It had been a long flight from Washington aboard Director McCone’s private plane, with one refueling stop in Tampa, Florida. Happy to touch down we practically tumbled out of the plane, stretching our legs and waiting for the base bus to pick us up.
“What’s that?” Bob Manning asked, gesturing at a sleek, black jet aircraft taxiing to the end of the runway where we had just landed.
“Don’t know,” I answered. “Never seen anything like that. What are those things under the wings?” I asked, referring to the droppable skids that supported the wingtips when the plane was fully fueled.
“I think it’s a U-2,” Ralph McLean said.
Ralph was an officer in the Marines assigned to the agency in a special program, as was Mike Deuel. I figured he had seen one before at some military base.
“Yeah, I think you’re right, Ralph,” someone else said. By now we all watched intently as the plane prepared for takeoff. We whipped out our cameras, everyone wanting a photo. The U-2 had gained international notoriety in the spring of 1960, when an agency pilot, Francis Gary Powers, had been shot down flying a high-altitude reconnaissance mission over Russia.
Powers, who remained in Soviet custody for two years, had been sent home in February 1962 as part of a prisoner exchange. The incident caused increased tensions between the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. It also caused worries within the agency, because Powers had failed to autodestruct his aircraft before ejecting, and so the Reds were probably able to recover or reconstruct some of the plane’s secret equipment.
As JOTs we didn’t know any of this at the time. We only knew the U-2 was an amazing-looking airplane, and we watched, fascinated, as the pilot started his takeoff and accelerated down the runway. As the plane gained speed, its wings, which could only be described as droopy, visibly lifted, and the wheel struts attached beneath the tips dropped away. Designed by the technicians at the famed Lockheed Skunk Works in Palmdale, California, the U-2 needed its extra-long wings for efficient cruising at high altitudes. But on takeoffs, when the fuel tanks were full and the wings sagged, the struts kept the tips from dragging on the runway, and when those wings lifted in takeoff they almost seemed to flap like a bird’s.
As soon as he had the wheels up the pilot must have given the engines full throttle, because the U-2 mounted an angle of ascent steeper than I had ever seen. It shot up into the air and soon disappeared from sight, mightily impressing us observers on the ground.
At Fort Sherman we settled into a small section of a large, concrete barracks, nothing fancy but adequate. Just like at the Farm we would not be spending much time there. We joined a group of about a hundred military officers sent to Panama from all over the United States to take this course, which was given only twice a year.
Except for our group and a platoon of SEALs, all of the men were young Army officers. Such a large class embarking on the two-week course surprised us, but we felt no less eager to get started.
I’m not sure why, but we also sensed the others were looking askance at us unlabelled civilians intruding into a military training program. Maybe they suspected who we were, or they wondered whether we’d be able to keep up. Either way, that perception piqued our competitive spirit, and we resolved to make a good showing.
After dinner the first evening our instructors assembled us behind the barracks for what they billed as an administrative briefing. Instead they gave us an introductory exercise in the nearby jungle. It was nearly dark. Just a walk through the jungle to a nearby clearing, they told us. We milled around before they lined up our groups, one behind the other.
“Okay, let’s move out,” one instructor announced, leading the first group into the thick vegetation. Soon we could barely see, as is the case near the equator when night falls quickly. Other instructors positioned themselves along the path while we moved forward into the darkness, which had become almost total.
“Hold hands,” another instructor ordered. No one argued.
“I can’t see a damn thing,” said Bill Watkins, a former Marine helicopter pilot.
“It’s like walking in a bottle of ink,” I heard another man say.
“I hope all the snakes are asleep,” someone else muttered, and everyone chuckled.
We half-stumbled through thick undergrowth up and down small knolls, holding on dearly to the hands in front of and behind us. The trees had sharp needles. I didn’t hear much conversation, just a few curses as people tripped or encountered the needles, but otherwise we stayed quiet. Soon we arrived at another clearing, relieved to be out of the ink bottle.
The instructors had set us up, but it was an effective learning experience. They knew that our inability to see while trying to move amid unfamiliar jungle surroundings would unnerve us. When they led us from the well-lit clearing behind the barracks into the darkness, the sudden change gave our eyes no chance to adjust to night vision, and the brief walk didn’t allow time to adjust, either.
The experience created a memorably negative first impression about nighttime movement in the jungle. But we learned later that the impression was false. Our instructors would correct it over the two-week program, which would start the next morning.
“Be sure to keep a firm grip just behind his head,” the instructor told me, as the 2-foot boa constrictor threw a couple of coils around my arm and started to hug.
The snake wasn’t big enough to hurt anyone, particularly during a controlled demonstration. The point was to show the spot just behind the head that would cause the reptile to go limp if you squeezed. I was getting my hands-on shot at seeing how it worked.
“Can I squeeze now?”
“Go ahead.”
As I did I could feel the coils loosen and fall off my arm. I handed the snake to the instructor and was pleased to do so, wondering if I’d ever need that bit of information for real.
How the hell would I get hold of the head of a big one?
The constrictor demonstration marked just one part of a first morning of useful briefings about jungle animals, birds, snakes, trees, plants—edible and inedible. All were interesting, informative and of practical use over the next two weeks, as well as to those of us headed to Africa or Southeast Asia.
Not so the course on rappelling. In a jungle setting the prospect surprised our little group, though not many of the military officers. They had obtained advance knowledge of what to expect during the two weeks and knew what was coming, while we JOTs mostly had to wait and see what each day would produce.
We had become fairly competent at rappelling back at the Farm, where we practiced it regularly. Here it was included not as a jungle skill but a confidence builder.
We loaded onto trucks and drove inland. After dismounting, we walked for half an hour up to the top of a precipice overlooking the Chagres River. It wasn’t exactly a waterfall, but here and there the footing was slippery, because water lightly flowed across the rocks and fell about 150 feet to the river. We couldn’t see all the way down until we got to the edge, where the rappelling ropes had been secured. What we could see, about two-thirds of the way, was a rock shelf where we would change ropes.
At the Farm we had practiced on a 20-foot tower, and some of us had gotten good enough to make it to the ground in one or two pushes. This looked considerably more
