K.A. Bachus
Goat Rope
DOSSIER: When you voluntarily enlisted in the US Air Force at the end of the Vietnam Era, your decision must have come with some level of trepidation. What made you decide to join? Did you know exactly what kind of job you’d get and that you’d start out as a clerk in an intelligence office?
BACHUS: a. Travel—to get out of Chicago. b. The old GI Bill. I was not going to be able to get a degree without it. c. I knew I would not be in danger, though I would have welcomed a smidge of it. Women were still noncombatant members of the WAF. We were not fully integrated into the regular Air Force until well into my first assignment. And women could not fly fighters until 1993. (My book Swallow).
I was supposed to fix heavy ground radar, but the job had become obsolete before I finished tech school, so they sent me as a typist to the 1st SOW. I worked in maintenance until the intel shop offered a spot running their library and typing aircrew briefings.
DOSSIER: You spent time in Germany around Zweibrücken, which is in western Germany, not far from France. Having lived in Germany for five years, the Dossier guy has been in and out of that area on many occasions and can imagine how you might get some good spy stories out of it. Did that happen to you when you were assigned there?
BACHUS: So many things happened.
I deployed as one of the weapons and classified custodians. For that purpose, we were armed with .38s, for which we’d had to qualify like officers (all enlisted had qualified on the M-16.) But we had no bullets because the load master of the C-141 that took us to Germany refused to break up the pallet. (Army people will roll their eyes at this typical Air Force behavior).
At the NCO club, I played many rounds of the dollar game and danced with abandon, linking arms with a bunch of gunners, to Ghost Riders in the Sky, anthem of Spectre, the AC130 gunship unit that had so effectively harried the VC on the Ho Chi Minh Trail.
I had a couple of affairs, one of them secret because, well, fraternization.
Had my bottom pinched by a French soldier in the narrow aisle of a train.
Was flashed on another train.
Because I could read German, I bought a local newspaper with the breaking story of Victor Belenko flying a Foxbat into Hakodate Airport. Followed him for a long time. Kept a file on him in the front of the top drawer of one of my safes back in the office.
Then, there was the actual exciting and inspiring work (read, sarcasm): typing and filing messages in a fortified vault. I don’t remember much of that.
DOSSIER: When and where do you write, and what kind of environment do you prefer? (A cabin in the woods of Maine/absolute silence/music playing?)
BACHUS: I write for a couple of hours each day, beginning by 5 am. My desk looks out on a quintessential New England street near downtown Bangor. I prefer Beethoven, Rachmaninoff, or silence.
DOSSIER: You’ve published ten books in your Charlemagne series, all having to do with deep espionage stories. Without a graduate-level explanation of ancient European history, please explain how you made the cross connection between espionage and the historical Roman figure. Do your books draw from events from that era at all?
BACHUS: The three original members of the team picked the name because though they were from three different countries, Charlemagne was their common ancestor. He was a warrior king and the first Holy Roman Emperor. He is often credited with introducing the concept of the rule of law to Western Europe, an essential element of civilization that I am very much in favor of.
DOSSIER: With your first-hand understanding of military protocol and special operations forces from when you were in the Air Force, how does that knowledge play into your work with veterans’ and writers’ groups today?
BACHUS: What is missing in much of civilian life is the team concept, forged through shared adversity (read, basic training). I am a member of many teams: my writers’ group, a book club of Vermont women veterans, the choruses in which I sing, and my neighborhood. In all of these, I have two essential tasks: know my role and don’t let the others down—pretty much the same as my fictional team, Charlemagne. Though admittedly there are differences in correctly singing the tenor part of the fugue in Beethoven’s Ode to Joy and shooting straight in a firefight against enemy agents, the concept is the same. It is the most valuable lesson the Air Force taught me.
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Jeff Circle 