THE BELL CURVE:

Tom Johnson’s piece a few days ago about the young woman who had to watch a dear friend being told that her son had been killed in Iraq reminded me vividly of one of the worst moments in my life.

It happened in Corpus Christi, Texas, in 1943. I was a flight instructor in a Navy fighter squadron, the last test before assignment to an aircraft carrier in the Pacific. Flight officers were required periodically to serve as the squadron duty officer, which meant we took the heat if anything went wrong in the daily routine of flight operations.

And on my watch one day, something went terribly wrong. A student returning to the base got confused in his approach pattern, causing a mid-air collision. Both pilots bailed out at a low level. The student’s parachute opened soon enough to break his fall. He was hurt, but not killed. The other pilot, a fellow officer, instructor and friend named Frank O’Brien, wasn’t so lucky. His chute opened as he hit the ground, and he was killed instantly.

I called the squadron chaplain as protocol required. When he arrived, I was told that one of my duties on this day was to accompany him to inform O’Brien’s wife of her husband’s death. It was a half-hour’s drive into the city, and my sense of inadequacy to deal with this tragic situation grew with every mile. And it was multiplied many times over by the memories of a dinner party my wife and I attended at the O’Brien’s home just a few days earlier.

The O’Briens lived in a tiny bungalow on a quiet residential street in Corpus Christi. Our footfalls on the porch sounded like doom to me and must have translated that way to anyone in the house. We rang the doorbell and could hear her approaching, the doorknob rattling and the door swinging open. Not a word was spoken. She was terribly young — as we all were — and in instant shock. She must have looked at us for 10 seconds, and I’ll never forget the anguish I saw. Never. Then she slammed the door and we could hear her running through the house. Then silence. We opened the door and went in. The back door was swinging open onto a backyard, surrounded by a high wall. She was crouched into a corner of the wall in the fetal position, staring at us in silent condemnation, as if she might will us away. The chaplain was accustomed to this sort of thing. I wasn’t. He crouched beside her, talking quietly while I stood and watched, feeling almost responsible for the pain we were delivering. I don’t remember much of the rest of that day. Only of Betty O’Brien’s face in the doorway as she processed who we were and why we were there.

I realize that this sort of agony happens daily to thousands of people dealing with sudden accidents or heart attacks. But there is another element added when it is a casualty of war, a sense that this didn’t have to be, that it grew out of the inability of humans to settle their disputes short of killing one another.

And now we’re at it again, and my war is a distant memory, buried in newer memories of newer wars.

Some signs of the times: I expected an avalanche of mail when the Pilot printed a picture of employees at the Beachcomber Restaurant saluting the “Martini Flag” to mark the opening of the cocktail hour. As a dedicated martini drinker, I do this daily in the privacy of my own home, especially since I read in the Health section of the Los Angeles Times that a bundle of studies have now convinced most doctors that two drinks a day contribute substantially to good health. But I was afraid that this public display at the Beachcomber of saluting a flag other than Old Glory would bring out the patriots en masse.

And lo and behold, there was only one short letter decrying this apostasy, which suggests we may be getting more sophisticated. This apparently hasn’t extended to a flag burning amendment to the Constitution as a campaign issue, but it does offer some hope.

The Orange County Republican Central Committee’s refusal to support Dick Nichols’ reelection to the Newport Beach City Council is commendable but also raises a few questions. This is supposed to be a nonpartisan office, so one wonders why the GOP brass is mucking around in it at all. I suppose nonpartisan in his Corona del Mar district is an oxymoron anyway, so it doesn’t really matter. The second question is more puzzling. The same committee that is now stiffing Nichols elected him to a seat in the Central Committee last June. According to a story in Tuesday’s Pilot, committee member Adam Probolsky is trying to prevent Nichols from being seated on the committee “because the stink of racism you can’t wash off easily.”

Besides the racism question and some strong complaints that he isn’t representing the interests of his constituents, he is facing a strong opponent in Nancy Gardner — so he’s in a peck of trouble while his GOP associates try to bail out.

I don’t usually respond to letters on the Forum page on the theory I’ve had my shot and the letter writers deserve theirs, but I can’t resist a complaint by letter writer Mark Griffin that while pointing out that the Iraq Survey Group found zero weapons of mass destruction, I ignored the conclusion of the group’s final report on weapons in Iraq. So here it is: “The regime had the intention of building and rebuilding weapons of mass destruction, when circumstances permitted.”

So how does that grab you as the rationale for starting a war that has already taken many thousands of lives and billions of dollars and is about to degenerate into a civil war that could be going on for years?