[TCTAAmembers] Charlie Shaub and Jon Sanders

Sat Nov 15 21:42:52 CST 2008

We've decided to make loadmaster Charlie Shaub, the only loadmaster to win the Air Force Cross, a special member of our organization. We'll be covering what Charlie did in the next newsletter but I wanted to share some other things about him. 

I knew Charlie casually but we were far from close. I first met him when he was at CCK and I was at Clark in 1969 and we were both rotating to Cam Ranh Bay and lived on Herky Hill. I can't say for sure when we first actually met but I'm sure it was at one of the impromptu cookouts we were always having with purloined steaks brought back by crews. Late one afternoon I was invited over to the CCK crews barracks where they were having a cookout. When I walked up, an officer, Bill Gunkle, greeted me with "this was supposed to be steak but this yahoo doesn't know the difference between steak and hamburger" as he gestured toward a young troop standing sheepishly near by. I didn't know it at the time, but Gunkle told me years later in a telephone conversation that Charlie was his loadmaster and the young troop was a student who had gone in-country with them. They had a load of rations and Charlie told the kid to steal a case of steaks as part of his checkout, but the kid got a case of hamburger instead! Bill also told me in that same conversation that "all good loadmasters come from Tennessee," a statement with which I don't disagree, and told me that Charlie was a Tennessean. I'm not sure that I knew that because even though I talked to him a few times, I'm not sure that Charlie and I ever told each other where we were from. Had we done so, we would have known that we grew up barely 100 miles apart. Charlie hailed from near Portland, a little town north of Nashville and not too far from where my grandfather was born. 

I next ran into Charlie at Charleston in the NCO Club. We had some mutual friends, including Billy Hoover, who was Charlie's best friend. Another was Al Steed, who was also at CCK with Charlie and who I got to know when we were in the 3rd MAS at Charleston. Billy was also in the 3rd. I'm not sure why Charlie didn't end up with us but it may have been because he didn't have any C-141 time when he came back to Charleston from CCK and at that time MAC required 1,000 hours in the C-141 for all new C-5 crewmembers. 

Charlie wasn't at Charleston too long that time, even though it was his favorite base. He had been stationed there as a flight attendant on C-121s before he became a loadmaster when the Connies were phased out and replaced by C-130Es. I'm not sure which squadron Charlie was in or how he ended up at CCK. He may have gone to one of the TAC bases when the MAC C-130s all transferred or he may have gone to CCK on orders like a lot of us went to PACAF as Vietnam was heating up. It seems to me that Charlie may have been at CCK in 66 and 67 but I'm not sure. I do know that Charlie was a sad man because his wife Nancy had died of Hodgkins Disease not long before he went overseas. 

Al Steed told me quite a bit about Charlie several years ago. They had flown together as hot-cuppers on Connies and were roommates in loadmaster school. Al told me that Charlie's wife was South Carolina Congressman and Chairman of the House Armed Service Committee Mendel Rivers' neice, which meant that he had some truly high powered political connections. Al also told me that he had never seen anyone who liked to drink so much, and that he figured that Charlie would eventually drink himself too death. Before he met Nancy he ung out at the RVA Club on Remount Road (I think that's the right street) and I believe that is where he met his wife. 

I don't think I knew that Charlie had gone back to CCK until I heard about the incident over An Loc. I walked into the NCO Club at Charleston one night and ran into Darrell Parker in the lobby. Darrell was in C-141s and had just come back from a WESTPAC trip where he had run into some of the guys from CCK and heard about An Loc and how that Charlie was on an airplane that been shot up really bad and had been credited with saving it. There was also some sad news because the engineer had been killed, and he was a friend of mine who had been in the 3rd.

Back around 2000 after Charlie passed away I talked to his cousin, Linda Pearson, and learned more about him. For one thing, no one ever called Charlie by that name except in the military. Although his given name was Charles, he went by Jack from the time he was a little boy and that was the only name he liked to be called. He had been orpaned very young and raised by his aunts. Charlie loved to read, particularly about the military and military history. She also told me that he was somewhat reclusive, that his favorite thing was to get somewhere alone with a bottle and a book. 

Charlie died after breaking a hip in a fall at a military nursing home in which he was living near Nashville. Linda told me she thought he simply lost his will to live after the fall and just gave up. He wasn't that old when he died. 

Jon Sanders was the flight engineer on the airplane that day. I first met Jon on my first C-5 trip after I got to Charleston. Jon was one of the engineers and was on the Lead The Force crew. He had gone into C-141s when the C-130s left Charleston, and had volunteered for the C-5 program. We were out together for about two weeks on that trip and then I'd see him in the club. We probably flew together again but I'm not sure. Jon was supposed to in a frozen assignment in the C-5 but USAF cancelled the freeze for all engineers with C-130 experience who had not been overseas and Jon left the squadron and went to CCK. He hadn't been gone from the squadron too long when we found out he had been killed over An Loc. I hated to hear it and when Bob Laymon told about how the airplane had come into Tan Son Nhut last week and he went to the flight line to see it I thought I was about to go into PTSD for the first time in my life. 

Dave McAleece was the other loadmaster, and I believe he told me it was actually his crew and that Charlie was in Stan/Eval and went along for the drop. Dave contacted me by Email a number of years ago. He was wounded by shrapnel and quit flying after the mission and crosstrained into photography and has made a career out of it. He lives in California. 

I wish I had talked to Charlie more when we crossed paths. We would have found that we had a lot in common. I'd like to have talked to him about the books we had both read. 

Sam McGowan
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