How I went from being a Pilot to a Computer Technician

I guess one of the most asked questions I receive is: “If you were a pilot in the Army, how did you end up a computer technician?” Well, it is kinda a roundabout story in itself so I suppose I should put it on paper. In one of my previous stories I mentioned how I first became interested in computers while on medical hold in flight school (1987). Once I graduated, I was assigned to Korea (1989) and I had little access to a computer there so I busied myself with other interests (like making extra money) during my Korea tour.

From Korea I was assigned to Fort Campbell, KY (1990) and very shortly afterward we deployed to Saudi Arabia and King Fahd International Airport for Operation Desert Shield/Desert Storm. As with many things in the Army, Desert Shield was a hurry up and wait situation.  The US Army scrambled to get assets into Saudi Arabia and then we waited, and waited, and waited for our engagement with the enemy. One of the directives aviation units had was the conservation of “blade time” (Helicopters have limits on how long they can be flown before major maintenance is performed. In a normal situation, you have all the aircraft in a unit setup so that there is a planned timing of these services spaced out over the year so that only one or two will be out of service for maintenance at one time. We intentionally flew aircraft with the most available time the absolute minimum required and flew ones with little time left into their maintenance window so we could quickly finish the servicing and add that additional 200 hours to the amount of time we were “banking”.) This lead to a lot of downtime for the pilots as we were only flying the minimum needed to maintain our currency.

When you are not flying, you find other things to do and one of them was a friendly Friday night poker game. We didn’t have beer or bacon, but we had cards and we a table of sorts, a shelter half makes a nice table cover and we have plenty of players. During one of these games, I met the assistant S4 (Battalion Supply Officer) CW2 Bill Flynn. Aside from his regular job, scrounging for supplies, Bill was also the Battalion Automation Officer. Bill liked to play cards, and he liked to talk and he especially liked to talk about computers. There not being a large group of computer savvy types in the unit, I was often one to share computer conversations with Bill. I didn’t know a lot, but I wanted to learn and Bill had no problem talking about computers or himself, so we talked quite a bit when we could. Bill seemed to think I was pretty good for a novice and I guess I made an impression upon him about my interest in computing.

I didn’t think much more about our conversations when Desert Shield transitioned to Desert Storm and we got down to business with kicking Iraqi ass. Soon, the war was over, we recovered back to King Fahd and then back to the states April 6, 1991 and immediately went on a 30-day block leave. When we returned from block leave, I helped recover our aircraft from Jacksonville, FL and things slowly started to return to normal. As is usually the case, normality didn’t last very long. Sometime in May, 1991 I received a call at the flight line to come to see the Battalion Commander. This was unexpected to say the least, I tried my best to stay off the radar of everyone and just be a good soldier. What I learned was that CW2 Flynn had been assigned as the Brigade Automation Officer and he had nominated me as his replacement at the Battalion level. I met Bill at Battalion and he explained how I have been nominated and he assured me that anything I didn’t know, I could call him and he would walk me through the issue. At the time, I didn’t even own a computer, but I said I’d give it a try.

There were about 20 or so computers in the Battalion at the time, Mostly Zenith 286 desktops with 12 in monochrome green cathode ray tube (CRT) displays and Okidata dot matrix tractor feed printers. We also had some Xenith 8086 portables. We had one modern computer (a 386) and it was the only system running Windows 3.1, the rest were DOS 3.3. The next day I got three calls to fix computers, and with a few quick calls to Bill I managed to get all three systems working again. Thus, my legacy began.

Bill left the Army in 1992 and started a computer shop (Magic Brain Computers) and that next spring I was able to buy a 386sx from Bill with my tax return and get my first computer. I was becoming good at fixing systems and I was upgrading my personal system with parts left over from upgrading systems for other people. By October 1993 I had a 486DX/66 and I was accepted into the Degree Completion program to spend 18 months getting my Bachelor’s Degree. While on degree completion, I had a lot of downtime when classes were out and Bill’s computer business was thriving so well he needed help. I wanted to learn more and extra cash was always nice so I talked Bill into putting me to work as his bench tech. I did part time work for Bill the rest of my time in Degree completion and ended up with a pretty nice 486DX4/100 system by the time I was done with my degree.

Another thing I did with my spare time was to become a Volunteer Income Tax assistant. The JAG office at Fort Campbell was sponsoring a Tax Assistance office and all you have to do was attend a free IRS seminar on taxes to work there. I figured it was a good way to learn about doing taxes and I could electronically file my taxes for free as a bonus. I can still remember the in briefing for the Tax Office by the JAG Captain running the program. He made the fatal mistake of saying how the software they were using was idiot proof and I took him to the side later and told him that he greatly underestimated the creativity of idiots. Sure enough, on the first day 7 of the 8 computers they were using (Zenith 286s) went down for one reason or another and I was able to resurrect all but 1 that day, then other took some parts a day or two later and they were all back on line. I was getting better at this computer tech stuff.

While getting ready for my next assignment, I sent a letter to my sponsor (CW3 Roy Murdock) in Germany at my next assignment (A/5/159 AVN, Big Windy) and I included my email address on the letterhead (Email was still kinda new and trendy) and on his reply, he let me know that since I was computer savvy enough to have email I would be the automation officer when I arrived (Yay! I was thrilled, NOT!).

In my 18-month hiatus during degree completion, computing had exploded in the army and especially in army aviation. My new unit had 20+ computers at company level and most every major function was computerized in one manner or another. I was now managing army email accounts and working on Windows based systems along with a few Xenith 286 DOS relics that were still some use. I also continued working as an IRS Tax assistant in Germany and I was actually much busier with taxes as there were a lot more issues to work through being assigned overseas and soldiers were much less likely to file their own taxes there.

Next came my back injury and grounding. I was pretty much useless to my unit except as automation officer and that didn’t keep me that busy as I’d been pretty proactive in keeping the systems up to date and maintained. Our Battalion S2 was the automation officer and he was swamped with work so I asked my commander if I could go work a casual assignment with the battalion while waiting for my medical retirement to go though. He agreed and soon I was a busy beaver getting the rest of the battalion’s computers in shape. I was also working as Battalion Tax assistant (I’d done it the year before at Leighton Barracks) and I apparently impressed the Battalion Executive Officer (XO) when I did his taxes and the next thing I know, I’m working as the Assistant Personnel Officer reviewing Officer Evaluation Reports (OERs) for the XO. I worked all these positions until my release in August of 1995 when we returned to the states and Clarksville, TN.

After we found a place to live in Clarksville, it was time to return to the civilian workforce. The wife sent me out in search for work the first Monday after we moved into our rental. I went out to the Miracle Mile of HWY 41A in the north end of Clarksville and started checking out the computer shops for work. I think it was the fourth place I stopped in with my resume that I seemed to get a bite. The manager of the store said they needed people by the owner was at the main store in Hopkinsville, KY (15 miles north) and he called the owner up. I was schedule for an interview at 1 PM, and by 2 PM I was hired, starting in the Hopkinsville Store the next morning. One interesting note, my new employer was blind.

This was my first civilian employment since I’d entered active duty in 1984 and it was pretty daunting to me. My starting pay was $6.00 / hour base pay but I also got a 50% commission on non-warranty computer repairs. That and my temporary disability retirement list (TDRL) pay was enough for us to do fairly well. The TDRL pay and more especially the medical benefits made this job workable and I needed a place to start in my new career in computer repair. During the next two months, we continued through some very rapid changes including the purchase of our first home October 30, 1997. During our early marriage before the Army and while on active duty, buying a house had never been a practical idea. Before the military, I just didn’t have the money and spent several years renting a house from my grandmother at a below market rate in lieu of me helping her out.

Things were looking pretty decent in my new life. Our kids were excelling in school, we were homeowners and I was doing well in my new career having gotten my CompTIA A+ certification (The first certified tech at the store) brought with it a $2.00 / hour raise. I had also become the manager of the shops second store in Oak Grove, KY across the gate from Fort Campbell through a bizarre series of events where I’d been sent to the other store to train under the manager there only to have him abruptly quit a week later leaving me holding the bag so to speak. I worked as the defacto store manager for several weeks before the owner finally decided I was indeed the manager and with my new title also came another $1.00 per hour raise. Then I got my notice from the Army that they had re-evaluated my disability and determined that I qualified for a reduction in my disability rating from 30% to 20% and I would be receiving a disability discharge and lose my TDRL retirement and benefits. While the discharge did come with severance pay losing our medical benefits was quite a blow. I did travel to Fort Sam Houston and I appealed to decision of the Medical Review board, but to no avail. I turned to the Veteran’s Administration (VA) for a disability evaluation and I was lucky to get an initial 30% rating (Later raised to 70%) and this resolved some of our issues, mostly income, and at least medical coverage for myself.

Working in a small computer shop with less than 20 employees was big change form over a decade in the Army. In many ways, it was nice, almost like family, but on the other side of the coin, family can also be quite a burden. I began to realize this when my pay began to be an issue with the owner’s wife, the majority stockholder and bookkeeper. It seemed that every time I started to make about $500 a week, the way my pay was computed changed. At first, it was the elimination of commission and working as an hourly employee only. This turned out to be a minor thing as I was working 50+ hours a week and since most of it was commission work, I never exceed a 40-hour week hourly and thus no overtime. Moving to a straight hourly pay, I started getting 10 plus hours overtime every week and that made up for most of my commission loss. A few months later, after more personnel changes and remodeling of the main store, I was put on a no overtime restriction. This too wasn’t so bad as I was making $11.50 an hour now and still getting a decent paycheck. That along with my VA pay was workable.

I was able to do some interesting things while managing the second store, one was hire a reliable assistant manager whom I’d worked with in the military. Leo had been a technical inspector in one of my units and he had retired from the army and was like me looking for a place he could hone his computer skills. It didn’t take long for us to work out a schedule and I ran the days and he ran the evenings. The I ended up with an interesting offer the spring of 1999. A tech temp labor company whom I’d interviewed with a couple times was looking for some techs for a six-week stint with a major corporation, fifteen dollars an hour forty hours a week. I worked out with Leo to cover my days and I closed the store and made some nice extra cash while I was at it. The temp job went so well, I was offered another two weeks in Dallas doing the same work. So, I took a long overdue vacation and was given a nice hotel and rental car in Dallas for two weeks along with two of the other techs who had done the Nashville portion with me. Leo like me had been registered with the tech temp company and not long after my trip he was offered a job in Nashville and he went on to his IT career. Not much later, a decision was made to close the Oak Grove store and I moved back to the main store. Then came the final straw that made me look for a new employer.

We had two other techs at the company (Jeremy and Kevin) that were salary, single and both pretty good guys. I was told that my hours were being cut to 32 a week by my boss. These guys, both knowing I had a wife and three kids, went to the boss and told him, hay put us back hourly and give Don his 40 hours. The boss took their suggestions put them on the clock again, then hired two, part time techs instead. At this point I could see that I needed to find another source of work. Fate seemed to favor me at this point as I saw on the news where a major corporation was hiring and how to apply via their website. I was almost an hour late for work that day as I feverishly worked to write a resume and file may application on-line. To my great surprise, I got an interview and then to my great dismay I noted that so had about 500 other techs in the Nashville area. Managers from the main office of this company had come in to town for a weekend frenzy of interviews 7 AM to 7 PM Friday Saturday and Sunday. The pre-interview testing had occurred a couple weeks prior and now I was facing the dreaded interview. While working with the Tech Temp company, I’d interviewed for a few positions, and I kept blowing the interviews. Either too bold, or not enough experience one thing after another. It seemed like a moving target that I couldn’t zero in upon. I’m finally in the room with the interviewer and we start going through the process. The first four questions are pretty easy to handle. Talking about how I would deal with this situation or that and I had examples from my current job where I could relate what I would/had done. The final question caught me a bit off guard; “Why do you like to work with the public?” I replied; “I don’t.” and the interviewer nearly fell out of his chair. I then alluded that while I didn’t enjoy interacting with the public, I was willing to do it for the job and that I was pretty good at doing it. I even was bold enough to ask after the interview was over, if I had done well, as I hadn’t been to lucky with interviews lately. He said I did fine.

Just after the fourth of July, I received a call with a job offer starting August second. Full pay and benefits from day one, medical, 401k retirement, life insurance and even stock options. That week at work was fun. We’d had Monday off for the 4th of July holiday and Tuesday I gave three weeks’ notice that I was leaving. Wednesday, the only person with more seniority gave two weeks’ notice and Thursday, the guy hired the same day I started Jeremy, gave a weeks’ notice. The top three techs all were leaving before August first, it was an awesome scene. I even had the pleasure of letting the majority owner know that while her husband didn’t think I could get any better pay somewhere else, I was getting a two dollar an hour raise, four weeks training and full benefits.

Life with a large corporation hasn’t been all bells and whistles, but it has done me well for over seventeen years now. We managed to graduate three sons from the same high school (I told them that after I left the military, they’d be able to stay at the same school through graduation.) That was a promise we kept. They also all graduated from the University of Tennessee and are all gainfully employed. Recently, I relocated to Texas for job opportunities in the corporation and those are looking pretty positive too. Thus, ends the tale of how I became a tech.

Blackhawk recovery. My Last mission at Fort Campbell

My last mission while assigned to A Company, 7th Battalion, 101st Aviation was a recovery mission of a UH-60 Blackhawk Medevac helicopter that had struck power transmission lines at the north edge of the Fort Knox military reservation along the Salt River. The UH-60 had been flying a Night Vision Goggle (NVG) training mission with they struck 2 power lines. One was cut by the wire strike protection device above the windscreen and a second wire was cut by one of the main rotor blades. After the wire contact, the pilot on the controls successfully landed the aircraft under a second set of power lines in a field just off the Ft. Knox reservation.

The landing site was on the north side of the Salt river at the end of Katherine Station Road. I believe the pilot of the UH-60 received a broken wing award for safely landing that aircraft when I’m sure just about every warning light in the cockpit was illuminated. Even with filters, that many warning lights illuminating in the cockpit had to affect his goggle performance. Our job on the mission was to recover the aircraft back to Godman Army Airfield on Fort Knox.

The incident had occurred more than 24 hours prior to our mission assignment as the Army Safety Center accident investigation team had cleared the site before we arrived, this allowed us to remove the aircraft from the crash site. Our aviation support maintenance unit 8th Battalion 101 Aviation, had personnel on site to rig the UH-60 for recovery with a sling. All I had to do was fly to the site and coordinate with them to recover the aircraft.

It was August 1993, (I left the unit shortly afterward to my next assignment as a student at Austin Peay State University) and I was pretty sure that this would be my last mission as Predator 20 (Our commander had changed our call-sign to this aggressive name because he felt the old one was Wimpy, go figure). This mission was both exciting for me and also a bit sad.

We arrived and landed at the site without incident. It was a clear and calm day, with temperatures in the 70’s and almost no wind. Just about as good as you could hope for on this kind of mission. After we shutdown I located the maintenance team leader and we discussed how I wanted to execute the recovery. The big question was: "Leave the main rotor blades on the Blackhawk or take them off?" If we moved the aircraft with blades on we were limited to 40 knots airspeed. Blades  off we could fly 90 knots. Since Godman Army Airfield on Ft, Knox was only 10 miles or so away, I opted for blades on to save time.

Then came the silly question: “Do you want to pick it up where it is at?” Since it was resting underneath a set of high voltage transmission power lines, I said: "No". I suggested they move it about 100 yards away from the power lines where I could safely hook up to it. They dutifully hooked up a tow bar and towed it to the spot I wanted to use as a pickup zone (PZ).

While waiting for the UH-60 to be moved, they used a Heavy Expanded Mobility Tactical Truck (HEMTT) tanker to refuel my Chinook (It was on site to defuel the Blackhawk anyway) and my crew and I ate our lunch while the Blackhawk was prepared as an external load. The Blackhawk was rigged with a recovery sling. The sling looped around the 4 main rotor blade roots and a fifth leg looped around the tail section forward of the tail rotor. The main section of the sling was roughly 100 foot and all together the rigging was about 130 feet long.

Once rigged and inspected by my Flight Engineer, the sling was laid out ninety degrees from the Blackhawk to the south of the aircraft and we approached for pickup from the east. The sling was long enough that we could land over the clevis and the Flight Engineer then merely reached down through the hook access in the floor, grabbed the clevis and put it on the center hook. No external hookup man at a hover was required.

We completed the before takeoff checks and slowly brought the Chinook to a hover, then continued up to about 100 feet. I was explaining to my co-pilot that with a heavy load and a long sling, you really didn’t have to worry much about being perfectly centered over the load. As tension was applied to the sling, the aircraft was automatically centered over the load. We chose the westward facing approach for all the correct reasons; the wind was from the west (Less than 5 mph) there was a nice tree line that would give us a nice hover reference for an out of ground effect hover and we wanted to go that way anyway, so less turns were involved.

Picking up a heavy load with a long sling had other considerations that you normally do not deal with, the main one was that you were already in an out of ground effect (OOGE) hover. An out of ground effect hover was when you were at a hover that was higher than half the diameter of your rotor system, (30 feet in a Chinook). When you hovered in ground effect, you had the benefit of the ground giving you extra lift by additional resistance to the downward air flow.

You had to be especially careful when hovering OOGE because you could get in a situation called “Settling with Power” or more correctly called a “Vortex Ring State”. When you hovered OOGE, your rotor down flow could re-circulate causing a down draft and if the downward air speed exceeds 300 feet per minute. You could quickly get into a situation where this downdraft could exceed your power available to counteract it and cause a crash. Because of this, you didn’t loiter in an OOGE hover.

We quickly did a before takeoff check and slowly I nosed the helicopter over and we accelerated to about 40 knots. We climbed to where the load was about 500 feet above the nearest obstacle (The forest) and turned south just before West Point, KY. We flew parallel but not over Highway 31W southward toward Fort Knox and I radioed the tower at Godman Army Airfield (GAAF) that we were on final visual approach with an external load and wanted to go to the maintenance ramp to set down the load.

We were cleared for landing runway 180 and then cleared to the maintenance ramp adjacent to the hangar to set down the crippled Blackhawk. We spent about a minute hovering over the pad while the Blackhawk slowly spun in a circle, my Flight Engineer wanted to set it down properly oriented on the pad facing south and I indulged him. Once down, we hovered to the right and released the clevis over the grass and we were cleared for immediate takeoff to the southeast. There was a no-fly area around the gold vault south of the airfield that we avoided then we made our return flight to Fort Campbell, mission complete.

Life in Korea continued aka:Tales of a geographical bachelor with limited funds.

One of the decisions my wife and I made when I was assigned to an unaccompanied tour to Korea was how we were going to manage our money. Since she was at home with the kids and the majority of our expenses, I got an allowance of $300 a month while the family deserved the rest. This was a mutually devised plan between my wife and I and it worked well for us. She was running a household with three children and I was a geographical bachelor. My housing was free and all I really needed was food and incidentals. If I wanted more, all I had to do was be a bit creative.

There were lots of ways to make easy cash and one of them was doing tasks other people disliked to do. In aviation, you use a lot of maps of the training area and to use these in a cockpit, you have to manage them. The best map management method I ever found was called the Australian Fold. You took the maps, a razor, a ruler, some rubber cement and a lot of patience trimming, folding and glueing maps together in sequential order. In Korea, our operations area covered 53 - 1:50,000 scale maps. These could be made into an Australian fold map book in about 3 hours (if you did it a lot) and I did it a lot, $50 a pop. I think 13 people gave up $50 for maps. To me it was easy money, time was something I had a lot of and an evening after chow in the pilot lounge putting a map book was a no brainer.

My other main source of side income in Korea was covering Staff Duty Officer. You came up for Battalion Staff Duty Officer (SDO) on the duty roster about once every 45 days. Most of the time when tasked with weekday SDO, people didn’t mind the duty much because they got the next day off. Friday and Saturday nights were different. People want to go out and be social, and depending on the night, and the tasked person's desire to do something else, I could get $50 sometimes $100 to cover a weekend SDO.

The Battalion SDO was someone to call for anything related to the battalion after normal duty hours. Rarely, did anything of any substance occur while you were on Staff Duty and for me nothing of any consequence ever happened. The biggest thing I had to deal with was a alarm going off at a secure building. I had the Staff Duty Non-Commissioned Officer (SDNCO, a sergeant) call the point of contact for that building and that person went out and reset the alarm, yawn. SDO duty was just long unending nights of perpetual boredom, but it was profitable boredom.

About Twice a year, you got the honor of Post Staff Duty Officer for Camp Humphreys. For the most part, it was the same as Battalion Staff Duty with one major exception, you had to count the prisoners. Camp Humphreys was the location of the I Corps stockade. At the beginning of your shift, you had to go to the Stockade and verify the prisoner count. Entering the stockade alone was a challenge, as you had to present your ID (which they kept while you were inside) and searched you for contraband before you could enter the building. Hearing that door close and lock behind you was a sobering sound.

The task itself was pretty simple, the Military Police (MP) Officer on duty provided you with the head count sheet, then you walked through and counted while he escorted you. The night I was there, there were six females, all in single cells, and 68 males mostly in dormitories. The prisoners all knew the drill and they all knew the needed to cooperate and get on with their routine. The whole process took less than thirty minutes, although it seemed a lot longer. Once we were finished, I was escorted back to the reception area and I was given back my ID and I left. I never wanted to return there unless I had post staff duty again.

Between money my wife sent me from home and my cash enterprises, I had enough money in Korea to meet my needs and still enjoyed myself as well as I could. One of the things I did to keep myself busy was join a bowling league. There was a small bowling alley on post, seems like it was 8 lanes but it could have been 4, I’m no longer sure. It was big enough and we bowled on Tuesday nights or something (American Bowling Congress and all) and it was fun, at least until I hurt my back.

All of my back-injury incidents have emerged from the most trivial of incidents. In this case, I leaned over a row of seats to high five a teammate coming out of the pit after a strike. It didn’t even seem to be anything major at the time, just a tiny “tweak” in the small of my back. I finished bowling, then as I started the quarter mile or so walk back to the Bachelor Officer Quarters (BOQ). It was at that point that I started to have some severe problems. I’d only gone a couple of hundred yards before I stopped and squat to relieve the pain. This went on every couple hundred feet until I made it back to my room. That night was just a blur of pain, and by 6 AM the next morning I was at sick call and seeing the Mr. Glenn Farris (CW2) the flight surgeon.

I was grounded (Big surprise, I could barely walk, much less fly) and he gave Flexeril and 72-hours quarters. I recall was waking up every eight hours, going to the bathroom, taking my next dose of pain medication and going back to bed for the next two and a half days. The next morning I went back to the flight surgeon and was put back on normal duty status but I was still grounded from flight duties. I was still hurting, just not as severely and I could walk and move with minimal discomfort. A few days later, I went to the gym to work out and I was using the hip abductor exercise machine, while adjusting the tension, I pulled hard on the lever and felt/heard a loud “pop” in my lower back and the pain was gone.

I was medically cleared to fly a couple days later and I didn’t have another back episode until several years later after I was at Fort Campbell. Boredom seemed to trigger me to exercise more during my year in Korea. I was not and never had been any kind of athlete and exercised under duress. But working out was something to do in my free time and that exercise kept me out of hack with the unit about my weight. Meeting my weight had been an issue my entire career and Korea was no different.

Like most pilots, I saw the flight surgeon fairly often for one thing or another and pilots were encouraged to have a good relationship with the flight surgeon (So we would actually go see one and not fret so much about getting grounded for something silly.) I became friends with Glenn and one day I sought him out because my shoulder was bothering me. (I think I strained it lifting something heavy while helping inventory the aviation parts stock) and for whatever reason it was bothering me.

Glenn started examining me and asking questions, and he started pressing around on my right shoulder. As I was talking about something he found the “Sweet Spot” and literally took me to my knees. Damn that hurt! From there he quickly diagnosed me with bursitis and gave me his “Cortisone Cocktail” (a combination of Xylocaine, Lidocaine and Cortisone) injection to remove the discomfort. It seemed to work pretty well and he never to repeat the procedure.

Glenn also introduced me to the local Friday Night poker party. Admission was a bottle of booze and the buy-in was $20. The booze was easy, as a fifth of liquor was about $3.50 the $20 for the buy in was a bit tougher and was part of the reason I had money making enterprises. (I didn’t make money at poker, but I found I could usually make $20 last most the night. Once it was gone, I was done playing poker as I was limited in funds and I didn’t like losing all that much anyway.

I fared better at the slot machines in the Officer’s Club. I limited myself to nickel slots and only one roll of nickels (two dollars a day.) I would play the entire roll and anything in the tray over two dollars went back into my pocket and I continued with that process until I either won another two dollars or I ran out of nickels and stopped playing that day. I think overall, I came out slightly ahead as I won $25 on a single play at least twice during my tour.

One of the nicest things about Camp Humphreys was it had a CH-47D flight simulator on post. During my in-processing, I had been introduced to the simulator supervisor MW4 Sandor Kelemen (aka the Raving Hungarian) Sandor (Pronounced SHANDOOR) was quite an imposing man and when we walked in his office he was on the phone giving some poor soul hell (hence his nickname) and once off the phone he quickly apologized to us about his rancor. It didn’t take us long to develop a friendship that we maintained for decades.

During the CH-47D grounding, I saw Sandor a lot as I had to maintain my currency in the simulator. I never got the opportunity to fly with him in an actual aircraft as our one mission (a fire bucket mission in an CH-47C) was called off as we were running up the aircraft. I’d often stop by and visit Sandor as we always had good conversations.

One of my first missions as a CH-47C qualified pilot resulted in my first entry of FlightFax published by the U. S. Army Safety Center. While flying a mission to a field site in a riverbed (Almost all our Korea field sites were a riverbed or a rice patty in winter) I was flying with CW2 Mark Marinelli as my Pilot-in-Command when we blew over a cinder block wall and small flagpole placing a load in the riverbed next to a school. It was published in FlightFax (Military publication of aircraft incidents) November 1989 as a Class C incident. “C-Series” – As aircraft approached a confined area with external load, it’s rotor wash blew down a small flagpole and damaged a cinder block wall around a tennis court.
Mark also had the prestige of being one of my TAC officers while I was in the Warrant Officer Entry Course (WOEC) a couple years earlier. It is a small world some days.

Finishing flight school and my assignment to Korea

The military assignment process is best described by a quote from the book "Glory Road" by Robert Heinlein:

"Regardless of Table of Organization (T. O.), all military bureaucracies consist of a Surprise Party Department, a Practical Joke Department and a Fairy Godmother department. The first two process most matters as the third is very small, the Fairy Godmother Department is one elderly female GS-5 clerk usually out on sick leave."

When we were nearing the end of our training as Warrant Officer Candidates in flight school (The first week of September 1988) and it was pretty much assured that we would all graduate. One of the final administrative tasks was posting our aircraft assignments. The 40 Warrant Officer Candidates in my platoon were allocated aircraft for advanced training based on; "The needs of the Army". We could list our preference, but if the Army didn’t allocate that aircraft to your graduating class, well, sorry. Since I was the Admin Officer of our class, I was slightly more informed of who got what because I was keeping track of the class rankings. Tradition held that candidates who were in the top ten percent of the class ranking were given their pick of available aircraft. That meant the top four candidates were allowed to choose their aircraft assignment from the list, the rest were assigned by our flight school cadre.

My Class (Class 88-09) was assigned the following advanced aircraft allocation:

AH-64 (Apache) – 6

CH-47D (Chinook) – 3

UH-60 (Blackhawk) – 2

AH-1 (Cobra) – 12

The remaining 17 WOCs were either assigned to UH1s or OH58s. The top four took aircraft in this order:

1. Apache
2. Chinook (Jim Herzog)
3. Blackhawk
4. Blackhawk (Paul Guido)

After the top four made their picks, then aircraft were assigned by class standing. the next five in the class ranking were assigned AH64 Apaches. At this point, the “Fairy Godmother Department" smiled upon me. For whatever reason, at this point, the cadre decided to look and see who the next person was with CH47 as their top choice and wouldn’t you know it #11 Donald P. Kempf. So the next group of assignments looked like this:

10. Cobra (Todd Pryby)
11. Chinook (Donald Kempf)
12.-22. AH-1 Cobra

Then they looked at who had CH47 as top choice in the remaining group and #25 Kim Young was the final selection of the "Fairy Godmother Department".

My biggest concern (Getting assigned a combat aircraft) had been narrowly avoided. About this time, the “Surprise Party Department" came along with duty station assignments and after my advanced aircraft transition I was assigned to the 1st AG Replacement Detachment Regiment 40 APO SF 96301 (Korea) with a final assignment to Bravo Company, 2-501st Aviation Regiment (Innkeepers) Camp Humphreys, South Korea. They embellished this surprise with my reporting date of May 29, 1989 (Memorial Day) which also assured my departure from Korea on May 29, 1990 (the day after Memorial Day).

Flight School graduation was November 2, 1988 and my CH-47D Advanced Qualification Course (AQC) class 89-5 didn’t start until February 9, 1989 which left me over 90 days assigned to Delta Company, 4th Aviation Training Battalion (ATB) as a “casual officer” where I flew NOE covership (Prima) for other training pilots. The “Practical Joke Department" tasking was Christmas Day 1988.

All casual officers were listed on the Duty Roster (DA Form 6) for the daily Staff Duty Officer (SDO) for the battalion. On weekdays, the SDO started at 5PM until relieved in the morning usually about 7 AM. On weekends and holidays, it was a 7 AM to 7 AM tour. I’d been in the military a while and I’d expected the duty roster to be managed by regulation, one of which was that once the roster was posted, you couldn’t submit for leave on any day you were assigned duty.

I was happy as the roster showed that I didn't have holiday duty and this allowed me to bank some leave time. This was a bad tactical decision on my part because as soon as the roster was posted, roughly 40 people who did not have a leave already submitted, requested leave for Christmas. The "Practical Joke Department" intervened and suddenly I ended up stuck with Staff Duty on Christmas Day. You live and learn.

Once I completed my CH47 AQC, I moved my family back to my boyhood home in Sellersburg, Indiana where my Father and Step-Mother (Jackie) had an upholstery shop. Jackie had been an upholsterer for decades and she was the fastest person I’d ever seen with a sewing machine.

Her speed and skill were tested the Saturday night before I left for Korea when we recovered 57 stools for a hospital in Louisville KY. The stools had to be recovered overnight so that they could be disinfected before 6 AM when they would be needed in the hospital. Jackie had a partner, Clifford, who picked up the stools about 20 at a time and transported them to the shop. My Father, my wife and I disassembled the stools, Jackie would use the old cover as a pattern, cut and sewed the new cover and then we stretched and stapled the new Naugahyde covers in place.

As we completed the first batch of stools, Clifford brought in the next in and the process restarted. My wife spent a lot of her time keeping the coffee and sandwiches flowing and I learned the hard way that stretching Naugahyde all night made your hands and fingers quite sore. Clifford left to return the last 17 stools about 4:30 AM. I can remember sitting on the plane to Korea with my fingers stiff and sore until they finally uncurled somewhere across the Pacific Ocean.

I flew from Louisville, KY to Oakland, CA, where I was loaded on to the World Airways Civil Reserve Air Fleet 747 "Freedom Bird" and flew a roundabout route to Korea by way of Anchorage, AK, Yakota Air Base, Japan to Osan Air Base in South Korea. From there I was bussed to U. S. Army Garrison at Yongsan, Seoul South Korea for in processing. I spent two days in processing then I was bussed again back past Osan to Camp Humphreys, my duty station. The bus to Yongsan had been an Army bus, the trip to Camp Humphreys was another story.

This was a Korean regular service passenger bus and I was again feeling very isolated as I was the only non-Korean on the bus. The trip took over two hours to drive 60 miles and a good part of the trip was the bus stopping (it seemed every corner) to let someone on or off. Passengers weren’t limited to people either as there was at least one laying hen was among us. This bus was similar in design to a greyhound and was designed for longer distance travel. (I later become familiar with the local city type buses that we used to go from town to town in the area.) On this bus, having a seat was the norm, the city buses not so much. Finally, after seeing much more of the local countryside than I really wanted to see, I was dropped off at Camp Humphreys.

Camp Humphreys was a fairly small installation by US Standards but was larger than most U. S. Army bases simple due to the airfield on the installation. The actual garrison portion of the base was quite small and you could easily walk across it in ten minutes. It was also a haphazard mix of Korean War Quonset huts and newer structures. The commissary was new and very small (roughly the size of a Seven/Eleven) there were NCO and Officer Clubs and even a Burger King. One thing that was in short supply during the summer was officer housing.

I was initially billeted in the Royal Hotel in Anjong-Ri just outside the gate to the camp. I stayed in Room 501 on the 4th floor (Koreans feel about 4 like Americans feel about 13 and avoid its use whenever possible, so no 4th floor, not room number with 4 in it either). There were many interesting quirks staying in that hotel, from the non-potable water in the bathroom.You left your key on the counter at the front desk going to work and picked it up again when you returned. All the keys had a long rectangular plastic key tag (almost a foot long) and they were lined up according to room number on the counter. You just picked it up on your way in to your room.

I couldn’t afford a car, so I quickly purchased a 10-speed bike from a departing soldier and I had transportation. In the mornings, I rode in for PT, then showered in the barracks and ate breakfast and lunch on base. I rode back to the hotel in town in the evenings and then I carried that damn bicycle up four flights of stairs to the fifth floor (no fours remember) to lock it up in my room. Unattended items lasted only a few moments, and bicycle theft was a big issue in the town, so up the stairs it went.

Most of my evening meals were eaten in town due to the distance to the dining facility and that is where I first met Warrant Officer 1 (WO1) Steve Perkins. Like me, he was billeted temporarily in town and we ended up roommates in the Bachelor Officer Quarters (BOQ). Steve and I started meeting for dinner in the ‘Ville” since we were both living in hotels. Steve was more internationally experienced than I and was already familiar with the local food scene, he showed me around. When it came to food, I was pretty lame at my meal selection (I didn’t eat anything hot or spicy) I suppose that goes back to the German roots of my family and traditional Indiana American style eating habits. Steve, not so much, he was game for just about anything, so he’d already tried most menu items.

We’d eaten together two or three times when I was about to order “Chicken Fried Rice” for the third night in a row and Steve asked if that was all I ever was going to eat. I replied that I didn’t see anything else on the menu that didn’t look spicy and sniveled how I didn’t eat hot foods. Steve suggested the “Chinese Egg Roll” dinner and for some stupid reason, I agreed. We talked and drank ice cold Pepsi in 16-ounce glass bottles while we waited and soon dinner arrived. The presentation was wonderful. Two large and savory beef eggs rolls, sliced and turned up on edge. Twenty or so total bite sized pieces with fried rice on the side.

I took the first bite, and this explosion of flavor hit me, delicious! Pleasantly surprised, I took another bite and repeated the experience. It wasn’t until the third bite, that the surprise hit me. This dish had a subtle but quiet present back-end heat that built on every bite. I started to feel flushed and I began to sweat and then I noticed Steve laughing at me as I grabbed that Pepsi and chugged it trying to put out the fire. I sure I used some choice expletives at Steve but I also couldn’t stop eating this delicious dish. I drank 3 Pepsis in the process, but I ate it all while Steve continued to make fun of me.

The next day, I ordered the same meal, while Steve at Daejibulgogi (Marinated Pork in red pepper sauce served on s sizzling platter with white rice & the hottest item on the menu). I was prepared for the heat (Mild in my now learned opinion, but hot to me then) and again I reveled in the wonderful flavors. It was through meals with Steve that I expanded my pallet and learned to be much more adventurous with my food choices. If nothing else, I will always be thankful to Steve for getting me to eat better food.

Lucky for me, Steve and I got along pretty well. We were finally given a reprieve from hotel living and moved to temporary quarters in the “Bat Cave”. The bat case was a converted Korea War temporary barracks (Same design as the WWII temporary barracks) and at best it was sad, but it was post and a slight improvement over the hotel (Potable water for one). Steve and I moved into permanent quarters (rooms 215 & 216) sometime in July.

The permanent rooms were essentially dorm sized with an adjoining kitchenette and bathroom. The first thing we tackled in that room was the shower ceiling, which was black with mildew. Steve had quite the confrontation with the maid (Ojuma! You no clean! I pay you to clean!) over how filthy the bathroom had been. We were paying her a weekly fee and we even provided cleaning materials she couldn’t get, like bleach. It took some time but ee got her to understand what our minimum standard of clean actually meant and she started cleaning to that standard and had few problems afterward.

When I arrived at B-2-501 AVN, I was surprised the unit didn’t have any CH-47D Chinooks, they had CH-47Cs instead. The Army was still fielding the CH-47D and they just finished the deployment of D-Models with A Company. The next shipment of 3 CH-47Ds included one for Alpha Company and two for Bravo. I was given my local area orientation flight in aircraft 70-15018 (CH-47C) on June 19, 1989 then I didn’t fly again until our new CH-47Ds had been assembled and tested.

Not flying didn’t mean I wasn’t busy. I was the Supply Officer, Arms Room Officer and Petroleum Oils and Lubricants (POL) Officer, so I got to keep busy trying to ensure that we had everything in order. I finally got to fly a CH-47D in Korea four times in mid-July 1989 and then the D-models were grounded worldwide for a design flaw in the combining transmission oil cooling fan drive shaft. This kept me grounded through the end of August as my leadership figured it would be a waste training me to fly a C-Model since we were turning them in at a rate of about three a month. That changed when September approached and they were running out of C-Model rated co-pilots due to their leaving at the end of their one-year tours.

I was given the world’s fastest C-Model qualification on a field training exercise August 25th and I flew C-Models until the 21st of December after the D-model aircraft were modified and the grounding was lifted. The grounding had been lifted in November, but I took a mid-tour leave and an aircraft crash while I was on leave had prevented my D-Model currency training. Here is an abbreviated incident report synopsis:

"On 4 December 1989, while ascending a draw to cross a ridge line, CH-47D aircraft 88-00092 went inadvertently into instrument meteorological conditions (IMC). The copilot on the controls established the initial emergency procedure. Moments later, visual contact was established with the ridge line. Due to close proximity of the hill mass, collision was unavoidable. The pilot-in-command and copilot initiated a rapid deceleration and power application in an attempt to avoid impact. The aircraft struck in a near level attitude with the 44-degree slope of the terrain. Rotor blade contact with trees and the ground caused the aircraft to roll inverted and slide down the ridge approximately 120 feet. There were no fatalities or serious injuries. The 5 crew members and 14 passengers were rescued by Air Force and Army MEDEVAC helicopters. There was no post-crash fire. SGT Bo Crumpler was the Flight Engineer (FE). CW4 Robert Johnson was the Pilot-in-Command"

Part of the delay in my training was my involvement in sorting out the mess the crash had created. I had a pile of TA-50 field equipment that went floor to ceiling in one corner of the supply room. The supply sergeant and I had to figure out who owned what and get it returned, exchange damaged items and do the accounting for damages and loss. Somehow the one bad thing that did not happen is all the weapons were accounted for an undamaged. The crashed aircraft itself was recovered using another CH-47D and the airframe was shipped back to Olathe, KS, where I believe it was scrapped. I had to document the equipment losses with Reports of Survey, four total. One for the Aircraft, one for the TA-50 equipment, one for the communications security equipment on board and one for the Conex Containers they were carrying as those were Air Force Property. December was a busy month for me that year. The joys of paperwork.

101st Airborne was sent to provide relief in Florida after Hurricane Andrew

On August 24, 1992, Hurricane Andrew struck southern Florida with extreme devastation. Three days later, President Bush committed U. S. Army support for the storm ravaged state. On September 2, the 101^st Airborne Division deployed ten CH-47D Chinook helicopters to Opa-Locka Airport to assist in the relief efforts. I was a part of this mission and in many ways, it helped change my life.

7^th Battalion, 101^st Aviation Regiment (Liftmasters) sent a task force of Chinooks comprised of elements from all three companies in the battalion so that each unit had enough personnel and equipment to continue their mission as part of the rapid deployment force (RDF). This was important as we had just returned from the Gulf War the year prior and international events were heavy on everyone’s minds. We arrived at the Opa-Locka airport to a near chaos situation with the situation just barely being managed as food and equipment were arriving faster than the support effort could be coordinated. A hangar at the east side of the airfield had been converted into a makeshift warehouse and we were billeted in a vacant shop area in the back corner of the hangar.

The first thing we noticed was that there wasn’t an immediate need for the Chinooks as no cargo had been allocated for shipment and the areas of need for delivery were not yet identified. This left us with the uncomfortable situation of having rushed to the scene and waiting for something to do. We were watching all these volunteers arriving and working from dawn to dusk unloading trucks, sorting supplies and trying to bring some organization to everything while we were just sitting there with nothing to do. After correctly determining that it might be a while before we were actively involved as a unit, I inquired if we could assist in the volunteer effort on our free time with our command leadership and they said we could do what we wanted when we were not working on a mission.

I had noticed that there was a forklift that was being under-utilized and I asked one of the volunteer coordinators if I could assist as a forklift operator. (in one of my previous careers I had been a forklift operator/warehouseman.) I was given a resounding yes and started my contribution to the volunteer effort. I would guess that there were in excess of 100 volunteers unloading and sorting supplies, and there was a steady stream of semi tractor-trailers with all kinds of cargo. Almost all the trucks were owner-operators who volunteered their trucks and donated their time and fuel to haul the loads from all points in the USA. It was incredibly moving to see what people were doing to try any help others they didn’t know.

For the next couple of days, I spent the majority of my waking hours on the forklift loading and unloading trucks. The rest of the task force equally spent a lot of time in the volunteer effort alongside the local people coming in to work the warehouse. Two of the coordinators, a local banker and his wife, a school teacher, did something incredible for the task force, they asked us to come over to their home for lunch, use the pool and to wash all our clothing. They had noticed that while we had cots and food and a place to sleep with facilities, there was no laundry facility available to us on the airport. So they took twelve of us to their home (in Miami Lakes, a very posh Miami neighborhood) where there seemed to be an endless buffet and a wonderfully refreshing pool for us to swim in. I wish I could recall the names, maybe one day I will and edit this to give them full credit. This lady washed and dried clothes while hosting a dozen soldiers for at least eight consecutive hours after a week of 12-hour shifts at the hangar sorting supplies. She and her husband were magnificent and it was a gesture that I will always remember.

The task force was in Opa-Locka for 26 days and during that time, a fellow pilot, Kevin Ballard and I went to the Miami school where this same lady taught fifth grade. It was a show and tell and we wore our flight suits and survival vests and other flight gear. The children were quite excited with the visit and the teacher treated us to lunch at a local restaurant before we returned to the flight line.

I’d say it took the better part of a week for sufficient coordination was made to utilize our equipment. Some of the first missions included flying to Homestead Air Force Base (AFB) which was close to ground zero as far as hurricane damage went. The destruction was epic and I clearly remember a hangar that had been stripped down to the I-beam superstructure and the remains of a C-130 inside that wasn't evacuated before the storm hit. We flew essential items, food, water, diapers and the like into the town of Homestead at a makeshift Landing Zone (LZ) near what had been their downtown. Only a few buildings survived in Homestead as the majority of homes in the area were either mobile homes or modular homes and neither tolerated the wrath of the storm. The damage resembled tornado damage only the area of destruction was miles wide instead of a few hundred yards. I saw less damage in war-torn Sarajevo, it was overwhelming.

There were also some poor decisions made in the relief effort. Some of these were made in the choice of cargo that was selected for us to haul from the fairgrounds in West Palm Beach to Homestead. For this mission, we had several Chinooks (At least 3 and it could have been up to 5) and we were making turns from the fairgrounds to a LZ in Homestead, pretty regular Chinook work hauling external and internal loads. External loads were preferred because they allowed us to make the most use of blade time and personnel. Apparently, there was insufficient heavy cargo to assemble to make legitimate external loads or whoever was coordinating the loads did not understand the physics of external loads. This is how I ended up with a center hook load that consisted of three pallets of things like diapers, and Cheetos. The loads were properly wrapped in Army pallet wraps designed for these hauls but the loads were so light that while flying we had to restrict the airspeed of this load to about 45 knots. Our route was along the west side of the Dade county urban areas along railroad tracks that bordered the swamps. As we flew south with this light load, the load started to come apart in the air. I left a glittery trail of Cheetos bags and diapers along the swamp. At least the gators there had something to amuse them. Due to this unintended distribution of snacks, I was dubbed the “Cheeto Bandito” by my fellow pilots.

I celebrated my thirty-fourth birthday in Opa-Locka which in itself was no big deal. I think I had a Tuna Casserole MRE for my birthday dinner. One of the things you had to do as an Army pilot was an annual evaluation. This required me to have a proficiency check ride as a Night Vision Goggle Pilot-in-Command and an Instrument evaluation with the Instrument Flight Examiner (IFE) who was part of our task force. So pilot training was worked into real missions when possible and other training missions were flown when required. 

I had to complete requirement in my birth month and it was unclear if we would leave Florida before the month ended. Since I needed the eval, we planned an instrument training flight to West Palm Beach and back. We had to fly outside of the Miami area as parts of the instrument navigation aides were still out of commission so we flew to where operational equipment was available. We encountered some difficulties as the commercial air traffic into West Palm Beach was heavy do to limits on flights to Miami. 

One of the requirements for the instrument check ride is a precision instrument approach. We had selected the Instrument Landing System (ILS) runway 09 approach to West Palm Beach. At first we had trouble getting Air Traffic Control (ATC) to work us in, this required us to wait about thirty minutes, so we completed other training tasks such as a holding pattern until we were finally cleared for an approach at the airport.  I established our approach on the ILS glide slope at the standard approach speed of 90 knots for a helicopter. We were almost immediately requested to speed up the approach due to traffic spacing and I had the pleasure of completing the approach at 135 knots (normal speed was 90 knots). It wasn’t pretty and it kept me busy computing the changes in the approach plan but I managed to get the job done and we landed without incident.

One of the benefits of taking an instrument check ride, is you normally get a good meal. It seems the IFE’s make a practice of flying to different airfields and while refueling with the fixed base operator (FBO) they borrow the FBO loaner car and get something to eat at a local restaurant. Getting the car is usually pretty easy when the FBO is refueling a Chinook and 800 gallons of Jet-A gives them a nice profit. When they make the IFE happy, he comes back with more business. We had lunch a local restaurant that had the unique distinction of all the waitresses were modeling lingerie. I didn’t mind, but mostly I was interested in a good meal but a free floor show never hurt.

I think the best side benefit of the deployment to Opa-Locka was getting to know some of my fellow pilots a bit better. Two of the pilots, Kevin Ballard, and Dan Davidson, had brought guitars with them. Kevin played bass and Dan lead. When things were slow, it wasn’t unusual to see then jamming together, even though they had no amps. They were playing country music and while not a big country fan, I did enjoy the distraction. In 1992, we didn’t have cell phones and the internet, and most of us didn’t bring much of any electronics to the field or deployment. I learned that Kevin and Dan were trying to put a band together, they had another guitar player in the unit (Jim Housand) who wasn’t there and they needed a drummer. I had played drums in high school and was fair to middling at best but I offered my services and they agreed to let me have a shot. Out of boredom and wanting to practice a bit, I whittled a pair of drumsticks from pallet splinters and began to sit in with Dan and Kevin. This was the start of the “Red River Band” named after a local river near Fort Campbell and we soon changed the band name to something more fitting: “A Wing and A Prayer.”

We recovered back to Fort Campbell September 28th and it wasn’t but a few days later that our band started practicing in a recreation center at Fort Campbell. We practiced there because they had drums we could use, but I soon purchased a set at a local pawn shop for $400 and we practiced in Kevin’s garage after that. We played about five paying gigs at local bars such as Maria’s Ranch, The Hole and Western Sound. I earned enough at make up the money that I paid for the drums. As with many things, this band was a fleeting moment in an ever-changing life. I left for Degree Completion in the autumn of 1993, Kevin joined the 160^th Special Operations Task Force and Jim became an Instructor Pilot then left he service not tool long after I left Fort Campbell for Germany.

There are two legacy items I took away from my deployment for Hurricane Andrew

• My Humanitarian Service Medal (the medal I am most proud of earning) 
• The experience of having played in “A Wing and A Prayer” 

I finally played some music like I’d always wanted to play, even if it did lean to rock and these guys were country.

Part of how this narrative came to be was Jim looking me up on the Internet in early 2016, thanks Jim.

Officer Candidate School (OCS) at the Indiana Military Academy (IMA)

My inspiration to write often has to do with a triggered memory, so if these posts are confusing because they are not in chronological order I apologize in advance.

I have detailed how I came to be a member of the Indiana Army National Guard (ARNG) and now it is time to document how I went from a Private First Class to a Second Lieutenant in the same unit. My career in the guard had been relatively successful as an enlisted soldier. I really had no plans to become an officer but life hands you some interesting little twists and this was one of them. When I joined the 128th General Supply Company, my father had been the First Sergeant. After about 18 months, he moved on to another position and so I was working more as a mechanic now and I wasn’t on Kitchen Police (KP) every other drill. Mostly I was doing what most new mechanics do, I was learning from the senior mechanics. One day in the spring of 1979, while checking the mail at home I received a postcard from the Military Department of Indiana (MDI), Indiana’s version of the Department of Defense. It simple read that they had reviewed my records and wanted to know if I was interested in attending Officer Candidate School (OCS). I had the option of going to OCS at Fort Benning Georgia for the 16-week resident course at an administrative pay grade of E-5 or I could go to the Indiana Military Academy reserve course at Camp Atterbury over the course of a year (two, 15-day annual training exercises and 12 weekend drills) at an administrative pay grade of E-6. Not wanting to be away from my bride, I elected the latter.

I was soon given an appointment for and OCS evaluation board at Stout Field, Indianapolis, Indiana, where I was evaluated by three field grade officers (A Colonel, Lieutenant Colonel and a Major) whom I’d never met and they interviewed me to evaluate me for candidacy for OCS. There were three of us there from my unit (I was the junior; the others were a Specialist and a Sergeant) and I was absolutely sure I had not impressed the board. (My high school GPA was 2.65) and the only mildly impressive documentation they had was my Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) test score which was well above average. After the board, I had given it little further thought as I was busy getting married and working, just getting along with life. To my surprise, I received a set of orders assigning me to the Indiana Military Academy (IMA) as an Officer Candidate. Surprise! This lasted for about three weeks, then fate decided to pay me a visit. I can clearly remember lying in bed and just as I awoke, lying flat on my back, I coughed. And with that, I now had an inguinal abdominal hernia. The hernia itself wasn’t a big deal, I’d had one as a child. But it required surgery and recovery and this was two weeks before I reported to OCS. OCS is not a place you can recover from surgery and they can’t wait for you either. With this development, I contacted MDI and resigned from OCS without ever attending. (Sigh)

This turned out to be providence as about a month after my surgery, my new wife and I lost our baby girl at birth. The summer and fall of 1979 were tough times as I’d been off work for 6-weeks recovering from the surgery, the disability insurance that was supposed to help us eat while I couldn’t work didn’t get me a draft until two days before I returned to work and then took an additional ten days to clear. Life was pretty well kicking us in the butt. We had no rent money, we had no money at all really and social services was even kicking us when we were down. We qualified for food stamp assistance ($2.00 the first month) and after three months we managed a bit of rent assistance to help out our landlord who was being really nice to us as he could have booted us for non-payment. Finally, by November or so, things were looking a bit better and while I was at one of my weekend drills at Camp Atterbury, I was told to go report to the post commander, Colonel Clifford Brown. I’d had no warning and I had absolutely no idea why I was reporting to the commander but I showed at the appointed time, knocked then entered the office and reported as directed. Colonel Brown asked me to take a seat and then explained that he wanted to know if I was still interested in IMA? I was puzzled, but I told him that I was still interested. He then told me that he was the chairman of my selection board, and based on the previous board recommendation he was again recommending me for OCS and that the other members of the board would concur (It was just me and the Colonel in the office). We talked for a few minutes and I was dismissed. I’d gotten a second change and I hadn’t even asked for it.

With my new orders, the process had changed a bit. I was attached to IMA-OCS at Camp Atterbury for the next year. Twelve weekend drills and four weeks the following summer. I’ll be the first person to admit, I had no clue what I’d gotten myself into by applying for OCS. I knew nothing about being an officer or a leader but I figured it couldn’t be too hard (Wrong) and I knew that if I applied myself I could get through any military school (Correct) so I tried my best to get my shit together before I reported to IMA in June of 1980. My work kept me in decent shape and I worked out a little more than usual. Most of my preparation was my uniforms and boots. I had received some instructions on what I was required to have and had checked off all the items. I’d gotten some new uniforms, embroidered nametags and new jump boots. I tried to get everything up to standard before I reported to OCS.

The first weekend at IMA was an education. There were 60 candidates divided into two platoons. I was assigned to first platoon and my Training and Counseling (TAC) Officer was First Lieutenant Randy Handy. Second Platoon was assigned to Second Lieutenant Martin. TAC Officers are the drill sergeants of OCS. They wear a Smokey the Bear hat, are dressed immaculately, and are generally hard asses. All non-classroom instruction was done by the TAC officers. LT Handy was like his name, unique. He could be very personable one minute, then pull a Sybil (Display a split personality. If you have never seen the 1976 movie Sybil, look it up) and turn in to a raging maniac. You never really knew what to expect from him, which was exactly what he intended. LT Martin was just a prick. LT Marten did mean things just because he was in a position of authority and likely tried to repeat some of the abuse he received in his OCS training. Unlike LT Handy, LT Martin often made mistakes and generally was not respected or well liked.

If you have been to basic training in the military, any branch, then you know the physical part of OCS. You make a mistake; you are doing pushups. You are under 24-hour supervision, everything is inspected and you get to do things you would not normally do anywhere but in training. Our uniform was the standard 1970’s era olive drab (OD) green fatigue jacket and pants, a web utility belt with canteen, combat boots and a helmet liner. I’ll explain a helmet liner as most people likely are familiar with the term. Before the Kevlar helmet, combat helmets were a two-piece device. A steel outer shell and a fiberglass helmet liner. The helmet liner had the web mesh that your sweatband was attached to and weighed about 12 ounces. Like everything else in the Army, it was OD Green. The first weekend at OCS we wore these green helmet liners as our headgear and we were also charged with a mission before the next drill to modify them for OCS. We were issued IMA decals that were to me applied to each side, just above your ears. Before you applied the decals though, you had to paint the liner. The color? John Deere Yellow. The liner had to be sanded smooth (It had a rough texture due to the fiberglass material) then spray painted, then wet sanded and clear coated. Then you applied your decals. The yellow indicated we were Junior Officer Candidates and when we became senior candidates, we would repaint the helmets Infantry Blue (light Blue).

Once of the joys of OCS was drill and ceremony (D & C). Field Manual 22-5 was your bible for D&C and you got to know it and the other manuals in the 50 or so manuals we were issued that first weekend. FM 22-5 was the most used and we got plenty of practice marching to and from classes, meals etc., just like in basic training. But things were always more amplified and you didn’t just have to march, you had to be able to march the unit. The platoon leader and squad leader positions were subject to change at the whim of the TAC officer (Usually after the one before you was relieved). You could be in the ranks one minute and the next you could be in charge of a squad or the entire platoon. These changes can fairly often and if you were the target of the TAC officer for some drill and ceremony error, you were fairly certain to end up in the Duck Squad. The Duck squad was where you went when you fucked up. It was to humiliate you and to encourage you not to repeat the error of your ways. If you were the first person assigned to the Duck Squad, you also go to carry a white plastic goose under your left arm (Officer Candidate Duck). It was called the Duck Squad because you marched single file behind the platoon and you quacked every time your left foot touched the ground. Everyone, eventually, ended up in the Duck Squad. At one point on a particularly bad day, we ended up with more people in the Duck Squad than the platoon we were following.
I mentioned the Duck Squad because at the end of the first drill, LT Handy put me in charge of Officer Candidate Duck. My mission, aside from bring the duck to the next drill, was to make a uniform for OC Duck. I was so overjoyed with this challenge and let me tell you, your wife will spare no expense in adding humiliation to you about being in the Duck Squad especially when you ask he assistance in creating an army uniform for a Duck. Lucky for me, after she had a great laugh at my expense, may lovely wife took to the task and she modified a baby tee shirt and sewed an army fatigue jacket, complete with name tags for OC Duck. U. S. Army over the right front pocket, DUCK over the left. LT Handy was duly impressed with her handiwork and I’d managed a passable job painting my helmet liner. I even got out of the Duck Squad for most of that weekend.

Meeting the standard is the goal in OCS, whatever it is. Just answering a TAC officer requires a specific format, as the first word and the last word in any reply to a TAC must begin and end with “SIR”. To answer a question in the affirmative: “Sir, Candidate Kempf, Yes Sir!” is the correct response. If you were asked something about how to do a drill movement, you might reply: “Sir, Candidate Kempf, In accordance with TM 9-2320-218-10, the preventative maintenance checks and services can be found in chapter three, table 3-1, Sir”. The TAC’s also made a game out of seeing if you would make a decision and stay with it. Once day, while the nominal platoon leader, I was in charge of getting the platoon to the dining facility (Mess hall) and getting them in to eat. I had sent the platoon sergeant in to see if they were ready to feed yet and we’d been told to wait ten minutes or so while they got ready to serve. Having time to kill, I put the platoon at “Stand at Ease” and gave them authorization to smoke if they wanted to do so. LT Handy abruptly came up from the back of the formation and I called “Attention” and then LT Handy began to chew me out for some alleged infraction. After he extolled for several minutes about how unsatisfactory my decision-making process had been, he asked me why I made this obviously flawed decision. I replied “Sir, Candidate Kempf, with the information I had at the time, I made the decision I thought was right, Sir!”. He smiled and replied “Carry On” and walked away. I’d not made any mistake, he just wanted to see if I’d back down. TACs could be assholes.

One last memorable item was during Physical Training (PT). A duty roster (DA Form 6) was maintained to track who would give physical training instruction each morning. Like every other aspect of OCS life this was subject to the supervision of our TACs. Generally, LT Handy wasn’t a morning guy and since they had two TAC to watch us morning and evening, LT Martin being the junior TAC, he got the early morning shift. LT Martin wasn’t a morning kind of guy. The day before I was supposed to lead PT instruction, LT Martin was in a bad mood and took get joy in giving the day’s instructor hell over his instruction of the exercise, the Bend and Reach. I took interest in this because LT Martin was wrong, the candidate had been correct, but lacking confidence, the candidate had given in and instructed the exercise as LT Martin had directed. I made a mental note of this as I had a bad feeling about the next day. Before lights out, I opened up my trusty FM 21-20 (Physical Training) and reviewed the 3 sets of conditioning drills. I took a 3 x 5 card, and I made notes on all 18 exercises, the starting position, the cadence and any details I thought I might need. The next morning, I started through the exercises starting with the “High Jumper” Exercise number one of conditioning drill one. I demonstrated the exercise, then led the candidates in 12 repetitions of the exercise. Then I began to instruct, exercise two of conditioning drill one, the “Bend and Reach”. I followed the book and gave the exact same demonstration of the exercise that the candidate had done the day before. Then I called the group to attention and gave the command “Starting Position, Move”. As I had expected, LT Martin (speaking from my left rear) called out to me: “Candidate Kempf, are you sure you are doing that exercise right?” I replied in true candidate fashion: “Sir, Candidate Kempf, in accordance with FM 21-20, page 37, paragraph 97, subparagraph C, Yes Sir!” LT Martin, somewhat surprised just said “Carry on”. We completed the exercise correctly, then as I told them to shake it out, LT Martin said: “Do the pushups”. I then put the candidates as parade rest and told them: “The next exercise is exercise number four of conditioning drill one, the push up. …” and we completed the push ups. LT Martin was still trying to trip me up so again as I gave the command “Stand at Ease” he said: “Do the Body Twist” and I replied: “Sir Candidate Kempf, Yes Sir!”  and we did exercise number six of conditioning drill two the “Body Twist”. At this point, other candidates had demonstrated the exercise but when it had come to leading it to the platoon they’d just called cadence from attention because it required you to get on your back and that made leading the exercise with a group difficult. I was very good at this particular exercise, so I not only called it while doing the exercise, but I put the candidates through a good painful workout with it. Again, at “Stand at Ease” LT Martin chimed in with: Do Leg Circulars”. Again, and I replied: “Sir Candidate Kempf, Yes Sir!”  and we did exercise number six of conditioning drill three the “Leg Circulars”. It is a similar exercise to the body twist and I went through the same motions. After the exercise, LT Martin apparently gave up messing with me as it was unproductive, but I didn’t give up on him. I knew he couldn’t run with any endurance and he didn’t know I could call running cadence. I took them for a 4-mile run and I made sure the pace was fast forcing LT Martin to really struggle to keep up. At the end of the run, after I dismissed the formation and LT Martin walked away with his pride well dented, the Candidates carried me in to the barracks on their shoulders as I’d made him look bad and he’d had not way to get even. That was a good day.

The Yukon Territory and beyond

Leaving British Columbia was quite a milestone of the trip. If you are not familiar with Canadian geography British Columbia is similar in shape to California and twice the size. Our journey through the province had covered over 1,200 miles and the better part of three days travel and now we’re entering the Yukon Territory. The further north you go, the more rustic things become and isolation increases. We are seeing more wildlife of all sorts and sizes. Beavers, Eagles, Moose and we watched a herd of Caribou cross the highway just to name a few we’d seen recently. The magnificence of the country and the beauty are a sight to behold and the day is nearly 24 hours long as we are now approaching the Arctic Circle. All day and almost no night takes some adaptation. Good sleep had become problematic as we are accustomed to adjusting our sleep cycle with the sun rise and sunset. Here the sun was setting around 2 AM and rising around 4:30 AM. One thing we noted in our overnight stay in Whitehorse, YT, was BLACKOUT SHADES. Pull down the window shades, instant night. We added blackout shades to our shopping list of items to buy when we moved in to Post Quarters in Alaska.

One thing we found in Whitehorse that we did not expect was a Dairy Queen. You were never exactly sure what you would find as you entered any town in the northern regions as things can be very eclectic in more remote areas. It had never occurred to me that people in the north might be interested in ice cream but as it turns out that is a misnomer. Alaska for example has often been quoted as the state where the most ice cream per capita is consumed, so I guess a Dairy Queen in the Yukon should have been a big surprise. We stayed in the Gold Nugget Inn than night and how could we deny our kids dinner at Dairy Queen? Well, that would just have been cruel. The next morning was the start of a momentous day, this was the day we would finally arrive in Alaska.

The drive from Whitehorse, YT to Anchorage, AK is 700 miles and there are some quirks about this part of the trip, like so many others we encountered that I had not anticipated and we encountered the next one around noon when we approached the Yukon – Alaska border. The Canadian Customs checkpoint is in Beaver Creek, YT is twenty miles from the Alaska border and at least at that time (it may be different now) there wasn’t a lot of incentive for the Canadians to do a lot of road maintenance on that last twenty miles. I can honestly say that was the worst stretch of road we encountered the entire trip and portions more resembled a moonscape than a road. Here I am in a Ford F-150 Supercab and I am navigating around potholes larger than the truck. Again, I really couldn’t blame the Canadians for not doing a lot on that road but really? It took over forty minutes to drive that twenty miles. In most of the Yukon, if you were doing less than ninety on a rural road, you were impeding traffic, what little there was. With a mild celebration and urgent need for plumbing we finally arrived at the US Customs checkpoint and our first encounter with Alaska.

Having refreshed ourselves at the checkpoint, we continued our final approach to Anchorage. The first town of any size we encountered was Tok. Tok at that time had a population of less than 500 people making it a fair size Alaskan town. It is at the intersection of Highway 2 and Highway 1 of the Alaskan highway system. In most places, a highway in Alaska is like a county road in the lower 48 states. A two-lane asphalt highway. Alaska, is the only US State that does not have an Interstate Highway (Yes, Hawaii has Interstates). Here we turned south (After 2,500 of driving generally north this was a change) on to Highway 1 and we headed to Glennallen. We had dinner in Glennallen and we got our first look at the Trans-Alaska pipeline as we crossed it on our journey to Anchorage. This is also the portion of Highway 1 known as the Glenn Highway that passes through the Matanuska valley, the fertile crescent of Alaska. One of the more interesting items we observed during our drive down through the valley was about a mile stretch of the road that was uncharacteristically straight. In the curve at each end of the straight you would see some traffic cones off to the side of the road, which I found a tad unusual. I was puzzled by their presence until I noted some rather odd looking garages and very wide gravel driveways on several of the houses along the road. It wasn’t until I spied one of these garages with the door open that it all came together. These garages were hangars and the road was the runway. You guessed it, when they needed to take off or land, someone goes out and blocks the road and they use the highway as the runway.

As we emerged from the valley into the Matanuska River basin we started to enter the more suburban areas of Alaska, such as Palmer and Wasilla. I had to adjust to driving in traffic for a few minutes, but that was oddly reassuring that we were emerging form the wilderness. We passed through one last town (Eagle River) before we arrived at our destination; Anchorage, AK. Our lodging for the next couple of weeks was the Mush Inn. At the time it was the first fairly large motel as you arrived into Anchorage and it had the added benefit of being one of the closest ones to Fort Richardson, where I had to in process before I was sent to my ultimate assignment in Fairbank at Fort Wainwright. My sons were excited about the Mush Inn because it sets across the highway from Merrell Field, where 400+ bush planes are based in Anchorage. Like me my sons can watch planes takeoff and land all day long. They readily approved of our lodging without even seeing the inside of the room.

I expected to be in Anchorage just a couple days and then spend another day long drive back north to Fairbanks, but I encountered change 1 the first day of in processing when I discovered I was being diverted to Fort Richardson as a permanent assignment. (Change 1 is a reference to the Army Manual update process, where they would publish incremental change documents to update errata in manuals, and these would be annotated Change 1, Change 2 etc.) so I was given amended orders changing my assignment to from some Infantry unit in Fairbanks to an Artillery unit in Anchorage. There were some other odd things about in processing into the 172nd Light Infantry Brigade (Arctic), like being asked if I played an instrument and if I’d like to try out for the band. Official Army Bands are a Table of Organization and Equipment (TO & E) organization at Division level and above in the Army. But the Brigade Commander had decided they needed a band so they assembled one using On the Job Training (OJT) and getting the 20 or so personnel needed from the Brigade authorized strength. (Within limits, a General can customize his organization as he desires, this one wanted a band. I said what the heck, I played drums in high school, I’ll try out. This got me shuffled off to a very bored Specialist 4 drummer who quickly decided my meager talents as a concert drummer were not needed and I went back to being processed as a mechanic.

This last-minute reassignment to Fort Richardson was nice because we were near the largest city in Alaska, but troubling because I knew that all our furniture was shipped to Fort Wainwright and our original housing assignment was on-base housing at Wainwright too. At a minimum, this meant delays in getting our furniture and I was unsure if they had any quarters available at Richardson. The Transportation division assured me that this happened a lot and they were used to dealing with the changes and the Housing office also assured me that they had a place for us to live. To understand my concern, a three-bedroom apartment off post started at about $1,500 a month in 1985. My housing allowance was $350. The Army has cost of living allowances (COLA) for high cost areas but they historically limited off post authorizations to Sergeants and above and I was an E-4 Specialist. The first quarters we were taken to turned out to be occupied and I was concerned that these people might not have their act together, but the second set of quarters was empty and quite acceptable. It was part of an eight-unit town house on Beluga Avenue. We arraigned for temporary furniture and moved out of the Mush Inn and into our Alaskan home, trip completed.

Up, to Alaska, The Adventure Begins

All around the post you could find bumper stickers that read “Happiness is Fort Hood TX in your rear-view mirror” and that is the way that we felt. My assignment there had been a fairly successful one and we looked forward to a change of scenery and climate. This was a very exciting but also a very daunting journey. I’d certainly never attempted any kind of move of this magnitude and had never traveled anywhere in the northwest United States or Canada. But first, a quick detour home to the Louisville, KY area were our families live and where we were leaving Anna’s Mustang. One of our many discussions over the previous months was about one vehicle or two for the move and we both agreed that the Mustang would not be a practical vehicle in Alaska so it stayed in storage back home.

After visiting everyone and a lot of tears because we were going to ALASKA of all places, we loaded up the truck and headed west. My wife’s sister Mary and brother-in-law Bill lived in Leavenworth, Kansas and since it was on the way, we of course stopped in to visit. It was a good visit and the only time I ever got to meet Bill as he died the following year from cancer. We spent the night there in their pop-up camper trailer which was interesting and enough for me to determine that I would never buy one myself. Then the next morning we were off to Denver. We’d taken time to plan out route to Alaska to maximize visiting with family and friends and to see parts of the country we wanted to visit that were along the way. Roughly, the route Leaving Fort Hood, TX consisted of overnight stays during June 1985, in the following locations:

• Louisville, KY.
• Leavenworth, KS
• Denver, CO
• Ogden, UT
• Twin Falls, ID
• Mountain Home AFB, ID
• Yakima, WA
• Merritt, BC, Canada
• Summit Lake, BC, Canada
• Fort Nelson, BC, Canada
• Whitehorse, YT, Canada
• Anchorage, AK

We also planned the trip for economy as we were in much better financial shape than when we moved to Fort Hood, saving as much as we could on this trip was a factor. We stayed with family in Louisville and Leavenworth, camped in the truck in Ogden, Yakima, Merritt, Summit Lake and Fort Nelson, Visitor’s Quarters in Mountain Home and only three motels in Denver, Twin Falls, and Whitehorse.

One thing about this ambitious plan I want to bring up here is that we undertook this travel escapade with a three-year old and a four-year old in tow. A month of travel with two boys under the age of five and better that half of the journey it was just the four of us all together in the cab of a 1977 Ford F-150 Supercab pickup truck. I attribute the success of this journey to my spouse and partner who always seems to have the capacity to make the best of any situation. I admit, she did most of the parenting as I was either working, away for National Guard, away in the Army or just away trying to earn enough money we didn’t starve. Early in our marriage we’d decided that one parent would stay home and raise the kids and the other would work and I ended up the breadwinner. In all honesty, I can’t imagine it working out differently as she made some spectacular achievements with our children. Small events sometimes are the most defining of what we have achieved.

One example of this was an incident in a truck stop café somewhere in Kansas on the leg between Leavenworth and Denver. We had stopped for lunch and it was a pretty busy restaurant. During the meal, my oldest son spilt his glass of milk and was quite upset about the mess he’d made. He was mostly upset because he’d wasted his mike being careless but he also wanted to clean the mess. He “helped” mom and the waitress clean the mess and was happy to learn that she was bringing him another glass at no charge. All of this was done with a minimum of drama and if you weren’t at the table you likely wouldn’t have noticed as our children knew to behave in public. This was validated later when we got up to leave and an elderly couple sitting nearby marveled to us about how well-behaved these two boys were during the meal. Often, unsolicited praise for small things can be a most poignant moment. It made an impression on me for sure.

My wife Anna, was keeping the boys entertained while I was driver/navigator. She would make a great boy scout as she is always prepared. During the trip, she had activities for the boys and never failed to make something an educational opportunity for our young charges. She in charge of the “in Trip” activities and I was the guy in charge of plans and logistics. Since this was before the age of the Internet, one of the tools I’d used was my AAA trip planning services (Yeah, 5000-mile adventure and no GPS for backup.) AAA was the best source for maps and they also had a service making route plans called a “Trip-Ticket”. The trip ticket was a custom, hand held bound map set that contained the entire planned route with both detail maps and key details like known road construction, detours and the like. I’d purchased AAA for the roadside assistance package and found the route planning was a fortuitous side benefit.

Our journey between Denver and Ogden, UT was punctuated by wilderness beauty. The rolling grasslands of the high prairie in Wyoming and the majestic beauty of the mountain valleys as we entered the Rockies in Utah were things I’d never witnessed in person. My youngest son at the time, Kevin may have been introduced to his love of maps and geography during this trip. We all were fascinated with the natural beauty were encountered and there were new adventures for us around every turn. Ogden was the first time we stayed at a campground and the one we found was one of the nicest that we saw on the trip. Camping was a big economic for us as we’d only planned motels for about one third of our stops to save money, and heck it was an adventure too. We stopped in Twin Fall, IS along the Snake River made famous by "Evel" Knievel. The valley carved by the river is beautiful and the falls that are the namesake of the town are also a beauty to behold.

Our stop in Twin Falls, ID was a prelude to a visit with a family friend in the Air Force. She was a Chaplain’s Assistant at Mountain Home AFB and she was also the person who helped us finance the truck. We would have been remiss not to stop and visit. The costs were low as we qualified for Visiting Enlisted Quarters (VEQ) where I rented a furnished house in the base for 5 days for about the price of the Motel room we’d stayed at in Twin Falls. It was educational to drive through the northwestern part of the country. I’d read about it in geography but I’d never really understood the concept of “High Desert” until driving through Idaho and the eastern portions of Washington and Oregon. But then again, this was my first experience with it so I was broadening my education at every turn. One of the highlights for me was seeing F-111 Aardvarks that were stationed there. The night takeoffs there were a fabulous sight.

Well rested from our stay in Mountain Home, we continued with our adventure as we trekked toward Yakima, WA and our next camping site. During the entire five thousand mile odyssey, I made one wrong turn and it was in Washington state. Apparently Washington keeps it’s taxes low by not investing in extraneous signage. To be truthful, we had encountered road construction for a 20 or 30 mile stretch and I will give them the benefit of the doubt about not having signs at the intersection where I’d made the wrong turn. It was a dark and overcast evening and I had to choose left or right. I chose wrong and it was another thirty miles down the road before my error became evident. But aside from 90 minutes lost, it wasn’t a big deal, we just had a later than planned leg of the trip and we rolled into the campground much closer to midnight than I had planned.

The next stop was Canada. I had never gone outside the United States and I’d never been west of Texas before beginning this trip so we were always entering new territory or doing something new as the adventure progressed. We’d crossed the continental divide the day prior and could actually see what it meant as far as the geography of the mountains and how the rivers all drain away from the divide east and west. Eastern Oregon’s desert was also one of the first times I’d encountered large scale farm irrigation and we all were wonderstruck with the technology and the circular layout of the irrigated fields. The border crossing into Canada was fast and uneventful. This had been one of my concerns as never having lived or traveled to the border, I was unsure exactly how things would transpire. But a quick check of my military ID and orders for travel and we were waived through. There were no grand differences having crossed the border but there were several nuances to adjust to we encountered. Metric conversion was evident with kilometers instead of miles and seeing the majority of things in both English and French was a bit different. One thing that was evident was the Canadian penchant for ending a phrase with “You know what I mean, eh?” I’d always thought that was just a Bob and Doug McKenzie joke from the SCTV skit “Great White North”, but there apparently was a lot of truth to that gag. Exchanging money was also a first for me, and the colorful Canadian currency almost seemed like play money. Especially the two and three dollar notes. We camped at a campground near Merritt, BC and the fact that we were going north was becoming evident as we needed more and more blankets to stay warm at night. One lesson we learned was that a foam mattress was a much better idea than the air mattress we used as the air mattress didn’t keep us warm. Live and learn.

Our second day in Canada marked our entrance to the ALCAN highway. We travelled up the highway from Merritt to Dawson Creek where the ALCAN originates. Historical note: The ALCAN was built by the US Army Corps of Engineers in 1942 to provide land road access to Alaska during World War II. In 1985, all but about 150 miles of the ALCAN were paved. The 150 segments were gravel but just because they were “unpaved” didn’t mean that they were not well maintained. In many aspects, some of the gravel segments were nicer that the paved ones, and a lot smoother. As we travelled further and further north in British Columbia, we could tell that we were in the wilderness. The farthest stretch we traveled without seeing anything man made aside from the road was 70 miles and for a boy from the suburbs that was an eerie feeling. The one thing I can say for sure is that isolation is not for me. Travelling the length of the ALCAN (1700 miles in 1985) I tried to be prepared for anything. I had three spare tires on rims, fan belts, oil, antifreeze and three weeks of food and water for four. First aid kits, medicine, bandages and more. Still I was unsure and I felt a bit of relief each time we returned to a small patch of civilization. The further north you go, the friendlier people were, the more primitive things became and the menu options at restaurants were fewer. One place we stopped to get gas and have the truck checked out for an unusual noise advertised a bathroom with real plumbing. It was a heated outhouse with very leaky pipes and it just barely qualified, but that was rural Canada.

The first full day on the ALCAN seemed to go on forever and ever. The miles were passing by and we saw fewer and fewer vehicles and more wildlife. We were checking off an informal list of animals we sighted on the trip. Beavers, moose, black bears, deer, elk and Dall Sheep. Also known as “Tinhorn Sheep”, they are the northernmost of the sheep breeds. There was a large rock outcropping and we spotted 30 or more of these sheep at the base of the rocks 50 to 100 feet from the road. We stopped and Anna rolled down her window to take some photos as one Ram walked closer to the truck. They had no fear of humans and were curious about us. Anna was fast taking photos with a 110 camera when this Ram stuck his head into the cab and she about climbs on top of me to get away from him. I slowly let the truck roll forward and he backed out of the cab, and she quickly rolled the window back up. That Ram had the most intriguing eyes. So back on the road and further north and edging westward the day continued. Finally, feeling pretty weary, I asked if we could stop for the night, but Anna wanted to drive until sundown. I pointed out we were nearing the Arctic Circle and it was 2 AM and the sun hadn’t set yet when she said OK and we stopped at Fort Nelson, BC. The previous night we’d camped at Summit Lake, BC. We’d chosen that campground because it was full service and had showers. Like many things in Canada, we learned the hard way that even luxuries like showers were often less that optimal. These were coin operated and at least in the ladies’ room, the water heater was subpar. Fort Nelson we opted for a real room and real showers and gladly paid the room rent without a second thought. Armed with a warm shower and a full belly at the local restaurant, we left British Columbia the next day and headed into the Yukon Territory.