Once They Were Eagles (28 page)

“It was a hell of an experience. Of course, I'd rather not have been hit. I'm sorry I wasn't around with the guys longer; it damn near broke my heart when Doc sent me out of there.”

Gelon H. “Corpuscle” Doswell, still looking as though he could use some plasma, might benefit from some of Rinabarger's invigorating mountain climate. Instead, he lives in a town where the altitude is only 22 feet: Ocean Springs, Mississippi, an almost 200-year-old Gulf Coast resort that has become an artists' colony.

I interviewed Doswell in my hotel room in New Orleans during the Marine Corps Aviation Convention. He'd put on some weight, was still pasty-faced, and wore his hair in a Marine Corps brush cut.

“The Black Sheep were pretty much the same as other squadrons except that they seemed closer knit. It was a gung-ho situation, and everybody seemed to pull together very well. I got more enemy contact, and Dustin and I were convinced we were going to paint some Japanese flags on our airplanes, but it never happened.

“Afterward, I returned to the States by ship and was assigned as a Corsair test pilot after training at Patuxent. I applied for a regular commission that came through in Hawaii, and I was sent to multi-engine school and became a transport pilot.

“I was at the Bureau of Aeronautics for a couple of years, commanded a Night Fighter squadron, and had the usual tours: Armed Forces Staff College; Fleet Marine Force, Atlantic; Iwakuni, Japan. I commanded the Reserve Training Detachment at the Naval Air Station in New Orleans and was assigned to the International Secretary of the NATO Standing Group in Washington—and selected for colonel there.

“One interesting assignment was at Quantico, heading up a small task group working on the Marine Corps Fighter Study. At that time, it appeared the Defense Department was going to cram the F-111 down our throats. The thing had grown from about 40,000 pounds up to about 70,000 pounds, and during its first carrier trials, I think, it buckled the deck of one. Then we were testing all kinds of ideas, like a one-man helicopter.

“In 1965 my back began to bother me. At Bethesda, they told me they could do surgery but couldn't guarantee anything, so they wrote me up for a disability retirement, and I retired in 1966.

“I sent out resumes and interviewed with several companies. Colt Industries in Hartford wanted me to sell weapons to the Army, Navy, and Marines; for a retired regular officer, that's illegal, of course. I told them that. So I messed around awhile and finally came to Ingalls Shipbuilding Division of Litton Industries. I'm in subcontracting management, negotiating and administering major subcontracts. Been here 14 years, like the work, and expect to stay till I'm 65.

“We like living in Ocean Springs, too—we like to fish.

“I've had many outstanding times: a joint exercise with the Thai Marines in Bangkok, where we called on the King and the Ambassador; meeting Lord Mountbatten in Paris with the NATO Standing Group. And there were close calls, like Christmas Day of 1943, when I had to limp into Torokina just as the plane quit on me.

“The Black Sheep experience was great. I consider it an honor to have been a part—a hell of a squadron. I know Greg had his problems, but he was a fine combat pilot and a good combat commander. A little rough for a peacetime Marine Corps—actually, his own worst enemy.”

“Big Old Fat Old Ed” Olander has slimmed down considerably since his days with the Black Sheep. He was on vacation in Hawaii, and I interviewed him in my Honolulu apartment.

After being released from active duty, Ed went back to his home town of Northhampton, Massachusetts, and carved out a distinguished
career. He started a building materials business, which he still owns. He served two terms as Northhampton's mayor; he was a member of his Community Hospital board for 18 years, nine of them as president; and he is now on the board of directors of a national bank.

About four years younger than Boyington, Ed was the oldest of the pilots who served both tours.

“It turned out to be a good mix, having new pilots with the experienced ones. We didn't have the opportunity, like the other squadrons, to become familiar with each other's moves before we went into combat. I don't think I was scared, the first flight, but I remember it because I was confused—didn't know which was east or west, or what the islands were going to look like. If we'd had enemy contact that day, I don't think I could have found my way home. Later, we were confident because we had good leadership in the air, and the right airplane. I've had a love affair with the Corsair for 40 years. Yet after 40 years, the missions are a blur; I recall some misses more than I recall any hits.

“After we broke up, I went to dull Green Island, then to El Toro and trained in field carrier landings for the invasion of Japan that never happened. When the war ended, I was released from active duty, just before Thanksgiving 1945.

“The Black Sheep were a very special squadron, and not only because we were at the right place at the right time and compiled a good combat record. I can recall no group I served with that had such esprit. Part of that may have been the good feeling generated by success and by combat; part was a confidence maybe instilled by Boyington. It was a good-times squadron. Everyone knows Greg's affinity for drink, and we all seemed to have a little, and we had some parties. But I think by the luck of the draw we had some damn nice guys who would have had this kindred spirit any place they happened to congregate. I've said many times that I spent six months with a total of 50 people and felt closer to them than people I lived with for four years at Amherst College.

“I let the Black Sheep experience all lie fallow until you organized that first reunion; then it all came alive again as though there had been no interim period at all. It was a very special group. It occupies a very special niche in my life.”

Harry “Skinny” Johnson drove the nearly 400-mile round trip from his home in Birmingham to meet me in Nashville. Like Yankee Doodle Dandy, Harry was born on the fourth of July. At six feet, two inches, he was one of the taller Black Sheep, and he was still distinguished looking. He might have been a banker.

I asked why he had chosen the Marines after he received his commission.

“There was this Marine Captain with all the ribbons. He said, ‘If you want to have tea at three o'clock and lace on your drawers, you stay in the Navy. But if you want to be the sorriest son of a bitch in the world, get in the Marines.'

“I said, ‘Well, I'd like to get into fighters.'

“He looked at me and said, ‘We have a new fighter, the Corsair, and its big enough for a 300-pounder.'

“I said, ‘Thank you, Sir,' and that's how I got in, but the first time I flew a Corsair was in Espiritu Santo. I was real hepped up to get assigned to the Black Sheep. I thought Boyington knew what he was doing, and if I listened to him and the others who'd already had the first tour, I could learn a lot.

“I don't recall ever being real scared until later, in Korea. That's because I was older, and we had to work under the flares at night, 4,000,000-candlepower parachute flares. There, most of the roads are river beds, so you have to get down below the mountains to see anything, then corkscrew yourself out.

“When I got back from Korea, I stayed on extended active duty as a Reserve for a couple of years, and on Organized Reserve until 1961. By then I was 40 years old, and they were trying to put us in ground school, so I was through with it. I had a wonderful time in the Marine Corps; I just wanted to get out and make some money, and that's exactly what I did.

“I started to work on a commission basis, then decided to go into manufacturing. Now I have a small plant, the Harry C. Johnson Company, manufacturing electrical connectors. Every power company uses them. We thought about expanding like the
Wall Street Journal
says, but I decided to keep it small and dirty. I have anywhere from four to ten employees.

“When somebody talks about recession, I say, ‘We don't have a
problem.' We have orders for all of next year. Don't get me wrong. It's not a big outfit because I don't want it to be, but I can do my boating and fishing. I have six boats. At the lake south of Birmingham, I have what they call a ‘deck boat'; there's a stereo on it where I play my favorite, Frank Sinatra's ‘I Did It My Way.' Then I have a bass boat that'll go 54 miles an hour; a pontoon boat; a small aluminum boat; and at the yacht club I'm a member of, a 47-foot Swannee with all the deals on it. It's slick. And I own a 42-foot antique, all-mahogany boat that I'm having refinished now. It's beautiful—18,000 pounds of good stuff.

“But I've never been in any group like the Black Sheep since then that would even approach it. It was fun. It was a feeling that we were the best and we'd take any job. I liked the singing; I just liked it. You don't see the same loyalty now that we had—I don't believe I knew a one who wouldn't risk his life to save another.

“Getting married and having a family, and the Black Sheep experience were the high points in my life.

“I agree with football coach Bear Bryant; what he preached and what we had was pride. When you have pride, you have class. When the crunch comes, you're in there in your formation; you want to be a winner.

“In the Black Sheep, we had pride; we had class; and we were winners.”

After serving 30 years in the Marine Corps, Bruce Matheson has retired to a comfortable life in Kailua, Hawaii, on the other side of the island of Oahu from Waikiki. Daily runs on the beach have kept his weight about the same as in our Black Sheep days; he still has his hair, with a few flecks of gray. One of the original members of our choral society, he is still musically inclined: he has an organ in his home, and he sings with a choral group and in the chorus of both the Honolulu Opera Company and the Honolulu Symphony Orchestra.