There's a newly-arrived sergeant in the airframes shop that I knew from my previous unit, a reserve light/attack helo squadron. He's a reservist, so I was quite surprised to see him out here in Okinawa.

My prior unit got reactivated, him among them. But they decided they had too many airframers, and rather than just deactivate him again, he got sent out here to join the 31st MEU. He'd rather be with his home unit, naturally.

They got reactivated to go to Iraq. That's where my prior squadron is right now. I am so jealous I can't stand it. A MEU is normally a one-year cycle, but our CO decided we'd all love it when he volunteered us all for a two-year stint. Two years of sailing around the West Pacific, playing grab-ass with the Koreans, visiting Olongopo City ("The Pimple on Paradise!"), and doing jack-all. The only worthwhile thing we've done was provide four days of medical services to a few small towns in the hinterlands of Cambodia. Four days out of two years.

And meanwhile, my old comrades are in the fight. Again.

People join the Air Force to suck a paycheck from the government teat. People join the Army to get a free college education. People join the Marines to fight. But here I am, posing for photos with South Koreans in front of our helicopters, before doing a pretend amphibious invasion, that we probably couldn't do for real anyway, because so much of our armor has been stripped away for the real fight.

Thanks, Colonel! Thanks for the two years on the USS Stressex!

Meanwhile, the CO is about to move on, there's a new boss on the way. That guy's about to get screwed very hard. After two years on the MEU, our aircraft are in terrible shape. Our programs are a disaster. We're going to get a couple of inspections within two months of finally leaving the MEU, and we all know are going to get shut down for weeks until we can convince the Wing that we are safe to fly. I personally manage a program- last inspection, it got an "outstanding" rating and the inspector complimented me by name in his brief for the general. (My reward for exceptional performance: bupkis.) My program now? It's a disaster. It a direct safety program, and I know for a fact that half the squadron is not in compliance. But that's OK, because I know tool control, ground safety, hazmat, and training programs are all off-track too. We've been so busy doing pointless missions that our aircraft are falling apart, we've done the required weekly training sessions thrice in the last year, and people are getting hurt.

In the last six months (i.e. the time after we normally would have passed off the MEU and gone into reconstitution mode) we've had a rash of aviation mishaps and ground mishaps. As I write these words, the senior flightline mechanic is getting vertebrae fused as a result of a work mishap. The second-senior airframes guy had a nasty multiple compound fracture a week ago, he'll be down for three months until he's done with surgery and casts. And the newest guy in flightline fell twenty feet onto tarmac and was lucky to have only a shattered shoulder. He'll be months recovering too. Aircraft mishaps? We had a CH-53 damage four rotor blades in flight over water, which is as close to death for all four aboard. We had a CH-46 blow out a transmission with a full load of passengers, luckily on final approach to the ship, so the pilot had enough time to slam it onto the deck; before he could complete the emergency shutdown, the rotors seized up. A little further away from the ship and that would have been sixteen dead on water impact, because you can't autorotate without rotating rotors.

The official DoD policy on blogging is that discussion of morale and unit readiness are off-limits. Fuck that. This unit is a disaster about to happen. In a few days I fly on to the ship again. Half the unit is going to fly on, and normally that's where everyone wants to be, because the alternative is two hours on a bus and a wet hour on a LCAC. This time? Hot competition for the busses. Does it tell you anything that the people that fix the aircraft don't want to fly on them?

Posted by: Boviate at 09:03 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Our shop has two people right now that know anything about Hueys and Cobras- me, and Cpl W, the guy that came out with the skid detachment specifically to work on them. Me being here and knowing them is just a convenient bonus.

Some bad news came up, this morning: Cpl W's brother was in a serious car accident. The brother was unconcious, and rushed to the hospital.

Good news is, he woke up, with just a few broken bones and a concussion. Broken bones will heal, and a concussion is nothing to get all excercised about.

I said there was worse news. "Punch in the gut" news. For a patient that has been knocked unconcious from trauma, standard procedure is to get a CAT scan to look for brain hemhorrages or other problems. They found those "other problems".

Cpl W's brother has three brain tumors, at least one of which is malignant. I didn't get the prognosis, but it's bad enough that they're doing brain surgery about 30 hours from now, which is inherently risky and also a bad sign. It'll take 24 hours to fly back Cpl W to the bedside, so that's the schedule we're on. The Red Cross message arrived via fax, and we got him approval for emergency leave in full bore crisis speed: the CO and XO were both out flying, and the CO or XO had to give assent for the leave. They were out of range of our squadron's normal communication radio, which is unsecure anyway. So we had to squack their bird using a communications method that is, shall we say, not normally used. We got the CO's verbal assent, the duty officer signed off the CO's spot on the paperwork "by direction", and Cpl W is going to the airport tomorrow morning. If the duty driver can't take him there, I already volunteered my services, but I suspect our OIC's volunteering overrides mine.

Cpl W's only been here a couple of weeks, and he works nights, so I don't know him all that well. But Marines are family. We squabble and quarrel, but when trouble strikes, it's horns outward. I am literally sick with worry for this guy.

Posted by: Boviate at 05:30 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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