Adolf Hitler made two enormous blunders that led eventually to the downfall of Nazi Germany. One was his ill-fated invasion of Russia, which brought the Soviet Union into the war on the side of Britain. The other was declaring war against the United States.<\/p>\n
In a blustery address to the German Reichstag after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hitler hurled personal insults at Franklin D. Roosevelt and called for the Reichstag to support a declaration of war. The deputies leaped to their feet cheering.<\/p>\n
In Rome the following day, Benito Mussolini proclaimed his own Fascist declaration of war against the United States. The tripartite circle was now complete.<\/p>\n
The world was at war.<\/p>\n
***<\/p>\n
In the first week of the war, Japanese planes sank two British battleships off the coast of Malaya. Along with the crippling American losses at Pearl Harbor, this blow gave the Japanese fleet complete supremacy in the Pacific, the China Seas and the Indian Ocean.<\/em><\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n America was stunned.<\/p>\n In the tumultuous weeks and months that followed, the nation lurched toward total mobilization. Thousands of young Americans enlisted in the armed forces without waiting for the draft.<\/p>\n January 1942, on the eve of becoming twenty, I announced to my mother that I wanted to try out for the Naval Aviation flight program. The washout rate was high, that I knew. But I wanted to be a Navy pilot. I was determined to give it my best shot.<\/p>\n I suppose my childhood enthusiasm for airplanes and flying played a role in my going for the Wings of Gold.<\/p>\n But that goal was bolstered, I admit, by a strong sense of duty to my country\u2014the kind of simple, unabashed patriotism that may be out of style in today’s cynical environment.<\/p>\n During the bleak days following Pearl Harbor, we felt that the real issue in America was beat or be beaten. I felt a strong, personal responsibility to get involved.<\/p>\n It took careful cajoling to get my mother to go along. Eventually, she gave me her full support and I headed downtown to the US Navy recruiting office in Portland, where I was sworn in almost immediately as a lowly Seaman Second Class. The following day, they put me on a train to Seattle for two or three long days of physical and written exams at the Twelfth Naval District headquarters overlooking Puget Sound.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n As I\u00a0remember it now, several endless weeks passed before I learned the results. Finally, an official-looking envelope arrived in the mail from the Department of the Navy. Inside was a congratulatory letter from the chief of the Naval Air Training Command informing me that I had been accepted as an Aviation Cadet in the US Naval Aviation Flight Program. I was ordered to report in sixty days to thenewly opened West Coast Pre-Flight School in Moraga, California, where the Navy had taken over the entire St. Mary’s College campus.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n For the next few weeks, I continued to work at the shipyards. I think I quit about the time a new boilermakers’ union contract raised journeyman wages from $1.75 to $2.05 an hour. My working partner, Lew, surprised me by quitting at the same time. He said he was bailing out and heading back to the Southland. An inveterate Southerner, Lew couldn’t live with the brooding mists that drift across the skies of the Willamette Valley sometimes for weeks on end.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n \u00a0I remember very little of that last night across the road at Bernie’s Place. “A send-off for the kid,” I think Bernie called it. Or something like that. It was a blur of loud talk, explosive laughter, sweaty bodies crammed too closely together and raucous hollering back and forth across a crowded room. Clouds of cigarette smoke shrouded the air.<\/p>\n There I sat at a packed table somewhere in the middle of the uproar, crammed in with a bunch of genial, loudmouth roughnecks who insisted on buying me Boilermakers<\/em>\u2014shots of bourbon with beer chasers. How I got back home shall forever remain a mystery to me.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n John Moore was bound for a US Army infantry officers’ training camp. Dick Lewis had enlisted in the Army Air Corps. I had my orders for Naval Air.<\/p>\n In the brief time remaining, the three of us decided to pool our savings and embark on a ten-day fling, high in the mountains of Idaho.<\/p>\n Our destination was the fabled resort of Sun Valley.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n In its fourth season, Sun Valley was at the peak of its fame as a remote alpine playground for the celebrity set, attracting the likes of Gary Cooper, Sonja Henie, Clark Gable, Barbara Hutton, Ernest Hemingway and Ingrid Bergman. During that first year of the war, it also became a\u00a0popular haven for wealthy European refugees.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Sheltered on three sides by towering mountains, it boasted winter sunshine, dry corn snow, the world’s first chair lift, an enchanting alpine village atmosphere, and some of America’s most spectacular skiing.<\/p>\n As we stepped into the lobby of the big, brawny stone lodge, a welcoming fire was crackling in the massive fireplace. I also vaguely remember the main dining room as a preposterous tiered affair with staircases like a theatre and key lit platforms and a grand piano. It had the improbable look of a Hollywood stage-set from some old Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers musical.<\/p>\n We soon learned that playing the sophisticated scene at Sun Valley Lodge was far too grandiose and expensive for three twenty-year-olds from Portland’s lower\u00a0eastside. We ended up renting a narrow, four-bunk room in nearby Challenger Inn, a lively refuge for ski bums and seasonal workers. We felt right at home.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n Fritz Uhrl was the name of our rugged Austrian ski instructor, the one with a taut, angular face. He was tough and he was teasing as he helped us unscramble our stiff, icy Mt. Hood style. By the end of our stay, he had turned us into better skiers, I think. At the very least, we were loose, more confident, more relaxed. I could ski the moguls, finally, without making a damn fool of myself.<\/p>\n “Bend zee knees … bend zee knees,” he’d shout over his shoulder as we followed downhill in his wake.<\/p>\n Every morning, the early spring sun would pour down on the slopes of Mt. Baldy. We reveled in it. There were only six or seven of us in the class. It was in that disparate group that I met Mac Stone from St. Charles, Illinois. J. McWilliams Stone. He was a big, balding “Daddy Warbucks” kind of guy in his early sixties, I guessed. He had a bellowing laugh and a beet red face topped by a signature black bowler.<\/p>\n And he was fearless.<\/p>\n When it came his turn to traverse his way downhill, with Fritz Uhrl on the side watching, he would jam the derby down on his head, punch his ski poles in the snow, give out a snort and shove off, hard. Sometimes his hearing aid would pop out, dangling behind over his shoulder as he whooped down the hill.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Mac and I became good friends. Our paths crossed several times over the next two decades. He was a man of boundless enthusiasm who rode with Pancho Villa in the\u00a0waning days of the Mexican revolution, started a portable radio company in 1922 and went bankrupt in 1929. An inventive engineer, he paid off his debts eventually and staged a comeback with his development of acoustic beacons and ultra sound devices, including the US Navy underwater “pingers” used during WWII. Mac died in the late sixties. Today, his DuKane Corporation, a global manufacturer of hi-tech communication systems, is still in the family and operated by his son, Jack.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n The prettiest skier in our class was a petite Jewish teenager from the suburbs of Paris. How old was she? Seventeen? Eighteen?<\/p>\n Dark hair, high cheekbones, a rather tense smile. With the grace of a ballerina, she fairly floated across the snow. Early one afternoon, she joined me for coffee and doughnuts at a small cafe in the Village. I can’t even remember her name, but the memory of that afternoon still lingers.<\/p>\n In a halting French-English accent, she told me of her family’s escape to Switzerland ahead of the final Nazi push into Paris. She said her Papa had been a banker in the city. From Switzerland, they had made their way to Portugal, across to South America and then up to the United States.<\/p>\n Obviously, they had escaped with ample family funds. She said they were spending the season at Sun Valley.<\/p>\n As we left the cafe, I invited her on a sleigh ride at sunset along snowbound Silver Creek. She seemed enthralled with the idea. And we agreed to meet at the same cafe later in the afternoon.<\/p>\n I waited at the cafe until long after sundown, when the narrow valley turns dark green and purple with mountain shadows. But she never returned.<\/p>\n The following morning up on Baldy, a subdued young Parisian softly revealed that her Papa had firmly forbidden her to have anything to do with me.<\/p>\n Why?<\/p>\n That’s a question she quietly refused to answer.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n Ernest Hemingway loved the high meadows and mountains surrounding Sun Valley. Sometime prior to our visit, he spent four months in and out of a room at the lodge, finishing For Whom the Bell Tolls<\/em>, a manuscript he had begun two years earlier in Cuba. And he returned again and again to Ketchum, the old mining town with sagging wooden sidewalks two miles down the road from Sun Valley village. Alongside Trail Creek on the backside of Ketchum,\u00a0he built his final retreat.<\/p>\n Years later, despondent, broken in health and spirit, Hemingway took down a shotgun from the rack in his Trail Creek cabin and blew his brains out.<\/p>\n ***<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0At night it was very cold in the Valley. The snow crusted hard. During our stay, we headed into Ketchum for hot dancing and mild hell raising at a raunchy joint called the Sawtooth Club.<\/p>\n A ski bum at Challenger Inn had tipped us off that Sawtooth was a hangout for western musicians, skiers, cowboys and good-looking girls.<\/p>\n One night, however, we switched the venue. We decided to test the expensive, rarified air of The Duchin Room in Sun Valley Lodge. When we sat down at our table, a trio may have been playing soft jazz. Maybe not. I don’t remember.<\/p>\n What I do remember was the well-dressed crowd, an elegant atmosphere and classy Claudette Colbert sitting at a table directly across the dance floor from us.<\/p>\n Out of the blue, John Moore said that he was going to ask’ her to dance. Dick Lewis and I ventured the well- considered opinion that he was out of his mind. John thought it over, stood up, braced himself, walked directly across the dance floor and approached her table, wearing his engaging Irish smile. About this time, Dick and I spotted her escort, a distinctive-looking gent with snowy white hair, making his way back to her table. We watched with amusement from across the room to see how this screwball comedy would play out. We anticipated a slapstick finish.<\/p>\n To our\u00a0complete surprise, we saw Claudette Colbert graciously offer John her hand as he introduced himself. A moment later, we saw what appeared to be John and the white-haired gent laughing and shaking hands. Then, unbelievably, we watched them invite John to join them at their table, where the three of them chatted for several minutes as if they were old Hollywood party pals. From across the room, Dick and I viewed this scene with disbelief, totally astonished.<\/p>\n John never did get to dance with Lily Claudette Chauchoin. But he returned to our table with a triumphant, ear-to-ear grin on his face. He reported that he had introduced himself, told her how much he admired her work in her latest film, asked a question or two and things just seemed to flow on from there. I think her latest film\u00a0that year was called The Palm Beach Story<\/em>\u2014 one I never did see.<\/p>\n John, of course, was elated. And his reputation among his buddies soared. In the ensuing years, John Moore has always proved to be a man who makes friends easily.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n One afternoon, a tousle-headed kid who had been scampering in and around the Sun Valley ice sculptures, crashed into me and slipped to the ground on some ice. I guessed he was about seven or eight years old.<\/p>\n He bounded to his feet, stuck out his hand and introduced himself as Lance. In a moment or two, we had the start of a playful conversation going. And I held his attention with a little disappearing coin trick. Suddenly, however, his father came rushing over, grabbed the youngster by the arm and strode back toward the lodge. The kid squirmed around and waved goodbye.<\/p>\n It wasn’t until later I learned that the concerned father was Count Reventlow, Barbara Hutton’s wealthy ex-husband. The count and young Lance were spending an early spring vacation together at Sun Valley.<\/p>\n Lance Reventlow grew up to become a handsome international playboy, famous for his fast Scarab racing cars and beautiful women. He was killed when the light plane he was flying crashed in a storm over the Rockies.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n The Sun Valley Ski School Championships climaxed our ten-day fling. All guests enrolled in the ski school were invited to compete, Fritz Uhrl pushed hard for everybody in his small class to enter, but I think John and I were the only ones who took the challenge. We both signed up for the Giant Slalom. And I signed up for the Downhill Race. Dick Lewis had suffered a mild knee injury and decided to sit it out. The final number of entrees from all classes probably totaled about twenty.<\/p>\n On Dollar Mountain that crisp, clear morning, John decorously completed his run in the Giant Slalom without a fall. As I remember it, he even placed somewhere in the top five. My own\u00a0attempt was a fiasco. As I charged into the second gate, my skis slid out from under me and I skidded down the hill ten feet or more, chewing snow all the way. Luckily, the only thing hurt was my pride.<\/p>\n Over on Mt, Baldy, the downhill race that afternoon was a different story. The course ran down an open bowl and then funneled into a narrow, bumpy, tree-lined trail called the River Run.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n In no way was it a steep, Olympic caliber downhill course. Or was it? When I stood at the top of the run that afternoon and stared down at Ketchum, seemingly far below … whoa … it seemed to me like the real thing. No turning back. I was committed.<\/p>\n The handlers counted down the start of my run. I tensed for the shove off. Five … four .., three … two … one… bang<\/em>. Away I went, careening down the mountain with a double-diamond dose of adrenaline surging through my veins. I thought I was going too fast. I felt on the edge, out of control. And I knew a wipeout could be disastrous. I went into a tuck. I tried to let the skis follow the course down the bowl. “Bend zee knees … bend zee knees.” I took a wide turn, swinging down into the River Run. Maybe too wide, I thought. But I stayed on course, down through the trees. My legs pumped like pistons over the washboards of the River Run. I came bursting out of the trees into the final turn. Split seconds down to the finish. Wide open. I crossed the line. A final Christie stop. And it was over. I’d made it down the mountain course without crashing. My heart pounded. My legs wobbled. I felt dizzy. But I was elated just to have made it down.<\/p>\n Then came the shock. Fritz Uhrl came running over to inform me that I was holding second place. An even greater shock followed later on, as the other skiers ended their runs. My second place finish held up. I had won the silver medal. I was overwhelmed.<\/p>\n We partied that night, our last night, at the Sawtooth Club in Ketchum.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n For decades, the silver ski pin with its Sun Valley medallion which the officials presented to me on that final day in Idaho lay nestled in a dresser drawer, half forgotten. When I came across it a few years ago, I presented it to our grandson, Gabe, on his twelfth birthday. In the mountains of New Mexico, he is a far better skier than I ever was at any age.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n Sometime that spring, before boarding a train for California and the Navy’s pre-flight school, I received in the mail a surprise gift package from Mac Stone. It was a biography of John Paul Jones, the swashbuckling skipper of the BonHomme Richard<\/em>, who helped to establish the fledgling U.S. Navy during the American Revolution.<\/p>\n On September 23, 1979, off the coast of Yorkshire,\u00a0England, the\u00a0BonHomme Richard<\/em> and HMS Serapis<\/em> fought a tenacious battle, with both ships literally locked in combat. It was during this bloody battle that John Paul Jones, asked if he had surrendered, issued his immortal reply, “I have not yet begun to fight.” In the end, it was the battered crew of the British warship that was defeated. Finally, the British captain tore down his colors and surrendered the Serapis<\/em>.<\/p>\n It was an absorbing biography that found a permanent place in my bookcase at home.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n During those early months of 1942, news from out of the Far East was grim. The Japanese juggernaut continued to roll\u2014beyond the South China Seas and into the South Pacific.<\/em><\/p>\n Japanese assault troops invaded the Philippines. In Northern Luzon, their eventual triumph over the American and Filipino survivors of Corregidor ended with the infamous, seventy-five-mile “Bataan Death March.”<\/em><\/p>\n Japanese armies also poured down through Indochina, invaded Burma and Malaya and drove east toward the borders of India.<\/em><\/p>\n They advanced the length of the Malay Peninsula, cut through the Johor jungle and forced the British to surrender at Singapore.<\/em><\/p>\n Supported by the powerful Japanese fleet, they moved in on the oil-rich Dutch East Indies.<\/em><\/p>\n In the South Pacific, they captured New Britain, including the strategic port of Rabaul with its enormous natural harbor. There, the Japanese established the strongest, most important naval base in the South Pacific, ringed by five separate military air bases.<\/em><\/p>\n Beyond Rabaul, they took over the Solomon Islands. And they began bombing the Australian port of Darwin.<\/em><\/p>\n They further strengthened air and sea bases on Bougainville and Guadalcanal\u2014closing in on Australia.<\/em><\/p>\n The position of Australia was perilous.<\/em><\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n At that time, all prospective U.S. naval aviators attended pre-flight school\u2014three-months of intensive mental and physical conditioning, designed, it was said, to toughen up every candidate for the challenges ahead. It also provided the Navy and Marine Corps, right at the start, with a fast, efficient way of weeding out those who couldn’t handle high pressure and physical stress.<\/p>\n “Shape up or ship out,” was the word. And within\u00a0the first three or four weeks, a surprising number of the fellows in my battalion were gone.<\/p>\n Today, my memory of that relentless pre-flight training is nothing more than a swirling kaleidoscope of barking, in-your-face discipline, calisthenics, close order drill, lifting weights, scrambling over obstacle courses, peripheral vision exercises, early morning sprints, mental gymnastics, hand-to-hand combat training,\u00a010K runs in the heat, pushups, pull ups and Gawd knows what else I’ve mercifully forgotten.<\/p>\n We went at it six days a week, week after week, for three grueling summer months. I gritted my teeth and hung in there. By the time I finished pre-flight training, I was probably in the best shape of my entire life. But I’d had enough, more than enough. I wanted to fly.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n The San Francisco experience is not an encounter you can enjoy in an hour or a day or perhaps even a lifetime.<\/p>\n My introduction to the City came on a morning when the sea breezes were blowing cold and salty from the northwest. I had taken the early Sunday morning liberty bus from Moraga to Oakland. There, I embarked on a ferry to San Francisco, across the bay.<\/p>\n I stood out on the deck,. still damp from the early morning mists. On the bay, tugs, barges, fishing boats, freighters and ferries moved across the choppy surface.<\/p>\n Off to the right, I saw Alcatraz, bright against a dark expanse of water. And there, straight ahead of me, I saw for the first time that spectacular skyline, upthrust towers rising from the city’s hills and valleys, clean and sharp. To this day, I am thrilled by that vista, even as bulky, new skyscrapers alter its classic lines.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n My grandmother died that year, at the age of seventy. Josephine Martell Dewey. She was a generous, tough- minded woman who had an important influence in my young life. Probably her greatest legacy was her strong commitment to honesty. “Tell the truth,” she said. And she never let me forget it.<\/p>\n Following her death, my grandfather, Jim Dewey, lived on in my mother’s upstairs flat, alone.<\/p>\n About the same time, my mother and Aunt Phoebe put their restaurant experience to work by taking wartime jobs in the Swan Island Shipyard cafeteria.<\/p>\n One month after Pearl Harbor, Gatzner Wagoner’s 629-acre ranch in California’s Livermore Valley was taken over by\u00a0the U.S. Navy. Old Gatzner wasn’t happy about it. They paid him $75,265\u2014about $120 an acre.<\/p>\n On Wagoner’s sprawling piece of land, the Navy rushed to completion the Livermore Naval Air Station, one of several West Coast primary flight-training centers setup during WWIL.<\/p>\n Later, in the early fifties, that same 629 acres became the site for the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. But when I reported in with my orders. October 1942, it was a bustling new air station boasting a variety of buildings, including a large aircraft hangar and two wooden barracks.<\/p>\n There at the Livermore NAS, I learned to fly.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n \u00a0I learned to fly in a Boeing-built Stearman N2S3, the Navy’s famed biwing trainer. Painted bright yellow, it was laughingly called “the yellow peril.”<\/p>\n Despite\u00a0its nickname, the Stearman N2S3 was a strong, well-balanced plane\u2014a military version of the biwing planes used in the ’30s and ’40s for stunt flying and crop dusting.<\/p>\n It had two open cockpits, staggered 34-foot wings, exposed radial engine cylinder heads and a cruising speed of about 90 knots, or 103 miles per hour.<\/p>\n You can still see these nostalgic flying machines, lovingly restored and maintained, at occasional air shows. Only last year, I went up for an aerobatics flight with a local pilot in his yellow Stearman, which he stores in a hangar at the Sonoma Valley Airport. We did a few loops and rolls and assorted maneuvers. The memories, they came flooding back.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n Primary flight training took a total of thirteen weeks. If a student pilot failed any of the flight tests along the way, he washed out. That was it\u2014an end to the time and money the Navy was going to waste on him.<\/p>\n After five weeks of ground school and twelve hours of in-the-air dual flight instruction, I went up for a sweaty check flight with sharply dressed Ensign F. G. Wolf. About an hour later, after I brought the Stearman in for a rough but solid landing, he scrawled in my manila flight jacket, “Safe for solo.”<\/p>\n At that point, I felt that he had one helluva lot more confidence in my readiness than I had.<\/p>\n On the afternoon that I strapped myself in the cockpit of the Stearman, carefully went through the startup checklist, taxied to the end of the strip, revved the engine, checked the mags, turned back into the wind, stared\u00a0down the runway and eased the throttle forward for my first solo takeoff, I don’t think I had spit enough to swallow.<\/p>\n Once I cleared the end of the runway and began to climb, however, I was scared but in control.<\/p>\n In the weeks ahead, I certainly had my share of problems. At that point, most of us did. My earliest flight records contain several painful notations from instructors. “Pulls back on the stick in turns.” “Doesn’t control his slips well enough in small field procedure.” “Excessive speed in his glides.” “Poor use of rudder in climbing turns.” “Wingovers too steep.” “Permitted wind to drift him back over the pylons.” “Taxiing too fast.”<\/p>\n One stiff-necked Ensign named J. J. Hanley wrote in my flight jacket, “Cadet Mayo does not cooperate as he should. In another few months of Naval training he should be more cooperative.”<\/p>\n With damned good instruction and more experience in the air, I did smooth out my handling of the Stearman. I gained more confidence. And I passed my check flight tests for takeoffs, precision landings, spin recovery, emergency control, crossovers and other categories, up and down the line.<\/p>\n I was especially pleased with an evaluation by Lieutenant John Sciarrino, a senior\u00a0instructor, following my check in night flying. Giving me two thumbs up, he wrote in my flight jacket, “Handles plane extremely well in all phases. Take-offs very good.”<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n \u00a0In the final weeks of primary training we concentrated on aerobatics. We practiced and practiced a routine of snap rolls, barrel rolls, tight loops, hammerhead stalls, lazy loops, Immelmens<\/em> and spins.<\/p>\n In flying a Stearman through a lazy loop, I thought it was fun to see the ground replace the sky momentarily and then to come out with wings level in the spot I departed. I found aerobatics exhilarating. But I soon learned that flying a full routine of snap rolls, tight loops and such was a gut-wrenching, demanding, physical experience. It required intense concentration and ability to endure high “G” forces. I was able to do it.<\/p>\n My favorite maneuver was an Immelmann<\/em>\u2014a combat maneuver invented by the German ace Max Immelman during World War I. You pick up speed and pull back sharply on the stick, shooting almost straight up and over, until you’re flying upside down. Then you quickly roll the plane horizontal, so you\u00a0end up facing the opposite direction from the start.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n Ver-ti-go<\/strong>, (vurf<\/sup> te go’), n., a disordered condition in which a person feels that he or his surroundings are whirling about.<\/em><\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n I have to dig deep in my memory to recover the details of what happened that day in December 1942. It’s something I always wanted to forget.<\/p>\n Several of us were practicing aerobatics in different sectors of the sky. In my sector to the west, I could see turbulent clouds and fog rolling in over the South Bay hills toward the valley, I returned to base and circled the field to see if we were to come in. No recall flag was flying from the tower. The landing strip at that point was clear.<\/p>\n Following procedure, I poured on the power and regained altitude, dodging some fast-moving clouds. As I approached my sector, the clouds grew thicker. The front moved in fast. A high bank of fog swept into the valley. Suddenly, I was in the thick of it. It surrounded me. Zero visibility. No horizon line. No way to orient the angle of my position. I couldn’t even see my wing tips.<\/p>\n For several minutes I tried desperately to concentrate on needle, ball and air speed. Full power. I kept telling myself I had to keep from stalling out\u2014and spinning in. I became disoriented. I was in a whirl. I couldn’t see. I couldn’t tell if I was right side up or upside down.<\/p>\n For one fraction of a second, I think I saw the hillside, instantaneous with the crash. My plane plowed into the side of a hill at a steep angle and cart wheeled down onto\u00a0the rocky ground, inverted.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n As a cloud of dust settled on the wreckage, I found myself dangling upside down in the cockpit. I was numb. Unfeeling. Stunned to be alive. Suddenly realizing the danger of the situation, however, I jerked the release on my harness and dropped to the ground, still wearing my bulky parachute. Frantically, I crawled away from the smashed fuselage on my hands and knees. Any moment, I expected to see and to feel it explode into flames.<\/p>\n But the wreckage did not burn, The remaining fuel from the upper wing tank spread out onto the ground, away from the smoldering engine. The crumpled wings were in tatters. Yet the tail assembly seemed almost intact.<\/p>\n I felt myself carefully up and\u00a0down, from head to toe. Unbelievably, I was alive, I kept telling myself.<\/p>\n I was probably in a daze. But I was apparently unhurt, except for a slightly bruised left shoulder.<\/p>\n Around the site of the crash, thick fog continued to swirl. It was surreal. I had no idea of my location or direction. I slowly began making my way downhill through heavy hillside brush, still packing for some reason that damned parachute.<\/p>\n After wandering for perhaps a half-hour, I heard a rooster crowing in the distance. Heading in that direction, still in the fog, I reached a fence line and a plowed hillside field and eventually a farmhouse.<\/p>\n As I mounted the high front steps, a startled farmer came to the door. He welcomed me inside, poured me a stiff cup of coffee, listened to my story and then drove me all the way back to the Livermore NAS in his old pickup.<\/p>\n At the main gate, the astonished Marine guards refused to let me enter. Who was this guy climbing out of a battered old pickup, walking up in winter flight gear with helmet and goggles and no written pass, carrying a full parachute pack under his arm?<\/p>\n They checked on the phone with somebody and within a minute or two, a jeep bearing a Navy lieutenant came roaring up. I was immediately taken to the CO’s office for debriefing followed by a quick physical.<\/p>\n By nightfall, I learned the full and tragic impact of that day’s fog-bound turmoil. Three other missing planes turned up safely, over in the San Joaquin Valley. One other plane was lost. Somewhere near Mt. Diablo, one of our cadets spun in and was killed. A fellow named Chapman. The flight officer of the day faced a potential court martial.<\/p>\n Two days later, I was back in the air.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n I went on to pass my aerobatics check flight. And in mid-January, with 92 hours of flight time in my log book, I completed my primary flight training and received orders for advanced training at the Naval Air Training Center in Corpus Christi, Texas.<\/p>\n