A few nights after this, Mom was just finishing up “Swinging On A Star,”
when my sweating father decided to take a break from pumping the harmonium. He motioned for a volunteer. One of the passengers took over as Mother
began “Sentimental Journey.”
Dad had met this particular “volunteer” in a poker game a couple of days
before, and felt a mite guilty about tagging this gentleman, for he knew this
guy wasn’t in the best of shape. He was
of medium height, had dark hair and eyes - denoting his Irish-Sioux blood – who
was full of yellow jaundice, which made him a tad underweight. He also walked funny; leaning forward at a
45-degree angle. Which was due to his
recently crashing in a fighter - severely damaging his knees – causing them to
be bandaged with yards of adhesive tape resembling casts. He wore an AVG (American Volunteer Group)
pilot’s uniform that had seen better days and, having lately “divorced” himself
from the Flying Tigers in China, was presently making his way home to reclaim
his commission in the USMC. He was also
an alcoholic.
Additionally, my
father had heard - via the ship’s scuttlebutt
- that this gentleman had knocked down six
Japanese warplanes (five Ki-27 fighters and a seaplane) in his Curtiss P-40.
So one afternoon, while they were
playing poker, Dad asked him what went through his mind when he got on the tail
of a Jap fighter.
The pilot glanced up from his cards - looked my pop dead in the eye – and
after a moment, said, ”Mike, honest to God, all I see is two yellow wings
bearing meatballs with a five hundred dollar bill in
between.”
Please note, dear reader, that the members of the AVG were
basically flying mercenaries and, for each Japanese warplane they shot down,
were paid a five hundred dollar bonus.
For the next six weeks this pilot played poker with my dad during the
day, and pumped the harmonium at night for my mother’s concerts. That is when he wasn’t engaged in a drunken
sexual orgy with several unattached wives; pumping a harmonium of a different
type. In spite of his imperfect
predilections, my folks formed a bond of friendship with this pilot, which they
kept up long after the war was over.
When the pilot returned to the
States, he ultimately reclaimed his commission in the USMC, and wound up in the
Pacific Theatre forming a successful fighter squadron of misfits, called the
“Black Sheep” by the press. Although he
broke all the rules – and the Marine Corps viewed him as a royal pain in the ass
– they couldn’t do anything concerning his infractions since he got spectacular
results. Upon achieving his
28th kill, he was in turn shot down and disappeared. Thinking he was KIA (Killed In Action) the
USMC breathed a substantial sigh of relief and, because he had beaten WW I Ace
Eddie Rickenbacker’s score, bringing glory to the Corps, they guiltily awarded
him the Medal of Honor posthumously.
Imagine the USMC’s surprise, and dismay, when our boy resurfaced alive at
the end of the war in a Japanese POW camp.
Okay, dear reader, I’ve given you every
clue that I can. So who was this
battered, alcoholic, ragged-assed pilot that my folks grew attached to on the SS
Brazil? That’s absolutely correct. His name was Col. Gregory “Pappy”
Boyington. The press had saddled him
with the nickname “Pappy,” however his pilots (“Boyington’s Bastards”) always
called him “Gramps.”
Boyington achieving another “kill” over Rabaul in the
Pacific.
Boyington receiving
the Medal of Honor from President Truman.
In my late teens I had occasion to meet Greg Boyington, in Hollywood, for
meals with my folks and his current wife.
The quiet gentleman that sat across from me, with the impeccable manners,
didn’t equate to the hard drinking, hell raising - legend in his own time -
fighter pilot I had read about.
That’s when I first began to realize, dear reader, that the
hype, and other media bullshit, seldom reveals the real man at the core of any
legend.
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