Dedicated to soldiers who die young:
Tombstone inscription
“For the wife I will never see,
For my children who will never be,
I trust my legacy to Thee.”
Jay Lacklen

“While you (generals) commanded at headquarters, we possessed the Air Force soul and dwelt in its home, on the line, where the mission is accomplished, the essence revealed, and where you may get to embrace a brother crew in the dark skies over the Nile.

The bell to commence the class was still a few minutes away, but the (Russian second grade) students slowly showed awareness that some aura had descended on the room, almost like they were, somehow, in a church. The teacher stood silently before them with some manner of reverence with a man in a strange uniform they had never seen. Perhaps the flag patch on the shoulder suggested he was someone from far outside their experience. The students also noticed school administrators and teachers quietly filing in by the rear classroom door to stand silently to observe something, but what? What was going on?

It was as surreal a scene as I would ever experience. In these final winter days of the Soviet Union, my American air crew and I stood on the tarmac at Sheremetyevo airport outside Moscow intermingled with a cadre of a hundred Soviet soldiers, dressed in their full-length Peter the Great coats, as they manually downloaded our C-5 cargo aircraft.

Each group feigned total disinterest in the other, yet none could have failed to grasp the incredible irony of the moment. We had been each other’s evil empire, the dreaded enemy we had spent our careers preparing to fight and defeat, and now we were working together at the same task on a frigid winter night in Moscow.

After several minutes of haughty posturing and faux disinterest I eye-locked with one of the Russians and could not let go, nor could he.

The next time I was in the squadron I stepped into the ops officer’s office and brought this to his attention. “I can’t find the sentence about me being the only ART to fly in command with ASEV in my OER,” I said.

He frowned and nodded his head to imply he had had to make a difficult decision and said, “I know, Jay, it was a tough call, but I had to remove that sentence. It would have made all the other ARTS look bad.” (Especially him.)

This encounter over the Nile haunted me over the years. Here we found a fellow Westover crew in the darkness over Egypt where the bright strip of gold and silver lights along the Nile River wound starkly and narrowly through the utter darkness of the landmass below. We discussed in professional tones the operational problems we would later chatter about excitedly on the ramp at Dhahran. After our consultations on each other’s problems, my aircraft slowly pulled away from the other crew due to our greater speed, and lost contact with them over southern Egypt.

All this occurred as we sailed through an invisible dark blue air ocean above exotic lands that left us gazing silently at the beauty we saw. Alas, we are but pilots in a poetic realm we can marvel over but are often unable to describe. The points along our journey mesmerized—Cairo, Luxor, Gassim, Alkir, Tabuk—as we flew an American war chariot to the front lines while passing over the home of the pharaohs and Ali Baba. These would be such marvelous feelings to share, if only we had the words.

We got off the bus, empty guns in hand, and entered the Ramstein O’Club for Sunday buffet brunch on this first Desert Shield mission.

It didn’t occur to me what was about to happen until I approached an empty table in the middle of the room. I got to my chair, paused, and laid the revolver on the white tablecloth next to my plate and silverware, as did my crewmates.

A ripple of shocked silence flowed away from our table in all directions. I didn’t look up. I didn’t need to. I knew every eye of the hundred or so diners, many with their families, was on us. This was their notification that war had come to Ramstein and things would be different.

Suddenly we were not in control of the plane. I felt as if a giant invisible hand had scooped us up and begun to raise us into the sky, a sensation similar to a rotating Ferris wheel after you pass the bottom of the circular arc and begin to rise rapidly.

(Typhoon refueling) For what seemed like the fourth time in five minutes, the flight engineer reminded me of how little fuel we had. We were below 30,000 pounds, which sounds adequate, but is not. We always try to land with a minimum of 20,000 pounds since the gauges become unreliable below 16,000 pounds and engine flameout can occur. Most troubling, we were still about 20,000 pounds’ worth of fuel away from Guam. This would, indeed, be a “you-bet-your-ass” refueling.

The (retired) colonel’s eyes narrowed and a sneer came across his face. “Are you a reservist, captain?” he asked.
“Yes, Sir, I am.” I said.
“I could tell,” he said, “because it is obvious your patriotism and dedication to this country are much less than the active duty.”
Total silence ensued.
As I have said previously, I only lost my temper a handful of times in 33 years in the Air Force and, prior to this moment, only once. This would be the second.”

Later, a statue in the Cairo museum brought me the essence of Egypt. This simple work about 18 inches high shows a man of ancient Egypt standing erect, holding two poles in his hands, as if pulling an unseen cart. Beside and just behind him, a woman stands with her hand on his shoulder, facing forward with him.

I studied the pair, not initially grasping what they were telling me, but somehow knowing they had a message for me. Slowly it came to me. The man, larger, and in the foreground, initially seems to dominate. But the longer I studied the pair the more I saw the woman subtly begin to assume domination. She seemed to control the scene despite occupying a secondary physical position.

I gasped. Suddenly I saw the intricate male/female interplay the artist wanted to convey. I had received a sophisticated message of universal interpersonal relationships from an Egyptian artist 4,000 years dead, yet alive in his work to speak to me.