Once They Were Eagles (29 page)

Named outstanding freshman in his University of Illinois ROTC unit, he joined the regular Marines the day after Pearl Harbor. He had no thought of aviation but was tested in boot camp in San Diego and selected to go to aviation electronics school in Florida. Commissioned in January, he arrived in Espiritu Santo in July 1943.

“When Boyington introduced himself with a bit about his Flying Tiger tour, I was impressed. He had seen combat and could tell us that the Japanese were not really ten feet tall. We felt we were there purely to fly. No such things as electronics officer, oxygen officer, parachute officer; when we weren't flying, we had nothing else to do.

“I felt I knew what I was supposed to do; I had confidence in the people I flew with and thought the missions were certainly within our capability.

“My first aerial combat taught me about as much as I learned previously or subsequently: you can't afford to get a fixation on anything. I was devoting so much attention to shooting at a plane that I became a target myself, and didn't realize it till I heard something like hail on a tin roof. I went into a split S and lost the Zero. The action moved like a swarm of bees in the general direction of the bombers, but it didn't seem so much an overall movement as split-second glimpses of happenings you had to evaluate in a fraction of a second.

“I got my last Zero on the mission when Boyington went down. I wish, for our sake, that we had not been split up. It would have been wonderful to continue with that group of people. However, by the time we came back from R and R in Australia, for all practical purposes the air war in the Solomons was finished.

“By the time the war was over, I was a Captain, with a wife. I found I enjoyed flying very, very much, and we could fly in first-line airplanes. We traveled a lot. I liked the people. My college had been interrupted, so when I was asked if I wanted a regular commission, I cast my lot with the Marine Corps.

“When the Korean War started, there were no Marines in China, Guam, Philippines; none even in Hawaii. Had it not been for the Korean War, there might not have been any Marines, period.”

Matheson had a distinguished career: service in Guam with John Glenn, a Marine pilot before he became an astronaut and then U.S. senator. After Korea, Mat was in Hawaii three years; commanded the Marine Air Reserve Training Detachment at Norfolk for two years; was head of Shore Development Branch of the Division of Aviation at headquarters for three years; trained to fly helicopters; spent one year in Japan and then three years as Deputy Chief of Staff, G-4, Pacific Marine Corps Headquarters in Hawaii. In 1968 he went to Vietnam as commander of Marine Air Group 36, the largest Marine Air Group ever sent overseas; it consisted of 12 helicopter squadrons at two locations.

His final year of active duty was spent as Chief of Staff of the Development Center at Marine Corps Schools. After retiring with the rank of colonel, he took a position as head of general accounting services for a data processing firm; most recently, he has become an income tax specialist with H&R Block.

As Mat thumbed through my musty War Diary, I asked him what set the Black Sheep apart from other squadrons.

“One thing that seemed to set us apart and also draw us together was the fact that the squadron comprised a number of college students, all bringing their own lore from various parts of the country. Entertainment was pretty much what you could make of it. Many of us liked to sing barbershop harmony, and we each brought with us songs the others didn't know. Our songfests became sort of impromptu gettogethers—it didn't even make any difference if you couldn't carry a tune; we still learned the words. And despite the TV show, very little hard liquor was available on combat tours; it wasn't the drinking. The relationship among the pilots was extremely good; we felt we were part of a group we had confidence in, and I think that is possibly the reason for the success we achieved.

“I don't think I've ever seen people as motivated to go again and again without question and hang it out as much as the Black Sheep and some in the other Solomons' squadrons. I think the shock of Pearl Harbor literally carried me to and through V-J Day, through years of effort to try not only to survive it but to right the wrong that was done there. There was no such impetus for Korea, and you might say there was negative impetus for Vietnam.

“The youngsters who came through flight training just prior to Vietnam were given much better training, both on the ground and in the air, with better equipment, more sophisticated equipment. Their basic education was much better than we had, so they were a lot more capable.

“I don't think we get the draft-card burners in the military now, but we got them in Vietnam because we were at the head end of the ‘me' generation. In Vietnam we began to have trouble with drugs, and found drugs in flight crews. The obvious difference was motivation. I had hundreds of young pilots and thousands of enlisted men. I had to do the best I could to convince them that what they were doing on a daily basis was right, that it was productive and in the country's best interest. At the same time, we were being visited by correspondents
from U.S. newspapers who would tend to ask all the wrong questions and draw all the wrong answers, and go back and paint a wrong picture.

“The highlight of my entire 30 years was those two tours with the Black Sheep. As I look back, never before or since have I been in a situation that was a literal life-and-death effort, where you would knowingly place yourself repeatedly and routinely in these remote air battles hundreds of miles from your base and really think nothing of it. I don't believe it was a matter of stupidity; we had reliance on each other and the airplane. I never found anything subsequent to those two six-week tours that was nearly as challenging or completely demanding of me as a person. Other things were colorful and enjoyable, but in that crucible I made friendships and attachments and long relationships such as I've never again experienced.

“Never since that time have I been given the opportunity to achieve or attain or do anything as notable or noteworthy as I was able to do in those few short weeks with the Black Sheep Squadron.”

Glenn Bowers is one of those rare persons who had his sights fixed on his career goal early in life and managed to achieve that goal. He had completed three years as a zoology and biology major at Penn State when he enlisted in the Marine Corps. After his release from active duty, he returned to Penn State to obtain both his bachelor's and master's degrees, and then started to work for the Pennsylvania Game Commission. Commencing as a wildlife biologist, he worked his way up to the Division of Research, then to Deputy Director, and for the past 18 years Executive Director of the commission.

At his home in Dillsburg, Pennsylvania, Glenn talked forcefully and enthusiastically about the work he and his people in wildlife management are doing in the state. He runs an outfit with over 700
employees and an annual budget of $32 million. The state owns a million and a quarter acres of land used by some 1,300,000 hunters. His regular staff is augmented by 1,500 deputy game protectors who donate most of their time.

“I don't want to break my arm patting myself on the back, Frank, but I think we have one of the best deer management programs in the country, and our waterfowl management is far better off today than it was some years back.

“One of the real drawbacks has been the loss of habitat through development: housing developments, shopping centers, roads, factories, and modern agricultural practices that destroy small game habitat on the farms. Without favorable living conditions, these animals cannot survive, any more than you and I could out in the desert without anything to help us.

“We've taken steps to help some of the species that are most threatened. We've got a fine turkey management program: we do a lot of trapping and transfer to move wild birds into areas that are not now occupied but have the potential for self-sustaining populations.

“As to our deer program, Pennsylvania is about thirty-third in deer population and maybe fourth in human population, but I expect we have about the third highest harvest of white-tailed deer. We have an excellent hunter education program, too; it's mandatory for all new hunters and has substantially reduced the number of hunting accidents, actually by some 90 percent.”

“Let's think back to another kind of shooting. Can you recall joining the Black Sheep? What else do you remember?” I asked.

“I joined not long after I arrived in the South Pacific in October 1943, and it was my first chance to fly the Corsair.

“I remember Boyington was confined to quarters and not released till we went up in combat, the squadron's second tour. A number of us younger guys smuggled whiskey in a coke bottle to him in his hut. We'd rap on the shutter and stuff it in through the opening there.

“I think everybody had some misgivings, flying a plane we weren't all that familiar with. One of the first flights I remember was Torokina on Bougainville, following those big muslin banners—arrows—as to where to glide across the jungle and strafe. The ground Marines reported we killed 106 of the enemy. The thing I recall most vividly was that when we went across the trees, the jungle erupted with thousands of white birds.”

“I also remember New Year's Day, 1944, escorting bombers to Rabaul, and there were Zeros stacked practically from the ground to
36,000 feet. The antiaircraft had crippled a number of bombers, and we kept hovering as long as we could to keep those hordes of Zeros from making final kills.