A Grandpa's Notebook · Chapter 7Part Five Lore, Myths and Memoirs (3)
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Strategic Air Command bombers and their direct support aircraft in the active and — at that time — programmed inventory during the early-1950s included the B-47 Stratojet, a six-engine 4,000 mile range medium bomber which entered service in 1950; the B-52 Stratofortress, an eight- engine 8,000+ mile range heavy bomber scheduled to enter operations about 1955, and the C-97 Stratofreighter cargo and tanker versions with four piston-driven engines which had been in SAC fleet operations since about 1950, also late models B-50 and earlier B-29s from WW2.
Context
During the period covered by this memoir, the probability of a worldwide nuclear conflagration, sparked by a Cold War incident between US/NATO and the USSR, was considered to be high. The memories of WW2 were fresh in the minds of everyone. The U S confrontation with the USSR that brought on the Berlin Airlift, and its threat to world peace were of the gravest portent. The Korean 'police action,' another product of confrontations between USSR/Communist China and U S/NATO, was winding down. 'Viet Nam' was on the horizon.
During much of the half-century post-WW2 Cold War era the US depended mainly on its own economic, military, industrial and human resources to defend its own far-flung interests. The international competition for country and regional security resources to rebuild a devastated Europe, and administer the lands of the former central powers, created a massive arms race that affected the lives and destinies of people everywhere.
In the late-40s/early-50s the US-USSR conflict of interests was at a critical stage. Intercontinental nuclear-armed ballistic missiles were far beyond drawing boards; their operational reach, capabilities, and effects against civilian as well as military targets had been carefully estimated and understood.
The US doubled the number of its Air Force groups to ninety-five, and placed great importance on the Strategic Air Command (SAC). The number of SAC wings increased from 21 in 1950 to 37 in 1952. The growth of SAC air power arrayed US military capabilities and strategies for massive retaliation and Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) by NATO should the USSR launch a pre-emptive attack in Europe.
At least for the next several years, NATO and US planners admitted, however, that neither massive retaliation nor MAD, by themselves, would stop a Soviet first strike and an invasion into Eastern and Central Europe and the Middle East. The USSR could count on huge reserves of its still young, combat-seasoned men under arms, pre-positioned war materiel still in good condition for combat, and relatively short lines of transport and communications.
Operational ICBMs were still several years in the future. The B-52 bomber was still in the early stages of production and deployment. Strategic warfare against construction and operation of Soviet oil drilling, refining, storage, and pipeline facilities in the southwest USSR (Caspian Sea area) were expected to slow Soviet military momentum. For this and other reasons, the US expanded and modernized its existing facilities to conduct air operations over the USSR's Eastern and Southwestern regions.
NATO and the US built or otherwise secured ground, seaport, and air bases and/or implemented joint-use agreements with governments in the Mediterranean area in the event of a US/NATO-USSR conflict and, specifically relevant to this memoir, in Morocco, Libya, Turkey, and the Central and Eastern Mediterranean generally.
Morocco
In the early 1950s, SAC was the major tenant on military airfields in Morocco: Ben Guerir and Sidi Slimane Air Bases in central Morocco, and Nouasseur Air Base in the desert about 25 kilometers south of the Morocco's dominant port Casablanca. Morocco had been a French protectorate since 1912, and thousands of French citizens and other Europeans had migrated to French and Spanish Morocco over the years and taken up residency. Large numbers of Moroccan, French and other European nationals were employed by the USAF at its bases and the US Navy's tenancy in Port Lyauty, and at other military installations where the U S and/or NATO had been granted French/Moroccan permission to do so.
Throughout the French occupation of Morocco a number of Moroccan nationalist groups formed in opposition to French domination, and engaged increasingly in nationalist political and armed resistance, including occasional bombings and other acts of violence. Sultan Mohammed V sided with the nationalists and was deposed in 1953. This further angered the Moroccan populace. In-country violence increased.
The Sultan returned from exile in 1955 and Morocco gained its independence some years later. Many French and Spanish citizens returned to their countries of origin. French military forces, business enterprises, and employment for the indigenous population in Morocco became uncertain, and so did American military presence on Moroccan territory.
In the years that followed, the Libyan government also changed rulers, with the results that American use of Wheelus Field, for any purpose, was revoked. Nevertheless, context and circumstances in North Africa aside, USAF planning for support to SAC operations under general war conditions, and for a variety of military contingencies, continued; in its way, North Africa all along the Med, would likely experience a deja vu of its WW2 occupations and their consequences. Caught up in a nuclear exchange, probably worse.
In WW2, oil refineries, and storage and transport nets, such as those in the Romanian Ploesti complex, were important but extremely costly targets. For instance, in one WW2 mission, of 178 B-24s dispatched to bomb Ploesti, 52 were lost, and all but 35 aircraft suffered damage, one limping home after 14 hours and holed in 365 places. Most of these Allied bombing missions originated in and returned to airfields in North Africa; many of the old landing strips, fuel storage, and maintenance shops previously used by German and Italian military occupiers and then by the Allies, were in poor condition, but they were there.
Caspian Oil Refineries
In the early 1950s, a US/NATO war with the Soviet Union would likely include strategic air attacks against Soviet oil wells, refineries and other industrial plants, storage facilities, and transport nets. If so, USSR facilities in the southwest USSR (the Caspian Sea area) would have been among high priority targets.
That being so, planning for US/NATO aircraft to return from bombing missions over the southwest USSR included routes over-flying Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Crete, Greece, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Israel, Egypt, and other countries throughout the Middle East, across the length of the Med, and along its northern and southern coasts.
The Gap
It was expected that among returning aircraft there would be those which had incurred serious damage sufficient to compel landing the aircraft short of its destination. Battle-damaged, or non-operational in flight for other reasons, aircrews might need help to repair their aircraft for a one- time flight further East or otherwise on their way. The 'helpers' had to be as close as possible to where they were needed.
One option, to be implemented immediately upon USAFE, SAC, or NATO notice, was to deploy 'rapid area maintenance teams' comprised of U S civil service employees, along with their tool kits and air- transportable mobile power generators and other essential equipment, to designated locations along the SAC aircraft return routes. Battle- damaged aircraft would be quickly fixed and serviced sufficiently to take off and keep going west, if not all the way, then at least to another location where another quick-fix and service could be rendered. Repairs would be accomplished through use of anything from on-site fabricated bits-and-pieces to parts and assemblies cannibalized from wrecked aircraft.
Tasks
My assignment was to prepare the plan, inspect potential repair sites, work out and integrate the details, and draft a Logistics Plan supplement to the USAFE and SAC overall logistics support plans to close the gap. The draft plan would include policy and procedural guidelines and Standard Operating Procedures (SOP); a list of hands-on maintenance and supervisory skills relevant to aircraft in the current SAC inventory, and provide for continuing compatibility of data, tools and procedures with replacement or programmed weapons and support systems. The plan would identify committed US civil service technicians and staff by skill, name and location currently on duty at an AMFEA depot, identify U S personnel policies which would need adjustment to the anticipated circumstances and initiate administrative actions to initiate the changes.
>From there, I went on to determine manpower resources by anticipated skills requirements, identify and set in motion urgent-immediate procedures to acquire (by standard practices or otherwise) relevant and current manuals and tech data, general and special hand tools, etc. More, to plan orientation and training for the program, upgrade skills for maintenance team workers, crew chiefs, and site and regional supervisors.
To design a team member notification system, and a procedure for ongoing liaison with Hqs USAFE (Lindsey Air Base, Weisbaden, Germany) to acquire opportune air transportation from selected pick-up points for the Mobile Maintenance Teams and drop-off at forward area emergency work sites. Put it all together, get staff and command approval in principle at Nouasseur, take the draft to Weisbaden and get staff preliminary sign-off by Hqs Air Material Force European Area and Hqs United States Air Force Europe (USAFE). Following that, to get the coordination of the Directors of Maintenance and the Commanders at Burtonwood Air Depot UK and Chatereaux Air Depot France (Burtonwood and Chatereaux depots' manpower, tools, and other resources were to be committed to the program, hence their being in the loop for sign-off.)
With that done, I would integrate and send the package off to Hq SAC, Offutt AFB, Oklahoma and give them a crack at it.
Along the way, I got with SAC and other intelligence types and checked the lay of the land from Morocco east to Turkey.
Deployment
The three Directors of Maintenance at Nouasseur (Morocco), Chatereaux (France) and Burtonwood (UK) would assemble personnel committed to the Program, and using the previously authorized priorities request Base Commanders for opportune airlift to move skills, tools, supplies, tech data, etc., to the Program's initial assembly point in a specified hangar at Wheelus Field, Libya.
At Wheelus, the program manager (a Nouasseur Air Depot military officer and staff) would shuffle and combine the physically present skills, tools, etc., so that teams and their kits were formed, organized, equipped, and ready to move according to requirements and priorities to where they would be needed. Get the teams to their assigned stations by air, sea or land transport, each Civil Service employee equipped with personal gear adequate for survival under the anticipated conditions.
That, generally, was how it was supposed to work, but we knew better. The reality we saw was that as soon as the nuclear threshold was crossed, which was highly probable, a US/NATO-USSR general war wouldn't last much more than a couple of days. —- Several weeks after I coordinated the draft plan, my supervisor at Nousseur sent the final version to Hqs SAC. They replied that it was the best that could be expected under the circumstances. Not long afterward, I transferred back to the States where I got a job at McClellan AFB near Sacramento.
The plan was one of several that I drafted while at Nouasseur and at other places in those early days of the Cold War. Many personal anecdotes, from the deeply sad and poignant to the trivial and absurd, have been written about WW2, Korea, Viet Nam, and the other confrontations between the U S and the Soviets. The Cold War, in as many of its facets as possible, needs to be written about, including memoirs such as this, and they should be entered into the nation's lore so that students may view their many perspectives.
I spent almost two years in researching and drafting the details of this SAC support plan. Would it have worked if and when the need arose? Were there plans for other options? I don't know. Forward area emergency maintenance (Rapid Area Maintenance - RAM) teams, much more advanced in concept and application, were used in Viet Nam.
Memoir: Suicide Prevention, The Viet Nam War, McClellan Air Force Base, California, 1969-1973
Preface: There is a general viewpoint among experts in suicide and suicide prevention that official statistics on the number of suicides and suicide attempts in any identified population are like the tips of icebergs. They do not reveal to a casual reader the reality of how many individuals in that population killed themselves intentionally and, separately, how many tried to kill themselves, failed, and might try again. Authoritative estimates occasionally appear in both professional and popular media that there are about eight suicides in fact for each that is certified as a suicide for the official record, and about fifteen unsuccessful attempts at suicide for each that is classified as such, again for the official count.
According to figures compiled by the Centers of Disease Control (CDC), suicide rates are rising steadily for teenagers while declining or holding steady in other age groups. Between 1980 and 1993, the suicide rate rose 120 percent for 10 to 14-year olds, and almost 30 percent for 15 to 19-year olds. In part, this rise can be attributed to the increasing availability of firearms, but, in addition, (according to the American Association of Suicidology) 'there are more depressed kids.' And while the actual number of suicides remain quite small - in 1993 there were 315 students in the age group 10 to 14-year old and 1,884 students in the age group 15 to 19-year old who committed suicide. A 1993 study of 16,000 high school students conducted by the CDC found that an astonishing 1 in 12 said that he or she had attempted suicide the previous year.
Camouflage is not unusual: suicide preparations may be arranged so that the act will appear as an accident. An ailing individual might suddenly stop taking life-saving medication; or family members, friends, or 'significant others' might goad or exert harsh psychological pressures on an emotionally distraught person so that suicide becomes the only escape. Ironically, 'suicide statistics' do not examine the impact of a suicide on the victim's family and friends, nor do they note the traumatic and often permanent effects of the failed attempt on the victim. Further, they ignore the financial burden of subsequent home or institutional and health care for both victim and family as well as paying for precautions against further attempts.
Context
Before I retired from the federal civil service in 1974 I was the civilian deputy to the Inspector General (IG) at McClellan Air Force Base, a large military installation near Sacramento, California. I was and am a civilian and a non-professional lay person in all mental health disciplines. I attribute my involvement in 'suicide prevention' to circumstances of the 'Viet Nam' period. At that time, many military mental health professionals and other caregivers were on duty at medical and mental health facilities in Southeast Asia, at way stations along routes for military personnel returning to the U S, and at medical and other facilities in the U. S. where Armed Forces wounded received care. One result was a general shortage of mental health specialists and staff at military installations in the continental U. S. Existing staff, including untrained civilian employees, were often assigned 'additional duties' to fill gaps.
In 1969, the McClellan Air Force Base senior Commander instructed me to represent him on the Sacramento County Mental Health Council. At the time, the Council was considering the establishment of a county Suicide Prevention Service (SPS). The SPS was approved, and I became involved as a volunteer worker. As the SPS functions and workload became clear, I joined its paraprofessional training to certification and when the Service became operational I took my turn on the 'hotline,' especially those related to my McClellan responsibilities. I extended my duties to include SPS liaison with several other military bases in the Sacramento area. At that time, central California and Nevada had military installations where military personnel of all Services were stationed for training and operations, or who were in transit to or from Southeast Asia. In effect, the Sacramento-San Francisco corridor in the late 1960s-early 1970s was filled with military personnel on their way to and from Viet Nam and elsewhere in Southeast Asia. From the outset, as word spread about Sacramento County's SPS hotline, increasing numbers of calls came in from potential and selected draftees and active duty members of the Armed Forces and their families.
One of my Inspector General's office responsibilities was to organize and operate McClellan AFB's support to the Air Force Inspector General Complaints System. The basic principle of the System holds that, as a last resort within their organization, military and civilian personnel and members of military families have the right to address a grievance or appeal to the installation's Inspector General. The installation Inspector General represents the installation's senior Commander in these matters. An appeal to the IG may be for information and explanations concerning status and duties, to describe perceived unreasonable conditions under which the appellant works, to report on inadequate support to themselves or their dependents or, for other reasons to seek relief from what the grievant considers an intolerable and unjustifiable situation.
The IG, or deputy IG, acting for the senior Commander, hears complaints and appeals and conducts such inquiries and investigations that may be required to resolve the matters. In the context of this memoir, when hearing (or reading) a complaint, there were occasions when a complainant hinted at suicide as the only remaining option should he or she not be given what they considered a reasonable resolution of the problem they presented.
A significant number of phone calls was also being received by the County Suicide Prevention Service 'hotline' from active duty military, military veterans and retired military of all Services, and from members of their families. Many, if not most, such calls (to the SPS) required information or actions from a military or other government entity.
The SPS policy was to not disclose a caller's identity: Protecting a hotline caller's identity is (or was at the time) generally practiced by most crisis intervention centers unless the situation was an imminent life-death crisis.
Organized, volunteer-staffed, telephone suicide prevention 'hotline' services were beginning to appear in the larger cities throughout the U. S. in the late '60s; less than a hundred were in operation across the U S at the time. In order that I might better understand the 'suicide' phenomenon and to accomplish my duties in support of the USAF IG Complaints System, I became a regular volunteer at the SPS, attended their ongoing paraprofessional upgrade training, and worked a shift on the hotline. I served with the SPS Speakers Bureau, Executive Board and other committees and gave talks about the community program at staff, non-commissioned officers', military dependents', and civilian community meetings.
Job-related, I compiled an information kit on suicide myths, and the signs that would generally indicate that a friend or family member might be thinking of suicide. I sent copies of whatever literature I acquired from the SPS and the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) to my counterparts at other military bases. The USAF Inspector General printed an article about the information kits in the USAF TIG BRIEF (The Inspector General Brief) an IG administrative newsletter distributed to USAF facilities worldwide and to the Hqs of the other Services. The TIG Brief newsletter was also distributed in Viet Nam. The item resulted in more than 150 requests from Southeast Asia for the information packet, which we forwarded.
During talks I gave to military and general audiences I was occasionally asked for examples of what 'hotline' exchanges with military callers were like. Two of the 3 summaries that follow were related to the Viet Nam conflict. The third is a problem all too common, regardless of the times; it happened and continues to happen as often in the civilian world as it does in the military. I've screened my recollections so as to honor my commitments to confidentiality. The narration reflects a tiny sample of the effects of stress that can surface in military life and is not intended to represent major emotional, behavioral, or physical indicators toward suicide ideation. My regular work shift at the SPS brought me as much of a military-civilian mix of callers as the other hotline workers, so I've seen both sides.
The contacts were all by telephone, and in two of the three cases led to a number of quick follow-on calls to several parties on and off the base. Each caller had the potential for violence, either to self or another. If intervention, at a high point in the interaction failed, the situation might well have deteriorated, possibly with tragic results.
Draftee
While on the job in the McClellan IG office, a phone call came in from the SPS Director who told me he needed my help right then. A young Army draftee was on the SPS hotline and he was threatening to commit suicide. He was supposed to be on his way to Viet Nam but he had gone AWOL instead. He was far from home and felt lost and confused. He said he had one question before deciding whether to kill himself: 'What'll they do to me if I turn myself in?' He wouldn't identify himself or say where he was.
The SPS Director said that he didn't have the answer. He told the soldier he had a contact at a nearby military base that could check it out. Holding him on one line he called me on another and gave me the facts. I immediately called the Staff Judge Advocate - who was part of my on- base network - and had him phone the SPS Director immediately to review the ramifications of military justice as it might apply. The SPS Director passed the information to the soldier and then talked to him for about an hour. The guidance provided by the Staff Judge Advocate gave the soldier options that might reduce potential charges he faced, not ruling out desertion. We never found out what the soldier decided; he never called back.
This call, and how it was handled, demonstrated teamwork between a community suicide prevention resource and military and civil service administrators on a military base. Comparable groundbreaking was going on in other military-civilian communities and contexts.
Family Problem
The Base Chaplain called me at home late one Sunday night and said he'd had a phone call from a hotline worker at the community SPS. The SPS worker had asked for his help in a call that had come in from an airman's wife. She had phoned the SPS from her home off-base and threatened to kill her husband and then commit suicide.
The caller to the SPS had impulsively terminated the call to the SPS after a few minutes, but in her responses to questions at the outset of the interview, had given her phone number to the crisis worker. After she hung up, the crisis worker judged the woman was more than moderately lethal, and also that she might listen to a military Chaplain. That brought on the call to the Base Chaplain.
After getting the specifics from the crisis worker, the Chaplain phoned the woman and talked to her for about 10 minutes before she hung up on him too. His conclusion, also, was that she was highly lethal for both homicide and suicide. He phoned the Base Security Police and then the Director of Personnel. The Chaplain was leaving that day for Viet Nam; the Director of Personnel suggested he call me.
The Chaplain asked me to follow up. I called the woman. The conversation was heavy, and lasted for more than 2 hours. The problem was in marital relations, finances, and spouse abuse. We finally got around to talking about on-base resources that might ease the load she was carrying: the Staff Judge Advocate, Family Services and Medics. Just listening, and then talking about potential on-base resources helped to lower the pressure. She finally agreed to wait until morning, now only a couple of hours distant, so that the resources we had discussed could be consulted.
First thing that morning, I got the base Family Services people into the act. They moved in fast, took control, got the airman's wife around to talk to the right people, and did a lot themselves. I checked back later. Family Services had her under their wing. She wasn't talking about murder-suicide any more. It was going to be one day at a time for her for a while. She now had somewhere on-base where she felt she could turn, and people in whom she had some confidence.
Why hadn't the woman tried Family Services on her own? I don't know. She chose the civilian community's suicide intervention resource. She had other options, and she might have tried them too. What's my point? Another instance in which military and civilian resources collaborated and made the system work.
Returnee
At about 11 PM one night, I was working my shift at the SPS hotline desk. A call came in from the switchboard supervisor at the city's telephone company. The supervisor said she had a man on-line and he was in a fury. She couldn't handle him. Would I take him? I told her to let me have him, and he was on.
It took a while to get him down to where he could speak coherently. He was an enlisted man in from Viet Nam, making his way to the East Coast. His problem wasn't suicide, it was homicide. He was in a barroom, he said, drinking and minding his own business. Shortly before his call, another patron had ridiculed his uniform and his Service. He had a weapon in his bag and had an almost overwhelming urge to use it.
A stranger in town, passing through, he felt he'd better divert and talk to someone. Searching for some means to vent his rage other than assault, he had, on impulse, picked up the barroom phone and dialed the operator. He must have come down real heavy on her and her supervisor; he found himself of a sudden switched to a hotline worker at the local SPS.
We talked for more than three hours. At the outset he was openly hostile, demanded to know who I was, and how the hell I had been loaded on to him. When I told him, he said he didn't know what 'suicide prevention' was about and wanted no part of it. But he didn't hang up, and we never hung up on anyone.
In our give-and-take, when he realized he was talking to someone who had more than a passing knowledge of the military, who could respond in his jargon and relate to his lifestyle and to his feelings, his hostility eased off. Other feelings began to surface.
He admitted that he had been deeply shaken and enraged by his experiences during border crossings into Cambodia, and he still carried the same, almost overwhelming, anger. Without my bringing it up, he confided that he'd had intense thoughts about self-injury, even suicide, and that the feelings had been strongest before taking off on missions. The rage, and the thoughts of suicide, were still with him and, looking back at them in calmer moments, he said that he was alarmed by their intensity. After a while, he admitted, reluctantly, that he might need help. He said he would think about seeking it out when he got to his permanent station.
At the close, he was much calmer. He phoned back a few hours later and told the hotline worker on duty that he was at the bus depot, and would soon leave for the east. He said to pass the word to me that he was OK.
Collaboration
Eventually, it became evident to me from my IG and SPS experiences, that much could be accomplished through a carefully designed system for collaboration between military bases (or other federal agencies) in any given geographic area and the crisis intervention/suicide prevention (ci/sp) resources of adjacent civilian communities. The potential for good was enormous, not only for and within the military community, but national as well. I learned in time that I was not alone; many others, professionals and lay, were thinking and active along similar lines.
I was convinced that the time was long past for both military and civilian managers and supervisors, in both the public and private sectors to acquire basic indoctrination in ci/sp as it pertained to the people that they commanded or supervised. I wrote numerous letters on the issue, recommending specific actions, and continued doing so after I retired in 1974. My appeals went to the Federal Executive, Congress, and the media. I stressed the urgent need for proactive command (or agency)- wide training and motivational programs to confront the suicide phenomenon, and get organized to reduce suicide attempts and deliberate self-destructive behavior among military personnel, members of their families, and DoD and other Departments' employees.
The essence of my appeal was, first, for a set of formal objectives for the federal military and civil services to move them toward collaboration with community resources that were engaged in grass roots suicide prevention; in essence, collaboration and teamwork between the federal government, as an employer of people, and the communities in which their people lived and worked. If the concept could get a foot in the door at the federal level, then state and county governments might hitch a ride on the system, and ultimately, so would private sector employers. In made no difference which level took the initiative, cross feed and human nature would eventually get the others interested. The suicide trend, the way I read the Public Health Service's statistics of the early and mid-70s, was heading up.