Posted on 10/14/2001 2:39:41 PM PDT by Jean S
Patuxent is about 30 miles away, across the Chesapeake Bay, and though the jets occasionally cruise over, they've never done anything like this. It makes sense that they would use the Wicomico River to practice; there's nothing here, no one to see them.
I wish I could paint the picture for you. It was a beautiful sight. They looked like two eagles courting, if you know what that looks like, these two shining birds circling each other, higher and higher, closer and closer, engines screaming until one plane broke away and went straight up into the sky where it stalled and plummeted back to earth, the second plane doing the same a little lower, reengaging, passing within what looked like feet of the first.
This went on for about three minutes before I looked around completely dumbfounded at what I was watching and realized I was the only one watching.
The only one.
My neighbors were gone for the day and there was no boat traffic on the river, and across the water, directly under the planes, there's nothing but wildlife preserve.
So I stood there, alone, watching, watching my protectors prepare and I burst into tears.
I don't know why, a combination of elation and fear and sadness and pride, I guess. I didn't care. But then I thought, what does a person do in a situation like this? So I ran back in the house and grabbed our American flag and ran back out to the end of our neighbor's pier and started waving it over my head, yelling, "Go get 'em, boys! Go get 'em, goddamn it!" with tears streaming down my face, jumping up and down, yelling over and over like a maniac, as loud as I could.
They stayed for about 15 minutes, looping, circling, flying away and returning, thundering over the nothingness, and the whole time I waved my flag until they finally broke away and started south, back, I assume, toward Patuxent. But their departure felt more final than that.
It felt like they were not heading back to Patuxent but to war, right that minute, and it was awful.
I glanced up the river again and saw I had been wrong; I hadn't been watching all this alone. A waterman who crabs that stretch of river every day had come around a bend and stopped his boat to look up, too.
And he was out on his boat in the middle of nowhere, like me on my pier, in the middle of nowhere, waving his American flag over his head, waving his arms, agape at the sight of his protectors preparing. That's all we could do; two little people at the end of our desolate finger of land in this great big world, waving flags at pilots who couldn't possibly see them.
And I thought, united we stand.
Jeff Dean is a freelance writer who wrote this for the Wilkes-Barre Times Leader.
It's the sound of freedom. I never get tired of it.
And thanks JeanS for the thread!!!!!!
on a motorcycle web site the other day a guy posted pics of a B-52 that made a bunch of passes right over his house. he said the windows shook and the pics were amazing. this was in arkansas.
BTTT
This article brings tears to my eyes everytime I read it. I am so proud of our military.
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