Plaine des Jarres

Tuesday, January 27, 2009
0600 LST, -4° 54.5’ / +31° 00’ speed 7.6 knots, course over ground (COG) 148°, 8522 NM from Dampier, 3282 NM to Cape Town, traveled 4339 NM.

So, we are something over half way to Cape Town, probably another 20 days. Today is our 30th at sea. Ahead, there is a hurricane in Dampier this morning. Daylight comes early, and night late, for a while anyway. March 21 is the vernal equinox, whatever that means on the equator. By then, I hope to be in Texas, so I won't have to deal with all this confusion.


Yesterday broke the sea-weariness of all. On the chart is shown a jumble of rocks poking up out of the water called Ferdinand de Noronha. When we passed them, it was a delight. One pinnacle jumped out of the water over a thousand feet. Others jumped and strutted their former volcano status, but somewhat less vertically. In all are twenty- one lovely islands that belong to Brazil. The little town of Noronha is quaint and colorful, bespeaking wealth, perhaps. Two thousand people live there, in aquamarine seas, both black and white sand beaches, tunnels and caves, sprites and mermaids. I am told that the principle crater is beneath the sea and is a diver’s paradise. Ashore are fresh water swimming pools and fountains, old gates and walls, lush growth of greens, speckled richly with orange, white, blue, red, and yellow. Some beaches still retain lava beds. There are a number of inns and hotels that promise a short time in paradise. It is funny that I never knew of it before. They speak Portuguese there, but in past times it has been Spanish, English, French, and Dutch (not sure about Dutch).

Wednesday, January 28, 2009
31st day, holding position on DP, taking on fuel all night long. Our position holds at -6° 18.15’ and 30° 2’ . Since we are all straight on the pluses and minuses, then everybody knows where we are. The tow vessel Alpine is along our starboard side and dispensing some 110,000 gallons of fuel to us. We did not really need it, but it mollifies certain onshore entities. We ought to get under way about 9am local, which remains four hours ahead of Central Standard Time.

John Keats, the English poet, was only 26 when he died. That deprived us of some very fine poetry, but before he expired, he knew a man like Corbin Richards, of my own time. In fact, he wrote about the man. Edwin A Robinson wrote about the same sort of gentleman. I’ll tie these facts together momentarily.
Corbin Richards was one of the smartest men I ever knew. He was lucky, good-looking, and well-liked. He was my age, but his life and talents were much superior to my more plebian military self: I found satisfaction in service; he by self-aggrandizement. By the time I was a captain, he was a millionaire and just getting started. We had been close pals as we grew into young men and continued seeing each other on occasion, exchanged Christmas cards, announced births, and such. He was interested in airplanes and the war, so we had that, too. He, in fact, made a good deal of money on the war, while some of us were losing our lives, or worse.

At university, Corbin drove a Corvette, and it always had a beautiful girl in it. He was president of the student body, Dean’s list for grades, lived in a palatial old home, usually full of fraternity buddies. He was generous and affable. Every man liked him, and every woman loved him. He was the kind of guy that could work all day in a Stetson hat and come in late with no hair out of place, no apparent sweat, and no odor. He wouldn’t ask a person if something were needed: he’d simply take care of it with money, or skill, or professional help. When we graduated, he had employers lined up for him, bonuses in hand.

He worked for a few years with a major energy company, then went on his own in a whole new field. He married Miss Ohio, a runner-up at Miss America. They toured the world, made headlines, and were received with honors. Then suddenly, they divorced. He became a millionaire on his own, and then the good life really started. He built a mansion in Georgetown and had a new office in Washington. All the while, he maintained a youthful, trim appearance and an ageless face. I began to wrinkle and get gray, but not Corbin. When we were thirty, I looked it: he didn’t.

The only time I ever saw him shaken was at Udorn RTAB, Thailand. He came to visit us after demonstrating a super-snooper spying device for the lads behind the fence at Nakhon Phanom. That was McNamara’s stuff, highly classified, very expensive. He figures he made a billion dollars on that stuff. Roger Carrol, Corbin, and I had lunch at the officers’ club and planned to socialize seriously that night. Roger had an afternoon sortie up in the Plaine des Jarres, Laos. We watched him board the flight line taxi and disappear into the forest of F-4s. An hour later, while attacking, he was shot in the face by a .51 caliber AA gun during a dive-bomb delivery. He died instantly, and the airplane continued at a 45° angle at 500 knots. The back-seater ejected and barely cleared the airframe, but went in face-first at a little over 700 feet per second. That was the end of Joyhop 01, their call sign. We got word of it quickly. When I told Corbin, he became ashen. That event seemed to hurt him. It hurt all of us, but we were more used to it than he was. That was his first and only foray into combat. He left the next day and went to Bangkok and invited me to come after we finished trying to recover the remains.

The PDJ (Plain of Jars) is a beautiful place, shaped like an upside down T-bone steak about 22 miles long. Jungle forest ceases at the boundary of the “J”, giving way to lush, tall grasses and shrubs, and thousands of great jars. Those jars are six feet across and built of stone not found in the area. Many weigh more than 6000 pounds. No one knows from whence they came, but they are ancient. Some evidence indicates that the stone came from India. There are many limestone caves in the area, and several have been the sites of hot fires. Some include scorched human bones, and so it is propounded by one school that the jars held the ashes of the dead of some unknown culture, now dead and without trace. A major east-west road traverses the northern half of the Plain, joining North Vietnam with Louang Prabang, and a north-south road joining the north to Vientienne. “Road” is a pretty generous term, but they were sufficient to carry marching armies. Many streams cross the J and several significant rivers flow past it. The Plain lies in a bowl, surrounded by rough, wild mountains and deep jungle. It was the center piece of the unknown war, the war of guerilla units and special missions—kept secret from America, despite 60,000 of her sons fighting and dying there. Men who died there, or who earned distinguished medals, were summarily downgraded, because the US government could not tell the truth about whom we fought, where we died, nor what we did. About 20 miles west-southwest of the J lies the hidden city of Long Tieng, named by the CIA as Lima Site Twenty Alternate. It was the HQ for General Vang Pao and his little rag tag army of hard-fighting men and boys. It was home of the Raven FACs, Air America, and hangout for other special operatives, including us, 21st Special Operations Squadron. (Read Christopher Robin, The Ravens and John Plaster, SOG.) Lima Site 20A is one of the most remarkable places I ever saw, built into karst on three sides, with Skyline Ridge on the east and over which lay the PDJ. Flying into the city requires an approach that terminates in a mountain of karst at the other end of the runway and on the right. Departing requires that you go the other way, regardless of winds or weather. The south end contains the karst, but also a cul-de-sac where offices, guns, parking ramps, and barracks are located. The karst looks like a case of wine bottles with the necks broken off—sharp, hard, vertical rock. At the approach end was a gun pit with a 175 mm Howitzer, usually pointed at the J.

The two sides fought annually over possession of the PDJ. Vang Pao owned during the dry season, with the aid of US air. The communists owned it during the wet season, due to lack of air support. Many, many men died over the years, the red earth never even noticing the extra supply of blood. Roger was but the latest.

His target area was beside a south-running creek in a stand of trees. It was destroyed when we got there. There was the usual water-filled crater where the airplane went subterranean. The back seater, such burnt jelly as was left of him, lay outside the crater in 15 or 18 pounds of human goo, mostly contained inside the legs of his g-suit. Flesh festers up quickly over there, so the unfortunate guy was—for the most part—in some other realm. Roger was in the crater. We didn’t find anything, really, but a piece of the control stick into which was fused the splintered bone of a human thumb, both charred and defaced.

I didn’t get down to Bangkok: I still had a war to fight. Corbin was affected about the recovery and he was very upset. Then he went silent for two or three years. My DROS (date of return from overseas) came, and I went to a new base, a new airplane, a new job and continued to screw up my life without any delay whatever. I saw Corbin in some of the commissary tabloids, first with one lovely, then a rich divorcee, then…He bought a ranch in Montana to raise—protect—wild horses. When I made major, he flew down in his Gulfstream III and whisked me away to celebrate. I really was overwhelmed with the women, the money, the class and quality of location, board, and consumables. He was an absolute gentleman, but his fast living was now showing in his face, and his color was bad. Before I went back to being a government airplane driver, he offered me a job. It so surprised me that I had no answer, but he said not to hurry, he’d keep it for me. Thus, I thought, I had it made with one career in the pocket and another ready to go. I never saw Corbin Richards again. Three months later, he shot himself in the head at the table of his new condo in Georgetown and was dead when he hit the floor. There was no note, no reason to think he would do that, and to this day, I can not come up with any answer, except that Keats must have had it right: the good life killed him. Robinson knew, too. Read them below: it is worth it.

La Belle Dame Sans Merci
(The Beautiful Woman Without Mercy)
John Keats

I
O What can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
Alone and palely loitering?
The sedge has withered from the lake,
And no birds sing.

II
O, what can ail thee, knight-at-arms!
So haggard and so woe-begone?
The squirrel’s granary is full,
And the harvest’s done.

III
I see a lily in thy brow
With anguish moist and fever dew,
And on thy cheeks, a fading rose
Fast withereth, too.

IV
I met a lady in the meads,
Full beautiful—a faery’s child,
Her hair was long, her foot was light,
And her eyes were wild.

V
I made a garland for her head,
And bracelets, too, and fragrant zone;
She looked at me as she did love,
And made sweet moan.

VI
I set her on my pacing steed
And nothing else saw all day long,
For sidelong would she bend, and sing
A faery’s song.

VII
She found me roots of relish sweet,
And honey wild, and manna dew,
And sure in language strange she said—
“I love thee true.”

VIII
She took me to her elfin grot,
And there she wept and sigh’d full sore,
And there I shut her wild, wild eyes
With kisses four.
IX

And there she lulled me asleep,
And there I dream’d—Ah woe betide!
The latest dream I ever dream’d
On the cold hill’s side.

X
I saw pale kings and princes, too,
Pale warriors; death—pale were they all;
They cried—“La Belle Dame Sans Merci
Hath thee in thrall!”

XI
I saw their starved lips in the gloam,
With horrid warning gaped wide,
And I awoke and found me here,
On the cold hill’s side.

XII
And this is why I sojourn here,
Alone and palely loitering,
The sedge is withered from the lake,
And no birds sing.

To that I add another poet’s revelation of the privileged not coping;

Richard Cory
Edwin Arlington Robinson

Whenever Richard Cory went downtown,
We people on the pavement looked at him;
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean-favored, and imperially slim.

He was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked;
But still, he fluttered pulses when he said;
“Good Morning”, and he glittered when he walked.

And he was rich—yes, richer than a king,
And admirably schooled in every grace;
In fine, we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.

So, on we worked and waited for the light,
And went without meat and cursed the bread;
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head.