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The year 2003 began for me in Germany. I was
sent to Rhein-Main
AB in
Frankfurt on a 60-day deployment with the Air
Force Reserves. I had been in the Reserves since 1994 as an
Air Transportation specialist, a career field which involves
the loading and unloading of all types of military aircraft,
and other related duties.
After reporting in to Rhein-Main on
the 30th of December 2002,
I was given a few days off for New Years. There wasn’t much
to do on base, and I didn’t have a rental car, so I mainly
sat around the dorm. I began work on the 3rd,
assigned to the Fleet Services section of the transportation
squadron. In nine years as a reservist, I think I had done
fleet service a total of two days. Ramp was where I usually
worked, actually loading and unloading the aircraft. I
would get a quick introduction at Rhein-Main on how fleet
services worked (or so I thought) then I would be put right
to work.
Introduction to Fleet Services
Fleet Services, sometimes called
Aircraft Services, provides four main functions for the
aircraft at Rhein-Main. First, it is responsible for
providing potable water (for sinks and lavatories) to the
various types of military and civilian aircraft. In
practice, if an aircraft comes in and is low on H2O
they call and request potable water. The Fleet Service
Dispatcher then sends a crew of two people in a water truck
to the aircraft, they hook up and pump water until it’s
full. A second function of Fleet Services is food. Any
meal that is going to be eaten on the flight is picked up
and delivered to the aircraft. Let’s say there’s a C-5
going to Dover with 75 passengers and 6 crew, which is not
uncommon. Passenger Services (PAX) would call in a meal
order for roughly 81 meals. At the appropriate time, the
fleet services dispatcher would send a crew of two people to
the flight kitchen to pick up all 81 meals (which are in big
trash bags) and drive to the aircraft. All meals and
several 5-gallon water jugs are then placed on the aircraft,
usually 30 minutes prior to departure. Another fleet
service function is trash pickup. Whenever an aircraft
lands, and the passengers have exited, the dispatcher send a
crew of usually one person to gather any and all trash bags,
pillows, blankets, or any other unauthorized item left
onboard the plane. Finally, the fourth main function of
fleet services is known as LST. The LST crew is responsible
for the servicing of each of the aircraft’s lavatories.
This crew is made up of two people and a Lavatory Servicing
Truck, dubbed LST. When an aircraft lands, after the
passengers have exited, the dispatcher sends the LST crew
out to the aircraft, they hook the truck up to the aircraft
and empty the lavatories. Afterwards, they fill the empty
lavatories with an antifreeze liquid known as blue-juice.
So, those are the four main areas in Fleet. When arriving
to work on any given day, you would be assigned to one of
those crews, unless you were the supervisor, or the
dispatcher.
Initially, I was rotated through
the different sections for about a week, learning how to do
the specific tasks. After I became competent, or at least
familiar, I was able to go out on my own. There were twelve people assigned
to day-shift in fleet service (12 hour shifts). On any
given day, however, there were maybe seven or eight people
actually at work. One of those was the supervisor, and one
was the dispatcher. This left only five or six people to
perform all four fleet services. And that simply wasn’t
enough to handle the upcoming surge of military traffic
through Rhein-Main.
The workload was pretty light at first.
Fifteen aircraft per day was typical. You’d have a spurt of
four or five aircraft, either landing or taking off, every
few hours, which was quite manageable with 5 people. One
person to do the trash, two people to do the meals and
water, and two people on the LST. If an aircraft needed
water the dispatcher would radio the meal crew, who would go
back out to the aircraft and pump water. The workload
didn’t stay this low for long. Soon it became twenty
aircraft per shift, then thirty, then forty…then fifty. At
fifty aircraft a day, you’re looking at an aircraft either
taking off or landing every fifteen minutes, for twelve
hours straight. Which meant that you went to work every
day, knowing you’d have little time to eat, rest, or catch
up on paperwork or supplies, which were dwindling.
Of course, one aircraft every fifteen minutes
for twelve hours never happened. We should be so lucky.
No, what we encountered was a swarm of about twelve aircraft
between 0530 and 0730, which unfortunately coincided with
shift change (day shift worked 0530 to 1800). The rest of
the day was filled with several influxes of numerous
aircraft all at once. If you happened to be stuck on LST
crew for the day, you would suit up at 0530, and not have a
break until lunch, which might be at 1300, 1400 or not at
all. I remember several occasions where the LST crew would
leave for the first mission and I wouldn’t see them until
the end of the day. I was fortunate that I was able to
handle Dispatch, because it kept me off of the flight line
and near the coffee pot.
The heavy workload was quickly taking its
toll on the crews and equipment. The LST truck was the
first victim. Within two weeks, the dated piece of
government equipment simply gave up. The vacuum pump went
out, on numerous occasions. The electrical wiring and
switches used to operate the lights and pumps on the back of
the truck corroded and became useless. And there was a fuse
that blew on several occasions rendering the entire truck
inoperable. The problems with the truck soon became
problems for the mission, because when the truck was down,
there was nothing to replace its function, other than making
a phone call to the Germans and having them bring their
commercial LST truck. The idea of paying the Germans to
work on US Military aircraft in a time of war was one that
did not sit well with the commander.
One solution to the problem was obvious.
Another LST truck came from Ramstein
AB within a few weeks. This truck looked
brand new. Everything worked, from the electrical systems
to the mechanical systems. For about two weeks, this seemed
like the cure. Then the workload claimed its second
victim. The brand new LST truck also began to break down.
Now we were back in the same boat we were in before, and the
aircraft kept coming in.
With no fast solution in sight, the commander
authorized a lease of a German LST truck for us to operate.
This truck was about twice the size of our trucks, and
fairly complicated. Not to mention everything was written
in German, and we had no operator’s manual. This was one
opportunity for me to help. I took the German truck and
went with a German operator one day, and learned how to run
the thing. I then sat down and wrote a manual with pictures
and diagrams, for use by the LST crew. The German truck,
once we learned how to use it, solved once and for all the
LST problem, providing a big relief for LST crews who could
now have time for lunch and several breaks throughout the
day.
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Rhein-Main After Work
Living in the dorms at Rhein-Main posed its
own challenges to the men and women who were deployed
there. Rhein-Main was a base that had been scheduled for
closure several years prior to this operation.
Consequently, much of the infrastructure had begun to fall
into disrepair. This included the dorms. Prior to
Operation Enduring Freedom, the dorm buildings were
condemned, and earmarked for demolition. The rooms were in
disarray, the carpeting was worn thin and ragged, the
showers were barely functional, and the ceilings were
deteriorating. We slept three or four to a room that was
approximately 25 feet square. My two roommates were John
Westermeyer and Tom Chasteen. John was a friend of mine,
assigned to my unit at Wright-Patterson. I had known him
for six years or more, and enjoyed working with him. He was
assistant supervisor of Fleet Services at Rhein-Main, and an
absolutely essential part of the success of that mission.
Tom was a reservist from Texas, and was assigned to Ramp at
Rhein-Main, so we did not see each other much at work.
The Ramp section was typically slow during
the day, since most of the aircraft coming and going did not
require loading or unloading. Rhein-Main was just a
stopover point between the United States and the Middle
East, so except for the occasional tail swap or broken
aircraft, all the Ramp crew had to do was sleep all day (just
kidding Tom). Actually the workload
became quite high for all sections as the weeks progressed
and tempo increased.
But Tom took full advantage of his free time to exercise his
partying privileges after work. Every night, without
exception, you could find Tom at The Rocket, the only
on-base club for drinking, dancing, karaoke, and not-so-fine
dining. We found ourselves on numerous occasions being
awaken at 2 or 3 o’clock in the morning by Tom, when he
would return from the club, wanting to share his
entertainment experience with John and myself, not realizing
we had to get up for work in just a couple short hours.
At least twice a week, John and I, and
sometimes Tom, would meet up for dinner after work with a
friend of mine from high school, Lenore Appelhans. She
happened to live in Frankfurt, and knew the area, so we
followed her to the various eating establishments around
town. The food off-base was exceptional. I think in the
entire time I was there, I can remember one meal I didn’t
enjoy. The other great thing about dining in Frankfurt, and
I guess in Germany as a whole, was the apple-wine. We would
go to these restaurants and sit at long tables with perfect
strangers, and before we could order, there was a 2-liter
pitcher of Apfelwein, a cross between apple juice and wine.
You could drink it straight, or cut it up to 50% with either
orange Fanta, or mineral water. I preferred the Fanta. It
took some getting used to at first, but we quickly began to
crave the stuff.
The frequent trips off-base were morale
boosting as much as they were necessary from a nutritional
standpoint. The food we ate on base, or didn’t eat,
consisted normally of MREs, the little brown packaged meals
in a bag. We had MREs for breakfast, and MREs for lunch,
time-permitting. After eating a steady diet of these awful
things, I had to have a decent meal at least once a day,
usually at dinner. Since the Army operated the only dining
facility on base, I stayed away from there, and usually went
into town.
The weeks went by quickly, I spent a few
weekends at my friends house in nearby Hutschenhausen, a
small village outside of
Ramstein
AB. John and Deb Mol, and their family were friends of
ours, and had been since I was in junior high school in Ohio
in 1987. It was great to visit with them, and get away from
the base, even if it was only for a day or two, just having
a real bed to sleep in, and a real breakfast, lunch and
dinner does wonders for your spirit.
As
February came to an end, so too did my tour at Rhein Main.
My deployment was over Feb 27th. The Air Force wanted me to
sign up to stay an additional 90 days, due to their manning
issues. Needless to say the decision really wasn't one. I
left Frankfurt Feb 27th, arriving in Cincinnati later that
day.
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Spring 2003
I spent the first couple weeks in March at my
grandfather’s house in Kentucky, working in the garage, and
playing cards in the evening. I also went on a trip to
Savanna Georgia with my Aunt and Uncle for Spring Break. My
cousin Lydia and her cousin Leslie rode with me on the trip
there and back. It was nice to get away to someplace warm,
but it wasn’t quite the getaway we’d anticipated. I also
found out around this time that I had been officially
accepted by the Air Force to go to Pilot Training. I would
leave in July for Officer Training School, and November for
Pilot Training in Texas. I was both elated and relieved to
hear the news. It had been several years since I’d started
the application process to try to get into pilot training,
finally my persistence would start to pay off.
I began flying again around the end of March,
to try to finish my Instrument Rating, which had been
interrupted by the deployment to Germany. I had taken the
written test in December, and had all but
finished the flying portion or the course. Naturally, I
needed to get recurrent in the aircraft, and get my
confidence back before I would attempt to take the practical
exam with an FAA examiner. So I went up a couple times a
week, doing instrument work, and a little airwork to get
comfortable. As soon as I was able to schedule my check
ride, and felt prepared for the test, my flying was once
again interrupted.
I had purchased a four-wheeler, or
ATV, or quad - whatever you want to call
it - a few weeks earlier, and had gone on numerous trips
with my cousin Tim, getting used to the bike and my own
limitations. It was a big bike for me, 350cc Honda Warrior,
which Tim had worked over to get more performance. One
weekend in Kentucky, Tim, myself, and several of our friends
were riding in the woods near Big Bone State Park. Tim
scaled a fairly large hill (maybe 40 feet up and quite
steep) with no problem. I saw this and decided to follow on
my quad. The next thing I remember was sitting on my bike,
at the bottom of the hill, drinking a bottled water. My arm
was stinging, I looked down and saw a big chunk of flesh had
been scraped off my left arm, near the elbow, and everyone
was talking to me. Apparently I had attempted the hill not
once, but twice, flipping backwards each time as I neared
the top. I vaguely remember doing it but they assured me I
did, and the arm injury began to convince me.
Turned out I had torn my rotator cuff muscle,
in my shoulder, and had numerous abrasions to the outside of
the arm. If you’ve ever torn or strained a rotator cuff
muscle, you would know that not only is it painful, it is
debilitating. For an entire week I was unable to move my
left arm away from my body more than a few inches without
excruciating pain. The only remedy was to go in to the
doctor, have an MRI done on my shoulder, and either have
them operate to repair the torn muscle, or go without
surgery, hoping physical therapy would help the muscle
repair itself. Considering the upcoming training with the
Air Force, I decided not to get the surgery, and instead
opted for the physical therapy route. I started consuming
Advil by the bottle, four every four hours, until my friend
Mark introduced me to a doctor friend of his who gave me a
wonderful drug called Bextra. After two weeks of
immobilization, I began to do little exercises, with a stick
and elastic bands. Progress was painfully slow. By June, I
could raise my arm almost parallel with the ground with only
slight discomfort, and was able to do more and more things
normally.
I continued working with the engineering
business, taking a few jobs here and there with the toy
company in New Vienna Ohio. Nothing big, just some motors
and sensors on their bottling line. Around June 20th,
my family went on a trip to
Disneyworld. The trip had been set up by my Mother, and
was something we had all wanted to do for quite some time.
My Dad, my two sisters Jenni and Julie, my brother-in-law
John, and my nieces Allison, Cari and Sara, drove down to
Florida for a week’s vacation. It was nice to be by the
water, and the accommodations at Disneyworld were superb,
but all I could think about was my upcoming trip to Maxwell
AFB Alabama, for Officer Training School.
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Officer
Training School
OTS was a wonderful
experience (in futility) for me. I went in expecting to
learn a great deal about leadership, teamwork, and
officership. In that, I suppose, it was a worthwhile
venture. The problem wasn’t in the material being
taught, but rather the amount of time they used to teach it.
The first six weeks were like basic training all over again
for me, shaved heads, marching everywhere, getting in
trouble for not doing this or that, etc… Initially I
was surprised at the structure of the program, but it didn’t
take long to adjust. I knew it was a game, and I just
had to play by the rules.
The first two weeks were the worst. Marching
everywhere with our flight commander, no talking at meals,
uniforms, dorm inspections, cleaning, ironing, studying,
exercising… They intentionally put more in our schedule
than we could actually, physically do in one day. But after
two weeks, the pace slowed a bit, and we became more
competent which allowed us more free time in-between
scheduled events. From then it became a countdown until our
upper class graduated, August 8th.
Once we became upper class, and got jobs
within the wing, things began to make more sense and become
much more tolerable. The stress was still there; it just
took a different form. I was the Services Squadron
Commander, which meant I was in charge of the services
provided by the wing. These included church, food,
recreation and physical conditioning. In addition I had to
organize the food and entertainment for the mobility
exercise, and organize and coordinate a community service
project for the entire wing. It was a lot more than I
bargained for, and I had little help from my upper class
mentor. Still, with a little pushing and shoving, I
accomplished all of my goals, and didn’t screw anything up
too bad. I managed to graduate with my class on Sept 19th.
My Dad flew down for the ceremony, and pinned my bars on.
It was his 52nd birthday.
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72nd Air Refueling Squadron and
Casual Status
We drove back to Cincinnati immediately after
graduation. I had to report to Grissom ARB
Indiana as soon as I could. So on Sunday, I checked in to my
new unit, the 72nd Air Refueling Squadron, of the
434th Air Refueling Wing. I showed up for work
on Monday, stayed until
noon, then they gave me the rest week off to
go home and get settled back in. I didn’t complain.
The next month I spent on a pretty strict
routine. I got up around 6:30, went in to the pilot shop at
8:00, studied the T-6 boldface emergency procedures and
aircraft operating limitations until noon. Then I went to
the gym and took the rest of the day off. Not too bad.
Since I wasn’t leaving for pilot training until November 20th,
I had plenty of time to relax. I did have one thing,
though, that stood in the way of me going to pilot
training. Medical Flight Screening.
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Flight Screening
On the 28th of October I flew to
San Antonio Texas and checked in to the American Heritage
Inn just outside the gate of Brooks AFB. At 0730 the next
morning, I reported in blues to the Medical Flight Screening
Building for the final pre-UPT medical screening. After
years of applications, forms, physicals, tests, interviews,
resumes, references, phone calls, and OTS, the Air Force
said “OK lets see you jump through this hoop, then we’ll let
you go to pilot training.” So there I was, with 6 other
applicants, sitting in a waiting room where we would learn
our fate. What other choice was there? A buddy from OTS
happened to be in my group that day; Richard Peace was a
Lieutenant from the reserve unit at Maxwell AFB, and I think
he was headed to go to Columbus AFB for Pilot Training.
The day started off with four hours of
computer-based testing, which I can’t go into too much
detail about, except to say it was mostly for future
reference and was not of the disqualifying type. We had
pizza for lunch, and after a brief break began our next
series of tests. The first was a heart ultrasound, or
echocardiogram. I went first. I had never seen my heart on
a TV before, and I just knew that the notes she was taking
meant I had problems. Of course they would make us wait
until the end of the day to let everyone know if we passed.
The test was over in probably 5 minutes, and I went back to
the waiting room. After we had all finished the heart
tests, we started the next battery of eye exams. Standard
stuff here, color vision, linear topography (to test for
laser surgery) and red-lens test. We bumped into a fellow
OTS graduate while waiting, who just learned he failed the
eye exams and was not going to go to UPT. The mood became
considerably more somber, partly because he is a great guy
and got a raw deal, but also because it made us more wary of
our fates.
At around 3:30 that afternoon, the testing
supervisor came in and gave us the news we were waiting for:
we had all passed. We finished up quickly and left for the
hotel. Since we were all staying in the same hotel, we
decided to get together for dinner. The seven of us, and
two other guys from the previous day of testing decided to
go to the River walk, as if there was any other option. We
had a nice dinner, went to a couple clubs afterwards, then
called it a night. I flew back the next day, relieved that
the last obstacle had been successfully negotiated. It
helped to re-motivate me and allow me to focus solely on
preparing for UPT.
The next three weeks at
Grissom were pretty routine, go to the gym and study
boldface. I did get to try out the KC-135 simulator
one afternoon, which was great. I spent two full hours
in the pattern at Grissom (with a qualified pilot in the
left seat of course) doing touch and goes. I came out
of the sim tired and sweaty. I realized the significance of that
ingenious innovation called elevator trim.
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Texas Bound
So
after two months of exercise and some studying, I was ready
to head west. On the 19th of November I packed up a U-Haul
trailer and left Cincinnati, bound for Del Rio Texas. My
first stop along the way was going to be in Kansas. I had
planned on staying with my cousin Ryan for a couple days,
both to visit and break the trip into more manageable
segments. The trip was going great, making good time
considering the trailer and headwinds, and when I was about
45 minutes away from Ryan's house, the Jeep overheated. It
was around 9:00pm local time halfway between Topeka and
Junction City Kansas. I pulled over to the emergency lane,
got out, and sure enough there was no coolant in the
radiator. Luckily no hoses had burst, all I had to do was
put some water in it and see if it would hold for another 40
miles. Ok, where's some water? Did I mention I was in the
middle of Kansas? The nearest exit was about a half mile
up, so I waited for the Jeep to cool down, then I drove it
cautiously to the exit. Nothing. I don't know why they
even made it an exit there was nothing in either direction
except gravel road. So I'm out of options right? That's
what I was thinking until I remembered I had a nifty little
program on my laptop called Microsoft Streets and Trips. A
thought popped into my head and I thought maybe Bill Gates
would come through for me on this one. Turned on the
laptop, opened up the program, found where I was (a feat in itself)
and presto. The map showed a creek running by a road off
the next exit. 15 mintues and one mile later (driving like
I was on an frozen lake) I pulled off the interstate, found
the creek, filled up the radiator with Grade A Kansas
Creekwater, and made it to Ryan's in no time.
The visit was great
in Abilene, and after a few days I was on the road again,
this time headed south towards Enid OK. Saturday night
I stayed at my friend's house just outside Vance AFB OK.
Jeff Suhr was a buddy from OTS, and he showed me how to
party Oklahoma style, if you want to read his account of
that night go to his website
www.pilotusaf.com and click under UPT I. He
got started in training much earlier than I was able to,
even though we graduated OTS at the same time. Sunday
morning came, and after reacquiring my equilibrium, I was on
the road again to Texas. I got as far as Austin before
I gave up driving and found a hotel. Monday morning I
arrived at Laughlin (my report-no-later-than date). I
checked in at the transition office, got my in-processing
packet, and went into Del Rio to find a hotel. Since I
didnt have a place to stay yet, I had to find something to
do with my U-Haul, so I dropped it off in the parking lot by
the dorms, and went to the housing office to see about
getting a duplex. The next couple days I stayed in the
La Quinta Inn downtown, while roaming around base trying to
finish the in-processing checklist. Once I had that
done the Housing office called and told me that they had a
duplex available if I could find a roommate. Luckily
for me, Dave Wohler (another buddy from OTS) was already at
Laughlin living in the dorms, and wanted to get into a
duplex. With that straightened out, I had to just sit
and wait for class to start.
Thanksgiving came,
and one of my classmates hosted dinner for those of us who
weren't able to go home for the holiday (most of us).
I got to meet most of the class, and had a pretty good time.
Monday, two days before class was going to start, I got
pulled into the Flight Commander's office, where he informed
me that I would not be starting on the 3rd, but rather
January 8th, due to a foul-up with the manning allocation.
I was pretty disappointed because I was looking forward to
flying the T-6, and since they alternate aircraft with each
class, I would now be flying the old T-37. Also it
meant that I had to wait another month before I got to
start. So I decided not to hang around Del Rio and get
tasked with all kinds of crappy little jobs; I took 30 days
of leave and went home.
Over the break I
visited with everyone from Ohio, Indiana and Kentucky, got
to do both Christmases, and drove back to Little Rock for
New Years. My long time friend Mark goes to UAMS
(Medical School) and he had some time off so we hung out for
a few days. Needless to say I was anxious to get back
to Laughlin and start class, so I left Saturday morning, and
got in to Laughlin around 8:00pm.
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