A KILLER OF LIONS

A Novel Based on the Heroic Deeds of
The Tuskegee Airmen

by

Stan Weisleder

Chaucer Press Books

An Imprint of Richard Altschuler & Associates, Inc.

New York

A Killer of Lions: A Novel Based on the Heroic Deeds of the Tuskegee Airmen. Copyright©2011 by Stan Weisleder. For information contact the publisher, Richard Altschuler & Associates, Inc., at 100 West 57th Street, New York, NY 10019, (212) 397-7233, or RAltschuler@rcn.com.

This e-book was originally published in paperback format by Chaucer Press Books / Richard Altschuler & Associates, Inc.

E-Book ISBN: 978-1-884092-29-9

Paperback ISBN: 978-1-884092-18-3

Paperback Library of Congress Control Number: 2011934554. CIP data for this book are available from the Library of Congress

Chaucer Press Books is an imprint of

Richard Altschuler & Associates, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of Richard Altschuler & Associates, Inc.

This book is a revised edition of the novel previously published under the titles The Black Eagles and Wings of the Panther.

Cover Design: Stan Weisleder

Cover Layout and Computer Graphics: Josh Garfield

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

Author’s Note

Prologue

Epilogue

Afterword

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Almost every book I have ever read made mention of or gave thanks to those who offered their support and encouragement during the long years of putting together a readable manuscript, particularly when the subject matter dealt with a part of our American history.

I first want to thank my wife, Marilyn, and three daughters, Mindy, Sharon, and Jill, for their patience and understanding while putting up with me as I isolated myself during the countless hours of research and dozens of preliminary drafts that are part of the writing process.

I also want to thank my instructors at UCLA, starting with Howard Kaplan, who concentrated on the method of getting started by putting your ideas on paper; Al Brenner, John Herman Shaner, and Lew Hunter, who stressed structure, structure, and more structure above all, as well as good dialogue that is short and to the point; and Les Boston, who showed me how to put flesh on the dialogue and shape it into a readable story.

Since I write everything out in longhand, preparation of a draft can be a tedious chore, which was tackled by Jude Evans during the typing of the final version.

Lastly I want to thank the men and women of “Tuskegee,” without whose sacrifice, and in some cases their lives, this story would never have happened. Particular thanks must go to Col. Lee A. Archer, Jr. (retired), who provided the inspiration for this novel.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

The principal source of material for this story was the official U.S. Army Air Corp microfilm records of the 99^th Fighter Squadron and the 332^nd Fighter Group stored at Maxwell A.F.B.

All of the events and actions described in this novel, with rare exception, basically occurred as presented. Some of the timelines and sequences of events have been slightly altered for ease in storytelling, and some of the names have been changed. Most of the principal characters are represented as composite figures.

PROLOGUE

In 1941, while the rest of the world was being consumed in flames, the United States of America, being the champion and last bastion of democracy, decided to conduct a “noble experiment,” to see if “colored” men could fly military aircraft and, perhaps, be privileged to fight and die for their country.

Thirteen of the top colored applicants from across the country were selected for this experiment, five of whom graduated and won their wings. One of these men was Captain Benjamin O. Davis, Jr., who had graduated from West Point in 1936 after being subjected to four years of the silent treatment by his classmates. These men, under the capable leadership of Captain Davis, formed the nucleus of the all-Negro 99^th Fighter Squadron and, later, the all-Negro 332^nd Fighter Group. These men were not cooks or orderlies or mess boys. They were fighter pilots and officers.

These valiant men, who became popularly known as the “Tuskegee Airmen,” aspired to become pilots so that they could fight fascism and prejudice. What they did not know was that they would have to fight not only the Luftwaffe, but also the U.S. Army Air Corp before they would be recognized.

The term “Tuskegee Airmen” includes not only the 992 pilot-officers who graduated from Tuskegee, but also some 13,000-plus support personnel—men and women ranging from doctors, medics, and nurses to chefs and gravediggers. They served in the 332^nd Fighter Group, which included the 99^th, 100^th, 301^st, and 302^nd Fighter Squadrons. Also included was the 477^th Bomber Group, composed of the 616^th, 617^th, 618^th, and 619^th Bombardment Squadrons, which never saw active service because the war ended before they completed their training.

Chapter 1

A LONG WAY FROM ST. LOUIS

WITH ONE ARMED GUARD on either side of him, Buddy was driven to Jilava Prison on the outskirts of Bucharest, a gray shapeless building originally constructed to house the insane and the criminal population of Romania. After the Romanian government signed a mutual protection treaty with Germany, the ancient structure was converted to a place of detention for political prisoners, enemies of the state and other undesirables.

The guard on his right pressed a Walther P-38 against the back of his neck. The one behind him prodded him with an MP-40 at the base of his spine. He was escorted to a room where he was searched for the third time, this time a strip search, then pushed along a dark hall to a row of cells. In front of one cell, the guards stopped. Buddy heard the click of a key being inserted into a lock, then the sound of tumblers falling, followed by the creaking protest of a heavy door. It was far darker in the cell than in the hall.

He was half lifted and half shoved into the cell. Before he could look back, the huge iron door clanged shut. Once the door was closed, Buddy could see nothing but gray shadows. From the narrow skylight high above he could hear the incessant raindrops.

The cell was cold and damp and reeked of the unmistakable ammonia smell of urine. Even without being able to make out details, Buddy knew that the cell was filthy. Slowly, very slowly, his eyes adjusted to the darkened cell. As his eyes collected more and more stray bits of light, he began to see where the walls began and then to make out the form of a body huddled on a cot against the far end of the cell. He was not alone. Straining his eyes, Buddy caught the glow of gold leaves on the collars of his cell mate. Seconds passed. Then minutes. Slowly, the blurry shape turned familiar. But Buddy could not be sure. He moved his head, trying for a better angle. No. No, it couldn’t be. Too much of a coincidence. But it was.

Taking another minute to be sure, Buddy spoke, “Well, well, well, if it isn’t the Master of the Plantation.”

Major Richardson looked up. He was more annoyed than surprised and acknowledged Buddy’s presence with little more than a nod.

“Fancy meeting you here,” added Buddy. “As the song says, ‘It’s a long way from St. Louis.’ I’ve always meant to ask you, Major, where are you from?”

Major Richardson, not used to being questioned by a junior officer, a colored no less, hesitated the appropriate amount of time before he answered.

“Montgomery, Alabama.”

“Montgomery? Say, isn’t that near Tuskegee?”

Richardson didn’t respond.

Buddy wanted to ask Richardson how he was captured and a million other things, but he had been too long without sleep to articulate the questions. As he stared at the blank wall, the same thoughts ran over and over in his mind until they sounded like a broken record. What the fuck am I doing here? How the fuck did I ever get into this mess? My old man was right. Why didn’t I listen to him? Within seconds he felt himself floating and then went into a deep sleep.

Chapter 2

A TIME LIKE NO OTHER TIME

IT WAS A TIME when “God Bless America” was played in every movie theater across the land and when the country was still licking its wounds and recovering from the initial shock and humiliation of Pearl Harbor. It was a time when newspaper headlines and radio broadcasts revealed one setback after another and when America ached for the taste of victory. It was a time of rationing stamps, air raid drills, blackouts and brownouts, scrap drives and war bond sales, ten cent hamburgers and nickel ice cream cones, boogie-woogie, big bands and when women’s skirts reached to just above the knee. It was a time when loved ones and unloved ones left for far off places they had never heard of, or, perhaps had read about in a travel brochure, only never to return.

A troop of anxious Boy Scouts with their scoutmaster and oversized bass drum waited for the ferry from Governor’s Island at the lower tip of Manhattan, New York City.

As the rusted gate lifted, a platoon of enlisted men disembarked from Governor’s Island Ferry Number Three to the clipped cadence counting of a master sergeant. The soldiers wore doughboy-type helmets, leggings, sagging cartridge belts and had 1903 vintage Springfields on their shoulders, relics which were scheduled to be replaced within the coming months. As the order was given, they came to a smart two-step halt.

The scoutmaster carefully approached the master sergeant, looked up at him with admiration and respect, while the master sergeant looked down at the scoutmaster with contempt, almost laughing, as he motioned for him to position his “men” at the end of the column.

When the master sergeant was satisfied that the Boy Scouts had stopped fidgeting, he called for his color guard to move to the head of the column. They consisted of four enlisted men, one carrying the flag of the United States of America, another carrying the flag of the New York State National Guard, 69^th Infantry Regiment, and two honor guards.

On the order to forward march, they proceeded up Whitehall Street in the direction of the pigeon-stained, graying U.S. Customs House with its nouveau Greek architecture. The soldiers maintained a steady even pace to the cadence counting of the master sergeant while the Boy Scouts of Troop 436 brought up the rear, holding up for all those to see a huge banner that read “Don’t Get Caught In the Draft, ENLIST NOW,” with a solitary Boy Scout at the end of the column pounding away on the huge bass drum hanging from his shoulders.

With the advent of spring, which came late in 1942, there was a lightness in the air. The battles that raged took place some 10,000 miles away. It was hard to believe that we were at war.

It was a time when men and women of all ages and backgrounds were ready and willing to answer the call of their country in its time of need.

Those who lived through it would remember it until the day they died. It was truly a time like no other time.

Chapter 3

WE DON’T NEED ANY NIGHT FIGHTERS

THEY BOTH STARED at each other, each one waiting for the other to speak first.

“C’mon Pop, we’re at war.”

“You are not going to do it, Buddy. You are not. War, that ain’t your war. Your Mama and I, we worked ourselves to the bone so’s you could go to college, get an education and amount to sumthin’, and not waste your life fightin’ the white man’s war. Maybe get killed. Whatchu tryin’ to prove anyway? And don’t tell me again how Hitler wants to kill the colored people till you show me white folks right here want to keep us alive. You’re not going. How many times do I have to say it?”

“But, Pop, if I don’t join and try to be a pilot, I’ll just be drafted and sent to the front lines to get shot at.”

“Wrong. That’s wrong. It’s just as wrong as the first time you said it. If they spend all the time and money to teach you to fly, they’ll for sure put you out in front of the front lines. And then who gets shot at first? But if you get drafted, you got some chance you could stay in the States—maybe even wind up right here in New York, maybe teaching other boys. You got a year and a half of college. They going to get lots of boys can’t read or write.”

“Yeah, I could wind up being a cook or a ditch digger.”

“Don’t get smart, Buddy. You already got me angry.”

“Now you hush your mouth,” added his mother. “Don’t you be sassin’ your daddy like that.”

“Pop, Momma, I’m not trying to be smart. I’m just saying I got a chance to fly airplanes. You know how much I like airplanes. Pop, you were the one who showed me my first airplane. When I was a kid we would watch them take off and land.”

His father clasped his hands and bowed his head. “That was a long time ago.”

“You handed me a dream and now I’m trying to claim it.”

“Maybe I wanted something for you I knew I could never have for myself.”

“Since then everyone’s been telling me that I’ll never become a pilot, saying that’s not for the likes of me and I have to know my place. I can do it. I know I can. Besides, at CCNY, the guys are saying that getting through flight school is like getting a college degree. You’d be proud of me. You want more than anything else for me to get an education. I’ll get it. And you won’t have to spend every penny you can get on me. You can spend some money on yourself. Tell him, Momma. Tell him I got a chance to get ahead, be somebody.”

Annie Bowman took her hands out of the dishwater, wiped a dish on her apron, turned, and spoke.

“Buddy, you got all the chance you going to get right here at Goldwassers Market. They’re going to need you. The way you know that store, they’re going to need you. Don’t go asking for trouble.”

“Your momma’s got sense.”

An edge of anger came out when Buddy said, “And I don’t?”

Buddy Sr.’s eyes narrowed, and his jaw tightened. “You not showing much right now. You ain’t goin’, and that’s final.”

Buddy looked across the kitchen table at his father and then at the ceiling. It had been many years since Buddy had had a whipping, but he hadn’t forgotten the signs. He knew he wouldn’t take a whipping. He didn’t know what he might do to stop one.

He knew he wanted out of that apartment and away from Goldwassers Food Market, and flying could be a way out. They were in a kitchen so small only one person at a time could do anything. There was no dining room. The living room was no bigger than the kitchen. The owner hadn’t painted in twenty years, and the building reeked with cooking odors. Even if his mother did keep the place spotless, it wasn’t fresh. It could never be fresh. Buddy wanted more than anything else to afford a bigger place for his parents. He’d never get that at the food market—even if the manager changed his whites-only policy on promotions.

Buddy took a minute to cool his own temper and said, “Pop, I don’t mean any disrespect, but I have to find out about being a pilot. Give me that much.”

Buddy Sr. buried his face in his hands. When he looked up he let out a long sigh.

“All right. You go. You’ll regret it. The only time you ever get out of Harlem is to go to school. You go on out there in the white man’s world and see what it’s really like.”

*

The next day, Buddy attended his early classes, then, with two classmates, headed for the subway. The three were a study in contrasts. Buddy A. Bowman, Jr. of Harlem—tall, well-developed, sharply chiseled features, sharp eyes—was a little uncomfortable going across town with white classmates, which he tried to cover with feeble jokes. Sidney Kornblum of East Flatbush—short, affable, red hair, freckles, blue eyes—was Jewish but often called “that cute Irish boy.” Dominic Fusilli of the South Bronx—wiry, olive complexion, lots and lots of black hair—was a talker and a scrapper and a chain smoker.

Once they were on the subway, Dominic started a discourse on what a great pilot he’d make, and how he’d be famous and decorated but, in spite of all his accomplishments would still be modest.

With a setup like that, Buddy had to step in.

“You know what your problem is, Dominic? You have a goyische cup. Du bist a yuld. Du bist a groesser yuld. You think like a gentile and are a moron. Right, Sidney?”

“Ungats,” retorted Dominic as he gave Buddy the finger. “And that’s Italian, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

“You got a good ear, Buddy. It’s all in the pronunciation,” said Sidney. “The guttural sounds are what does it. Now if we could only find a way to bleach your skin and teach you how to count money, you could become one of us.”

“And when you have him circumcised, can I do it?” asked Dominic. “Huh, can I, please?”

“Dominic, I wouldn’t trust you anywhere close to me with a knife in your hand, especially anywhere near my privates. But, hey, Sidney, are you sure about all those requirements? I thought you told me that one of the lost tribes turned up in Africa. Schvartze Yiddishers. And I can already count money with the best of the money counters.”

“You may be right, Buddy. I’ll check with the rabbi.”

“Thank you. Thank you, Sidney. Could you do anything for Dominic at the same time?”

“Hah. That’s rich. You two money changers better be asking me to intercede with the priest on your behalf.”

The barbs continued until they reached their station. When they approached the red brick building of the Selective Service and Armed Forces Enlistment Center at 19 Whitehall Street, they saw that a few hundred other men were ahead of them. There were lines and more lines. In the longest line were draftees who had received their personal greetings from the President of the United States of America ordering them to report for their initial examination. In another line were those already classified as 1-A who had been ordered to report for induction. Another line was for those classified 1-C, family men over the age of thirty-five with children but otherwise fit, reporting for their mandatory physical examination. One line was for those classified 1-D who sought to extend their deferments for whatever reason they could think of. The last line was for those classified 4-F who were reporting for re-examination and possible re-classification to 1-A.

From inside one of the examining rooms the command could be heard, “Drop your shorts, bend over and spread your cheeks,” while a young 2^nd lieutenant with a white smock down to his knees, stethoscope dangling from his neck and clipboard under his arm walked down the line and peered into the crevasses of the bare asses with their pimples and rashes and cheeks spread apart.

In addition to the No Smoking signs, patriotic posters of all shapes and sizes with grotesque caricatures of Hitler, Hirohito and Mussolini adorned the walls. They cried out to “Get the Jap” and reminded careless servicemen and citizens alike that “Loose Lips Sink Ships.”

Dominic lit up a Camel and barely got in two drags when a voice shouted out.

“No smoking in here, stupid.”

Dominic grudgingly complied as he groaned at the order.

“What a mess.”

“Yeah,” Sidney said, “this must be what they call ‘organized chaos.’”

They found their way to the main room on the ground floor, which was for volunteers. Four lines led to enlistment officers and their staffs of noncoms. The shortest of the lines belonged to the Army—not many volunteers there. The line for the Marine Corps was longer; the lines for Army Air Corps and the Navy were longer still.

Dominic moved ahead of Buddy and Sidney, picked up an application form, and joined the line. Sidney stepped back so that Buddy could go ahead. As they filled out the short form, they tried to figure out the system.

After a few minutes, Dominic turned and said, “O.K. The guys in line hand this form to that fat sergeant. He talks. The sergeant sends some guys down the hall and sends some guys away. A few guys talk to that movie star-looking lieutenant. We’ll be maybe thirty minutes getting up there.” Sidney and Buddy looked to the front of the line and to the lieutenant who sat behind the desk.

*

Lt. Thomas C. Richardson, III, a sixth-generation American whose grandfather was a cavalry officer under Robert E. Lee, could have stepped right off a recruiting poster. He was the image of the Air Corps pilot in the flesh: tall, good looking, perfect Anglo features, not a kinky hair on his head. He had a degree in Public Relations from Alabama State University where he was a two-letter man, captain of the swimming team, president of Delta Epsilon Pi, and Big Man on Campus. When he found that graduates with his background were not exactly in demand in1940, his fraternity brothers told him he was best-suited to be a soldier of fortune. Liking that idea, he accepted the commission he’d earned in ROTC and applied for cadet training in the fledging Army Air Corps. Soon, he was in training at Kelly Field near San Antonio, and nine months later he won his wings.

*

Sidney laughed. “Yeah, the lieutenant is the movie star, and the fat staff sergeant is his comical sidekick.”

Directly behind Buddy, Dominic and Sidney, three white men in their early twenties, full of cockiness and swagger, closed ranks. One of them nudged the other and motioned in the direction of Buddy, as he rubbed his hands over his crewcut hair.

“I don’t believe it. A coon, a hebe and a dago. What are they doing here?”

Buddy quickly spun around and was ready to haul off when Sidney grabbed his arm. “Ignore them. They’re not worth the trouble you’ll be in if you do it.”

“Hey, Sambo. Maybe you can fly us up some cotton and molasses from down south.”

That was Buddy’s breaking point. It was all he could tolerate. Before the man with the crewcut haircut finished laughing at his comments with his two friends, Buddy pushed past Dominic and Sidney and decked him with a roundhouse right. He never saw it coming. The fat staff sergeant barely raised his head at the brief ruckus. The other two white men picked up their fallen comrade with the crewcut haircut.

When Dominic got to the front of the line, the sergeant was stuffing his mouth with a jelly doughnut and reaching for a cup of stale coffee that almost tipped over. The sergeant took Dominic’s form, glanced at it, then glanced up at Dominic. “Foosilly. What kind of silly name is that?” Before Dominic could answer, the sergeant said, “You sure you don’t wear glasses?” Before Dominic could answer that, the sergeant pointed down the hall. Dominic looked back, grinned, and headed in the direction the sergeant pointed.

Buddy stepped forward, holding out his form. The sergeant looked up but didn’t reach for the form. Instead, he said, “Hey, boy. Whatchu tryin’ to do heah?”

“I’m here to enlist in the Air Corps. I hear you need pilots,” said Buddy proudly.

“You in the wrong line, boy. We sure as hell don’t need no prize fighters.” A smug grin showed that the sergeant liked his kind of joke. “You want the R.A., boy. That’s Regular Army—over the next room. They could use a strong boy like you.”

Buddy’s guts did a flip. Nothing that he had ever read or heard or experienced prepared him for this kind of personal confrontation, but he remained calm. “Sergeant, this is 1942, we’re in a war, I have the skills, and I want to fly for my country.”

“Well, that’s very brave of you, boy. Next in line.”

Buddy turned to Lt. Richardson and said, “Lieutenant, I’m here to join the Army Air Corps. Will you please tell the sergeant to take my application.”

“Son,” answered Richardson, “the last thing we need in the Air Corp are troublemakers. Next.”

Dominic reached out to touch Buddy only to have his hand brushed aside. Buddy said nothing. The young man with the crewcut haircut nursed his aching jaw as he got in the last words. “Besides, we don’t need any NIGHT fighters.”

This time Buddy ignored him. He was intent on locking eyes with the movie star Lieutenant.

Richardson didn’t raise his head to look at Buddy, but he moved his eyes up far enough to make eye contact. With his face entirely expressionless, Richardson made one barely perceptible shake of the head, then let his eyes go back to what he was reading.

Sidney reached out and pulled at Buddy’s arm. “Come on, Buddy, let us get out of here.”

“Us? What do you mean, ‘us get out of here?’ I’m the only one they don’t want.”

“No, Buddy. If you’re out, I’m out too.”

“No, Sidney. If I’m out, I’m out. I don’t need your help.”

Sidney stiffened. “Buddy, I want to say two things. Number one, my people know something about humiliation and discrimination. We’ve been dealing with it for two thousand years. We can argue about what kind and how much but not about the reality. Number two, you’ve got a lot going for you, but you got something that’ll go against you: too damn much pride.”

Buddy didn’t respond. He turned to face the men in line who were transfixed by what they were seeing. With steel in his eyes and voice, Buddy said, “Let my friend back in line.”

Immediately, the line opened, Sidney was drawn in, and Buddy was gone.

Outside the building, Buddy fumed. So that was what his father had warned him to expect. So living in a thirty-block square of Harlem hadn’t exposed him to real bigotry. Sure, he’d been to the Statue of Liberty, the Empire State Building, Yankee Stadium, places like that. Once. And he was going to CCNY where he moved among more white people than he ever had, and many of them were not friendly to Buddy—but nobody there was very friendly to anybody. Besides, the two students he spent the most time with at CCNY were white—not colored. He was well aware of general discrimination, but never had he experienced the open, belligerent prejudice of the sergeant or the condescending dismissal of the lieutenant or to have some wise ass refer to him as a “Night Fighter.”

Towering anger, deep embarrassment, and acute desire for revenge merged into frantic frustration; degrading weakness left him empty, and renewed rage filled him.

In the midst of a hundred thoughts about ways he would show that hostile world what his hostility could do, Buddy asked himself what realistic and reasonable things he might do. Go back to school, wait to be drafted? Try to get a deferment? Enlist and apply for flight school again? And maybe again?

What was he to do?

What could he tell his father?

What could he say to Sidney—or to Dominic?

With no answers to those questions, he turned and went back into the center. He had to take a step toward flying. He couldn’t go back to what was.

When Buddy stepped out of the recruiting station, the cool, salt-tinged breeze from New York harbor swept across his face. He looked up at the ENLIST NOW banner that the Boy Scouts had stretched across Whitehall Street and thought, “O.K. I’ve done it. Enlisted. All colored army. No Army Air Corps. At least not for now.”

Chapter 4

PRIVATE BOWMAN

HE PAID HIS FIVE CENTS and boarded the jerking, grinding subway. He had no sense of how long the ride from South Ferry to 125^th Street took. The little relief that he felt about leaving home the next day was overwhelmed by his anger at that fat sergeant and smug lieutenant, by his dread of what his father would say—or do—and by his apprehension about what would happen.

Buddy was not one to get tied up inside. He was one to go inside and close off the outside. And so he went inside. He relived every moment of that day, bounced back to the day before, to the year before, to childhood, to playmates and girlfriends, to conversations from the past…to everything that had led him to a seat on a subway car and Orders to Report to Active Duty in his hand.

He tried to think of a way he could tell his father he had to enlist in order to apply for cadets and say no more. It’d be easier on both of them. But it was too close to a lie, and Buddy couldn’t lie to his father. He’d have to tell his father that he was right. But then wasn’t his father always right?

About handling problems in high school? About making sure he had a good record? About getting into college? About getting a job?

From the time he could remember, Buddy had listened to his father make the speech. Buddy listened before he started first grade when he was so small that he had to look almost straight up to see his father’s face. He listened when he was in the second grade, the third, fourth, fifth—each year his eyes getting closer to the level of his father’s eyes. He listened at least three times a week to the speech that began, “Son, the most important thing in this world is education. Without education, you got one—maybe two—chances in a zillion to amount to anything. With education, you got one chance out of four or five, maybe even better.”

The speech usually came with the evening meal, and Buddy always listened politely as they sat at the kitchen table, their only table, knowing that his father would soon offer himself as an example.

Annie Bowman would nod each time Buddy Sr. wanted to stress one thing or another. Whenever Annie felt that her husband was coming on too strong, she would butt in by referring to him by his middle name, “Alvin, don’t you be so hard on the boy, “and nonchalantly continue with her chores.

“Look at me. I load 50 pound blocks of ice onto a truck for a white man to deliver. And if I drop a block of ice and it busts, it comes out of my pay. It don’t matter that I could be just as good and friendly with all the customers or keep the accounts straight or anything else the same as a white man. Maybe even better. For damn sure, better than some. No, I can’t never move up to a job that pays more. A colored man is supposed to stay out of sight. An’ no matter what, you don’t cry. You never cry.”

At some point in the speech, Buddy’s father pointed out how much better off he was than most of the men in Harlem. Some of them hadn’t had jobs since the Depression hit in ’29.

But he spent more time talking about the system. “It’s just the way it is …”

“It’s just the way it is” recalled memories from the past. It was on a hot day in July on Lenox Avenue and 126^th Street. Sweltering in the heat with nowhere to go to cool off, Buddy and his friends, Lemuel Washington included, opened a fire hydrant with a borrowed monkey wrench. They rolled and laughed in the clear cool water with nothing on but their underwear. And whenever a car would go by they forced the surging water to arc upwards by putting a milk crate underneath so that it would totally drench the passing vehicle and its occupants. They were having such a good time that no one noticed that the next car was a green, white and black coupe of the N.Y.P.D. Lemuel and the others ran off in all directions without any warning to Buddy, who stood there with the monkey wrench in his hand. That night his daddy gave him one good whipping.

Along with lectures and whippings, Buddy’s father gave him some very special things. For his tenth birthday it was a trip to Yankee Stadium to watch the Yankees play the Boston Red Sox. Excitement was in the air. More people than Buddy had ever seen pushed and shoved, but Buddy and his father got to their seats early. Their own seats. That Buddy could not see over the head of the man in front of him didn’t matter. He had his own seat. When the “Star Spangled Banner” was played, he stood up as he was taught to do in school, placed his right hand over his heart, sang the words out proudly, and looked up at his father for that assuring smile of approval. When Buddy sat down, he made eye contact with another little boy about his age. Maybe exactly his age, maybe celebrating his birthday. Buddy smiled at the little boy who cautiously smiled in return, then spoke. “How come you’re black? And why do you smell funny?”

Memory of the incident stung the ten year old Buddy more than if he were hit by the bat.

The excitement of the noisy crowd and the umpire’s ringing command “play ball” were far more compelling than some kid’s comment, and came to his rescue. Then, during the seventh inning stretch, with the Yankees leading six to three, Buddy was swept up by something even more exciting than the ball game. A sound came from above. A reflection of light caught his eye. Looking into the cloudless blue sky, Buddy saw for the first time a Gee Bee, bright yellow with streamlined covers over extended wheels. The oversized radial engine hummed and whined and roared and sang a magical song as the plane went through a series of loops and stunts for the spectators below. Buddy was in awe. All he could say was, “Look, Pop,” as he pointed his finger skyward.

“That’s an airplane, son. The man flying it is the pilot. Going to be lots of airplanes in the future they tell me.”

On the way home, Buddy asked more questions about the airplane than about the ball game. The next day, he told his best friend, Lemuel Washington, that he’d be up there some day. Lemuel responded with great confidence, “Colored boys don’t get to fly airplanes. They maybe gets to clean ’em.”

Buddy knew he would fly. He played at flying. He became a good reader so he could read about flying. He asked for a model airplane, and his father helped him build one. Buddy built so many more that his little room wouldn’t hold them. Balsa wood airplanes were on his dresser, in his closet, and hanging from the ceiling. He pinned articles and pictures about flying from newspapers and magazines on his walls and kept them long after they were yellowed and frayed.

Across the years he accumulated his heroes and took his inspiration from them. Buddy had never valued those heroes more than he did on the way home from the enlistment center. At the top of his list was Eugene Bullard, who flew with the Lafayette Escadrille during World War I, because his own country would not accept him. There was Bessie Coleman, a woman no less, who was the first colored to qualify for a pilot’s license in the whole country. And he could never forget Willa Brown, who looked more like a sexy movie actress than an accomplished stunt pilot. They overcame their obstacles. With no thought or concern that another passenger might hear him, Buddy said aloud, “I will, too.”

“Too damn much pride,” Sidney had said. Better than too little, Buddy thought. Adam Clayton Powell, Pastor of the Abyssinian Baptist Church where Buddy and his family attended services every Sunday, stressed during his sermons, Pride. I got to have some pride about who I am. He remembered that it was in his freshman year at George Washington High School that he first began to think about who he might be. Who were his people? Who were his ancestors? Some forgotten names on some forgotten ship’s manifest long since lost? He found a few answers and even more questions, but even so, he felt the pride. He could feel it in his bones. His school was truly a melting pot, and students—some well meaning and some not—asked others about their heritage. Whenever somebody asked Buddy, he proudly answered, “My ancestors were killers of lions” and with anger boiling up in him, “I do not smell funny.”

While in his junior year, this feeling was punctuated by a knock-down, drag-out brawl with one of those smart-aleck Irish kids from over on Dyckman Street. Buddy had enough of his snide remarks and racial insults but did not expect the resulting three-day suspension. His father was understandably irate but at the same time secretly admired Buddy for “standing up.”

In his senior high school year he did a report on the American Indian at the Museum of the American Indian located in, of all places, Harlem. Browsing through old photographs that dated back to the days following the Civil War he came upon at least a dozen that depicted colored cowboys and colored cavalrymen of that era. He had sat through a number of cowboy and Indian movies and always wondered and asked the questions, “Where are they? Where are the colored cowboys and cavalrymen? Didn’t they exist?”

He could do the 100 yard dash in just under eleven seconds, the 440 in one minute, ten seconds, and the mile in just under five minutes. College track coaches wanted him. The coaches knew he would do better in college. After all, he was colored. And everybody knew that colored boys could run. That’s all they did in Africa. It was in their blood. Buddy turned down all their offers without explanation.

Buddy wondered for a moment whether his pride had kept him from gaining something valuable from college athletics—and whether his pride might keep him from flying. But, no, what happened in the Enlistment Center was not the way it’s supposed to be. The American way is supposed to be working hard and getting somewhere. For everybody.

As soon as that thought registered, it struck Buddy that hard work hadn’t got him anywhere at Goldwassers Food Market on 125^th Street and Seventh Avenue where he worked part time and summers. Try as he might, he could never move into a job out front, not as a bagger and certainly not as a cashier. He was told he had to wait his turn at seniority. But even when he had seniority and fully expected to be promoted, he saw each opening filled by some Irish kid from over on East 110^th Street or by some Greek or German or Italian who had to ride two busses and the subway to get to the store.

Each time, he was disappointed, but each time, he talked with his father who assured him, “It’s not right, but you can’t get promoted at the food market if you’re not working at the food market.”

Well, he wouldn’t be working at the food market anymore. He’d be soldiering. The thought comforted him. All those patriotic posters had produced a very positive response. Yes, it was action, but it was duty, too. It was his country, too.

Lemuel Washington had to add in his two cents worth as he was prone to do. “Man, you crazy? Sheeiiit! How many times I done told you? A million? The only ways they gonna make you an officer is if they makes you general of the garbage trucks.”

And it was his subway stop that Buddy almost missed, but as he stepped out at 125^th Street and Lenox Avenue, he felt back at home. He decided not to take the trolley but to walk the six blocks. He could actually smell the pavement and the sidewalk as he walked along well-known streets to the three story walkup at 350 West 119^th Street. The familiar sights and sounds protected him. He was safe from the judgment of his classmates and the stares of strangers at the center. Maybe the apartment and the food market weren’t so bad after all. Maybe they were a good trade-off for being safe from bigotry.

No. On second thought, Buddy wanted to be free from bigotry wherever he went. He was leaving Harlem, and he swore that he had taken his last lesson in racial discrimination.

When he reached his building, the thought of what his father and mother would say hit him again. Well, he just had to tell them everything. Inside, his mother, who was cooking, and his father, who was reading the paper, questioned him with their eyes, as only they could. Buddy greeted them, then quietly and slowly said, “I’ll remember this day as long as I live. Pop, you were right about what I’d run into. Let me just tell you all of it.”

Annie Bowman put bowls of hot soup on the table, and they ate as Buddy talked. Buddy’s father listened, saying nothing, until Buddy told them about going back into the enlistment center, then he exploded, “You enlisted? You enlisted! That’s what you were not supposed to do.”

Buddy kept his voice very soft. “Pop, I want something better for myself, same as you do. And this is a first step.”

“Should I salute you, PRIVATE Bowman? If I wait until you’re an officer, I might be so old I can’t raise my arm.”

Annie Bowman watched and listened as she gently moved her spoon around her bowl. First one, then a second tear trickled from her eyes.

“Pop, Momma, it’s not that bad. The recruiting sergeant said that with my year and a half of college plus the fact that I’m in ROTC, I’m sure to get a very important assignment while waiting to be selected for pilot training.”

“Son. It’s not like we never wanted you to fly or anything like that. We just don’t want you gettin’ hurt in a war that’s not yours.”

“I got to go. You’d go, Pop, if you were twenty.”

Buddy’s father started to speak, then stopped. He stood, paused, looked at Buddy, and said, “I’m going to bed.”

Buddy talked with his mother a few minutes, telling her how grateful he was to have them for parents and how much he loved them. They fell into silence. After a few minutes, Buddy dropped to one knee beside his mother’s chair and they embraced. He rose, gazed at her, and said good night.

The next morning, he was up very early and without a sound got ready to leave, then wrote a note.

Dear Pop and Momma,

You’ve always been right about things, and I’ll never need a reminder of that, but I have to go even if it is wrong.

I’m going to hope that something good will happen, and if it doesn’t, I’ll use what happens as a big lesson. I appreciate you more than I can tell you, and I love you very much.

He signed the note, placed it on the kitchen table, and left. On the sidewalk, he stopped, took one last look, memorizing the scene and fixing the moment in his mind, then walked away.

Chapter 5

THE JOCK STRAP OF THE ARMY AIR CORPS

BUDDY ARRIVED AT THE Recruitment Center early. While one bus was already pulling away from the curb, men were boarding another. The nearer Buddy got, the slower his pace became. The recruits were not well-dressed and they didn’t look very clean. A soldier with corporal’s stripes where staff sergeant’s stripes had been leaned against the bus and talked without stopping. Buddy moved past the man and caught the smell of body odor and beer.

When most of the seats were taken, the corporal stepped aboard and addressed the recruits. “Good morning, gentlemen. I call you gentlemen but you know what you really are. Welcome aboard the non-stop luxury tour bus to Camp Upton, which is just outside of Albany. But as you will learn, how close to Albany it is doesn’t tell you whether it’s hot or cold, for there is something about the weather at a military base that defies explanation. The nearby city or town may have its four seasons with reasonable, predictable conditions. Not so with the military installation. Now, I don’t know whether it’s some weird act of God or that the Army hired geo-graphic and other government experts to find odd places where the winters would be excruciatingly cold and the summers unbearably hot, where rain and sun both seem relentless, but where conditions would also be susceptible to instant change without warning. It’s always that way.” Buddy groaned. The corporal was like the most tedious of his college professors: carrying a ton of information and observations that nobody wanted but unloading it anyway because he had a captive audience. Sleep would be a relief.

The corporal wrapped up his lecture on weather, paused to let some additional recruits board the bus, then continued. “At lovely and picturesque Camp Upton, during the next five days, you will be weighed, measured, tested, processed, inoculated, indoctrinated and otherwise pissed on by the harsh realities of introduction to military life …”

He made it sound quite cheery. Buddy drowsed off and remembered little of the ride to Camp Upton. For the next five days he remembered the corporal’s preview.

Buddy stood in lines, one after another. He got undershirts, but there were no shorts, so he stood in line at that station for a second time. At the station where shoes were being handed out, men asked for larger sizes and for smaller sizes, but they all got the same response: “OK, here you go, 10D should be just right.” Socks and toilet articles were piled on top of boots, two caps, four complete uniforms and a parka. Only then did Buddy get a duffel bag to hold everything.

One day it was five hours in lines and four in lecture rooms, and the next day was the reverse. Every day included an hour for meals three times a day; two hours of being dressed down, chewed out and spat upon, from three to thirty minutes at a time, being told that all recruits were ignorant, incapable and unworthy, but, by God, that they’d be soldiers or dead in the process.

Buddy endured it, but barely. ROTC was nothing compared to this. His clenched fists rarely relaxed. He wrote home only once during those five days. A postcard. All it said was, “I miss you, Buddy.”

Capping those days was the news that he would go to Wheeler Army Air Corps Base in Macon, Georgia for sixteen weeks of basic training. Buddy also endured that—in part because of the talk on the long train ride. One card player said to the others, “You know the word sadistic? Those drill sergeants are walking definitions. That’s what I heard.”

“Yeah,” another said, “a guy from my old street told me that they get their jollies when somebody breaks. They get happy when some recruit starts screaming, ‘I can’t take it anymore. Let me out.’”

“That’s what basic is for. They load it on you. It lets up after that.” The speaker caught Buddy’s eye and said, “Ain’t that right?” as though he sensed there was something special about Buddy.

Buddy didn’t have to answer. Almost everybody seemed to know somebody who’d gone through basic and all of them were eager to report what they’d heard.

“Those instructors get right in your face and talk so loud they could be heard a mile away. And some of them spray-spit when they talk.”

“They like to be called names like ‘Old Iron Ass’.”

“Well, I was listening to three guys I went to high school with and they said don’t ever do anything that gets their attention. Don’t be first on anything. Don’t be the last. Don’t get mad. Don’t laugh. Don’t forget anything they ever tell you to do. If they say take showers between 8:00 and 8:30 at night, you don’t go close to the shower before that time and you don’t stay in there one second after that time.”

“Cousin of mine been in the Army twenty-five years. He says that’s the way to do it all the time. Don’t let any sergeants or officers notice you. Always say, ‘yessir’ and ‘nosir’ and always be vague when you answer a question.”

“And don’t ever volunteer for anything.”

Buddy didn’t talk very much and never played cards, but he listened to the talk. He decided that he’d be tough and serious. He wouldn’t show one ounce of emotion. He wouldn’t try to get lost in the middle; he’d stand off to the side and look straight ahead. He did just one more pushup than anybody else. He ran one step faster than anybody else. He climbed the rope one second faster than anybody else. He scored a few points higher on every test.