Earning My Wings: From Crew Chief to Combat Search and Rescue

Nothing about daily military life is normal from the outside. When the music plays, everything on base stops. The roar of jets down the flight line, forcing two people to talk intermittently, becomes normal. Life in the military is normal as it gets because it's all routine. When you’re in the life, you are normal, and the outside world becomes the exception, becoming slightly more alien with every passing day.

Everything is about the regulations and routines, and when you master the ability to follow those two concepts, the military is easy. Salute smartly and press on with the next objective. After a long day’s work on the flight line, you rinse and repeat the routine. Until you put bombs on foreheads, every day is about training for that moment when you get to push the button or pull the trigger. An instructor once said that until you deploy, you never get to do your job. It’s all just training until the day you walk down the ramp of the troop transport in a country where the task at hand is war.

Looking back on my time spent as a crew chief working long, hot days on the flight line, I know it was all worth it. The fighter crew chief role is hands-on and part of a larger ground crew, ensuring the fighter jet is ready and the pilot gets off the ground to do America’s work. Crew chief life really was a blast. We always carried on with the motto, “Work hard, play harder." On the weekends, you could quickly locate a group of crew chiefs at the bar passing out shots and talking about which pilot broke their aircraft that week. God love the pilots, but when they broke our aircraft, their day was over, and ours was kicking off.

It is easy to imagine, no matter the job in the Air Force, that when you work with a group of men and women, friendships are bonds that last forever. Your first duty station is where you start forming new bonds that will become your brothers and sisters. 

I was a few years into my military service when I started to focus on the future. How would I make it better for myself? I never blamed my mom for how hard she worked and suffered to provide for us. It wasn’t until later that I said thank you for always working hard and never giving up. The greatest lesson I learned from my mom was to never quit.

The Air Force got me started on my path. It was up to me to determine how far down the road I was willing to go. When I look at my path today, I don't envision an end. When I look at the way before me, I see the opportunity to go as far as my willingness will take me. There is a difference between saying you can do anything and truly believing you can do anything. The difference is the execution of the latter; ask yourself what you are going to do today to make a difference in your path tomorrow. That is the question I ask myself every day.

As much as I loved being a crew chief roaming the flight line with my buddies, I knew in my heart I wanted to be more, to do more in the Air Force. I wanted to make a difference. What I found was Combat Search and Rescue. The more I read and talked to the few people on a fighter base who knew the Air Force had helicopters, the more I wanted it. I pulled the trigger, so to speak, to execute my next Air Force chapter. Merely clicking the mouse saying you want to be a flight engineer doesn’t mean crap. They still have to want you, and more tests, physicals, and schools wash people out of the program at every step to graduation. A fully qualified enlisted aviator in the Rescue community meant you survived an 80 percent washout rate. As that statistic sinks in, remember, I mentioned at the beginning that I was average at best; it was going to take hard work. I had never been in the top 20 percent of anything in my life to that point.

Earning the right to wear the wings was not an easy road. After almost a year of training in various schools, I knew just enough to be dangerous. By the time I made it to flight school, I had to work harder than most. During the ground course, I failed every test at least once before figuring it out. What feeds one’s motivation is a combination of struggling to get it right and enduring the self-induced fear of getting washed out of the program. During that time, I was in the middle of something exciting and terrifying all at once. Every step of the course is designed to build stress in students to teach them how to handle the stress of combat. What you have to remember about flight school is that every moment in training is dedicated to preparation for a combat situation. In flight school, they can’t shoot at you, but they still build stress into the training to prepare the students for the weight of combat.

It is a good try, but nothing ever really prepares you for the first time you see enemy gunfire flying up at you. It wasn’t about doubting my ability or myself; I desired to be more than the sum of my parts, and that pushed me. Even when I stood before the commander at risk of academic failure, I fought to prove myself. My instructor told me afterward, “There is no doubt you can fly, but you suck when it comes to the book stuff. Get better!” At the time, it was the hardest I had ever worked. I knew from that point nothing would stop me from standing tall with my wings boldly pinned to my chest.

I loved turning wrenches; however, nothing will ever compare to the rush of yanking and banking through the air mere 100 feet above the treetops. Tearing up the gun range, blasting targets with the red glow of the minigun shining in the moonlight. My calling was the ever-changing landscape 100 feet off the deck with the horizon in the distance. There are too few words to describe what the world looks like when you are sitting in the door of a helicopter with your feet dangling in the wind. You experience the pure beauty of the world below as it passes by. Those are the simplest yet most impactful moments in time that leave the most profound impression.