Chickenhawk: Back in the World

One bus passed us on a downhill run, and we saw two forty-year-old men with their naked butts pressed up against the windows. Everybody was laughing. Patience and Martie were giggling. One guy yelled “Pressed ham!” Martie yelled “I’m in love!” It was crazy, it was juvenile, it was fun.

The pilots raced and mooned each other all the way to Fort Worth, prompting calls to the police from offended motorists. The police called the hotel and were informed by the manager, “That’s impossible. These men are all over forty!”

When we got back to the hotel, the drivers were all given their prizes, for being good sports and for giving it their best.

I woke up early Sunday morning wondering what I was going to say in the speech. I’d given talks at universities, but those were usually about Vietnam and helicopters in combat. What could I tell these guys about that? Also, I knew there was going to be some kind of demonstration.

I decided to write a short story about our trip to Mineral Wells. I spent a couple of hours at it and it seemed like it would probably work, though I suspect you would have had to have been there to appreciate it. I still didn’t know how I was going to handle the protesters.

Jerry and Martie Towler and Patience and I sat at a table near the dais. Dave Owens, who was sitting with us, leaned over and said, “You know what you’re going to say?”

“Yeah, pretty much.”

“Bob, I want you to do me a favor and not get mad.”

“What’s that, Dave?”

“Show me your notes when you come up to the dais, just a glance.”

“What for?”

“Because that was one of the conditions for you speaking here. They said I had to see your notes before you speak.”

“That’s bullshit, Dave.”

“I know. I won’t read them. Hold them up when you walk by me. That’s looking at them, isn’t it?”

I laughed. “Sure, okay.”

Dave went to the podium, made a few brief announcements, and then introduced me.

As we passed each other on the steps, I held my notes out to Dave, who looked at them and then out at the audience. He nodded and said, “Thanks, Bob. Give’m hell.”

I turned on my pocket tape recorder, put my notes, my story, on the podium. There were over a thousand people in the room. The applause was thunderous. I waited.

I said:

“I thank you for inviting me to be your speaker today. I feel kind of odd about that. I’m a member of the organization; I’m not from outside.

“I’m here because I wrote a book about what I, and many of us, did in Vietnam, and subsequently gained some celebrity because of it.

“I feel odd about that, too, because almost anybody here could have written Chickenhawk. Many of you certainly experienced more harrowing adventures than I did. But I’m the one who wrote the book.” I paused. “I’m the one that’s getting the recognition,” I said quietly. I looked across the audience.

“I’m the one who gets the letters.”

“I get letters from grunts thanking me for having been a helicopter pilot in Vietnam.

“They thank me for the pilot who pulled them out of a hot LZ and saved their lives.

“They thank me for the pilot who got the Huey in, at night, without lights, under fire, bringing in ammunition and supplies that saved their unit.

“They thank me for the things we all did in Vietnam.

“Being, I suppose, the more well-known of the Vietnam pilots here, the one who gets the mail, the one who gets the attention we all deserve, I hereby pass that thanks on to you.” I stood back, held up my arms, and said, “You deserve it. Give yourself a hand.”

There was much applause. I scanned the room. I saw smiles. I saw tears. Nobody got up to walk out.

I then read them the story I’d written, “The Race,” which, as I had hoped, met with success. Racing buses filled with mooning forty-year-olds is just naturally funny, especially to the participants. I brought the house down.

I talked about some early experiences I’d had as an adolescent pilot trying to teach myself to fly and got a lot of laughs.

Then I faced the issue of my controversy.

“A situation that irks some of my fellows here, and is an issue of curiosity for others, is, what did happen at the end of the book?

“For those of you who haven’t read Chickenhawk, I say, at the end of the epilogue, that I had been arrested for smuggling marijuana and I was appealing the conviction. That sounds pretty serious. It was. In fact, I lost the appeal. I went to jail.”

It was quiet in the auditorium. Someone coughed.

I launched into a quick-paced summation of selling the book and going to jail. I told them what it was like being sent to Eglin. I told them about the white lines that marked the boundaries, that it was a prison for wimps, that if you had to go to prison, Eglin was the place to go. I made Eglin seem like a lark. I made them laugh.

I paused.

“But it was still prison. I couldn’t leave.