Missing in Action…

Major C. Rudnick, the fighter pilot, died towards the end of 1993 when the wing of his Impala aircraft came off during a Silver Falcons’ show at Lanseria airport.

Charlie Rudnick, the person, only died a few years later.

I regret that I never got to know Charlie better but he was an instructor and I was a student and a rank junior to him and some idiotic rule would not have allowed that line to be crossed. To be honest, though… Now that I have started chatting to the families of some of the other pilot friends we lost, I have started getting to know the real men behind what we all got to see and I am starting to realise that I didn’t know any of them as well as I should have.

Maybe that was part of the plan? Maybe the tragedy of the loss would have been too great if we were able to attach a heart and soul to the lost body and that would have affected our ability to fight a war.

But… I am not a warrior anymore. And I think I’m changing. I think I want to start realising the tragedy. To maybe start feeling it the same way their families felt it. I think I want to start attaching a bit of heart and soul to all my lost pilot friends.

I think I want to start with Charlie…

I flew a sortie with Charlie the day before he left for Lanseria. For the first time, being asked the same old tired question of, “Why do you want to be a fighter pilot?” didn’t seem to come from an instructor constantly trying to find a weakness in us. The question seemed to come from a friend. It wasn’t in his asking… It was in the answering. I gave him the standard Fighter Pilot, pro-Airforce, drivel and he responded with, “well I fly jets because its lekka!”

The gruesome reality of Major Rudnick’s death was that there wasn’t much left to be able to identify him. Charlie’s daughter, on the morning of his departure, painted his toenail while she played around his feet with a make-up kit. I picture this little girl yakking away at her father’s feet and, casually, with no care in the world and with a few brush strokes, brings a part of her dad into her world.

The painted toenail was the final testimony to Charlie’s existence.

A little boy brought me into his world in September of the following year.  The day Jeffrey was born was awesome.  That’s all I can use to describe it. I sometimes miss that feeling of being a Dad to a new baby.  It comes back to me in dreams…

I DREAM OF A BABY

I am lying in a bed with a baby.
The mother’s away and I’m on my own.
It’s early morning and I’m listening
To the baby sucking its bottle
With desperate tugs
As if each suck is the last.

The baby needs me
To get another bottle ready,
The baby needs me
To get a nappy ready,
The baby needs me

And I need to feel needed
And to lie here forever
Listening, smelling, feeling.

The day that we took Jeffrey home for the first time from the Military Hospital in Voortrekkerhoogte in Pretoria, we drove past Air Force Base Swartkops.  There was an air show and the Silver Falcons were making their first public appearance since Charlie’s accident.  The Silver Falcons flew a missing-man formation flypast. I stopped and cried for the first time.

On my way to bringing Jeffrey into my world, so Charlie finally flew out of it.

~ by Norm on September 6, 2010.