OK, so who did kill those 20 skiers who plunged to their deaths last winter in Italy after a U.S. Marine Corps jet sliced through the support cable of their ski lift?
If it wasn’t the pilot, was it the officer responsible for equipping the cockpit with a map that failed to show the location of the ski lift? Or maybe the maintenance supervisor who certified the EA-6 Prowler as airworthy even though its altitude radar was on the blink?
Or was it simply an “accident?” You know, an unlucky string of coincidences that couldn’t have been foreseen or prevented.
It appears the Marine Corps is leaning toward the last explanation. At least that’s my take on last week’s acquittal, on involuntary manslaughter charges, of Capt. Richard Ashby by a jury of his fellow officers. “This was an accident waiting to happen,” defense attorney Frank Spinner explained to reporters after whoops of relief filled the courtroom at Camp Lejeune, N.C.
Several grieving families who made the trip in search of justice didn’t appreciate the outburst.
I didn’t sit through the trial so it may not be wise to second-guess that Marine jury. Maybe the bad map and erratic altimeter raised sufficient reasonable doubt. Maybe the jurors bought the testimony of one flight expert who testified that the ups-and-downs of Italy’s Dolomite Mountains can cause “optical illusions” and lead pilots to misjudge altitude.
But you know what? I’m not buyin’ it.
I think Capt. Ashby was, as they say, hot doggin’. I think he and the other Marine aviators in that Prowler cockpit were having a rollicking good time, skipping over those snowy ridges and roaring down those storybook Alpine valleys. I think Ashby knew he was flying 100 knots faster and 1,500 feet lower than his standing orders specified. And I think it’s no accident that the personal video the crew made of that fateful training run on Feb. 3, 1998, somehow got lost after the crew returned to their Aviano base and learned what happened.
Why would I think such a thing?
Because I’ve long harbored the belief that the United States Marine Corps, our proudest and fiercest service, suffers from a dangerous case of macho dysfunction.
I even remember the exact time I came by this opinion. It was Christmas week, 1971, when the Marine Corps ruined my 10-day liberty on the French Riviera. I was a lieutenant, junior grade, aboard a Navy oil tanker which, at the time, was supporting carrier task groups in the western Mediterranean. It was an around-the-clock deal but after a couple of weeks we got orders to Cannes, the classy film festival town, for a Christmas stand-down.
It was rainy season, but I got so excited about the casinos, perfumeries and other delights on the Cote d’Azur that I barely noticed another Navy ship, the helicopter carrier USS Inchon, with two battalions of Marines, had dropped anchor across the bay. Didn’t give it a thought, in fact, until our third morning in port, when the Shore Patrol officer at fleet landing radioed my ship for the legal officer, ASAP. (The crafty executive officer on the Inchon had stuck my ship with the “legal” watch for the port visit. And guess which wet-nosed “j.g.” was our non-lawyer legal officer.
Anyhow, I spent the remainder of my days in paradise carrying out the duties of a one-man foreign claims commission. I drove up and down the Riviera with an interpreter, buying off irate Frenchmen whose shops, cafes and vehicles had been damaged by lean young Americans with extremely short hair. The Marines walked out on restaurant tabs, smashed plate-glass windows, threw mopeds in the harbor. One smuggled his bayonet ashore, got drunk and lacerated dozens of automobile tires, mostly Michelins, along the municipal quay.
I settled claims on the spot, doling out greenbacks (the French loved greenbacks) and taking names and notes for the obligatory final claims report. The hard feelings I could do nothing about. Except to tell claimants that most American servicemen, indeed, most Marines, are law-abiding gentlemen who think well of France and the French people.
OK, so that was 27 years ago.
Over the years I’ve kept one eye on the news wires. There was the gang-rape of a Japanese schoolgirl in Okinawa and the savage “pinning” ceremonies at that same Camp Lejeune. (Somebody forgot to “lose” the home video of jump school graduates pounding parachute pins into each other’s chests. It was a tradition.) And when a pair of Marines got charged earlier this year with gunning down dozens of wild horses outside Reno, well, I was saddened but not that surprised.
Now the Corps appears to be closing ranks around a jet jock with a prior record of “overly aggressive” flying. Never mind that Capt. Ashby, either through recklessness or misjudgment, sent 20 people screaming to their deaths at an Italian ski resort. Never mind that, as a result, Uncle Sam may get its tail kicked out of some of the most strategic military bases in Europe.
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So go ahead, fellas, and write to me about Guadalcanal. My Marine drill instructor had scars from Korea’s Chongjin Reservoir and I know the stories. I believe them too. Semper fi.
But save a second envelope for the Commandant, USMC, Washington, D.C., 20380-1775. Ask him, if you’re Marine enough, if it isn’t time for a more balanced approach to human development.
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