The Air Force Years

The bank didn't pay crap even to the officers. They could make connections and do deals to make some extra and it was untaxed if you know what I mean. The department heads would had trouble getting by but just about all were married. And most of them were women and since the bank paid for decent insurance for both it was a decent deal. A lot of the husbands were self-employed or for other reasons didn't have a paid-for insurance. So having your wife working at the bank was a good deal. The fact that if she was reasonably attractive the men would be hitting on her and likely scoring didn't seem to bother them. Some probably never knew, some others did and didn't care.

Even so money was tight for a lot of them and most had a stack of credit cards most of which were maxed out. They'd get a cash advance on one to make the minimum payment on another one. But they didn't stop buying stuff they didn't need and eating out every day at lunch. Not being married or having any major expenses it didn't bother me as I lived pretty simple and and anyway had other lucrative enterprises. But I'd been thinking about a military career and figured I'd better do it before I got too old.

I talked to the recruiter and went and took the tests - he was real excited when I aced the ASVAB - and a few weeks later I was on my way to Lackland Air Force Base in Texas. Pretty standard stuff even though I wasn't the ideal military recruit. Never quite got the marching down, the MTI (like a DI in the Army) was still yelling at me the last day, something in my legs I couldn't do it smoothly enough. But to make honor grad one of the things you had to do was ace the written tests. I was the only one of fifty that did it so they went easy on me some. There were some more tests to evaluate our potential for other stuff, one of the ones I scored unusually high on was the language aptitude tests, which probably helped. I was intervied by some guys, a couple in civvies, now that I think about it maybe spooks. Asked me if I was interested in a lingust job, said I could do tech school in Monterey California. I accepted and signed. Someone forgot something but I didn't know it then.

The lead TI called me in his office a day or two before it was over and told me he put me up for it even though as he said 'in some respects you aren't worth a shit'. I said 'yes Sir'. He said 'get out of here'. They put us on a bus for Keesler Air Force Base in Mississippi. In May. That was for training as a 702X0 which was my original career choice. Turned out later I had to extend my enlistment to six years for the job I volunteered for and they didn't have me do that.

They did put in for a security clearance for me, TS/SCI. The investigation would take six months, they'd check me out good, send people to Twin Falls and talk to anyone who knew me, see if there was anything that made me a bad risk. That worried me a bit but I'd never actually been arrested for anything so there was no official record. With the exception of a few close associates nobody knew anything bad about me.

At Keesler I did the six week 702X0 school. There were about four or five hours of class and then we hung out here and there around the base or in Biloxi. Lot of drinking and sex - the Air Force was aggressively recruiting women by then and there were a lot of young women our age getting likkered up with us. Keesler had a Hurrican Hunter squadron and their C-130s were always coming and going, and you could get close enough to the end of the runway they they were pretty low when they went over. One thing some of us liked to do was get a girl and go out and have sex on the ground with the airplanes going over. At night of course. We were a bunch of horny kids drinking all the time and the SPs were always catching people having sex in places where they weren't supposed to. Never heard of anyone getting caught doing it at the end of the runway even though everybody knew we were doing it.

I got my assignment to my first duty station and went home to visit the folks for a week or so before leaving. It was my first time flying overseas. I'd been to Canada and Mexico so it wasn't the first time out of the country, and it was a little scary getting on that DC-10 and going up into the night sky. It was a pretty good trip, seven hours or so. We landed at RAF Mildenhall, the main base in the UK for Air Force traffic in and out of England. They had taxis waiting to distribute us to our bases and I had another couple of hours going to RAF Bentwaters down in East Anglia.

I had been assigned to the Consolidated Base Personel Office (CBPO) and generally referred to as the Seebo. I was a 702 and personnel people were 732s but the chief's office had several 702s. And a civilian secretary which was nice because she was gonna be a good-looking British gal. The chief was a major, had a retread captain under him and the captain had a staff sergeant and the staff sergeant had me and another airman first class (A1C) and a buck sergeant. The buck sergeant was a woman and didn't wear a uniform because she was pregnant and they hadn't gotten around to maternity uniforms yet.

She was as they say dumb as a brick, the other A1C was a pretty sharp dude and we got along great right off the bat. The staff sergeant was a good dude, a black guy that had about ten or eleven years in. Except for the woman we all got along pretty well. She had some attitude problems and eventually the boss had to write her up a few times. Don't remember how she left - PCS'd out or transferred somewhere. They did that with women who were problems.

Not anyone else. The black personnel was at above representative of the population and with the high standards for enlistment almost all were qualified and good troops. Same with Hispanic, Asian, Jewish, native American. But women - due largely to the pressure to keep numbers up - were cut major slack, and that went for enlisted and officers. Supervisors who had problem women would go to considerable lengths to avoid having to administer any serious discipline to female personnel. Low-level actions such as documented counseling and reprimands were about as far as anyone wanted to go and would be working to offload the burden or wait out the end of the tour.

But I'll get around to that later. Life was pretty good, the work I could do standing on my head blindfolded. I could type close to a hundred words per minute and made short work of that and the major was always loaning me to other offices. Not just for typing either.

A couple of months after I arrived someone from the records section came up to see the major, something about my security clearance. He asked me why his newly assigned staff support administrative specialist had been given a TS/SCI clearance. Apparently that's a heavy-duty clearance and you have to have a good reason to have one. I figured it was because of the assignment I volunteered for but didn't get because someone dropped the ball back at Lackland. Only reasonable explanation, they would have finished the background investigation about that time.

What I have volunteered for - not knowing what it was all about - was eavesdropping on communications in foreign languages. Russian, Chinese, Arabic, etc. Some of it would be done at places like embassies in various places, some in airplanes flying around where there was radio traffic in those languages. Scan the military communications frequencies listening for something interesting and recording it. The tapes would be analyzed and any useful information extracted. Sometimes those airplanes mysteriously disappeared and presumed lost and sometimes embassies got taken over by unfriendlies as happened in Iran later. I may have gotten lucky.

Anyhow the major had a clerk that was cleared for exposure to just about any kind of classified information. He also reported directly to the base commander and wanted to be sure he made lieutenant colonel at the earliest opportunity. So I not only got volunteered to fill in for the base commander's secretary when she was out, being able to type so well, but he volunteered me to operate the slide projector at briefings at the wing level.

The base commander was responsible for running the base infrastructure - everything from personel and food service to security and mainenance - while the wing commander was responsible for the combat mission. That was three squadrons of F-4s when I arrived but they were preparing to switch to A-10s. Once in a while they needed someone to flip slides for a briefing and needed someone with a high clearance to be in there while the pilots looked at pictures of Russian tanks and other stuff they would have to bomb and shoot at in the event of a war. And probably hear talk about top secret stuff.

So the major got some extra exposure by volunteering me for that, and for typing super secret messages and taking them to the comm center. The ones where they take you to a room that only certain people have keys for and use a typewriter in there to type the message. You had to take the ribbon out of a safe (they had one of those fancy new IBM Selectrics with the golf ball and non-circulating ribbon so whatever you typed was there clear as day on the ribbon) and type the message and then put the ribbon back in the safe. I had an amusing experience with that later at another base.

I got to go to the embassy in London once when they had some big event and requisitioned a couple of junior airmen that looked sharp. One of the things about being autistic is you're good at doing orderly things by a set of rules. Fortunately I didn't have it bad enough to make me seriously dysfunctional.

The major got his promotion next time around, so we could call him Colonel Sawyer. Lite colonels are generally addressed as 'colonel' for convenience same as lieuetnants are generally called lieutenats whether they're a first or a second. He was pretty cool, the retread captain was too. We were in a room maybe twenty by twenty, maybe a little bigger. The major later colonel and the captain had small private offices on one side. If someone was being called on the carpet they went in and closed the door. Saw that a few times, one time I got invited in to watch. It wasn't fun even if you weren't the object of wrath.

Work was pretty much a 0800-1700 job Monday through Friday. About once a month we'd have an 'alert' where they pretend we're being attacked, get your field gear (gas mask, canteen, combo pen and I forget what else) and usually they'd wake us up around 0500 or so, sirens on all over, the PA telling everyone to get to your alert duty station. For some the alert duty station was somewere else than their regular job. Mine wasn't at first, I just went to the office as usual and about the only interruptions would be NBC alerts. NBC was nuclear-biological-chemical attack. Chemical was about the only thing we could do anything about, put on the gas mask and get into a shelter. The Seebo was a shelter so we didn't have to go anywhere. Close all doors and windows and seal up the cracks with duck tape. Then you might get an all clear announcement in an hour or it might be several. Take the mask off and go to work.

One time it was something like six or seven hours and when it was over one guy didn't get up and take off his mask. Older guy, had a heart attack and died. By the time I'd been there a few months they put me in the SP (Security Police) augmenters. Non-essential operations had to pony up several guys each to play sentry around the critical facilities. Do a qualification with the M-16 (75% hits and a hundred yards) and some classroom stuff and then when the sirens go off you to to the SP headquarters and get issued a weapon and they they drop you off somewhere, I usually got out by the runway. Fun watching the F-4s taking off, especially at night. Got cold but they issued arctic gear in the cold winter. Once in a while they'd send someone out to walk up out of nowhere like an intruder and you had to holler "Halt! Hands up!" and check their ID and they'd go on and bother someone else.

Usually the alerts were about three days and then back to the usual. Before long I was hanging with pretty much the same guys. One was a 702 and worked in the admin office of one of the aircraft maintenance squadrons, one was a photographer (Public Affairs) and a dude that lived in my barracks and I forget what he did. We were nerdy types, SF readers and what all goes with being a geek. We banged around England a lot, goint up to London about every other weekend. Sometimes we'd get on a bus tour of somewhere on the continent - France, Belgium, Italy, Germany and most everywhere that wasn't Eastern Europe. Closest to that was Austria I guess, never did go to Berlin it being in the wrong part of Germany. I got nervous being near the border. Later I knew a guy that was stationed in Berlin, doing the kind of job I had signed up for.

Once in a while about twenty to thirty of us would rent a bus and driver and drive around for a week or so, and one of my buds was pretty cool going places on his own. He and a couple of us would catch a ferry over to France or Belgium and use our Eurorail passes to go places. Greg was into history and knew all the historical places to go and eat and drink and take pictures.

Bunch of us went to Oktoberfest one year, stayed at a hotel leased by the US government for military personnel to use. The last day I stayed at the hotel instead of going to Munich to drink. As they were closing and the folks were leaving someone put a bomb at the entrance and it killed a dozen or so. There was a fair bit of that kind of stuff going on in Germany back then.

Being in the personnel business we saw a lot of people arriving and leaving. Actually everyone would make at least one trip but most didn't have occasion to visit the admin section. The ones that were going to be working there did. They would be introduced to the captain and the major and of course all us in the office. With something over sixty personnel mostly on two to three year tours we had one leaving or arriving occasionally. A new arrival might be a midrange NCO (E4 to E6 usually) or an officer (usually a second lieutenant or a captain) or occasional an E1. Slick-sleeve, meaning no stripes. You were an E1 for six months and going through basic training and tech school only took about four or so months. So they wouldn't have their first stripe yet when they arrived at their first assignment.

I only remember one right off. The average recruit was around eighteen, so these were mostly kids away from home for the first time. He was average but maybe was the type that maybe shouldn't have left home so soon. Quiet, little shy maybe. Went to work in Records.

I lived in what they called the Headquarters barracks. That was people in personnel, accounting and finance, post office and such. In other words not in one of the organizations big enough to need their own barracks. The maintenance squadrons, Security Police, some others. Headquarters was bigger, three floors while most of the others had only two. The first floor was for transients - mostly people on TDY. Second floor was men and third was women. By the time I left the second floor was women too, and with just a month or so left Greg (my roommate by then) got booted out and they found us an empty room in the SP barracks. But that was later.

Airman Winter was the young quiet E1 recently arrived. The entire second floor was still all male then and he and his roomie lived down the hall. The building was divided into halves with the main entrances and stairs in the center (there was another entrance at each end) and a dayroom and latrines next to the stairwells. The dayroom was a big room where you could hang out and drink and watch TV. Being in the UK there were three channels and two of them were BBC1 and BBC2 and the third was the only one worth watching. Saw the premeire of Dallas in that dayroom but...

There was another recent E1 arrival to he HQ barracks, a big cheerful black dude. He didn't hang in the dayroom much as he was usually drinking at the NCO club. We'd see him around now and then coming and going but that was about it. I'll call him Eric because I don't remember his name.

If I didn't have anything else to do I'd go down there and have a beer or two and watch TV or jaw with some of the guys. One night pretty late we were sitting around shooting the breeze and Eric suddenly appeared in the door.

"There's some queer fuckin' my roommate!" he yelled, stood there for a few seconds and the turned and left. We all looked at each other. What do you do?

Later we learned that Eric had gone out and walked (most of us didn't have cars and there weren't many buses running that late) to the AFOSI office a mile or more away. They were open 24/7. Told them what he witnessed when he returned from the NCO club and entered his room.

Eric's roommate was Airman Winter.

It doesn't take long for the word to get around. In personnel we heard all the gossip on everyone, and this deal was in-house. It happened on a weekend and when we got in to the office the captain told us - just in case we didn't already know - and how to handle it which was to say nothing to anyone and not be involved in the gossip. Hearing it would hardly constitute involvement and we heard plenty. Some of the Seebo people talked too but we ignored then. It was a pretty touchy bit of business.

The post office was across the street from Seebo and staffed by military personnel. I went over there once in a while and knew the fellow that was buggering Airman Winter was a staff sergeant who worked there. Homosexuals were rare as it was illegall and persons who engaged in homosexual behavior would be discharged forthwith. There was a UCMJ article against it but the usual procedure was go simply boot them and be done with it. More on that in a minute.

The don't-ask-don't-tell policy was in effect then, unofficially. Or officially unofficially. Or unofficially officially. When we arrived at Lakland before we even got our haircut and uniforms issued we were taken into the chow hall (dining hall in the Air Force, mess hall in the Army) and told to wait in the kitchen which had just been cleaned up after the previous meal. A young man about our age in a white uniform (what the cooks wore) and no insignia or name tag came in and told us: The Air Force is still run by a bunch of old farts and being gay is against the law. If any of you guys are just keep it cool and don't draw attention to yourself.

The message was pretty clear. Don't flaunt it and don't get caught. Staff Sergeant Lindeen of the post office and Airman Winter should have listened.

Airman Winter did get the boot fast. He was processed out in little over a month. I felt sorry for the kid, having to go back home and face his family and community. Maybe he could make up a convincing cover story, medical or something. The psychological damage would be another matter.

The major came out of his office one day with a file in his hands and handed it to our boss, SSgt Oliver. "Read that when you have time," he said. "When this happened I called him in and talked to him, he said it was the only time he did it. He didn't just to it once, he kept going back and going back."

Apparently Airman Winter tried to avoid the boot and the major talked to him about it. Maybe he didn't reaized the major would read the file? That doesn't make sense. But he was just a scared kid, his life already seriously fucked up.

Sgt Oliver passed the file to A1C Ralph Borden (the guy I was replacing and was about to PCS back to the States) and he passed it on to me.

The main attraction was Airman Winter's statement. He related that Sgt. Lindeen had made his acquaintence and the two of them had gone jogging together. Upon their return to the barracks Airman Winter stated that Lindeen "pulled down my pants and gave me a blow job" and than when requested to reciprocate he did so.

That's a textbook case of a homosexual recruiting a victim. The older, experienced Lindeen picked the shy insecure young man out of the flock, made his move and scored. They had gone at it a number of times before they got caught doing it in Airman Winter's room.

Airman Winter was quickly dispensed with but Sgt. Lindeen was around for a while. I don't know what they kept him for but probably they were interrogating him. They would have some leverage as he was guilty under Article 125 and they wanted something from him. When Eric reported the incident one of the AFOSI guys commented upon hearing who the other perp was we've been trying to nail this guy since he was in Turkey. I've never been to Turkey but heard a bit from guys who were and the thought of a Lindeen in Turkey, maybe hitting on and indig or two....

Whatever they did he was eventually processed out without being court-martialed and sent to prison. He had to visit Seebo on the way out for some final paperwork. Couple of guys that worked in Separations as that office was called, Sgt. Peter Green and A1C Steven Lewis. They were both pretty sharp and the kind that can be casual across ranks without causing problems, and kidded around a lot. This included coarse lingo. One day Lewis walks in and casually says 'Pete, you cock-sucking homosexual, you ready to go to lunch?' and then noticed Lindeen sitting there getting his final papers done.

That was yet another Pete and Steve story that got a lot of laughs. That was 1981 or so, would never happen now.

OK, where was I?

There was another dude in the post office that got nailed for bad stuff. TSgt Balda (E6) probably had over fifteen years in, got caught stealing stuff from the mail. That was pretty early, he did some prison time and was out and sent back to be dishonorably discharged as an E-1. Lost his pension and all. Even an E-6 would have a nice bit of money coming if he retired at 20 years. That was before they fucked that all up. Lindeen probably had ten years of close to it.

I mentioned that the third floor of our barracks was occupied by female personnel. I believe they were from all units - not just headquarters. Most were fairly promiscuous and quite a few were flakes. Working in personnel I saw some of them get nailed for drugs, some psychiatric cases. A few got booted for being lesbians but you never knew if they were really or just said they were to get discharged. Some good-looking ones and we fooled around with some of those. I and my roomie at the time were doing a pair that palled around together. They didn't room together though. George's gal lived with a real sure-enough lesbian.

I saw her file (we looked at all the juicy ones) and she was having some other problems and the lez stuff came to light. The file had some of the letters exchanged with a woman at a base she had been assigned to before, graphic stuff. It took a few weeks for a simple boot like that and we occasionally saw her when we went by George's girl's room. The women had taken over half the second floor by then and it was just a short walk. George knocked and one of them opened the door. The light was off and they had a couple of candles and we could smell incense. They were in t-shirts and panties and were drinking wine. We said we'd check with them later.

George's girl admitted to him that they did it. I wasn't surprised. Homosexuality, to be something practicsed by one percent or so of the population has a fair bit of variety. Men who are thoroughly disgusted at men doing men (the 99%) are more tolerant of women doing women - in fact some are stimulated by the idea - but that is women doing it with women in addition to doing it with men. And presupposes attractive women which many lesbians are not. Most in fact. If she wanted to give it a go before her roomie departed that was cool with him.

As I observed earlier women were treated differently to a degree that race or ethnicity never was. In basic training the men's heads were shaved and while the idea of having a bunch of bald women around wasn't appealing the fact is that it was hypocritical. So was allowing them bathrobes. But it was in discipline that the double standard was most apparent. Partly because they were trying to get numbers up and getting women to enlist was hard enough they kept the unsuitable ones around longer than they would any man.

Weight standards were strictly enforced - for men. Women not so much. I was five-six and the regulations said I should weigh no more than one-forty-something. I'm built pretty stout, wide legs and shoulders, suitable for a six foot body. I was always just a few pounds within regs. We had this one gal at Seebo, she was taller than average and still couldn't stay in regs. And she was in fact fat. They made some changes about that time, one of them allowed measuring the body parts (circumference of upper arm was one) and allowing extra pounds based on that. Ever seen a fat woman with really big arms?

I might have gotten some slack if they measured my thighs, don't remember if that was part of it. The point being that rules were being changed to make it easier for women who couldn't or wouldn't meet standards to not be discharged.

With officers it was not that much different. One more thing you saw in personnel. I actually had to babysit a second lieutenant, came in through ROTC. Not bad looking and personable enough, lucky for me as I had to spend so much time with her. The major quickly got to where he wouldn't even look at a report she wrote until I'd gone through it and corrected the bad grammar. One day we were talking and college came up and I asked what her major was. You guessed it, English.

I remember the major having to figure out a way to deal with a lieutenant that nobody wanted to deal with. She'd been bounced around from one job to another, stuff like food service and something called Morale Recreation and Welfare - entertainment stuff. He was constantly on the phone with the various unit commanders trying to find something she couldn't fuck up. Don't know what ever happened on that one.

We had a young female A1C down the hall that somehow didn't get it. She was the type that if she'd gone go college she'd be out protesting something all the time, whatever replaced the Vietnam Was as an object of indignation among young intellectuals. Her NCOIC was a no-nononsense type, former Marine been to Vietnam. We had two or three of those just in Seebo. Apparently quite a few Army and Marine types decided to get in twenty the easy way. I watched him chew on her a few times and it was like talking to a cat about what they did wrong.

When your phone rings you're supposed to answer it with your name and rank. Or rank and name - I'd say 'Airman Spencer' (Airman being any E1-E3 or Senior Airman which was E-4 but so was a buck sergeant) and wait for the caller to speak. Later I would say "Sgt. Spencer" when I was a Staff Sergeant (I was only an E-4 Sergeant for a day because I made E-5 on my first shot and the one day as an E-4 was a formality) and that's the way it worked.

Only A1C Rike got the idea she wasn't an airman but an airperson and answered the phone "Airperson Rike". Like you're gonna do that more than a couple of times before someone calls your supervisor (the former Marine in this case) and tells him there's a nutjob in his department. He told her to cut it out and she kept doing it until he told her the next time she did it it would cost her a stripe. Damn some people are dense.

She was a recent arrival and had most of her two years to go. She started trying to get a swap, a deal where if two personnel at different bases of the same rank and AFSC wanted to trade places and their commanders approved they could to it. She worked out a swap with someone in Italy, Aviano I believe. Did I tell you about the time four A-10s were going there and somehow ended up in Austria?

Nevermind, tell you later. The deal was done and airperson Rike was out of our hair. Mostly.

A few months later now-Colonel Sawyer came out of his office and was jawing with JC (SSgt Oliver, our supervisor) and updated us.

"I just got off the phone with Col. Grayson at Aviano," he says. "He said 'that whore you sent down here, first thing she did was she got on her back and now she's pregnant by an unknown officer."

Airperson Rike did like to fuck officers. And only officers. We had a few of those. After the pilots mostly and only partly because most of the younger pilots weren't married - they didn't care. There was plenty of screwing around among officers as well, some of those blew up and ended being discussed behind the closed doors of the Colonel's office, after which he came out and told us. Some, like our marginally literate second lieutenant, were fooling around with enlisted guys and smoking dope with them. Some of the young women managed to snag one, and it didn't always turn out bad. Later, back stateside at Vandenberg I had a new OIC come in and replace the second lieutenant that wasn't cutting it (nice guy but not really officer material) with a retread first lieutenant. He'd knocked up a very attractive young A1C and married her. Seemed like a nice kid and he was a first-rate officer, she decided not reenlist.

But that was later. What else happened in England? Well...

I observed that discipline was pretty poor for female personnel. And that race or ethnicity didn't matter for men. I suppose there was a bit of reluctance to discipline a black member until a little later than a white guy would get it. There were occasional accusations of racism from black personnel and a white supervisor would try to get a problem subordinate to straighten up without official action but generally if you were a problem it didn't matter what color you were. But there would be one occasionally that just push too far.

Sgt. Bradford had probably ten years in, and ten years of not getting past E-4 was an indicator of some problem. You had to make E-5 to stay in for the twenty years necessary for a pension but generally the promotion the time-in-service and time-in-grade points would get you there. So he might have made it if he'd had a better attitude but he probably would have gotten promoted if not for his attitude.

There was a serious base housing shortage both in houses for married personnel and barracks for singles. Any umnarried personnel were free to live off-base and most did. They didn't have to worry about inspections and could party all the time and you couldn't keep indig women in the barracks. At least it was not authorized. And if you were off-base when the alert sirens went off you could just now show up until notified by someone on base. So on a weekend you could be up in London and didn't get back until Sunday night when the alert started on Saturday you hadn't done anything wrong.

Sgt. Bradford did live in the barracks, same one I did as he worked at Seebo. It was well known that if an alert started on a weekend he would high-tail it off base and not report for duty until the next duty day. One Saturday afternoon the sirens went off and the PA squawked 'report to duty stations' and I got into uniform and grabbed my gear and headed out and met Sgt. Bradford in the hall. He said "You didn't see me, right?" as I went by.

A couple of weeks later I was talking with my office mate Brian - who had replaced Ralph - and the subject came up. I related the encounter.

It was the next day Captain Nunn - Colonel Sawyer's subordinate who ran Seebo operations - called me in and asked me about it. I told him. Captain Nunn told me to sit down and type a statement of the facts, and I did. Signed it and gave it to the Captain.

I asked Brian what it was about. Everybody knows what Bradford has been doing. "You actually saw him," Brian said. "And reported it."

I had fucked up royally by not reporting it myself and apologized to the Captain later, he said not to let it bother me. Truth is he was so glad to get rid of Sgt. Bradford that my transgression was pretty minor.

I suppose Bradford wasn't real bright, about as not-bright as you could be and still qualify for enlistment, and we had a few of those. TSgt Rowe, his supervisor, had been letting him slide for a while. I didn't check to see if he was getting straight-9 APRs (Airman Perfomance Reports) as was common for anyong that did an adequate job and didn't have disciplinary issues but Rowe had not indicated any dissatisfaction with his performance. Now Bradford was in deep shit and people were talking about Rowe not being up to the job. Rowe was pretty annoying himself as I remember.

I don't know what went on with the disciplinary process. I would have expected an Article 15 and probably a fine and maybe losing a stripe. Whatever it became more compliated than him just taking his medicine and maybe learning from it. As it was he was in the Captain's office a couple of times and the second time the Captain opened the door and said to me "get in here". Inside he told me to stand there and listen. Bradford mumbled some stuff about not meaning to be disrespectful and the captain and he had a couple more exchanges and the captain dismissed him. The captain wanted a witness to whatever Bradford was about to say and if he'd said much more he would be in jail. Whatever else went on I don't know but he ended up being kicked out. Some people you just can't help.

Some could be serious Alpha Hotels over nothing but depending on who was screwing up they could cover up things. Ralph was just a few days from heading back to the states and he was in an altercation with a TDY member outside the chow hall. Somebody said something and somebody took umbrage and the Ralph and the other guy was standing face to face arguing and allegedly one or the other shoved the other and both walked off.

That was a weekend and on Monday Ralph got a call to report to the Security Police. Guy asks him what happened at the chow hall, Ralph says 'nothing'. Guy has a stack of papers an inch or more thick on the desk, smacks it with his hand and says 'you call this nothing?'

Neither Ralph nor the TDY guy reported it but someone apparently found it necessary to do so. So they investigated. It looked like Raplh's return home might be delayed but whatever it was got resolved without anybody getting arrested.

Maybe when higher-level people are involved there's more thought given to the process. Greg worked at one of the maintenance squadrons over by the flight line. One day during an alert I was out here standing in a revetment looking at A-10s being prepared for a mission. There was one real close I could see they were loading Maverick missiles. You can about walk under the wings of an A-10 and they had a missile on a scissor lift just up under the wing. I looked away for a few seconds and when I looked back the missile was back on the ground and the guys were scurrying around.

Later Greg and I were drinking with a couple of other dudes and I asked about the missile that got dropped. Everybody told what they heard and then Greg said, 'officially, it fell 18 inches'. Okey-dokey.

The Rendlesham forest deal happened while I was there. Then-Lieutenant Colonel Halt (he got his chicken) was one of the witnesses. He was deputy base commander and I was in the office a lot and he's as normal and sane as anyone I've ever seen.

We had a couple of A-10 crashes, neither of which should have happened. One was the commander of one of the maintenance squadrons putting in some hours to retain his flight status, flying in a pair out over the coast. One or the other of both got wingtips tangled and both went down. He ejected but before they got him out of the water he drowned, reportedly tangled in his chute. The other was the deputy operations commander, doing a demo at another base. The crash was later attributed to a malfunction but I had seen him putting on a show at Bentwaters before and looked about to do roof damage to some of the buildings. Scared me watching it.

I departed the UK shortly after the A-10 incident. Brian PCSed a couple of months before I did, and we both put Vandenberg AFB as our first preference. 702s can go just about anywhere the there's always openings. I arrived at Vandy with just over a year left on my enlistment. Brian had only about seven or eight months and was soon gone. He had family up near Bakersfield, mostly in Porterville. I drove up a lot of weekends and we hung out together.

At Vandy I was assigned to the 392nd Communications Group. I was in the admin office like before. The OIC was a retread lieutenant and my boss was a Senior Master Sergeant that was in his last year or so before retirement. Cool guy, told me right away we had about a four day work week and not to be around on Friday unless told to. It was pretty light work. The lieutenant was the group security officer so I became the seurity NCO. I had to do about a fifteen minute briefing for all incoming personnel, give them some printed material and a brief spiel about security stuff, check off some things and file the report.

One day the Lieutenant told me I would be briefing a guy who was a little disabled and his appearance might be unsettling if I wasn't prepared. We had a number of civilian telephone operators and he was one of those.

He came rolling in in a wheelchair, and not an electric one. Used his one hand and handless other arm to propel it. No legs. After the briefing I walked down to the entrance and opened the door for him and when I last saw him he was getting himself and his wheelchair into a yellow '70s Corvette.

I've never had much sympathy for homo parasitis, and I've seen a lot of them. My dad made railroad ties in the L'anguille River bottomland when he was a kid. I have the axes he and his brother used to shape logs into ties, big wide blades about three to four times the size of a regular axe like you'd use for chopping wood. They got paid fifteen cents per tie. That was in the 1930s and three nickels was probably like a dollar or more but damn that was some work.

One funny little incident happened because of my security clearance. Sometimes a classiied message needed to be prepared and I'd get called over to the comm center to type it. It was near end of day so the lieutenant followed me over and we went in the room with the typewriter and did he routine. Put the ribbon away and locked the door and went out. As we exited the building I went to put my hat but it was back in the room we'd just left. Whoever opened it for us had left - probably some kind of violation - and without a key I couldn't get my hat.

I took a look at the door and said, "Just a minute, Sir." and took out my pocket knife. The door didn't have a deadbolt so I used my knife to jimmy it, got my hat. I suggested that it might be a good idea to report the deficiency in the lock, and the lieutenant allowed that I was probably right.

Not much went on in the just over year that I was there. We did have a suicide in one of the mods (three story buildings with six private rooms on each floor) where I lived. It was on a holiday weekend and the place was pretty well deserted so they didn't find him until Monday when he didn't show for work. Pretty unusual in those days.

It was pretty common for a guy going PCS and had found favor in the eyes of his supervisor they would put in a recommendation for a AFCM. That's Air Force Commendation Medal. They'd write up a bit about how you did a great job and improved your little part of the Air Force and should be commended. It would be sent on to your next duty station and if approved you would be notified and at a future Commander's Call you would have the medal pinned on and photographed and all that. Then the commander would make a speech and they'd tap a keg or two depending on how big the outfit was. The main thing about medals was they were worth points on you promotion. So having a Good Conduct Medal (not getting caught doing anything serious enough for an Article 15 or worse for three years) and that I was in pretty good shape for my first shot at a non-automatic promotion. Had straignt 9 APRs and aced the WAPS tests and made E-5 (Staff Sergeant) first time. When I got my promotion date I would be an E-4 Sergeant for one day so they gave me a 24-hour pass so I didn't need to have the stripes on one shirt for one day. Next day I was a Staff Sergeant.

A couple of months before my separation date I had an interview with the group commander. A colonel whose name I don't remember. See if he could talk me into reenlisting. Dammit, he says, we can't the the marginally qualified ones to leave, and we can't keep the good ones. Not much I could say.

I went to LA and San Francisco a couple of times, to Santa Barbara a lot. It was a short drive just south of the base. I wouldn't mind living there and thought about staying in California. Considering what it has become I'm glad I didn't.

Last day came around and I was all packed up and had all my stuff shipped home and I drove east. Took my time about it and was almost a week getting home. And that was all of me and the US Air Force.