In the early Fifties, Australia re-instituted involuntary military service; in the USA it was called “The Draft”; in Oz it was called National Service or in Aussie slang, “Nasho(e)s”. Being an independent sort and not wanting to mix with the hoi polloi, I had no desire to be ‘called up’ to serve. I had been told, or read, that to preserve one’s American citizenship, you could not serve in a ‘foreign’ army.

I still treasured my American birth certificate and longed to return to land of cheap motorcars. In 1952, I took the train to Sydney and presented myself to the American consulate on the top floor of the Bank of New South Wales, an impressive Victorian sandstone building at the end of Martin Place in the center of the city. (The building is still there and is still a bank – WESTPAC.)
I filled out the necessary papers and was given a US draft card for my trouble! I asked if I could be inducted into the US Armed Forces then and there, but was told that I must enlist in a country where the Army had a presence and the nearest country was Japan. So much for that way out! I then asked for my passport but was told they would issue one when (and if) I had a ticket to the USA. To ensure that there was no doubt as to my intentions to resume my U.S. citizenship, I took my British passport, drafted a ‘snotty’ letter to the Australian Passport Office in York Street, where I relinquished my Australian citizenship and was able to avoid the Australian Draft. (The law was changed in the 1990s so I am now a dual national – able to own property, collect the Australian Old-Age Pension and vote.)

Back in Gunnedah with my head in the clouds, I walked the hot, dusty sidewalk and imagined I was in America. Maybe Texas, or even California. (I didn’t dream of living in Arizona where we now reside.) Living in the Imperial Hotel in Gunnedah, I drank with traveling salesmen and college graduates who knew something of the world outside. They advised me to leave Gunnedah and go to Sydney to seek a new adventure. Why not leave Australia and return to the USA? Yep, why not?

By the summer of 1955 I decided to go to the U.S. as soon as I saved enough money. I was earning a journeyman wage and by reducing the partying and extra-curricula activities, I could minimize my expenses. Besides, my friends were marrying – Bob Cozens the airplane mechanic who had helped me learn the airplane mechanic trade was engaged. My old Riverview mate, Bob Bower was married to his long time love, Virginia and starting to raise a family. QANTAS was a good job but I realized that with my lack of training I would never be able to progress beyond a low technical level job. A free college education was beyond my reach, nor I did not know how to go about it.

“San Francisco, a One-Way Ticket, Please.”

During my insurance days, the Pacific and Orient Steamship Company (P & O) was two doors away on Spring Street; I knew the blokes who worked there and they helped me find the cheapest berth on the ship. I wrote a cheque for £50 and reserved a berth on the S.S. Oronsay to depart Sydney on December 3, 1955. And what a berth it turned out to be! The ‘no porthole’, tiny, six-bed cabin below the waterline reminded me of pictures of WW2 troopships. But my bunkmates were pleasant and we all shared one thing in common: we were off on an adventure! My childhood friends were excited and a bit envious. One of us was ‘getting out of Australia’. In the 1950s, many Australians felt that the only national culture in Australia was to be found in a bottle of yogurt! Most young people went to Europe and began their adventure in Kangaroo Valley the Pommie name for Earls Court in London. It was crawling with Aussies who lived together in much the same way as American kids did in the late sixties– 10 to a room using the ‘hot bed’ principle: there was always someone sleeping in every bed and sometimes two to a bed! But, because I had a U.S. passport, my travels would allow me to go the America, and unlike most other kids, I could legally hold a job!

Before departure, my friends would not allow me to spend and more money than was absolutely necessary. The waitress at the local ‘greasy spoon’ brought me as much food I could eat and charged me only the minimum price on the menu. My mates bought most all the beers and three girls made me a gray pullover wool sweater as a joint project. They presented this to me at a going away party held at Rae Soulos’ apartment. They had made the sweater without measuring me and the arms were ten inches too long. (Several years as an Air Force cadet my friends told me that it would be de rigueur with blue jeans and I purchased my first pair of Levis in Lubbock.)

And what a party it was! John and Shirley Jones, my QANTAS mates, Bob Cozens and his intended, several girl friends and their blokes gathered at Rae’s tiny Coogee flat and we had a great ‘piss-up’. I crawled back to my room in Cowper Street and passed out.

The night before departure was sleepless because of a visit from a psychotic, drunken fellow boarder. I guess he’d had enough of my bragging at dinner and decided to take me down a peg or two. He bashed in the door to my bedroom and as I didn’t wish to get involved in a pre-departure interview with the local constabulary, I yelled for help. Paddy, a nearby friend had been an Irish policeman and knew how to handle drunks. He ‘took him away’ in short order. The landlady, Mrs. Retallack, a tiny slip of a woman set on the stairs for several hours to preclude another visitation. Poor woman - the job was worth more than her trouble of looking after an aging apartment, its staff and twenty rowdy inhabitants.

Next morning with my Val Pak (a B-4 leather bag which I kept for years) and briefcase in hand, I called a cab, and boarded the SS Oronsay, a Clyde-built, single funnel, P & O two-class liner which was doing service in taking Poms and Wogs to Oz, and disgruntled Aussies to Canada and the USA. By today’s standards of cruise ships, the Oronsay was small. My below-the-waterline cabin had no porthole and six bunks. This was home for almost three weeks—and after New Zealand, I was the only occupant.

The Oronsay was docked in Pyrmont adjacent to the dock where the family had landed 18 years ago on the SS Mariposa. The dock and the deck were jammed with partygoers envious of those of us who were ‘getting out’. There were confused noises of music, laughter, sobbing and ‘chundering’. The gang from Cowper Street showed up with booze and small goodbye gifts. I remember none of them except a bottle of Cointreau from a girlfriend (I think it was Jacquie Trigg) who remembered that we had enjoyed champagne cocktails in her room on some forgotten evening orgy. We hugged and kissed until the ship’s siren blasted and the crew announced, “All visitors ashore, all visitors ashore!” I stood with hundreds of other escapees by the railing throwing the traditional rolls of streamers to my friends until the gap between the ship and dock was a solid paper wall. The tugs took hold, the streamers parted and the sliver of water in the gap grew larger. I turned my back to the wharf and went downstairs to unpack. I didn’t look back.

First stop, Auckland, and by then I had made new friends over coffee in the lounge with my new shipmates. They were a mixed bunch: old friends were quickly forgotten in the spirit of the moment. Next stop, Suva, Fiji where in 1938 my father had been forbidden to go ashore for fear he would jump ship and leave his wife and two children to fend for themselves. Next stop, Honolulu and for the first time in my life, I knew I belonged to a great country; the Immigration and Naturalization Service of the US Government had set up two tables labeled U.S. Citizens and Others. The line to the U.S. Citizens table was short, and I was home!

I had made friends with a Canadian couple returning from a six month walkabout in Australia and they allowed me to share a car rental. We toured the island until late afternoon. It was in downtown Honolulu, a place which I would frequent with my wife and children 5 years later, that I saw my first TV. I stared like a country bumpkin through the window of a department store until they dragged me away to a fast food restaurant several blocks away. We walked a little way further and I tasted my first American hamburger slathered in relish.. My Canadian friends were quite amused as they were ‘world travelers’ raised in Canada and used to the American diet.

Little did I know that in three years I would visit Honolulu as a commissioned USAF pilot and eat in the Officers’ Club at Hickam AFB.

Mid way through the voyage, I found that I had friends in First Class—two Armenian sisters from Coonabarrabran. They were the daughters of a modestly well-to-do haberdasher and had been on several Gunnedah YCW outings I attended. The 21 year old was rich, but chubby but I knew a good thing when I saw it. She had invited me to her cabin several times during her afternoon nap and was generous with drinks and squeezes. She suggested that we visit the night spots before our midnight departure. Heck, I didn’t own the proper clothes but she took care of that and a blazer was borrowed. On her nickel, we hit several clubs and as the ship was scheduled to cast off at midnight, we left the joint at a quarter to twelve, hailed a cab and the five of us tried to pile in.

“No way brudda!” said the cabbie, “You need two taxis for this load!” I panicked—I had no money for a cab, but the others thought it was a great joke and decided to run to the wharf. So we ran. The two girls were in heels and the three boys were nine sheets to the wind. We arrived the minute prior to their raising the gangplank to the cheers of those already on board. Being always the gentleman, I was the last on board.

The weather became very cold. The leg to Vancouver was a bit rough, but we were now seasoned mariners and walked the rolling decks in the rain and cold wind of late November. I walked the decks with my new friends, kept my sea legs and my meals. During evening coffee there was much talk about Canada and finding jobs—none of the Australians seeking work were permitted to continue to the USA without an appropriate visa and these were in very short supply.

In Vancouver, I said goodbye to all of my new friends except the sisters. But, as fate would have it, a young Sydney honey, already in love with the USA and American boys in general, boarded en route home to Oz via San Francisco. I forgot my Armenian friends and quickly became entangled with this new Sydneysider.

Alas, the trip ended far too soon.

Under the Golden Gate

The morning I arrived in America was foggy but passing the Farralone Islands, the sky cleared and the Bronze Bridge was dead ahead. Packed and ready, I went to the pointy end and, just as in the movie “Titanic” many years later, I stood on the fore-peak and was first to pass under the Golden Gate.

Thus began my American adventure.

Once upon a time, a rather confused, fifteen year old boy was cut loose from adult guidance to find his place in the world in a small bush town on the Northwest Slopes of New South Wales.

His only relative, a sister Mary, had left town to secure what she thought was a better future with an itinerant surveyor who promised her a better life than bookkeeping at the Boggabri Framers’ Co-Operative.

Having failed the Third Year of high school and lost his scholarship at a fancy boarding school in Sydney, Bill was forced to repeat the school year to secure the very basic Intermediate Certificate issued by the New South Wales Department of Education. Two weeks into the year, Bill rode the bus twenty-five miles to Gunnedah Intermediate High School and announced to the Principal, “Ook” Whitbread that he would be his new student. Graciously, Mr. Whitbread admitted him and placed him in 3B sitting in the front row next to the class nerd, whose face covered in teenage pimples.

But Bill was a bright lad despite his recent failure at the prestigious Jesuit college in the Big Smoke and soon was upgraded to the more elite, 3A. And better yet, he was recruited to sit in the back of the class with the ‘in’ crowd of local blokes: John Jones, Rossie Norman and the rest of the footy team. Bill was not a great sportsman, but had a quick wit and as the curriculum was very much below what he had in Sydney, he was able to be a smarty pants and earn the respect of his peers, if not his teachers.

Luckily, John Jones’ parents took a shine to Bill and allowed him to stay with them. Mary was still sending 10/- a week for his board and this seemed fair to the Jonses. He shared a twin bed with his mate John in the sleep-out at the back of their house by the single railroad track leading north to Moree and south to Sydney. Soon however, with John’s help, he got a job selling newspapers at two of the local pubs: The Royal and the Court House Hotels on Conadilly Street. Not a bad lurk! Bill borrowed Mr. Jones’ bike and John and he would rendezvous at the Gunnedah Railway Station at 5 PM, collect their 100 Daily Telegraph and 20 Sydney Morning Herald newspapers, secure them between the upturned handlebars, and head downtown to their pubs.

“Laaaaay-up, laaaaay-up,” he yelled as he entered the six-o’clock swill at the Bar. Quietly he would go from table to table in the Lounge asking, “Paper sir? Madam?” Papers were tuppence, and most of the drinkers who had their schooners lined up on the bar or window-sill, gave him a thrippenny bit and winked at the change. The Lounge offered better tips, but was not shoulder to shoulder like the Public Bar. Not a bad job for the fifteen year old.

Not content with the newspaper job, Bill introduced himself to the local photographer, Keith Riley, a Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society who having avoided military service in World War 2 had made a pile of money taking pictures of the ‘diggers’ prior to their leaving the nearby military camp enroute to the Middle East to defend the Empire. Keith and his attractive wife, Joyce, a relative of a local squatter family, the Heaths, offered Bill a job taking photographs at local dances – ‘candids’ as they were then called. This was great fun and allowed Bill enough pocket money to relieve his sister’s burden of supporting him. It also allowed him to upgrade his clothes now looking a bit worn. These new threads attracted the attention of the local girls who while they did not consider him future husband material, found him a bright spot in this rather quiet country town. And, he was a foreigner! Yes, Bill had never forgotten that his parents had not only left him their kind regards, but a birth certificate which showed he was an American!

Being a good Catholic boy, he did not join the Church of England Youth Fellowship with John Jones, but searched for a Catholic alternative. The local parish priest, Monsignor McDermott, had decided that the Young Christian Workers (YCW) was the choice of youth groups for catholic Gunnedah.

The YCW became a focus in Bill Critch’s life. Guided by his close friendship with its president, Bill Clegg, he could see the advantage of being associated with a fraternal group of young men and women: trips away from Gunnedah to visit other YCWs, dances at the Parish Hall, and an imprimatur from the priests which allowed him to associate socially with ‘cockeys’ (farmers,) business owners and professionals beyond the social contacts of the Jones’ family. And his new job as a photographer gave him entrée and some small standing in the community.

But the Saturday afternoon in the Jones house showed him another side of Australian life.

On a hot, busy Saturday in Jones’ yellow frame house on Wentworth Street next to the railway tracks leading into town, the corrugated iron roof would crack and snap in anger at the Outback summer’s heat. The kitchen was a cream painted room with a black woodstove, a tiny sink with a simple, copper faucet leading out to the metal fresh water tank connected by downspouts from the iron roof. The ‘Fridge’ throbbed in the corner, its compressor competing with the heat from the open window.

Mrs. Violet Jones always cooked on Saturday. But why heat up the kitchen on an Australian summer day?

The woodstove had a dual task. Fired up early Saturday morning it was for cooking and security. Mrs. Jones baked on Saturday, but as she formed her scones and mixed the Sunday sponge cake, she knew that the real purpose of the blazing stove was not only to ensure a fully risen sponge, but to prevent the Sydney Police’s Flying Squad from finding the evidence of her husband, John’s Saturday business.

John Sr. had an illegal, Starting Price, horseracing ‘book’ and the betting slips were carefully stacked in the living room. If front door was opened on the Squad’s command, to “Open up, this is the police!” the slips would be thrown into the stove.

Behind the house where copies of the bets were stashed in a bottle ready for a long throw into the tall grass, John Junior and Bill watched and waited in relaxed anticipation for a ‘bust’ which rarely happened. Why? The Clerk of Petty Sessions and the local constabulary were all punters who laid their bets with big John. If they knew the Sydney cops were in town, a quick call to Jones would shut down the operation till the threat passed and headed north to Boggabri and Narrabri!

Bill and John were inseparable. Neither excluded the other from his life: Bill helped John with his homework, John ensured his mates were Bill’s mates. They rode their bikes everywhere: to sell their papers, to collect the small bets for Big John’s bookmaking business, out to Cushan’s swimming hole, and up onto the Porcupine, the hill overlooking Gunnedah. They ‘hung out’ down the lane with John’s future wife, Shirley Southorn and her brothers, and played under the street light until bedtime.

On his sixteenth birthday, Bill left high school and went to work full time as a photographer with Riley. He learned most of the tasks required of a small town photo studio: developing and printing, enlarging, lighting and portraiture, weddings, debutante balls, and when the boss was away, cuddling in the darkroom with compliant girlfriends. Even now, Bill’s libido is still stimulated by the smell of Kodak D-76 developer and fond memories of Carmel and Patricia.

The Jones were Bill’s anchor and for six months, his surrogate parents. However, the workload of two teenage boys became too much for Vi, a tiny woman with a huge heart and a true Aussie ‘mum’. She sorrowfully told Big John to ask Bill to look for another home. But the parental feeling remained for many years and John Jr. and Bill remained mates until John’s death.

Ozzie and Eileen Cross lived around the corner. They were younger, liberally minded couple who offered Bill their hospitality and provided room and board to this young, still confused, rudderless boy who had not yet set his sails. He had met their pubescent daughter, Beverly, at school and they were friends – not boyfriend/girlfriend, just friends. Beverly was a good swimmer and as there was no public (nor private) swimming pool, she and Bill enjoyed swimming at Cushan’s, the local swimming hole on the slow moving Namoi River. John and his steady girlfriend, Shirley Southorn, also swam at Cushan’s, but Shirley was never one to allow another girl to catch John’s eye and he seemed to like Beverly, a tomboy like her mother, Eileen. Shirley kept a tight rein on John and several years later, they married.

Now eighteen, Bill was eager to return to Sydney and enjoy what he envisioned as a more exciting social life. When Keith Riley decided to close the studio and take an extended vacation in Europe, Bill made plans to move to Sydney.

Late one night while visiting a YCW friend on duty at the Post office telephone exchange, he made a free long distance telephone call to an old friend, Bob Bower, who lived in Waverley, a Sydney suburb. Mr. and Mrs. Bower who had known Bill’s mother, agreed that he could live with them an find a job in Sydney.

He put his bicycle in Cross’s back shed, packed his suitcase and got a free lift to Sydney in the back of a friend’s ‘ute’, waved goodbye to Gunny and disappeared into the night.

Eight hours later, he began his Sydney adventure.

William H. Critch II

I was not always “Bill Critch”. After birth I quickly became Bunny, Billy, Billy Brown Bear, then ‘Critch’, Master Critch, Critchey, Private Critch, Aviation Cadet Critch, Captain Critch, Pop, Benjamin Pink, Mr. Bill and finally, Bill.

Baby Billy’s Recollections

I see bright sunshine.
I hear a phonograph playing “Me and My Shadow”, and I am throwing my toys down a long flight of stairs.
I am riding a ‘kiddy car’, on broad but not busy streets. It is hot.
I'm in a car with other people somewhere in the mountains on a hot, narrow, dusty road. I am playing with a silver ashtray. I throw it out the car window. We stop at a place that is green and someone's climbing on a stone that's larger than I am.
A soft-spoken and gentle woman tells me not to go in the swampy lake. There are insects flying around my head.
The second floor of a sparsely furnished, wood-frame apartment. From high on the back steps I see gray freight trains close by.

The California Fog Begins to Clear.

I am holding a streamlined, black toy train. It smells of lubricating oil and the On/Off switch is very large especially now that I have taken it apart and the body is removed. I hand the clockwork innards to a big man who puts it down and begins to read the ‘funnies’ section of the Sunday newspaper. My favorite strip is Buck Rogers. Black Barney, Doctor Huer, Buck and his young protégés, Buddy and Alura excite me with their adventures fighting the Martian cat people and the Mongol hordes, the evil Killer Kane and his ‘squeeze’, Ardala Valmar. In the minds of the authors Philip Nowlan and the illustrator, Army Air Corps Lt. Dick Calkins they represent the foreign aggressors who will soon throw the world into war.

We are in a very busy outdoors place with many people. The people I am used to seeing every day do not say the usual softly spoken words to me. They are concerned with the other big people. I cannot understand what's happening. It's not frightening but it's not the usual routine of being washed, dressed and fed. A large, noisy moving machine is very close and my mother is talking loudly. My father is talking loudly and quickly. My sister is on the ground, but she gets up.

We are in a small space with the steamer trunks - large trunks that I shall remember for the rest of my life. I see suitcases, I feel secure. The smell around me is a ‘new’ smell like the paint on the black; toy train but there is no train. But I can and see Dutchie, the girl doll I have undressed. I hold Teddy out of a round window smell my teddy bear and I hold him tight or he will fall down into the water.

The Voyage to Australia, 1934

While the voyage to Australia was great fun for a four-year-old, my sister Mary tells me it was embarrassing for my mother. She was all too aware that we were not allowed to leave the ship until we arrived in Sydney. My father, an accountant with a serious drinking problem, had surrendered the family passport in return for free repatriation to Australia. We were ‘charity’ cases of the Great Depression with our passage paid by the U.S. government to ease the drain on the economy that was paying foreigners unemployment benefits. But for me, it was my first adventure. En route to Pearl Harbor, ‘white hat’ US Navy sailors took me on their backs in the swimming pool and the bar tenders gave me root beers. Hawaii and Pearl Harbor were just names. I knew nothing of the rest of the world and the coming war. The boat was a happy place for me. People were friendly, let me talk or sit with them on the deck chairs.

My sister’s Memoirs describe our landing in Sydney:

“While we waited for port clearance, we anchored for several hours out in the stream near Fort Denison, known as Pinchgut, a bare knob of rock with a miniature stone fort. The sky was clear blue, the water sparkled, and on this Saturday afternoon the harbor was dotted with sailboats and ferries. While deep enough for ocean-going liners, the harbor is narrow and the shoreline is indented with scores of sheltered coves, all edged in lush parks and gardens and houses with red-tiled roofs.
Leaning on the rail, we watched the tugboats with their thick hawsers nuzzling the Mariposa toward the pier. The ship made a slow turn to port, helped by four tugboats. Soon we were going down the starboard gangplank and the pleasure trip was over
After Customs clearance the agent returned Father’s passport, shook hands, and said, “Welcome home.” Father then turned to mother and said: “Addie, we’re home.” Mother said nothing. He was not at all concerned that he had only £3 (about $15) to feed and house the family.…
Father called a cab; we loaded it with our three large steamer trunks, and asked the driver to suggest a suburb where we might find an apartment. Near the docks we drove through streets of terrace houses welded into one mass from corner to corner; houses with strings of gray washing hanging on the lacy iron balconies. Then up busy William Street with Darlinghurst on the right and infamous Kings Cross on the left. After a discussion with the driver, this area was deemed too expensive. At his suggestion, we drove on for another ten minutes to Bondi Beach and its acres of cookie-cutter brick houses with red tiled roofs and meager front yards, enclosed by low wire fences. Neither a garage nor a tree in sight...

Driving slowly, we saw a “To Let” sign on a decrepit apartment building next to the Royal Hotel opposite the beach boardwalk known as Campbell Parade, the fish and chip belt of Bondi Beach. The narrow, dead-end lane separating the apartments from the hotel was littered with orange peel, lolly wrappers and old newspapers. We waited in the cab while Father went inside. He soon returned and paid off the driver, who said, “Good luck, mate.” Typical of Father, he had talked the manager into waiving a deposit for the first week’s rent!”

Growing Up in Bondi

For me however, it was a fun place - vacant lots, kids to play with and a ‘sleep-out’ of my own on the front balcony. It was here on the back stairs that I found a cardboard carton of toys including a small train set and a Russian Cossack doll we named “von Skirtz”. I was never told where they came from but as it was Christmas I believed it to be a gift from Jesus. It was in Bondi Beach that I formed an attachment to our bread knife that accompanied mother and I wherever we moved. It was the family’s general-purpose tool used for cutting string, paper, vegetables, meat and in the near future as a potential weapon. We ‘shifted’ (moved) frequently in 1939 but it was within a small radius and I kept the same friends. They had toys - new to me but associated with my heroes: Buck Rogers Disintegrators and Rocket Pistols.

We moved to North Bondi near Ben Buckler, close to the cliffs. I stood on the bluff and watched the waves and the surf fisherman hundreds of feet below - Ocker Aussies - Iron Men. Down the road on Bondi Beach I discovered Peter’s Ice Cream and Minties – the white, sweet, chewy lolly wrapped in a red, white and green paper. The tram terminus nearby was my first sight of the ‘toast rack’ trams that would provide our usual means of transportation for many years. Trams filled with smokers and steamy, sweaty bodies, conductors on the running boards saying, “Fez Pleeze” loom large in my memory. Those men earned their wages clinging in the cold and rain to the swaying tram on the 12-inch footboard. Frequently newspaper boys would cling to and work the other side of the tram’s footboard pressing close when another tram passed at their back. “Getcher latest Telly, Laaay-up.” When they had canvassed the entire tram and it was clear, they would ‘dismount’ by stretching their arm to full extent still grasping the door railing. They would then let go landing on one foot and pivoting 180 degrees to lean forward facing the rear so that their bodies were angled to absorb the forward motion of the departing tram. In later years, I too was a newsboy, but never on trams.

And Bronte

I was six years old when we moved to the suburb of Bronte Beach. It was the last time we lived together as a family. Our rental house across from what is now Bronte Park was still standing at the corner of Alfred and Hewlett Streets when I visited Bronte in 1970. The park was the ‘gully’ inhabited by the fierce “Gully Gang” whom we never saw. There were some ‘big kids’, but if we saw them in the gully, we’d run off. We did discover some depressions in the brush-covered areas. These I suspect, were ‘pozzies’ for the local blokes and their compliant sheilas. Sexual consciousness was now raising its delightful head, and my neighbor girl, Betty Dietcham, attempted to give me an introduction. It was lost on me but she was a great ‘mate’. We walked the fences behind our houses, made mixtures of anything to be found in the kitchen, played ‘hidings’ under the street light till our parents called us, went to the flicks on Bondi Road and pretended we were the actors. We dug a hole in the back yard to make a ‘fort’ or ‘cubby-hole’. An old canvas awning pole was our cannon and the pit was lined with cast off clothing. We scrounged corrugated iron for the roof and supported it with scrap lumber from the gully. After all, we had to defend our house - this was World War 2 and the Japanese had captured Singapore. Mary’s bedroom windows were taped to preclude any bomb driven, flying glass.

Following a late evening ambulance trip to the Children’s Hospital in Camperdown for suspected diphtheria, my sexual awakening occurred. The wards were crowded with iron cots filled with boys and girls. The nurses wore either stiff veils with the point in the center of their back, or small starched caps on the front of their head. I looked down the ward and saw a large, high-ceilinged room full of beds with white covers. Mine was covered with a transparent tent and when Mum came to visit, they lifted the side. Mum looked inside and held my hand, which was unusual for we were not a visibly affectionate family. The warmth was there, but it was not expressed in a tactile way. Even when I was older, I cannot recall many kisses or touches. The same was true of my father, but I recall times when he put his arm on my shoulder. I suspect we were never a touchy-feely, ‘lovey-dovey’ kind of family.

It was at the Children’s Hospital that my sexual awakening finally occurred. Excited by an urgent need to micturate, I persuaded the girl in the bed adjoining mine to allow me to join her and conduct an exploration of her lower parts. Penetration seemed appropriate, but like all boys of my age, the ejaculation was not semen. I persuaded her that she had wet the bed and to call for the nurse to change the sheets. The nurse scolded her while I covered myself with the blanket and pretended I was fast asleep. What a bomb-out at age seven!

My father however, gave me a real bomb. It was an unloaded Mills bomb, a hand grenade, which he had liberated as a souvenir from his employer, The Ministry of Munitions. From the pathway at the side of the house he pulled the pin and threw it across the road to the park across the street. I don’t know how I knew, but then as now I realize that he had done this before many times. I kept the bomb until the day following my own similar demonstration at school. The Army representatives were quite nice. All they wanted to know was where it came from. By this time, Dad had departed to the Army repatriation Hospital.

Surf’s Up!

Bronte is on the Tasman Sea and has big waves. Not a great surfing beach and somewhat dangerous because of the undertow. There was a Surf Lifesaving club who stood watch on weekends. I learned to swim in a bogey hole. The Bronte Bogey Hole is protected from the ocean by a ring of rocks and at high tide is open to the surf. You learned to swim and loved it, or had a lifetime fear of the water. I love the surf. Either my sister or I, were given a rubber ‘Surf-O-Plane’, a small inflatable raft about a body wide and a yard long. Surfing on the raft was terrifyingly exciting, but as safe as you wanted to be. You could skim the baby waves, get outside the first line of breakers, or float between the lines. Great for the lungs, too. We had no tire pump to inflate the raft, so if you deflated it to walk home, the next time you and your mate would blow it up again. Body surfing could be tackled in stages. The first thing I learned was that if a wave ‘dumps’ you turning you over and over, swim for the bottom. The turbulence was less and other than collecting a lot of sand in your ‘cozzie’ you were pretty safe. The next thing I learned was to dive through a breaking wave; basic survival in the ocean for a six year old.

And survival it was. Even at this tender age we knew that to surf was to be alive and to be able at some distant time, to enter a man’s world. We quickly learned the lingo: “How’re the shoots?” (Never ‘waves’). Responses would be short and to the uninitiated, cryptic. “Great,” “Ar - Bluebottles”, “Bit sharky.” Waves were judged with the same precision as Eskimos judge the quality of snow. “Too much water”, “Dumper! (everybody off.) or for good shoots" Everybody on!” I was never a great surfer even in my teens, but was always ready to “Give it a go!”

By climbing down the cliffs, one of my mates and I learned how to avoid paying the tuppence admission fee and sneak into the ‘big’ pool at the end of the beach. This was ‘big kid’ stuff. Now, in my 60s, looking up at the route we took down the cliffs gives me a very nervous feeling in my anal sphincter. The pool is still there and it is still open to the ocean. Quite refreshing - particularly when the surf is up. The green water crashes against the bath’s gray cement and quickly rises vertically to spill a small part into the pool. If the tide was high I was frightened that sharks would be waiting for me when I swam. The baths were made of cement that was very rough on the body, but the surrounding sunbathing decks were full of splinters.

Sunday mornings at the baths were a ritual; it was men’s country. No one considered why women were excluded—Australia in their minds was a man’s world. How wrong we were. The backbone of Australia was the Aussie Mum

My mother once noticed a boy limping up the Alfred Street hill. Ever the compassionate nurse, she removed a long splinter and gave him what she could ill afford, the bus fare up the hill. I’m sure that it came for the small housekeeping money she had saved. I now suspect that my dad drank much of his salary although unlike other countries, children could NOT enter the Public Bar. On the rare times he took me out, I would sometimes stand outside the pub and wait for him to finish drinking. But Dad was never mean – just a quiet drunk. I suspect, his experiences in France during the First War would now have qualified him for some kind of treatment or counseling for post traumatic stress disorder.

You have to know my daughter Tammy to appreciate this..

Forty years ago I got both my daughters their Social Security numbers. Don’t ask me what was on my mind that day, but I not only gave the wrong name for Tamara, but I gave the wrong birth date. She was listed as Tammy and her birth date was five days off.

Several months ago, she was subjected to an I.R.S. audit and her accountant noticed the discrepancy in her records.

“I think you should fix this Social Security data” he said, “and soon!”

At her request and seeing it was my screw-up, I looked up the requirements on the web. Seems as ‘tho all she needed was a current passport and maybe a birth certificate. She collected the documents and checked in by drawing a number at the Downtown Seattle Social Security Office on 8th and Lenora.

Ever been in a Social security Office? Well, I have been there several times in the last five years and the customers are not all savory folk; actually there’s a lot of low-lifes and why they gather there I can only imagine.

Seen Tammy lately? She dresses in Escada, Hermes, Chanel, David Yurman and in her Jimmy Choo’s, she’s almost 6 feet of gorgeous womanhood. Very impressive and she keeps up with her clientele of high-end restaurateurs, local celebrities and the Seattle ‘in’ crowd. Sitting in the Social Security Waiting Room she was definitely out of place catching up on her Blackberry e-mail. But she took a number, was cool and waited her turn.

When it came, she put her documents on the shelf in front of the window and faced a large lady who no doubt had put up with a lot of crap that morning and was in no mood to be trifled with.

“Watcher need, girl,” she asked looking up at her antithesis who was probably about the same age but definitely not from her ‘hood’.

“I need a new Social Security card. My name’s not correct and my birth date is in error. My dad got it wrong when he registered me about 40 years ago,” said Tammy.

“Whaddya mean, got it wrong?”

“Well, for some reason he forgot.”

At this, the large, very Southern woman began to laugh very loudly and slap her large, larded sides and thighs and immediately called out to the other ‘ladies’ in the office, “Get a load of this will ya. This girl’s father didn’t remember her name or her birth date! Ha, ha, ha!”

The rest of the office of large women gathered around the window and joined in the laughter.

“He didn’t even remember her birthday” continued the woman, “or her proper name.”

Now Tammy, or should I correctly say Tamara, has inherited many of our better qualities. She has her mother’s memory, her calm charm, but alas she has her father’s smart mouth.

“Well,” said Tammy. “At least I knew who he was!”

The laughter immediately stopped. The dark faces turned red with anger. This was not a multi-cultural group. No sir!

“Get out of here, girl. Next time you come in you’ll need.....” and the woman reeled off a list of unnecessary documents.

Tammy exited as gracefully as possible and licked her wounds in her large, red, Mercedes convertible. Then she laughed and laughed. I guess she did inherit my sense of humor after all.

DITLIP
or
A Day In the Life of an Instructor Pilot

The instructor pilots in this story are not the usual ones that hang around your local airport trying to build up time to get a ‘real job’ flying for an airline or a corporation. No, these instructors have many thousands of hours and mostly flew in the United States military, or for an airline that went ‘belly-up’. They are true professionals who would look great in a full-page advertisement for an airplane manufacturer. These instructors in this story flew for what was at the time, the Boeing Commercial Airplane Company. The story is set in the mid Nineties and is a composite of many of the situations that they found themselves in: at home, on a foreign ‘Line Assist’ or instructing in the simulator in a non-U.S. country.

To their wives (and girl friends), their supervisor and their stock broker, they are often a will-o-the-wisp frequently seen only at Oh-dark thirty hours. This gives rise to the belief that they are closely related the North American sasquatch.

INSTRUCTOR A

Seattle

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzz Rrrrring!!!!!!

4.00 a.m.

Wife: “Honey, would you catch that alarm before it wakes the baby! Who do you have this morning? Same class? Well, I’ll see you around five. And DON’T FORGET OUR DATE TOMORROW NIGHT. It’s been weeks since we went out together.”

Arrgh! Friday morning, way to go! Nearly finished with this bunch and it’s been an interesting class, or maybe I should say, challenging. First time I’ve had a compressed schedule in a long time and it sure was a short night. Well, Monday they get their check rides. My captain is really sharp but the FO is slow. Hope he improves today. Hmmm. I wonder if he is someone the airline customer wants Boeing to pass judgment on. Just my good fortune to be Program Lead and no one to lean on.

INSTRUCTOR B

In Flight over the South China Sea

Who was it said that ‘the dawn comes up like thunder out of China ‘cross the bay?’ This dawn is right in my eyeballs and I’ve been fighting sleep all night in the right seat of this little bitty jet. The newly checked-out captain is really catching on fast to the ‘glass cockpit’ and the Flight Management System. He’s using concepts rather than rules. Line Assist can be fun, but sunrise in the eyes is the same the whole world over.

I think I’ll celebrate by rinsing out my mouth with some Vee-Eight. We’ve got a very light load; I hope the airline’s Sales and Marketing Department can drum up some more passengers, then with luck they’ll buy a few more Boeings. Hmm, I’ll better drop a note to Boeing Sales and let them know more about this operation.

Lessee, next stop we’ll have Customs and Immigration. I hope they’ll have the proper forms. The last Line Assist I was on bogged down on arrival because the official form had only shown boxes for three models of the 737. They insisted that the airplane couldn’t be a 737-800; as far as they were concerned if it wasn’t on their form it didn’t exist.

Ahh. The smell of the islands. Salt air, clear skies – not too many contrails in this part of the Pacific. This island looks like a throwback to the Fifties – motor scooters and litter and still relatively undeveloped. Well, not for long. Breakfast! Fresh fruit and what IS that stuff? Better get some ‘tho. It’s going to be a long day.

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

INSTRUCTOR C

Indonesia

Boy, sometimes you get lucky. A late sleep-in and a limo pickup. The high tech Orient has some advantages I don’t get at home - a nice room on the fourteenth floor and still fairly quiet at 7.30 AM. Funny but I don’t hear the birds at this elevation but the ‘flavor’ of the Orient surely rises with the humidity. Fruit for breakfast. The Flight Surgeon would definitely approve of that and with the customer picking up the tab - what the hell!

Down to the lobby for pickup. No graffiti in these elevators. Very nice place. (Thanks Boeing Travel Department! Better take them a bottle on the way home.)
And a limo – a Mercedes? Smooothe, and the driver’s taking the scenic route; this must be the tourist road. I wonder where the poor people live? What’s this? The Training Center? The driver opens my door in the training center porte cochere and the students are there to greet their new simulator instructor.

We brief for the lesson and, Omigawd! they are letter perfect – let’s hope they understand the concepts. And that’s my job to make sure they do because there’s several different ways to work a Flight Management System and all of them are correct.

Who are these guys? The captain is just off an older, short-range Boeing with no ‘glass cockpit’ experience. The First Officer is transitioning from the Airbus A-320. Wonder why he’s going on the Boeing? Maybe he likes our airplanes. Did his A-320 have a side stick? Have to watch he doesn’t try to outsmart the captain and show him how clever he is. Crew management is a key concept that is sometimes difficult to get across to Asian crews. Ah well, as long as he can type 40 words a minute on the keypad……..

INSTRUCTOR A

Seattle

10.00 a.m. and it looks like my day is just beginning. The First Officer needs more than additional training - the captain has been ‘carrying’ him and saying nothing about it. It’s hard for me to tell when there is a language difference. We do have a Standard Operating Procedure for slow students. Let’s see. What did the boss say?

“Work ‘em, guide ‘em, but don’t baby ‘em. My family may be on their flight someday.”

First the paperwork. Gotta be objective. “The FO could not find the correct page in the Quick Reference Handbook.” Maybe he doesn’t read English as well as he can speak English. That’s unusual, it’s usually the other way round. “FO gets lost in the middle of the Hydraulic Leak or Loss procedure.” Is this language or logic? Or maybe the procedure isn’t clearly written. Y’know, the captain is being very quiet about this guy which may confirm my suspicion that the airline has some doubts and is looking for us to pass judgment. Perhaps he’s politically connected and they can’t pull out the rug?

O.K. Paperwork’s done. Now, let me get a hold of the class leader. One thing’s sure, I’ll miss my day off on Saturday. Let’s check Saturday’s schedule. Gotta time slot for an extra simulator schedule? Yep. Call the leader.

“Hello Captain. I’d like to discuss the FO’s performance today. Can I come to your hotel? Sure. See you in thirty minutes.” Oh boy. Up and down the superslab to his hotel.

INSTRUCTOR B

Kuala Lumpur

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

INSTRUCTOR C

Indonesia

These guys are sharp! Nice contrast to the last program I had. Some classes are just smoother than others. The Captain must’ve burned the midnight oil, or maybe spent time with his buddies. He’s sure got flying experience. All it takes is hangin’ new stuff on the old hooks he has in his head….. and he’s doin’ it! The FO has that great quality I see in so many Asian youth - smart, energetic, coordinated and a mind like a sponge. Guess they aren’t as coddled as many of their U.S. contemporaries.

Nice afternoon. Think I’ll take the captain up on his invitation to play a short nine at his club. Sounds exclusive and very ritzy. Such is life for the rich Asian.

Back to the hotel. Fill out the paperwork. Hmm. Looks like the Ground Training Department back home could use a little help in smoothing out the flight profile. Better redline this puppy. Then I’ve got an article to write for the Ops Review Board. Paper, paper, paper. If I was a real airline pilot, all I’d do is collect a bigger paycheck and the heck with the paperwork!

Life ain’t too bad in the tropics, sometimes!



INSTRUCTOR A

Seattle

Well, my guess was correct. The F.O. can’t hack it without extra time. I gotta be a diplomat here, but maybe I’ve got to ‘let him out gracefully’. The airline knew he was a ‘slo mo’ but wanted an outside opinion. Hmmm, I’ll have to find some extra time for him in the simulator tomorrow and see if that helps. If not, I’ll have to let him go. But, who’ll be his simulator captain? It can’t be one of their guys and his real Captain doesn’t need the time nor does he want to miss his weekend off in Seattle. Lessee, what does our Black Book say….. Nada. That’s what I get paid for – decisions that make everybody look good.

Wait a minute, we have some up-and-coming Ground School instructors that are fully qualified in real airplanes and just longing to be upgraded. That new guy is really sharp, I think he is in the Reserve. Maybe he’ll work on Saturday. Better call the ground School Supervisor and get his O.K.

Now the hard part, what am I going to tell the wife about to-morrow night?



Instructor B

At the Hotel.

Well it IS better than the Da Nang BOQ – no bugs, no drugs, less noise and the air conditioning doesn’t smell of cigar smoke. A hurried sleep at best with the 5 AM alert. Well, it’s a short ride to Operations. Breakfast? Oh yeah. Wonder what the in-flight meal will be? Not Asian, I hope. I can handle just about anything but sushi. Still, it’s a no-fat diet.

At the airport.

Lookin’ good, just like we left it and it still SMELLS new. Boy, these cabin attendants are really attentive. I believe that if they had a real kitchen, I could have a real breakfast of steak and eggs.

The captain is very much in command during the briefing. If all their pilots are like him, they’ll make it on the Ops side for sure. This sure is a funny little island. Japanese War graves and still some rusted stuff in the lagoon. No American graves ‘tho. Guess the Commission must’ve moved ‘em after The War. Lots of Japanese tourists ‘tho making offerings at the gravesites. Beautiful beaches. Pity I didn’t have time to swim and snorkel. Guess this is a pretty good Line Assist trip after all.

Not like the one I had in Europe several years ago before the EU spread its influence. The customer airline was assisting in the deportation of two foreign nationals whose travels had originated from a third country, not their homeland. On arrival back at the third country where they were being returned, the Immigration Department wouldn’t let them off the ramp and the guards on the customer airline wouldn’t let ‘em back on my airplane. Impasse!

After lots of hard stares and stiff jaws, the customer airline captain said, “Well, if they return to XXX, there is no food for them to eat and they’ll starve!” This loss of face by the locals was sufficient to satisfy any backpedaling by the officials who replied, “Well, of course they can stay.” I wonder whatever happened to those guys?

In Flight

At least the sun ain’t gonna burn my eyeballs on the way home.

Instructor C.

ZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzz

A typical day in the life of a commercial airplane manufacturer’s IP?

Yep, they’ve got to be diplomats, psychologists, philosophers, proficient pilots and good human beings. And oh yes, have an encyclopedic memory.

In the early Autumn evening, we gather in the Continental Airlines departure area at San Francisco International Airport, 10 young men who may become USAF pilots or navigators. Outside on the ramp are the four engined, propeller powered airliners I have worked on as a mechanic and hope someday to fly as a pilot. I watch the flight engineers in their airline uniforms perform the pre-flight ‘walk arounds’ checking the plane’s exterior and I envy them their knowledge and skill. In less than ten years, I shall be one of them, but the reciprocating engines will have been replaced by jet turbines.

Most of us are accompanied by family members, a few from the outer Bay Area towns are alone.

The Recruiting Sergeant takes me aside and tells me, “You’re in charge here, Critch! Be sure they all make it on to the flight.” I wonder why, but suspect it’s because I’m the oldest and am dressed a cut above the others. “Yes, sir,” I say. “Thank you, sergeant.” I feel as though I’m already a commissioned officer and fully in charge of lesser beings.

We have been instructed to bring very little to our first phase of training which is called “Pre-Flight.” What we don’t fully appreciate is that, it’s the beginning of a process which will not only teach us to fly, but will eliminate 50% of us from earning our wings and commission. It is truly as Brown, the mechanic on my United Airlines graveyard shift has said, “It’s a real tiger program!”

My bag is stuffed with what I consider essentials: ‘hip’ narrow cut ties, loafers, slacks, a dress shirt and aftershave. What I shall shortly discover, is that these items are totally unessential – the United States Air Force will provide me with everything I need to complete my training. Civilian clothing will not be permitted on Lackland Air Force Base, San Antonio, Texas, for the next four months.

Our flight is called and having been involved in talking to my older sister, I have forgotten to round up the other newly sworn-in recruits. The sergeant has left long ago for the nearest tavern and I count the heads as they pass through the boarding gate – only seven! I panic! Where did the other two disappear to? As I wait at the entrance, the final boarding is announced and I climb the ramp into the Continental Airlines DC-6. What if they miss the flight? Will I be held responsible? Will the Air Force sergeant report me to someone? Who?

I enter the airplane without glancing at the smiling stewardess, and frantically look for the missing men. I relax, they have boarded early and before I took up my post at the gate. I feel stupid and learn a first lesson in military manners. You may be in charge, but to be officious is an admission of insecurity and ignorance.

We arrive in San Antonio and are shepherded onto a blue Air Force bus. Not having yet learned the lesson we quickly learn in the future, to stay in the background and become inconspicuous, I push to the head of the line and announce, “All present and accounted for.” The driver looks at me with his large white eyes and says in a bored and deep southern voice, “Yes suh, I ‘spose y’all are.” We are wired and tired after such a long flight and the burning Texas mid morning sun, is right in our face as we emerge from the bus. Looking out of the window, we see our greeters in starched khaki uniforms, large blue garrison hats, gleaming shoes and white gloves. If the Recruiting poster is to be believed, these are our buddies, “the best crowd of guys you’ll ever meet.”

I’m the last off the bus. I look down to be sure I don’t miss the step and as I look up, I am eyeball-to-eyeball with a fierce looking Aviation Cadet Upperclassman.

“Hit one, mister,” he screams.

I think, “Hit what? Him?”

What he means is that I should come to a rigid position of military ‘attention’.

“Mister, you are a spastic, a poor excuse for humanity!” he screams again.

“What is going on,” I wonder.

“Are you a pilot, mister!” Again the loud voice

“Yes!”

“Yes, SIR, spastic. When you speak to me, it’s sir. Ya got that?”

“Yes sir.”

“And, spaz, you are not a pilot and by the look of you, you never will be. What’s all that crap in your side pocket?”

Crap in my side pocket? Handkerchief, RayBan case, change, a packet of M & M’s.

“Take it out,” he yells. “Put it in your back pocket. Crap in the side pocket spoils the crease in your pants.”

I comply, but it’s difficult. The pocket isn’t built to carry much more than a wallet.
Meanwhile, the rest of the recruits have been lined up in a loose marching formation and are being harassed in much the same way as I.

There is no evidence of physical abuse; it’s all shouting and provocative questions to which there is no correct answer.

“Cage those eyeballs, mister!”

“You’ll never make it, mister!”

“Mister, mister, mister.” Yes, we are cadets, not enlisted recruits, not “Airmen” and we will conform to this discipline and quickly, or be given demerits and forced to march in starched uniforms in the hot sun.

One of the Upper Classmen takes a look at my highly polished jump boots I purchased when discharged from the California Army National Guard in which I was a Private First Class, and assumes that I know something about marching.

“You, with the jump boots, get out there and be the road guard.”

“What’s a road guard?” I wonder.

I’m confused and show it. I look left, then right. The Upperclassman assumes that I’m as stunned as the rest of the guys and quickly reverses his order. I fall into line and we are marched toward a distant barracks, my back pocket bulging from the unexpected surplus of contents. One of the Upperclassmen, joins me in the formation and says, “Take that stuff and put it back in your side pockets, you look ridiculous.” I sense he is not enjoying this any more than I am, and I realize that it’s all part of a game, but a game that will continue for the next 18 months.

After Bainbridge Air Base, which had been a 'country club' existence, Reese Air Force Base, Texas comes as a shock. We are in World War 2 style barracks, albeit three to a room with an adjacent small, common room with three metal desks and chairs. We have our own shower and toilet which when compared to the cadets' living quarters 10 years before, is luxury. But, as Under Class we are always ready for 'spot' inspections by the TAC Officers or our Upper Classmen. We keep everything in white glove condition - except on Friday nights when we are exempt and the beer is 'on' at the Cadet Club.

It is a mixed class - half the students are aviation cadets and the others are commissioned officers from either ROTC (a college commissioning program at 'land grant' universities), a U.S. military academy, or perhaps Officer Candidate School or even some who have been navigators. They live in the Bachelor Officers' Quarters (BOQ) or with their spouses in off-base in private rentals. We are all expected to attend the same classes and compete for class standing which, when it comes time to be given our assignments, will determine the order in which we chose them.

Reese is no 'country club'. It is strictly military - gate guards 24 hours a day, salutes for the incoming officers' cars which have special stickers, and inspections for the cars piled full of soon-to-graduate, sometimes inebriated, Upper Class Aviation Cadets. As Lubbock is a 'dry' Texas town with a church on almost every corner and no bars, we drive to the next county which allows us to imbibe of Texas hospitality.

As before, the flight schedule alternates between a five o'clock reville for morning flying, with afternoon academics and physical training, and a six o'clock bugle if the schedule is reversed. We have begun our last phase in September 1957 and the Texas autumn weather is excellent to begin our training in the twin engine, Mitchell medium bomber.

The B-25 'Mitchell' had been the star of the 1st bombing raid on Tokyo in 1942 led by Jimmy Doolittle from the deck of the aircraft carrier 'Hornet'. (It was also the star of the Hollywood movie, "Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo" which I saw as a nine year old at the Bondi Junction Regal Threatre.) Our base commander at Reese, Colonel Travis Hoover, who is nearing retirement, had been on the Doolittle raid and while we see little of him, it gives us a warrior's link with an historic moment in U.S. history. On Saturday mornings, we pass in review under the watchful eye of our training officers, the Colonel and his staff. They stand, we march to the cadet Drum and Bugle Corps.

Each instructor has four students and I have been fortunate enough to pick my instructor before we were assigned. A close friend at Bainbridge told me to 'look up' one of his friends, Bob Applebaugh, who was newly fledged and as luck would have it, I am in his flight. We bond from the beginning, and under his gentle hand, I transition into the 'Mitchell' with no problems. My barracks roommate Henry, No Middle Initial (MNI), Brown and I team together for our dual instruction and for our first day and night solo flights.

Just like most modern twins today, the B-25 has two pilot seats - one on the left designated for the captain and one on the right for the co-pilot. Why? Well, the left seat has the nose-wheel steering control and as the captain usually makes the landing, he can steer the airplane when it slows down. Besides, it's been the tradition for many years and the military is not one to break with tradition.

Solo night flying in Basic Flying School is a very controlled exercise. Think for a moment about 20 or 30 very low time pilots flying a bomber around a traffic pattern and exercising their own judgment based on a small amount of experience. Scary! We have seven or eight airplanes in layers at different altitudes with each layer vertically separated by 2,000 feet. The bottom layer lands first, and the two higher layers space themselves to avoid collisions - I had come close to a collision in Primary training and had no desire to repeat another near miss.

Henry No Middle Initial and I are in the middle layer and I am in the left seat 'playing' captain. It's my ship, I'm in command. You've seen the anti collision lights on modern aircraft - strobe lights on the tail and on the wing tips in addition to the standard red and green lights. The B-25 had no strobe lights, just the wing tips and a rotating anti-collision light under the belly. Planes follow the same rules as boats: green for the starboard (right) side and red for the port (left). Imagine 16 sets of red and green lights in the upper two layers, all flying in a clockwise direction, and four scared eyes in each cockpit hoping to avoid every other set of scared eyes.

We are both tired from physical training that afternoon and of course the usual 6 a.m. reville. Henry is looking out to the right side, I'm looking straight ahead and I think I see a bifurcating red and green light - the gap is growing wider and I assume someone's going the wrong way and heading straight for us. What I really see are two airplanes at our level but the green light on one is obscured by its wing as is the red light on the other. I immediately roll into an almost vertical bank to avoid what I believe will be a mid air collision and Henry thinks I've lost it. Before he can decide what to do I realize my error and begin to right the airplane from what has developed into a most unusual attitude.

Recovery from 'unusual attitudes' is on the flight curriculum and we have practiced several already, but we are not yet proficient in that exercise. After this night solo, I am more than proficient in determining what the lights mean.

We make it to the bottom layer, I shoot three landings, we park with the engines running and swap seats. Henry has no trouble in telling me to watch for other aircraft and I sense he's glad he's driving.

This is a 'guy' story, and if you're not interested in aviation or rites of passage, give it a miss.

Bainbridge Air Base, Georgia. June 1957

I taxi into the takeoff position and hold the brakes on with my feet pressed against the brakes on the rudder pedals. Today, it's a solo flight to practice coordination maneuvers and aerobatics.

The plane in front of me has lifted off, so I slowly apply full power. The big radial engine has a comforting sound as I feel the propeller torque try to turn me to the left and I apply right rudder and keep the Trojan headed straight down the runway. The prop seems to be turning very s-l-o-w-l-y, but it’s a typical illusion of the T-28’s paddle-bladed propeller after flying the smaller T-34. The airspeed is increasing normally and I lift off at around 85 knots. “Gear Up”, and I climb straight ahead to 500 feet, raise the flaps then make a right, then a left climbing turn and I’m clear of the traffic pattern. I check the cowl flaps closed and set the power for Climb.

A beautiful spring day with big woolly clouds against a clear, blue Georgia sky. But I don’t day dream – I’ve work to do. I clear the sky to my left to see if anyone else is close and continue climbing and turning to 8,000 feet. The Georgia farmland, as indeed all of the land in the U.S., is laid out in sections with the boundaries running north, south, east and west. As I climb, I practice staying lined up with the section lines. Today, the fields are irrigated, the section lines less prominent and are replaced by the circles made by the watering systems.

Using an imaginary line across the windshield, I begin to practice steep turns. We have not been taught to fly on instruments yet, and I refer to them only to check my ability to fly while looking outside.

I talk to myself. “Throttle up a bit. More back pressure on the stick. Keep that imaginary spot on the horizon. Oops, I can feel I’m losing altitude! Add power. Raise the nose a bit. I’m skidding. Ease out some bank and use a little top rudder – keep the ball centered, keep it coordinated. Now, more bank again, back to 60 degrees. Fly the plane, don’t let it fly you!” I work at turns for about 15 minutes till I’m tired of it.

Now for some chandelles. This maneuver, that I seem to have little trouble performing, feels like flying is meant to: a rapid change in altitude, pitch angle, speed, and the sense of a rapid climb out of some dangerous situation. I imagine myself flying into a fjord or into a box canyon and finding that I must immediately reverse direction and climb back out. This is a situation that can easily happen and indeed, several later, I put this maneuver to good use when flying in Greenland.

Next snap rolls, horizontal reverses and the exhilarating Cuban Eight. I don’t know why it’s called a Cuban Eight but it is two loops joined together like an infinity sign.

I try to remember what the acrobatic section of the flight manual says as I talk myself through the maneuver:

“Mixture..Rich.
Prop Full - Forward
Airspeed - Descend to increase to 220 Knots.”

I begin to dive and enter a loop. Easing in the back pressure, I feel the g’s as I begin the loop. I arch my back to look straight up and keep the North/South section lines fore and aft. At the top of the loop, I ease back on the throttle and dive upside down at a 45 degree angle until the nose passes through the horizon. Then I half-roll till I’m ‘blue side up’ and commence another loop all the time keeping the plane properly aligned. Over top again, down at 45 degrees and roll out at my original entry altitude. Wow! Fun, fun, fun. Oops, lost a thousand feet or so – better do another, and another. I’m charged!

Before I realize it, my two hour solo is almost over and I’m going to be cutting it pretty fine to land in time so that the next student can have the plane.

I can see Bainbridge Airbase from this altitude and also can see that the line of trainers preparing to land is stretched out by five or six miles. Yikes! How will I squeeze in? Like the ‘tiger’ I’d like to be, I make a high speed descent and parallel the 45 degree entry for the south east runway. I see a gap and whip into a steep 180 degree turn and bully my way in front of another T-28 who has left a bit wider spacing than usual. What I don’t know is that the ship I have pushed in front of has a student AND an instructor.

I turn right 45 degrees on to ‘initial’ and can see I’m too close to the plane in front, so I extend my pitch-out point a bit further down the runway. What I don’t hear is the mobile control van say to me, “Solo T-28 on initial, go around.” They can see I’m extending the pattern too far, but my attention is already divided with spacing and landing. For all intents, I’m deaf to their request and I begin my 60 degree ‘pitch-out’ to the right.

“Throttle back until the horn sounds, Gear Down, Horn silent…..” I say as I turn.

Suddenly I become instantly aware of a blur ten or fifteen feet above my canopy. I can almost count the rivets in the underside of another trainer’s fuselage.

I have barely survived a near miss at less than 1,000 feet. If he’d hit me, nobody would have survived; we would both be a pile of burning metal at the end of the runway.

I continue my descending turn towards the runway, but something doesn’t feel right. I’m descending too fast. I add power, and the descent slows. I touch down much faster than usual and do not make the first turn off but taxi further down the runway causing the next T-28 to go-around.

While ‘cleaning up’ after landing, I realize why I landed long and fast. After the near miss, my train of thought was interrupted and I forget to put down ‘landing flaps’. What a ‘tiger’ I am. More like a scared pussy cat.

Entering the line shack, I decide to say nothing about the near-miss to Earl Wederbrook, my instructor. Glancing out of the window, I see an old nemesis, P.D. Bridges, my ex-instructor, the southern boy who doesn’t like slow Yankees with an Australian accent. Earl sees him coming, flicks his eyes towards the parachute loft and I beat a hasty retreat. I put it together! P.D. was the guy I cut out of the pattern and with whom I almost shared a common pile of burning rubble.

Five minutes later having checked in my parachute, I look inside the line shack. P.D. and Earl are nose to nose, except that my instructor is about six inches taller, 50 pounds heavier and who is looking down on a red faced Bridges who is obviously yelling. My protector is saying nothing, and shortly P.D. turns on his heel and leaves.

Earl has a wry smile during the debriefing and after I discuss my maneuvers, Earl says, “By the way, next time you cut someone out of the landing pattern, be sure he’s shorter than me. I’m a lover, not a fighter.”

Back in the barracks before supper, I look at my log book and realize that I have just passed 100 hours of flight time and in an airplane which 15 years ago would have been considered a high performance machine.

And I am sad knowing that neither my mother nor father will ever know their grown up son.

In the early Fifties, Australia re-instituted involuntary military service; in the USA it was called “The Draft”; in Oz it was called National Service or in Aussie slang, “Nasho(e)s”. Being an independent sort and not wanting to mix with the hoi polloi, I had no desire to be ‘called up’ to serve. I had been told, or read, that to preserve one’s American citizenship, you could not serve in a ‘foreign’ army.

I still treasured my American birth certificate and longed to return to land of cheap motorcars. In 1952, I took the train to Sydney and presented myself to the American consulate on the top floor of the Bank of New South Wales, an impressive Victorian sandstone building at the end of Martin Place in the center of the city. (The building is still there and is still a bank – WESTPAC.)
I filled out the necessary papers and was given a US draft card for my trouble! I asked if I could be inducted into the US Armed Forces then and there, but was told that I must enlist in a country where the Army had a presence and the nearest country was Japan. So much for that way out! I then asked for my passport but was told they would issue one when (and if) I had a ticket to the USA. To ensure that there was no doubt as to my intentions to resume my U.S. citizenship, I took my British passport, drafted a ‘snotty’ letter to the Australian Passport Office in York Street, where I relinquished my Australian citizenship and was able to avoid the Australian Draft. (The law was changed in the 1990s so I am now a dual national – able to own property, collect the Australian Old-Age Pension and vote.)

Back in Gunnedah with my head in the clouds, I walked the hot, dusty sidewalk and imagined I was in America. Maybe Texas, or even California. (I didn’t dream of living in Arizona where we now reside.) Living in the Imperial Hotel in Gunnedah, I drank with traveling salesmen and college graduates who knew something of the world outside. They advised me to leave Gunnedah and go to Sydney to seek a new adventure. Why not leave Australia and return to the USA? Yep, why not?

By the summer of 1955 I decided to go to the U.S. as soon as I saved enough money. I was earning a journeyman wage and by reducing the partying and extra-curricula activities, I could minimize my expenses. Besides, my friends were marrying – Bob Cozens the airplane mechanic who had helped me learn the airplane mechanic trade was engaged. My old Riverview mate, Bob Bower was married to his long time love, Virginia and starting to raise a family. QANTAS was a good job but I realized that with my lack of training I would never be able to progress beyond a low technical level job. A free college education was beyond my reach, nor I did not know how to go about it.

“San Francisco, a One-Way Ticket, Please.”

During my insurance days, the Pacific and Orient Steamship Company (P & O) was two doors away on Spring Street; I knew the blokes who worked there and they helped me find the cheapest berth on the ship. I wrote a cheque for £50 and reserved a berth on the S.S. Oronsay to depart Sydney on December 3, 1955. And what a berth it turned out to be! The ‘no porthole’, tiny, six-bed cabin below the waterline reminded me of pictures of WW2 troopships. But my bunkmates were pleasant and we all shared one thing in common: we were off on an adventure! My childhood friends were excited and a bit envious. One of us was ‘getting out of Australia’. In the 1950s, many Australians felt that the only national culture in Australia was to be found in a bottle of yogurt! Most young people went to Europe and began their adventure in Kangaroo Valley the Pommie name for Earls Court in London. It was crawling with Aussies who lived together in much the same way as American kids did in the late sixties– 10 to a room using the ‘hot bed’ principle: there was always someone sleeping in every bed and sometimes two to a bed! But, because I had a U.S. passport, my travels would allow me to go the America, and unlike most other kids, I could legally hold a job!

Before departure, my friends would not allow me to spend and more money than was absolutely necessary. The waitress at the local ‘greasy spoon’ brought me as much food I could eat and charged me only the minimum price on the menu. My mates bought most all the beers and three girls made me a gray pullover wool sweater as a joint project. They presented this to me at a going away party held at Rae Soulos’ apartment. They had made the sweater without measuring me and the arms were ten inches too long. (Several years as an Air Force cadet my friends told me that it would be de rigueur with blue jeans and I purchased my first pair of Levis in Lubbock.)

And what a party it was! John and Shirley Jones, my QANTAS mates, Bob Cozens and his intended, several girl friends and their blokes gathered at Rae’s tiny Coogee flat and we had a great ‘piss-up’. I crawled back to my room in Cowper Street and passed out.

The night before departure was sleepless because of a visit from a psychotic, drunken fellow boarder. I guess he’d had enough of my bragging at dinner and decided to take me down a peg or two. He bashed in the door to my bedroom and as I didn’t wish to get involved in a pre-departure interview with the local constabulary, I yelled for help. Paddy, a nearby friend had been an Irish policeman and knew how to handle drunks. He ‘took him away’ in short order. The landlady, Mrs. Retallack, a tiny slip of a woman set on the stairs for several hours to preclude another visitation. Poor woman - the job was worth more than her trouble of looking after an aging apartment, its staff and twenty rowdy inhabitants.

Next morning with my Val Pak (a B-4 leather bag which I kept for years) and briefcase in hand, I called a cab, and boarded the SS Oronsay, a Clyde-built, single funnel, P & O two-class liner which was doing service in taking Poms and Wogs to Oz, and disgruntled Aussies to Canada and the USA. By today’s standards of cruise ships, the Oronsay was small. My below-the-waterline cabin had no porthole and six bunks. This was home for almost three weeks—and after New Zealand, I was the only occupant.

The Oronsay was docked in Pyrmont adjacent to the dock where the family had landed 18 years ago on the SS Mariposa. The dock and the deck were jammed with partygoers envious of those of us who were ‘getting out’. There were confused noises of music, laughter, sobbing and ‘chundering’. The gang from Cowper Street showed up with booze and small goodbye gifts. I remember none of them except a bottle of Cointreau from a girlfriend (I think it was Jacquie Trigg) who remembered that we had enjoyed champagne cocktails in her room on some forgotten evening orgy. We hugged and kissed until the ship’s siren blasted and the crew announced, “All visitors ashore, all visitors ashore!” I stood with hundreds of other escapees by the railing throwing the traditional rolls of streamers to my friends until the gap between the ship and dock was a solid paper wall. The tugs took hold, the streamers parted and the sliver of water in the gap grew larger. I turned my back to the wharf and went downstairs to unpack. I didn’t look back.

First stop, Auckland, and by then I had made new friends over coffee in the lounge with my new shipmates. They were a mixed bunch: old friends were quickly forgotten in the spirit of the moment. Next stop, Suva, Fiji where in 1938 my father had been forbidden to go ashore for fear he would jump ship and leave his wife and two children to fend for themselves. Next stop, Honolulu and for the first time in my life, I knew I belonged to a great country; the Immigration and Naturalization Service of the US Government had set up two tables labeled U.S. Citizens and Others. The line to the U.S. Citizens table was short, and I was home!

I had made friends with a Canadian couple returning from a six month walkabout in Australia and they allowed me to share a car rental. We toured the island until late afternoon. It was in downtown Honolulu, a place which I would frequent with my wife and children 5 years later, that I saw my first TV. I stared like a country bumpkin through the window of a department store until they dragged me away to a fast food restaurant several blocks away. We walked a little way further and I tasted my first American hamburger slathered in relish.. My Canadian friends were quite amused as they were ‘world travelers’ raised in Canada and used to the American diet.

Little did I know that in three years I would visit Honolulu as a commissioned USAF pilot and eat in the Officers’ Club at Hickam AFB.

Mid way through the voyage, I found that I had friends in First Class—two Armenian sisters from Coonabarrabran. They were the daughters of a modestly well-to-do haberdasher and had been on several Gunnedah YCW outings I attended. The 21 year old was rich, but chubby but I knew a good thing when I saw it. She had invited me to her cabin several times during her afternoon nap and was generous with drinks and squeezes. She suggested that we visit the night spots before our midnight departure. Heck, I didn’t own the proper clothes but she took care of that and a blazer was borrowed. On her nickel, we hit several clubs and as the ship was scheduled to cast off at midnight, we left the joint at a quarter to twelve, hailed a cab and the five of us tried to pile in.

“No way brudda!” said the cabbie, “You need two taxis for this load!” I panicked—I had no money for a cab, but the others thought it was a great joke and decided to run to the wharf. So we ran. The two girls were in heels and the three boys were nine sheets to the wind. We arrived the minute prior to their raising the gangplank to the cheers of those already on board. Being always the gentleman, I was the last on board.

The weather became very cold. The leg to Vancouver was a bit rough, but we were now seasoned mariners and walked the rolling decks in the rain and cold wind of late November. I walked the decks with my new friends, kept my sea legs and my meals. During evening coffee there was much talk about Canada and finding jobs—none of the Australians seeking work were permitted to continue to the USA without an appropriate visa and these were in very short supply.

In Vancouver, I said goodbye to all of my new friends except the sisters. But, as fate would have it, a young Sydney honey, already in love with the USA and American boys in general, boarded en route home to Oz via San Francisco. I forgot my Armenian friends and quickly became entangled with this new Sydneysider.

Alas, the trip ended far too soon.

Under the Golden Gate

The morning I arrived in America was foggy but passing the Farralone Islands, the sky cleared and the Bronze Bridge was dead ahead. Packed and ready, I went to the pointy end and, just as in the movie “Titanic” many years later, I stood on the fore-peak and was first to pass under the Golden Gate.

Thus began my American adventure.

Once upon a time, a rather confused, fifteen year old boy was cut loose from adult guidance to find his place in the world in a small bush town on the Northwest Slopes of New South Wales.

His only relative, a sister Mary, had left town to secure what she thought was a better future with an itinerant surveyor who promised her a better life than bookkeeping at the Boggabri Framers’ Co-Operative.

Having failed the Third Year of high school and lost his scholarship at a fancy boarding school in Sydney, Bill was forced to repeat the school year to secure the very basic Intermediate Certificate issued by the New South Wales Department of Education. Two weeks into the year, Bill rode the bus twenty-five miles to Gunnedah Intermediate High School and announced to the Principal, “Ook” Whitbread that he would be his new student. Graciously, Mr. Whitbread admitted him and placed him in 3B sitting in the front row next to the class nerd, whose face covered in teenage pimples.

But Bill was a bright lad despite his recent failure at the prestigious Jesuit college in the Big Smoke and soon was upgraded to the more elite, 3A. And better yet, he was recruited to sit in the back of the class with the ‘in’ crowd of local blokes: John Jones, Rossie Norman and the rest of the footy team. Bill was not a great sportsman, but had a quick wit and as the curriculum was very much below what he had in Sydney, he was able to be a smarty pants and earn the respect of his peers, if not his teachers.

Luckily, John Jones’ parents took a shine to Bill and allowed him to stay with them. Mary was still sending 10/- a week for his board and this seemed fair to the Jonses. He shared a twin bed with his mate John in the sleep-out at the back of their house by the single railroad track leading north to Moree and south to Sydney. Soon however, with John’s help, he got a job selling newspapers at two of the local pubs: The Royal and the Court House Hotels on Conadilly Street. Not a bad lurk! Bill borrowed Mr. Jones’ bike and John and he would rendezvous at the Gunnedah Railway Station at 5 PM, collect their 100 Daily Telegraph and 20 Sydney Morning Herald newspapers, secure them between the upturned handlebars, and head downtown to their pubs.

“Laaaaay-up, laaaaay-up,” he yelled as he entered the six-o’clock swill at the Bar. Quietly he would go from table to table in the Lounge asking, “Paper sir? Madam?” Papers were tuppence, and most of the drinkers who had their schooners lined up on the bar or window-sill, gave him a thrippenny bit and winked at the change. The Lounge offered better tips, but was not shoulder to shoulder like the Public Bar. Not a bad job for the fifteen year old.

Not content with the newspaper job, Bill introduced himself to the local photographer, Keith Riley, a Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society who having avoided military service in World War 2 had made a pile of money taking pictures of the ‘diggers’ prior to their leaving the nearby military camp enroute to the Middle East to defend the Empire. Keith and his attractive wife, Joyce, a relative of a local squatter family, the Heaths, offered Bill a job taking photographs at local dances – ‘candids’ as they were then called. This was great fun and allowed Bill enough pocket money to relieve his sister’s burden of supporting him. It also allowed him to upgrade his clothes now looking a bit worn. These new threads attracted the attention of the local girls who while they did not consider him future husband material, found him a bright spot in this rather quiet country town. And, he was a foreigner! Yes, Bill had never forgotten that his parents had not only left him their kind regards, but a birth certificate which showed he was an American!

Being a good Catholic boy, he did not join the Church of England Youth Fellowship with John Jones, but searched for a Catholic alternative. The local parish priest, Monsignor McDermott, had decided that the Young Christian Workers (YCW) was the choice of youth groups for catholic Gunnedah.

The YCW became a focus in Bill Critch’s life. Guided by his close friendship with its president, Bill Clegg, he could see the advantage of being associated with a fraternal group of young men and women: trips away from Gunnedah to visit other YCWs, dances at the Parish Hall, and an imprimatur from the priests which allowed him to associate socially with ‘cockeys’ (farmers,) business owners and professionals beyond the social contacts of the Jones’ family. And his new job as a photographer gave him entrée and some small standing in the community.

But the Saturday afternoon in the Jones house showed him another side of Australian life.

On a hot, busy Saturday in Jones’ yellow frame house on Wentworth Street next to the railway tracks leading into town, the corrugated iron roof would crack and snap in anger at the Outback summer’s heat. The kitchen was a cream painted room with a black woodstove, a tiny sink with a simple, copper faucet leading out to the metal fresh water tank connected by downspouts from the iron roof. The ‘Fridge’ throbbed in the corner, its compressor competing with the heat from the open window.

Mrs. Violet Jones always cooked on Saturday. But why heat up the kitchen on an Australian summer day?

The woodstove had a dual task. Fired up early Saturday morning it was for cooking and security. Mrs. Jones baked on Saturday, but as she formed her scones and mixed the Sunday sponge cake, she knew that the real purpose of the blazing stove was not only to ensure a fully risen sponge, but to prevent the Sydney Police’s Flying Squad from finding the evidence of her husband, John’s Saturday business.

John Sr. had an illegal, Starting Price, horseracing ‘book’ and the betting slips were carefully stacked in the living room. If front door was opened on the Squad’s command, to “Open up, this is the police!” the slips would be thrown into the stove.

Behind the house where copies of the bets were stashed in a bottle ready for a long throw into the tall grass, John Junior and Bill watched and waited in relaxed anticipation for a ‘bust’ which rarely happened. Why? The Clerk of Petty Sessions and the local constabulary were all punters who laid their bets with big John. If they knew the Sydney cops were in town, a quick call to Jones would shut down the operation till the threat passed and headed north to Boggabri and Narrabri!

Bill and John were inseparable. Neither excluded the other from his life: Bill helped John with his homework, John ensured his mates were Bill’s mates. They rode their bikes everywhere: to sell their papers, to collect the small bets for Big John’s bookmaking business, out to Cushan’s swimming hole, and up onto the Porcupine, the hill overlooking Gunnedah. They ‘hung out’ down the lane with John’s future wife, Shirley Southorn and her brothers, and played under the street light until bedtime.

On his sixteenth birthday, Bill left high school and went to work full time as a photographer with Riley. He learned most of the tasks required of a small town photo studio: developing and printing, enlarging, lighting and portraiture, weddings, debutante balls, and when the boss was away, cuddling in the darkroom with compliant girlfriends. Even now, Bill’s libido is still stimulated by the smell of Kodak D-76 developer and fond memories of Carmel and Patricia.

The Jones were Bill’s anchor and for six months, his surrogate parents. However, the workload of two teenage boys became too much for Vi, a tiny woman with a huge heart and a true Aussie ‘mum’. She sorrowfully told Big John to ask Bill to look for another home. But the parental feeling remained for many years and John Jr. and Bill remained mates until John’s death.

Ozzie and Eileen Cross lived around the corner. They were younger, liberally minded couple who offered Bill their hospitality and provided room and board to this young, still confused, rudderless boy who had not yet set his sails. He had met their pubescent daughter, Beverly, at school and they were friends – not boyfriend/girlfriend, just friends. Beverly was a good swimmer and as there was no public (nor private) swimming pool, she and Bill enjoyed swimming at Cushan’s, the local swimming hole on the slow moving Namoi River. John and his steady girlfriend, Shirley Southorn, also swam at Cushan’s, but Shirley was never one to allow another girl to catch John’s eye and he seemed to like Beverly, a tomboy like her mother, Eileen. Shirley kept a tight rein on John and several years later, they married.

Now eighteen, Bill was eager to return to Sydney and enjoy what he envisioned as a more exciting social life. When Keith Riley decided to close the studio and take an extended vacation in Europe, Bill made plans to move to Sydney.

Late one night while visiting a YCW friend on duty at the Post office telephone exchange, he made a free long distance telephone call to an old friend, Bob Bower, who lived in Waverley, a Sydney suburb. Mr. and Mrs. Bower who had known Bill’s mother, agreed that he could live with them an find a job in Sydney.

He put his bicycle in Cross’s back shed, packed his suitcase and got a free lift to Sydney in the back of a friend’s ‘ute’, waved goodbye to Gunny and disappeared into the night.

Eight hours later, he began his Sydney adventure.

William H. Critch II

I was not always “Bill Critch”. After birth I quickly became Bunny, Billy, Billy Brown Bear, then ‘Critch’, Master Critch, Critchey, Private Critch, Aviation Cadet Critch, Captain Critch, Pop, Benjamin Pink, Mr. Bill and finally, Bill.

Baby Billy’s Recollections

I see bright sunshine.
I hear a phonograph playing “Me and My Shadow”, and I am throwing my toys down a long flight of stairs.
I am riding a ‘kiddy car’, on broad but not busy streets. It is hot.
I'm in a car with other people somewhere in the mountains on a hot, narrow, dusty road. I am playing with a silver ashtray. I throw it out the car window. We stop at a place that is green and someone's climbing on a stone that's larger than I am.
A soft-spoken and gentle woman tells me not to go in the swampy lake. There are insects flying around my head.
The second floor of a sparsely furnished, wood-frame apartment. From high on the back steps I see gray freight trains close by.

The California Fog Begins to Clear.

I am holding a streamlined, black toy train. It smells of lubricating oil and the On/Off switch is very large especially now that I have taken it apart and the body is removed. I hand the clockwork innards to a big man who puts it down and begins to read the ‘funnies’ section of the Sunday newspaper. My favorite strip is Buck Rogers. Black Barney, Doctor Huer, Buck and his young protégés, Buddy and Alura excite me with their adventures fighting the Martian cat people and the Mongol hordes, the evil Killer Kane and his ‘squeeze’, Ardala Valmar. In the minds of the authors Philip Nowlan and the illustrator, Army Air Corps Lt. Dick Calkins they represent the foreign aggressors who will soon throw the world into war.

We are in a very busy outdoors place with many people. The people I am used to seeing every day do not say the usual softly spoken words to me. They are concerned with the other big people. I cannot understand what's happening. It's not frightening but it's not the usual routine of being washed, dressed and fed. A large, noisy moving machine is very close and my mother is talking loudly. My father is talking loudly and quickly. My sister is on the ground, but she gets up.

We are in a small space with the steamer trunks - large trunks that I shall remember for the rest of my life. I see suitcases, I feel secure. The smell around me is a ‘new’ smell like the paint on the black; toy train but there is no train. But I can and see Dutchie, the girl doll I have undressed. I hold Teddy out of a round window smell my teddy bear and I hold him tight or he will fall down into the water.

The Voyage to Australia, 1934

While the voyage to Australia was great fun for a four-year-old, my sister Mary tells me it was embarrassing for my mother. She was all too aware that we were not allowed to leave the ship until we arrived in Sydney. My father, an accountant with a serious drinking problem, had surrendered the family passport in return for free repatriation to Australia. We were ‘charity’ cases of the Great Depression with our passage paid by the U.S. government to ease the drain on the economy that was paying foreigners unemployment benefits. But for me, it was my first adventure. En route to Pearl Harbor, ‘white hat’ US Navy sailors took me on their backs in the swimming pool and the bar tenders gave me root beers. Hawaii and Pearl Harbor were just names. I knew nothing of the rest of the world and the coming war. The boat was a happy place for me. People were friendly, let me talk or sit with them on the deck chairs.

My sister’s Memoirs describe our landing in Sydney:

“While we waited for port clearance, we anchored for several hours out in the stream near Fort Denison, known as Pinchgut, a bare knob of rock with a miniature stone fort. The sky was clear blue, the water sparkled, and on this Saturday afternoon the harbor was dotted with sailboats and ferries. While deep enough for ocean-going liners, the harbor is narrow and the shoreline is indented with scores of sheltered coves, all edged in lush parks and gardens and houses with red-tiled roofs.
Leaning on the rail, we watched the tugboats with their thick hawsers nuzzling the Mariposa toward the pier. The ship made a slow turn to port, helped by four tugboats. Soon we were going down the starboard gangplank and the pleasure trip was over
After Customs clearance the agent returned Father’s passport, shook hands, and said, “Welcome home.” Father then turned to mother and said: “Addie, we’re home.” Mother said nothing. He was not at all concerned that he had only £3 (about $15) to feed and house the family.…
Father called a cab; we loaded it with our three large steamer trunks, and asked the driver to suggest a suburb where we might find an apartment. Near the docks we drove through streets of terrace houses welded into one mass from corner to corner; houses with strings of gray washing hanging on the lacy iron balconies. Then up busy William Street with Darlinghurst on the right and infamous Kings Cross on the left. After a discussion with the driver, this area was deemed too expensive. At his suggestion, we drove on for another ten minutes to Bondi Beach and its acres of cookie-cutter brick houses with red tiled roofs and meager front yards, enclosed by low wire fences. Neither a garage nor a tree in sight...

Driving slowly, we saw a “To Let” sign on a decrepit apartment building next to the Royal Hotel opposite the beach boardwalk known as Campbell Parade, the fish and chip belt of Bondi Beach. The narrow, dead-end lane separating the apartments from the hotel was littered with orange peel, lolly wrappers and old newspapers. We waited in the cab while Father went inside. He soon returned and paid off the driver, who said, “Good luck, mate.” Typical of Father, he had talked the manager into waiving a deposit for the first week’s rent!”

Growing Up in Bondi

For me however, it was a fun place - vacant lots, kids to play with and a ‘sleep-out’ of my own on the front balcony. It was here on the back stairs that I found a cardboard carton of toys including a small train set and a Russian Cossack doll we named “von Skirtz”. I was never told where they came from but as it was Christmas I believed it to be a gift from Jesus. It was in Bondi Beach that I formed an attachment to our bread knife that accompanied mother and I wherever we moved. It was the family’s general-purpose tool used for cutting string, paper, vegetables, meat and in the near future as a potential weapon. We ‘shifted’ (moved) frequently in 1939 but it was within a small radius and I kept the same friends. They had toys - new to me but associated with my heroes: Buck Rogers Disintegrators and Rocket Pistols.

We moved to North Bondi near Ben Buckler, close to the cliffs. I stood on the bluff and watched the waves and the surf fisherman hundreds of feet below - Ocker Aussies - Iron Men. Down the road on Bondi Beach I discovered Peter’s Ice Cream and Minties – the white, sweet, chewy lolly wrapped in a red, white and green paper. The tram terminus nearby was my first sight of the ‘toast rack’ trams that would provide our usual means of transportation for many years. Trams filled with smokers and steamy, sweaty bodies, conductors on the running boards saying, “Fez Pleeze” loom large in my memory. Those men earned their wages clinging in the cold and rain to the swaying tram on the 12-inch footboard. Frequently newspaper boys would cling to and work the other side of the tram’s footboard pressing close when another tram passed at their back. “Getcher latest Telly, Laaay-up.” When they had canvassed the entire tram and it was clear, they would ‘dismount’ by stretching their arm to full extent still grasping the door railing. They would then let go landing on one foot and pivoting 180 degrees to lean forward facing the rear so that their bodies were angled to absorb the forward motion of the departing tram. In later years, I too was a newsboy, but never on trams.

And Bronte

I was six years old when we moved to the suburb of Bronte Beach. It was the last time we lived together as a family. Our rental house across from what is now Bronte Park was still standing at the corner of Alfred and Hewlett Streets when I visited Bronte in 1970. The park was the ‘gully’ inhabited by the fierce “Gully Gang” whom we never saw. There were some ‘big kids’, but if we saw them in the gully, we’d run off. We did discover some depressions in the brush-covered areas. These I suspect, were ‘pozzies’ for the local blokes and their compliant sheilas. Sexual consciousness was now raising its delightful head, and my neighbor girl, Betty Dietcham, attempted to give me an introduction. It was lost on me but she was a great ‘mate’. We walked the fences behind our houses, made mixtures of anything to be found in the kitchen, played ‘hidings’ under the street light till our parents called us, went to the flicks on Bondi Road and pretended we were the actors. We dug a hole in the back yard to make a ‘fort’ or ‘cubby-hole’. An old canvas awning pole was our cannon and the pit was lined with cast off clothing. We scrounged corrugated iron for the roof and supported it with scrap lumber from the gully. After all, we had to defend our house - this was World War 2 and the Japanese had captured Singapore. Mary’s bedroom windows were taped to preclude any bomb driven, flying glass.

Following a late evening ambulance trip to the Children’s Hospital in Camperdown for suspected diphtheria, my sexual awakening occurred. The wards were crowded with iron cots filled with boys and girls. The nurses wore either stiff veils with the point in the center of their back, or small starched caps on the front of their head. I looked down the ward and saw a large, high-ceilinged room full of beds with white covers. Mine was covered with a transparent tent and when Mum came to visit, they lifted the side. Mum looked inside and held my hand, which was unusual for we were not a visibly affectionate family. The warmth was there, but it was not expressed in a tactile way. Even when I was older, I cannot recall many kisses or touches. The same was true of my father, but I recall times when he put his arm on my shoulder. I suspect we were never a touchy-feely, ‘lovey-dovey’ kind of family.

It was at the Children’s Hospital that my sexual awakening finally occurred. Excited by an urgent need to micturate, I persuaded the girl in the bed adjoining mine to allow me to join her and conduct an exploration of her lower parts. Penetration seemed appropriate, but like all boys of my age, the ejaculation was not semen. I persuaded her that she had wet the bed and to call for the nurse to change the sheets. The nurse scolded her while I covered myself with the blanket and pretended I was fast asleep. What a bomb-out at age seven!

My father however, gave me a real bomb. It was an unloaded Mills bomb, a hand grenade, which he had liberated as a souvenir from his employer, The Ministry of Munitions. From the pathway at the side of the house he pulled the pin and threw it across the road to the park across the street. I don’t know how I knew, but then as now I realize that he had done this before many times. I kept the bomb until the day following my own similar demonstration at school. The Army representatives were quite nice. All they wanted to know was where it came from. By this time, Dad had departed to the Army repatriation Hospital.

Surf’s Up!

Bronte is on the Tasman Sea and has big waves. Not a great surfing beach and somewhat dangerous because of the undertow. There was a Surf Lifesaving club who stood watch on weekends. I learned to swim in a bogey hole. The Bronte Bogey Hole is protected from the ocean by a ring of rocks and at high tide is open to the surf. You learned to swim and loved it, or had a lifetime fear of the water. I love the surf. Either my sister or I, were given a rubber ‘Surf-O-Plane’, a small inflatable raft about a body wide and a yard long. Surfing on the raft was terrifyingly exciting, but as safe as you wanted to be. You could skim the baby waves, get outside the first line of breakers, or float between the lines. Great for the lungs, too. We had no tire pump to inflate the raft, so if you deflated it to walk home, the next time you and your mate would blow it up again. Body surfing could be tackled in stages. The first thing I learned was that if a wave ‘dumps’ you turning you over and over, swim for the bottom. The turbulence was less and other than collecting a lot of sand in your ‘cozzie’ you were pretty safe. The next thing I learned was to dive through a breaking wave; basic survival in the ocean for a six year old.

And survival it was. Even at this tender age we knew that to surf was to be alive and to be able at some distant time, to enter a man’s world. We quickly learned the lingo: “How’re the shoots?” (Never ‘waves’). Responses would be short and to the uninitiated, cryptic. “Great,” “Ar - Bluebottles”, “Bit sharky.” Waves were judged with the same precision as Eskimos judge the quality of snow. “Too much water”, “Dumper! (everybody off.) or for good shoots" Everybody on!” I was never a great surfer even in my teens, but was always ready to “Give it a go!”

By climbing down the cliffs, one of my mates and I learned how to avoid paying the tuppence admission fee and sneak into the ‘big’ pool at the end of the beach. This was ‘big kid’ stuff. Now, in my 60s, looking up at the route we took down the cliffs gives me a very nervous feeling in my anal sphincter. The pool is still there and it is still open to the ocean. Quite refreshing - particularly when the surf is up. The green water crashes against the bath’s gray cement and quickly rises vertically to spill a small part into the pool. If the tide was high I was frightened that sharks would be waiting for me when I swam. The baths were made of cement that was very rough on the body, but the surrounding sunbathing decks were full of splinters.

Sunday mornings at the baths were a ritual; it was men’s country. No one considered why women were excluded—Australia in their minds was a man’s world. How wrong we were. The backbone of Australia was the Aussie Mum

My mother once noticed a boy limping up the Alfred Street hill. Ever the compassionate nurse, she removed a long splinter and gave him what she could ill afford, the bus fare up the hill. I’m sure that it came for the small housekeeping money she had saved. I now suspect that my dad drank much of his salary although unlike other countries, children could NOT enter the Public Bar. On the rare times he took me out, I would sometimes stand outside the pub and wait for him to finish drinking. But Dad was never mean – just a quiet drunk. I suspect, his experiences in France during the First War would now have qualified him for some kind of treatment or counseling for post traumatic stress disorder.

You have to know my daughter Tammy to appreciate this..

Forty years ago I got both my daughters their Social Security numbers. Don’t ask me what was on my mind that day, but I not only gave the wrong name for Tamara, but I gave the wrong birth date. She was listed as Tammy and her birth date was five days off.

Several months ago, she was subjected to an I.R.S. audit and her accountant noticed the discrepancy in her records.

“I think you should fix this Social Security data” he said, “and soon!”

At her request and seeing it was my screw-up, I looked up the requirements on the web. Seems as ‘tho all she needed was a current passport and maybe a birth certificate. She collected the documents and checked in by drawing a number at the Downtown Seattle Social Security Office on 8th and Lenora.

Ever been in a Social security Office? Well, I have been there several times in the last five years and the customers are not all savory folk; actually there’s a lot of low-lifes and why they gather there I can only imagine.

Seen Tammy lately? She dresses in Escada, Hermes, Chanel, David Yurman and in her Jimmy Choo’s, she’s almost 6 feet of gorgeous womanhood. Very impressive and she keeps up with her clientele of high-end restaurateurs, local celebrities and the Seattle ‘in’ crowd. Sitting in the Social Security Waiting Room she was definitely out of place catching up on her Blackberry e-mail. But she took a number, was cool and waited her turn.

When it came, she put her documents on the shelf in front of the window and faced a large lady who no doubt had put up with a lot of crap that morning and was in no mood to be trifled with.

“Watcher need, girl,” she asked looking up at her antithesis who was probably about the same age but definitely not from her ‘hood’.

“I need a new Social Security card. My name’s not correct and my birth date is in error. My dad got it wrong when he registered me about 40 years ago,” said Tammy.

“Whaddya mean, got it wrong?”

“Well, for some reason he forgot.”

At this, the large, very Southern woman began to laugh very loudly and slap her large, larded sides and thighs and immediately called out to the other ‘ladies’ in the office, “Get a load of this will ya. This girl’s father didn’t remember her name or her birth date! Ha, ha, ha!”

The rest of the office of large women gathered around the window and joined in the laughter.

“He didn’t even remember her birthday” continued the woman, “or her proper name.”

Now Tammy, or should I correctly say Tamara, has inherited many of our better qualities. She has her mother’s memory, her calm charm, but alas she has her father’s smart mouth.

“Well,” said Tammy. “At least I knew who he was!”

The laughter immediately stopped. The dark faces turned red with anger. This was not a multi-cultural group. No sir!

“Get out of here, girl. Next time you come in you’ll need.....” and the woman reeled off a list of unnecessary documents.

Tammy exited as gracefully as possible and licked her wounds in her large, red, Mercedes convertible. Then she laughed and laughed. I guess she did inherit my sense of humor after all.

DITLIP
or
A Day In the Life of an Instructor Pilot

The instructor pilots in this story are not the usual ones that hang around your local airport trying to build up time to get a ‘real job’ flying for an airline or a corporation. No, these instructors have many thousands of hours and mostly flew in the United States military, or for an airline that went ‘belly-up’. They are true professionals who would look great in a full-page advertisement for an airplane manufacturer. These instructors in this story flew for what was at the time, the Boeing Commercial Airplane Company. The story is set in the mid Nineties and is a composite of many of the situations that they found themselves in: at home, on a foreign ‘Line Assist’ or instructing in the simulator in a non-U.S. country.

To their wives (and girl friends), their supervisor and their stock broker, they are often a will-o-the-wisp frequently seen only at Oh-dark thirty hours. This gives rise to the belief that they are closely related the North American sasquatch.

INSTRUCTOR A

Seattle

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzz Rrrrring!!!!!!

4.00 a.m.

Wife: “Honey, would you catch that alarm before it wakes the baby! Who do you have this morning? Same class? Well, I’ll see you around five. And DON’T FORGET OUR DATE TOMORROW NIGHT. It’s been weeks since we went out together.”

Arrgh! Friday morning, way to go! Nearly finished with this bunch and it’s been an interesting class, or maybe I should say, challenging. First time I’ve had a compressed schedule in a long time and it sure was a short night. Well, Monday they get their check rides. My captain is really sharp but the FO is slow. Hope he improves today. Hmmm. I wonder if he is someone the airline customer wants Boeing to pass judgment on. Just my good fortune to be Program Lead and no one to lean on.

INSTRUCTOR B

In Flight over the South China Sea

Who was it said that ‘the dawn comes up like thunder out of China ‘cross the bay?’ This dawn is right in my eyeballs and I’ve been fighting sleep all night in the right seat of this little bitty jet. The newly checked-out captain is really catching on fast to the ‘glass cockpit’ and the Flight Management System. He’s using concepts rather than rules. Line Assist can be fun, but sunrise in the eyes is the same the whole world over.

I think I’ll celebrate by rinsing out my mouth with some Vee-Eight. We’ve got a very light load; I hope the airline’s Sales and Marketing Department can drum up some more passengers, then with luck they’ll buy a few more Boeings. Hmm, I’ll better drop a note to Boeing Sales and let them know more about this operation.

Lessee, next stop we’ll have Customs and Immigration. I hope they’ll have the proper forms. The last Line Assist I was on bogged down on arrival because the official form had only shown boxes for three models of the 737. They insisted that the airplane couldn’t be a 737-800; as far as they were concerned if it wasn’t on their form it didn’t exist.

Ahh. The smell of the islands. Salt air, clear skies – not too many contrails in this part of the Pacific. This island looks like a throwback to the Fifties – motor scooters and litter and still relatively undeveloped. Well, not for long. Breakfast! Fresh fruit and what IS that stuff? Better get some ‘tho. It’s going to be a long day.

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

INSTRUCTOR C

Indonesia

Boy, sometimes you get lucky. A late sleep-in and a limo pickup. The high tech Orient has some advantages I don’t get at home - a nice room on the fourteenth floor and still fairly quiet at 7.30 AM. Funny but I don’t hear the birds at this elevation but the ‘flavor’ of the Orient surely rises with the humidity. Fruit for breakfast. The Flight Surgeon would definitely approve of that and with the customer picking up the tab - what the hell!

Down to the lobby for pickup. No graffiti in these elevators. Very nice place. (Thanks Boeing Travel Department! Better take them a bottle on the way home.)
And a limo – a Mercedes? Smooothe, and the driver’s taking the scenic route; this must be the tourist road. I wonder where the poor people live? What’s this? The Training Center? The driver opens my door in the training center porte cochere and the students are there to greet their new simulator instructor.

We brief for the lesson and, Omigawd! they are letter perfect – let’s hope they understand the concepts. And that’s my job to make sure they do because there’s several different ways to work a Flight Management System and all of them are correct.

Who are these guys? The captain is just off an older, short-range Boeing with no ‘glass cockpit’ experience. The First Officer is transitioning from the Airbus A-320. Wonder why he’s going on the Boeing? Maybe he likes our airplanes. Did his A-320 have a side stick? Have to watch he doesn’t try to outsmart the captain and show him how clever he is. Crew management is a key concept that is sometimes difficult to get across to Asian crews. Ah well, as long as he can type 40 words a minute on the keypad……..

INSTRUCTOR A

Seattle

10.00 a.m. and it looks like my day is just beginning. The First Officer needs more than additional training - the captain has been ‘carrying’ him and saying nothing about it. It’s hard for me to tell when there is a language difference. We do have a Standard Operating Procedure for slow students. Let’s see. What did the boss say?

“Work ‘em, guide ‘em, but don’t baby ‘em. My family may be on their flight someday.”

First the paperwork. Gotta be objective. “The FO could not find the correct page in the Quick Reference Handbook.” Maybe he doesn’t read English as well as he can speak English. That’s unusual, it’s usually the other way round. “FO gets lost in the middle of the Hydraulic Leak or Loss procedure.” Is this language or logic? Or maybe the procedure isn’t clearly written. Y’know, the captain is being very quiet about this guy which may confirm my suspicion that the airline has some doubts and is looking for us to pass judgment. Perhaps he’s politically connected and they can’t pull out the rug?

O.K. Paperwork’s done. Now, let me get a hold of the class leader. One thing’s sure, I’ll miss my day off on Saturday. Let’s check Saturday’s schedule. Gotta time slot for an extra simulator schedule? Yep. Call the leader.

“Hello Captain. I’d like to discuss the FO’s performance today. Can I come to your hotel? Sure. See you in thirty minutes.” Oh boy. Up and down the superslab to his hotel.

INSTRUCTOR B

Kuala Lumpur

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

INSTRUCTOR C

Indonesia

These guys are sharp! Nice contrast to the last program I had. Some classes are just smoother than others. The Captain must’ve burned the midnight oil, or maybe spent time with his buddies. He’s sure got flying experience. All it takes is hangin’ new stuff on the old hooks he has in his head….. and he’s doin’ it! The FO has that great quality I see in so many Asian youth - smart, energetic, coordinated and a mind like a sponge. Guess they aren’t as coddled as many of their U.S. contemporaries.

Nice afternoon. Think I’ll take the captain up on his invitation to play a short nine at his club. Sounds exclusive and very ritzy. Such is life for the rich Asian.

Back to the hotel. Fill out the paperwork. Hmm. Looks like the Ground Training Department back home could use a little help in smoothing out the flight profile. Better redline this puppy. Then I’ve got an article to write for the Ops Review Board. Paper, paper, paper. If I was a real airline pilot, all I’d do is collect a bigger paycheck and the heck with the paperwork!

Life ain’t too bad in the tropics, sometimes!



INSTRUCTOR A

Seattle

Well, my guess was correct. The F.O. can’t hack it without extra time. I gotta be a diplomat here, but maybe I’ve got to ‘let him out gracefully’. The airline knew he was a ‘slo mo’ but wanted an outside opinion. Hmmm, I’ll have to find some extra time for him in the simulator tomorrow and see if that helps. If not, I’ll have to let him go. But, who’ll be his simulator captain? It can’t be one of their guys and his real Captain doesn’t need the time nor does he want to miss his weekend off in Seattle. Lessee, what does our Black Book say….. Nada. That’s what I get paid for – decisions that make everybody look good.

Wait a minute, we have some up-and-coming Ground School instructors that are fully qualified in real airplanes and just longing to be upgraded. That new guy is really sharp, I think he is in the Reserve. Maybe he’ll work on Saturday. Better call the ground School Supervisor and get his O.K.

Now the hard part, what am I going to tell the wife about to-morrow night?



Instructor B

At the Hotel.

Well it IS better than the Da Nang BOQ – no bugs, no drugs, less noise and the air conditioning doesn’t smell of cigar smoke. A hurried sleep at best with the 5 AM alert. Well, it’s a short ride to Operations. Breakfast? Oh yeah. Wonder what the in-flight meal will be? Not Asian, I hope. I can handle just about anything but sushi. Still, it’s a no-fat diet.

At the airport.

Lookin’ good, just like we left it and it still SMELLS new. Boy, these cabin attendants are really attentive. I believe that if they had a real kitchen, I could have a real breakfast of steak and eggs.

The captain is very much in command during the briefing. If all their pilots are like him, they’ll make it on the Ops side for sure. This sure is a funny little island. Japanese War graves and still some rusted stuff in the lagoon. No American graves ‘tho. Guess the Commission must’ve moved ‘em after The War. Lots of Japanese tourists ‘tho making offerings at the gravesites. Beautiful beaches. Pity I didn’t have time to swim and snorkel. Guess this is a pretty good Line Assist trip after all.

Not like the one I had in Europe several years ago before the EU spread its influence. The customer airline was assisting in the deportation of two foreign nationals whose travels had originated from a third country, not their homeland. On arrival back at the third country where they were being returned, the Immigration Department wouldn’t let them off the ramp and the guards on the customer airline wouldn’t let ‘em back on my airplane. Impasse!

After lots of hard stares and stiff jaws, the customer airline captain said, “Well, if they return to XXX, there is no food for them to eat and they’ll starve!” This loss of face by the locals was sufficient to satisfy any backpedaling by the officials who replied, “Well, of course they can stay.” I wonder whatever happened to those guys?

In Flight

At least the sun ain’t gonna burn my eyeballs on the way home.

Instructor C.

ZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzz

A typical day in the life of a commercial airplane manufacturer’s IP?

Yep, they’ve got to be diplomats, psychologists, philosophers, proficient pilots and good human beings. And oh yes, have an encyclopedic memory.

In the early Autumn evening, we gather in the Continental Airlines departure area at San Francisco International Airport, 10 young men who may become USAF pilots or navigators. Outside on the ramp are the four engined, propeller powered airliners I have worked on as a mechanic and hope someday to fly as a pilot. I watch the flight engineers in their airline uniforms perform the pre-flight ‘walk arounds’ checking the plane’s exterior and I envy them their knowledge and skill. In less than ten years, I shall be one of them, but the reciprocating engines will have been replaced by jet turbines.

Most of us are accompanied by family members, a few from the outer Bay Area towns are alone.

The Recruiting Sergeant takes me aside and tells me, “You’re in charge here, Critch! Be sure they all make it on to the flight.” I wonder why, but suspect it’s because I’m the oldest and am dressed a cut above the others. “Yes, sir,” I say. “Thank you, sergeant.” I feel as though I’m already a commissioned officer and fully in charge of lesser beings.

We have been instructed to bring very little to our first phase of training which is called “Pre-Flight.” What we don’t fully appreciate is that, it’s the beginning of a process which will not only teach us to fly, but will eliminate 50% of us from earning our wings and commission. It is truly as Brown, the mechanic on my United Airlines graveyard shift has said, “It’s a real tiger program!”

My bag is stuffed with what I consider essentials: ‘hip’ narrow cut ties, loafers, slacks, a dress shirt and aftershave. What I shall shortly discover, is that these items are totally unessential – the United States Air Force will provide me with everything I need to complete my training. Civilian clothing will not be permitted on Lackland Air Force Base, San Antonio, Texas, for the next four months.

Our flight is called and having been involved in talking to my older sister, I have forgotten to round up the other newly sworn-in recruits. The sergeant has left long ago for the nearest tavern and I count the heads as they pass through the boarding gate – only seven! I panic! Where did the other two disappear to? As I wait at the entrance, the final boarding is announced and I climb the ramp into the Continental Airlines DC-6. What if they miss the flight? Will I be held responsible? Will the Air Force sergeant report me to someone? Who?

I enter the airplane without glancing at the smiling stewardess, and frantically look for the missing men. I relax, they have boarded early and before I took up my post at the gate. I feel stupid and learn a first lesson in military manners. You may be in charge, but to be officious is an admission of insecurity and ignorance.

We arrive in San Antonio and are shepherded onto a blue Air Force bus. Not having yet learned the lesson we quickly learn in the future, to stay in the background and become inconspicuous, I push to the head of the line and announce, “All present and accounted for.” The driver looks at me with his large white eyes and says in a bored and deep southern voice, “Yes suh, I ‘spose y’all are.” We are wired and tired after such a long flight and the burning Texas mid morning sun, is right in our face as we emerge from the bus. Looking out of the window, we see our greeters in starched khaki uniforms, large blue garrison hats, gleaming shoes and white gloves. If the Recruiting poster is to be believed, these are our buddies, “the best crowd of guys you’ll ever meet.”

I’m the last off the bus. I look down to be sure I don’t miss the step and as I look up, I am eyeball-to-eyeball with a fierce looking Aviation Cadet Upperclassman.

“Hit one, mister,” he screams.

I think, “Hit what? Him?”

What he means is that I should come to a rigid position of military ‘attention’.

“Mister, you are a spastic, a poor excuse for humanity!” he screams again.

“What is going on,” I wonder.

“Are you a pilot, mister!” Again the loud voice

“Yes!”

“Yes, SIR, spastic. When you speak to me, it’s sir. Ya got that?”

“Yes sir.”

“And, spaz, you are not a pilot and by the look of you, you never will be. What’s all that crap in your side pocket?”

Crap in my side pocket? Handkerchief, RayBan case, change, a packet of M & M’s.

“Take it out,” he yells. “Put it in your back pocket. Crap in the side pocket spoils the crease in your pants.”

I comply, but it’s difficult. The pocket isn’t built to carry much more than a wallet.
Meanwhile, the rest of the recruits have been lined up in a loose marching formation and are being harassed in much the same way as I.

There is no evidence of physical abuse; it’s all shouting and provocative questions to which there is no correct answer.

“Cage those eyeballs, mister!”

“You’ll never make it, mister!”

“Mister, mister, mister.” Yes, we are cadets, not enlisted recruits, not “Airmen” and we will conform to this discipline and quickly, or be given demerits and forced to march in starched uniforms in the hot sun.

One of the Upper Classmen takes a look at my highly polished jump boots I purchased when discharged from the California Army National Guard in which I was a Private First Class, and assumes that I know something about marching.

“You, with the jump boots, get out there and be the road guard.”

“What’s a road guard?” I wonder.

I’m confused and show it. I look left, then right. The Upperclassman assumes that I’m as stunned as the rest of the guys and quickly reverses his order. I fall into line and we are marched toward a distant barracks, my back pocket bulging from the unexpected surplus of contents. One of the Upperclassmen, joins me in the formation and says, “Take that stuff and put it back in your side pockets, you look ridiculous.” I sense he is not enjoying this any more than I am, and I realize that it’s all part of a game, but a game that will continue for the next 18 months.

After Bainbridge Air Base, which had been a 'country club' existence, Reese Air Force Base, Texas comes as a shock. We are in World War 2 style barracks, albeit three to a room with an adjacent small, common room with three metal desks and chairs. We have our own shower and toilet which when compared to the cadets' living quarters 10 years before, is luxury. But, as Under Class we are always ready for 'spot' inspections by the TAC Officers or our Upper Classmen. We keep everything in white glove condition - except on Friday nights when we are exempt and the beer is 'on' at the Cadet Club.

It is a mixed class - half the students are aviation cadets and the others are commissioned officers from either ROTC (a college commissioning program at 'land grant' universities), a U.S. military academy, or perhaps Officer Candidate School or even some who have been navigators. They live in the Bachelor Officers' Quarters (BOQ) or with their spouses in off-base in private rentals. We are all expected to attend the same classes and compete for class standing which, when it comes time to be given our assignments, will determine the order in which we chose them.

Reese is no 'country club'. It is strictly military - gate guards 24 hours a day, salutes for the incoming officers' cars which have special stickers, and inspections for the cars piled full of soon-to-graduate, sometimes inebriated, Upper Class Aviation Cadets. As Lubbock is a 'dry' Texas town with a church on almost every corner and no bars, we drive to the next county which allows us to imbibe of Texas hospitality.

As before, the flight schedule alternates between a five o'clock reville for morning flying, with afternoon academics and physical training, and a six o'clock bugle if the schedule is reversed. We have begun our last phase in September 1957 and the Texas autumn weather is excellent to begin our training in the twin engine, Mitchell medium bomber.

The B-25 'Mitchell' had been the star of the 1st bombing raid on Tokyo in 1942 led by Jimmy Doolittle from the deck of the aircraft carrier 'Hornet'. (It was also the star of the Hollywood movie, "Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo" which I saw as a nine year old at the Bondi Junction Regal Threatre.) Our base commander at Reese, Colonel Travis Hoover, who is nearing retirement, had been on the Doolittle raid and while we see little of him, it gives us a warrior's link with an historic moment in U.S. history. On Saturday mornings, we pass in review under the watchful eye of our training officers, the Colonel and his staff. They stand, we march to the cadet Drum and Bugle Corps.

Each instructor has four students and I have been fortunate enough to pick my instructor before we were assigned. A close friend at Bainbridge told me to 'look up' one of his friends, Bob Applebaugh, who was newly fledged and as luck would have it, I am in his flight. We bond from the beginning, and under his gentle hand, I transition into the 'Mitchell' with no problems. My barracks roommate Henry, No Middle Initial (MNI), Brown and I team together for our dual instruction and for our first day and night solo flights.

Just like most modern twins today, the B-25 has two pilot seats - one on the left designated for the captain and one on the right for the co-pilot. Why? Well, the left seat has the nose-wheel steering control and as the captain usually makes the landing, he can steer the airplane when it slows down. Besides, it's been the tradition for many years and the military is not one to break with tradition.

Solo night flying in Basic Flying School is a very controlled exercise. Think for a moment about 20 or 30 very low time pilots flying a bomber around a traffic pattern and exercising their own judgment based on a small amount of experience. Scary! We have seven or eight airplanes in layers at different altitudes with each layer vertically separated by 2,000 feet. The bottom layer lands first, and the two higher layers space themselves to avoid collisions - I had come close to a collision in Primary training and had no desire to repeat another near miss.

Henry No Middle Initial and I are in the middle layer and I am in the left seat 'playing' captain. It's my ship, I'm in command. You've seen the anti collision lights on modern aircraft - strobe lights on the tail and on the wing tips in addition to the standard red and green lights. The B-25 had no strobe lights, just the wing tips and a rotating anti-collision light under the belly. Planes follow the same rules as boats: green for the starboard (right) side and red for the port (left). Imagine 16 sets of red and green lights in the upper two layers, all flying in a clockwise direction, and four scared eyes in each cockpit hoping to avoid every other set of scared eyes.

We are both tired from physical training that afternoon and of course the usual 6 a.m. reville. Henry is looking out to the right side, I'm looking straight ahead and I think I see a bifurcating red and green light - the gap is growing wider and I assume someone's going the wrong way and heading straight for us. What I really see are two airplanes at our level but the green light on one is obscured by its wing as is the red light on the other. I immediately roll into an almost vertical bank to avoid what I believe will be a mid air collision and Henry thinks I've lost it. Before he can decide what to do I realize my error and begin to right the airplane from what has developed into a most unusual attitude.

Recovery from 'unusual attitudes' is on the flight curriculum and we have practiced several already, but we are not yet proficient in that exercise. After this night solo, I am more than proficient in determining what the lights mean.

We make it to the bottom layer, I shoot three landings, we park with the engines running and swap seats. Henry has no trouble in telling me to watch for other aircraft and I sense he's glad he's driving.

This is a 'guy' story, and if you're not interested in aviation or rites of passage, give it a miss.

Bainbridge Air Base, Georgia. June 1957

I taxi into the takeoff position and hold the brakes on with my feet pressed against the brakes on the rudder pedals. Today, it's a solo flight to practice coordination maneuvers and aerobatics.

The plane in front of me has lifted off, so I slowly apply full power. The big radial engine has a comforting sound as I feel the propeller torque try to turn me to the left and I apply right rudder and keep the Trojan headed straight down the runway. The prop seems to be turning very s-l-o-w-l-y, but it’s a typical illusion of the T-28’s paddle-bladed propeller after flying the smaller T-34. The airspeed is increasing normally and I lift off at around 85 knots. “Gear Up”, and I climb straight ahead to 500 feet, raise the flaps then make a right, then a left climbing turn and I’m clear of the traffic pattern. I check the cowl flaps closed and set the power for Climb.

A beautiful spring day with big woolly clouds against a clear, blue Georgia sky. But I don’t day dream – I’ve work to do. I clear the sky to my left to see if anyone else is close and continue climbing and turning to 8,000 feet. The Georgia farmland, as indeed all of the land in the U.S., is laid out in sections with the boundaries running north, south, east and west. As I climb, I practice staying lined up with the section lines. Today, the fields are irrigated, the section lines less prominent and are replaced by the circles made by the watering systems.

Using an imaginary line across the windshield, I begin to practice steep turns. We have not been taught to fly on instruments yet, and I refer to them only to check my ability to fly while looking outside.

I talk to myself. “Throttle up a bit. More back pressure on the stick. Keep that imaginary spot on the horizon. Oops, I can feel I’m losing altitude! Add power. Raise the nose a bit. I’m skidding. Ease out some bank and use a little top rudder – keep the ball centered, keep it coordinated. Now, more bank again, back to 60 degrees. Fly the plane, don’t let it fly you!” I work at turns for about 15 minutes till I’m tired of it.

Now for some chandelles. This maneuver, that I seem to have little trouble performing, feels like flying is meant to: a rapid change in altitude, pitch angle, speed, and the sense of a rapid climb out of some dangerous situation. I imagine myself flying into a fjord or into a box canyon and finding that I must immediately reverse direction and climb back out. This is a situation that can easily happen and indeed, several later, I put this maneuver to good use when flying in Greenland.

Next snap rolls, horizontal reverses and the exhilarating Cuban Eight. I don’t know why it’s called a Cuban Eight but it is two loops joined together like an infinity sign.

I try to remember what the acrobatic section of the flight manual says as I talk myself through the maneuver:

“Mixture..Rich.
Prop Full - Forward
Airspeed - Descend to increase to 220 Knots.”

I begin to dive and enter a loop. Easing in the back pressure, I feel the g’s as I begin the loop. I arch my back to look straight up and keep the North/South section lines fore and aft. At the top of the loop, I ease back on the throttle and dive upside down at a 45 degree angle until the nose passes through the horizon. Then I half-roll till I’m ‘blue side up’ and commence another loop all the time keeping the plane properly aligned. Over top again, down at 45 degrees and roll out at my original entry altitude. Wow! Fun, fun, fun. Oops, lost a thousand feet or so – better do another, and another. I’m charged!

Before I realize it, my two hour solo is almost over and I’m going to be cutting it pretty fine to land in time so that the next student can have the plane.

I can see Bainbridge Airbase from this altitude and also can see that the line of trainers preparing to land is stretched out by five or six miles. Yikes! How will I squeeze in? Like the ‘tiger’ I’d like to be, I make a high speed descent and parallel the 45 degree entry for the south east runway. I see a gap and whip into a steep 180 degree turn and bully my way in front of another T-28 who has left a bit wider spacing than usual. What I don’t know is that the ship I have pushed in front of has a student AND an instructor.

I turn right 45 degrees on to ‘initial’ and can see I’m too close to the plane in front, so I extend my pitch-out point a bit further down the runway. What I don’t hear is the mobile control van say to me, “Solo T-28 on initial, go around.” They can see I’m extending the pattern too far, but my attention is already divided with spacing and landing. For all intents, I’m deaf to their request and I begin my 60 degree ‘pitch-out’ to the right.

“Throttle back until the horn sounds, Gear Down, Horn silent…..” I say as I turn.

Suddenly I become instantly aware of a blur ten or fifteen feet above my canopy. I can almost count the rivets in the underside of another trainer’s fuselage.

I have barely survived a near miss at less than 1,000 feet. If he’d hit me, nobody would have survived; we would both be a pile of burning metal at the end of the runway.

I continue my descending turn towards the runway, but something doesn’t feel right. I’m descending too fast. I add power, and the descent slows. I touch down much faster than usual and do not make the first turn off but taxi further down the runway causing the next T-28 to go-around.

While ‘cleaning up’ after landing, I realize why I landed long and fast. After the near miss, my train of thought was interrupted and I forget to put down ‘landing flaps’. What a ‘tiger’ I am. More like a scared pussy cat.

Entering the line shack, I decide to say nothing about the near-miss to Earl Wederbrook, my instructor. Glancing out of the window, I see an old nemesis, P.D. Bridges, my ex-instructor, the southern boy who doesn’t like slow Yankees with an Australian accent. Earl sees him coming, flicks his eyes towards the parachute loft and I beat a hasty retreat. I put it together! P.D. was the guy I cut out of the pattern and with whom I almost shared a common pile of burning rubble.

Five minutes later having checked in my parachute, I look inside the line shack. P.D. and Earl are nose to nose, except that my instructor is about six inches taller, 50 pounds heavier and who is looking down on a red faced Bridges who is obviously yelling. My protector is saying nothing, and shortly P.D. turns on his heel and leaves.

Earl has a wry smile during the debriefing and after I discuss my maneuvers, Earl says, “By the way, next time you cut someone out of the landing pattern, be sure he’s shorter than me. I’m a lover, not a fighter.”

Back in the barracks before supper, I look at my log book and realize that I have just passed 100 hours of flight time and in an airplane which 15 years ago would have been considered a high performance machine.

And I am sad knowing that neither my mother nor father will ever know their grown up son.