Life in the Army while you are on Medical Hold.

Life on Medical Hold is awkward at best. For me, it resulted in my being permanently grounded from pilot duties, and since seventy percent of my unit was forward deployed in Hungary, I was now part of what is known in Army vernacular: The Rear-Detachment (RD). In almost every scenario, when a unit is deployed temporarily from their home base, a small portion of the unit stay behind to maintain the unit area and to perform some functions that can’t be done in the forward area. This is known as the Rear-Detachment. Size and personnel and equipment allotted varies based on the unit needs. One common theme in all scenarios it that personnel in-processing, out-processing and on Medical Hold are part of the RD.

I was on hold pending the results of my medical board. When injured on active-duty, if you were injured enough to qualify for a disability discharge or disability retirement, you were referred to a medical review board. My medical review board (and all medical reviews from the European Theatre) was based at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, in Bethesda, Maryland. While my board was pending, I was on hold from all administrative processes, including my being discharged due to my second non-selection for promotion to Chief Warrant Officer three (CW3). It also meant that I couldn’t return to Hungary.

A grounded pilot is about as useless as “Tits on a Boar Hog” as my grandfather used to say. This outstanding, I was the company Automation Officer who kept all the computers going. The Battalion Intelligence Officer (S2) was overwhelmed with computer repair work and I asked my company commander if I could go an assist him. I pointed out that over fifty percent of the assets that the S2 was trying to fix belonged to our company and he agreed to load me full time to the S2. So, I became the battalion computer tech.

This was also Spring of 1997. Everyone in the United States knows that April 15^th is in the Spring and that US income taxes are due. For those that didn’t know, US soldiers, while deployed overseas, are still subject to US income taxes. (There are exceptions when deployed to war zones and such, but in general, you are still a US citizen and you are still subject to the tax code.) One of the things I had done since my time at Fort Campbell on Degree Completion, was I was an Internal Revenue Service Volunteer Income Tax Assistant (VITA) volunteer. From 1993 through 1997 I volunteered to assist with soldiers and their dependents to help them file their income tax returns. The Army Judge Advocate General (JAG) Corps (ARMY for LAWYER) setup tax preparation centers and there was one in front of the Post Exchange at Leighton Barracks where I was housed. Not having a lot to do, I did a lot of volunteer tax work.

This is where I met our Battalion Executive Officer (XO), I did his taxes. Apparently, I also impressed him. And when he found out that I was essentially working for him (the XO was the Chief of Staff for the Battalion Commander) assisting his S2, he found more for me to do as the new assistant Personnel Officer (S1) for the battalion. While working on his taxes, he observed that I knew computers and I was pretty well versed in communication. The S1 had a problem where Officer Evaluation Reports (OERs) were being submitted by raters or senior raters that really couldn’t write well. As I mentioned before, I’d been prompted by my English Professors in degree completion to change my major to English, and I was now tasked to put that knowledge to work for the battalion.

I went from being useless, to really busy in short order. I helped e-file taxes for the entire battalion staff and many others in the unit, plus a couple hundred at the VITA office after working hours, fixed a lot of computers and was the battalion proof reader and ghost writer for OERs from January to May of 1997. I also spent a lot of time using the Army Transition Center computer assets trying to set myself up for a post Army job. I kept all this up while waiting for Walter Reed to get around to processing me and my discharge from the Army.

While working in these positions, I also came into closer contact with CW3 Dave Pasch. Dave was the unit Safety Officer, and like me he had been passed over for his promotion to CW4. Dave was considering his options and since I was also in the same situation, we talked a lot. Dave’s situation was better though because he would have fifteen years active duty prior to separation. I assisted him in getting his early retirement packet submitted and he out processed and retired in May 1997. About the time Dave was clearing I got my board results. I was finally informed that I was being given a disability rating of thirty percent which qualified me for the Temporary Disability Retirement List (TDRL).

I’d done it! I was going to get to retire and move on to civilian life. When I’d entered active duty from the National Guard in 1984, the plan had been put in my twenty years and get my retirement. Reduction in Force (RIF) and an unfortunately timed early promotion to CW2 had put me in a position of having been passed over the second time with only fourteen years active duty. Leaving short of the fifteen-year early retirement threshold. The TDRL assignment gave me the opportunity to retire on disability from the army, and all the benefits associated with retirement. While Post Exchange (PX) and Commissary (Military Grocery) privileges are nice, the important part to me was continuation of medical insurance and availability of post medical services for myself and my family.

I started out-processing in July of 1997 with a separation date of August 1, 1997. Separating from the military from an overseas tour also provided another quandary; Where do we go from here? I grew up in Indiana and my wife in Kentucky. Neither state held great ties to us as my immediate family now lived in Tennessee and I had left the area due to the inability to get work there anyway. We decided to go to Tennessee as that was the state that our kids had the strongest ties to and my sons wanted to attend the University of Tennessee after high school. My brother and mother living in Franklin, Tennessee was just icing on the cake. I told the army to send us to Tennessee.

Our return flight to Tennessee didn’t exactly go smoothly, as well there were “Problems.” On July 31, 1997, FedEx Express Flight 14 was a scheduled cargo flight from Singapore to Newark, New Jersey. The aircraft flying this route crashed during landing on its final segment at Newark International Airport, catching fire as it flipped upside down, while attempting to land on runway 22R (The right of two parallel runways aligned to magnetic heading 220.) Our route home was Frankfort to Newark, NJ, Newark to Louisville, KY to visit my Step-Mother and Father before making the final trip to Tennessee to live. That MD11 crash occurred while we were over the Atlantic.

Nothing had been unusual until we go near the coast of the USA and our captain announced that there would be a delay in landing due to traffic and that we would be holding west of Newark for about forty-five minutes while Air Traffic Control (ATC) got things figured out. If you are any kind of experienced flier and you have flown to the northeast part of the US, you know that air traffic issues are not that unusual and we had a long layover so we were not too concerned. Finally, the captain announced we were clears to land and made his approach to Runway 22L. As usual, as we touched down, the passengers all started applauding the crew for a job well done. That quickly turned to silence as we taxied past the smoldering remains of the crashed MD11 on the adjacent runway. Freaked out was an understatement for all of us.

We arrived at the terminal, and processed through customs and then joined the chaos of trying to get out of Newark. Between the in-route delay and near total chaos of the airport due to the crash, we were unable to make our connecting flight. My wife, my three kids and I joined the queue at the TWA ticket counter trying to get tickets to Louisville. As you can imagine, tickets were in short supply and the frazzled ticket agents were being creative in getting people to their destinations. Here came our next quandary. I could get seats for five on a flight to Cleveland, OH, but from Cleveland, I was only assured of two seats to Louisville, KY. Exhausted from twelve hours of travel so far, I reluctantly accepted this offer and got tickets and boarding passes.

We had a while between flights and we were afforded the opportunity by TWA to visit with our two cats that were flying cargo back to the US with us. We were glad to see they were doing well and reluctantly saw them off with the baggage handlers came to load them on the plane to Cleveland. The flight to Cleveland was uneventful, the scene at the TWA ticket counter, not so much. Since I knew I was going to have to get reticketed, I looked for the gate information for the Louisville flight and told my family to meet me there as I sprinted ahead. It seems like negotiations with the TWA agent took an eternity but it was likely only a few minutes and we managed to get the last five seats on the flight to Louisville on a CRJ-200 commuter jet.

Where are the cats? This was now the big question. Since we had no confirmed transfer, our biggest concern now was the cats. These cats were family, one we’d had since Alaska twelve years before, and we were adamant that we would not board the plane unless the cats were on it too. We were prepared to give up the seats and get a hotel if we had to, but we weren’t leaving the cats alone in a strange city after what we’d just gone through. Finally, the gate agent was able to confirm the cats were in the baggage heading to the plane and we boarded. Just as I was entering the plane, I saw them being brought to the plane though the window of the jetway. Soon we were wheels up again and landed in Louisville, KY about an hour later.

My back finally said enough is enough.

My platoon leader (1LT Casey) and I were tasked to fly a Chinook back to our home base in Giebelstadt Germany from our forward base in Kaposújlak airfield outside Kaposvar, Hungary. It was an interesting flight as we were allowed to fly an Instrument Flight Rules (IFR) over-flight of Switzerland. The Alps are beautiful from above and we had fairly clear skies that allowed us quite a view. Once we transitioned into German airspace, we got an airspace traffic warning. There was an aircraft flying on Visual Flight Rules (VFR)(Squawking 2400 on their transponder). They were not in contact with Air Traffic Control (ATC) since they were flying in unrestricted airspace. They just happened to be flying at approximately our altitude (6,000 feet). We radioed we had visual contact with the aircraft (a Tally-Ho) and identified it to ATC as a sailplane (Glider). The glider was playing cloud tag. Climbing up in up-drafts to the base of the clouds, then diving away. A violation of cloud clearance rules, but no threat. We just kept an eye on the glider and kept it our distance from it.

The only other thing of significance to note was when we flew past the Neuschwanstein Castle. After we had cleared the glider, we cancelled our IFR flight plan and transitioned to VFR. This allowed us to choose our own altitude and heading as we had planned on doing a fly by on the castle. We told the crew and they had their cameras out and I think we all got some pretty decent photos of one of the most famous and visually recognizable castles on the world. Soon enough, we were back at Giebelstadt.

I had an office in the hangar where I did my unit automation work. It was also used to store some unused desks. I needed to move one a few inches (it was an old 1950s era metal army desk and super heavy). I only needed to move it a few inches so I just walked up to it and tried to nudge it over a bit with my thighs. No bending, no twisting, no awkward movement, just a nudge with both thighs and the dreaded “pop” was heard with that little twinge in my lower back that I just knew would get worse. Unfortunately for me, I was right. For the first time, I had a spinal disc dislocate and no matter the therapy, the shots, the adjustment or the workout, I could not get the issue to resolve. Nothing was relieving the problem.

I was grounded and for the first time taking some pretty heavy pain medications just to function. Even then, taking drugs strong enough that I couldn’t drive, I wasn’t functioning very well. Every morning it was like a mini-test to see what the day was going to bring. If I could stand up, it was going to be a good day. A bad day usually consisted of my placing my left foot on the floor, trying to stand, and then collapsing into a spastic pile on the floor, overwhelmed by a blinding, unrelenting pain.

It is hard to explain a massive back spasm to anyone who hasn’t experienced one. If you have ever had a cramp in your calf, imagine that pain, magnified by a factor of ten, in your lower back. Unlike the calf, you have no way of stretching it out to relive the pain. Your vision goes white, maybe it seems like 100 strobe lights are going off all around you, and you collapse on the floor screaming because it feels like someone has just stabbed you in the back with a glowing red broadsword that was recently pulled out of a blacksmith’s forge. I decided it was time to do something about this.
The local hospital had an Orthopedics Clinic and the doctor I saw there was a reservist on active duty. His specialty was back surgery, but in the European Theatre all back surgery was done in Landstuhl at the Landstuhl Army Medical Center. The initial diagnosis was a Herniated Nucleus Pulposus (HNP). I was quickly given a referral to the Neurosurgery clinic there. Two weeks later, on a Monday morning, I met Dr. (Maj) Gary Flangas at the Neurosurgery clinic. Dr Flangas had worked as a neurosurgeon in Houston, Texas, for almost a decade before he decided to join the army and see the world. He was the head of neurosurgery in the European Theatre.

Doctor Flangas evaluated me, confirmed that I indeed had an HNP (L5-S1, the lowest disc in the back) and he determined I was indeed a surgery candidate. Next, we discussed my options. He could do the minimum necessary, a partial discectomy or we could elect to do a spinal fusion. A partial discectomy involved a small incision, taking out part of a facet on a vertebra, removing the part of the spinal disc that was pressing on a nerve, and hoping the remaining part of the disc supported the weight of my spine. Minimally invasive. Spinal fusion, they first harvest bone from the ilium (The part of your hipbone you can feel). Then they do a similar, but larger incision, remove the entire damage disc, and insert the harvested bone between then vertebra. This allows the vertebra to fuse together. Part of the discussion was that the discectomy was a good first choice and if needed go back and do a spinal fusion. If I elected for a fusion, then there were no more surgical options left if the problem was unresolved. I chose the discectomy as I wanted options.

My next surprise was to be scheduled for surgery within eleven days. Originally, I was going to be scheduled for that Thursday, four days later. But the doctor was already booked up that Thursday with three surgeries and we had to wait another week for him to have an available operating room. There were limited operating rooms for the amount of surgeries that could be done and Doctor Flangas only had the OR booked every Thursday morning for Neurosurgeries. The only other time he operated was during emergencies. I was kinda shocked that I was getting surgery so soon, and even with a week delay, I had to scramble to coordinate transportation to and from the hospital. My wife didn’t drive in Germany and I had to enlist my platoon leader’s wife as my driver.

I made the trip back to Landstuhl and the actual surgery was fairly uneventful (for me) as I was wheeled in for surgery at 0700 and I woke in the recovery room around 1130, I was slow to wake from the anesthesia and the nurse was continuously telling me to breathe, as my blood oxygen was dropping below 80 percent, causing an alarm to go off. When Dr. Flangas came to the recovery room that I learned my case was more difficult than he’d expected. I was scheduled for a forty-five-minute procedure and I was in the OR for well over two hours. He mentioned that the two cases behind me would be unhappy as they would have to wait another week.

I was back to my room a little past noon and the nurses had me walking the halls two hours later. It was a wonderful feeling. For the first time in ages I had no issues with back pain. I was so relieved and I thought that all my problems had been resolved. This was one of the happiest moments of my life. I was monitored for two days and all seemed to be good. My wife and Valia, (My Bosses Wife) and her daughter (Ariana) came to get me in their Ford Super-cab pickup for the drive home. I was tender but I managed the back seat. The trip home was only punctuated by a stop to resolve a rather nasty diaper blowout for Ariana. Five days after surgery, I woke up and couldn’t feel my left leg.
Fearing the worst, we called Dr. Flangas and I was given some steroids and told to stay in bed for seventy-two hours. They were figuring I had some swelling around the spinal cord and that it was causing the paralysis. I did get some feeling back and most of my motor function (I could walk fairly normally after the bedrest), but I could no longer lift up my toes and foot more than a couple inches. My dorsiflexors were not working on the left leg and most of the foot felt like it was asleep. As soon as I was able to move and walk again, I had a dye-contrast MRI and the results were inconclusive. Dr Flangas could see nothing that going back in would help and he hoped in time the issue would resolve. (It didn’t.)

I could have requested another surgery and a fusion might have resolved the issue. This was a quandary that I went over and over about. There was a chance the issue might resolve, there was a chance a fusion might help. There was also a chance that the fusion or any other surgery might make things worse. After the steroids and the MRI, I was out of pain and my back was pretty stable. I could walk normally and I really didn’t have major limitations aside from not being able to fly and I was being medically boarded anyway. With no clear indication that I would get a better result, I decided to wait it out.

The pain was gone and I was now permanently grounded. My career was over anyway as I had been awaiting my results from my second opportunity for promotion to Chief Warrant Officer 3 (CW3) and I was turned down again about the time I had surgery. In a way, the leg problems were beneficial as I could apply for a disability retirement instead of just being discharged. I had to apply for disability through Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington as they were the approval authority for Europe. The disability process went from the end of 1996 through the summer of 1997 and I was placed on the Temporary Disability Retired List (TDRL) effective 1 August 1997.

No so fun times at my new duty station in Germany

While I arrived in Germany in April of 1995, it took the rest of the summer to get my family there. Due to medical issues with members of my family, they were enrolled in the Exceptional Family Member Program (EFMP). EFMP was created to ensure that if a family accompanied a solder to a duty station (Overseas or in the US) that needed medical care was available for these family members. Between the administrative requirements of this and some ongoing medical care that required a doctor's consent to travel, my family was not able to join me in Germany until August.

Once travel was approved, travel arrangements were made and the family arrived in Frankfort. I remember my first impression of exiting the jetway and seeing two Polizi standing watch holding Uzis. Made quite an impression and this was before US travel changed after 9/11/2001. I wasn't used to machine guns in airports. We made it through customs without issue and managed to get to our van where I'd parked it on the US Air Force section of the Frankfurt airport. The drive back to Wurzburg on the autobahn yielded the first of many interesting questions from my children. Why are there so many signs for Ausfahrt? It must be a huge city. Then I explained that Ausfahrt meant Exit and those were exit markers on the Autobahn.

Getting a family established in a foreign country was not easy. The Army was supposed to give me thirty-days stabilization. The was to ensure that for the first thirty days my family was in country was there to help them adapt. That lasted about ten days before I was sent by our unit operations on temporary duty (TDY) to Heidelberg to spend three days in the flight simulator. The flight simulators had cost a lot of money and they were expensive to maintain (Still much cheaper than flying the actual aircraft though). This caused pressure on operations to keep all training slots filled. Since a large amount of our pilots were preparing for a field exercise in Grafenwoehr, I was selected with another pilot for the simulator. I complained, but I still ended up riding in CW2 Millares' beat-up BMW to the simulator.

Ignoring my stabilization seemed the norm instead of an exception as I found out a few days after returning from the simulator, I too was going to Grafenwoehr. Grafenwoehr was the field training area for Germany. There weren't any attached training areas like Fort Campbell or for Hood had, just this one main one for all of US Army Europe to use. This resulted in my living in a tent in Germany less than three weeks after my family arrived in Germany. But this couldn't get worse could it? Did I mention the low clouds and rain that kept us on the ground the entire exercise? It was cold wet and dreary. But we were army and used to cold and wet and dreary. Then I got a call to report to the commander.

Shit! I thought there was a problem with a member of my family or some other tragedy. In a way I was right, but the tragedy wasn't with my family, it was with my career. He called for me to let me know, in the field, that I'd hadn't been selected for promotion to Chief Warrant Officer Three (CW3) I'd been passed over by the Department of the Army selection board. I had known this was a possibility, but I had gained false hope after my assignment to Degree Completion that DA actually had plans to keep me around. My commander apologized and asked if I knew what I wanted to do? I told him I had to think about it.

Here is some clarity on the situation. I needed promotion to CW3 to accrue enough time to retire at twenty years. This had been my plan since starting active duty. Originally, I'd needed to be a Staff Sergeant (Promotable) to retire. When I had made Sergeant, that had meant making one more grade and just being eligible for the next which was pretty easy. I could have made that threshold with ease. When I went to flight school, I got credit for my active duty time, but I then became subject to the Warrant Officer promotion schedule. Two years as a WO1; Six as CW2; then make CW3 and retire. While in Korea I'd learned I could make CW2 six months early due to my National Guard service credit. That 180 days screwed my career.

At the time, getting promoted early looked like an all win situation. Make rank sooner, more pay, more respect as I wasn't the warrant officer equivalent of a "butter bar" anymore. All my career, getting promoted early had been a good thing. Desert Storm changed things. The army had spent a lot of money and they were now looking to save money. Reduction in Force (RIF) has always been the army way to save money and I was now looking at it personally. RIF changed the way the army was looking at overseas assignments to Germany and Korea and other places, especially in regard to Chinooks.

When I was in the CH-47D transition at Rucker, there were three companies of Chinooks in Germany, Two in Korea and one in Alaska and Hawaii. By the time I left Degree Completion five years later, there was one in Germany, one in Korea and the Alaska unit was only half the size it had been, Hawaii was gone. What did this mean? More pilots than Chinooks. The Gulf War had caused a dramatic increase in departures of seasoned Chinook pilots. I'd arrived at Campbell as a low-time pilot (300 hours) when the unit average was over 1500 hours. When I left for degree completion, I was a high-time pilot with 800 hours and the unit average was 300.

The early promotion to CW2 meant that I was also going before the CW3 board a year earlier than I would have done normally. An ever shrinking pool of assignments and my straw that broke the camel's back was my physical profile. My promotion board consisted of fifteen field-grade officers. Thirteen of them were combat arms (Infantry, Armor, Artillery, etc.) and combat arms types didn't like soldiers with permanent physical profiles. The P3 profile I'd had to try and save my back from further injury, along with force reduction, had killed my career. "What should I do?" was the question.

I had a second chance. If you were non-select the first time, there was a second look a year later. Second look selections were rare, but they did happen. One of my instructor pilots in Korea made CW3 on the second look, so there was a chance. My family had invested a lot of money in the move to Germany, going home after six months was not attractive as we had no money reserves and I had no after army career plans. After some heart wrenching discussions and hope for something to work out, we opted for me to wait it out another year.

My first trip to the Joint Readiness Training Center (JRTC) at Fort Chaffee

It was almost assured that about once a year you would end up at the Joint Readiness Training Center (JRTC) for a field training exercise. Training like this was important because if you were stationed at a post for any period of time, you become very familiar with the terrain and local features that it was like playing hide and seek in your own backyard. You knew where all the good hiding spots were and that took away from the fun. In the army, having to move units from and to unfamiliar places was a big part of the job and you needed someplace unfamiliar for that. Hence JRTC.

You also got training in deployment. When you deployed to a remote area, you had to take what you needed with you. This was another skill you only learned by doing it. You got to test how well your equipment worked, or how well it didn't work. You practiced unit movement, whether by convoy, train or as Chinooks go, SELF-MOVEMENT BY AIR. Let's face it, if you couldn't take it to the field in a Chinook, you couldn't take it to the field.

JRTC usually meant that about half the company (8 Chinooks) were sent to JRTC. There were some items that went by convoy, Maintenance vehicles, parts trailers, Mobile Kitchen Trailer (MKT) and the like, but the majority of what left Ft. Campbell flew in a Chinook. For this turn at JRTC, our unit was not based on Ft. Chaffee, but at a Army National Guard Base in Little Rock. Our landing area was on the 1000 meter rifle range (Obviously closed.) Missions were flown from Little Rock to JRTC and back for the most part, so we had a lot of equipment stored at that field site.

We had a night NVG mission that included an insertion of a company of Infantry. This required us to basically offload just about all our personal equipment so we could load the grunts. It was inconvenient, but it was part of the job. The personnel cargo capacity of a Chinook is 33 passengers in the seats. Under true combat conditions, we could forget about the seats, have the solders sit on their rucksacks on the floor in rows of five and we could get about 88 on board in that manner. Hence the passenger capacity running joke of Chinooks: "Max capacity 33, do not exceed 88.)

So there we were, a flight of four CH-47Ds, picking up 100+ infantry in some Pickup Zone (PZ) somewhere and we hauled them to our destination, Arrowhead Drop Zone (DZ). Arrowhead was designated a drop zone as it was a multi-purpose area. You could use it as a Landing Zone (LZ) for helicopters, a Drop Zone for paratroopers, a Drop Zone for air cargo via parachute or you could have tactical landing by Air Force aircraft on the unimproved gravel runway. The problem with a multi-use zone like that is you don't always get all the information about what was going on there, especially if more than one branch of the military was involved.

Everything was going great, until we were on short final to our landing area on the north side of the DZ and about 500 meters north of the gravel runway that ran east and west. This is when a C-130 landed and shook us up a bit. Like a Chinook, when a C-130 landed on a gravel runway, they stirred up a lot of dust from reverse thrust like we did with our rotors. As dust and dirt flew while he came to a stop, the dust and dirt was causing a gigantic shower of sparks off the propellers, effectively shutting down our goggles while we were trying to land. That made for an exciting few moments, but we managed to land safely. There was much ado over the radio about who was running the DZ and notifications of friendly aircraft and the like, but no major repercussions.

This is also where I got the ever present "Mission Change" and I was told to land at an LZ on Ft. Chaffee and rendezvous with other Chinooks from my unit as they'd had a bird scratched from a mission for maintenance reasons and needed another aircraft. Well damn, our sleeping gear was in Little Rock. Grrrrr. The flight was uneventful and we landed just after midnight behind the last aircraft in the LZ. It was springtime 1992 and it wasn't too hot, but it got cool at night. I ended up sleeping on a bench seat inside the Chinook wearing my PT uniform (Grey Sweats) and wrapped up in a poncho liner (Lightly insulated blanket for all intents and purposes.) Mostly I was cold.

Somewhere in that endless cold sleep, I remember rolling over and feeling a small tweak in my back. I didn't think much of it aside from it annoyed me and I went back to sleep. When I woke up in the morning, I needed to find out what the operations order was since I'd gotten little intelligence the night before with the mission change. I walked about 500 yards to the next bird and talked to CW2 Schroder (He was our Operations guy) and got what details he had then I headed back to my aircraft intent on breakfast. That turned into one of the longest walks of my life.

I'd gotten roughly half the way back, walking over mildly rough terrain, when I started having pain in my lower back. The more I walked, the more it hurt. I got about 100 more steps and I had to stop for the pain. I found bending over and squatting helped the pain, so I squatted and waited for it to abate. Then I got up and started walking again. I repeated this several times, over increasingly shorter distances the last 300 meters to the aircraft. (10 to 15 stops). I had a major problem.

I got back to the aircraft and the crew was trying to help me out. We found, I'm not sure how, that if I laid down on a ruck sack, face down, with my left knee pulled to my chest, the pain abated for the most part. And there I was in a field site, no medics, no pain meds and of course, no way could I fly. My co-pilot communicated this to operations and they said they would get me out, but it would be a while. It was all damn day!.

Some time after noon (Yes, I did eat lunch face down over a ruck sack) they determined that the aircraft was going to be used on the mission and I was moved over to the wood line on a cot (Still face down with my knee to my chest.) The mission departed and it was me and one extra crew member that had been left behind to help me. Finally, around 6 PM a Chinook returned to take us back to Little Rock. Now I had to find some way to sit up in a seat with a seat-belt on, this didn't bode well at all.

I managed to get over to the aircraft, (I think I had help) and managed to climb up the step and into the aircraft. It was packed, and there were 5 people riding and 5 seats. I managed to get around and into one of the seats, head spinning from the pain. No it was get the seat belt on. I managed to snap the buckle and then I jerked to tighten the strap and that movement caused my back to pop! First a wave of pain, then some relief. I wasn't out of pain, but it was bearable now anyway.

We flew back to Little Rock and I was reunited with my aircraft and my sleeping bag and other equipment and officially grounded by the Flight Surgeon (Big surprise there.) But at least I got some pain medications and that helped. The next day, we returned to Ft. Campbell.

Since I was grounded, I was replaced by another pilot and I rode in the jump-seat between the pilots for the return flight. They used me as a navigator as neither of them had made the flight from Little Rock to Campbell and I was known for my navigation. We got back in the afternoon and after getting all required equipment (weapon and Goggles and such) turned in and accounted for, we were released. I called my wife to come and get me and she greeted me with all three sons which was nice as they could carry my equipment while I staggered to the van.

We got home, and for the only time I can remember while I was in the military, my wife took my boots off for me. She helped me out of my flight suit and I just laid on the living room floor in my skivvies and tried to do a hip roll to ease the pain in my back. My wife was sitting close entertaining our four year old and they were horsing around and she fell over and landed on my leg while I was stretching my back. CRRRAACCKKK!! and I howled in pain. My wife quickly checked on me and asked if I was in pain and I said yes, but it hurt so good. She'd managed to realign what I'd thrown out and I was pretty much pain free.

I ended up grounded for a couple months while I was evaluated and did physical therapy. I ended up with a P3 profile (Permanent Grade 3. A P3 profile meant I was 100% deployable but that I had limitations for physical training) and modified exercise program, but otherwise I was okay and went back to flight status.

I became a Pilot-in-Command just after the war.

One of the most coveted accomplishments you earned as a pilot was designation as a Pilot-in-Command (PIC). The PIC was responsible for everything that happened with the aircraft. It was a rite of passage and it was an acknowledgement from your chain of command that you had earned their respect and they trusted you to be in charge of an aircraft. Pretty much it said you had made it.

Every time you checked into a new unit, you had to complete Readiness Level (RL) progression training. You started at RL3. RL3 meant you could only fly with an Instructor Pilot (IP). Each unit had 4 or 5 IPs and you flew with them until they were confident of your basic pilots skills. Then they progressed you to RL2. RL2 allowed you to fly with a Pilot-in-Command (PIC) to sharpen your skills and then you progressed to RL1 which meant that you could fly unit missions as a fully qualified aviator. There often was a separate RL progression for NVG qualification. The next step in RL progression was designation as a Pilot-in-Command.

I never made PIC in Korea. It wasn't because I didn't have the skills, it was more; "this is the way we do it here." You see, in Korea you were either on a one-year unaccompanied tour or a two-year accompanied tour. You were sent to Korea either by yourself, or with your family. The Standardization-Instructor-Pilot (SIP) was not inclined to let a Warrant Officer One (WO1) take a PIC check-ride unless they were on a two-year tour. Aviators that had come from other aviation assignments, and had made PIC at the previous station, you usually made PIC quickly. (Note: CW2 promotions occurred after two years as a WO1.) Instead, he would offer WO1s, straight out of flight school, the PIC check-ride just before they departed station. This way you could say you made PIC in Korea, but you would never get to fly PIC on a mission before leaving.

I really chafed at this policy. I got along well with the SIP and he was one of the people I hung around with off duty. But I found this PIC Policy insulting. I was RL1 (Day/Night/NVG) and I was fully qualified for PIC months before I was due to leave. I'd become proficient in both the D-model in which I ws school trained but also on the C-Model which I learned about in country. All this didn't matter as the check-ride was never on their agenda until I got my clearing papers 30 days before departing for Fort Campbell. I told the SIP to kiss my ass when he offered me a PIC check-ride and asked him to sign my clearing papers instead.

Everything was different at my new duty station in June 1990. I was arriving as a CW2 instead of a WO1 (I'd been promoted to CW2 early due to reserve active duty officer time credit.) and I'd been assigned to an actual aviation unit for a year. So I wasn't treated as quite the still wet aviator I had been in Korea. That being said, my training was far from the normal unit integration. My RL progression at Fort Campbell was interrupted by the Gulf War. I made RL2 flying to the port ferrying aircraft and I was signed off RL1 Day/Night/NVG during Desert Shield at King Fahd International Airport. I had both my Platoon Leader and others lobbying for me to be signed off as PIC (Day/Night/NVG). I had my PIC Check-ride in March of 1991 in the desert. It was at that point that unit politics and personnel issues came to bear.

My transition to the PIC role was complicated by some internal unit issues. One of our Pilots-in-Command and his co-pilot were not getting along. The Co-pilot was a WO1 and the PIC was a CW2 with just about the same experience level as I had. During this deployment, we were generally teamed as pilot/PIC teams and this had been no exception. I never got a good explanation of exactly why these two pilots didn't get along but I was told the WO1 didn't feel safe flying with his PIC. The result was I was told to move to aircraft (24155?) and the WO1 moved to 23780. Initially, I had been told that I would be PIC and the CW2 would be my co-pilot. He bristled at this idea and it was deemed that we would alternate as PIC of the aircraft.

So we took turns as Pilot-in-Command for the missions we flew the remainder of the deployment and once we returned to Fort Campbell, Personally, I never had any issue with the CW2 and his flying or decision making. I was glad this was all occurring after the war had ended though as I was a tense situation and outside of missions, we really didn't talk and I think he felt I was an interloper.

I entered mission rotation as a Day/Night/NVG PIC in the states and I heard no further issues between those two pilots afterwards. I did fly as co-pilot on several missions at Ft. Campbell as their training philosophy was to train everyone they could as a PIC, so often we had more PICs than co-pilots and we would be paired together on a mission. Like in Desert Storm, when this occurred, we would take turns.

Losses in a sister unit after Desert Storm.

Pilots in my unit were devastated when we heard about this crash. We'd successfully managed to go though actual combat operations without an serious aircraft damage of any injuries with our aviation assets during the 100 hours of the ground war campaign of Desert Storm. A fatal crash during routine training a few days later was just unthinkable.

Crash synopsis: 1 March 1991, 84-24177, a CH-47D from the B Company 159th Aviation Battalion of the 24th Infantry Division hit a radio tower while flying 250 feet above ground level (AGL) a NVG training mission along tapline road shortly after we moved to our new base. The Chinook was piloted by the Bravo Company Commander Major Marie Rossi and their Standardization Instructor pilot (SIP). Both pilots and two of the three enlisted crew members received fatal injuries.

Because of the loss of fellow crews we were saddened, but because the crash was 100% preventable it was infuriating! They hit the only radio tower within a 50 mile radius. It literally was the first item on the hazards map for the area of operations. The tower was 500 feet tall and they hit it at the 257 foot mark according to the accident report. No one can say it was from a lack of experience in the cockpit, because as a rule of thumb, Chinook Company Commanders flew with the Standardization Instructor Pilot (SIP, the most senior IP in the unit.) partially to ensure that things like this didn't occur to the commander.

I felt mostly for the enlisted crew. They depend on the pilots to fly the aircraft safely and to take appropriate measures to ensure they have all the information they need for a safe flight. Hundreds of missions were flown in the previous week and we all lived. Then someone goes on a NVG currency mission and forgive me for my righteousness, STUPIDLY FLIES INTO A GIGANTIC TOWER!!!????

A normal result of such incidents was a SAFETY STAND-DOWN and this was no different. We were grounded, safety procedures were gone over, commanders emphasized that safety was the primary consideration and we all sat and talked and brooded and thanked God that it wasn't us.

I think one of the most troubling thing for me was that the three Chinook crashes that had occurred in the past year had not been the result of pilot inexperience. In all three, the Standardization Instructor Pilot had been one of the pilots involved either on the controls or supervising the training. What was the issue? It couldn't be lack of familiarity with the aircraft or pilot skill, these were our teachers. One was partially a hardware issue with the hook release, but even that was predicated by a pilot error in the approach. It was a no moon night, so there is the question of should NVG external load training have been done in those conditions.

The other two crashes were judgement errors on the pilots. One flying up into to the clouds on the side of a mountain trying to get to a field site, the other you read about above, a NVG training mission where they hit the only obstacle for miles and should never had flown anywhere near it..

I'd been the only pilot to refuse to fly a mission in Korea due to our  having been awake for almost 24 hours and it was just a field training exercise. I think I made a conscious decision that day to try and avoid the pitfalls of complacency and command pressure as a pilot. Looking back at my flying career, I see I wasn't always successful, but I managed to avoid any crashes and successfully survived the times when I either caved to command pressure or made poor cockpit decisions that were not so severe that really bad things happened.

Moving up closer to where the action was during Desert Storm

Five weeks elapsed between the start of the air war portion of Desert Storm and the introduction of ground units to the war. 7th Battalion, 101st Aviation Brigade, 101st Airborne Division, remained in the scatter site field position for about a week. We then moved back to King Fahd International Airport for a day before we headed north and established our forward operating base near tap-line road in northern Saudi Arabia.

We actually established a working field base at tap-line road, as opposed to the emergency position we'd been in at the scatter site. Tents were set up, latrines were built, supply and maintenance areas were setup and this was our new home. Back to normal operations, just closer to where things were going on.

Aircraft concerns where high as just prior to our scatter into the desert a CH-47D 89-00165 caught fire during flight. On 11 January 1991, during Operation Desert Storm, the number two engine transmission experienced a catastrophic failure accompanied by an in-flight fire during execution of an emergency landing being conducted as a result of the illumination of the number two engine transmission hot caution light. The aircraft internally loaded cargo, an M102 Howitzer and M998 High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle (HMMWV, aka HUMVEE or HUMMER) and all the equipment of the crew and passengers were totally destroyed in the fire. All the crew and passengers were able to exit the aircraft safely and uninjured. This all occurred in less than fifteen minutes.

Other aircraft maintenance concerns also included sand abrasion wear of the turbine blades of the engines. It was troubling to look in the inlet of the engine and see turbine blades that looked like potato chips. Normally, engines on a Chinook were rebuilt after 800 hours of flight time, Due to sand erosion of the first and second stage compressor blades, our engines were being replaced after only 50 to 100 hours of desert flight time. This caused a worldwide shortage of of replacement engines in the supply system.

The Organizational Readiness Float (ORF) is a supply chain method where critical components are stages in depots world wide to allow for major component replacements to occur quickly while the old component is sent to the repair depot for overhaul. There were over 80 T55-L712 engine base assemblies in the ORF at the beginning of Desert Shield. These were rapidly depleted and the situation became severe enough that engines were removed from aircraft in other regions of the world and shipped to the combat theater.

Our company aircraft maintenance section became engine replacement experts. Normal turn around time for an engine replacement was 48 to 72 hours. Servicing one of our company aircraft, the team replaced both engines on one aircraft, completed all required inspections. Had the aircraft test flown and back into service in less than 24-hours. We held the maintenance team in the highest esteem.

The desert conditions were wreaking havoc on other aircraft components. The rotor systems were connected to the flight controls by a rotating swash-plate. This device transferred stationary control inputs of the flight controls into rotating control inputs to the rotor system. Part of this assembly was a large Teflon slider assembly. During the aircraft run up, one of the things we tested was that the flight controls moved freely and smoothly. Sand causes the slider to shudder and under non-combat conditions, we would not have flown the aircraft. This was where ingenuity of our maintenance team again came to the rescue. They found that application of dry Teflon spray to the sliders during the flight control check, allowed them to slide freely as needed. 

Once we left the base at King Fahd International Airport (KFIA) we suffered from a lack of information. Unless we were tasked for a mission, we got little communication from our chain of command. Even then, we didn't get a lot of information on what the tactical situation was in our area. We got most of our information on the high frequency radio one of our crew had sent to them from home. The BBC became our window to the world. (A re-occurring theme.)

The terrain of this area was a surprise to us. There wasn't sand like we'd experienced in the southern region, this was all fragmented limestone rock, dirt and dust. There were these flat rocks, up to a foot in diameter and up to 6 inches thick all over the place. There there were flat pond like areas of dirt. Some only a few feet across, some half the size of a football field. We parked aircraft in the larger ones, and setup tents and other equipment in other ones.

Tents. We lived in 5-man tents that were in theory, designed to house five people. Since we had cots and weapons and our kit and such, this was nominal at best. It was crowded and cozy and mostly smelly. It was cold enough at night that we slept in our sleeping bags, but not warm enough during the day to dry everything out. So the tent was usually a damp zone. We tried to keep things from mildewing at the least.

My pilot-in-command, Mark, brought a couple golf clubs with him and a half-dozen golf balls. So we improvised a golf course and occupied some of our down time playing golf. Pitching balls from one dirt area to another. No drives but we got better at our short game.

Cards, writing letters to send home, reading and of course company duty were other a pastimes waiting for the next ball to drop. That happened soon enough.

Day to day life in Nairyah during Desert Shield

Trips to Nairyah were great as a change of pace but they still had the 98% boredom factor discussed earlier. There were four to a crew. On this trip the crew was:

Pilot-in-Command:  Mark
Co-Pilot: Your's Truly
Flight Engineer: Snyder
Crew Chief: Dustin

Mark was the Battalion Safety Officer and he was also a good leader. (Many pilots are great at flying, not so good working with crews.)  He did a good job of making sure that we were not only keeping the aircraft up for missions, was the one who made daily checks with the logistics operations in Nairyah for missions and such. He also made sure that we were keeping up with emergency procedures and other crew coordination issues. Mostly, I think he tried to keep us from killing each other.

Boredom is the seed of a lot of discontent. Sometimes people do things to annoy others just for something to do. Seems that we kept that to a minimum. There were the normal trading Meals, Ready to Eat (MREs) so that we all were eating meals that we kinda sorta liked. One thing we really hated was having to choke down an MRE you did like. We also had the luxury of space in the helicopter to store not only MREs but sufficient amounts of food from home and most of all water.

By the time we were doing the Nairyah missions, it was November and cooling off comparing to the summertime temperatures we were dealing with on arrival. We were acclimatized and the moderating temperatures helped moderate tempers too. The wind in Saudi was generally from the north most every day and with the wind came dust and sand. Everywhere. Keeping the aircraft and equipment clean was a never ending battle. Keeping ourselves clean was also a challenge.

Dustin was the crew barber. We were doing haircuts just because shorter hair is easier in the desert, but a buzz cut is not optimal for a flight helmet. You need a decent pad of hair to prevent hot spots giving you a contact headache on your scalp. With the heat, and dust and sand and relatively close quarters sleeping in an enclosed aircraft, personal hygiene was also paramount.  The access door to the center hook opened a yard square hole in the bottom of the aircraft. We figured out how to drape a poncho across the back of the aircraft and rig a five-gallon water can from the ceiling and Viola! we had a shower.

I think the thing I hated the most there were the biting black flies. At our base, these were not an issue. But they were in Nairyah. They were constantly in your face all day, thankfully they were not active at night. I had several books and I liked to read, but flies in my face made it difficult. I finally learned what horses know instinctively, to face into the wind. My favorite spot was on top of the helicopter, facing into the wind, leaning back on the aft pylon. I spent quite a few hours up there, just reading and looking out over the town.

While we were close to a small town, one of the lasting impressions of the region is the desolation. Except for the village to the south, in every other direction all you could see was the desert. Sand and rocks and dirt with the tapline road only man made presence away from the town. There were what appeared to be the remains of a dead goat on the end of the runway. It was hair and skin and bones and all that remained after bugs, scavengers and heat had done their best on it. It might have been there a month or a decade, I couldn't tell.

That was one observation I made in the desert. If something died, machinery broke, whatever, it was left where it was. I saw a Mercedes coupe, on the side of the road, stripped of what could be easily taken, miles from anywhere. This was a very barren and foreboding area. It gave us a lot to think about as to how dependent we were upon each other not only for our jobs, but our own survival. If our aircraft failed out on a mission, we could end up isolated, alone and on our own. Yeah we had radios, but I also knew their limitations and if we ended up in a bad situation, we could have easily run out of provisions before we could be located. There was a lot of time to just sit and think: "What if?"

My sons and I looked up Nairyah on Google Maps today, and the remnants airstrip is still there, north of the town and just barely visible. It appears the temporary cargo base had been made more permanent after we left, as there are now concrete cargo pads there were at one time there was a major supply operation. When I was there, it was nothing but sand.

Attending a Wedding in Korea

While I was stationed at Camp Humphreys, South Korea, I had the honor of attending a Korean Wedding. Several of the members of my unit had Korean wives and Bob Johnson’s wife, Yong-Su was from a village not too far from the Camp. Yong-Su’s sister was having her public wedding ceremony and I was invited to come along and enjoy the festivities. There were five of us in out little group. Dave McMahon and his Korean wife (I can’t remember her name) Bob, Yong-Su and myself. Dave was the videographer for the event (videotaping weddings was just becoming a trend.) and I tagged along as a guest of the Bride’s family. Dave, Bob and I were all decked out in our dress blue army uniforms.

It was about a ninety-minute drive to the village and we arrived at the town wedding hall where the event was being held. It was late morning and when we arrived, lunch was being served to guests in the great hall downstairs. I was taken aback by the size of the crowd, it seemed that everyone in the village was there. Easily 300, maybe more guests were seated at long tables with bench seats and caterers were serving them lunch. Bob and Yong-Su went to sit with the family, Dave, his wife and I found seats at a table along the far side of the building. The food was typical Korean fare (Stir-fried vegetables, fried meats, seafood and of course rice in many presentations.) and there was plenty of it along with several options of spirits. Dave was drinking Makli, which appeared to me to be dirty river water, sticks included. Dave raved about it, but I declined and drank water since we were in dress uniform and the day was already heating up. There were ceiling fans, but no air conditioning so I was sweating already.

After lunch, it was time for everyone to visit the bride in her rented pearl beaded gown. This requires a bit of explanation I think, so let me set up the situation. Yong-Su’s family was a blue-collar, working-class family. By local standards they were doing well, but far from well to do. Her sister and brother-in-law had been married in a civil ceremony and saved their coins for seven years to pay for this public spectacle. (They had three children by the time they had enough money saved.) Hence the rented hall, catering and rented dress. (The dress value was over $8,000 in 1990, hence only rented.) This was a public ceremony to show everyone they had the means to have the wedding. (This was based on conversations with Dave, Bob and Yon-Su, and may not be representative of Korean culture in general, just the small part I witnessed.)

The procession of people visiting the bride and giving her cash wedding presents in her alcove on the second floor continued until early afternoon when it was time for the wedding ceremony. The ceremony was in a large hall on the 2nd floor (half the size of the downstairs hall) and it was packed to capacity. It was standing room only in the back, which was nice as I was standing near a balcony door trying to get any breeze I could find in the heat. It was a western style Christian ceremony conducted in the Korean language so I couldn’t tell you what the officiant said or give real details on the text of the ceremony. It lasted well over an hour and finally it ended.

Once the bride and groom exited the hall, the guests filed the out and back to the hall downstairs for more food and drinks and the reception. Meanwhile, the bride and groom changed into the traditional hanbok, a traditional Korean dress specially designed for the ceremony. Then they were sequestered in a small area draped in silk where the kunbere ceremony was held. The Korean ceremony represented thousands of years of tradition and was private for the bride and groom.

Eventually, the bride and groom re-appeared and were seated at a long low family table in the front of the hall on a dias. It seated about 30 or so and Dave, Bob, Yong-Su and I were all seated with the immediate family this time. I ended up seated between two of the bride’s younger brothers. I was at a loss for much of the conversation as I spoke no Korean a and only Yong-Su and my army mates spoke English. Yong-Su was our translator and I only had a clue about what she translated, which was I’d say less than a tenth of the conversations that were going on. Mostly I was eating and some drinking while everyone else was talking around me.

After the ceremonies, there was a slow departure of everyone but the immediate family at the table. I was slow to notice this as I was seated facing away from the main seating area and because I was becoming occupied at the table. In the process of everyone trying to get to know the Americans at the table, I was asked: “How many sons do you have?” I replied that I had three sons and immediately my status at the table soared to incredible heights. Now it appeared, it was time to challenge the manliness of this incredible American stud.

I was politely informed that it was customary that if you wanted a refill of your drink, you poured a drink for the person seated adjacent to you. I was seated between Yong-su’s brothers and one of them had poured me a shot of Soju, so I in return poured him a shot. No big deal. (Soju is a rice whiskey akin to panther sweat. It takes about 4 shots to get seriously polluted.) After pouring his shot, he signaled “cheers” and we both kicked our drinks back. Then the other brother repeated this dance, and I kicked back another shot. My father taught me well, that if you are going to be drinking, to eat well too. Booze and an empty stomach are a bad combination, so I had been taking every opportunity that came along to put on the feedbag. It quickly became evident that the plan was to get me hammered.

I’ve never been a small person and I have been 200+pounds since the eighth grade. These brothers may have matched my weight together. I decided if they were going to get me hammered, I was going to return the favor. If one of them poured me a shot, I poured them both one. Shot for shot they didn’t stand a chance with me. Then they tried just putting the glass up and taking a sip while I drank the whole shot. I made a big production and animated that if I kicked back my shot, they had to kick back theirs. After I called them out, everyone was watching the show and I had peer pressure on my side as they tried to outdrink the stud. After 5 shots, I was wobbly but still eating, the brothers were leaning against me dozing lightly.

Eventually, the wedding hall staff wanted to go home. They had cleaned up, put all the leftover food in buckets and we were shooed out of the building to the parking lot. There seemed to be no real plan after that point as I remember we spent a long time in the parking lot, talking, eating out of some of the buckets and of course the Soju was still flowing. Eventually, the party dwindled down to about 10 and we drove down the road to the bride’s house. (This part may seem a bit disjointed, but I was pretty well smashed and this is what I could piece together after I sobered up.) Dave’s Korean wife was now our driver as she was pregnant and was the only sober one in our group.

At the house, the men congregated in the kitchen, the women in the family room. There was a TV on in each room and I think we were playing poker while the ladies did whatever. I can remember the brothers again trying vainly to out drink me resulting in them laying passed out on the floor. I was wobbly, but still upright for the most part and successfully managed to find the toilet. (You entered it from outside, that is all I really recall.) And finally, Dave’s wife corralled Dave, Bob, Yong-Su and I and convinced us we needed to go back to base.

I woke up the next day with a terrible hangover, but memories of another interesting adventure in Korea.

Housing inspector

During my army service I did a lot of things, and one of the more interesting ones was a housing inspector for post quarters in Fort Richardson, AK. I’d recently been promoted to Sergeant (E-5) and this was a problem for the Battalion S-1 (Personnel office) as they had no slot for me to be assigned into. The Battalion Headquarters & Headquarters Battery (HHB) had a more fluid organization and I was temporarily assigned as an aide to the Battalion Command Sergeant Major (CSM). The CSM is the most senior (Non-Commissioned Officer aka Sergeant) NCO in the battalion. He is the person that makes sure that the desires and directives of the Battalion Commander are carried out. In garrison, one of these tasks was to ensure that the assigned area of post enlisted housing was maintained to standards. While working as his aide, this was my primary duty when we were not deployed.

I think this tasking was one of the turning points in the way I reacted to situations in my life. Up until the time I entered the military, I had always been plagued with self-doubt and a lack of confidence. But as I moved up in the military, I started learning a lot about myself and how I was seen by others in the military. If you have ever had self-confidence issues, you know that every time you something, you have doubts about it. Is this the right decision? Will my boss like this? This kind of thoughts can consume your confidence and paralyze your decision-making processes.

I entered active duty with 6-years’ service credit for my time in the National Guard, and this allowed me to rise up in the active duty enlisted ranks much faster than normal and arriving at Sergeant with only 18 months of active duty time. This speedy rise also afforded me a look at how my chain-of-command looked at my performance and was part of my realization that my personal standards were higher than those I was being evaluated with, and as long as I met my own personal standards, my life in the military would go pretty well.

Anyone who has lived in post housing knows that there are post policies that are to be followed about maintaining the quarters (Mow your grass, trim the shrubs, keep the place neat and tidy). Other regulations have to do with following safety guidelines and even common-sense directives (Don’t have a charcoal grill against the building while having a cookout, etc.).  The job is similar to dealing with the management at an apartment complex of condominium. There are also some differences.

Being a very junior NCO, one of the things I had to deal with was more senior NCOs who felt that I could either be intimidated by their rank and experience or they thought that I was naive about how their rank and position applied when I was doing my job. I recall one such interaction pretty vividly.
One major safety issue was the storage of gasoline operated machinery in or near the buildings. In this case, a motorcycle that was parked and tarped on the front porch of the building. The regulation was precise and clear. Each quarters unit had an assigned parking space (only one, parking was at a premium) and if you had a motorcycle, it was to be parked crossways at the front of the space next to the sidewalk allowing you to park your car in the same space. A Staff Sergeant (SSG) lived in these quarters took exception for my giving him a notice that he was in violation of regulations and that he had 24 hours to resolve the issue.

He then proceeded to inform me that I had no authority over him as he out-ranked me and wasn’t in my chain-of-command. I listened patiently to his diatribe and smiled and told him that was fine, he didn’t have to do anything that I said. I also reminded him that I was working on behalf of my Battalion Command Sergeant Major and I was sure he’d enjoy having a discussion with the Staff Sergeant’s CSM later that day and I walked away. Mysteriously, within an hour, the motorcycle had moved to its assigned location, so much for his bluff and bluster.

Since the aide to the Command Sergeant Major was a make-work position that the Battalion created just to slot me somewhere until a TO&E (Table of Organization and Equipment) position could be found for me to be formally assigned to fill. I only worked that position for about two months before I was re-assigned to Headquarters and Headquarters Company (HHC) 5-327 Infantry as a Sergeant in the Motor Pool. Housing inspector was a fun little job, but I was glad to get back to some real work.

Dealing with the car

Having the wife’s car totaled and being laid up after a knee replacement is not a fun situation. My wife was lucky and only received minor injuries and some unwanted trauma in her life, how did we know replacing the car would be more traumatic?

Once we were informed the car was totaled, we made what we thought was a good decision and went back to our dealer to get a replacement. I mean we’d just bought a car there six months ago so this one should be a breeze, right? Well, not so much. I think a lot of this started off with some poor assumptions on my part (I’ll admit, I doubt I was thinking super clear as I was still pretty uncomfortable from the knee replacement.) and there were miscommunications with the dealership too. This should have been pretty easy. It turned out to be: Complicated.

My first failed assumption was; Hey, I’m an existing customer, you should have all my information and realize I’m not some yahoo off the street. Seems between the time we bought the last car and this attempt; they had changed over to a fully computerized system and all the paper records were in archives somewhere away from the dealership. The original purchase had gone well with the exception of my Report of Military Service (DD214). They needed a copy of the document and I don’t carry a DD214 copy on me, so I needed to email it to them.  It took about a week back and forth because, I don’t know, and when they finally got the email, they said the scan was too faint to read. We finally just hand carried a copy to them.

I had also purchased a prepaid maintenance plan with the car. Again, making the assumption that this could just be transferred to the new car seemed logical, and the Sales Manager at the moment told me it would be no problem.  My failure was to get that in writing. That came up a bit later.

My last screw up was not insisting on being assisted by an experienced salesman. Ali, the kid we ended up with was all enthusiasm, but he had no experience with how the processes worked so he was as much in the dark about the processes at the dealership as we were. Things were complicated by the fact that there was not a car on the lot that met our needs. This meant one on the incoming cars would be tagged for us and that was fine. We couldn’t buy the new car until we had the insurance payment and we expected that to take a couple of weeks. We didn’t need the car immediately as I wasn’t going back to work for a month anyway. That first day, we spent about 2 hours trying to get everything front loaded so when the car arrived, it would be simple. Again, great concept, but it didn’t execute well.

We were given expectation of 3 to 4 weeks for the car to arrive (It was in shipment from Korea) and we were fine with that. Someone at the dealership apparently was a bit more antsy about getting me a new car and they found another Sonata hybrid at a sister dealership and had it driven in to Round Rock. We got a call after 10 days saying your car is her, come and get it. Having learned a long time ago, that you often cannot get things done over the phone, we agreed to come in that afternoon to talk about it. I had made it clear early in the process that nothing was going to happen before I had the insurance money in hand, but that doesn’t stop some sales managers.

Ali, the salesman, had full confidence in us coming in to buy, but apparently the sales manager on duty was concerned as we had nothing in writing on this new car. We show up that afternoon and look at the car, and we agree that it will do. This is when Ali asks us for a post-dated check to hold the car. I’m already irritated with having been called in early when we’d agreed to 3 or 4 weeks (which would have given us time to collect on the other car) and this really put me off. I told Ali to get the sales manager. The Sales Manager comes trotting out (not the same one I’d talked to 10 days ago of course) and starts giving all kinds of excuses as to why they need some monetary tool (post-dated check, credit card etc.) to hold this car until we can buy it. I told him, he was free to sell the one they had and we could order another and then he goes on about how they’d busted tail to get this one there. At this point, I just sat back and said: “Get me the General Manager.” He seemed taken a bit aback and trotted off to the office. Apparently, somewhere in the office a bit of clarity emerged and all of a sudden holding this car for a week or two was no problem. Leaving that afternoon, Anna and I discussed going through another dealer, but we decided that we were likely over most of the bumps in the process. Alas, we were not.

While the dealership was a pain in this process, USAA (My auto insurance provider) was such a divergent difference. The day after I had the discussion with the Hyundai dealer, they messaged me that the payoff balance had been transmitted to my bank. Knowing that even an electronically transmitted draft is not immediately accessible, I patiently waited until I could confirm with my bank that the draft had cleared and I had the money available in my checking account. It also worked out that my eldest son and his wife flew in to visit and help with my spirits and this was a nice distraction. Based on our schedule for visiting and such, we setup with the dealer to pick up the car on Thursday.

We arrived at the dealer at the appointed time (10 AM) and figured we should be out in an hour or so and head to lunch. Boy, I was an optimist. This is when I learned that we were essentially starting from scratch. Everything was all computer driven and of course all our information was transferred into the system in the change-over. Being computerized, it was supposed to be faster, I would debate that. This was when I also learned that the pre-paid maintenance couldn’t be transferred, it had to be refunded. The refund had to come from corporate and so we’d have to buy it again on this car and wait for the check. This is also the point where I am again asked for my DD214, even though I have the disabled veteran plates in hand to put on the car. The finance manager was trying to be helpful but he’d been sandbagged by all the previous crap and I was losing patience.

There were some bright spots in the process, we actually got a better financing rate (it is amazing what you can do with an 857 FICO score) and the computerized paperwork process was kinda neat (touch screen LCD built into his desk) and so we got through endless paperwork electronically. Then were ran into the mailing address quagmire. It seems their system had no option for a mailing address different from the street address. This was problematic for us as our mail goes to a PO box and any postal mail sent to my street address, by post office policy, was returned to sender. We explained this in detail to the finance manager who told me they, by law, must write up everything to the physical address. We ended up with an empty assurance from the finance manager that he’ll make sure that the mailing address for everything is updated (especially with the finance company) to avoid any problems. Finally, at 1 PM, Anna drove off in her new car.

I got an email from Ali about needing another copy of the DD214, and I dutifully replied almost immediately with a very clear copy of the document that I’d printed off during the 1st encounter with the dealership. I had assumed this was a done deal until a couple of weeks later when the dealership office was again calling for the missing document. I returned to work by this time and I confirmed that I’d sent the email and it had not been rejected by the email server for the dealer. This left Ali as the glitch in the matrix. Ali had left car sales for greener pastures and of course no one had access to his dealership email. Anna said screw it and just drove over with a copy. A couple days later I got a check from the dealership and expected it to be the refund for the maintenance plan. Instead, it was the difference between what they charged and what my vehicle tag transfer fee cost at the clerks’ office. This prompted me to stop by and talk to my favorite finance manager (Cory) and it was at that moment, (while he was looking up the refund check) that I learned about a $50 fee and 13% proration of the refund. This just wasn’t going to fly. Lucky for Cory a senior sales manager was there and calmer heads prevailed, I didn’t get the money back. Instead, I got an upgrade on the service plan worth more than they were screwing me for (They still made a profit, but it was something I could take home to the wife). Another issue was the mailing address. We hadn’t received anything from the lender about the new auto loan. We’d gotten two copies of the payoff of the previous loan, but nothing on the new one (the same company was used). Anna got proactive and called them and of course they had our street address listed as our mailing address. (I wonder why the mail kept coming back?) She had updated the address information and I had an agreement to check with Cory in a week or so.

Seventeen days elapsed and I was so unsurprised that I hadn’t heard squat from Cory. I sent him an email and ask “What the F***” (WTF)? I also made a reminder with myself to stop by his office after work. Cory called me around noon, and let me know he’d gotten the email and was looking into where the check was at. I told him that was fine and I’d be there about 4:30 and we could talk. (This was about June 7th or so.) I arrived and he was busy on the phone, so I amused myself for the next 40 minutes or so getting popcorn, using the bathroom and getting a bottle of water from their fridge. Finally, he came looking for me and we scurried off to his office. The phone calls he had been making were about my refund check. It seemed that the check had been mailed May 30th, to the lender. The last information the dealer had was that there was an active lien against the car so any refunds were sent to the lender. Apparently, my presenting them with a totaled statement from my insurance company didn’t trigger them to ask if I’d paid off the loan. Cory had also called the lender and determined that they would either send us a check or apply the check from the dealer to the outstanding balance, and that would be our choice. He also learned that we had already updated the mailing address. I did manage to leave with the paperwork validating the service plan was updated and at this point I declared the new car purchase process complete. The refund check from the lender did arrive four days later.