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  Colonel Maitland nodded that he understood, “I wonder if I had taken a stern stance like the General if more of the people I was responsible for would have made it.”

  “No Sir you can’t think that way, you can’t second guess what you did. General Watkins and Colonel Clayton for that matter, there attitude towards handling these situations have changed and grown since they first took over. I have been around Colonel Clayton longer than the General, if you hadn’t noticed Colonel Clayton is a snake eater from way back, he’s the one largely responsible for where we are at today.”

  “Ok ok Major I get it, let’s move on, can we?”

  “Yes Sir of course.” responded Major Baroon.

  “Since I just found myself newly in charge of the entire Air Force what can you tell me about the base here.”

  For the next several hours Major Baroon reviewed everything about the base from the ground up, she reviewed personnel assignments, number and type of aircraft, ongoing maintenance and repair of aircraft, and munitions what they had and what they wanted. Colonel Maitland assured here he definitely could help with what they wanted.

  He then discussed with her the current status of Travis AFB and what was going on there, they did have aircraft but not nearly what was here in Oakland, he had more people than he had jobs for, she told him she knew what that was like. She told him she could help him out with the job situation she suggested an exchange program to begin immediately they could for the time being move people back and forth between the C-47 they had. He went on to tell her they have a lot of aircraft in the Travis museum to include a flying fortress B-29 but they didn’t have anyone to work on them. She also told them they had aircraft mechanics that would help out with that, they also had a training program that new Airman and women coming out of Basic were sent to the school, they were graduating about ten to fifteen every few months.

  Colonel Maitland shook his head, he couldn’t believe how far they had come here, and he looked forward to getting Travis back on track.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  What’s old is new again.

  In and around Camp Parks new types of businesses were being set up to accommodate the new reality, blacksmiths were thriving creating utensils, tools and of course items for livestock, new construction businesses that specialized in the building of windmills used to generate some electricity (if the parts were available) and to pump water. There were also demolition businesses which tore down many homes in and around Camp Parks, Hayward, Dublin, Pleasanton and other communities. The houses were becoming more of a danger to people as they sat their idle with no maintenance.

  Farming had taken off following of the clearing of the houses in areas farms sprung up, those farms needed farm hands. More and more ranches started to pop up to the east of the towns where more land had been cleared, herds of cows and sheep could be seen every place and like the farms needed farm hands the ranches needed ranch hands. Riding horses became a lot more prolific as they were a lot easier to feed and maintain, fuel was hard to come by sometimes even though it was claimed there was an abundance of it.

  Foundries, not to be confused with the Blacksmith, opened up to take all sorts of metals that people no longer needed, depending on the foundry they would melt the metals down into bars and then sell it off to the blacksmiths or the would melt it down and make their own products, the problem was is that foundries were dirty and there was a lot of pollution generated by them. There were a lot of people opposed to them because of it primarily environmentalists but they also had no other solutions. It was technology that cleaned up the air prior to the event and that technology was now gone and they were going to have to live with it, they were also opposed to the military but were happy to live under the protection they provided. There was no shortage of metals as there would thousands of non-operational cars, which in turn prompted an industry which took them apart and sold the parts.

  The parts depending on the car could be sold to auto-shops which were also popping up or they could sell them to a foundry that may melt them down. There were new shops that fixed and repaired all of sort of generators people were using and of course this all depended on parts to be able to fix them. Some required new hoses which were easy fixed or new spark plugs which there were hundreds of thousands of those these days, if a metal part broke it didn’t mean it couldn’t be fixed sometimes a blacksmith could create a mold for it and make a new one.

  Manual lathes started turning up which could be turned by hand or foot pump this again opened up new businesses to make parts and other needed items. There were glass blowers who made all sorts of things such as kerosene lamps of all sorts. Everyone had taken a step back into history using what used to be considered antiques but were now modern every day.

  If these businesses existed at Camp Parks it didn’t take long for them to make their way to Fort Irwin and Barstow. Fort Irwin, Barstow and the surrounding communities had become the leaders in windmill technology. The waterways near Fort Irwin were using water wheels for some of the same purposes the windmills were doing. People became more innovative in positive ways; they knew that if their ancestors did it they could too. It was all about finding the proper mix of past and present and not being afraid to try new approaches to everyday problems that were handled by technology.

  The areas around Oakland, San Mateo, San Bruno, South San Francisco, Richmond, Rodeo, Martinez and their surrounding communities were coming along. The things that were working at Camp Parks were being pushed out to the communities guided by the military’s civilian affairs units who were now spread very thin.

  Most of San Francisco proper had been secured the problem is that it was a big city and it was going to take a large force which the military had now but they had other pressing matters they couldn’t stay camped out in the city forever. The other issue was that there was no cohesiveness in the city between its people; they all still thought they were entitled. There was a new city council with a mayor who tried to extend its authority over the military as its civilian overseers, that lasted about a day until they were threatened with exile and told only the President and Congress had authority over the military and they just didn’t look like it.

  The city council didn’t like it General Watkins said that was fine he would order all military forces out of the city and they could go it on their own. There was a lot of crying and whining by the city council who thought it was unfair, General Watkins told them he didn’t care what they thought, they could either join in as part of a family of communities who were doing their best to adjust to the new reality or they could fuck off, he pointed out that San Francisco was no better or worse than any other community, again more whining and crying by the city council.

  The truth of the matter was that the people who wanted to stay and live within the city had nothing to offer the outlying communities. They were bound by miles of buildings and homes that required amazing amounts of electricity; there was no running water which meant no sewage, there was no open space to farm or ranch. All of the outlying communities grew enough food to sustain themselves and the ranchers butchered and sold the meat from their cattle and sheep to the communities they were nearest. To bring it into the city required cars and or trucks and the city people felt that the communities should be servicing them and that wasn’t happening. The city of San Francisco was a shell of what it once was. People were abandoning it at every turn as supplies ran out within the city itself.

  They didn’t have leadership in place or the type of leadership that would build on what they could be instead of looking back and wanting it that way again. They had a work force which they refused to put to work, they could have torn down buildings (well not all of them but many) and homes and made way for farming. But what if the people who owned them came back was always the response, they could sue us!

  The military did come in and clean out the militias that had taken the city over and many of the gangs, but it was a big town so the criminal element was still th
ere. The military had stayed for months and held the ground, they installed a council who later renamed themselves the city council of San Francisco and appointed (not elected) a major who then demanded the military report to him. This of course never happened.

  General Watkins told the council time after time they needed to get civilian security forces set up to protect the city but the council refused stating it was the military’s job. Finally, General Watkins had enough and pulled all military forces down to South San Francisco at least they were making an effort. As expected crime started to pick up, murders and rapes, along with home invasions, the average person within the city was not armed. The city had done all it could over the years to push firearms and the military out of its city limits. They believed the only people that should carry firearms were the police, and where were they now? They abandoned the city when they saw it was futile there weren’t enough of them to handle the crisis and they had told the then city council and mayor if there was ever a major crisis they wouldn’t be able to protect the city.

  The answer was always not to worry the federal government would step in and of course they believed it. When reality set in it was too late to do anything about the mistakes they had made as a city. For now they were left to deal with it on their own, the only saving grace was that the military or civilian security forces guarded most of the approaches in and out of the city so what happened in there stayed in there. If problems occurred, such as a gang or new militia they could react and for now all major roads and railways were through the city were secure.

  There was still a lot of clearing of the roads and railways between San Francisco and Travis Air Force Base. There were a lot of bad people who came out of San Francisco and Sacramento and headed out to Travis. Although they did leave Travis when they couldn’t find any more food or water they headed back west, south and southwest into the smaller cities and towns and overwhelmed them. There were several militias who had declared their own little kingdoms but they were made up of at most a couple under men and women under arms. There dozens of roving gangs that did a lot more damage than the militias at least in these areas.

  In some places, out in the middle of nowhere, the railroad ties were missing. Prior to the event there was active rail transportation from San Francisco to Fairfield and on, sometime after the event someone decided to pull the railroad ties, obviously for the wood. They were replaced one by one as they pushed east toward Travis but it was slow going. There were a few times when the train sat idle while men and woman worked on the rails installing new ties when they came under fire.

  Fortunately for them there were armed Soldiers on each train, more than enough to protect it, in one of the cars were ATV and dirt bikes that were used by the military. They could easily hunt down people who fired on them if they wanted too. Usually once someone fired on the train they were quickly dispatched by the Soldiers who returned overwhelming fire in their direction. After the shooting stopped the Soldiers were required to verify the shooters were dead.

  The Air Force at Travis seemed to be having some issues reconciling itself with their current mission; they didn’t know what it was. The problem was leadership it became more apparent as time when on that Colonel Maitland wasn’t going to be able to continue to lead the Air Force. He was still dealing with a lot of internal emotions from losing thousands of Airmen and women during the post months of the event. He continued to blame himself and second guess all of his decisions he made at that time, it was tearing him apart emotionally. He had an Executive Officer Lieutenant Colonel William Brandt who was a young hard charging Officer who had moved up the Air Force ranks pretty quick.

  General Watkins eventually relieved Colonel Maitland and appointed Colonel Brandt the new Air Force Chief with Major Baroon his XO. Colonel Brandt was under strict orders to listen to Major Baroon, the General did. Making Colonel Brandt the new CO was a good move, he immediately got to work squaring away the base, getting a working inventory of their food stores, water, fuel, everything. He ordered the Airmen to go through all aircraft and clean them out and get them moved to an area that had been made an airplane graveyard, something akin to the one in Tucson.

  He had all prop aircraft big and small moved out of the bases museum and ordered them repaired all of them, if they couldn’t get them repaired he wanted to know why and potential solutions. They had one Flying Fortress B-29 that would be awesome piece of machinery to have working; his mechanics didn’t have the background and experience to work on it. He spoke with Major Baroon about the problem and she said she might have a solution and she would be back to him on it.

  The next morning Colonel Brandt met a Cessna at the Travis Terminal onboard were several old men who looked as though they had seen a lot of fight in their lives. Major Baroon had accompanied them and introduced the men to the Colonel as the men from Hiller Aviation Museum. They had restored all of the planes to include the C-47 that were at the museum. She told the Colonel when she spoke with them about the B-29 they were all smiles and assured her that if anyone could get it running they could.

  The Colonel asked them if he could get them anything before they started, the declined saying they needed to get started now because by around 1800 they weren’t going to worth anything to him. If he let them look over the plane they should have something for him NLT 1300 that sounded great to the Colonel. He and the Major took them over to the B-29, the Hiller men stared at the old plane for a moment, patted her side and said, “Good to see you again.” With that the men entered the plane.

  The Colonel asked, “Do you really thing they can do it?”

  “I don’t see why not they have been able to produce some miracles on aircraft back in Oakland.” replied the Major.

  There were a dozen Airmen shadowing the Hiller men trying to see what they were doing. As the men went along they pointed out many of the aspects of the plane and its mechanics to the Airmen. As they went they taught they looked over every inch of the aircraft within two hours and asked for the Colonel and Major to come back.

  Within fifteen minutes the Colonel and Major returned one of the Hiller men greeted them outside of the plane the Colonel asked, “What have you got?” With that the Hiller man gave the thumbs up to the one sitting in the cockpit that had been looking out the window at him. The B-29 engines started to crank over coughing and sputtering, then stopped. He tried again after a few moments with more coughing and sputtering now with a lot of white smoke, it stopped again.

  They could see the pilot in the plane get up out of the seat going someplace, he returned after a few minutes and gave another thumbs up. The engines cranked again, more coughing, sputtering and smoke and then they kicked to life! All the props on the plane were turning powerfully spinning, the pilot increased the power to the engines the plane was trying to move until he cut them back. He cut the engines and the pilot came out after five minutes.

  “What did you do?” asked the Colonel.

  The Hiller man looked at the Colonel, “Well we first replaced the thingamabob, then we fixed the do-hicky, and torked the wack-a-doodle.”

  “Oh, so that’s all it was?” laughed the Colonel.

  “Don’t worry Colonel we showed your mechanics what to do they were actually pretty close to getting the old girl running she just needed a few other tweaks.”

  “Will she fly?” asked Major Baroon.

  “Yeah she should do you wanna go on a test flight?” he asked.

  “Hell yeah!” said the Colonel.

  “Well let’s load her up, get those blocks moved and get her in the air?”

  Colonel Brandt, Major Baroon, all the Hiller men and many of the Air Force mechanics loaded into the B-52.

  One of the Air Force mech’s remained behind and pulled out the blocks and acted as a ground guide. The pilot powered up the engines and started to slowly taxi to the runway.

 

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