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The Nation's Pulse

(Page 3 of 3)

At that point, the old man told me, he was making "$50 a month plus $50 overseas." By his standards, that was a king's ransom.

ONCE HIS TOUR IN PANAMA WAS OVER, Jack was recalled to the states and stayed here for a while, due to regulations about troop rotation. He was assigned to help manage troop transport planes and that eventually took him back into the international stage.

"I crossed the ocean six or seven times," he told me, the ocean being the Atlantic. "Had a few scrapes along the way, and picked up a few of what I call 'scratches,' but I got through okay."

By "scratches," he meant shrapnel. Jack told me two stories of when death got a little too close for comfort.

One time, one of the engines in a two engine prop-plane sputtered and blew out and they had to make an emergency landing. He illustrated the wobbling of the plane by holding his hand straight out and twisting it from side to side.

And the other time, his plane was picking up troops in Italy when enemy troops got a lock on their position: "I told everybody to strap down quick and told the pilot to get the hell out of there. There was a guy standing close to the door, so I yanked him in and we took off."

It was Jack's job to keep a flight manifest for funeral records, so he learned in the air that he had hauled a "decorated general" on board.

"He told me, 'That's the first time I've ever been manhandled by a sergeant.' I said, 'Well, that's the first time I've ever manhandled a general.'"

When Jack was to be discharged after four years, the general contacted him, said that the air corps had let too many people with Jack's expertise go, and asked if he'd be willing to help run U.S. operations in Canada.

Since that counted as "overseas pay"; and since Jack didn't have anything better lined up; and since, after all, he was born in Canada, he said he'd do it. He touched down north of the 49th to discover that there was no commanding officer to report to, because he was it.

The only serious snag that he ran into was that army brass tended to send a lot of high-ranking but incompetent "pencil pushers" his way, and they didn't want to take orders from a sergeant.

Jack told me that he called his general friend -- whose name he struggled but failed to remember -- and asked what he should do about it. The general sent him a bunch of decorations and told them to wear them at all times, and people fell into line.

"Of course, they took them away when they were discharging me," Jack said. Apparently they took a dim view of that very American notion, "promote thyself."

In the "young and dumb" department, Jack told me, "Something I didn't know is if you did things in the service that you weren't trained for, and you did them well, then they would write that on your discharge papers."

He continued, "If I would have taken those papers to Boeing, I could have got a job there no problem. I went there and I asked for a job but they said, 'We don't have time to train you.' I got a job working for the phone company instead, so that worked out alright."

Jack regretted this, he said, because, when he was going through his effects a few years back, he accidentally dropped a copy of his discharge papers. His accomplishments literally came tumbling out on the floor. So he picked them up and read them, and then he passed the story of his hot youth on to me.

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