Quent Cordair
The Sculpture that Won the War
From a letter to Sam Axton, from Quent Cordair, Sept 27, 2001
Once upon a time, in the early weeks and months of a war in defense of a country, there lived a sculptor who had only the face to finish of a most magnificent sculpture. The country was in greater need than ever of Art's fuel and inspiration, to survive, defend, conquer, reconfirm, rebuild, and thrive once again as America. The sculptor, with renewed vigor and determination, threw his efforts into what he did best: sculpt. Days, nights, coffee, curses, dejection, perseverance, satisfaction....Within a few weeks of the enemy's first strike, the sculptor had sent his clay to the foundry, and shortly thereafter was able to deliver the masterpiece to his gallery's client who had commissioned it.
Little did the sculptor realize the extended effects that his efforts would have, and how events may have turned out otherwise, had he not completed his task when he did.
The finished sculpture brought in the balance of payment due from the buyer to the gallery, which after months of war and economic repression, was on the brink of closing for lack of sales. And the buyer, upon receiving the sculpture, was so delighted that he was motivated to purchase yet another significant artwork, and the deposit on this work kept the gallery open for yet another precious month. In that next month, the economy stabilized sufficiently that purchases by the gallery's clients began to trickle back in, and the gallery would never again be quite so close to not surviving the rippling shock waves of a terrorist act in New York.
Three months after the sculpture was completed, an eight-year old girl was passing by the gallery with two of her friends. Upon catching a glimpse of the art, she was drawn in. She stopped before a figure in bronze, patined in white, a smaller, earlier casting of the larger work recently completed by the sculptor. She fell in love with it and was all the more enchanted when she discovered that she shared the sculpture's name. Of course she couldn't afford the piece. She saw a framed photo print of the sculpture on the wall. She couldn't afford that either. But she had five dollars, she offered, wondering, hoping.... The gallery owner dug through the files and found a small photo of the piece, which he gave to her, smiling, without charge.
A young pilot cruised silently through the cold night sky, diamond dust of stars twinkling above. The flat blanket of clouds below stretched ahead to a rumpling rise in the distance, marking the beginning of mountainous terrain beneath. His sortie consisted of only himself and his wingman, in two stealth fighters. According to the screen in front of him, they were now crossing the border into Afghanistan. It wouldn't be long now.
Iran had jumped into the conflict, in support of the terrorist bin Laden. The mountains bristled with anti-aircraft batteries, and the ground war was proving more difficult than any had imagined. But a disgruntled traitor in bin Laden's close circle had gotten word out to the Allies as to his location, and the area around the targeted caves had been bombed incessantly since. On this evening, a satellite had picked up a small convoy attempting to leave the area under the cover of darkness. The mole had sent a signal, confirming that it was indeed bin Laden, who could disappear into another system of caves within minutes or hours. Two stealth fighters had been scrambled immediately, and now they were within a short twenty miles of their target. They rolled onto their sides and slipped like diving sparrowhawks through the clouds to the height of the peaks, then turned silently into a craggy walled valley. They were nearly undetectable by radar, but a watchful soldier, at first spooked by the two shadows which had streaked so closely over his head, had frantically radioed a warning ahead. Anti-aircraft fire began tracing upwards in their direction, trying to catch the fleeting shadows. They dropped even lower, so as not to offer so much as a silhouette against the sky. Without warning, a missile from below caught the wingman's craft, which erupted into a comet of flame and dropped away, without a sound from the pilot's radio.
The young pilot remaining fought to stay focused. All his instincts said to pull the stick back and shoot straight up to the sky, to get above the range of the fiery tracings that would surely find him too at any moment, to live to fight another day. He might be able to get a fair shot at the convoy from altitude. But it was bin Laden. When would there be another chance if he missed? He thought of the photo in the breast pocket of his flight suit, of the delicate looped handwriting in violet pen on the back, of the girl who had sent it. He steeled himself and kicked the plane over on its side, banking hard around a canyon corner, flying so low that bullets from small arms pinged into his craft's underbelly.
The infrared on his radar confirmed the convoy on the road ahead. Either of the 2000lb smart bombs in his bays would get the job done, but it appeared he wouldn't be able to gain enough elevation and still have enough time to guide one in, and with the defenses alerted, there wouldn't be a second chance before the convoy scattered. He hadn't even met the girl. A class of fourth graders had sent mail to his unit, and her envelope had found its way onto his bunk, just the evening before. The letter started with the generic but respectful "Dear Sir..." He recalled her words on the back of the photo, and the image of innocence and delight on the front. It was the only mail he had received in weeks. It was enough.
"Okay, baby, this one's for you...."
He armed both the bombs and pointed the nose of his black angel at the rear vehicle in the convoy ahead. In his final seconds, he thought of his target, bin Laden, and realizing something, chuckled at the irony: with the fire of hell in his eyes, he said, "Live by the plane, die by the plane, mother f--"
On a cloudless day in the thin mountain air, an American soldier walked through the scattered wreckage at the site of the strike. Pieces of wood, metal and cloth were scattered around the perimeter of a blackened gouge in the road, three hundred yards long. It would go down in history as the place where bin Laden was killed and the tide of war had turned. The platoon was combing through the wreckage for any of what might remain of the terrorist's papers and effects. Of the pilot's body, they hadn't been able to find anything, though small pieces of the plane were identifiable here and there. But the oddest scraps can survive such conflagrations. After the World Trade Center attack, someone had found one of the terrorists' passports in the rubble below.
The soldier lifted a piece of twisted metal and noticed in the ashes a curled photo print, its edges seared brown but unburned. It was the photo of a sculpture, an elegant figure in white, beckoning to be followed into a world of wonder and happiness. The soldier smiled, turned the photo over and read: "Dear Sir, This is how I used to feel before the war. I hope I can feel this way again someday. Thank you for fighting for me. — Joy."
He tucked the photo into his breast pocket, and slung his rifle over his shoulder. Kicking aside a half-burned turban, he walked down the road and took in a chestful of mountain air. For the first time in months, he allowed himself to think of home.
