To start off, someone had the brilliant idea that we should use three large circus tents to house everyone at Davis Field so that we didn’t have to deploy then move our army tents with us once we left Davis Field for Fort Chaffee. This was all well and good except for the failure to consult Mother Nature and her abhorrence to bad planning and abject stupidity. The temps were moderate for March, mid-thirties or so and they had the big tents with light sets and torpedo heaters to keep them warm. Nice, quiet torpedo heaters, you know, the ones that made the helicopters outside seem quiet?
Then Mother Nature decided it was time for a snowstorm and deposited say 18 to 24 inches of snow at about 28 degrees over the next day and a half. In ordinary military tents, this would not have been an issue and we’d thought little about it, but circus tents, with a large surface area and minimal interior supports, a foot or so of very wet snow makes for a very heavy roofline. Some of us became pro-active and started using camouflage poles and spreaders to encourage snow to slide off the tent we were in at the time. We were preparing for a night mission, so our group noticed the sagging of the tent during the night as the snow piled on and we actively used those poles to slide the snow off and kept going around the tent all night addressing heavy points in the accumulation. One of the other two tents was not so lucky and had a catastrophic tent failure causing about 1/3 of the tent to collapse and the tent had to be abandoned. So now we are having to help evacuate the tent into the other two tents making what had been fairly open quarters to somewhat cramped and a very chaotic. So by the time morning came, we were all in such a great setting to try and get some sleep with the day crews mixed with the night ones.
The Mother Nature decided to be nice to us, and the temperatures rose with the same sudden speed that the snow had come and by the afternoon temperatures were now nearing seventy. What happened to all the snow? Why it melted of course, except that there was a 3-foot wall of Ice and snow at the base of the tents and that kept the melting snow from running off and we were now living in a three to four-inch-deep lake inside the tents. We were lucky enough to be sleeping on cots and we had our equipment piled up on them while we “acquired” empty wood pallets to build a floor inside the tents until the water receded. Meanwhile, the mission planning continued and I accompanied our company commander to (Major Lucas) to Battalion for our air mission briefing. It was there that I learned that our 6 PM takeoff time had been pushed back 12 hours to 6 AM. I was not pleased. Preparations for flying all night missions (Reverse cycle, or reverse sleep cycle) called for 72 hours of prep time to change you sleep cycle from night to day and we were now being told to go back to bed (we’d just gotten up at 3 PM) and prepare for a 6 AM takeoff. I was walking back to the company area with the Major and at least one other Warrant Officer and I suppose I was being a tad animated “discussing” aka yelling at MAJ Lucas about his just accepting the mission change with no push back. At this point, for the first and only time in my military career, I had a superior officer call me to attention (Locked my heels) and proceeded to tell me what I would do and that he would hear no further dissent from me. (Great job Don!)
So now that my commander was sore at me, I had to go tell my crew about the debacle that lay ahead and to try and get some sleep in the helicopter for what was sure to be a long day ahead. By about 7:30 PM we bedded down to try and get some rest only to have the unit we were supporting show up at 9 PM to load their cargo in the helicopter. We were so overjoyed! Two hours later we again try and get some sleep because 4 AM is going to show up soon and we were going to be dragging all day long.
Dawn arrives and with it our mission. We are making multiple turns between Davis Field and the training area at Fort Chaffee. The helicopters are equipped with the Multiple Integrated Laser Engagement System (MILES) to indicate if we receive any incoming fire from the Opposing Force (OPFOR) and we have an Observer/Controller (OC) on board who acts as a referee for the war game to ensure we play by the rules. Our first load was internal (hence our loading it the night prior) then after dropping it at the landing zone we returned to Davis Field for hot refuel. (Hot refuel is where you taxi into the refueling point and refuel the aircraft with the engines in ground idle.) After refuel, we then picked up our next load and made turn number two.
Turns number two and number three between Davis Field and Fort Chaffee were unremarkable aside from the fact that we never left the cockpit. (The pilot seats are okay in a Chinook but after about four hours, you are ready to get out of it and at the four hour point we were just finishing our second hot refuel for turn number three.) After exiting hot refuel for the third and last time, we start our final turn back to the post. After we set down this load, we head for the field site because we will have hit our maximum flight time for one day (8 hours). Like the previous turns, it had been uneventful until we are on short final approach to the landing zone when we get a radio call from a ground based Observer/Controller telling us we’d been shot down. Our MILES equipment did not indicate a hit (I’ll be honest, the stuff was crap at best) and our on-board OC was arguing over the radio with the ground OC about we were not recording any hits and he was over-riding the ‘Kill”. We completed our approach and unloaded while the OC’s argued and then the ground OC ending the argument by calling us dead due to a mortar strike. After a very heated discussion between the OC’s (during which my co-pilot and I both took the opportunity to take a much-needed piss) we were told to fly the aircraft to the holding area and report to the Prisoner Exchange Holding Area (PEHA) aka the “Dead Tent”.
The dead tent was seventy-two hours of mild harassment punctuated by large amounts of boredom. You are “Dead” as far as the exercise goes, but you are treated more like a prisoner. The officers and enlisted men were separated and we were housed in an old, World War II motor pool building. We had cots to sleep on but you couldn’t sit on them after breakfast until after dinner. Meals were combat rations (Meal, Ready to Eat or MRE) and cold and we only had water to drink (They even took the coffee from the MREs.). You couldn’t sleep during the say, or sit so you spent the time standing and walking around and if you were lucky you could talk to someone about something.
I must have also been separated from my co-pilot as I was not familiar with anyone in the dead tent. I did make the acquaintance with a Chief Warrant Officer 3 (CW3) who I engaged in several conversations about career planning and education. We discussed at length the need for any warrant officer to have a Bachelor’s degree and I had explained my unique path to getting my Associate’s degree with only four resident college classes. I matriculated my other credits through the College Level Equivalency Program (CLEP) and credit for resident military schooling. I wish I could remember his name, because it was mostly through his impassioned discussion and his experience with the Degree Completion Program that I was inspired to apply for the program myself. I know I talked with other people and spent most my time in the PEHA just slowly walking around (Sitting and leaning were verboten.) and eventually, this interminable seventy-two hours ended and we were released back to our unit.
Due to weather forecasts of more unsuitable weather and extremely lousy field site conditions, instead of taking our aircraft to the field site, we returned to Davis Field where the unit consolidated before returning to Fort Campbell the next day. Once I’d gotten home and showered and reunited with my family, I sought out the Education Center early the next week (Returning from a field exercise always involves some pilot down time just because most of the aircraft are undergoing some type of maintenance and flight missions are minimal.) and I got some baseline information on the current Degree Completion Program (DCP) requirements and I consulted with Austin Peay State University (APSU who had a night school program on post at Fort Campbell) and had my transcript evaluated. My transcript and my additional Military schooling since my last stint in college would get me 53 of the required 128 credits to get a Bachelor’s of Science Degree in Public Management. What was the catch? Degree Completion was a maximum of eighteen months and I needed Seventy-five (75) credits to get the degree.
Austin Peay Fort Campbell campus uses an eight-week accelerated semester system where classes meet twice a week for two and a half hours a class. This allowed me six semesters in eighteen months (75 divided by 6 equaling 12.5) to get my degree. The required some serious discussions with the wife and sons as while I would be getting paid my normal salary and benefits, I was also betting my career that I could pass every class and had to pay for those classes as I had no GI Bill benefit for tuition costs. We decided that it was a no brainer of a choice and all I had to do now was get my application in and hope for the best. This was by no means a sure thing as I had other members of my unit doing the same thing. CW2 Jim Schroder applied for a year of DCP, CW2 Rosten Henderson applied for nine months (He was a semester short of an engineering degree) and I was applying for the full Eighteen months and had by far the weakest educational background with only four actual college classes under my belt and only two of those instructor lead.
Anytime the assignments branch would grace you with a favorable assignment, it was like a Fairy Godmother had granted you wish. In our cases, it was a dream come true for all three of us. I was very surprised that all three of our applications were both endorsed by our chain of command and that our assignments branch approved the assignments, but none of us were going to complain. In May of 1993 I received my orders and I was to report for duty at Austin Peay State University the first week of September 1993 and I had to graduate by the end of the spring semester May of 1995. During this time, I could remain in my quarters at Fort Campbell and still received full pay and allowances (Including Flight Pay?? I didn’t object!). The only caveat was that if I failed to earn my degree I could pretty much expect the end of my military career. No big deal.
I hedged by bet by enrolling in two summer classes (July-August term) at Austin Peay before I left my unit reducing the classes I needed in Degree Completion by six hours to a paltry sixty-nine hours. I almost immediately regretting one of my decisions as the two classes I took were Technical Writing and Fundamental Concepts of Math I. I was woefully unprepared for both classes. The Technical Writing class should have listed English Composition and Rhetoric I & II as required courses, but it didn’t and I had to play a bit of catch up getting my writing style up to par. Most of that was mitigated by my study partner who I worked with all through the course and we found we had a good symbiosis as a team with my detailing the technical aspects and he did the grammar and the formatting. That class turned out to be an easy A. Fundamental Concepts of Math I, this was another story entirely.
Doctor Cochner was our instructor for this summer class and it turned out he was the Chairman of the Mathematics Department. We quickly learned that he was the Chair for a reason as he was a brilliant mathematician. Our class started with Fifty-four (54) students and the APSU policy said you could drop a class without an incomplete after 2 sessions. After two sessions, the class was down to twenty-seven and I think we had twenty-four take the final exam. While Dr. Cochner was quite personable, he blazed through the coursework at a blistering speed because he could do all the computations in his head. There were three sixteen-foot-long chalkboards in the classroom and he would fill these up with classwork then go back to the beginning and start to erase so he could do more work only to hear a chorus of: “Wait, we haven’t got that in our notes yet!” It was a fun time. I’d chosen Fundamental Concepts because I had to do it or Algebra and I was terrified of Algebra due to my high school experiences with it. Little did I know I’d jumped from the frying pan into the flames of hell itself.
I can honestly say that I worked harder at that one class than I did in any other class in an academic setting before it. I thought Truth Tables and Mathematical Logic would be my undoing but I finally mastered it. In this class, we had a core group of seven “Non-Traditional” students, most of us degree completers that quickly earned the title of the “Brain Trust” by the rest of the class. I believe this was mostly because we felt the pressure of having to not only pass the class, but the need to get an A in the class. I constantly felt as if my head was going to explode and I truly worked hard and getting my brain in the “Math Mode”. The end of my first semester, I was rewarded with two hard earned A’s and I figured out that this Degree Completion thing was going to be my toughest challenge since flight school.
As September approached, I out-processed from my unit and was nominally assigned to DCP at APSU and I reported to a Captain who was the senior student on campus in DCP. I wasted no time in making my second blunder in enrollment by managing to enroll in English Literature I before I took English Composition and Rhetoric I. I got a D on my first writing assignment and my professor took the time to talk with me about my lack of college writing style. Once she learned of my goof, she suggested I get the English Comp I Modern Language Association (MLA) writing guide and learn it quick. She also gave me until the next class (five days Thursday to Tuesday) to rewrite my original paper using the MLA guide. I managed to bring a D up to a C+ and I was off and running again. I never go lower than a B on any subsequent assignment and I squeaked out an A at the end with a good score on both my Mid-Term and Final.
I managed to finish the balance of my required courses (English Comp I & II, Literature II & Fundamental Concepts of Math II) without any crisis. I was even encouraged by all my English Department professors to change my major to English. (I politely declined but now I do find humor that I write for a living now.) Now I started taking classes in major and most of these classes were with our Department head and class advisor, Doctor Muhammad Waheed-Uz-Zaman, aka: Dr. Z.
I just checked and Doctor Zaman is still the Chairman of the Public Management and Criminal Justice Department at APSU. Dr. Zaman hails from Bangladesh and apparently, it is (at least in his opinion) the Valhalla of Public Management. He is a very gregarious man and was always willing to talk to a student although he could be a challenge to locate during “office hours”.
At the time, (25 more years in Tennessee may have changed things, I don’t know.) Dr. Zaman spoke with a fairly strong accent. While being extremely fluent in English, he could be difficult to understand especially if he was excited and he was always excited talking about public management. The running joke among Public Management (PM) majors like myself was that we’d sit in the back of the classroom because by the time his voice traveled to the back of the room it was almost in English. He did have another bad habit that was the main reason why we generally sat in the back of the room, he tended to spray you with spittle when he lectured.
I think I ended up taking five classes with Dr. Zaman and by the mid-term of the second class I had zeroed in on the three words that the good doctor lives by; “Economy, Efficiency and Effectiveness.” Doctor Zaman loved essay questions on his Mid-Terms and Finals and they were always a two or three part one or two paragraph questions. He even went as far as to give you a selection of questions to answer. (I.E. Answer two of these five essay questions with 3 to 5 paragraph answers.) Anyone who had been in at least one of his classes knew that if your answer answer that addressed the question with viewpoints that discussed the Economy, Efficiency and Effectiveness of X in regards to the subject you would get a good grade.
The one thing that intrigued me more than anything was Dr. Zaman’s filing system. You had to go to his office for course selection advise and I also had to consult him and get his approval on my internship for my last 12 credits. I felt nervous every time I entered his office because his filing system was to put papers in piles, then put up shelves and put the piles on the shelves. Every wall of his office had floor to ceiling shelves, and they were all loaded with papers. His desk, with the exception of the small space where he worked, was covered in stacks of papers. What was even more impressive was that he seemed to know what was in each stack. Impressive, but a bit scary as I thought that the walls might collapse due to the weight.
By the time I had gotten in to the classes for my major, I’d pretty much figured out what I had to do and how to go about it and the only major thing I had to figure out was what I was going to do for my internship and where I could do it. Dr. Zaman was pretty liberal in what you could choose and he wanted you to choose an area you were familiar with since this was equivalent to a four-class semester and 12 credits toward your degree. I finally decided that I would do my internship at the Fort Campbell Airfield Safety office and work under CW3 Bob Hardy, the airfield safety officer. I researched the Army and Airforce regulatory requirements for firefighting personnel and equipment and completed my internship with a proposal that documented the existing personnel and equipment, the requirements of all the stakeholders and a recommendation of changes that would be required for the airfield to be compliant for all the regulatory requirements. I’m sure that somewhere in that herculean document I documented the Economy, Effectiveness and Efficiency if the firefighting capability as I got an A on the paper and managed to qualify for my Degree.
My one lingering regret was that I got my diploma in the mail as the Army saw to it that I was in Germany when my graduation ceremony was held in May 1995. My family had so wanted to see me walk across that stage and get my diploma. Of course, the greatest irony of all was that I had been sent to Degree Completion to make me a well-rounded officer and to make me more competitive for promotion. Bob Hardy and I had even flown to Arlington, Virginia to meet with our Branch Manager to review our promotion packets as Bob was up for CW4 and I was getting my first look at CW3. As it turned out, all my efforts were for naught as four months into my tour in Germany I received notification of non-selection for promotion and I had to figure out what in the hell I was going to do next?
