Saturday 14 July 2012

"There I Was," 5116 Days Later - A true story

By now you know that I am an ex-military pilot. Within my autobiography are some stories of flights I have had. In the spirit of my last blog I will tell you a true story from one of my flights. This can easily be verified by anyone who was on this flight with me.

I was giving a check ride to a potential Aircraft Commander. I was working for the training squadron 426. I was on a multi-leg trip from Trenton to initially, an air force base in the US (Savannah, GA). The crew all got going and to flight planning okay but, something was wrong. After doing this kind of stuff for so long, you just get a feeling about the mood of your crew.

Finally the Chief Warrant Officer and the Acting Aircraft Commander came to me with the problem. We had a young Corporal on board who was a Deserving Crewman. The Corporal had been informed by his wife, living in Comox, BC, that she was having serious troubles with her pregnancy and needed him home right away. The Chief had called his Squadron (429) and asked how quickly they could get this fellow home to his wife. The answer back was, 4 days. He would have to wait in Trenton for the next service flight leaving for the west coast.

I asked the Acting Aircraft Commander, what would he do? He said that his hands were tied since their Squadron could not do any better than that (this was the correct answer but I worked for a different squadron) . I told the Chief and the other Captain to leave this one to me. I called back to my squadron (426) and asked to speak to the Commanding Officer. The real CO was away, so I spoke to the Acting CO. His name was Major Michael H.(I would love to use his full name but, he is one of the real good senior officers I know and I would not want to let that secret out). I explained to the Major our situation and requested his approval for me to re-route our training trip so that I might get this poor Corporal home as soon as possible. I heard the words, do what you have to do, to get it done.

I went back to the crew and explained our situation to them. Our crew day is 18 hours and if we were fast, we might make the 20 hour crew day exception rule. To a person, they all said, let's do it. We re-filed a flight plan from Savannah, GA direct to Comox, BC. The flight was to be so long that we needed to re-fuel en-route.

I, to this day, have never seen a Chief look so proud that we all took the Corporals thoughts and feelings into consideration and we were going to get him home today. Truth be told, I was never prouder of a crew or their performance under trying circumstances than I was that day. This was a true honour. One of those you never hear or read about.

I came home from another hard day at work about two months later and there was this hand written letter addressed to me. It was in a woman's hand writing. I was curious to open this letter and see who this woman was who took the time to hand write me a letter.

When I opened it, the hand writing was all done in gold ink. Enormous care and thought was put into each and every pen stroke. It was a thank you letter from the Corporal's wife. She wrote to personally thank me as the Captain, for flying her husband directly home when she needed him the most. I must admit that it took several eye clearing sessions to wipe the tears away long enough to read the whole letter, but I made it through. I told the Chief about it and all he did was nod and smile. This is one of those stories, never told but actually happened.

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