Tom JacobsLet’s talk about helicopters. The North Shore has lots of ‘em … tourist helos like little bugs, and the Coast Guard bird that circles the island daily … but I’m talking about those Army helos flying from Wheeler Army Air Field next to Schofield Barracks. Flying alone or in twos and threes all hours, day and night … seems like all the time sometimes.
It’s the “all the time” part that bothers some folks. I’ve been at community meetings, twice, listening to community complaints about Army birds flying over residences at night, interrupting sleep.
An Army Black Hawk helo went down off Kaena Point on 16 August of this year; three months ago. All five crewmen were lost, their remains still at sea a few miles from all of us. Those soldiers died doing their job, which was … is … national defense. That means defense of us. The helos flying days, and nights, and Saturdays, Sundays, and holidays are defending us. When they’re not on Oahu they’re in Afghanistan or Iraq or somewhere else defending us. While they’re up over the North Shore some crew member’s teen-aged wife is tucking her child in bed and pouring herself a cup of coffee while she awaits … endlessly … for the phone call that will tell her that her husband is back, safe. Then she can go to bed. Then her husband can post-flight his bird, finish paperwork, drive home, turn in next to his wife in bed, and turn out tomorrow morning to do it all over again.
That’s what they do at Wheeler, every day. While the Army was searching for that Black Hawk and those five troopers last August they set up a command post at Haleiwa Harbor. Did any of us North Shore folks go down there to tell the men and women on that search-and-rescue mission that we were sorry, that we hoped and prayed that the search would have a good ending? I know I didn’t. Wish I had. But I do know this … when I see an Army vehicle coming the other way on Kam Highway I’m gonna roll my window down and give ‘em a thumbs-up. And when I see a soldier … or sailor or airman … in uniform in town at Joe’s or the Beach House or someplace my wife and I are gonna buy them the meal or the drink they’re having. You can say we’re doing it for those five troopers asleep off Kaena Point, and for their comrades flying over our house at 3 a. m.
That’s not a helo we’re listening to. That’s the sound of freedom.