Content area
Full Text
WHEN HE TOOK command of the aircraft carrier Intrepid off the coast of Manhattan, Maj. Gen. Donald Ray Gardner flew the F-18 Hornet fighter jet off the flight deck and into the Persian Gulf War, dodging Scud missiles and firing on Iraqi tanks.
Of course, he was not as thrilled about it as the 8-year-olds sitting next to him, since Gardner had flown on the real plane, not just the amusement ride - grandly called the navy flight simulator - that is part of the Intrepid Sea Air Space Museum.
"That's the neat thing about being a marine general," Gardner says. "You can shoot anything there is to shoot, fly anything there is to fly. You can blow things up. You can visit anywhere."
Donald Gardner, raised in Tennessee, was in the Marine Corps for 40 years. "I loved it. There were some bad days - I didn't like writing parents saying your child got killed. But it's fun being a marine." He is most proud of having started as an enlisted man and ending up a major general, along the way commanding every possible combat formation, from smallest to largest: "platoon, company, battalion,...