“Are we really doing this?”
Booger, my squadronmate, was incredulous.
We all were.
He was just the first to verbalize it.
We usually went surfing on Friday mornings.
All of us officers were instead standing in a gaggle—hardly a formation, by military standards—in the road in front of the hangar.
We all wore squadron tee shirts, as the Skipper had directed, along with shorts and running shoes.
It appeared the Old Man intended for us to go running around the base in formation.
Which was something Naval Aviators avoided like non-alcoholic beer.
The scene was nonetheless picturesque.
The sun was rising behind us, painting Oahu’s Ko’olau mountains yellow-green.
And the mountains, in turn, were reflected, mirror-like, in Kaneohe Bay in the foreground.
The Trade Winds were blowing.
Palm trees were swaying.
Another perfect morning in Paradise.
It was about seven forty-five.
Friday, September Fourteenth, Two Thousand One.
It had been a hell of a week.
For the entire country.
The phone had rung that Tuesday morning, just before four a.m.
It was my mother-in-law, back in Illinois, telling my wife and me to turn on the television.
We did, just as the second plane hit.
Naively, I first thought, There’s not a cloud in the sky. How could that pilot not have avoided hitting that building?
It was all so unbelievable.
I decided to go for a run.
It was still dark, so I velcro-ed on the stupid reflective belt the Marines made you wear during non-daylight hours.
Clearly, the news was out.
Lights were on in every house.
And the Marines had definitely gotten word of the attacks, evidenced by all the Humvees and armored personnel carriers that rumbled down Marine Corps Base Hawaii’s main drag.
It was surreal.
As I crested the hill near the officers’ club, I was stopped by a foot patrol of Marines in full battle gear.
“What are you doing out here, sir?” asked the corporal.
What the fuck does it look like I’m doing? I thought.
Just out for a run, I told him.
“Probably not a good idea this morning,” he said.
Not one to argue with dudes with loaded weapons, I didn’t disagree.
I took the most direct route back to my house, showered up, put on a set of khakis, and headed into the squadron.
I was the duty officer that day.
The Commanding Officer, who also lived on base, arrived shortly after I did.
It was still early, so not many others were around.
Soon, the phone in the duty office started ringing.
Squadron members who lived out in town wanted to know whether they should come in.
The base was in full lock-down mode, and access was limited.
A long line of cars had formed at the front gate.
I found the Skipper in his office and asked what he wanted me to tell people.
“I don’t care if it takes all goddamned day,” he said. “Tell them to get their asses in here.”
As the morning progressed, the situation remained unclear.
Were we grounded or supposed to go flying?
And to do what?
At one point, we were told to arm up a couple of helicopters with Hellfire missiles and head for Pearl Harbor.
Someone thought the bad guys were on inbound merchant ships, looking to take out the Fleet.
That got the place spun up.
But only for a short while.
Stand down, we were later told. But be ready.
The remainder of day, and most of the week, played out much the same way.
Go! Stop. Get ready! Stand down.
There was talk of moving deployment schedules up to support a multi-battle group surge to the Middle East.
And then we heard deployment schedules would likely remain as-is.
All the back-and-forth made people anxious. We were on edge.
And then the Skipper decided to form us up for a run around base.
Are you frickin’ kidding me? I thought.
We were a nation at war.
And this was the Navy, dammit. We were the HSL-37 “Easyriders.”
We prided ourselves on not doing ridiculous, yut-yut shit like that.
We stood there, out in the road, hoping it was all a joke.
But it wasn’t.
The Skipper yelled, “At a double-time . . . forward . . . maaahhhch!”
We all started shuffling, completely out of step.
It was comical.
Seeing this, the Skipper ordered, “Somebody call cadence, for Chrissakes!”
Eventually, one of the new guys, who’d apparently been tapped for such duty in Officer Candidate School, started in with, “Left . . . left . . . lefty-right-a-lay-uhhffft.”
It wasn’t great. But it was passable.
So, we were running through the base, feeling as stupid as we looked.
That was confirmed by the smirks on the Marines’ faces we passed.
We made our way to the base athletic fields, about a half mile from the hangar.
It was large, open area with a ball diamond and connecting football and soccer fields.
There, the Skipper halted the formation and told us to gather around.
What now? we were thinking.
He wasn’t going to make us do push-ups, was he?
“Welcome to the Easyrider Olympics,” the Skipper announced.
The what? we asked.
The Executive Officer, or XO, then appeared next to him, clipboard in hand.
“Okay,” the XO began, “these are the teams.”
We’d all been arranged into groups and assigned a series of competitions.
That included softball, flag football, volleyball, and various track and field events.
Teams would rotate through each, with winners crowned at a beach barbecue later that evening.
Okay. Not a terrible idea.
Oh, and there was beer.
So, so much beer.
At every venue, there were coolers filled with cases of it.
The suds started flowing at about eight-thirty that morning.
And they didn’t stop until well after midnight.
I don’t remember much about any particular event.
Except for how our flight surgeon, Dave, who’d been a starting quarterback at Colorado State, pretty much single-handedly beat the entire squadron in flag football.
After he’d had about six beers.
The rest is pretty fuzzy.
But it doesn’t matter.
It was one of the most fun days of my life.
And instructive.
I don’t recall any passage in my Naval Academy leadership textbook that would have suggested a commander organize a beer-soaked field day following the deadliest attack on U.S. soil since Pearl Harbor.
But you know what?
It was fucking brilliant.
The Old Man knew exactly what he was doing.
We emerged from the fog of our hangovers a tighter, more focused, more determined group.
Yes, the future was uncertain.
But we’d deal with it.
Together.
Thanks, Skipper.
I’ve never forgotten the example you set that day.
And I don’t intend to.
Ever.