Prologue
A few
days ago, my wife was at one of her charity meetings and I decided to finally
make the effort to clean out the attic. It's amazing how much can accumulate in
forty or so years. I climbed the narrow stairs and turned on the lights. Dust
lay on every box and covered the sheet over that old recliner which I had never
gotten around to throwing out. Then I saw something that felt like an old
friend, sitting there on the floor by that comfortable old chair. Though it was
dust laden I could still see the color of my old Air Force footlocker. It was
secured with the same lock I had bought for it in 1958 when I was in boot camp.
Brushing some of the dust from its lid I looked at the name stencilled on its
lid. The foot locker chronicled my career through the Air Force. It started
with AB which means Airman Basic and I saw the ranks I held crossed through as
I was promoted all the way to Lt. Colonel over twenty five years.
Should I
open it? I was struck with a strong aversion to opening the lid and turning back
time. I pulled the keys I carried from my pocket and stared at them. My eye
went unerringly to the Master Lock Key which was worn and smooth. I doubted if
it would even open the lock but it did. I raised the lid and the musty smell of
old material and old papers hit me in the face.
There in
the top tray, neatly folded, lay my dress blue uniform. It's six rows of
ribbons, still in place. I thought, "Look at all that fruit salad" which is
what decorations were called back when I was in the Air Force. The silver wings
sat atop the rows of ribbons. Alone in the seventh row of my decorations, in its
place of honor, sat the blue ribbon with the white stars. The Medal of Honor.
I removed
the uniform and there beneath it lay a number of small booklets. My journals! I
had forgotten them completely. I pulled them out noting that they were stacked
according to date. I opened the first one, dated 1958 and began to read.
Closing
the last one, I felt a tear trail its way down my face. I brushed it away, not
wanting it to get on my shirt. I looked down and saw the whole front of my dark
blue shirt was soaking wet. I pulled the material away from my skin and looked
back into the footlocker. There was the sterling silver frame of an eight by
ten photograph.
I turned it
over and her face leaped out at me. I was actually startled for a moment. I
gazed at Ellen's face as she had looked in 1960 and I felt something inside me convulse
once again. I quickly placed the picture face down on the uniform and reached
for the small packet of letters. They too were organized by dates. There were
almost daily letters in her handwriting from mid-May until mid-July, 1960 and
one typewritten letter dated in October 1961. I didn't bother to read them. I
knew them practically word for word, so I slowly put them on top of the
journals. Then, looking back into the foot-locker I saw the white, heart shaped
box which had yellowed with age. I opened it and looked at the wedding rings
which I had bought for her. I felt a tremble go through me and I closed it with
a sharp snap. A thought went through my mind then. I decided that I would give
the rings, separately of course, to my daughter. She needn't know where they
had come from or what they had represented. The rest of the paperwork had to do
with my retirement. And I thought that it was good to be past it all, but I
certainly missed those days.
Something
came over me then, a feeling of having missed something, something left out. I
placed the memories back into the blue footlocker, keeping the journals out. I
locked it and went back down stairs, leaving my old friend to begin to gather a
new layer of fine dust. I took the journals into my office. There I sat at my computer
to write this story.
It is a
story of betrayal, of pain, of terror and horror in war and finally, after a
long time, love. I knew all those emotions and feelings because I was the man
that I was writing about. Not all of the story was true, in fact a lot of it I
made up myself, but I do know the emotions and in the following book, I try to
pass it on to the reader of this narrative. I remembered with regret, the kind
of man I was at age nineteen. The great zeal I had for life then. The hopes and
dreams which made me so happy. I had faith in life then. But I learned the hard
way, that when you fall deeply in love...especially the first love, and lose
it, a man holds on to the illusion of it. He finds other loves, other paths to
follow, but a man's heart always stays true to the one he lost. Philosophical?
Perhaps, but
I did know one thing, if this story was ever published and some young woman
reads it and decides not to betray her man, who was far away and unable to
defend himself, then I would be satisfied. If that doesn't happen then my labor
of many hours will be in vain.
I know I
can never go "Home". I knew that well. There is nothing in the state of
Mississippi for me anymore. But I plan to take my character home in the end and
let him find.......A Life Lost.
PART ONE - 1960-1966
Chapter 1
A very
predictable, warm rain slowly drifted down on a cloudy May morning in 1960. I
kissed Ellen goodbye that morning as we stood by the train, holding each other
tightly. The train, the famous City of New Orleans, would take me as far as
Chicago, on the way to New Jersey and overseas. We had spent our last night in each
other's arms and I dreaded the thought of letting her go for a whole year. I
kissed her tenderly, then hard as I told her,
"I will
write you every day and you will be in my heart forever." I didn't know then
that love could hurt so much, that it would be forty years before I kissed her
hello again, or even saw her and I certainly never thought the love I felt for
her would turn to hate, or that she would cause me to totally distrust women,
even the woman I would eventually marry.
I was
born in the state of Mississippi and my name was Charlie Glenmore. I went to
high school there. As the fates would have it, I fell in love with Ellen when I
was only a Junior in high school. She was a freshman and I felt a strong desire
for her the first time I saw her. She was a City Girl though and I was scared
to death of City Girls. I had been happy in the little country school but the
priest had talked my old man into sending me and my sister to St. Joe's, in
Jackson. I never fit in because I was such a damned country boy. But suddenly I
was much happier in the big city school because Ellen was there. We dated
steady for the two years I had left at St. Joe's and got laughed at by the In
Crowd a lot because they all played the field and would not commit to any one
person. I acted like a jerk several times and even broke up with her once and
went out with another girl. I always came back to her though, hating myself for
hurting her. I graduated in 1958 and I asked my father, "Dad, are you going to
send me to college?
"If you
want to go to a university, you should get a job and earn the money to pay for
it, I sure as hell ain't going to." Was my father's blunt reply. I sure wasn't
going out on the road liked my father did, so I decided to go into the
Military. Ellen begged me, "Please Charlie, don't enlist in the military. You'll
be gone so much and I'll be so lonely."
But I had
always felt a strong desire to serve my country so I joined the Air Force when
I graduated from high school. In just over two years, I was being transferred
to my first overseas assignment to a base in the Arctic called Thule,
Greenland.
The
Arctic is a desolate wasteland of ice and snow in the best of times but with
all that went wrong with my life that year, it got even worse and then some. My
career in the Air force was definitely on track and I had already decided to
spend my life in the Military, especially if I could get a commission. I'd
gotten a commercial pilots license just before I left my last duty station and
was rated as a multi-engine pilot with endorsements in the Cessna 310, 336 and
337, 421 and the venerable old DC-3, or C-47 as they call it in the USAF. I had
earned an Associate of Science degree from a junior college in Texas and combined
that with over twenty courses from the Armed Forces Institute, plus my
Commercial pilot's license, I submitted it all to the University of Chicago.
The
Military has an agreement with that institution to help Service men and women
attain academic degrees. The University of Chicago issued a B. Sc. in aviation
management. My former commander had told me, "Charlie, I think you might be
eligible for a commission with that degree. Why don't you apply for one?"
I applied
just before I got my overseas assignment and got to Greenland before the
paperwork came through. When the Commission was offered I accepted it quickly. I
knew Ellen would be proud of me with bars on my shoulders instead of chevrons
on my sleeves. What I didn't know was, when you accept a commission, the Air
Force closes your enlisted records and prepare new ones that are held in a
different location. If nobody knows you have been commissioned, you simply
disappear. That little detail would cause me a lot of problems later on down
the road.
I was commissioned
a Second Lieutenant USAF and assigned to a position as a weapons controller at
the 931st AC&W Squadron, (Aircraft Control and Warning) located on a
mountain top about fifteen miles off the main base at Thule, (pronounced
Tooly). The name of that delightful promontory was Pea-Mountain. It was the
last peak before the edge of the massive Ice Cap that covered almost the entire
island of Greenland. I didn't tell Ellen that I'd been commissioned. Instead I
had an 8 X 10 photograph made of me in my new uniform and was going to send it to
her as a surprise, along with a copy of my degree. The photo would take a month
to be ready as it had to go back to New York for finishing and coloring.