Had he refused to fly he would have
instanatly lost every friend in the unit he ever had. He would have been an
obrect of contempt and derision. What I did was not just for him, it was for
all of us as well. And had you been in my place, you would have done exactly
as
I did.

I agree. In fact, I did precisely the same thing to the guy that screwed me up
by quitting. I didn't care that he screwed up my well-planned tour of duty, I
was enraged by the fact that he had accepted the risks of flying and then
decided he was too good to risk his own neck. Given that we weren't in combat
and faced less than 1000th of the danger that you did, I'd say that what
motivated him was a baser, more self-serving act of cowardice than your Lt.
Jones - we all felt this guy was using the recent fatal crash as a excuse to
hide behind. His idea was that he would continue to fly day missions - which,
he judged, was safe enough that he would not be endangering a precious human
life (such as his own) - while the rather more exhilerating night missions
would have to be flown by someone else. I guess that tells you what he thought
of the guys he flew with. My reaction was to insist that the "night" guy flew
nothing but days while I covered the other pink and dark flights. I spent the
time I was assigned to his detachment almost continuously barking at the
'quitter' because I felt shame that he was one of us. Honestly, if it was
after a period of combat, I think I could have accepted his skittishness, but
after sucking up years of Navy pay to do a specific, rather dangerous job, just
quitting while his comrades were deployed overseas seemed the very pinnacle of
self-centered callousness.

I only put the story under cowardice because that has been an ongoing
subject around here for some time now. I wonder how he thinks about himself
now when he thinks back 60 years? I would love to know. Remember he wouldn't
talk to me or face me after that incident. So I wonder if he thinks I did
him
a favor or not. By the way, I repeated this incident to no one in the goup. I
didn't even mention it to my pilot and copilot even though we were very
close.
I mention it here and on my website because I think it part of war and worth
mentioning. And human values are a good beak from the endless techy numbers
and statistics that grow rather quickly tiresome.

Yep.

v/r
Gordon