Tag: Air Force

Sam’s Club

On September 24, 2024

DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER EXECUTIVE OFFICE BUILDING

Checking in at the lobby of the Dwight D. Eisenhower Executive Office Building is simple. They have my name pulled up on their computer and an escort ready to take me to the Office of Security Investigation.

“Grab a seat, Sir. The team will be right with you.” A young woman in a pantsuit smiles as she motions toward a long table picketed with a chair in the middle on the far side and two chairs on the other. All that’s missing is a one-way window and a dangling light bulb to complete the interrogation room I’ve imagined—and dreaded—since learning I’m interviewing for a job working next door in the White House.

This is my second visit to this historic structure. Five years ago, it was called The Old Executive Office Building, and I faced another panel as a national finalist for a White House Fellowship. Although uncertain how today will go, I’m guessing my 1998 interviews with actress Mary Steenbergen, and former National Security Advisor Robert “Bud” MacFarlane will seem like softballs in comparison.

I walk around the table, moving towards the lone chair, and wave to the woman as she departs. I settle into my seat and concentrate on my breathing. In through the nose, out through the mouth. This interview doesn’t have anything to do with the job I’ve been asked to apply for. It’s the hurdle required to enter the White House tomorrow and convince them I’m the right guy to carry a piece of luggage they call the “football.”

We’re at the end of deployment preparation back in the C-130 squadron I command at Little Rock Air Force Base in Arkansas. I’ll fly commercial from this interview and catch up with my squadron in Qatar for three months of IRAQI FREEDOM support out of Al Udeid Air Base. My unit spared me no mercy as I departed to compete for this potential future job.

“Hey, boss. I heard you didn’t make it past the first day when you tried to walk on the Academy football team. Now you’re going to carry a football for the President?”

“Sir, I predict you’ll spend ten percent of your time carrying that suitcase and ninety percent making coffee. Probably FooFoo coffee too.”

“Someone I knew did that job. You wear your service dress the whole time and stand around at cocktail parties. Good luck. I’d take the fucking desert over that.”

I take their shit because that’s how I roll—admitting they’re right while looking for opportunities to hurl an insult back where I can. They know what’s going on. I know what’s going on.

It’s not really a football. But it is a 45-pound suitcase holding the president’s launch codes for the United States’ nuclear arsenal. Military aides from all four services have been carrying the nuclear “football” since the end of the Eisenhower administration. How ironic that I won’t carry it unless I pass my trials today in this building named after Old Ike.

What kind of self-respecting warrior is interested in a nameless, faceless job following around the commander-in-chief with a satchel in hand? It’s a pretty easy answer: an officer who has reached the pinnacle of his O-5 operational career as a commander and knows his or her only chance to remain in the cockpit is to command at the colonel, and maybe, the general officer level. For some reason, the only officers who don’t find themselves on the promotion fast-track after carrying the football for the President are the ones who are asked to leave the job for some egregious error in judgment—usually influenced by thinking with alcohol addling their brain, or their dick in their hand, or both. Everyone else walks away from the tour for an operational command at the Colonel/Captain rank.

That’s what I want. I’m already slated for a year of Air War College next summer, followed by two or three years behind a desk—probably at the Pentagon—before competing to fly planes again. If I can snag this gig, it’ll be two years of hell—admittedly peppered with some interesting experiences—but also a chance to skip War College and the staff tour for an early shot at O-6 command.

I’m confident about tomorrow’s White House interview. The panel consists of the sitting aides who carry the “football.” They’re all a year or two older than I am and I’m guessing they’re less interested in finding out how much I know than they are in determining whether I’m a team player. That’s what I would look for. No one wants to work with an asshole. Rumor has it one—an asshole—slipped through the selection process during the Clinton administration and ruined it for the rest of the aides. They spent most of their tour hiding from the First Lady, minimizing their time in uniform, and as far away from the First Family as procedures allowed.

But today’s security interview? I’m not as confident. This job requires a squeaky-clean resume. While my Air Force performance rates as excellent in many areas, even outstanding in others—if you believe my inflated performance reports—I do have a skeleton or two in my closet. Not like I killed my drill sergeant in basic training and hid the body, but a couple of times out with the boys, where things took a surprising twist.

I’ve told these stories already to the Department of Defense teams that interview me for my security clearance every five years. No one messes with those screenings. If you don’t tell them everything, they go digging. And if they find out you haven’t been straight with them, you’re pretty much done serving in the military. But those security guys are checking for just one thing—whether you’ve done something so bad—Farm animals? Stolen lunch money?—that a foreign government could blackmail you into divulging military secrets if they found out about it. That means if the security personnel pass you, they have no reason to run and tell the rest of the Air Force all the bad stuff you’ve admitted to. Separate stovepipes. I’m hoping the military security clearance stovepipe crosses miles away from the White House security screening stovepipe.

Two men enter the room, all smiles. Both wear sportscoats and loafers, a look that tells me they probably don’t spend much time next door with Bush 43.

The first to enter introduces the other. “Cam, this is Bob Stevens. I’m Mike. Mike Tracy. Thanks for dropping by. This is just a formality, but it’s kind of a necessary one, you know?”

I match their smiles and nod, but there’s no way in hell the relaxed demeanor is putting me at ease.

They start in on the questions and I begin to wonder if I’ve been too optimistic. I’ve heard these questions before.

Bob starts, pausing between each question for my answer.

“Have you ever plotted to overthrow the US government?”

“Have you ever been a member of the communist party?”

“Have you ever had any financial difficulties or declared bankruptcy?”

The questions sound so serious but I’ve heard them all. And I’m guilty of none of them. When they reach the question “Have you ever been convicted of a felony?” I answer “no” with confidence, even though we’re treading close to the issue making me nervous today.

Bob finishes the questions on his list and nods at Mike. “That’s all I got.”

I want to sigh in relief, but that’s a tell, so I just let the air slowly out of my mouth as my muscles relax.

“Mike?” Bob says.

I suck a breath back in.

“Yeah, Cam. Good interview. I think we both know what’s left though, right?” Mike waits for me to answer.

“Uh, what?” I say, on the minute chance this is some line he uses to get guys talking.

“Why don’t you talk to us about the elephant in the room?”

This time I audibly exhale, then suck in a breath and spill my guts.

“I’ve filled this out on my security form with the Air Force multiple times. It was a misdemeanor, not a felony. Purdue vs. Wisconsin. We were downtown for Breakfast Club before the game. Couple of Bloody Marys and then this young security guard started hassling me about coming in the wrong end of the stadium as I was looking for our seats. He tore up my tickets, I grabbed them, and—”

Mike cuts me off. “Cam, stop right there.”

I stop.

“We got that. You spent twelve hours in the pokey for public intoxication. We already know about that from the stuff DoD sent over. Can’t say it was your smartest move, but you know…things happen.” He nods at his partner. “Right, Bob?”

“Shut up, Mike.”

“Then, what—”

“It was the question about financials.”

“What?” I’m baffled. I’m married to an Air Force officer who outranks me. We make good money. We don’t even have a car payment.“We’ve got some houses,” I say. “But the mortgages are good. Nothing’s overdue.”

Mike nods. “What do you know about Sam’s Club?”

“Nothing. We don’t shop there. They screwed us over on a membership thing a couple of years back and my wife is boycotting them. They tried to say we owed them $20, and she’s been disputing it ever since. She’s big on principle.”

“It’s $40,” Bob says.

“What?”

“Not $20. You’ve owed $40 to Sam’s Club for over three years.”

“Like I said—”

Mike must be the interrupter of the team because he shuts me down again. “Cam. We don’t actually care. I mean, sure, we care about principle and all that. Good on your wife. But if you want to interview tomorrow, you’re going to have to clear that debt today. Principle or not. Do you understand?”

“I can call my wife and she can work it out with them.”

“Do you have a credit card?” Mike says.

I nod.

Mike turns to Bob. “You still got that number?” Bob shoves his folder toward Mike and taps on a yellow sticky with his pen. Mike nods toward a phone at the end of the table. “If it were me? White House job? I wouldn’t go calling my principled wife.” He pulls the sticky off and hands it to me. “Here’s the number. We’re going to wait outside. Just pay it, Cam.”

So I do.

###

Six of us interview in the West Wing the next day. One of them is a classmate from the Air Force Academy and we do dinner together that night. We all stay at the same hotel. When we return to the rooms, the front desk gives a message to my classmate and then to me. We’ve been asked to return for another round of interviews the next morning.

A limo picks us both up the next morning and drops us off on the asphalt loop to the West Wing. Classmate Johnny “Q” Quintas interviews first and high-fives me on the way out. My interview flows as I expected. I’m not an expert at reading faces, but the three other officers—they leave the incumbent Air Force officer out so as not to bias their selection—all seem responsive to my answers.

Q and I both have Blackberry work phones and the selection team tells us they will call when they have results. We decide to hang out together.

I get the first call.

“Fantastic interview, Cam. So tough to choose between you two. We ended up deciding to go with Q.”

I tilt the Blackberry down and mouth to Q, “You got it.”

To his credit, he tries to make a face that looks like he’s sorry for me but it’s all mixed up with his excitement at getting the job. In the end, he goes with a wide grin. I might have done the same.

I’m disappointed. I wish I could say it’s because I want to serve our country and our highest elected official by protecting the codes to our most lethal instrument of power. That’s not it, though. Six officers competed for the job. One got it. It wasn’t me. That’s what stings. And I can’t blame it on Sam’s Club.

That night I fly to Bahrain with a four-hour layover in Paris. By the time I board my connection, my pity party is over. I’ve got a squadron of 33 aircraft and 275 personnel to command in a war that started 9 months ago. I’ve got a follow-on assignment to War College where I’ll be able to reconnect with my family after all these deployments.

Life is good.

I picture Bob and Mike laughing at the Air Force officer spilling his guts about his night in jail. Then I imagine myself telling the same story at the recreation tent at Al Udeid where I’m limited to three weak-ass beers and there’s no danger of intoxication. My aircrews are going to be roaring.

Fucking Sam’s Club.

THE WEST WING

In Whom Do We Trust?

By Cam Torrens

On June 25, 2023

In Blog, Nonfiction, Ruminating

In Whom Do We Trust?

In early January 2003, I command a squadron of over 500 operations and maintenance personnel and 18 C-130 transport aircraft based in Little Rock Air Force Base, Arkansas. Our mission is to deliver combat troops and supplies anytime and anywhere, either by parachutes out the back end of the plane, or by landing on whatever flat surface is available. A mantle of trust drapes my shoulders. My loyalty is unquestionable, but I’m hesitant to reciprocate that trust.

I’m cynical about a war twelve years earlier, where we declared victory but allowed a tyrant to resume his role as the leader of Iraq. I’m jaded over a presidential election that took the US Supreme Court weeks to adjudicate. I’m frustrated because I just returned from a deployment to Afghanistan where it seems our country is no closer to finding the mastermind of 9-11, and instead, appears to be manufacturing reasons to shift our focus from Osama bin Laden to Saddam Hussein. Poised at the prime of my operational career, I’m so wrapped up in how to keep my team at the leading edge of the fight that I offer nothing but complaints towards those working at the strategic level. When anyone over the age of fifty tries to give me the big picture, I stare at them like they’ve got a dick growing out of their forehead.

My midday summons to my commander’s office doesn’t help.

“I don’t have the details. All I know is we’re not stopping short this time. Be prepared to head out in less than a month. Questions?” My boss might be under the age of fifty, but his lack of specifics about our upcoming deployment just outside the border of Iraq inspires little confidence.

I stride across the street to my squadron, mulling over my boss’s words. So much for commander’s intent. The only useful information I cull from our meeting is I need to have my squadron ready to deploy to the Middle East in less than a month. I smile, then check to see if anyone’s watching the newest squadron commander talking to himself. I don’t need more guidance. I might not control where we’re going and what we are fighting for, but I’ve sure as hell got a unit that knows how to get out of Dodge, set up an operating base, and get shit done.

We spend the next five weeks prepping the crews with airdrop training at night and short-field landings on unimproved surfaces. My ops officer runs that training and I make sure I hop in the aircraft commander’s seat enough that I’ll be ready to fly in the lead wherever we end up going. I study the crews flying with me. Although I am the senior and most experienced aviator in the unit, commander duties keep me out of the cockpit and on the ground more than other pilots. I need a crew that’s been flying their asses off. Not just to make up for my recent lack of flight hours, but also because when the shit hits the fan, I need a crew I can bond with—one that I trust.

The basic crew on a C-130 is six: pilot, copilot, navigator, flight engineer, and two loadmasters. We’ll probably take a mechanic if we land in the combat zone, but I’m not worried about who that will be. My maintenance leaders will send me the best airman they got. I’ve already filled most of the flying crew, as well. My enlisted positions are senior NCOs that earned their rank through performance and common sense. My navigator used to fly with me in my last unit when I was a major. The toughest decision I make before departing our home base is who will be my copilot—my number two. My staff recommends two lieutenants to fly with me before we leave—so that I can make the choice myself. Andy Smith and Deanna Franks.

My ops staff assumes I’ll pick Andy. I suspect the only reason they don’t just assign him to me is so I’ll think I’m deciding and not them. Andy’s a good ol’ boy with a reputation for smooth flying, a raunchy sense of humor, and the ability to make a crew bond quicker than a middle-schooler’s tongue on a frozen flagpole. You can count on him to buy the first round, know the name of the girlfriend of the youngest guy on the crew, and fly better than half our aircraft commanders. A week before we leave, I take him out on a night tactical airdrop training mission and let him fly the plane for twenty minutes in formation. The rumors about his flying instincts are true. Hands of glass.

On the run-in to the airdrop, I run our plane one hundred feet higher than we plan. I do it on purpose, gauging Andy’s reaction. He doesn’t say a word. He is supposed to—the copilot keeps the pilot on airspeed and altitude while backing the navigator up to make sure the plane is going in the right direction. On the return flight to base, Andy rips a fart, tells a bad joke, and has the whole crew laughing—including me. We have an hour left on our mission and are scheduled to practice short-field landings using our night-vision goggles. This is an aircraft commander qualification and I’m the one doing the landings. After the whole ‘silent Andy’ thing with my airdrop altitude, I consider coming in high on the short-field landing just to see if he will point it out. But these night assault landings are nothing to mess around with, so I table that plan.

I screw it up anyway—carrying too much speed across the overrun. When I pull the power, we float out of the zone, my wheels touching six hundred feet down the runway instead of the required five hundred feet or less. I should take it around, but don’t. Mashing the brakes, I lift the throttle handles and pull them into reverse, bringing the plane to a stop.

“Nice, Sir!” Andy bobs his NVGs up and down like an agreeable grasshopper. “You just got it in the zone.”

An endorphin rush blooms in my chest and I quell it. The hardest thing about command isn’t the increase in responsibility, but the people always telling me what an expert pilot I am, calling me an awesome commander, and hinting how much they like me. Every time it happens, I get that rush; and it takes all my effort to remind myself I’m not invincible just because I’m in command.

Am I wrong about my botched landing? Did I land in the zone? I turn to our flight engineer, who sits behind and between us pilots. His goggles sway back and forth. Truth. I landed long.

Two nights later, I fly the same profile with Deanna Franks, my other copilot candidate. Deanna’s reputation precedes. When it comes to hands-on flying, everyone in the unit considers her the best copilot. She won the Triple Nickel Award in flight school for flying an evaluation where she was never more than five knots off airspeed, fifty feet off altitude or five degrees off heading for the hour-long flight.

But she’s also known for what she’s not. Not one of the guys. Not like she acts anti-social or anything, but she just doesn’t seem to be interested in playing the game when it comes to aircrew hijinks. The jokes about each other’s mothers disappear, nobody burps, and if someone has to cut loose after a round of bad burritos, you can be sure no one else will laugh about it.

Our airdrop mission with Deanna goes on time and on target. I don’t get the chance to test her reaction to my flying one hundred feet high because she never lets me. At fifty feet error, she calls it out, and I return to altitude. When the navigator mixes up on a turn, Deanna knows exactly where we are and steers us back on track. I let her fly the plane home, and she flies a rock-solid formation lead. When complimented in debrief, I fess up and tell the other two crews the copilot was flying, not me.

I decompress with a beer at home, my usual method for sleep enhancement, and ponder who I want flying in my right seat. Andy’s good. I like him and so does the rest of the crew. He might be just what we need to bring our crew together for the mission. But what is that mission? I’m not convinced our nation’s leadership knows. My boss across the street claims not to know. All I can do is trust my crews will do the right thing when they finally find out what that thing is.

“Nice, Sir!” Andy’s praise after my botched landing rings in my head. Fucking can’t trust him, either.

My crew—with Deanna in the copilot’s seat—deploys to Oman a week later, and we shuttle supplies around the Gulf, waiting for the war to start. I get the call to grab a flight to Qatar, where headquarters plans the mission everyone’s whispering about. At the end of the day, I fly back to Oman with big news for my unit. We’re going to lead 50 C-130s over the top of Baghdad International Airport and airdrop paratroopers and equipment from the 82^nd Airborne for the initial invasion of Iraq.

The planners pick a date at the end of the following week—a night with the least amount of moon. The last thing we want is to be highlighted across the Baghdad sky like Santa’s reindeer, our slow-moving aircraft easing pickings for Iraq’s antiquated anti-aircraft artillery. I brief my unit on the mission early in the day so we can use the afternoon for sleep before our late-night alert.

The wake-up happens on time, a hand shaking my shoulder, rousting me from atop a dank sleeping bag spread across my cot. My crew only suspects something is off when we enter the operations building. Instead of a crowded room of bleary-eyed aircrew, it’s just us—my crew of six. When I ask the obvious question, no one knows why—only what. My tactics shop gives us the lowdown.

“The mission over Baghdad has changed. No more airdrop. They’ve found an Iraqi Air Force runway called Tallil that we can use. It’s only a half-hour flight into Iraq from the Kuwaiti border. We think the runway is clear. You guys are going to take a runway-opening team in tonight and everyone else is going to fly up to Kuwait, pick up the Army dudes, and fly them in behind you.”

I nod. “What happened with the airdrop? Why the last-minute change?” The captain briefing me that the start of the war has completely changed in the last eight hours was twelve years old the last time we attacked Saddam Hussein. Should I call headquarters and check myself? I take a breath. These are my guys…trust them.

“Fuck if we—sorry, Sir. They haven’t told us why. They just sent all the planning stuff and told us to do this. When you pick up the team in Kuwait on your way in, the Army intel team there is supposed to give you more information on the field.”

“Anybody tell the loadmasters? They’re going to need to re-rig everything in the back end of the plane.”

My young captain, he of the errant F-bomb, turns to his planning partner and raises his eyebrows. The other guy shrugs.

“Shit. I don’t think so, Sir. We’ve been working on this.”

I turn to my copilot, Deanna. “Go let them know the new mission. Chad and I will start planning.”

“Got it, Sir.”

I’ve not questioned my final copilot decision once on this deployment. Deanna’s flying continues to be flawless and when they told us our crew would lead the assault on Baghdad, she buried herself in the planning, memorized the mission, and emerged as the leader of our group of copilots. The reason I can send her out to the ramp to pass a message instead of planning this new mission into Iraq is because I know she’ll tell the loadmasters exactly what they need to know and she’ll instantly catch up when she returns to help plan.

Three hours later, we’re airborne out of Kuwait, after loading up the runway-opening team and their trailer. Intel updates us on the Iraqi runway status while we load the plane. Best they can tell, the runway surface is rough, with potholes and loose gravel, but there’s no evidence they’ve erected any obstacles to discourage planes from landing. Of course, the photos are several days old.

We run our combat entry checklists, don our night-vision goggles, and drop to three hundred feet above the desert floor. It’s dark—pitch black. Something to do with that original plan of picking a moonless night, I remind my crew. Now that we’re going in low, I’m wishing we had a bit of moonlight so the night goggles would work better. I set my radar altimeter at 250 feet so I’ll have a warning if we inadvertently descend too low. The desert air—fetid, like we’re picking up the smell of the shit used to fertilize village crops—jets from the vents, but fails to prevent the sweat soaking the inside of my body armor.

Fifteen miles from the field, the terrain features pop out in black and green contours. The city of Nasiriyah lies just northeast of our runway, its lights confirming we’re on course, and the gunfire flashes in and around the town remind us we’re not in Kansas anymore. They also remind me that headquarters was wrong about no fighting reported near the airfield. We turn early to intercept the runway course and as we roll out on a seven-mile final, our navigator lets us know he’s picked up the landing surface on his ground-mapping radar.

At five miles to go, I yank the throttles to idle, slowing the aircraft to a speed that allows us to drop our landing gear and flaps. As the airspeed drops to 130 knots, I spot the runway in front of me and point the aircraft toward the first hundred feet, while scanning down the strip for obstacles.

“How’s the runway look?” I call over the intercom.

The navigator leans over Deanna’s shoulder and keys his mike. “Looks clear.”

I start out of the three-hundred-foot altitude I’ve maintained since the border on a three-degree glide slope toward the landing zone. It’s not like we have to land in a five-hundred foot zone for this mission, but I need an approach that allows me to stop quickly if we encounter an obstacle or take the plane back in the air if we call it off.

Passing through a hundred feet, Deanna breaks from the checklist. “Bank left! Land there!” she calls out—not in a panic, but not tentatively either. She’s giving me an order.

I get the adrenaline rush again, but this time it’s not from someone providing praise, but from the fear of being wrong. What if Deanna is wrong? But there’s no time.

I roll the lumbering cargo plane into a thirty-degree bank turn and then immediately counter-roll to line up with whatever Deanna’s finger points at. A broad, paved surface opens in front of me and I’m already in a flare when I realize what’s happened. We’d lined ourselves up on radar on the long, narrow taxiway, thinking it was a runway. When we were close enough to identify it, we’d seen what we wanted to see—a long paved strip—and missed the fact that there were several equally long strips to the left of it, including the main runway.

As the wheels touch down, I smash on the brakes, cover the nose steering wheel with my hand and turn my head slightly toward Deanna. “Thanks for—”

“Pothole on the right. Turn your way!”

I whip my head back to the runway and twist the nose steering wheel gently, angling away from the hole, and bringing the aircraft to a stop. My heart still pounds, but the cramping in my gut has disappeared. We’re on the ground.

The next thirty minutes seem like five. The commander of the runway-opening team tells us where he wants to set up. We keep the engines running while the loadmasters unload the trailer. The dank desert smell, so distinct at altitude, now assaults us through the open doors and ramp. In the cockpit, we’ve got that post-adrenaline relief thing going on and we’re high-fiving each other.

“First US aircraft in, baby…Red Devils lead the way,” our flight engineer croons. Across the cockpit our ever-stoic copilot, Deanna, wears a big grin plastered underneath her night-vision goggles.

“Pilot, load?” The loadmaster’s voice pitches high over the intercom.

“Go ahead, load.”

“I’ve got three unidentified personnel approaching the plane opposite from the set-up team. What do you want me to do?”

In my side window, I try to spot what the load sees. “Do you have your 9mm?” It’s a stupid question. We all have our weapons strapped to our chests.

“It’s pointed at them. Do you want me to shoot? They don’t look like they are trying to attack. One of them’s carrying a box or something. The other two have their hands raised.”

Like my reaction to Deanna’s command, my response is immediate. “Your call. Not unless you think they’re a threat.”

The figures are US Army aviators. Turns out, we aren’t the first US aircraft into Iraq for this war. These guys’ helicopter crashed near the field two days ago and holed up, waiting for the good guys to arrive so they could get a ride back to Kuwait. We help them load the helicopter’s black box, get them strapped in, and take off for our low-level return to Kuwait.

The helicopter pilot stands behind my seat on the flight back.

“What was your plan if we didn’t show up?”

“Wait for someone like you to show up. We knew you would, eventually.”

“Do you think they had a plan to get you guys?”

“Don’t know,” the helo pilot says. “Don’t trust those headquarters guys. All you can depend on out here is your crew.”

I look across the cockpit at Deanna. She’s scribbling coordinates on her kneepad, but seems to sense my eyes upon her. She turns her head, but I can’t read her expression under her night-vision goggles.

“You ready for the Combat Exit checklist, Sir?”

I pause for a second and then nod. “Yep. Crew, pilot: Combat Exit checklist.”

Welcome to the Jungle (It Gets Worse Here Every Day)

By Cam Torrens

On October 4, 2022

In Blog, Nonfiction, Ruminating

Welcome to the Jungle--It Gets Worse Here Every Day

In which I’m driving in a parking lot accident…inside a $30M aircraft

It’s autumn of 2003 and our C-130 unit is still running balls to the wall supporting the Global War on Terror. In the past twelve months, we’ve moved from Pakistan—flying night low-level airdrops into Afghanistan—to Oman, where we supported the initial invasion of Iraq. We’re given four months back home at our base in Arkansas to “recharge” before we deploy to Qatar for another round of “fun in the sun.” Lots of hugs and kisses (and tears) as we return home from the desert and settle in for a temporary round of family life.

I’m the commander of this unit and I’d love to tell you morale is high. But it’s not. We’ve all been on the move since 9-11 and there’s no end in sight. Our families know this is just a stopover to get the aircraft overhauled and try to restore some sanity for our airmen and our spouses. Unfortunately, I get more than one aviator in my office, head hung low, explaining how they are trying to reestablish control of the household, only to discover their presence is superfluous. Those guarding the home front managed things just fine while our fliers were gone and certainly didn’t need advice on how to keep a tight ship.

So, it’s no surprise when a month or two after we get back, I’ve got aircrews ready to get back on the road. Not to the desert, boss—I can wait for that. But how about that three-day mission through Vegas? Or what about that Alaska trip? And I’m just as guilty. A four-day trip to South America pops up and I’m thinking to myself…the commander needs to keep up his flying currency as well, right? What I don’t realize is this little hop down south will result in more updates to my currency than I’m asking for.

Here’s the mission: Deliver Combat Rubber Raiding Craft (CRRC—also known as Zodiacs) to a remote airfield in Columbia. Are there other details? Yes. But we just deliver beans and bullets, so we aren’t privy to the “why” and I likely wouldn’t be able to share them here if I was. President Bush’s Plan Columbia is in full swing and our special operators probably have a menu of options: 1) destroy drugs 2) eliminate drug traffickers 3) train Columbian forces in counter-terror operations 4) tell their grandkids about whitewater rafting east of the Andes…

I’ve got a young crew. Normally, the scheduler would have fixed that. Regardless of how good the commander thinks he or she flies the plane, the mid-level captains are convinced we just do paperwork, go to meetings, and suck up to those above us—we’ve no business behind the yoke without adult supervision. They’ve done well with their choice of an engineer—he’s crustier than I am—but the rest of the crew has a combined time in the squadron of about six years. And I should have recognized that taking only one loadmaster (who’s never flown outside the US) with a plane stuffed with bulky rafts is probably not fair to the young man.

We overnight in Panama City, Panama. The next day, we drop into Cali, Columbia for gas before the final leg into our narrow 3K’ strip east of the Andes. All is well.

Our mission planning warns us we need to ensure there are no other large aircraft on the ground before we land at our final destination. There is no taxiway, just an off-ramp of corrugated metal mats forming a path through the mud off the end of the runway. If a plane is on the ground and another lands, there is no legal way for the plane on the ground to get to the runway and no way for the landing plane to turn around and take off again.

We call with these questions and request clearance to land. The combination of broken English and great Spanish was clear enough for us. We’re cleared to land.

We put the plane down on brick one and I silently smirk at those silly schedulers worried about my rusty pilot skills. My smile fades about 2K feet down the runway as I see the telltale triangle of another C-130 tail loom into view.

“You see that, boss?” My engineer asks.

“Yep.”

“Yep.” He replies.

We stop on the runway and get the other C-130 on the radio. Its props are turning and they are ready to go. They’re none too happy with our arrival and the resulting delay in their departure. After a few minutes of coordination, we come up with a plan. The other aircraft will hug the eastern side of the metal mats, while we hug the west. The only way it will work is if one of our aircraft allows its nosewheel to go off the metal and into the mud while turning. Since we’re the ones in the wrong, (landed with another C-130 on the ground already) we get to do the nosewheel maneuver.

And it works! Some US contractors are out helping clear the wings, and we’re able to maneuver ourselves past the other plane so that our tail end points toward their “ramp” where several single-engine aircraft are parked. My nosewheel is still in the mud, but it’s maneuverable. The other C-130 takes off.

While the copilot and I head into a tent to use a SAT phone and let our headquarters know we made it, the engineer is checking out my nosewheel and shaking his head, and the navigator is doing…well, she’s doing that nav stuff.

No one’s watching our young loadmaster who has a bunch of jungle-fevered contractors yelling at him to hurry as he works through his checklists. He flawlessly offloads the rafts, but as he raises the ramp at the rear of the aircraft, he forgets an important step: Ensure Door is Clear. Unfortunately, one of the “helpers” has left a tie-down strap in the clamshell area of the door and when the hydraulics complete their cycle, thousands of pounds of pressure punch the buckle of the strap through the skin of the aircraft. We now have a hole in the airplane.

I can’t believe it. I’d just Q3’d (disqualified) a crew in Afghanistan for bending metal on the aircraft when they took out a light stand. Not their fault. Definitely their responsibility. Those are two different things. Now here we were in peacetime, in daylight, on a milk run. Bending metal.

I get permission to fly the aircraft back and we prepare for takeoff. The first thing we have to do is back the aircraft on the metal matting so the nosewheel is back on a solid surface to turn toward the runway. I’ve got spotters on both wings to make sure we don’t bump anything while reversing, and the loadmaster is watching out the back end to ensure sure we don’t hit any of the single-engine aircraft. The last time I had this much attention on my back end was at my annual flight physical.

We move backwards approximately ten feet when there is a sudden metal-on-metal screeching sound so loud it penetrates our ear protection. I stop reversing.

“What was that?” The nav asks.

“That’s the sound of my career ending,” I reply, never at a loss for a smart-ass remark, regardless of circumstances.

We shut down and survey the damage. As the weight of the main wheels sank into the rear of the metal matting, it caused the front end of the matting to “pop a wheelie” out of the mud and into the bottom of the aircraft. Since all eyes are on the wings and tail of the airplane, no one notices the metal scraping our underbelly until it collides with the nose gear door and shears it partway off.

While the engineer hack-saws the remaining portion of the gear door off the aircraft, I make my SAT phone calls, first to my boss back home. Then to headquarters. I brief my commander my policy of “bending metal” and how I need to be Q3’d. He tells me I don’t need tell him that. Get that plane home and I’ll have the disqualification paperwork waiting when you walk down the steps.

And so we do. Flying under 150 knots (that’s slow even for a Herk) and below 10K’ (except for an hour on oxygen when we climb over the Andes) we limp home over the next several days. We stop for an overnight again in Panama. No beer. We just sulk. And then back to the states.

They say you can’t recover from a taxi accident and you can kiss your career goodbye if you have a Q3 in your records. I have both because of our little Columbian adventure. Back in Arkansas, I take two proficiency rides with an instructor, where they review important things I know, but didn’t utilize on my mission:

-if you’re unsure about your landing environment and will not get shot down, then do a fly-by and check things out

-if you’ve got an inexperienced crewmember under pressure, don’t leave them alone so you can get a cup of coffee and make a phone call

-if you’re backing up, ensure you have people watching the whole aircraft and not just the back end.

I take my check ride a week later and return to qualified status. By the end of the month, I’m commanding a deployed squadron in Qatar, and we’re doing great things for our troops in Iraq. Even get to send an aircraft to Iran with relief supplies after an earthquake. I take special joy in putting a female pilot in command of that mission.

I’m never sure whether my career continues because it’s a time of war and we need the bodies, or because I’m a commander and someone is taking care of me. I like to think the decision was in higher hands than those.

But I still think that responsibility thing is pretty important.