Air Force Brat (7 page)

“
Can’t tell yet,” he said.
“We’ll know when we see what’s inside.” His eyes glowed at the idea
of the war loot that would soon be nestled snugly in his personal
armory: rifle stocks, grenades, ammo holders, and helmets. There
was no real hope of a bomb inside, unless it had fallen through the
roof and not exploded—a possibility I knew Tommy had already
considered. I looked up to see what shape the roof was in. Grass,
bushes and several trees grew upon it.

“
Gonna be lot of nasty
roots when we get inside,” I commented, keeping a nervous eye out
for rattlesnakes as I picked up rocks.

“
Just keep working,” he
said, not looking up.

The thought had occurred to me that this
bunker looked as if it had been deliberately sealed. Could this
many huge boulders have migrated to the doorway in just eighteen
years’ time? We worked silently, side by side, for the better part
of an hour. Then, without a word to me, Tommy simply wiped his
hands muddy hands against his jeans, squeezed through an opening
and disappeared. I waited for him outside. I watched the grey
clouds scuttle across the sky and wondered if we were in store for
another onslaught of French weather. While I was interested in the
inside the bunker, I was not interested in fighting through hanging
tree roots and spiders in the dark.

Finally, Tom poked his head out of the
opening. His face was filthy but he had the most incredibly happy
expression on his face. For a moment, I almost smiled back.

“
What is it?” I said. “One
or Two?”

“
Oh, definitely Two,” he
said, breaking into a bonafide grin. “You gotta see
this.”

“
Okay,” I said, unhappily.
“You got a flashlight?” But he had already disappeared back into
the bunker.

I squeezed myself painfully through the
opening. I was aware of the thought that, one day, I might inherit
this bunker once Tom got tired of it. So I was prepared to look at
it like a prospective owner. Its location was poor—it had taken us
nearly thirty-five minutes to get there. A bunker was superior to a
cave in many ways, not the least of which was the fact that it was
a sort of building as opposed to a granite hole carved into a rocky
hill. To a ten-year old, there was a feeling of value that a
man-made structure or domicile had that a natural den or cave
lacked. Plus, there might be furniture of some kind in a
bunker.

Once inside, it was remarkably roomy. Dark
and dank, smelling of earth and predictably scary, the dreaded
tendrils of ancient tree roots stabbed into the open room like
frozen bolts of lightning. Tom was standing a few feet away from
me. Already, I could see the pile of guns and metal at his
feet.

“
Lookit,” he said,
pointing to the wall.

Looking away from his booty, I could see the
wall closest to us held a stack of three wooden sleeping bunks.
There was a blanket or bedding of some kind, and at the foot of the
beds, on the floor, sat a grinning, bone-white skeleton.

I screamed.

“
Shut up! Shut up!” Tommy
said, waving an arm at me. “You’ll wake up the bats!”

I began to recite the Hail Mary.

“
I’m gonna charge the
French kids ten francs,” Tom said, with a blissful, dreamy look on
his face to
come see the dead
kraut
.”

“
We have to tell someone,”
I mumbled through the grimy hand I had clapped to my
mouth.

“
We
are
gonna tell someone,” he said as
he squatted down next to the thing. “We’re gonna tell ‘em and then
we’re gonna show ‘em and then we’re gonna be rich.”

“
I mean tell someone, like
a grown-up,” I said. “Tommy, that’s a dead…that’s a dead…” All of a
sudden there seemed to be a decided lack of air in the
bunker.

“
Well, no,” Tommy said
slowly as he straightened back up. “We are definitely not going to
do that.” He didn’t look at me, he didn’t threaten me. He didn’t
have to.

“
The French kids’ll tell
their parents,” I said.

I heard a slithering sound somewhere to my
right and resisted the urge to grab for Tommy’s sleeve.

He made a snorting sound.
“No parents are gonna believe their
kids
,” he said. “Especially
French
kids who lie
about
everything
.”

“
They might,” I said, “if
they get told it enough.” I definitely heard something scuttling or
scraping in the dark corner.

“
So what if they do?” Tom
tossed a rock into the darkness which only intensified the
slithering noise.

My hands began to sweat. The skeleton looked
as if it were looking at me and waiting for a response.

“
You know the French,” he
said. “They won’t care.”

“
I wonder why his family
didn’t come looking for him.” My throat felt dry. Was the
skeleton
looking
at me?

“
Still,” he said, “it’s
weird that the Germans didn’t track him down.” He squatted down and
peered closely at the corpse. “That’s definitely a German uniform
he’s wearing.”

“
Maybe he’s French,” I
said. “Like a French spy? That would explain why he’s still
here.”

Tom gave me a look of derision.

“
No, really,” I said,
edging away from the body, toward the entrance. “It explains why
he’s in a German uniform, why nobody came to find him, why there’s
just him…and….and…”

“
He’s a Kraut,” he said.
And that was that.

I was used to taking Tom’s word for
things—things, that if you thought about it, he couldn’t really
have known. He had an air about him that, when it didn’t evoke
fear, evoked confidence. If ever there was a kid who knew his own
mind and seemed to know yours as well, it was Tommy.

A week before finding the dead guy, our
father sent a detachment of Air Police to the village with Tommy to
confiscate Tommy’s main stash of found bombs. Tom adored Dad and
wouldn’t deliberately have chosen to upset him or disobey a direct
order—unless Tommy, felt he had additional information that voided
the direct order. This was usually the case. In this instance, Tom
was happy to acquiesce. Too happy, it seemed to his suspicious
siblings, but we had long since learned to keep our mouths shut and
let Tommy-induced incidents take their natural course.

The Air Police showed up at our house in Ars
one warm weekday morning. Tommy and his partner in crime, Ricky
Barasono, had been allowed to stay home from school for the event,
so the rest of us kids never had first-hand experience with the
incident. Even so, it is a story that continues to live in our
family, handed down and enjoyed—especially by any kid who longs to
get the best of adults at least now and again.

The two airmen from the Bomb Disposal Unit
of the Chambley USAF Air Police were probably in their early
twenties. They likely had little to no experience as policemen or
even security guards before their stint in the Air Force. They were
all very snap-to-attention proper when they were talking with my
father, “the Major,” before the expedition began but quickly
reverted to the overgrown boys they were when they began following
Tommy and Ricky up into the vineyards.

Of course, Tommy led the two hapless cops
the long way up into the vineyards, bypassing the steps, navigating
over the roughest part of the terrain. He and Ricky raced ahead
like two frenetic monkeys. Tommy’s armory was located nearly two
miles beyond the Roman aqueduct that loomed at the perimeter of
town. There were multiple bombs, rifles, ammunition cans, helmets
and one particularly prized bayonet—all piled neatly in the back of
a cave and checked on periodically by Tom and his friends. Tommy
and Ricky kept their speed up, climbing higher and higher into the
hills and wildest parts of the vineyards. The young airmen, used to
lounging around the NCO club and smoking and drinking as their main
pastime, yelled at them from time to time: “Hey, kid! How much
further?”

“
Not far now, sir!” Tommy
would call back in his high-pitched voice, serving to remind the
cops that he was, after all, just a child.

After a couple of hours, the airmen,
exhausted and sweating, flopped down on the ground, and lit up
cigarettes.

“
Hey, kid!” They continued
to call up to Tommy as he sat with Ricky on a rock some thirty
yards away. “How much further to where you keep the
bombs?”

“
Not much further now,
sir!” Tommy replied cheerfully.

The sun beat down, the men ground out their
cigarettes, cursing loudly as the two boys scampered up the now
very steep incline of the vineyard. Tommy had neglected to point
out the perfectly serviceable nearby steps carved into the earth
and the two airmen tripped and stumbled and cursed their way
laboriously up the hill.

Nearly an hour later, taking yet another
cigarette break, the sweating, decidedly cranky, airmen noticed
Tommy and Ricky picking up rocks and stuffing them in their
pockets.

“
Hey, kid!” one of them
called to Tommy. “What’re the rocks for?”

Tommy replied brightly: “For the pit vipers,
sir!”

Cigarettes were flung to the ground, more
oaths not fit for tender dependent ears uttered, and the two airmen
quickly retraced their steps back down the hill. I don’t know what
they told my Dad about why they didn’t find Tom’s cache. I don’t
remember if a second trip was ever attempted. I do know Tom’s
booty—minus the unexploded bombs—made it back safely in his
footlocker to Germany and the US without any further trouble from
prying adults.

The German bunker revealed Tommy’s
entrepreneurial streak early on. This proclivity would later
manifest itself repeatedly when he grew up in the form of various
business opportunities which always stemmed from a deep interest or
passion. He did, in fact, sell viewings of the dead German to the
French kids, although this wasn’t nearly as profitable as he had
hoped. He and his friends cleaned up the bunker, dressed it with
some of his other war booty and let a group of carefully chosen
kids look for a buck. Eight months later, when my father got his
orders that we were moving to Germany, Tommy simply re-entombed the
unfortunate soldier and set his sights on new adventures in
Deutschland.

Chapter Eight

Life On Base—World’s Apart

During the Cold War, Chambley was a
front-line base for the Unites States Air Forces in Europe (USAFE).
The base was ten miles west of Metz, just south of the road leading
to Verdun, and southwest of Paris which was a four-hour drive away.
Built on farmland near the village of Chambley, the airbase was
formally dedicated and turned over to the USAFE on June 12, 1956.
In 1961, Chambley was reactivated as part of Operation Tack Hammer,
which was the US’s response to the Berlin Crisis. The 7211nd
Tactical Fighter Wing was sent to Chambley to support the
Seventeenth Air Force and various NATO exercise in Europe—flying up
to thirty sorties a day with Seventh Army units in Germany. The
F-84 Thunderstreaks showed up at Chambley in 1961.

As part of the
7122
^nd
Tactical Fighter Wing, my father was sent to Chambley in the
spring of 1962. My mother and all of us kids followed in the early
fall.

As I understand it, the
Berlin Airlift
¹
was considered an international crisis requiring
the expansion of US military forces in Europe. The Department of
Defence announced in August of 1961 that 148,000 reserve personnel
would be called up for twelve months of active duty service. 27,000
of these would be from the Air Force Reserve, and the Air National
Guard flying squadrons and support units would augment the Air
Force and about 112,000 Army reservists. At that time, it was the
largest overseas movement of aircraft since World War
II.

Dad’s first assignment at Chambley was as
squadron commander of a combat materials squadron. Of course, his
first sergeant ran the squadron and managed the enlisted men. I can
remember overhearing him talking from time to time about
disciplinary problems with some of the airmen. If the first
sergeant couldn’t get it straightened out, then the offender was
sent to “the Commander.” Dad could reduce the guy in rank, toss him
in some kind of confinement (either to barracks or the brig) ship
him back stateside, or even discharge him.

The impression I get is that Dad had a lot
of time on his hands and so he was free to enjoy the French people,
discover local sources for great food and booze, and build a
five-star restaurant out of the rundown pilot’s watering hole of an
O-Club. It wasn’t what he was there to do but it’s likely that
creating and running this restaurant/night club on this forlorn
little air base in postwar France was some of the most fun Dad ever
had in his working life.

I’m not sure of all the
details of how my Dad came to be the acting commanding officer of
the base. I remember some of the stories I overheard of the ex-CO.
One involved him trying to throw an airman and his family off base
because the airman wasn’t mowing his yard often enough. I think I
remember hearing the word
sociopath
in reference to the CO, too. I don’t know what
happened to him.

We had lived in the village nine months when
my father assumed command of Chambley Air Force Base. When that
happened, it was necessary for him and us to live on base and so we
moved in the spring from Ars to what felt, in contrast, like
“little America.”