Everyone was watching as I taxied down the runway.
I was in the air again. I tried to relax and concentrate on remembering everything I had been taught about speed, altitude, and flight angles. Suddenly, blessedly, my mind started to clear. I stayed up for another fifteen minutes and this time I was ready. I made an almost perfect landing.
As I stepped out of the plane, Captain Anderson growled, “That’s better. You’ll do it again tomorrow.”
The rest of my flight training went without incident except for one memorable day near the end of the course.
That morning, as I was about to take off, Captain Anderson said, “We have a report that there’s a bad storm heading this way, Sheldon. Keep an eye out for it. When you see it coming, land immediately.”
“Yes, sir.”
I took off, reached my altitude, and began circling around the mountains, going through my spins and stalls. There’s a bad storm heading this way . . . When you see it coming, land immediately . . .
What if I were caught in it and couldn’t see a place to land? I visualized the headlines: “Pilot Trapped in Storm.”
The news would be on the radio and television. The world would be holding its breath to see whether the young cadet made it safely or not. The landing field below me would be swarming with ambulances and firefighting equipment. I was completely caught up in my daydream, enjoying my bravery in the face of this great disaster, when it suddenly grew dark. The reason it grew dark was that my plane was in the middle of the storm. I was flying blind, surrounded by ominous black clouds. I could not see the airfield or anything around me. All I knew for certain was that on every side of me were unforgiving mountain peaks and I could crash into one of them at any second. I had lost all sense of direction. Was the airfield ahead of me? Behind me? To the side of me?
The wind began to bounce the plane around. The headlines I had been daydreaming about were becoming real. In an effort to avoid the mountains surrounding me, I started to fly in very small circles, going lower and lower, bouncing around, trying to stay in the same safe area. When I got down to thirty feet, I could see the airfield. The whole crew was down there, watching.
When I landed the plane, my instructor came up to me, furious.
“What’s the matter with you? I told you to watch out for the storm.”
“Sorry. Yes, sir. It crept up on me.”
I got my wings exactly three months after I had arrived in Richfield.
Captain Anderson called us all together. “You’re ready for training in multiple engine planes, BT-19s and DAT-6s. Unfortunately, at the moment, the advanced flight schools are all full. So you’re going to be on standby. There could be openings at any minute. You don’t have to stay here while you’re waiting, but leave a phone number with the sergeant where you can be reached, day or night.
“The minute we have openings for an advanced flight school, we’ll be in touch with you. Good luck.”
And the thought that came into my mind was Ben Roberts. I decided that while I waited for a flight school to open up, I would go to New York. I made a reservation at a hotel in Manhattan and gave the telephone number to the sergeant. I had a feeling that the minute I arrived in New York, there would be a message ordering me to return.
I said goodbye to my fellow fliers, and that afternoon I was on a plane to New York, to see Ben.
CHAPTER 13
It was a smooth, pleasant flight. I sat in a large commercial plane filled with passengers, wearing my Air Corps uniform with shiny wings and getting continually airsick while all the passengers stared at me. I’m convinced that if I had been allowed to fly combat, the war would have been shorter. But we would have lost.
We arrived in New York, at the land of the Brill Building and the RKO Jefferson and Max Rich, and the memories that flooded in seemed to belong to another world, another time.