When Horner arrived at Lakenheath, among the first people he met was his new squadron commander, Major Skinny Innis—one of the wildest members of a profession that tries to corner the market on wildness. Innis, like many others, had gone off to World War II before he finished college. During that war, pilots of his age group had operated almost without rules—the name of the game had been to get the job done. The downside was that a lot of them had died in accidents and not as a result of enemy fire. Innis had survived that war, and Korea, by means of brains, energy, flying talent, and luck.

In the two worlds that make up the military—field and headquarters—Skinny Innis was at the far extreme of the field orientation. One earned points there for being outrageous, and Skinny had acquired just about as many outrageous points as it was possible to accumulate. All he wanted to do was fight wars and have fun in the downtime. He was profane, inelegant, not only un- but antidiplomatic, and often wrongheaded; but he deeply loved his nation, flying, and the Air Force; he made it fun to serve with him; and he kept his pilots looking at the enemy instead of worrying about their own careers.

Skinny hated to be supervised. In practice that meant that he and the wing director of operations, Colonel Bruce Hinton (who was called “Balls” Hinton and had had several kills in Korea), often had fistfights when they had a difference of opinion. Since they had both served in World War II and Korea, lived with adjoining backyards, and were friends as well as antagonists, however, they tolerated each other’s wild behavior.

Even though Skinny hated authority, he was loyal to senior commanders, which meant he worked their problems and did the mission they laid out for his squadron. He ran the squadron the way he wanted to, however, which today would not be politically acceptable, and he specialized in making flamboyant statements.

At the officers’ club at Lakenheath, a large bell was mounted over the bar. When you walked in, you had to buy drinks for everyone at the bar if someone could ring the bell before you got your hat off. Skinny turned the game upside down. He bought bowler hats for all the 492d Squadron, declared them the Mad Hatters, and “ordered” them to wear their hats in the bar. If they didn’t, they had to buy the bar a round. (The bowler rule was in effect only when you wore a civilian jacket and tie; uniform was excepted.)

Then Skinny decided that wasn’t enough. His squadron also needed to be different from the other two squadrons at work, so he bought them glengarries, the traditional Scottish hats, to wear with their flight suits. When Bruce Hinton tried to stop this change in uniform (correctly judging it against the uniform rules), they had another fight, and Skinny won. Thus, for the three years Horner was at Lakenheath, everyone in Skinny’s squadron wore a glengarry, with his rank on it, with his flying suit.