In the clearing stands a boxer And a fighter by his trade And he carries the reminders Of every glove that laid him down Or cut him till he cried out In his anger and his shame "I am leaving, I am leaving" But the fighter still remains
-The Boxer
Simon & Garfunkel
Sunny and 22 out there. Inside the electric fireplace hums, and Slane sits here next to me with a belly full of cat food, sated and sleepy-eyed.
A deep funk this morning. It's been nearly a year since the last time I drew a cup of coffee in my office, a month since I've laid eyes on the farm, over a month since I've flown. I missed the gym yesterday, my only human interaction unless we slip off for the weekend, but that's not looking so likely.
I lost a substantive motion yesterday in a case that is a vexation on my spirit, an endless flurry of well-funded body blows that has left me at times uncharacteristically snapping at opposing counsel. "Your client is a bully," I heard myself saying in somewhat disbelief. Since when did you develop a conscience, Donk? Didn't you make your fortune, such as it is, taking care of the well-heeled, without much regard for whether they were right or wrong? "Everyone deserves their day in court," I'd say, the rationalization of millions of billable hours ground out by lawyers over the years representing all manner of wealthy scoundrels. I guess it only matters when you lose, or don't get paid.
But there was a moment, thirty years ago, when I was riding a crescent of hope and self-delusion that life would be something different. I'm reminded of that line from Field of Dreams when Ray contemplates the visage of his long-deceased father, now young and pulling up his catcher's mask, chiseled and lineless:
My God! I'd only seen him years later when he was worn down by life. Look at him. He's got his whole life in front of him and I'm not even a glint in his eye. What do I say to him?
I guess that was me, flying low and fast up the Euphrates River on a perfect spring day, Sammy on the horizon to port.
Actually, that was me in 1988. I looked a little more weary by March of 1991, after seven months in the desert.
But that early afternoon we could feel a weight lifted. The ground war had ended in decisive victory after less than a week of combat, and we were now maintaining a cease fire, flying directly over Iraqi antiaircraft batteries and SAMs with impunity, low enough to see them and for them to see us.
She's a beauty, isn't she? Loaded up with 4X4X gun (four radar guided missiles, four heat seeking missiles, and a cannon with 940 rounds of high explosive incendiary shells), three bags of fuel, banking over the emptiness of southern Iraq. I think this is an Eglin bird by the slash on the vertical stabilizer. We disdained flying with the shiny stainless panels freshly cleaned like this, because they made us easier to see during day operations. I preferred the usual presentation of oil and smoke smears covering the whole underside of the jet. Industrial age camouflage.
To get to the Euphrates Valley, we would fly over Kuwait, which was a mess. Lots of burned vehicles and probably lots of dead Iraqis lying around. It's hard to tell from four miles up.
Once past the forward edge of the battle area (a term of art in war), we descended into a lush valley that looked like something out of the Arabian Nights stories, with the river lined by palms and grass.
Sammy and I ran low and fast up the river that day, which would have been suicidal just a few days before. Along the highway that hugged the eastern bank of the Euphrates, a long convoy of flatbed trucks snaked north, carrying the Republican Guards' remaining T-72 tanks to safety. Adding to the surreal, dreamlike scene, I noticed Iraqi soldiers, green dots sitting on the backs of the trailers with legs dangling over the side, waving at us as we flew past. I guess the war was over.
Around that time AWACs snapped us out of our reverie. We were vectored upriver toward a bogey (unidentified aircraft) flying low and slow along the river. Maybe a minute later we saw it, an Mi-8 Hip, by the looks of things unarmed, barn doors hanging open on the sides to let in the fresh air.
At the time, cease fire talks were ongoing down in Basra, and it wasn't uncommon to spot Iraqi helicopters ferrying Baathist VIPs back and forth between there and Baghdad.
We passed a thousand feet or so above them, perhaps unnoticed. This guy wasn't talking to anyone.
I asked AWACs what they wanted us to do.
"Has he committed a hostile act?"
"Negative. Just flying south down the river."
"Roger Exxon flight. If he commits a hostile act, you're cleared to fire."
So we decided to mess with the Hip a little, like two cats who'd happened across a lost mole scurrying along the grass.
We were now five or six miles north of the helicopter (things happen fast at 420 knots), and I called a cross-turn back down the river. We descended to maybe 300 feet, and collapsed the formation so there was less than a mile between us.
Within a minute or two we were coming up fast on the Iraqi aircraft, still apparently oblivious of the danger of two heavily-armed and bored F-15 drivers approaching from the stern. We passed on either side of the helicopter, and I called a cross-turn directly in front of them. In retrospect that was sort of stupid--if they'd been armed they would've had a momentary shot, and I could've gone down in history as the only fighter pilot ever shot down by a helicopter. No one would have been buying me drinks in the bar for that one.
But getting him to take a shot at us was sort of the point; if he had, we would have saddled up and distributed Hip parts in a half mile of splashing metal down the Euphrates after the first Sidewinder hit.
That didn't happen, of course, and old me is grateful that young me didn't murder a helicopter full of men.
Which isn't to say we didn't scare the bejesus (bemohammed?) out of them. As we passed directly in front of their windscreen, I could plainly see the pilots, wearing the dark leather flying helmets preferred by the Soviets and their military hardware customers. Did they look terrified? Hard to tell at those speeds and distances. I will say this--they didn't flinch, and the old helicopter kept puttering down the river as we passed again in the opposite direction. There would be no "hostile act" that day. The war really was over.
We laughed about our adventure in the mess tent that evening, a sure sign this had become a caricature of actual combat. A couple days later we would be looking over our shoulder at the brown Saudi expanse for the last time, headed for Spain and then home.
This morning I remember the resolutions of that young man who was once me on March 3, 1991. I would live a life of purpose, having been given a next chapter when the planners in Riyadh had expected roughly half of us to die or be captured once the shooting began (they only let us in on that grim assumption after cessation of hostilities). No more sitting around the bar wasting time. I'd keep that promise to God, in my stupid foxhole bargain, and go to church again with a grateful heart. Maybe I'd go to law school and become a U.S. attorney, using that big ol' brain to fight the good fight and do some good in the world. I'd be kinder. I would never waste a day, because every day after that was a gift. Hell, they were all gifts--I just needed the specter of having them all taken away at 26 to realize that.
So here I am, three decades later to the day. Sitting in slippers and plaid pajama bottoms, stiff-arming another day of paperwork and the nastiness of dealing with lawyers who spent most of the pandemic displaying a spirit of cooperation and goodwill that's fallen back along the wayside now that the end is in sight. I likely won't see another human being today except P, who may well just take a shower and go to bed after an exhausting day in the operating room. Whatever promise I made to God I guess I kept, right up until He and I had a falling out. Now I'm just an old man and his two cats, abiding.
But the Braves beat the Twins yesterday in a spring training game, and face the Orioles this afternoon in lovely Sarasota at the Braves' fancy new offseason facility. I think I'll give it a listen.
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