Air Force Eagles (45 page)

A small utility room connected the kitchen to the garage. As he moved forward, the bat caught a mop hanging on the wall, knocking it to the floor with a clatter.

Riley heard the side door of the garage open and the sound of someone running. He burst through the door in time to see a big man lope around the corner and out of sight. When Riley reached the corner, bare feet freezing in the snow, there was nothing but the sound of a car pulling away.

"Couldn't be the man who broke in, Officer. I saw him, and he was well over six feet tall and must have weighed two hundred and fifty pounds."

"Ah, well, sorry to bother you. We'll have to find somebody else to prefer charges against this guy."

***

Chapter 10

Los Angeles, California/March 26, 1954

"If old Sinatra can win an Oscar, I can get back into flying. If old Sinatra can win an Oscar, I can get back into flying."

Marshall repeated the phrase as he pounded along the beach, breathing hard and bathed in sweat, trying to think positively, to focus on anything but his investigation. He liked the linkage with Sinatra; both were outcasts from their profession. As Maggio, Sinatra had fought his way back to an Oscar for
From Here to Eternity;
Marshall would fight his way back to flying, one way or another.

He ran four miles a day now and usually worked out in the gym for two hours. When he read, he squeezed a spring-powered hand exerciser. He did a lot of reading, for there were no Air Force duties except to report in once a day to a little office in Space and Missiles Systems Office on El Segundo. Every Friday morning he met with the investigator from the OSI in a searching interrogation that seemed endless.

Fortunately, there were some major differences from his questioning in Korea—he always came in well rested and well fed, and the room, dreary as it was in its two-tone war-surplus green paint and muddy-brown asphalt tiles, was a thousand times better than the cornstalk and mud walls of a North Korean hut. The investigator didn't torture him, and he didn't have to worry about what was happening to Saundra.

But there was one tremendous difference favoring the brutal questioning in North Korea. There he didn't feel guilty—here he did. Fortunately the physical training was hardening him physically, just as the questions were hardening him mentally.

The interrogator had gotten off to a bad start when he asked, "Did you know any other prisoners of war who might have cracked under the North Korean questioning?"

"I don't know anything, they kept me in solitary. But that's a hell of a question to ask—you want me to be a stool pigeon for guys who suffered like I did."

Daniel Frazier, the investigator, was sympathetic to him. "No, no, come on now. We're just trying to get the facts." Yet he continued his routine of asking the same questions over and over, like Colonel Choi but without the brutality. Frazier inquired about every detail of his imprisonment, trying to construct a day-by-day record. The investigator, of medium height, with sand-colored hair, had a good sense of humor and was obviously not out to crucify him—but he wouldn't let go. None of the answers Marshall gave fully satisfied him. Finally Marshall realized that there was a method in Frazier's self-fulfilling madness, for the more he prodded, the more Marshall remembered of his months in North Korea, mostly things he'd prefer to have remained forgotten.

"Tell me, Captain Marshall, can you remember just when you were taken to Manpo?"

"Danny, you know I didn't have any calendar—I didn't even have anything to mark the days going by. They moved me about so much, I couldn't have kept track of it anyway."

Frazier took off his glasses to wipe them carefully. "Let's change the subject, shall we? How do you think the Air Force treats Negroes?"

"Is this official? I mean is this part of my interrogation?" Frazier nodded. "I used to think it was pretty good; after all, I was flying in an integrated outfit the whole time I was in Korea. And most bases are integrated today." The image of Coleman crossed his mind. "Of course, there were some diehards who were still prejudiced." He straightened the crease of his uniform; he, could have come in civilian clothes, but he always made a point of being in uniform, with his ribbons and his wings.

"You say, 'used to think'?"

"Sure, until I came back from being a prisoner of war and got treated as a traitor."

Frazier, quietly methodical, just shook his head. "No one's treating you as a traitor, John. You signed a confession that you engaged in germ warfare—that puts the Air Force in an embarrassing position."

"I signed a confession that I parachuted measles-infected rats out of an F-86 Thunderjet at forty thousand feet; it was an obvious joke, a way to stop them from killing me."

Frazier was relentless. "A joke, maybe, but the Communists are making use of it. Besides the Douglas Edwards show, the film clip of you signing has been shown around the country on dozens of other programs. And, of course, there are certain implications in your actions."

Marshall felt as if he were standing tiptoe as a pool of guilt washed up higher and higher around him; he resented it because he knew he was innocent—yet there it was, a clammy accusatory rising tide.

"What implications?"

"Like what is permissible to say, and what is not; what and how much a person is supposed to endure. This investigation isn't out to get you, John; it's part of a bigger program to establish a code of conduct for the future."

"And guys like you, sitting four thousand miles behind the battle line, working forty hours a week, wearing civvies, eating high on the hog, sleeping warm with your wife every night—you're going to decide?"

"Not me, John, but the top leadership."

Marshall pushed his chair back. "Let me tell you something. You put the top leaders where someone starves them for weeks, keeps them awake for maybe four or five days at a time, tells them they are going to die every other day, puts pistols"—he was screaming "now; he stopped to get control of himself before going on—"puts a pistol against their heads and pulls the trigger—it's a blank but for one hot minute you don't know it's a blank, you don't know if you're dead or alive, until they laugh."

He knew he was too excited, but he went on. "Ask the brass to put up with stuff like that for a year, and then let them make a code of conduct."

Clearly taken aback, Frazier waved his hands and said, "Let me get you some coffee."

"Can I leave?"

"Not right now. Let's take a break, then I've got a few other questions to ask you." Frazier fixed him a cup and left the room.

Marshall used to drink his coffee black; since he came back it was double cream and sugar, for he never wanted to miss another calorie. He sipped the coffee, thinking of the fetid water that had been his usual drink in Korea. He was sorry that he'd lost his temper just now, but glad he'd said what he did.

When Frazier came back he was smiling. "I understand how you could get emotional after all you've been through. But I've got to get back to the basic question. How do you feel the Air Force treats Negroes?"

Frazier smiled. "Okay, John, I get it. You're giving me the same business you gave the Koreans. Point well taken. But, come on, tell me, how do you feel about the Air Force?"

"I love the Air Force. I just don't like what it's doing to me. I shot down three planes in Korea, I'm an ace, and nobody believes me. Think about it, I'm the first Negro ace, and nobody gives me the time of day. They won't let me fly; I don't even have a job in the Air Force, except to come in here and let you pick my brains."

Frazier was persistent. "I can't comment on the ace business, out of my field. But how do you think the Air Force treats Negroes in general?"

"Compared to what?" It was a rhetorical question and he went on. "Compared to towns in the Deep South, it's terrific. Compared to the Army or the Navy, it's good. Compared to how it should be, it's lousy."

"Give me some specifics."

"Let's do it next time, when I can think about it. Right now I'm too pissed off to comment."

"Well, I've got to finish a report a week from tomorrow. Would you give it some thought between now and then, jot down your ideas, and bring them with you for the next session?"

Marshall went home, churning the idea over. Oddly enough, most of the information he had on the Air Force now came from Saundra, material she'd gotten from her activist friends. From what he could gather, integration had gone pretty well at most bases. The real rub was off-base relations—in many places, North and South, there was as much segregation as ever.

He picked up the phone and began calling, with Lockbourne first. It was like a chain letter; every place he called gave him some information, then referred him to someone else. He gave up everything but his running to stay by the phone, not worrying about the phone bill, trying to call Negro friends still in service, getting suggestions from them on who to call next.

Many of them were suspicious at first, but he was gratified to find out that his name was well known, and that they would talk frankly to him.

The results surprised him. Two of his old buddies from the 332nd at Lockbourne said that integration had sold them out—that they had a chance in a segregated outfit, but were strictly out of luck in an integrated unit. He talked to two others who said just the opposite, that they had a better chance in an integrated unit.

He felt he'd hit the jackpot with a sergeant in personnel at Scott Field who had access to the statistics that indicated what sort of opportunity a Negro had. The sergeant told him that only twenty-two of 2,085 aviation cadets were Negro, a little over one percent; there were 1,356 officers in flight training, and only
eleven
were Negro, less than one percent. And as far as living conditions, things were worse in the South, predictably enough. At Keesler, the base commander had forbidden base teams to play with local teams that would not play against Negroes; yet off base, in Biloxi, there was not only total social segregation everywhere from restaurants to poolrooms to whorehouses, but everything was substandard or worse. At Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Alabama, he found that segregation was just about eliminated on base, but not entirely, because white civilian chaperones at dances sometimes tried to keep Negroes out. Off-base housing was still miserable for enlisted Negroes, who had to live in a shantytown.

But on the whole, and to his surprise, it was heartening; time after time he got back reports that the ice had broken, that jobs were opening up, that people were getting used to the idea. The only really outrageous thing he found was that Little Rock Air
¹
Force Base, an elementary school built with federal funds and intended exclusively for Air Force dependents, was segregated because it was located on Pulaski County property, and the local school board rules applied.

He gave the report, six pages, single-spaced, to Frazier the next Friday.

"Jesus, John, I only wanted an opinion, not a thesis."

"This is no thesis--but it's a pretty good capsule survey of the Air Force and integration. The Air Force is doing a better job than I thought."

"Does that make you feel better?"

"Some. There's been progress, but not enough of it. When I get back to work, I'm going to see what I can do to help. But that's the big question—when are you going to be finished grilling me? When am I going back to flying?"

"I'm finished, and it was a pleasure to work with you. I understand you'll be getting orders in a few days. I hope they are just what you want."

That night John had a shaker full of martinis waiting when Saundra came in. They kissed and she asked, "How did it go?"

"Honey, I knocked him on his duff! He couldn't believe the information I had in that report. I couldn't believe it either—things seem to be looking up."

Saundra stood, unsmiling, a folded
Los Angeles Times
under her arm. "Tell me more."

"He says the investigation's over and that I should be getting orders pretty soon. I'll probably be back in the cockpit this time next month."

"That's great, 1 hope so. But you might want to take a look at this."

She flopped the newspaper in front of him, tapping at an article in the first column of the front page. The headline read russell rails against traitors and followed with a letter printed in full from Senator Richard Russell of Georgia to Secretary of Defense Charles Wilson.

Marshall read it out loud. "My views may be extreme, but I believe that those who collaborated and the signers of false confessions should be immediately separated from the services under conditions other than honorable." The letter went on for several more paragraphs, but John dropped the paper to the floor. "Conditions other than honorable"—it was impossible.

"This may not mean anything, Saundra. It's just a letter from a die-hard Southerner. The services still have their say."

She took his face in her hands and whispered, "John, John, think about it. The Air Force won't even let you put in your claims for your victories. Maybe they won't discharge everybody. But they'll probably have to sacrifice some."