By Matt Wilson
What’s it like… over there?
The answers are as varied as the people who ask. There is the new officer or enlistee, shipping shortly on their first deployment, who want me to put their mind at ease. There is the curious stranger. And there is the family member, who wants nothing more than to be lied to, or otherwise kept in the dark, so they can sleep easier at night.
I have often thought about putting words to paper, describing what it is like. The challenges are numerous. To truly understand, like so many things, you have to be there. To have it make sense, you would need to have experienced at least some of it yourself. To allow it to be described, so much would have to be omitted due to classification. I have decided these are in fact merely challenges, so I will see what I can do.
It begins with something as simple as an Excel spreadsheet. It is a list of names, organized neatly by month. It is constantly changing, because flexibility is the key to airpower. Eventually, my name is at the forefront, and that month arrives. There are two ways to take it. One is the obvious, the impending doom theory, as the day I leave draws near. The other is what most choose, the idea that they are finally going to be doing what they have been trained to do for so long.
I chose a career of service after September 11th. I do not pretend to think that day of days somehow caused an immediate effect. I did not run down to the recruiter. In fact, I slept through the whole thing. I had been up late building a computer, and awoke late to a note at the end of the hall, something to the effect of, “turn on CNN.” I left for my junior year of college a few days afterward. Later that year my computer science ambitions got derailed by assembly language and vector calculus. I withdrew from my classes, went home for Thanksgiving, and stayed there until after Christmas, when a new semester began. I returned to the university with a new plan. It turned out 20/20 vision was not required to fly in the Air Force. They also did not require a complex academic major. A Business Economics degree a year later, a flight physical, and an oath, and my path lay in front of me.
I am not convinced that anyone at that age has a clear idea why they are choosing that path, and certainly not where it will take them. It is essentially a roll of the dice, and letting go of most of the ability to make decisions about their own life. When I graduated from Officer Training School in 2003, the war in Iraq was in full swing. It was not “if” I was going to deploy, but “when.”
It took a few years to get all the training done, and once fully qualified I joined the cause, getting rapid fired onto five back-to-backconsecutive deployments to both Iraq and Afghanistan. I was assigned to fly gunships; planes with large side firing weapons attached that focused on close air support of ground troops– a challenge that suited me. Rarely did the time at home outlast the time away. I was halfway through my fifth deployment when I was “informed” of a decision that had been made “on my behalf.” “Voluntold,” as they call it. I was being transferred to a different unit, in a different state, to join a unit building a different weapon system on a similar aircraft from the ground up. Some might have seen it as an opportunity. My personality resists change, and it certainly turned my world upside down.
It took two years for that weapon system and the humans who would operate it to get up to speed, to the point both it and the people who flew it were ready to go. That meant two years continuously at home, which gave me a taste of what life is like for most everyone in America: to come home to my family every day, and not have to worry about how long until I leave again.
It was a ticking clock though. After delays, false starts, and eventually a solid timeline, I was leaving again. This time, for twice as long as ever before. A sixth deployment, back to Afghanistan. When people hear the number six, they usually gasp. Then comes the look I dread, where they give me a reaction similar to when you realize a person’s family member passed away, or they broke up with their boyfriend. They feel sorry for me of course, but then comes awkwardness. They try to figure out how to thank me for my service, while simultaneously hiding their internal emotions regarding whether or not any of us should have to deploy at all. They know the fact I am deploying is not my fault, and yet are so desperate to blame someone, to shout at something. They sometimes see inside me someone else they know. Honestly today, nearly everyone has a family member, friend, or friend’s family member either deployed, or deploying.
We call them our “deserts,” the tan colored camouflage uniforms we wear overseas. While deployed, they feel normal, they look normal. At home, it is like coming to school naked. Everyone stares, with that forlorn look on their face, as they try to think of what to say. As I am driven onto the military base, the gate guard notices, and wishes me luck. The parking lot is a somber place. Bags are being unpacked; wives and husbands are leaning against their cars, brushing each other’s hair aside in the wind, and wiping each other’s tears. It is a scene that has been played out in many movies. One leaves, and one stays. They never get it right. There is no somber music in the background. There are no extreme close-ups. There are just people who are very, very, sad.
I always turn to look back, one last time. And she always waits until I do.
The trip over is a flurry of emotions. Initially, everyone is lost in their own thoughts. For some this is time away from their spouses, their children. Others will miss watching their newborn grow, or worse yet, miss their child’s birth altogether. The first thoughts are always of what is being taken from them. The price, as I refer to it. The price of a life of service has gone up dramatically in the past ten years. So much so that lives are affected negatively every day. Just look at military divorce rates, veteran suicide rates, or PTSD statistics, and it is easy to find examples. It is a wonder anyone gets on that plane. But we do.
At the intermediate stop, we pick up extra gear we probably will not ever use. It is protection against an unfathomable version of warfare that is still a remote possibility. Then endless waiting ensues until we board yet another aircraft. Some try to get on the right sleeping schedule based on when they will be working at their final location, whether it be days, nights or somewhere in between. Some migrate between the various movie locations, knowing the odds are that at least one of them will be showing something they have not seen. Either way, the theater tends to be the coolest room on the base during the hot summer months, allowing hours of blissful sleep during romantic comedies.
This layover is the first indication of being on an actual deployment. The living quarters are tents, and the food is at dingy dining facilities. Somewhere between “here” and “there,” it is a place that all are familiar with, yet no one really enjoys. At the passenger terminal, scribed on the walls are the names of hundreds, thousands who have come before, and they all sharinge the common bond of having passed through that room , and having boarded aircraft that have taken them into hell and back again.
For me, the most physically aware I become is on final approach to my destination. Regardless of the type of aircraft, at some point during the flight, under the cover of night, they kill the lights, and have us don our protective equipment. We slap on armor and helmets, because you just never know. Truth be told, up in the air is about as safe a place as there is in a warzone, but the “golden beebee” theory continues to be whispered in the halls,: “sometimes it only takes one lucky shot by the enemy.” While I will fly that same approach into that same airfield dozens of times per deployment, the first time is for some reason the one that worries me the most and my body’s fight or flight response tends to be in full swing.
Wheels down, and we are safe. We are in “good guy land” where the United States controls the airfield, and most of a wide swath of area surrounding it. Then for the fourth or fifth time this rotation, it is time to bag drag. We all have a bunch, and those who have been there, done that, have it figured out. I use yellow duct tape, wrapped around all my bags with perpendicular crossing points, so I can distinguish my gear from the hundreds of others from a mile away. Usually some form of leadership has stayed awake, or gotten up early, or otherwise interrupted their schedule to come greet us, and help us haul our stuff. Eventually we arrive back at our “camp” which is a cordoned off area of the base restricted to those of us who are “special.” It is a place with a different set of rules, for a different type of people.
Much has been publicized in the news lately about this kind of people. They are the ones who make the extraordinary, ordinary. As a result, they do what is expected of them every day, with not the slightest insinuation that it ever deserves of a medal, ribbon, or any type of recognition whatsoever. With mantras that read like motivational crescendos, they are truly a unique type of personnel. While I am categorized among their ranks, I cannot consider myself as one of them.
Usually we arrive at the worst time, when the present crews are in the middle of their sleep cycle. Due to limited bunk space, we regularly have to put three or four guys in a room instead of two. The rooms are not exactly spacious. At this particular location, think seven feet wide (just wide enough to put your bed against the back wall sideways) by fifteen feet long. Cram in two bunk beds, and a couple nondescript dressers or wall lockers, and you have yourself a deployed living environment. It is a guarantee that the door will have a dramatic creak to it, and thus whoever is senior, and/or more selfish, takes the back half of the room. Sometimes the furniture can be arranged to mostly block off the front half from the back, giving some semblance of privacy. Mostly though, we are in each other’s business, all the time. The pairings are sometimes random, and sometimes based on who we fly with. After a twelve hour workday with a guy, even if you are pretty good friends, you would be amazed at how much you can come to despise their constant invasion of your world.
Then come the briefings- the ones that start with “how many of you have been here before?” which causes nearly the entire room to raise their hands, and the less obvious “how many of you have not?” There are always some first timers, either young officers or even younger enlisted members, looking confused, and even a bit frightened about what they got themselves into. For the most part, the briefings serve as a refresher, based on what types of rules have been changed recently, to include rules of engagement, and the rules about where to dump the excess coffee from the bottom of the pot. At this point, due to transit time and everything that followed we are usually pushing a 24 hour day. So they let us go crash, literally, slamming our bags around in our pitch black rooms, stumbling over other people’s stuff and cursing.
When time permits, we get a “ride-along” flight, where we fly with the experienced aircrew already in place. Our respective counterparts for each flight crew position help us out, answering any remaining questions about the way we do business “over here.” This is all just bonus “training” because no one is allowed to deploy without meeting the required standards for knowledge and performance.
The next day, we are on our own. Crews are arranged methodically, accounting for who is new, and who is not. In some cases, strengths compensate weaknesses. In others, immaturity is compensated by adult supervision. It is really a conundrum. If a person excels at their job, clearly knows their stuff, and is respected by everyone, they are basically guaranteed to be saddled with the complete opposite every time they deploy. No “dream team” is ever formed here. This is an all volunteer force, there is always going to be a variety of people, and capabilities. Managing the people is one of the challenges leadership constantly faces.
When it comes to morale activities, if you did not bring it with you or have it mailed, you do not have it. Depending on the operations tempo, and possibly even more so the weather, there can be periods of excessive downtime. Ironically, this is when I hear the most people yelling over the morale phones. While deployed, we have one duty, and it is to fly the missions. At home, everyone has additional responsibilities: paperwork, additional duties, family responsibilities, or trying to clear out the Tivo that is been stacking up for weeks. Morale calls can unfortunately turn into tasking sessions, while those left at home try to communicate all their issues.
It is no secret that time apart is difficult. Technology has certainly made it easier. If I haul my laptop over to the magical “MoraleNet” area, I am able to Skype with my wife. Sort of. Assuming the connection does not drop every ten seconds, or if I get more than one frame per minute. Every once in a very rare while we will get a solid connection, and for me that is huge. I usually walk back to my room rubbing my face, because my “smiling muscles” are sore.
My wife and I are managing this time around, and I am sad to say it is because of our experience. We met when we were both active duty, and due to my training commitments and prior to her being involuntarily separated from the service as a part of the “force shaping” measures, we did 832 days in different countries. During that time, we spent a total of about 60 days together, if one includes the six week training program where we met. After that, came the five deployments, and even during my two year stint “at home” after moving, a number of temporary duty assignments out of state as we tested and fielded the new weapon system. All told, we have been married for seven years, together for eight, and of that time we have spent somewhere in the vicinity of 1400 days apart. That is nearly four years. Imagine everything you ever did in high school. Then, picture that entire timeframe without your best friend. It is tough to wrap the brain around such a massive amount of time in different places. The price of service.
While that may seem like a depressing story, it is nothing compared to the families that never get reunited. It is the number one statistic reported by the media- number of service members killed during these operations. It has taken up a sidebar of nearly every periodical for as long as I can remember. Less often reported, probably due to the gray area in labeling and reporting it, is the number of wounded. Conservative estimates put that number in the tens of thousands. Every single one of them has a lot more to worry about than time spent apart. Even those who have not yet made either of those lists are risking adding their name every day.
There are two battlefields in this war. The one on the ground and the one in the air. It is no secret that the air war was won a decade ago. Enemy airpower is no longer a threat. While I fly around inside various possible ground based threat envelopes, the risk is minimal, and designed to be so. On the ground, it is a different story. These guys strap on their armor, leave the sanctuary of their controlled territory, as small as it may be, and go out fully expecting to take enemy fire.
Troops in Contact. That phrase, commonly known as a “TIC,” has the ability to rouse aircrew from their meaningless slumber, grab what little information there may be (location, callsign, how to reach them), skid the crew vehicle across the parking lot, and haul ass towards the beast of an airplane. No one complains, no one whines, everyone knows that regardless of what they were doing when they got the call, what they are doing now is more important. I suspect it is similar to when the bell rings at a firehouse, or “officer down” comes over the police radio. It may have been fun and games five minutes earlier, but no one is laughing now.
I once saw one of those motivational slides with a picture of my aircraft that stated “not so much a plane, as a flying castle of f#@%ucking DOOM.” There are certainly more flowery ways to describe it, but it certainly gets the point across. In a nutshell, I have the ability to strike a target from thousands of feet in the air, potentially miles away. The optics allow me to see if someone is carrying a machinegun, or a garden hoe, from that same distance. It is a dramatic advantage over an enemy who has little access to technology.
At a TIC, the “airstack” as we call it, fills up quick. In order to keep all the aircraft from hitting each other, everyone gets an assigned altitude. For the fixed wing assets, this can stretch miles into the sky. The bottom tends to be reserved for assets like mine, allowing for easier strikes without having to move anyone out of the way. Even further below are the “helo guys.” Other than the boots on the ground, I rank helicopter aircrews as among the most badass individuals on the planet. Here I sit in my heated and air conditioned comfort way up in the sky, while these guys buzz treelines and houses, corralling bad guys back into play with their mere presence. As a result, the enemy takes more potshots at helos than any other air asset. The helo guys just see that as a means to an easier solution. Rules of engagement state that having a guy shoot at them makes it as black and white an issue as it could possibly be. Like I mentioned before, it takes a special breed to fill their shoes.
Initial voice communication with the ground callsign is like the opening kickoff. Everyone is full of energy, ready to run down the field and unload on the enemy. We give them our information, tell them what we can provide, and they tell us what the problem is. Because of the time delay to get us to the location, sometimes the battle has already been waged, and won. In the more serious situations however, our mission is simple: seek and destroy.
I have never glorified what I do. In my brain, I simplify it. There are the good guys. They are on my team. There are the bad guys. They choose their team poorly. They are also trying to kill the guys on my team. It is not like they are trying to score a goal on us, or steal our girlfriends. Bullets are flying through the air, or improvised explosive devices are set up, with the intent to kill members of my team. I have the ability to prevent this, and I do not pass up the opportunity.
These are not grizzled veterans on the battlefield for the most part. The war is being waged by our youth, like it has so many times before. Each and every guy down there is a son first, a husband possibly, and in many cases a father. Each is tied to so many other people in the world, and I have the ability to help make sure he sees them all again.
I contrast my job with that of a factory toy maker. While he knows the hours of work he puts into every toy will be appreciated by a child somewhere, he does not necessarily receive that feedback all the time. When I land each day, I generally get a phone call from the team we supported, thanking us for what we did. Even if I do not, I know that because of my efforts, a dozen or more families will be welcoming their loved ones home from war, and had I not done my job effectively, that might not have been the case.
The rest of the deployment is Groundhog’s Day. Wake up, work out, get a briefing, go fly, complete the mission, land, eat, relax, sleep. Lather, rinse, repeat, over, and over. Eventually, the count of days deployed starts to outnumber the days remaining. Schedules continue to flux, and you never really know when “that day” will be. You just know it is coming.
I have said it many times, that there is one good thing about deploying. Coming home.
I cannot even write about it without getting choked up. The support from everyone, the pilots who fly us home, the veterans who shake our hands at intermediate stops, and the random people at the airports, is indescribable. I am hard pressed to think of a career that is as well respected by the general population as my own.
After what usually amounts to an oft delayed and prolonged journey, the plane pulls up to the hanger at our home base, and out the window we see the signs, balloons, and throngs of people. They have faced a similar challenge. It is not easy to be the one who stays, yet they get none of the attention for their trials. The stairs to the aircraft lower, and out we come, in our deserts. Instead of wearing them awkwardly, we now wear them with pride. They are a badge of honor, showing that we have just done what amounts to a portion of our part for our country. The big wigs normally show up, shake everyone’s hand as we come down the stairs, putting in face time. What impresses me more are the others, the guys fifty years my senior, wearing hats showing that they too paid a price at one time, that they too chose a life of service.
There is associated risk with nearly everything anyone ever does during their lifetime. For those who choose a career in the armed services, that risk is certainly higher than most. But that is not the only cost.
One of the Air Force’s core values is “Service Before Self.” It is the service’s way of saying that regardless of individual wants or needs, the needs of the bigger organization take precedent. Usually, individual needs can also be accommodated by leadership, especially when it comes to some of the basic military benefits allotted to every service member. One of plusses when compared with civilian counterparts is the thirty days of leave allotted per year. For those who are too busy or otherwise unable to take the leave, we are allowed to stack up to two years worth, before it gets classified as “use or lose.” For members to even get to that stage, they have to have gone two years cumulative without taking a day off. During deployments, it goes without saying they do not get weekends off either. The number of people I know with use or lose leave is simply staggering. When fighting wars on multiple fronts, with the acknowledged truth that you cannot mass produce certain types of forces, it is very difficult to find ways to give anyone a break.
As one of the fronts has drawn to a conclusion of sorts, the phrase “do more with less” has reverberated through the services. This means there will continue to be struggles by leadership to take care of their people, even as the deployed requirements are reduced. The reduction in forces over the past five years has shown that even those who have chosen to do their duty for twenty years until retirement, and accepted all costs associated, have at times been shown the door prematurely anyway, and lost all their benefits.
It was shortly before departing on this deployment that it fell into my lap. Sitting at a local Italian restaurant, I realized that as of the day before, my Active Duty Service Commitment had ended. Years are added for various things, from flight training, to changing bases, to becoming an instructor. As of that day, they had all expired, essentially meaning that at any time I could take a different path. Up to that point, I had no backup plan. The economy was not exactly prime for job hunting, and the profession of arms does not necessarily transfer much of its skill set to the outside world.
As it turned out, the company responsible for training the next generation of war-fighters had an opening, and was looking for someone with operational experience to fill the slot. In something comparable to a whirlwind romance, I was soon staring at a job offer. A choice.
I have faced a few extremely difficult decisions in my life. Generally, they work out for the best. But you just never know. After a few stressful days, and a lot of soul searching, I found myself in my Commander’s office. I was saddled with the impossible task of explaining why, after almost nine years of dedicated service, I was choosing a different path in life from this point forward, completely unlike the path he had chosen for himself. His response was predictable. He rattled off everything I was giving up, all the potentially amazing future situations I would miss. My response was equally predictable, a laundry list of the situations that could turn out downright terrible. The risks, and the price, of service. The bottom line was in an all volunteer force, when the required commitment has been fulfilled, the decision is up to the individual.
The Air Force has been a gigantic chunk of my existence. It has affected me in many positive ways, to include bumbling into my wife, and teaching me the importance and sanctity of life. It has also affected me in negative ways; missing holidays, getting leave cancelled, and never being able to plan my life in advance. The bottom line is the price of my service has become too high for me to choose to pay it, anymore.
Another popular catchphrase in the military is “the only one who cares about you, is you.” It is popular, because it rings true. I am making this decision based on what is best for me, and my family. I still have a passion for what I do, and am committed to the project and weapon system as a whole. I look forward to teaching those bright eyed bushy tailed young lieutenants, eager to please, and yet deathly afraid I will swipe the wings right off their chest.
I see myself far in the future, pulling out my own wings from a drawer somewhere, or off of a shelf. While watching them sparkle under the light, I will think about the times I slipped the surly bonds of earth, the things I did while rocketing across the sky, and the lives I affected on the ground. I hope to eventually meet some of the warriors I supported, and share war stories about “back in the day.”
Then, I will set down those wings, and look around. I will see everything and everyone else that is a part of my life, and never take any of it for granted.
Someday someone, young or old, will ask me, “What was it like… over there?”
And I will tell them.
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Matt Wilson is a veteran of the armed forces, who recently moved to King George, Virginia. He has a lot of stories to tell, and over time, hopes to find those curious enough to listen.
