Read Online Old Songs in a New Cafe by Robert James Waller - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Robert James Waller
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Khasi Hills toward Assam, the secluded province that curls off main India and lies snuggled up on the left
shoulder of Burma, just short of the Himalayan rise.
At Dinjan, he and the other pilots slept and took their meals in a large bungalow on the fringe of a tea plantation. Well
before dawn, he was awakened by the hand of a servant boy. Now he stands drinking thick Indian tea on the veranda, looking
out toward the jungle where leopards sometimes go.
An open four-wheel-drive command car arrives, and he rides through the heavy night toward an airfield five miles away. Time
is important now, in this early morning of 1943. Since losing an airplane to Japanese fighters over the Ft. Hertz Valley,
the pilots cross there only in darkness or bad weather when the fighters are grounded. He signs the cargo manifest, checks
the weather report, and walks out to the plane.
Like delicate crystal, our liberties sometimes juggle in the hands of young men. Boys, really. Climbing to the top of the
arch at the front of their lives, some of them flew into Asian darkness, across primitive spaces of the mind and the land,
and came to terms with ancient fears the rest of us keep imperfectly at bay.
There was Steve Kusak. And poker-playing Roy Farrell from Texas. Saxophonist Al Mah, Einar “Micky” Mickelson, Jimmy Scoff,
Casey Boyd, Hockswinder, Thorwaldson, Rosbert, Maupin, and the rest.
And there is Captain Charlie Uban. Khaki shorts, no shirt, leather boots, tan pilot’s cap over wavy blond hair, gloves for
tightening the throttle lock. He waits in the darkness of northeast India for his clearance from air traffic control in nearby
Chabua. There are perhaps a dozen planes out there in the night, some of them flying with only 500 feet of vertical separation.
Captain Charlie Uban, Twenty-two years old, five feet nine inches, 141 pounds. Born in a room over the bank in Thompson, Iowa,
when airplanes were still a curiosity and the long Atlantic haul was only a dream to Lindbergh.
Chabua gives him his slot, and he powers his C-47 down the blacktop through the jungle night, riding like the hood ornament
on a diesel truck, with 5,000 pounds of small arms ammunition behind him in the cargo bay. He concentrates on the sound of
the twin Pratt & Whitney engines working hard at 2,700 RPMs, ignoring the chatter in his earphones,
The plane, with its payload plus 800 gallons of gasoline, is two tons over its recommended gross flying weight of 24,000 pounds.
Gently then, Charlie Uban eases back on the yoke, pulls the nose up, and climbs, not like an arrow, but rather in the way
a great heron beats its way upward from a green backwater.
It gets dicey about here. If an engine fails, he does not yet have enough air speed for rudder control. And he’s lost his
runway, so there is no opportunity to chop the takeoff and get stopped. But he gains altitude, turns southeast from Dinjan,
and flies toward that cordillera of the southern Himalayas called the Burma Hump.
His copilot and radio operator are both Chinese. In the next four hours, they will cross three of the great river valleys
of the world: the Irrawaddy, the Salween, and the Mekong. In the place where India, Tibet, Burma, and Yunnan province of China
all come together, the mountain ranges lining these rivers constitute the Hump.
This is the world of the China National Aviation Corporation (CNAC—pronounced “see-knack”). Jointly owned by China and Pan
American Airways, CNAC flies as a private carrier under nominal military control of the U.S. Air Transport Command. In the
flesh, CNAC is a strange collection of civilian pilots from the U.S., Australia, China, Great Britain, Canada, and Denmark.
They are soldiers of fortune, some of the best hired guns in the world at pushing early and elemental cargo planes where the
planes don’t want to go and where most pilots won’t take them. As one observer put it: “All were motivated by a thirst for
shoulder of Burma, just short of the Himalayan rise.
At Dinjan, he and the other pilots slept and took their meals in a large bungalow on the fringe of a tea plantation. Well
before dawn, he was awakened by the hand of a servant boy. Now he stands drinking thick Indian tea on the veranda, looking
out toward the jungle where leopards sometimes go.
An open four-wheel-drive command car arrives, and he rides through the heavy night toward an airfield five miles away. Time
is important now, in this early morning of 1943. Since losing an airplane to Japanese fighters over the Ft. Hertz Valley,
the pilots cross there only in darkness or bad weather when the fighters are grounded. He signs the cargo manifest, checks
the weather report, and walks out to the plane.
Like delicate crystal, our liberties sometimes juggle in the hands of young men. Boys, really. Climbing to the top of the
arch at the front of their lives, some of them flew into Asian darkness, across primitive spaces of the mind and the land,
and came to terms with ancient fears the rest of us keep imperfectly at bay.
There was Steve Kusak. And poker-playing Roy Farrell from Texas. Saxophonist Al Mah, Einar “Micky” Mickelson, Jimmy Scoff,
Casey Boyd, Hockswinder, Thorwaldson, Rosbert, Maupin, and the rest.
And there is Captain Charlie Uban. Khaki shorts, no shirt, leather boots, tan pilot’s cap over wavy blond hair, gloves for
tightening the throttle lock. He waits in the darkness of northeast India for his clearance from air traffic control in nearby
Chabua. There are perhaps a dozen planes out there in the night, some of them flying with only 500 feet of vertical separation.
Captain Charlie Uban, Twenty-two years old, five feet nine inches, 141 pounds. Born in a room over the bank in Thompson, Iowa,
when airplanes were still a curiosity and the long Atlantic haul was only a dream to Lindbergh.
Chabua gives him his slot, and he powers his C-47 down the blacktop through the jungle night, riding like the hood ornament
on a diesel truck, with 5,000 pounds of small arms ammunition behind him in the cargo bay. He concentrates on the sound of
the twin Pratt & Whitney engines working hard at 2,700 RPMs, ignoring the chatter in his earphones,
The plane, with its payload plus 800 gallons of gasoline, is two tons over its recommended gross flying weight of 24,000 pounds.
Gently then, Charlie Uban eases back on the yoke, pulls the nose up, and climbs, not like an arrow, but rather in the way
a great heron beats its way upward from a green backwater.
It gets dicey about here. If an engine fails, he does not yet have enough air speed for rudder control. And he’s lost his
runway, so there is no opportunity to chop the takeoff and get stopped. But he gains altitude, turns southeast from Dinjan,
and flies toward that cordillera of the southern Himalayas called the Burma Hump.
His copilot and radio operator are both Chinese. In the next four hours, they will cross three of the great river valleys
of the world: the Irrawaddy, the Salween, and the Mekong. In the place where India, Tibet, Burma, and Yunnan province of China
all come together, the mountain ranges lining these rivers constitute the Hump.
This is the world of the China National Aviation Corporation (CNAC—pronounced “see-knack”). Jointly owned by China and Pan
American Airways, CNAC flies as a private carrier under nominal military control of the U.S. Air Transport Command. In the
flesh, CNAC is a strange collection of civilian pilots from the U.S., Australia, China, Great Britain, Canada, and Denmark.
They are soldiers of fortune, some of the best hired guns in the world at pushing early and elemental cargo planes where the
planes don’t want to go and where most pilots won’t take them. As one observer put it: “All were motivated by a thirst for
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