Barbara Bellmon referred to as “Marjorie’s Young Man.” Jack had left the Jaguar in Marjorie’s care while he was off on what was euphemistically called “temporary duty.”
Jack had been assigned to Fort Rucker when he finished basic training. He was not the only young man with a commercial pilot’s license to be drafted—although as far as Bellmon knew, he was the only one with an Air Transport Rating (ATR) in multi-engine jet and piston aircraft—or to decide that two years’ service as an enlisted man was preferable to three years as a lieutenant, and some provision had been made to use their special talents.
Not nearly enough provision, in Bellmon’s opinion. He regarded the army regulations that governed people like Jack as incredibly stupid, to the point where he’d written the assistant chief of staff for personnel about them.
It would be a sound Army policy, he had written, to send young men possessed of a college degree and a commercial pilot’s license, with instrument ticket, before an officer selection board. If they got through that, they could be commissioned, sent to a short course in how to be behave as an officer, then another short flying course, to familiarize themselves with military flying, and then be sent to a unit.
That would, he had written, provide the Army with experienced junior officer pilots in far less time than it presently took to train young officers how to fly. Based on what he called “an informal survey of such enlisted men” (by which he meant that he had sought out and spoken with the dozen or so at Fort Rucker), an “overwhelming majority” (by which he meant all but one of the men he had talked to) had expressed willingness to serve as pilots, even if that meant service in Vietnam if the Army would permit them to do so.
What they were not willing to do was serve more time in the service than other draftees. The Army, so far as Bellmon was concerned, compounded the original stupidity of not directly commissioning such young men by adding what they regarded as a punishment for having gone to college and knowing how to fly.
If they accepted a commission, which meant they would have to serve three years in uniform instead of two, that three years would start the day they were commissioned, with no credit given for the time they had spent as enlisted men, which would be at least six months, and often longer. And then this stupidity was further compounded, should they volunteer to fly, by recomputing the three years’ service required to start the day they were awarded their wings.
The reply to Bellmon’s letter from the assistant chief of staff for personnel said, in effect, and more or less politely, We don’t try to tell you how to run Army Aviation, please don’t try to tell us how to run our officer procurement programs.
Bellmon was very sympathetic to Jack Portet’s refusal to accept a commission, but he often thought that his mother and father—especially his mother—were spinning in their graves at the thought that Marjorie’s Young Man was not a commissioned officer and gentleman.
What Jack would ordinarily have done at the Army Aviation Center was become a teacher of navigation, or radio procedures, or something similar in ground school, or find himself assigned to the Army Aviation Board, or the Instrument Examiner Board, where there were many places an experienced pilot forbidden to fly could make himself useful.
Private Portet, because of his ATR, had been assigned to the Instrument Board. That raised the number of ATRs at the Board to two. The other belonged to Major Pappy Hodges, the president of the Board.
When Private Portet opened a bank account at the Bank of Ozark, the teller on duty was Miss Marjorie Bellmon, on her first job out of college. Bellmon thought privately that his previously levelheaded daughter had suddenly lost her senses. His wife called it “love at first sight.” Bellmon thought of it as pure and unbridled lust at first sight, with Marjorie cooing like a dove, and Jack pawing at the ground like a stallion in heat.
At first, Romeo and Juliet had thought, with good reason, that they were lucky. Jack had immediately been declared an “essential to mission” enlisted man, which would keep him from being stolen by other aviation activities who would kill to have someone with an ATR. That meant he would spend the remainder of his draftee service at Fort Rucker, which meant he would