for Veterans Day...a poem by Marilyn Nelson about the Tuskegee Airmen
Lonely Eagles
For Daniel “Chappie” James, General USAF and for the 332nd Fighter Group Being black in America was the Original Catch, so no one was surprised by 22: The segregated airstrips, separate camps. They did the jobs they’d been trained to do.
Black ground-crews kept them in the air; black flight-surgeons kept them alive; the whole Group removed their headgear when another pilot died.
They were known by their names:
“Ace” and “Lucky,” “Sky-hawk Johnny,” “Mr. Death.” And by their positions and planes. Red Leader to Yellow Wing-man, do you copy?
If you could find a fresh egg
you bought it and hid it in your dopp-kit or your boot until you could eat it alone. On the night before a mission you gave a buddy your hiding-places as solemnly as a man dictating his will. There’s a chocolate bar in my Bible; my whiskey bottle
is inside my bed-roll.
In beat-up Flying Tigers that had seen action in Burma, they shot down three German jets. They were the only outfit in the American Air Corps to sink a destroyer with fighter planes. Fighter planes with names
like “By Request.” Sometimes the radios didn’t even work.
They called themselves “Hell from Heaven.” This Spookwaffe. My father’s old friends.
It was always maximum effort: A whole squadron of brother-men raced across the tarmac and mounted their planes.
My tent-mate was a guy named Starks. The funny thing about me and Starks was that my air mattress leaked, and Starks didn’t. Every time we went up, I gave my mattress to Starks and put his on my cot.
One day we were strafing a train.
Strafing’s bad news:
you have to fly so low and slow
you’re a pretty clear target.
My other wing-man and I
exhausted our ammunition and got out. I recognized Starks by his red tail
and his rudder’s trim-tabs. He couldn’t pull up his nose. He dived into the train and bought the farm.
I found his chocolate, three eggs, and a full fifth of his hoarded-up whiskey. I used his mattress
for the rest of my tour.
It still bothers me, sometimes: I was sleeping on his breath.
WHITE WASHING HISTORY...THIS IS FASCISM
The US Government has quietly removed a memorial to Black soldiers who died in World War II from the Netherlands American Cemetery in Margraten, South Limburg. The move follows a complaint from the right-wing Heritage Foundation to the American Battle Monuments Commission.