Reluctant to Lead: Overcoming Fear of Failure

Chapter 1 - Disturbing Decision

September 1969

The olive-drab scout chopper trailed swirling foliage as it skimmed treetops in a hinterland 15 kilometers west of Qui Nhon. Warrant Officer 1 Bruce Carlson’s aggressive tactics sometimes exacted a cost. During my nine months in Vietnam, foes shot him down four times and pierced his airframe on dozens of sorties. After one, he interrupted sheet metal work by stretching a string between a bullet entry hole in the floor and the exit puncture in the top. He noticed the trajectory had intersected the normal position of the pilot’s head. “Look at this.”

The repairman rubbed his chin. “How come you’re not in a body bag?”

“Luck. I leaned out the window for a better view of bunkers.”

Surviving such threats emboldened Carlson and strengthened his reputation. On one occasion, when he prepared to leave a base alongside an attack helicopter, the other pilot notified the tower, “A gunship and a target, ready for takeoff.”

Radio static returned my attention to our reconnaissance. I supervised fliers of two gunships and two scout helicopters while hovering my command-and-control Huey above them. I kept backups on call. Four circling Hueys with 28 infantrymen aboard circled nearby. Replacements for the four crews on duty waited with their helicopters twenty kilometers away. This typical task for an Army captain serving as an air cavalry troop executive officer threatened me with mid-afternoon ennui.

The major who sent us here had tapped a spot on his wall map. “Intel thinks a battalion of 500 is assembling to attack our headquarters. We’re counting on the cav to verify it.” His advisors must have cried wolf. An hour-long probe turned up nothing. A large force couldn’t hide from our experts. Sunlight beaming through the transparent overhead panel baked my helmet. The vibration in the cockpit and the caress of warm air coursing through the cabin made me drowsy. Ruffling leaves of an unoccupied forest bored our action-loving airmen. I reached for the radio selector to announce we’d abandon the mission.

A stream of burning green projectiles penetrated Carlson’s aircraft and continued skyward in front of me. The crippled copter yawed and tumbled through the leafy shade. At the penetration point, a column of gray mist snaked up through silvery mimosas.

“Red One-Four’s down.” The scout wingman’s businesslike tone didn’t convey the gravity of the situation.

I clung to hope that God had granted me another miracle until my copilot said, “Woah! Willie Pete! They finally got the son of a bitch. The poor bastards are charcoal now.” Brilliant snowy smoke filled gaps in the branches and mushroomed upward. The implications rocked me with the force of a linebacker’s helmet ramming into my midsection. A white phosphorus grenade erupted with unimaginable heat. Incandescent particles burrowed into skin and released toxins into the bloodstream. Two observers and Carlson might suffer in a cage of twisted metal. The origins of my bond with him flashed into my consciousness.

I first encountered this spirited aviator in a pickup game with anonymous participants. Shirts battled skins on a makeshift dirt court. Rusty poles demarcated it. Each supported a tin sheet with a hoop dangling a shredded net. When he guarded me, his 200 pounds and six-foot wingspan presented a dead end or a detour through blows from knees or elbows. This taller and stronger stranger scored with bruises, not baskets.

When his friend later introduced him to me, my rough rival chuckled. “Your West Point ring caught my eye after that game. I thought, Oh no. I beat up an RLO.” In jest, he mocked me for having a higher rank and salary for performing the same job warrants did. They called such people Real Live Officers.

I waved my hand. “Rank’s meaningless on the court.”

A month later, my head sank to my folded arms on the office desk. A memorandum announced an inspector general visit. His staff threatened to expose my negligence in managing our vast arsenal. It contained flares, mines, rockets, and bullets for pistols, shotguns, rifles, and machine guns. We had grenades for concussion, fragmentation, white phosphorus, and smoke of assorted colors. Unauthorized items adulterated our stockpile, such as artillery rounds for improvised bombs.

Carlson sprang to mind as a resource because he loved shooting. Though charged with reconnaissance, he loaded his helicopter with as many bullets and grenades as possible.

I found him soaking up the sun in an Adirondack chair, shirtless and holding a paperback. Always alert to danger, he pulled off his sunglasses and lifted his gaze when he saw me approaching. Survival of so many scrapes and the audacity of youth had endowed him with an enduring facial expression of self-assuredness. “Bruce, I need help to prepare for an ammunition inspection.”

He cocked his head to the side as a dog does while parsing his master’s request. He rubbed his neck and paused, weighing my threat to his free days after each one in the air. “Got zero experience, except using a helluva lot. I can try.” This rakish youth’s Boston accent enhanced his all-American persona and aptitude for a film role as a war hero.

“Great. Choose someone to help you and meet me at the ammo dump tomorrow at 1300.”

At our storage site, I met Carlson and his assistant, Sergeant E-5 Scott Stanton, who loved things that blew up. He always reported for scout duty carrying a homemade bomb and wearing a shoulder harness decorated with grenades like holiday ornaments. The two stood with arms akimbo, appraising pallets, boxes, and loose items strewn over bare dirt. Their raised eyebrows and bright eyes cast them as toddlers in a toy store.

“How much trouble are we in?” I asked.

Carlson shook his head and pointed at a heap of damaged rockets and flares. “We’re in deep kimchi if they see this.”

“Dangerous stuff though. Better get EOD.” I hoped the Explosive Ordnance Disposal specialists could take care of it despite their backlog.

A couple of days later, I left my office tranquil from an empty in-box. The biggest explosion I’d ever heard staggered me and numbed my eardrums. Chunks of smoldering metal scattered over the base. A piece big enough to break bones blasted a hole in the dirt near my foot. A larger one ripped open half of a tin roof. People ran out of buildings the way ants scatter from a disrupted hive.

Various explanations scrolled through my consciousness. Attack? Accident? Something Carlson’s group did? This hypothesis unsettled me like a shot of amphetamine. I hurried through living areas looking for casualties. Clothes lay scattered around unattended wash basins. Some soldiers hunkered behind cover. Stanton slumped in a chair, as relaxed as a vacationer watching gentle ocean waves lapping on a beach. His sparkling eyes and ear-to-ear grin tipped me off—he celebrated a caper. My fear of knowing what happened drove me to turn away without conversing. Finding no one hurt granted me a little solace.

The heliport governor summoned me the next day. This colonel’s position freed him to investigate and report with impartiality and impunity. The United States and 1st Aviation Brigade flags behind his mahogany desk menaced as symbols of authority. I imagined a justice-gown-clad owl’s x-ray vision beamed through black-rimmed glasses into my darkest secrets. Sweat from tension more than temperature moistened my eyebrows as he spoke. “Do you know what caused the big bang?” My inquisitor started tapping his fingers on the desktop as if counting the seconds of my delay.

My legs grew restless from an impulse to flee this reckoning. “Just heard scuttlebutt.”

Compunction rose with a reminder. On Sundays under the Military Academy Chapel Gothic arches, I had recited the Cadet Prayer to “never be content with a half-truth when the whole can be won.” Yet I complied with a C Troop precept: we did not snitch, especially not on well-intentioned people toiling under a deadline I’d imposed to achieve a better rating. The mischief endeared Carlson to me.

He assumed three weeks satisfied an unofficial statute of limitations and freed him to divulge the back story. “Rumor has it Scotty rounded up friends to put defective ammo on trucks and dump it just outside the perimeter wire. They set up a detonator, lit a long fuse, and headed to their rooms to wait for the fireworks.”

“We’re low on fuel.” My copilot’s alert interrupted my musings about getting to know Carlson and returned me to the quandary.

I said, “Take it.” Releasing my hands and feet from the controls and narrowing my eyes to blur the colors and textures of the terrain permitted me to concentrate on planning a response to curtail casualties. Any survivors? Not likely. If some lived, could we save them without losing more? Better to give the job to our two dozen infantrymen or wait for reinforcements? The red hand of an imaginary timer spun toward zero when militants closed in on our burned and bleeding men. Troops and air crews awaited my orders.

Chapter 2 - Fretting About the Future

February 1969

Friends in Oklahoma City offered to facilitate our relocation and babysit one-year-old Susan during my deployment to Vietnam. Trish agreed. So, right after flight school graduation at Fort Rucker, Alabama, we headed west in our 1965 maroon Corvair convertible. As unfettered as kids on spring break, we listened to country music on AM: “Daddy Sang Bass” by Johnny Cash. “Games People Play” by Joe South. Burma Shave ads appeared on sequential roadside stakes. “The wolf is shaved / So neat and trim / Red Riding Hood / Is chasing him.” We spent two nights at old-fashioned motels with neon signs boasting air conditioning and TV.

With our friends and Susan in tow, we looked at half a dozen rentals. They lacked a safe place for our daughter to play. At the next one, the owner of a furnished two-bedroom with a fenced backyard on a quiet street met us in front. This snake-slender 30-something man’s black hair, full beard, and sheeny navy suit cast him as a funeral director herding riffraff clients, who wore jeans and T-shirts. He aggravated me when he locked his gaze on Trish, though it wasn’t his fault. Gentle golden waves tumbled to her shoulders. Her creamy complexion had a soft glow. Sky-blue, laughing eyes invited guesses at what amused her.

As if our guide expected theft, he shadowed us while we checked out the modest-sized rooms.

Trish said, “This will do.”

The landlord ushered his visitors into battered pine chairs with upholstered seats at the kitchen table. He tightened his lips. “I’ve heard military families with little kids cause problems. So, two payments for a security deposit.”

His Bronx accent grated on me. Trish rolled her eyes. We signed the papers.

Mister Fancy Suit rose with the sound of tearing cloth.

“Oh!” we said in unison.

Half of his butt glared through a gap in his expensive pants. A protruding nail in a chair had administered justice. He kept going. Our two friends grinned at each other and bumped shoulders. Trish suppressed a giggle with her hand. My midsection convulsed. Breath wheezed through my nose. When the door closed, I stated the obvious. “He didn’t set a great example of respectfulness.”

We started a three-week vacation. A laid-back mood prevailed until we heard on the black-and-white TV, “President Nixon threatens to resume bombing North Vietnam in retaliation for Viet Cong offenses…. Nobel Laureate George Wald’s speech calls the conflict ’the most shameful episode in the whole of American history.’”

My mother called with a wavering voice. “Norman was injured in Vietnam. One arm’s crippled.” The consequences crushed me. He’d never again play volleyball or guitar or perform as a carpenter.

He phoned later, speaking in the dry manner of a seasoned reporter. “While we patrolled near Pleiku, bullets flew all around us. They blew out the elbow of the grenadier behind me. The rifleman in front had his midsection ripped out. After we swapped fire for an hour and lost three, I dragged him away from the fight.” Norman saved other lives before artillery shredded his shoulder.

A shrimpy eighth grader when I left home, he’d surpassed me as a warrior and followed in my father’s footsteps as a combat leader and winner of the Purple Heart.

Our father parachuted onto the rugged island of Corregidor in World War II. An underground ammunition cache exploded, hurled him twenty feet, and knocked him out. A sergeant radioed headquarters. “Major Davis is dead.” But he woke up and conquered the territory in his zone, enabling United States forces to liberate the Philippines. Years of a combat commander’s responsibilities in the South Pacific probably handicapped his adjustment to family life. Ingrained habits carried over: giving orders and responding to resistance with violence.

Thoughts of my brother’s and father’s achievements spurred an inner demon’s jeer. “They’ve set the bar so high you won’t pass muster.”

Different disquiet engulfed me on my last night at home. I navigated through the toys lying around Susan’s room. Softer than cotton candy, her wispy blond hair caressed my arm while I lay on her bed. Her cheeks matched her soft pink pajama top. As I picked up The Velveteen Rabbit, she regarded me with expectant, pale blue eyes. Authorities in this tale separated the stuffed animal from the child who loved him. The kid recognized the bunny when he reappeared as a real one a year later. Would Susan accept me as a real dad when we reunited?

The story lulled her to sleep. Her upper and lower eyelashes intermeshed to bid me farewell. Her fingers loosened on Froggy, her fuzzy comfort pet. On most evenings, the steady rhythm of the Felix-the-Cat clock swishing its tail had tranquilized me to doze for a few minutes. Not this time.

Trish kept sleeping when I settled beside her. The sadness of our impending separation sank in. Her mother had died in childbirth, and her father didn’t care for her. At daybreak, I’d abandon her to tackle financial problems, car breakdowns, Susan’s illnesses, or whatever happened. Vignettes like Ebenezer Scrooge’s visions pointed out the true cost of my free education. I was missing from every scene—our daughter laughing at her birthday party with chocolate on her face, splashing in a pool while her mom taught her to swim.

Fantasies of denial arose, including a new civilian life in this cozy house, but an irrepressible tide loomed to sweep me across the Pacific. Fitful squirming filled the night.

Chapter 3 - Adjusting to a Wartime Context

In the morning, Trish drove me 16 miles to the passenger terminal at Tinker Air Force Base. Her embrace by the car treated me to her warm cheek and fresh scent, a bittersweet intimacy impossible to enjoy again for a long time.

“We’ll be okay,” she assured me. “I’ll take college courses. A babysitter’s lined up.”

It wasn’t my fate that roiled my insides but my fault for accepting a profession that prevented me from fulfilling my promise to care for her. Her upbeat acquiescence worsened my guilt. Like Oedipus’ epiphany, mine came too late. The military cattle chute constrained me to continue forward.

ID card? Yes. Duffel bag? Got it. Future? Unclear.