Читать книгу LIVING THE FAITH OF OUR FATHERS - Donald E. Wilson - Страница 3

Every life reaches a transition point; a time when we turn a corner and head in a direction that has no turning around. Such was my case on that hot day in June 1954, when I boarded the American airlines flight in route to San Francisco California. Walking out to the plane brought back memories of so many men who had followed the same route during World War Two and Korean conflicts, telling loved ones tearful good buy’s, as they headed for unknown destinations.

Now, though the Korean War hostilities had ended a few months earlier, I was sharing some of the same emotions as I headed for uncertainties that awaited me in my first Air Force duty station as a brand new Second Lieutenant. Of course Alleen was there to see me off along with our families, and while I was not going to war, as far as I knew, I was going to the Far East, still unsettled after an uneasy truce in Korea that seemed shaky at best.

Since Alleen and I had been married only nine months, the prospect of undergoing our first separation of at least a year’s duration was especially painful. I had just finished a three month accompanied tour in Air Transportation School at Lowry Air Force Base, Colorado. We remember those three months and the small combination living room, roll away bed and kitchen apartment, a few blocks from the Colorado capital, an exciting time for newly weds, and separation did not sit well with either of us.

Of course our families were part of the farewell party, and were sharing some of the same concerns of thousands of other families in two previous wars. While I did not know it at the time, my family’s life would change dramatically during the next year, when a near fatal automobile accident changed my mother forever.

When I arrived in California, I caught a bus to Parks Air Force Base, about 25 miles from San Francisco, California. After two weeks of processing, we boarded a Trans-Ocean airliner destined for Japan; a long and trying ordeal. At that time Jet transports were not yet a part of transcontinental transportation, and the World War Two vintage C-54 reciprocating engine transports needed three grueling days and two mid-pacific stops in route to Japan.

On the trip across the vast Pacific, we had two types of scenery, clouds and oceans. Hawaii was our first refueling stop, and the long flight stretched the plane’s fuel to the maximum. The half-way point to Hawaii, was referred to as the “point of no return,” and that meant no turning back. The vast shark infested waters below took on a rather ominous appearance, reminding me of the movie, The High and Mighty,with John Wayne. So, a two hour stop on that Pacific paradise, along with the opportunity to take a shower, was more than welcome.

While I had heard of Hawaii for much of my life I never dreamed of going there. That two hours lay over only made me wish I would never leave. I only wished then that Alleen could have been with me, and in a card I sent her from the terminal I promised that some day I would bring her there. Little did I know then that eight years later, the Air Force would send me, Alleen, and our two children, for a three year assignment to Hickam Air Force Base, and we would live in officer’s quarters about two blocks from where I was at that moment. I did visit the terminal flower shop before we re-boarded, and sent her a beautiful Orchid lei that she could wear to her sister Edna’s wedding the following day.

All too soon, we boarded our plane and headed for the next refueling stop, the legendary Wake Island, the place where a hand full of Marines held off the Japanese forces in the opening days of World War Two. The island was only a small dot in the Pacific, with no trees and only a lonely air terminal and refueling station, and the remains of some an old rusting Japanese landing craft. You could see the Pacific from any spot on the treeless island: not exactly my vision of a tropical paradise. I cannot imagine what it must have been like in those dark days of 1942 to be assigned to the last remnant of a vanishing perimeter as the Japanese gained near complete control of the South Pacific. Our three day journey ended a day later as we landed at our destination, Tokyo Japan.

The trip gave me plenty of time to reflect on my life; where I came from, Alleen’s entrance into my world, and my decision with her blessing to serve my country. That reflection provides the before and after of the story I tell in the following pages.

The story of two lives entwined in forty years of American history is complex at best. Nor, would that story be complete without including two other lives that indirectly provided the examples and above all the faith, without which we would not be who we are. They were our fathers: Charles P. Wilson (Charlie), and James A. Watson, Jr., (Jim). So, the following pages, in effect, provide not just an autobiography but a seamless experiential history of six decades of American history as told through four lives enmeshed together in a voyage through the significant events of the twentieth century.