Photo courtesy Erik Nilsen
For many nights this week, I have talked about different lessons I learned through many members of my family. Tonight, I will be talking about my other family – my military family. If you have never been in the military, don’t worry, these are lessons that will hopefully bring a smile to anybody’s face. I spent just under ten years wearing the uniform. While I enjoyed my time, I enjoyed the people even more. I made friends with whom I know I will be friends for the rest of my life. Just the same, sometimes things happened with these brothers and sisters in arms that last for a life time.
The first lesson I learned was to always know where your belongings are and to keep your bags closed. Our job included flying – quite a bit actually. A number of people would say that a bad day flying was better than a good day in the office. I loved being on the plane. Believe it or not, the more turbulence we encountered the more I enjoyed the flight. I can still remember my first flight when we dove and since I was standing, I rose. Our time in the air included air refueling. Now for those who have never had the pleasure of sitting on a plane being refueled at 25,000+ than you are missing out on a fun ride. You need to realize that all of the jet stream for the refueler is going down the sides of our plane. I used to think of it as a Ferris wheel in mid-air. Most flyers did not have a problem with this. New flyers…….well some of them did.
I can remember flying one night. The person next to me had a trainee with him. It was a very bumpy flight. I can remember talking to Jeff over the headsets with his trainee listening in. The bumpier it became, the more we talked about things like sardines, eating things like rotten food, and… well you get the drift. I believe one of us opened up our dinner about that time as well. I loved to bring curry dishes from the local restaurant when I flew. The conversation, the smell of the food, and the rocking of the plane did its job on the newbie. Jeff paid the price.
When we flew, we carried our helmets in a bag. We stored them next to us on the floor. Some people, like Jeff, allowed his bag to do double duty. It carried both his helmet and lunch. In Jeff’s bag was an open bag of chips, a can of soda, and other items. Most people, if they were going to lose their lunch would throw off their headsets and run for the bathroom. I guess Jeff forgot to tell his trainee about this. Before we even knew what was happening, he bent over, 90 degrees, between our seats and reached for the first thing he could find – Jeff’s helmet bag. The next thing you knew, the bag had additional weight.
We quickly zipped the bag until the newbie could take in the bag and dump the contents. In the end, I had to give Jeff a ride home with the bag in tow. We learned that if we were going to do such things to have better control of our own property.
The second lesson was that not good deed goes unpunished – or watch how fast your friends can run. Our job had us staying in Riyadh quite often. When the end of our deployment came, the flight out could not come fast enough. For this particular trip, our departure was late at night. The departing crew was all packed and just waiting for the bus to the air terminal. We were bored.
Our housing was outside of Riyadh in a village that had originally been built for the Bedouins who later decided they didn’t like it. Our people were spread throughout the different villas. I called a couple of them to see what they were doing. Since I lived near the villa were the mini-busses were parked, my friends asked me to come get them. What the heck, why not.
I walked next door and retrieved the keys. I headed off to pick-up my buddy. Along the way, I saw others who were flying out that night. They flagged me down and asked me to swing back by to pick them up. They would grabbed their bags and be outside waiting. I ended up driving around and picking them all up. We headed back to the bus parking area to get the sergeant who would be driving us out to the base.
We pulled up and parked. As we disembarked, the mood was light – we were leaving shortly. The next thing we knew this deep, booming, bass voice came out of nowhere, “Who the hell took this bus?” We turned to see that the MSgt in charge of the busses had come out of his villa. I looked as he stood close to me arms crossed. This man was scary. He worked out. I truly believe that he lived in the gym. His biceps were two of my thighs. “I asked who the HELL took my bus?” I turned to my friends for a little bit of support. Nothing. And by nothing, I do not mean no support, I mean there was nobody next to me. All of my “friends” had vanished in less than a second. So there I stood all by myself hearing in many terms that I will not write here about his rules for the busses. Somehow I felt like all the other people in the world had vanished. That night I learned that when your friends can stay out of trouble – they will.
The final lesson is that jokes can backfire and backfire quickly. At one point, we left the Riyadh area and moved into the desert. We moved into an area with no buildings so tent city became our home. At first this was a cool place to live since we really had a chance to live without all of the rules. However, after the upper officers moved in the rules came back. Every Tuesday seemed to bring a whole new slew of rules. This would have been okay had they made sense, but many of the rules that came down seemed to have been made just because they could.
A few of us led by a gentlemen named Kenny started playing with peoples’ minds. We would work on rules and then talk loudly about them in places like the chow hall. It was amazing to see just how fast the rumors would get around. But, one day it almost came back to bite us.
Our showers were supplied with water by huge bladders outside. Water was trucked in and used to fill these bladders. In the summer, due to the heat, hot showers were common since the black bladders would absorb the heat all day long. Kenny, a couple of others, and I decided to play with shower rules. The idea was that a low ranking airman would be stationed with a clip board inside the shower tent. The clipboard would have one stopwatch for each shower. The airman would time each person and the amount of water used. At ten minutes, the airman would tell you that your shower was done. Each group of tents would have a SSgt just in case an airman needed support. We went through our normal louder than normal talk around the unsuspecting. We could see the whispers.
Then a day or two later, I was driving one of the busses, yes the same bus, out to pick up the crew that was returning. Our lieutenant decided to ride out with me and another SSgt to pick up the crew. On the way out, he started to mention the new rules. He then brought up that at the base commanders meeting, somebody brought up that they had heard the shower rule. Nobody knew anything about it, but then, apparently, thought that it was a good idea and started to discuss its possibilities. Kenny and the rest of us realized that we may have really messed this up. Fortunately in the end, the rule never took. We were allowed to shower as long as needed. We did learn though that one must be cautious when playing with the minds of those who make the rules. We wanted to show them how silly they were, but in the end we almost lost the freedom of long showers.
Someday I will describe the toilets in tent city, but that is another story. Thank you for meandering with me tonight.