Neil Armstrong: A Life of Flight (12 page)

They also relearned how to use ejection seats and parachutes, and how to keep sharp their piloting skills and judgment by flying an assortment of jets that were based at nearby Ellington Air Force Base.

Then they were sent off with the Mercury Seven astronauts for jungle survival training to Albrook Air Force Base in the Panama Canal Zone.

They were dropped into the Panamanian tropical rain forest in pairs; Neil hit the jackpot. His partner was John Glenn and the two hurried hand-over-hand down a hanging rope from their helicopter into the jungle where they would build lean-tos out of natural materials and forage for food and water.

They were told the area where they’d been left was occupied by the Choco Indians, natives still living as they had always lived. Neil immediately fashioned a welcome sign that read “Choco Hilton.”

“It was anything but a Hilton,” John told me. “We each had a knife and scant provisions, and we fished from a nearby stream.

“We learned immediately not to stick our hands under logs,” he said with emphasis. “That’s where the deadly
fer-de-lance
snakes live, along with lizards and other strange creatures we may need to cook over open flame—or eat raw.”

Neil flashed one of his big grins. “For taste we topped our lizards and bugs off with a generous helping of worms.”

Yuck!

*   *   *

Jungle training was the place where Neil and John became lifelong friends. Both told me it wasn’t the best of places—so wet they could never find wood dry enough to make a really hot fire. They spent most of their time shivering and eating jungle delicacies cold, sometimes raw.

Each jokingly offered to trade the other for a woman astronaut. Both thought it would be great to snuggle in the wet cold with a bunkie. What they got were a couple of very ugly men—flight surgeon Bill Douglas and NASA photographer Ed Harrison. Neither came close to resembling a woman. They dropped by to make sure the duo was okay. Harrison took a picture to prove they were alive.

No sooner had Douglas and Harrison left when a painted Choco tribesman showed up with an assortment of trinkets and native doodads to trade.

The native admired their heavy writing pen, the one Neil used to create the welcome sign. He and John used gestures to talk the Choco local out of many of his trinkets before giving him the pen, then smiling and waving farewell.

They were pleased until Neil and John asked themselves: What if the pen runs out of ink before we’re safely out of the area?

They sweated until it was time to walk back to civilization. They wisely followed the stream, cutting their way through jungle when necessary until they reached a river.

There they joined up with the other astronauts, and were ordered to put on their life vests. Some gung-ho survivalist thought they should spend a few hours in the water learning how to float safely down the river.

“What, no life rafts?” some questioned.

“You have one in your pocket,” barked the survivalist instructor.

Neil and John kept quiet and followed orders. They donned those life vests, jumped in the river, and began floating toward their assigned pickup area.

“What about piranhas,” yelled one concerned astronaut?

“The hell with the piranhas,” yelled another, “what about crocs?”

Neil laughed and signaled John. “Hey, I think I see some piranhas over there,” he said pointing, adding, “Steer clear of that area, John.”

“Yeah,” Glenn answered, “it looks like they’re eating a crocodile.”

Suddenly everyone in the river was quiet, looking, watching with trepidation the water around them. Neil and John smiled knowingly. Both knew the flesh-eating vicious piranhas weren’t commonly found in the rivers of Panama, nor were crocodiles. Poisonous snakes like the large pit viper fer-de-lance, yes, and small alligator-like caimans, along with mosquitoes carrying malaria. But the chance of an astronaut being eaten alive was nil.

Their swim and float lasted three hours with all arriving at the river pickup point in one piece.

Neil logged the river float as one of the highlights of their training before they all parted in different directions. His future in space flight was ahead. John’s was in the rearview mirror. President Kennedy, concerned an American hero of Glenn’s stature might be injured or killed in another spaceflight, ordered him grounded.

*   *   *

Once back home Neil was suddenly concerned about another flight. The stork arrived April 8, 1963, with Janet and his second son. Of course the other astronauts wondered how Neil found time to get Janet pregnant.

The Armstrongs were all very happy with the arrival of Mark Stephen. Brother Ricky put aside his outgrown ball gloves and toys for the new baby.

Neil felt blessed. He and Janet had a healthy child. Neil was acutely aware that his first job was to make sure Janet and the boys would have everything they needed. Deke and the astronaut office stepped forward with that assurance, and Neil rejoined the Gemini Nine, where he and the group began riding parabolic trajectories in the undignified “Vomit Comet.”

Neil said, “I left one source of vomit for another,” and they all laughed possibly more at Neil making a joke than at the joke itself, and they went back to training.

The modified KC-135 was given the unflattering name of the “Vomit Comet” because vomiting was what its simulated weightlessness induced in some.

Neil could only smile. He had gone “over the top” in zooms in the F-104A Starfighter at Edwards for the same weightless-inducing maneuvers without a problem. But he was surprised to learn those flights had failed to provoke the queasiness he’d feel with the Vomit Comet’s abrupt changes in gravity.

Like most of the Gemini Nine, Neil endured four days in the Zero Gravity Indoctrination Program at Ohio’s Wright Patterson Air Force Base. He and his new colleagues were introduced to floating free; tumbling, spinning, and soaring across the cabin by pushing off walls; eating and drinking in weightlessness, and using tools effectively in space.

Later, the new astronauts attended water safety and survival training at the Naval School of Pre-Flight in Pensacola, Florida. Naval aviators Armstrong, Conrad, Lovell, and Young had been there before. What was new for all Nine was learning how to stay afloat while awaiting helicopter rescue.

*   *   *

Neil found the transition from research test pilot to astronaut easy and comfortable. He recognized the similarities and appreciated the differences.

“We were looking for the best method we could find to go out and do something that’s never been done,” Neil said. “Being an astronaut is different yet the skills and the engineering and the hardware are really similar.”

His astronaut brethren respected Armstrong’s abilities as a pilot, engineer, and astronaut while most admired his intelligence. What set them to wondering was Neil’s personality.

“Neil is quiet and thoughtful,” Frank Borman said, “and when he says something, you think you should listen.”

“Most of us came out of the same mold,” added Alan Shepard. “But Neil is different. He’s always trying to understand exactly what the inner workings of systems are—he wants to know what he’s flying.”

“Neil is as friendly as you can get,” said John Glenn. “He’s laid-back, a nice guy, small town just like where I came from. I don’t think either of us put on any airs, and his sense of humor cracks me up.

“It’s more British humor than mid-America,” Glenn added. “Like the time someone told him, ‘I passed by your house last night, Neil.’ And Neil said, ‘Thank you.’”

Dave Scott, who would fly with Armstrong on
Gemini 8
, had nothing but praise. “He’s slow in making decisions on the ground but he’s the quickest pilot I’ve ever seen in the cockpit. He’s easy to work with, very smart—really cool under pressure.”

The astronauts who would fly to the moon with Neil had something to say, too: “Neil is a very reserved individual,” said Mike Collins. “He’s more thoughtful than most, and in a world of thinkers and doers most test pilots tend to be doers. Neil is way over on the thinkers’ side.”

“Neil is certainly reserved, deep, and thoughtful,” said Buzz Aldrin, who would walk on the moon with Armstrong. “He does not utter things that could be challenged later because of their spontaneity. In other words,” Buzz laughed, “keep your mouth shut until you know what you’re talking about.”

The consensus among those who knew Neil was that he takes a long time coming to a decision on the ground and when he makes a decision that is that! But, say the astronauts, in the cockpit there’s no pilot faster. He can read a problem and immediately correct it. That’s Neil Armstrong.

Neil in the Gemini spacecraft learning the machine he would fly. (NASA)

*   *   *

Most believed the Gemini Nine’s credentials were more impressive than those of the Mercury Seven. Neil Armstrong had not only been an astronaut in the first Man-In-Space-Soonest group, he had flown the X-15 rocket plane; Tom Stafford, Frank Borman, and Jim McDivitt had been instructors at the Air Force test pilot school; and John Young had aced two world speed-to-climb records—all of them were the best stick and rudder pilots around.

The short of it was that Gemini Nine belonged on the same field as the Mercury Seven, and on an upcoming trip to the Cape where they were getting ready to send Gordo Cooper into orbit for a record day-and-a-half final Mercury flight, the new astronauts came up with a great plan. They decided to show their respect and share fellowship with the established hands.

*   *   *

Henri Landwirth was the new space coast’s beloved host.

Belgian-born, he spent much of his boyhood in one of Hitler’s concentration camps before making his way to the United States with only two shirts, a pair of trousers, and one pair of shoes, a wardrobe that held up only long enough for him to land a kitchen job in a Miami hotel.

He washed the dishes, the pots, the pans, mopped the floors, cleaned tables, made beds, and smiled pleasantly at the guests. Then he became an American citizen.

Henri did every job there was in the motel and hotel business, and as a reward he was sent to Cocoa Beach. He ran his bosses new Starlite Inn, and when he learned the astronauts were not fond of their Spartan quarters on the Cape, for the charge of only one dollar per day, he became the astronauts’ innkeeper.

Henri had a fondness, a protectiveness over those who flew through space, and he instantly recognized the need for one of his classic stunts to solidify the two groups brotherhood.

“You need to show your reverence and respect,” he told Neil Armstrong and Tom Stafford. “Show the Mercury guys you’re one of them. Bring them around to your side.”

“How do we do that?” Neil questioned.

“The best way is to invite them to an evening of getting acquainted,” he explained. “Host them for an unforgettable event. Serve them the finest wines and a cuisine befitting their station in life. Show them you are from the best families. You are cultured. You are refined. Show them your respect.”

Refined my ass, Tom Stafford spat. His mother had to borrow the bus fare to send him to fulfill his scholarship at the Naval Academy so he could later become a three-star Air Force General. He had a far more important question: “Who in the hell is going to pay for all this culture and refinement?”

“Oh, the motel will,” assured Henri. “We’ll take care of everything.”

Neil grinned quietly. He had come to know Stafford pretty well, and he knew the last time Tom picked up a Czech she was hitchhiking in Prague.

“Okay, then.” Stafford nodded in agreement with the others.

“Let me handle it, guys,” Henri told them. “It’ll be the best of everything. Best food, best imported wines, the best.”

Henri walked away smiling to set his plan in motion, and Neil looked at Tom. “I smell a dastardly deed here,” he laughed.

“Me, too,” chuckled Stafford. “Let’s go help Henri make it more dastardly.”

And they did.

*   *   *

Under Neil Armstrong’s and Tom Stafford’s direct supervision, Henri printed a gold-leaf menu that called for a magnificent meal of breaded veal with au gratin potatoes, salads, and imported wines.

Each invitation was delivered personally by two of Cocoa Beach’s sun-kissed beauties, who pointed out it would be black-tie (Henri rented tuxes, too).

The Mercury guys appeared the following evening dressed to the nines in their tux rentals. Showing their delight, they thanked Henri and their Gemini Nine hosts for what was promising to be a great evening of fellowship.

The imported wines lived up to their billing. They were poured, and words fell immediately to the required toasting and bestowing of best wishes and good fortune on one another.

Chief astronaut Deke Slayton heaped high praise on the Gemini Nine. Armstrong and Stafford returned the praise, making sure to show comradeship at its finest. It was the kind of togetherness that would warm any heart, and with the general high praise from each group quaffing the wine, 16 astronauts sat down to enjoy the gastronomical repast.

Waiters served the meal on Henri’s best silver as silence descended with a crash.