fall onto the pile of kindling and magnesium shavings.

 

Well, I hadn’t had the opportunity to use the magnesium fire starter at all during the three months I traveled and camped. I was using a sterno stove and the small safety matches I packed were all I needed to create the fire for heating water to make coffee. It is now about 6 months since I purchased the fire starter and I have been looking at it and waiting for a nice day to be outside to give the process a try. Today was the day. I reread the directions and went outside with the starter and one of my best utility knives to use as the scratching/flaking tool. I gathered a small handful of pine shavings from the rose garden and put the pile on the grass near the garden hose. (I’m safety first much of the time.) I held the block of magnesium in my right hand and scratched and scratched the surface of it with the blade of the knife. At first my gestures were clumsy and I only succeeded in making minor scratch marks on the magnesium block. However after a few swipes I got the hang of it and soon I was causing small flakes of magnesium to fall into the pile of shavings. I soon was ready to use the knife edge on the flint to cause a spark to ignite the mess.

 

Pretty basic stuff if you know how easy it is for magnesium to burn. My first knowledge of the ability of magnesium to ignite and stay burning was during the Vietnam conflict. Thankfully I was not involved militarily in the war raging in Southeast Asia but I was certainly aware of the losses and violence happening during those days. I have met many men from those years who have spent their youth in horrifying conflict in that country. Their stories are first about adventure and then it all turns to fear and constant worry and agony, loss of friends whose names weren’t fully known, loss of time and memory of places visited or under brutal and relentless attack. These men were very young; just teenagers most of them. Their immediate supervisors were young officers just turned twenty one. An old hand was usually only twenty three or twenty four years old.

 

I served on submarines from 1959 to 1968 with no shore duty during that period. In 1968 I was 29 years old and I had been in the Navy for 11 years by that time. I was considered to be an old hand at that point in my career; a ‘salt’ in our jargon. During those years I applied myself dutifully to reading and taking correspondence courses. I took all the courses the Navy had to offer me in my line of work. I did those and took courses outside my field of expertise. I learned about cargo handling, engine rebuilding, diesel engine operation, mathematics. Physics, and a bit of chemistry.

 

I served on missile submarines which meant I spent 3 months away from home and then 3 months home. Each 3 month period away we were at sea and submerged for 2 months at a time. During those ‘patrol’ days I usually volunteered to be the editor of the ship’s newspaper and I got to read all the news that the radio gang could copy. I put the paper out once per week so I read a lot of copy between editions. I was reading a lot about Vietnam during those years from around 1963 to 1968. You might say I was well read compared to the rest of the crew.

 

I remember in 1968 my crew was at sea and on patrol. The North Vietnamese had launched their Tet Offensive earlier causing a great deal of chaos in the country of Vietnam and here at home as well. The politics of the war shifted dramatically due to the horror faced by our side and the reports that found their way back to newsrooms across the U.S. Our citizens were awakened to the reality and the truth about this war for the first time causing unrest and resistance against the war to mount. We were losing so many troops and morale throughout the services was low. It was during this time in this type of atmosphere that my crew was cruising around the North Atlantic Ocean or the Mediterranean Sea on patrol as part of the long contracted Cold War with the Soviet Bloc. I had been reading the reports that came on the wire and it was easy, at my age and experience, to figure what was going on outside of our underwater world.

 

I remember one news item that was circulated within the military community for a few months. The item was odd because it was a notice sent inter-service; between the army and all other branches. When I read it my interest was piqued but after reading it a few times and considering the news of those days I shelved it in my mind. The gist of the message was this. The Army was making an offer to pay grades E-6 in all other branches. An E-6 is a First Class Petty Officer, one step below Chief Petty Officer. An E-6 is a Staff Sergeant in the Army and in the Marine Corps. This is the offer being made to all of these E-6s: Transfer over to the Army and take a helicopter pilot course to fly the Huey, a transport helicopter that was commonly used to deliver combat troops to the front and behind enemy lines. The pay-off was each E-6 who successfully became qualified to fly the helicopter would jump 4 pay grades to officer W-1, Warrant Officer. It looked like a sweet deal. But I was a well read salt of the highest order because I got to see all of the news releases and I had educated myself with those Navy correspondence courses.

 

I was standing in the crew’s lounge under the crew’s mess one mid-day waiting to be let into the mess hall for lunch. One of my fellow E-6s, Donnie DelCore saw me and rushed over to tell me all about a message he saw that offered W-1 to eager E-6s who wanted to transfer to the Army and become helicopter pilots. His face was flush with excitement as he related all the information I had digested a few days earlier. I love Donnie. He is from Boston, my neck of the woods. Donnie grew up in East Boston and I grew up in Dorchester and we could swap a lot of funny stories about home.

 

“Donnie”, I said. “Think about this for a minute. Why do you think the fuckin’ Army is trying to get us to join up and learn to fly helicopters?” I looked at him straight in the eye and waited. He looked back at me straight in the eye. I could see he had no clue. At the same time Donnie knew I was smarter than the average bear and that I probably had a good reason for saying what I said. I took him off the hook by speaking first. “Donnie, the reason they want you to go over there is because all the helicopter pilots are dying. Those Hueys are made of magnesium for chisesakes and they burn like a fuckin’ Roman candle when they get shot. Everybody turns to crisp before they hit the ground.” Donnie let a look creep into his eyes and his gaze slowly left mine and moved down toward the deck. “Holy shit…” his voice trailed off. Donnie turned and leaned against the bulkhead next to me, hands stuffed deep into his poopie suit. I shifted next to him and let him stew on this new perspective for a while. “I knew it was too fuckin’ good to be true. Goddam I want to get of this fuckin’ boat!” Donnie was a nuke and he had been slaving in the Engineering Department nearly his entire Navy career. The nukes got overworked by a ton but it was what was necessary in that field. No mistakes allowed. I let him continue moaning until we were allowed into the mess hall then the conversation shifted to more manageable talk.

 

What I told Donnie about the Hueys being made of magnesium wasn’t completely true but it was true enough. In fact the helicopter engine block, the transmission block, and much of the framing for seats and other air frames were all made of magnesium alloy and the aircraft would in fact burn like a Roman candle in company with the JP 4 fuel if it ever was hit with a rocket of some other incendiary device. I never heard Donnie talk about the Army again.

 

That was 1968. In the year 2000, 32 years later, I was contacted by snail mail that there was a reunion of the submarine crew being held in New London, Connecticut and would I be interested in signing up for it. Of course I was eager to attend. I would love to see all those wonderful young men with whom I’d served all those years ago. I went to the restaurant in New London and I did in fact bump into Donnie DelCore during the evening. Donnie saw me and rushed over to where I was and wrapped his arms around me. “You saved my fuckin’ life, George”, he cried. What a Donnie. It was good to see him and hear him say that. We talked for a long, long time that night.

 

Now as I crouch over the pile of pine shavings and magnesium particles I let my mind feed on that beautiful memory and I make sure that my old salt experience and knowledge and wisdom of the many years under my hat take everything into consideration before I strike the flint with the blade of my knife. Scratch, scratch, there go the sparks flying into the mix and poof the mess ignites gently creating a feeling of accomplishment and well being inside me.

 

 

G. M. Goodwin

July 12, 2014