The Black Power Squadron
I worried how Moonbeam would handle the culture shock of exotic Ubon, where killing and partying seemed to go hand in hand, but he had no sooner unpacked his bags than he took off for location shoots over in Vietnam. Reports we got over the next two weeks, however, hinted that his metamorphosing wasn’t letting up. After only a few days in Nam, Bitchin’ Guys Productions was put on the back burner. We knew Moonbeam was going through some major changes when he swapped out Sliviak and Lutz, his hand-picked Vietnam-based crew, for Washington and Blackwell, his hand-picked Afro-American crew, even though Washington wasn’t nearly as experienced as Sliviak and Blackwell wasn’t even working in his primary job classification. We got word that off duty Moonbeam was now on a Black Power kick, hanging out with black officers and enlisted men only, avoiding white dudes and other minorities.
The day of Liscomb’s return to Ubon, he was named Deputy Chief of Combat Documentation for the 601st and became my supervising officer on Hits of the Week. I didn’t know quite what to expect the first time he stopped by to see me at the editorial section of the ComDoc lab trailer, so I gave him a warm smile and played dumb. “Welcome back, Lieutenant. How’d the interviews go?”
He returned my smile, but I had a sense he was sizing me up. “It was strange, Leary. This time the pilots were interviewing me. ‘Who is it down there we’re killing?’ they asked. ‘Are Thieu and Ky really our friends or are they just ripping us off while we do the heavy lifting?’ And then they asked why a higher percentage of black pilots than white are being sent out on high-risk missions—softening up hot landing zones, for instance, or dodging walls of triple-A up near Hanoi. I said I’d look into it, but when I put in a call to Seventh Air Force in Saigon, all I got from General Gong’s staff was, ‘We don’t have time for bean counting, Liscomb. In case you didn’t hear, there’s a goddamn war going on!’”
I switched off the Moviola and looked up. “Sounds like you had an intense couple of weeks, Lieutenant.”
“Unless they’re called in by troops-in-contact on the ground, how do these pilots know for sure who they’re killing? We’re fighting a ruthless enemy that’s badly outgunned and has to make up for it with guile. Several of the pilots I talked to think they’ve been set up: a lone sniper hides in a friendly village and fires at a Forward Air Controller. The FAC calls in an air strike, napalms the friendly village—men, women, children, grandparents—and voila! we’ve turned the survivors into hard-core Viet Cong. The pilots I talked to don’t like this ‘Free-fire Zone’ business, either—shooting at anything that moves over big stretches of countryside. They’ve heard about too many ground troops who thought they were firing at Viet Cong and ended up finding the bodies of women and kids.”
“I’ve been asking myself a lot of the same questions, Lieutenant. It’s comforting to know I’m not alone. But it still leaves me wondering who’s nuts around here, you and me or the other five thousand nine hundred and ninety-eight people on this base?”
Moonbeam paused a moment and glanced around, giving Zelinsky a little smile at the editing bench behind us. He leaned down and whispered, “You better start running that machine. I don’t know who else should be hearing us.”
I cranked some film through the Moviola, pretending I was paying attention and pantomiming marking usable scenes with my grease pencil. “Tell me again,” he asked me softly. “What were you trying to accomplish with all that rabble-rousing back in San Bernardino?”
“I was trying to waltz my way out of the Air Force. When Nixon invaded Cambodia, we were sure the war would never end. When I got orders for Nam, I didn’t want any part of it.”
“And did you mean what you said at that July Fourth rally about how ‘our objectives in Vietnam are illusory and our means of attaining them are barbaric’?” He looked around and saw that Zelinsky was busy canning up out-takes and trims to store away in the department safe. He put his head back down close to mine, asking, “That was you, wasn’t it, who spoke out against asking more Americans to die while we’re pursuing a failed policy in Southeast Asia? That was you, wasn’t it, who asked why black and Latino GIs are shedding more blood than their white counterparts when they’re still fighting for their civil rights at home? And wasn’t that you who finished to a rousing ovation when you cried out, ‘We must not falter! We must have peace!’?”
I laughed uneasily. “I said that? I think there might have been a UC Riverside co-ed in the front row who got me carried away.”
“From what I could see, you had her spellbound—”
“That wasn’t all,” I blurted. “We had our heads all puffed up because the San Bernardino Sun had given us some good press, never thinking it was just to sell newspapers. When a couple of local limousine-liberal lawyers gave us their business cards, we thought it meant they had our backs, never figuring they were just looking for work. But the Air Force brass has pretty well had their way with us. We hadn’t stopped to figure that being a colonel was what some very tough cookies did for a career. My personal attorney came highly recommended by the ACLU in L.A.—but he turned out to be dripping behind the ears, and he didn’t work for free. So now I’m sending half my paycheck home each month to a bleeding-hearted bozo who forgot to call when he got blown out of the water on every motion he made to keep me stateside.”
“I got a call through last night to the guys at the Movement House. They gave me some good ideas and said you’d be able to help me.”
“The Movement House was boarded up when I left.”
“Had a little trouble paying their rent. We got that straightened out.”
“The guys at the Movement House are down in Santiago, Cuba, getting ready for the fall sugar cane harvest for all I know. They can’t think for themselves and they’re going to volunteer my services, eh? I love you, Rick, but read my lips: I have absolutely no desire to be a martyr. My support group in California was as paper-thin as a cutout movie set. I’m sure as hell not sticking my neck out over here alone.”
“How about if I had a few hundred brothers lined up?”
“We’re living in Lifer Heaven. And they can feed you all the crap in the world about ‘parliamentary democracy,’ but the fact is we’re guests of a military dictatorship. The lifer brass is right at home here. I’m a half-lapsed pacifist making $127 a month. I just want to keep my nose clean, do as good a job as I can stomach and get back to the friendly smog of San Bernardino. Headquarters Squadron. Home. The government already paid for you to go study film at the University of Rochester. USC cinema has promised me I’ll still have a spot when I get out, but the only way I’ll ever afford it is with my GI Bill intact.”
“What about your father? Heard he’s an airline pilot making the big bucks—”
“He’s old school—when you turn twenty-one, you’re on your own in his book.” I hated to disappoint Liscomb, but I was damned if I was going to take a fall for his noble cause. “Come on Rick, give me a break. Right now I’m off the Air Force shit list—I’m eccentric instead of radical, the white dude who plays soul music—”
“But I need your help right now. You’ve had experience organizing and we’ve got something big coming up. Doesn’t it bother you that the racial harmony you’ve helped create ends up making the Air Force a better killing machine?”
I couldn’t help thinking about Moonbeam at People’s Independence Day and couldn’t help
