"Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war!"
-William Shakespeare
The other day on Facebook I saw a post on the ex-Eagle Drivers page that included a photo of some guys I flew with in the Gulf War, and a caption saying this image was taken while they were "downrange" in 1991.
I have another old comrade who's fond of dropping "downrange" as well, whenever he refers to a unit that's deployed somewhere in harm's way.
Where in the hell did this "downrange" affectation even come from? We never used it when I flew in the AF, unless we were truly talking about being downrange in military training airspace during an exercise. As one crossed the eastern boundary of the Nellis training space during Red Flag, for instance, one was "downrange" and in the simulated shooting zone.
One is not "downrange" in a war, because there are no damned ranges. We used to "cross the fence" as we flew into Iraq, an unnerving moment the first few times as one realizes those people below you on the ground aren't your friends anymore. We "went downtown" if a mission took us into the SAM rings around Baghdad, a phrase we stole from our Vietnam-era fighter pilot progenitors who were flying missions over Hanoi. In technical terms, one "crossed the FEBA" after the ground war started and a formation flew over the forward edge of the battle area (hence, "FEBA" in case you haven't had your second cup of coffee yet). Always best to be above about 24,000 feet at that moment, because our own artillery and surface-to-surface rocketry could nip you accidentally if you flew lower.
We were never "downrange", which strikes me as another example of military silliness heaped onto the massive pile of silly that seems to accrete around lots of veterans with too much time on their hands.
Nor did any of our dead comrades "fly west", another phrase I hear all the time. It's actually kind of a lovely image, and gives you something better to paste on the back of a funeral service bulletin than our old euphemisms for death, like "bought the farm".
I always liked "bought the farm", a term that arises out of the perhaps apocryphal story that in the old days if you died flying in combat, Uncle Sam would buy your family a farm as compensation for the loss. Forty acres and a mule for the widow and fatherless children.
And of course, "bought the farm" shows up in the most widely known and sung fighter pilot bar room ballad of my era, "Dear Mom Your Son is Dead".
To make the song work, you needed someone who could voice the role of the messenger delivering the telegram from the United States government to the mother of a pilot away at war (the mere image dates the song):
Mrs. Murphy, Mrs. Murphy, Telegram for Mrs. Murphy
Is it a singing telegram?
Well ma'am, it's rather sad news.
I've always wanted a singing telegram.
Well, here goes!
Dear Mom, your son is dead, he bought the farm today
He crashed his OV-10 on Ho Chi Minh's highway
It was a rocket pass and then he busted his ass,
Mmm, mmm, mmm
Sudden death was hilarious when I was 26. Not so much now.
The song goes on from there, verse after verse about stupid orders delivered from the security of a command post, fighters low on gas and the tanker overdue--pretty much every complaint you'd hear during a war among pilots freshly back from a mission and reliving the last few hours over a cigarette in the hooch.
And there's another old euphemism in there: he "busted his ass". We used that one a lot.
My grandfather, a veteran of multiple shooting wars and all around aviation hero, casually used both phrases when I was a teenager and I'd ride around with him in his little Datsun pickup talking about life flying in the Air Force. He also liked to roll out some really dated pilot jargon, like when he'd start flying with his hands (thankfully, usually not when he was actually driving the truck), palms down and the two mitts maneuvering against each other in a mock dogfight:
"No shit. There I was. Flat on my back, hanging by my throat mic"
If Grandpa was ever flat on his back in an airplane, this would have been a very bad thing given that he spent his entire career in bombers. And what in the hell is a throat mic?
For the curious among you, World War II aviators (and German panzer crews, incidentally) used throat mics to communicate in the days before your mic was in your oxygen mask.
No, that's not Grandpa, but you get the idea. Dig the Clark Gable mustache. Those guys were genuine bad asses, flying combat missions against very good, very dangerous adversaries, and not against Arabs looking for someone who'd accept their surrender. Grandpa flew a B-17 back to England from Germany in 1945 as the only crewman not dead or wounded. That was a real war, and quite unlike the Splendid Little War I experienced for a few weeks this time of year in 1991.
I bet none of those guys flew downrange. Too bad now they've pretty much all flown west.
My first meeting is in a few minutes, and my email is lit up with queries from clients and other lawyers about motions to draft and hearings to get on the books. It makes me miss Iraq. Well, not really.
Comments