If you have ever watched old war movies or had the privilege of knowing any fighter pilots or naval aviators or such, you might know the term.
"Buying the farm" is also known as "crashing and burning." It means someone died in a military aircraft accident.
During eighteen months of the three years I lived in Alaska working with F-15 and T-33 pilots of the 21st Tactical Fighter Wing of the Alaskan Air Command, we lost six aircraft.
Two of the pilots "punched out" (utilized their ejection seats) and survived. One was at the beginning of the eighteen months. The other was at the end of that time period.
One crash involved a T-33, which is the trainer version of the F-80, the first jet fighter used by the US Air Force. Used in exercises to imitate a type of Soviet plane that might have been used to invade Alaska at one time, the T-33s were interesting.
An instructor pilot was teaching a student pilot how to re-ignite an engine that goes out on the approach to land.
It didn't.
The plane, built in the fifties, was about as old as the instructor and much older than the student.
And the pyre of smoke from the T-33 crash near the end of the runway was almost visible from the windows of one of the elementary schools on base where the instructor pilot's kids were enrolled. (My kids were in that school, too.)
The other pilots and one passenger died in F-15 crashes.
Many of them were very good friends. Some of them died within an hour after I saw them or I briefed them right before they headed out to fly.
When military members die in an aircraft crash there are a lot of rituals and coded ways of talking about them and about what happened.
"He died doing what he loved," is one that is oft repeated. How he got his tactical call sign and other stories are told during the fighter pilot wake in the lounge of the squadron or the Officer Club bar.
Of course this was the 1980s, so I am using the pronoun "he" because there were no women fighter pilots in those ancient days.
I was one of the first women to have a ride in an F-15, though. That's another story, though. I will tell you about it another time. I flew in T-33s several times, too. They were quite a different kind of ride than the one I had in the F-15.
(And for those of you who have received my meditations and journals since the fall of '99, you have heard some of this before, so I don't mind if you ignore anything I write. Really.)
The thing is, for three years I spent my working life with over thirty guys who strapped themselves into fuselages with jet propelled engines and took off into the wild blue yonder several times a week. Each time they did they were taking their lives and the lives of the men they flew with into their own hands.
Of course there were many things beyond their control. An experienced team of people made sure as best they could that each component part of their jets worked right. They had to trust all of them and they had to trust themselves.
They are all people of faith in very special ways.
Their faith does not have to do with doctrine or dogma or anything taught in Sunday schools or in synagogues or in mosques in ashrams.
Their faith cannot be learned from sermons preached or from teachings given.
As I remember my friends who have died in aircraft crashes -- or who have survived them, I also think of my Uncle Ron who flew Spitfires in World War II as a Royal Canadian Air Force pilot.
Right before I went to Officer Training School I visited my Aunt Betty and Uncle Ron.
He showed me a book written by his Squadron Commander and a piece of paper from a squadron newsletter on which was mimeographed the following poem by an American, John Gillespie Magee, Jr., who flew Spitfires in England before the U.S. entered the war.
Perhaps you know the poem already.
It's called "High Flight," and part of the poem was used by President Reagan at the memorial service for astronauts who perished in the Space Shuttle "Challenger" accident.
High Flight
Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds, — and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of — wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there,
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air. . . .
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds, — and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of — wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there,
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air. . . .
Up, up the long, delirious burning blue
I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or ever eagle flew —
And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.
I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or ever eagle flew —
And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.
http://www.skygod.com/quotes/highflight.html
I first heard of the poem from an F-4 pilot friend who died from the affects of Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma in the summer of 1986. In the fall of 2002, his son, Joel, was killed flying a US Navy F-18. I knew Joel since he and my daughter were in the three year old class at a nursery school co-op in Urbana, Illinois.
And one of my best friends who was an F-18 test pilot was killed in an experimental aircraft during an air show in August of 1995.
They are all part of the "host of witnesses" who are with me in Spirit.
It may seem maudlin to bring their deaths up, but I am more grateful for their lives and their friendship than I am grieved over their passing.
And I appreciate it that you have accompanied during this time of reminiscence.
I thank God for them and I am blessed they were all part of my life. Love is eternal, so I trust we will always be bound together by that Love in which we live and move and have our being. [See Acts 17:28]
http://www.biblegateway.com/quicksearch/?quicksearch=live+and+move+and+have+our+being&qs_version=NIV
This is dedicated to Uncle Ron, to Ben, to Daniel, to Pat, to Jim, to Kent, to Rick, to Fred, to Chris, to George, to Joel, and to everyone who is wiling to give up their lives for their friends. And especially to those who have done that either by dying of by surviving the horrors of war.
May the Lord continue to bless and keep you, Beloved, now and always.
Kathleen Ware Harris © 2013
kwharris777@gmail.com
