Bastard or Fighter Pilot?

Been called Both!

This is the A-10 version of the story:

After single-handedly winning the Cold War in the early '80s, an A-10 pilot was cruising back from Leipheim to Bentwaters. He was single ship because his buddies were still hung over from drinking Doppelbach Dunkel and food-poisoned from Herr Meyer's cooking. After buzzing the towers at Bierfahrt, Bad Blau-Jahb and Gaggmienau, our intrepid hero realizes he's low on gas. With his INS dumped (since he hadn't bothered to align it) and his LATN map stowed in his helmet bag, Ace decides to climb all the way up to 500 feet. Lo and behold, there's a runway! He buzzes the tower, waving his hand in front of his face and his right ear, not realizing this isn't how you tell tower you're NORDO. Regardless, they give him the green light and he lands.

Ramstein Transient Alert pulls up to marshal him into a parking spot. "Aha," says our brilliant aviator! "I must be at Sembach!" No, not quite, oh knight of the skies...you're at Ramstein, fighter pilot mecca on a Friday afternoon, and the club is open at 1600! Well, our macho man calls back to the squadron and tells them he's broke at Sembach and probably won't be home until Monday. (He's a slow learner.)

After checking in, Roger Ramjet swaggers (as opposed to staggers, which he'll do later) from the Q to the Club, a short three minute walk on your feet or 20 minutes on your hands and knees. Things don't really start happening until 1800, so he goes down to Vesuvio's and has some pasta (it doesn't hurt coming back the other way). As he gets back to the bar a little while later, he sees the standard crowd: HQ dorks in their flightsuits who haven't touched a jet in three years, F-4 pilots who keep telling their GIBs to "shut the hell up and get away from me!", brand new Eagle drivers who haven't wiped their asses for months (because everyone knows their $hit doesn't stink), and a few OV-10 guys who can't hear what's going on because of hearing loss. Then you've got the shoe clerks who wander in with a blank look on their faces; because this is the environment of the fighter pilot, they quickly realize that this is no place for mere mortals, so they scurry out, leaving their wives. (Big mistake!)

All of a sudden, the DoD school lets out, and the teachers come strolling in. Single women, in a foreign land, with lots of American fighter pilots hanging out...yes, this is the definition of Hell for these poor ladies. (They just don't realize it yet.) Our noble Hog Driver (have those three words ever been used in a sentence before?) sits back to watch the fun. The F-4 guys are quickly blown out of the water (and not in a good way) because their GIBs keep trying to tell them what to do, and whoever heard of a backseater getting anything right with a woman? The OV-10 guys keep asking for "clearance to drop" but because they can't hear, they go home unexpended. The HQ guys, in their clean, shiny, starched flightsuits end up going home with the F-15 guys. (On Saturday, the Eagle guys all wear their "Not in MY squadron" t-shirts...irony at its best.)

Now, our low-flying warrior, in his two-week-old flightsuit, smelling of stale beer, fresh vomit and JP-8, surveys the room. Unfortunately, the only woman left unattached is, to put it politely, the runt of the litter. In fact, she may be better described as the placenta. However, beggars can't be choosers (more correctly, drunk beggars can't be choosers), so they end up together for the rest of the evening, and after several attempts, nature takes its course. (The word "nature" is used liberally here. There's no known instance of anything like this in nature...on this planet anyway.)

Seven years later, after a staff job at the Pentagon (where brain cells go to die) and an IP job at Davis-Monthan, our plucky surly bonds slipper ends up at Ramstein again. During the obligatory shelf check at the new big BX, he happens upon a six year old boy. Noticing the empty stare, the slight drool and the mouth-breathing, he thinks, "Boy, that kid looks familiar." Just then, the kid's mother comes around the corner. As they each do a double-take, she says, "Yes, that's your son." "Why didn't you let me know?" he asks. "I'd have done the right thing."

"Well, your nametag said, 'Hugh G. Rection, you stuck me with the bar bill, you bailed out of the BOQ early (after taking the soap, the shampoo and a towel, which I had to pay for!), and you never called me like you said you would. But when I found out you were an A-10 pilot, I realized you HAD done the right thing. Meet Hugh, Jr."