Army men. Legos built into aircraft and space ships. Trying to organize a local militia of 10 year olds to fight the kids from the other development. Mostly with slingshots and bottle rockets. Asking Grandpa about his time in WWII. He was in the CBI (China Burma India) theatre of operations. Even my Grandma was in the army for a few months, until they pissed her off about something.
Thats how I grew up.
At 17 I graduated high school, since I had a late in the year birthday. Much of the senior year was spent with both the Army and Navy recruiters fighting over me. Finally, my dad convinced me to talk to a friend of his in the Air National Guard. He’d let me do that, since he was in the Air Force in VietNam, a crew chief on a KC-135 refueler. At 17 I didn’t have too much choice in the matter. Talked to the recruiter there, liked what I saw. I had two options: Combat Arms, since I am an excellent marksman, and Avionics tech on C-130’s. Up until the last minute I was still deciding between the two, and finally went with Avionics simply because the tech school was a year instead of just two months.
I had a knack for avionics, and I aced the schooling as honor graduate. In the airman’s club every night they played “Proud to be an American” by Lee Greenwood. I figure now they play that and “Letters from Home” by John Michael Montgomery. Which is tough to listen to without getting all emotional and stuff. But it does capture the real feeling of the soldier.
I came back and learned the real stuff under SSgt. Kevin Rydzewski, who is a personal hero of mine. I figure that will embarass him a bit. He taught me so much those years.
That was 1988 to 89. Along comes Kuwait, and we’re activated and sent to the United Arab Emirates for a few months (August 16, 1990 through October.) This was about a week or two into it, we just had enough time after being activated to pack and go. As a young hotshot in the unit, I was of course going. Lots of airlift going on, lots of work. We had our planes at 99% FMC (fully mission capable) which must have been a record.
January comes along with the air war starting. We were re-activated. The entire unit was supposed to go, but just two days before leaving, the shop boss calls all the part timers in. He starts to say that all the full time techs are going, but only one… By that time my hand was raised as the volunteer to go. My mom asked to see if I volunteered. I evaded the question, but I think she knew.
Only a few of us few with the aircraft, the rest took commercial airlines. Kevin and I were chosen to go with the planes, since we were the best. A day in the Azores, a couple days in Italy, refuel stop in Egypt, and then we were there, in Al Kharj. For the next 5 months.
Everyone remembers the war went exceptionally quick. Things were incredibly boring after that. When a chance came to join an ALCE (Air Lift Control Element)
team, I jumped on it. Spent a few weeks both inside Iraq and on the receiving end in Saudi Arabia for the Shia refugee flights out of southern Iraq. I even had my very own personal call sign! I got to be an air traffic controller during that time, because I knew how to work the crypto gear on the radios. My “tower” was a soccer net with camo netting thrown over it for some shade.
We had a major with us for a few days to get us settled in. We were technically on an army base with the 2nd armored division. First day we went to get chow, and they wouldn’t serve us because we didn’t have our kevlar, webbing, and firearms with us. Huh? We’re zoomies, they don’t trust us with guns usually! The major took care of that, but we never did eat there. Just went into town every day and ate local. The army assigned us a female security cop with a hummvee to be our guide and driver. By the end of our stay we had her pretty well corrupted, working in just a t-shirt, her jacket and other gear just thrown in the vehicle. It does seem that the army frowns on that, requiring full uniforms and gear at all time. Hope she didn’t get in too much trouble!
For volunteering, when I returned, I was chosen to on R&R… the Cunard Princess was my destination. Docked in Bahrain, it was a rather nasty 16 hour bus ride across the desert. Three days of drinking tequila with a bunch of Marines. Somehow the crusty old crew chief from my unit that also went with me and I managed to spend time with two Marine nurses those couple days. I think there were two thousand guys on that boat that were pretty damn jealous of us scarfing up on two of the four women. Ehh, what can you do? Three days later, we’re heading back on the bus. Luckily at our first stop one of our C-130’s had just landed, so we hitched a ride with them back to our base after many stops. It is so much nicer to fly around than to sit on a bus.
Our flights and aircraft were so good that they started letting regular AF units go home before us. That caused a lot of grumbling, but finally we got home. Heroes welcome and all that.
I applied for a full time technician position with the Comm Flight for a computer tech slot. Finally SSgt Joe Bartel gave me a shot at the position. Worked out great and I spent about a year there before funding ran dry. But that gave me the edge to get me working in the computer field afterwards.
I didn’t re-enlist. I didn’t like the idea of Clinton running the military, and also I was looking at moving somewhere else, and didn’t want to be tied down.
Now I’m a member of the VFW. Having been there and met Iraqis personally, I fully support the current Iraq intervention.
On this Veteran’s day, I stop to think about all the troops through all the wars. The hardships and deaths, all in the name of protecting this country from those that would do us harm.

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