Dive, Skyhawks!

By Andrew Zakrzewski

After some experience as a cadet, Andrew succeeds in becoming a Marine officer and is selected for training as a Naval Aviator. He continues with mixed feelings, but gets his Navy Wings of Gold and joins a Marine squadron in South Carolina to get combat-ready for the Viet Nam war. He has a good deployment in Viet Nam and participates in many combat missions and also serves some time in a Marine infantry battalion. He returns home as a minor hero and soon discovers that due to Defense politics and budget cutbacks his career as a Marine officer will be too brief.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Oct 26, 2013
• ISBN: 9781304570147

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Dive, Skyhawks!

Dive, Skyhawks!

Andrew Zakrzewski

Dive, Skyhawks!

Second edition

Copyright © 2013 by Andrew Zakrzewski

HSBN:  978-1-304-57014-7

All Rights Reserved.

Portions of this book have been previously published under the title Captain Wedge’s School of Hard Knocks.

Other books by Andrew Zakrzewski:

Captain Wedge’s School of Hard Knocks (2008)

Climb or Crash (2013)

Dive, Skyhawks! (2013)

Captains of the Nether Skies (2013)

Dedication

This is dedicated to my father,

Colonel Władysław Bronisław Wyskota-Zakrzewski,

Good or Evil;

As one war hero to another,

I think I owe him some respect.

Prolog

Mrs Rose Shapiro, my high school guidance counselor, reviewed my report card.  She almost had tears in her eyes.

Oh, Andrew, this is… great, she finally said.  She looked up at me from her chair.  We should think about college for you.

At the moment I had no idea as to what career path I might want to pursue.  As a kid I had been extremely concerned with choosing a safe lifestyle.  I had thought of being an engineer or mechanic, since I enjoyed machinery and science, but then there was the chance of getting caught in the tools and get injured and maimed.  Same for being a carpenter, a cop, a chemist or even a baker – even a shopkeeper could get robbed and be subjected to violence.

I might have liked to be an aviator – I always had an inclination toward airplanes, but there was an aura of reckless danger to flying – an air of defying the basic forces of Nature – a chance of crashing or getting shot down or something… besides, my sense of balance was very touchy and I was too prone to getting motion sickness.  The fact that I had some problem with my high blood pressure was another obstacle.  Pilots were supposed to be super-healthy.

We first learned of our hypertension, my brother Richard and me, when we had our first modern physical exam back in Buenos Aires.  The U.S. Embassy had requested that we present a number of documents for our migration from Argentina to the United States, including a health certification.  We had gone to a clinic approved by the Embassy, and the doctor there had commented on our problem.  My mother was then some 51 years of age, so it wasn’t odd that she had some hypertension, but I was almost 15 and Richard was 21[1].  My problem was again confirmed a couple of years later, already in Brooklyn, when my Thomas Jefferson High School decided to start a soccer team and I actually tried out for it.  I wasn’t much of an athlete but I did have some real experience with soccer from the street games and summer camp matches we played back in Argentina – but the required physical exam disqualified me from the high school team.  Anyway, I could still recall that harrowing immigration flight on May 13, 1958, in a TAN Airlines Curtiss C-46 Commando from Chile two years before, through storms over the Caribbean and into Miami, when I had puked and puked like never before, and I knew that any thoughts of my potential interest in aviation had to be banished from my mind.

We had moved to Brooklyn in the fall of 1958, at which time I started high school.  A year or so afterward, my brother Richard, six years older than I, decided to act on my mother’s urging to look up the excellent educational opportunities in the peacetime military (the Cold War notwithstanding), and so he joined the U.S. Army to train in missiles and radar.  He had already completed trade schools and worked apprenticeships in the electrical field back in Argentina.

Richard’s return from recruit training at Fort Dix, New Jersey, on his way to Artillery & Missile School in Fort Sill, Oklahoma, was quite an epiphany for me.  There was such a change about him.

Why hadn’t I thought of this before?  Something snapped within me, and instantly I knew that I had found my goal:  I was to be a military officer, just like my father had been back in Poland during the Great War and just before World War II.  Any prior concerns about occupational hazards instantly evaporated from my mind.  As for Richard, he didn’t develop any love for the Army, but he happily spent most of his active duty in Germany.  He resisted the Army’s lures of further educational and advancement opportunities and declined to re-enlist.  By 1962, he was back at home with us, in Brooklyn.

After years of strife, Mother had divorced my father and we had left him back in Argentina, and her most negative memories revolved about Father’s abbreviated military career.  His own story was stranger than fiction – as a young man he had served as a lieutenant in the Prussian army and was a wounded veteran of the battle of Verdun in World War I, earning two Iron Crosses.  After the war, Poland had been reconstituted as a sovereign Nation, and he continued his military career now as a Polish officer, again earning a top decoration in the battle of Warsaw in 1920[2].

Father Zakrzewski, Polish army, c.1920.

Father had had to retire early from the Polish army due to some health issues, even before WWII, but, in Mother’s mind, he had harbored domineering and disciplinarian tendencies that she considered the worst vestiges of his military years.  She made no secret that she felt there had been a streak of evil in him, and her new fear was that I might turn out like him. 

And yet, from time to time, she must have realized she was being unfair.

Whatever I may say about your father, she would say soberly, he was after all a true war hero in his time.  We can’t take that away from him and, yea, you should be proud.

When I finally revealed to her my plan to make a career in the Services, she was somewhat appalled. 

Bah!  Brass buttons and fancy pants!  Petty authority!  That’s what he was all about! she said, angrily, figuring that I was on the way to becoming another military martinet.  I would rather think that this would be something honorable to look forward to.  Another obstacle I had to contend with was my ignorance of opportunities to prepare for such a career.  I sure would have liked to go away to a military school, but there was no way we could afford that.

But, as the saying goes, where’s a will, there’s a way.  It would be another year before I learned of youth cadet programs, ROTC and such, but soon enough I would find myself among kindred folks who would take note of my motivations and help me along.  I still had to deal with the specter of my health issues for many years to come.  I figured that I had to forgo the aviation angle as being physically ineligible, partially due to my tendency to succumb to motion sickness, and also due to the hypertension problem.

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[1] We also had brother Maciej, 20, but he had decided to marry and stay behind in Argentina.

[2] After the Bolshevik revolution of 1917, factions of the Russian civil war had entered Poland and even attempted to occupy Warsaw.

Chapter 1 – Brass Buttons and Fancy Pants

My brother Richard was still stationed in the U.S. Army in Germany and Mother and I lived alone in Brooklyn.  I don’t suppose that Richard sent any of his modest military pay home, but Mother’s meager earnings working at a sewing machine in a Manhattan sweatshop was the only income we had.  She was a very good piece-worker and actually made a fair paycheck, but as soon as I had finished high school, I got a job at United States Lines, a shipping company with corporate offices and piers in the Port of New York.  I planned to work only through the summer of 1961 but I ended up staying another year on the job.  Other than the matter of income, I felt that the office environment where I worked was contributing greatly to my social development as a still fresh immigrant in the USA.

My acceptance at the Brooklyn College of the City University of New York went smoothly.  Essentially, it was a free education available to city residents who were able to qualify academically.  Actually, the cost was a modest fee of $12.50 per semester – plus an occasional lab or equipment fee, books that one had to buy, and so forth.  There were no dorms, as one had to be a city resident to be eligible, so for those of us who lived at home the cost of school was extremely affordable.  Still, at the onset of my first semester in September 1961, I kept my job at United States Lines and started out in the Brooklyn College’s night school.  By the next year, I would quit working and be going to school full-time.  My one year of night school put me one semester behind, so I was slated for graduation by February 1, 1966, given a four-year degree program.

During my last year of high school I had finally discovered some militaristic youth activities that I could engage in, and I quickly became deeply involved.  I was very motivated, learned very fast, enjoyed the disciplines (as well as the fancy pants and brass buttons) and easily earned promotions.  I went from being an Air Explorer to a Naval Air Patrol cadet to a Civil Air Patrol cadet leader.  Mother cautiously agreed to foot the bill for my uniforms and other needs, but she was very hard to impress, in spite of my advancements.  She still was skeptical of my motives and keenly watched for a chance to jump on any potential character flaws she might discern.

Oddly enough, although I had forsworn any interest in aviation as a career due to my awareness of my physical limitations, the organizations I had followed were obviously very aeronautically oriented.  I even became seriously involved in model airplanes again, much more so than I had been before my immigration from Argentina, where the hobby had been harder to pursue, mostly due to economics.

Now in the fall of 1962, I quit my job at the Port of New York and enrolled full-time in Brooklyn College’s day school to continue my Bachelor of Science curriculum.  It hadn’t occurred to me to try the AFROTC until I saw some cadets in uniform about the campus.  Again, I had no plans for any aeronautical career, but the Air Force ROTC was the only ROTC available in the City University of New York system, and I finally enrolled in Military Science in the spring semester of 1963.  The first two years, Basic ROTC, was a try-out program that involved no commitments – the Service even furnished the uniforms for free – but if one continued on to the Advanced ROTC, it was with the intent of joining the Air Force as an officer.  Since there was no tuition cost at the CUNY colleges, the Advanced ROTC upper-classmen actually received a small salary in lieu of scholarship assistance.  Our Military Science classes and parade activities were on Fridays, which was our one uniform day, and the rest of the week we were in the guise of regular students.

By then I had been involved in the high-school level cadet organizations for well over two years, and my transition into the college ROTC went very well.  But I had run into a stumbling block with my science studies because I had spent the first year of public high school tied up with Basic English and Basic Civics and other such classes that I shared with the other immigrant students, and in my Senior year I just barely had the points for graduating.  At college, I discovered that my high school plain Algebra and Plane Geometry were not sufficient to keep up with college sciences.  I eventually had to switch to Liberal Arts, and the easy good grades from Military Science were a great help in keeping me in school.  It seemed, anyway, that the Military didn’t really care what major or minor one studied as long as one maintained a reasonable grade average and actually graduated.

As a cadet I participated in everything I could, including the ROTC bowling league.  I tried out for the rifle team, and in a basement shooting gallery I was handed a huge Remington .22 caliber target rifle with a barrel as fat as a broomstick, heavy walnut stock and complicated adjustable iron sights.  Each of us new shooters were assigned positions at the firing line, issued a weird-looking padded shooting jacket, a couple of magazines of ammunition and a couple of paper targets that were reeled out downrange to the correct distance.  After a bit of a briefing, we got down to shooting in the easiest position, that is, the prone.

Once all four of us were set, the range-master, an upper-classman cadet, announced "Fire away!"  I aimed carefully and took a shot.  The small-caliber charge made a very slight recoil against my padded shooting jacket.  I waited for the command to take the next shot.  I waited... and waited….   I could hear the other shooters shooting multiple rounds.  It finally occurred to me that I should have continued shooting all ten of my shots without waiting for a command after each single shot.  By the time I realized this, the range-master was already calling Cease fire!  Clear your weapons!

At the reckoning, there was only one hole in my paper target.  It was pretty close to the bulls-eye, but the total grouping was what really counted.  The upper-classman had collected the targets and had disappeared.  I figured I’d get a chance to discuss the matter with him later, but I never did.  The Air Force sergeant took our jackets, rifles and gear.  We were not expected to clean the guns.  I didn’t know whether it was worth appealing to someone about my misunderstanding of the range etiquette, but suffice it to say that I wasn’t invited to join the shooting team.

During an interview a year and a half later, I admitted to Lieutenant Colonel Glickman, the commander of our unit, that despite my excellence in Military Science, I saw no point in continuing to the Advanced AFROTC.  The way I saw it, the Air Force described itself as a great spear with its huge shaft being composed of legions of supporting personnel and equipment, but with a rather tiny spearhead – the combat planes, missiles and such – that actually closed with the enemy to destroy it.  How would I be able to go into battle in the Air Force if I couldn’t be a combat pilot, even due to my own physical limitations?

In my own mind, I felt that I should be a military officer with an opportunity to do heroic deeds and lead huge armies, à la Georgie Patton[1], or Robert E. Lee.  It was a silly and arrogant idea, it seems now, but at the time I felt a need to emulate my father who’d been a hero in the Prussian army in the front lines at Verdun in 1916, and again in the new Polish army against the Russians in 1920 at Warsaw.   So went my youthful idealistic visions.

Still, Colonel Glickman didn’t smirk at my juvenile arrogance but encouraged me to take all the tests available and to keep an open mind.  He didn’t try to give me a hard sell on a career in the Air Force.  One fine day, I and two dozen AFROTC cadets took a ride to Governors Island, off the tip of Manhattan, to take a battery of Air Force tests.  I did very well in all the written and aptitude tests, but I failed the physical because of –you know it – high blood pressure.  The flight surgeon cautioned me and recommended that I see my physician very soon.

My former pre-college cadet experiences had opened up my horizons a bit to include the Naval services as a possible alternative to the Army or Air Force.  I had been spending many a weekend, during those last three years, at Floyd Bennett Field, that is, the New York Naval Air Station, where we held our preppie cadet activities amid Navy and Marine people, submarine-hunting patrol planes, jet fighters and such.

Our AFROTC unit had a fair drill team equipped with the good old bolt-action M1903-A3 infantry rifles and we trained as much as our student time could allow.  I had no trouble qualifying for this drill team, as I already knew some moves with the M1903 rifle and I had also been a drill team coach for our Civil Air Patrol’s Brooklyn Group cadets.  Our ROTC drill team was led by Cadet Lieutenant Carlos Candelario, who was himself an ex-Brooklyn Civil Air Patrol cadet.

AZ as AFROTC Cadet (A.Z. Minox photo, 1964).

Candelario and I went uptown in New York to visit N.S. Meyer & Co., a manufacturer of military jewelry and uniform accessories.  We were looking for alternatives to our headdress, perhaps to look at some military berets that were just then coming in vogue, what with the hype that was currently going on with the Army’s Green Berets and their recent exploits in Viet Nam.  Eventually we decided to keep our old pre-Kevlar era helmet-liners and simply repainted them – again – in blue, with silvery lightning bolts on each side.

While we sat in the lobby of N.S. Meyer waiting to talk to a representative, I studied some interesting mounted wall displays of manufacturing steps in the fabrication of the various dress swords that they made for the Services, beginning from plain steel bars, forged into blades, shaped and sharpened, engraved and fitted with hilts and scabbards.  One sword attracted my attention – this sword didn’t look at all like the typical dress swords of the traditional U.S. military.  It had a cruciform hilt of solid gilt metal, a curved pommel with ivory grips, and a braided leather lanyard and tassel.

Marine officer’s Mameluke Sword (AZ photo, 2011)

I looked up some military history later and found that back in 1805, during the debacle with the Barbary Coast pirates, there had been a Marine Lieutenant, Presley O’Bannon, who had done a great heroic deed in North Africa, after which the Sultan of Tripoli presented him with a scimitar in the pattern of the renowned Mameluke mercenaries of Asia Minor.  O’Bannon was permitted to wear this Mameluke sword with his uniform, after which it became traditional wear for Marine officers since. Today the sword of an officer of U.S. Marines sports a straighter blade than the original curvy scimitar, but still has that unique look[2].

One of our drill competitions early in 1964 was a great experience for me.  I had been hearing about the fabulous Cherry Blossom Festival in Washington DC that our AFROTC team had participated in a couple of years back, where very serious drill team meets had happened amongst some of the finest collegiate drill teams in the country.  I never had an opportunity to go to the Cherry Blossom, but still on that weekend we went to a college uptown that was hosting the event, and I had a chance to see and participate in some remarkable militaristic showmanship.

The meet was being judged by a Marine Captain and a Gunnery Sergeant, resplendent in their dress blues and fruit-salad ribbons and swingin’ medals.  Talk about brass buttons and fancy pants!  Other teams had better uniforms and gear, spun and twirled chrome-plated M1 rifles with sharp bayonets, had obviously better opportunities for practice time and so forth, so we were outclassed with our very modest city university resources, but it was a great show anyway.   At the least, we were accused of copying the motif of the San Diego Chargers on our blue helmets with the silver lightning-bolts.

I felt I was being haunted by that Eagle, Globe & Anchor.  Everywhere I looked, I ran into Marine Corps symbolisms.  In my dreams, it seemed, I even had visions of Mameluke swords, and, yea, even Navy Wings of Gold.  It was no wonder, then, that in early 1964, when I saw Captain Menning in his dress blues doing his Marine recruiting gig at Boylan Hall at the Brooklyn College, I couldn’t resist stopping to talk to him and accept some information.  I had by then been an AFROTC cadet for a year and a half, and had another semester to complete my Basic course.

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[1] General Jimmy Doolittle wrote that Patton liked to be called Georgie – by his friends.

[2] Thence the Marine Corps hymn ...to the shores of Tripoli.

Chapter 2 – Semper Fidelis

On May 14, 1964, exactly six years since I had mounted the Greyhound bus from Miami to New York City[1] in the third leg of our migration from Argentina to the Land of Opportunity, I walked into the Marine recruiting office on West 22nd Street in Manhattan and signed up into the Marines.  Captain Menning, the recruiter whom I had met at college, seemed to remember me and was very happy to see me.  Soon he reviewed all the information about my program and my options.  The Marines didn’t have an ROTC, but they had something even better – the Platoon Leaders Class program, which was specifically designed for early college guys.  I was immediately enlisted as a Private in the Marine Corps Reserve, starting that very day.  This was important because the early date would be the basis for all my further promotions, benefits and salary increases.  I wished I had known this two years before.

Marine PLC collar insignia, 1964

The PLC program for college students required that the first available summer I would go to the boot camp at Camp Upshur in Quantico, Virginia, upon completion of which I would be promoted to Lance Corporal; then, the last summer before graduation, I would go to the Officers Candidate Course, also at Quantico, after which I would become a Corporal; and upon graduation from the college, I would immediately be commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant of Marines.  Additionally, the PLC program had an Aviation option and a Law option: the Corps was promising that a PLC(A) candidate would go to the Naval Aviation school at Pensacola, Florida, or the PLC(L) candidate would go to the Judge Advocate General (JAG) school to become a military lawyer.

Captain Menning felt I should try out for the aviation deal.  Well, after all, in the Marines there wasn’t as much supporting air power – most flying in the Marines would in fact be in or near some actual combat.  I took all the tests, very similar to the ones I had taken with the AFROTC.  Having taken similar tests before with the ROTC, and also my good knowledge