Are Politicians "better" than Others????

politicians (Photo credit: the|G|™)

Politicians.  I abhor most of them.  There are a few - like Gene Pinson and Lindsay Graham who are nice people and actually serve the public.  The rest are rapscallions and should be bundled up and sent on a Mars terraform project.

One of the things that I hate most about them is that they are "above the law".  Regular stuff doesn't count for them.  The give themselves big fat raises, have the best retirement system in the world and generally "feather their nests" at the expense of others.  I don't know why they think that they must be better than others.  I'd rather have a bank robber for a friend!

Tonight during dinner, I received a recorded call from John McCravy of Greenwood, SC.  I'm on the National Do Not Call list, but I guess John just thought he was better than me and it would be OK to give me an unsolicited call.  Shame on him.  Shame on all of them (except the two mentioned above.)

Elections, politicians, Do Not Call, John McCravy, David Stumbo,
Hang the Politicians, Hang the Lawyers,

JP Colson

Image via WikipediaI mentioned John Colson in my last post. John is a real, larger than life cowboy slash mountain man type of guy. We met at Chanute AFB and then traveled on to Vandenberg and Malmstrom where we were assigned to 564th Strategic Missile Squadron. JP's crew did alerts at Papa-0 near the town of Conrad and I was assigned to Romeo-0 near the really small town of Dutton. Frequently we did alerts at the same time and we spent a lot of time on the phone. John also befriended me by taking me hunting and fishing with him.

JP's father was lost in the raid on Ploesti in August of 1943 before John was born. We never did know for sure which squadron JP's Dad was in, but the 564th Bomb Squadron (renamed later to the 564th Strategic Missile Squadron ) was a part of the raid and suffered heavy casualties. Our guidon had a ribbon for that doomed bombing mission. When John was born, he was named John Pershing Colson. Later, the Air Corps awarded Colson senior a posthumous medal (I think it was the Silver Star.) The awarding officer pinned the medal to JP's diaper.

John hails from Indiana and attended school in Johnson City Tennesee. He got his commission in the Air Force "the hard way" by attending OTS at Lackland AFB in beautiful San Antonio Texas. From there he went to the Undergraduate Pilot Course in Laredo or one of the other Texas bases where piloting was being taught to a lot of lieutenants. As happened to a lot of us, instead of getting wings, he was given the choice of becoming a Security Policeman or a "Missile Jockey." It was my good luck that he chose missiles. We met at Chanute and were good friends the whole four years we spent at Malmstrom together. I can't remember if we ever had an alert together but I think he was promoted to Launch Commander at about the same time that I was.

There are hundreds of JP stories and I remember dozens of them, but the most painful for JP was being crewed with someone we will call "Don Braedenbach" Don was a real piece of work and should never have been an officer in my Air Force. He was forever browbeating, giving "orders", demanding this or that. Remember the military myth of the officer who wheedled a general into endorsing his Officer Efficiency Report? Supposedly the general wrote on the form, "Capt. Braedenbach is one of those officers who will go through life pushing on doors that are plainly marked pull!" In the mid 1970's Braedenbach was "riffed" and a great wrong was thereby undone.

Anyway, JP finally escaped the frightening comical Nazi guy and was crewed with one of our heroes named Joe Amlong. Later he was crewed with Bruce Rodie, a top-notch officer and a heck of a cook. Bruce is the one who introduced the Standing Rib Roast to the Launch Control Center. When they went on alert JP would carry the tech manuals and Bruce would carry a duffel filled with food and an electric frying pan.

One story that still chills my blood occurred in 1973 when a mix-up at Cheyenne Mountain made it look like the Russians were launching a preemptive attack on us. My phone rang at 3:00 in the morning and it was John telling me to "keep my head down. That was our pre-arranged code for "its about to happen" - meaning that WWIII was about to land in our laps. Fortunately sanity prevailed at some level in the decision chain and the world was spared a thermonuclear holocaust. What did I do after JP called? I kissed my wife and went back to sleep

JP, I owe a lot of my ideas and ideals to my conversations with you. I have always considered you to be a great man and a true friend. If I die first, you can have my guns.

Image via WikipediaOfficers Training School seemed horrible, but looking at it 40 years later I feel like it wasn't that difficult. It was the worst of times - it was the worst of times at that point. There in San Antonio, at Lackland AFB I first learned about "No Pain, No Pain!!" They whittled at my pea sized brain and I resisted. They whittled some more and I fought hard. They fought harder and I caved in and began learning to be a machine.

It took more than Captain Fox and Lieutenant Alfred Truman Parmalee the Fourth to break my spirit. They -and five or six days of "I really, really hate it here", were enough to change my whole way of life. I began to base my existence on fear. I reacted to imperfection with a hellish will. Life was mainly about showing the Air Force that I was made of tougher stuff and that I would show them who would quit. I always felt that this was the beginning of my PTSD. There was no blood and no trauma, but there was a terror of others finding out how scared you were. Bravado started slipping in where mild mannered country boy used to rule. It was at OTS that I was introduced to the military bar. Mixed drinks on Saturday night cost forty-five cents and draft beer was a dime. Booze came in very handy for getting through another week so that we could return to the bar.

Failing at my next step in life at UNT (u something navigator training) added to the misery. I started to come unraveled. Apparently the Air Force was giving me one more chance to become an asset by allowing me to attend missile training. I promised myself that I would pass it with flying colors.

The first part of training was at Chanute AFB; right outside of Rantoul Illinois. Chanute was interesting. It looked like it may have been left over from WWII or Korea. Older buildings, lots of landscaping, etc.,etc. My class of 4 young lieutenants drew the early morning shift - arriving at 6:00 a.m. each weekday and finishing up at noon. I have to say that the curriculum was not the toughest in the world. The real objective of the course seemed to be aimed at informing us that "the pointy end of the missile comes out of the hole first." Four weeks passed quickly and soon I was back in Sacramento packing up to move to Vandenberg AFB for seven more weeks of orientation.

At VAFB, we learned about codes security, basic launch control center operations and some about responding to an Emergency War Order. Mostly we just heard war stories about what it "REALLY" was going to be like. We also learned about the SAC policy that in order to pass a test you had to have everything 100% correct. I was paired up with Captain Walter Hinck who had just finished a year at Osan AFB in Korea as a Security Policeman. He seemed to be OK and very smart. The group was rounded out by John P. Colson and Rich Bender. John and I still converse once in a while.

More Kansas Wind

Image by lwa519 via FlickrActually, when I entitled the last entry as "A Kansas Wind" I was going to talk about something that happened later that night. This was the day the main body came in and occupied the tent. There was so much confusion and settling in that I decided to sleep next to our trucks in the parking lot of our corner of the "Dust Bowl."

Accordingly, I took my cot, duffel bag and a poncho liner down into the area, set everything up and lay down to get some well deserved sleep. I had removed my BDU blouse (BDU's were the old green, tan and brown camouflage uniforms named "Battle Dress Uniforms") and then I noticed the wind. The temperature that day had been over 100 degrees and what I felt was a cool, 72 degree wind blowing over me. It felt great. I draped the poncho liner over my boots and drifted off to sleep.

I awoke several hours later to a noise that I couldn't identify. The 10 mph cool wind had become a 30 mph arctic blast and the temperature seemed to be below freezing. I felt around and couldn't find my cover - it had been picked up by the wind and blown to parts unknown. I could still hear the noise and as I rounded up my belongings I suddenly realized that it was my teeth chattering. Using the keys from my "fag bag", I unlocked the Node Center Door and jumped inside out of the wind. I emptied my duffel bag, put on a long sleeved shirt and stuffed my feet into the bag. Later when I had shivered myself warm the noise stopped. Next morning it was in the 80's at sunrise and the heat of the day was "on."

Kansas was like that - tempting you with something attractive and then attempting to make you miserable. A prairie sunflower approached too closely was embedded in a skin shredding tumbleweed. Cooler weather was quickly followed by high winds, thunderstorms and tornadoes. Nice green grass harbored the Kansas variety of "chiggers" that infested your lower legs leaving itchy, weeping sores. Three weeks later we climbed on the chartered 727 to fly home; and I realized that this would be the happiest day of my life in 2002.

My poncho liner was found tangled in the trees, halfway across the camp.

A Kansas Wind

Image via Wikipedia You may have heard me say that the best thing about Kansas is crossing the state line into Colorado, Texas or Missouri. My experiences with the "Sunflower State" go back to us coming home from California to live in South Carolina, extend through the harrowing ride that Susie and I had from state border to state border in a blizzard and into a couple of trips to Fort Riley. You might say that Kansas is very cold in winter, very warm in summer and pretty ragged in between. However I have one memory of the place that I'd like to relate.

We (an advance team) arrived at Fort Riley in July and started work in the dust bowl immediately. The Dust Bowl was an area near the railroad tracks where the Cav troops used to marshal for troop movements to war. It was really a grassy area surrounded by Elm trees and looked fairly nice at that point. Our team was assigned to quarters in a "circus tent" pitched in the middle of the field. The tent was large enough to house us plus the main body of 150+ troops when they arrived the next week. We got our cots out of the Milvan and set up our sleeping area and then reported for work in extremely hot temperatures.

The day the main body arrived, I had been working inside armored vehicles all day - setting up their radio telephones and showing them how to use them to talk and/or send data bursts to the maintenance teams in the rear. I probably drank 10 liters of water that day and still hadn't gone to the porta potty when dusk arrived. At about that time, things started cooling off and I suddenly had the urge "to go." There were two portapotties nearby and I walked over, tried one door and then the next to find out both were occupied. Meanwhile several other soldiers had started forming a line outside the little blue houses and most of us were dancing from foot to foot. A couple of medics came up with an ambulatory soldier who had needles in both arms and "juice bags" or bags of Ringer's Solution dripping into his bloodstream - obviously a heat casualty. Having been in a similar state at one time, I knew he HAD to go, so I announced to the occupants of the privies that we had a needy heat casualty outside and one of them should open up and let the man in. The portalet on the left shook back and forth and the door opened and out walked a Two Star General - the commander of the North Carolina Heavy Support Brigade. I looked him in the eye and said, "General, I'm your man. I apologize for being disrespectful."

He looked back and me, smiled and said, "That's OK, Sarge. But now you have a hell of a war story to tell for the rest of your life!"

Ten Day Time-Out

Image by Clare H-P via Flickr

Just a note to say that Pat and I were gone for 10 days on a cruise in the Caribbean. We hit the high spots in Aruba, Curacao, Panama and Costa Rica. It was an excellent vacation but I'm glad to be back here to get my garden going.

Panama has changed a great deal. The Bridge of the Americas is still there, but the traffic now goes by a huge concrete and wire bridge that crosses the canal on the Atlantic side of Pedro Miguel Locks. The new one, called the Puente Centenario Bridge is fairly close to where Engineer's Point used to be. I say "used to be" because they have blown a good 200 feet off the bluff making room for the great expansion which is to take place in 2014. They are really working. I couldn't find out if the Chinese were the money behind the expansion.

A lot of the forts/bases that were turned over are private property now. The Panamanians are doing a fair job of keeping the canal trimmed (using "grass ninjas" and at least one John Deere tractor with a bush-hog. ) It doesn't look like it did when the US was in charge.

I guess that at some point in the not to distant future, we are going to have to suffer some casualties in order to keep it open. Damn Jimmy Carter! And the horse he rode in on!

Image by gravitywave via Flickr

When the Faculty Board said "you're out!" I was left with the dilemma of what to do next. There were numerous specialties available to young, non-flying lieutenants - Security, Missile Launch, Intelligence, Maintenance, Supply, etc. None of them sounded like what I wanted to do so I asked my flight captain what he thought. He said that no matter what I put down, the Air Force was going to make a missile weenie out of me. So, I volunteered to be a Sky Cop, a Supply Officer or an Intel type. I was almost immediately assigned to the Minuteman System as a launch officer. One good thing did happen in all this. Months earlier we had filled out our Air Force Form 392 (named the "Dream Sheet") and I had of course put down Shaw Air Force Base as my first choice. For my second choice I had circled "Pacific Northwest" and I forget what my third choice was. Anyway, instead of being sent to Minot North Dakota, or Grand Forks South Dakota I was assigned as close to the Pacific Northwest as possible. I was one of the lucky ones who drew Malmstrom AFB in Great Falls Montana. I didn't know it at the time, but I had also lucked out by being assigned to the WS-133B weapon system.

But first, I had to be trained. I left Sacramento for Chanute AFB in beautiful Rantoul Illinois with a rather large hangover from the "hail and farewell" the evening before. I seem to remember drinking a LOT of "Cold Duck" and being kicked out of the swimming pool around One a.m. Anyway Chanute provided an Air Training Command school for missile-iers and in four short weeks I learned that the pointy end of the missile comes out of the hole first and that when the missile gets where its going there is a rather large BOOM at the end of flight. Chanute was where I met JP Colson. (It is also where I met an F-100 pilot and four Marine Maintenance Officers and barely escaped arrest when we decided to burn the Officers Club one evening.)

Upon returning to Sacramento, Pat and I packed up our household goods, sent them on to Great Falls and we jumped in our 1966 Plymouth Valiant and headed to a three month school at Vandenberg AFB in Lompoc California. Thank goodness the Strategic Air Command had its own school for teaching us how to fly missiles!