On Service

Duty briefs at an air station are not exciting things. I’d been to hundreds of them. A dozen or so of us, pilots and aircrew for both a C-130 Hercules and H-60 Jayhawk feigned interest in the early afternoon as the Duty Officer recapped the previous 24 hours of activity at the unit and reviewed the flight schedule for the next watch. In the world of search and rescue, there is no plan without first a problem, so trying to ‘plan’ out our next 24 hours was a quixotic endeavor until someone somewhere was actually in trouble.

At that moment things were quiet, no boats in distress, no unlucky sailors lost in the North Atlantic, but something caught my attention. My crew was headed out on a training flight that evening and the comments section noted that it was Joe’s last SAR duty before his upcoming retirement. The rest of my guys caught wind of this frustration as I half-smiled, kicked at the carpet, and grumbled, “We’re screwed.” After 20-plus years, it was now in vogue to be a little jaded and I played the part well. My copilot Joe laughed as well, and we traded a few words about the jinx that had been cast upon us. We would, in all certainty, now be launched on a SAR case, at an inopportune time, and most definitely into questionable weather. Damn the schedulers, I thought.

We had an uneventful flight that evening, and to my surprise, our pagers sat silent by our crappy beds throughout the night. Early the following morning, I rolled up my sleeping bag and walked out of the crew berthing to finish up the last half of my duty. The organization’s headquarters in Washington D.C. is a swanky campus, but most Coast Guard facilities suck. Having been at air stations for most of my career, I had long ago grown accustomed to the faucets’ brownish water, the broken HVAC, clogged toilets, and the old mattresses likely sourced from a defunct Turkish prison. And so, with a stiff back and familiar grogginess, I stepped out into the early morning and got on with another day. Having deferred my own retirement for a few more months, I wondered sometimes on mornings like these why I was still doing this job.

A second training flight followed that morning, also to an uneventful landing, and as the afternoon wore on, we were all within a few hours of heading home. There had been a time in my career when I longed for a launch every time I was on duty. During my first assignment, I would stare at the SAR alarm and literally dare the damn thing to go off. In my 20s, I was an ornery matador flagging an angry bull with a bright red cape. No case was too far, no thunderstorm too intense. Now on my fourth assignment, 15 years into flying C-130s, and in my early 40s, I just wanted to go home and walk my dog.

Go figure, the alarm went off about an hour before we were due to be relieved. Joe and I met in the parking lot, laughing out loud as we hustled over to the command center. The H-60 crew’s pagers also went off, which normally meant a long-range medevac. Sure enough, there was a British ship several hundred miles off the coast of North Carolina with a sailor in deteriorating health. The helo crews were all big boys and girls; they could handle most missions on their own. But when a case stretched more than 100 or so miles offshore, we’d escort them in the Herc to provide better communications, some extra search capability, and some top cover in the event things got weird.

I’d flown this same profile dozens of times. In the Herc, we took off first and got into a loose orbit over the airfield while the H-60 crew added every drop of gas they could squeeze into their tanks and loaded extra medical gear. My crew was busy prepping gear in the back, powering up our onboard radar, dialing in the FLIR camera, and double-checking the aircraft’s suite of long-range radios. In the world of SAR, experience matters and for this case, both the C-130 and H-60 had solid crews, all of us with a few rodeos under our belts. In the H-60, two Aviation Survival Technicians, aka ‘swimmers,’ both experienced emergency medical technicians, came along instead of the usual one. Swimmers are like cold beer, two is always more fun than one and the added muscle might make or break the case. Minutes passed, the helo was airborne, both our aircraft turned and pointed east, and I settled into my seat confident that whatever lay ahead, we’d handle it.

An uneventful hour or two later, now over the open Atlantic, we sped ahead of the H-60, found the ship, and confirmed some details about the sailor’s condition. He wasn’t as critical as we’d initially been told, but was having a bad day and needed a hospital. The H-60, crewed by two pilots, one flight mechanic, and the two swimmers, arrived on-scene and put an ad-hoc plan together for the hoist. Conditions weren’t bad, but they weren’t good either. We orbited 1,000 feet above while the helo moved into a low hover. Daylight had faded, the seas and winds made for a rough ride, and each minute on-scene translated to less JP-8 in all of our tanks. There’s a saying that when you get in the end zone, professionals act like they’ve been there before. And that’s exactly what those rotorheads did.

With the sailor and an additional passenger from the ship onboard the helo, we pointed west into a stiff wind and asked the H-60 how much gas they had left. Sometimes the answer wasn’t good. For a C-130, it was less of a concern, but running several hundred miles offshore in a helicopter always necessitated some precise fuel planning. On that night, they had some gas to spare, and the sailor remained stable for the trip back. Easy day. Crossing over the Outer Banks an hour or two later, we peeled off from the helo and made our way back to the air station. The H-60 was headed to the local hospital landing pad, where they’d offload the two crewmembers then return to the air station.

It was now evening, cold in the early spring, windy, and raining. Coast Guard weather to be sure, and the perfect time to toast to Joe’s good fortune. Not ten minutes later, and just as their rotors stopped turning, me, Joe and a few guys from my crew were tossing a handful of Budweisers around as the H-60 guys unbuckled their helmets and slipped their drysuits down around their waists. The Coast Guard generally frowns upon anything alcohol-related and I got some nervous looks back as we huddled up beside the helo. Being the senior man, I cracked mine open and took a long sip—more of a gulp, the kind that a physician, or man of the cloth, or commanding officer, would probably frown upon.

On that night the ramp was quiet. No one was going to come tell us we did a good job. And we didn’t care. Standing in a loose circle, amid the wind, the rain, and the cold, beers in hand, trading smiles and joking, we were each quietly relieved to be back on the ground. Not a difficult case, but not an easy one either. Just another long day. Everyone was tired and each of us had a home to get back to, some to a frustrated wife, others to an impatient girlfriend only now beginning to understand the downside to dating a man in a flight suit (the upside being that we’re all dapper, charming, and wildly good looking). Yet we stood there and talked for a few minutes more, each of us silently cherishing the bond that none of us dared speak about openly because we’d be ruthlessly made fun of for it.

In an age of military ‘influencers’ with crisp uniforms making stupid Tik-Tok dances and mandates from the higher-ups for G-rated Facebook posts to increase community engagement, we had exactly nothing to offer. We were dirty, sweaty, tired, and drinking in the shadow of a Coast Guard aircraft. I’m sure the District’s Public Affairs officer (probably asleep in their bed) was disappointed by the lack of social media ‘content’ we generated from that SAR case.

But for those few precious minutes, we were each Roosevelt’s man in the arena, together in the rain for a moment in time as Shakespeare’s happy few, and with an empty beer in each of our hands under the rotorblades of a military aircraft, we took great pleasure in being the clean and shiny Coast Guard’s persona non grata. We were the ones that got the job done and that suited each of us just fine. Standing there, reflecting on my own retirement a few months away, I felt that each of us had done exactly what we wanted that night. If we hadn’t gone, someone else would have had to. Better us than them. And if not tomorrow, the following days’ crew would find themselves doing much the same. The air station would go on to fly hundreds more cases that year, many of them far more challenging than ours that evening. But in the moment, we each felt part of something bigger than ourselves, and that, for me, had been the whole goddamned point of joining the military in the first place.

Half a year later, and retired myself, I was out at dinner with my parents and some of their friends. A very nice older woman across the table asked me if I missed being in the military. The tactful response would have been to reply that I miss it every day and how I’d go back and do it again in a heartbeat. That would have been a nice Hallmark moment for everyone, but I’m not tactful. “No,” I replied, “I don’t miss it.” The table grew silent as several folks seated there were distinguished veterans themselves. I continued, “It was hard work. I was lucky to be a part of it, but I don’t miss it.” The conversation pivoted and thankfully never circled back to my uncouth thoughts on military service.

It’s been a little over a year since retiring and I’ve found myself increasingly introspective. That is partly due to finally having enough time to sit on my deck and think for a bit. Many of my friends, guys I spent a lot of time with over the years, have commented how they miss the friendships and the camaraderie. These are all fair comments, and I’ve wondered now for some time if my feelings would change. But they have not. I remember it all well, but I don’t miss it.

I’m incredibly appreciative of what I was able to be a part of. But I don’t want to go and do it again. It really was hard work. And it was hard work because I did my job. That will take a toll on anyone. I don’t see much these days on my phone or on the television that captures that. I just keep seeing recruiters choreographing dances with trending songs in the background, and the dweebs at headquarters liking and sharing those videos with the misguided thought that they’re promoting what it means to be in the military. And then I think back to standing in the rain on a cold night, drinking a beer with a bunch of a professionals that didn’t need likes or reposts or a pat on the back to validate their service. We shared something unspoken, something earned, something that is never given. I’m on the sidelines nowadays, but I take comfort in the thought that there’s still a few out there who know the prize is simply being the one that steps up when the alarm goes off.

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