Thursday - May 18, 2006

Through The Looking Glass

“Unsung Heros”
_{U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Rachel Walters}

This photo does not depict a glamorous sunset or beach. It was taken far from any national park or observatory but it means something special to me. My father enlisted in the US Army in December, 1941 and was placed in the Army Air Corps as an aircraft mechanic. During WWII, he kept the bombers flying and also manned a machine gun in the belly of those same bombers as they drove the Nazis back.

Through the Korean War and later Vietnam, the old man went from props to jets, learning each new technology as it came along. I remember seeing him sitting up at night reading thick volumes of new maintenance manuals. Sometimes he’d still be there when we got up next morning to go to school. Dad only had a Sixth Grade education, coming from a poor South Alabama sharecropper’s family during the depression but that son of a gun could fine tune a sophisticated Pratt & Whitney jet engine in no time flat. I know. I watched him do it on frequent trips to the flight line with him.

And when the hot-shot pilots came bouncing in to take their birds out to play they all treated the old man with the highest respect. I remember wondering why Colonels, Majors and Captains were so respectful and friendly with a lowly Tech Sergeant. As I grew older, I gradually came to understand why. He literally held their life in his hands ... and they knew it.

It’s one thing to sit in a cockpit and keep an eye on a dozen gauges and manage a joystick and two pedals. It’s something else entirely to remember everything about thousands of hydraulic lines, electric wires, machine tolerance and the milllion things an aircraft mechanic has to remember to make sure his pilot comes back alive.

You won’t see these guys like my dad or Staff Sgt. Ronald Broughton, 8th Expeditionary Air Mobility Squadron C-17 propulsion technician, shown here working on a C-17 Globemaster III jet engine, in some movie like “Top Gun”. That does not alter the fact that for every fancy pilot you see, there are literally dozens of troops like this keeping the birds in the air.

Question: which one do you you think has more intelligence (a) a journalist who denigrates the troops, spends his time at a safe hotel bar and only needs to know how to write a few words to get paid; (b) a Hollywood actor activist who hates the military and only has to remember how to memorize a script; or (c) this man who has to keep straight millions of parts in a modern jet airplane where the slightest mistake means someone will die?

The answer is easy: when my Dad retired after thirty years as a Chief Master Sergeant, they held the going away party at the Officer’s Club and the old man never paid for a single drink. I did have to help carry him home though. I felt honored to do so.

Posted by The Skipper     on 05/18/2006 at 05:07 PM   
Filed Under: • Military •  
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Not that very many people ever read this far down, but this blog was the creation of Allan Kelly and his friend Vilmar. Vilmar moved on to his own blog some time ago, and Allan ran this place alone until his sudden and unexpected death partway through 2006. We all miss him. A lot. Even though he is gone this site will always still be more than a little bit his. We who are left to carry on the BMEWS tradition owe him a great debt of gratitude, and we hope to be able to pay that back by following his last advice to us all:

1. Keep a firm grasp of Right and Wrong
2. Stay involved with government on every level and don't let those bastards get away with a thing
3. Use every legal means to defend yourself in the event of real internal trouble, and, most importantly:
4. Keep talking to each other, whether here or elsewhere

It's been a long strange trip without you Skipper, but thanks for pointing us in the right direction and giving us a swift kick in the behind to get us going. Keep lookin' down on us, will ya? Thanks.

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