“So I said, ‘Sir, with respect, yes, sir, I am a little.’
“That was in the days when I really believed ‘When all else fails, tell the truth.’ I wish I still did.
“Anyway, he puffed up like a pigeon and asked why. And I told him I had an ATR and knew how to work the radios. I don’t think he believed me. He kicked me out of class. Told me to go to my BOQ and stay there.
“The next morning, I was summoned before a bird colonel. I wasn’t as good at reading the brass as I am now, but I could tell he was nervous. He was dealing with the son of a Medal of Honor winner, a graduate of Hudson High, who had lied.
“He said, ‘Lieutenant, did you tell Lieutenant Corncob-Up -His-Ass that you hold an Airline Transport Rating?’
“ ‘Yes, sir, I did,’ I said, and showed it and my logbook to him.
“I could tell he was relieved.
“He said, ‘Eleven hundred hours? Two hundred in rotary wing? Lieutenant, why didn’t you bring this to our attention? ’
“ ‘Sir, nobody asked me.’ ”
Fernando chuckled and took a pull at his drink.
“So, cutting a long story short, I was sent back to the BOQ and that afternoon they took me out to Hanchey, where an IP gave me a check ride in a Huey. I blew his mind when I said I’d never flown one with only one engine before, my Huey time was in . . .”
“ ‘The twin-engine models used by Rig Service Aviation of Corpus Christi’?” Fernando interrupted, laughing. “Oh, Jesus, they must have loved you!”
“Shortly thereafter, I found myself wearing wings, and rated in U.S. Army UH-1F rotary wing aircraft,” Castillo went on. “And enrolled in Phase IV, which was transition to the Apache. The General himself came out to Hanchey when I passed my final check ride and shook my hand while the cameras clicked . . .”
“Abuela bought twenty-five copies of the Express-News with your smiling face on page one and mailed one to me,” Fernando said. “I was then living in a tent a hundred miles out of Kuwait City.”
“I really thought I was hot shit,” Castillo said. “Second lieutenants tend to do that anyway.”
“Speak for yourself, Gringo. I myself was the epitome of modesty. Phrased another way, I wondered what the fuck I was doing in the desert having absolutely no idea how I was supposed to command a platoon of M1s when we went through the Iraqi berms.”
“You did that well, as I recall. Silver Star.”
“The way they were handing out medals all you had to do was be there and you got the Bronze Star. You got the Silver Star if you didn’t squash anybody important under your tracks.”
“They didn’t pass out the Silver Star with the MREs, Fernando. Tell that story to somebody else,” Castillo challenged, and then went on: “So there I was, at oh-two-hundred hours on seventeen January, sitting in the copilot’s seat of an Apache. I couldn’t understand why the CWO-4 flying it was less than thrilled to have my services. At oh-two -thirty-eight we flew over the berms you were talking about and then started taking out Iraqi radar installations.”
“You were on that first strike?”
“Yeah. And we took a hit. The CWO-4 took a hit. Something came through his side window, took off his visor, and then went through my windshield and instrument panel. He had plastic and metal fragments in his eyes. He said, ‘You’ve got it. Get us out of here and take us home.’ There being no other alternative that I could think of, I did just that.”
“I never heard that story before,” Fernando said.
“For which I received the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Purple Heart,” Castillo went on.
“I didn’t hear about that, either,” Fernando said. “You got hit, too?”
“I had a couple of scratches on my hands,” Castillo said. “Some fragments went through my gloves. They were about as serious as a bee sting.”
“You were lucky,” Fernando said.
“Lucky is not like doing something that earns you a medal,” Castillo said, and then went on: “Anyway, the paperwork for the new hero went to Schwarzkopf’s headquarters. Naylor—by then he had his second star—was there. He was sort of the buffer between Schwarzkopf and Franks.”
“Freddy Franks, the one-legged general?”
Castillo nodded. “The first since the Civil War. He commanded the ground forces. They were not too fond of one another. Anyway, when Naylor heard about the paperwork for my two medals it was the first time he’d heard I was anywhere near Arabia. He went right through the roof . . .”
WINTER 1991