Last edited Wed Oct 17, 2018, 12:42 PM - Edit history (1)
...I would have been a perpetual Stop Loss for Iraq since I should have likely been schedule to retire in 04 or 05, that is until Bush had to defend his daddy's honor.
Since my RH '321' combat engineer qualifier would have made sure that I almost never left.
In '87, it was common knowledge (as related by most of the senior NCO's in the Red Horse) that once you did a RH tour in the ROK you were tagged for repeat tours (i.e. had the 321 on your records).
In the late 2000's, I checked and found out that RH personnel were being given repeat tours to Iraq at higher rates than typical non-RH airman. Same game, different board.
I'm glad I missed that meat grinder.
I wouldn't choose to do anything different career wise. I was trained as a draftsman, surveyor and in soil/concrete testing but most of my time in Grand Forks was as a contract manager/inspector. As an A1C I had a great amount of freedom/autonomy driving all over the base to check/inspect civilian contractors since I was assigned my own AF truck (one of those small blue dodge pickups). Went up in the active Air Control tower to inspect the new windows they put in, I was given a letter from the base commander to take photos of newly installed doors WITHIN the active nuclear weapons storage area (man were the SP's not happy about that), went down in a MM3 missile control room to verify newly installed electrical lines, plus a lot of other interesting places/jobs on and off base. Once I was in Red Horse I was honored to be selected to be a member (the youngest and most junior) of the RH1 mobility unit, plus I made on the Aggressor Squad for our forward air base perimeter defense training (running around back woods Korea with a M16, a ton of blanks and a multiple integrated laser engagement system (Miles) on my back. I was being PAID to play splatball, before splatball was a thing).
Man... you've triggered some memories.
I remember as an aggressor, during a newby training exercise, while in one of our final attempted penetration scenarios the aggressor team I was with was pinned down until I started yelling out in a fake Russian accent. Insults like "the cowardly american pigs dogs" who were too scared to come out and fight. That prompted a few newby idiots to stand-up and get pick-off which allowed us to get behind the defense perimeter. I ended up being able to make my way into the makeshift command bunker and "tagged" our brand new operations commander Captain Croslen (he eventually retired a Col Croslen). In the 3-months afterwards, before I went back stateside, he would always say he was going to earn his pin back (all in good jest). Custom was during training for a tagged officer to give one of his collar rank pins (the new guys had started to switch over to BDUs) to the tagger. I still have the single captain's bars he gave me after I tagged him in my memento box.
Man... you've triggered some memories.
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