"Paul J. Adam" wrote in message
...
In message , ArtKramr
writes
THE PILOT WHO WOULDN'T FLY
Captain Johnson's plane was badly hit over the target. He and his crew
bailed
out. But Johnson never liked to keep his chute harness buckled tight. It
gave
him cramps. So he wore it loose. On this occasion, as he bailed out he
slipped
out of the harness and it tangled around his foot. That meant that he
dangled
head down in his chute as he came to earth. He was badly shook up on
landing
and hospitalized with severe cuts and bruises and a good deal of shock.
After
he recovered he was returned to duty. At that time we needed 65 missions
to go
home. He had 62, Only three more to go. But he refused to ever fly again.
This
was serious business with a war on. He was sent to London and a staff of
psychiatrists worked on him, but he wouldn't fly. Then they said if he
flew as
an observer on the lead aircraft he could get 1½ missions credit for each
mission, He could fly two and get credit for three, and go home. He still
refused to fly. What was to be done? You can't really court marshal a man
with
62 missions for cowardice in face of the enemy.

This is a tough one and no mistake.

First up, calling someone with 62 combat missions including being shot
down "a coward" risks a certain terminological inexactitude.

Secondly, techniques have improved. Men do fail under pressu but
we're better at fixing them. IIRC something like 40% of Israeli
battlefield casualties in the first days of the 1973 war were what could
be called "LMF" or similar in WW2: but almost all those troops were back
in combat within 48 hours. (Layman's understanding of a complex
technique: you don't stigmatise the guy as a coward, you treat him as a
casualty with the solid expectation that he's going to get better soon
and go back to help his friends who need his assistance ASAP. In other
words, get him back to his unit and have him finish his missions)


But he still wouldn't fly. But
everyone else in the 344th damn well had to fly.

Another reason this is a damn difficult question: does _anyone_ really
want to fly those last few missions before the end of the tour? No
personal experience, but I've read infantry memoirs from Vietnam of how
"short-timers" sometimes got very gunshy... nobody wanted to become a
KIA a week or two from their escape date. But I would get really angry
if I felt that a cadre of folk were getting the easy jobs while I took
the risks, simply because they'd been in-theatre longer than me.
Similarly I'm sure I'd get very jumpy in the last few days / last few
missions of a term-limited deployment.

Part of me says that this wolfpack reaction he recieved was very wrong.
But part of me understands it: when you're fighting fear yourself,
seeing others lose their battle and go apparently unpunished is almost
toxic. "If he can chicken out then why do _I_ have to go?" must be a
hellish hard argument for commanders to deal with when they're
continuing to send the rest of the squadron out.



Art, would it have been different if the guy had had these problems
after a dozen missions, been gone a couple of weeks, then come back to
fly the rest of his tour without notable heroism but in regulation
style? Was it that he refused to go, or that he refused to finish his
tour, that you and your comrades found so offensive?

What would it have taken for him to redeem an initial refusal to return?
Would his finishing his tour and flying three missions (or two as lead)
have been sufficient? If he dropped out at 62, would _anything_ else he
did have counted? (Wide open question... to give an extreme, if he'd
refused to fly in a Marauder ever again, but instead walked to
Berchtesgaden and personally cut Adolf Hitler's throat, would your unit
still have condemned him so fully?)

Fast forward 15 years
to a reunion of the 344th Bomb Group. Who should walk in but our old
friend
Captain Johnson. No one spoke to him. Many just turned their backs on
him. I
felt sorry for him. But while we were risking our necks over Germany and
losing
good men, he was curled up and whining under a blanket. He flew with us,
but
after that not a single man in the 344th considered him to be one of us.

From outside, I admit to finding this fascinating.

On the one hand, this is a man who has demonstrated a hell of a lot of
courage in the past.

On the other hand... when it ran out, he didn't have a reserve. (And I
have to admit, being shot down sounds uncomfortable enough, without
having to add a parachute descent by one ankle: never been shot down,
but I have done a jump with a properly-fitting 'chute and that was quite
enough excitement for peacetime at my own expense )

How could he have been kept as a useful asset? I'm not asking that he be
left feeling joyful about himself, but this is an experienced crewman
who at worst has a lot of hard-won lessons to teach trainees. (But then
how do you prevent '60 of 65 and my luck is running out - time to be a
Stateside instructor!' taking hold?)

It's an interesting collision of doctrine and reality... to me, anyway.

I believe this is an intelligent approach to this issue.

I wasn't going to answer this because when it comes to assessing something
like this; personal, and directly associated with combat, I usually defer to
those more qualified to speak. The closest analogy to why is the feeling I
get when someone who hasn't rolled an airplane inverted at 50 feet tries to
tell me how I should feel about someone who has and been killed. I get an
involuntary reaction when this happens. It's caused by a firm belief right
or wrong, that unless you have paid your dues, there are certain things in
life you're not really supposed to comment on. Something like this is
closely related to what I'm discussing here; I call it the "association
factor".
I can't comment directly from a combat point of view on something like this
as I haven't earned the right to have this opinion, but I am in the unusual
situation of having known many people who have "been there and done that",
and I can relate a sort of summation of what I believe they would say on
such an issue as this one.
I honestly believe that every man and woman who goes in harm's way in a war
situation has a limit for being able to handle fear, and stark terror; and
no two limits are the same. I believe the 8th called it a "maximum effort
factor" during the war. No one could define it of course. You were just
supposed to keep going! There are of course those who somehow manage to
traverse the whole thing while maintaining some degree of control, but for
most of those who go into combat, there is a limit to what the human mind
can absorb and still function normally. The macho folks will no doubt tell
you that no matter what these limits are, it's your solemn duty to swallow
whatever it is and continue on regardless. There's just too much at stake if
one person caves in. Besides, one can argue effectively.....why aren't the
others affected? They have to continue on, so what gives one person the
right to call it quits? I honestly don't have the answer to this. How do you
tell a crew that they have to continue living through the same horror that
one man can't take any more and understand the reasons why? How can you ask
men who have to continue on to understand the plight of one of their fellows
who no longer can take it? God! What a difficult thing to have to face.
I honestly don't see how anyone can call a man who has flown 62 missions a
coward. But where does this leave you if suddenly you can't take it any more
and the rest of the crews have to continue? Is it reasonable to expect these
men to understand that you have reached the absolute limit of your human
tolerance to fear and can't take a single step further? Considering that the
crews have to continue, it's asking a great deal of them to exhibit
understanding in these cases. It is however also reasonable, that the powers
that be in these cases, exhibit some higher degree of understanding with the
issue. A man who has lived through a personal experience as absolutely
terrifying as this pilot did has reached a personal limit of human endurance
to fear. He's over his personal edge for what his mind has allowed him to
accept as acceptable. He's a causality as sure as if he had taken a bullet.
The man has already demonstrated 62 times that he came to do the job. He in
fact, did the job...time and time again.
So what do you do with a man like "Johnson"? Do you write him off as a
coward simply because you have to go on and he says he can't? I can see in a
heartbeat that for those who have to continue, this would be a quick
call...and who's to blame these men? But does this address Johnson's problem
at all, or is it simply an understandable reaction from the other crews?
Hell, if I had to go, I'm sure I might have had the same reaction as these
crews did. Of course this assumes that I as an individual, hadn't reached my
personal limit for what I could take yet!!!! It might happen today....but it
hasn't happened YET!!!!
The guys I know would have reacted exactly as Art's associates did at the
time, but strangely enough, many I know would have also understood the
causality issue with Johnson, and would have agreed that treatment for him
was what was needed instead of admonishment by the group. I believe they
would have based this on the 62 missions Johnson had already flown.
In situations like this one, in a combat group, you will always have those
who see something like this only as a sign of cowardice. That's
understandable, but not necessarily right. No matter how you cut this guy's
record down, if he flew 62 missions, then had this unbelievable experience
and couldn't go on after that, I would say there's a serious question that
cowardice should be given a real hard long look as NOT being the prime
factor in this instance.
I believe that in many cases like this one, if some degree of care is given
at the medical/psychological level instead of shunning, the person involved
can be brought back. Of course, there's always a chance that once over this
kind of an edge, there's no return from whatever mental sanctuary the
affected person has entered into in order to escape. The easy road is to
write him off. The hard way is to take him off the line; work with him; and
try to bring him back.
As I say, I wasn't there and don't know the exact circumstances involved
with this case, but from what I've read in Art's post, I think I would have
given this guy a chance. 65 missions takes a lot of guts....as I'm sure Art
can relate to much better than I can!!
Dudley Henriques
International Fighter Pilots Fellowship
Commercial Pilot/ CFI Retired
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