Nighttime on Base: As You Sleep, Many Airmen Are on Duty

While most Airmen sat down for dinner with their families last night, Staff Sgt. Joshua Parrish worked on the fourth A-10 Thunderbolt II of his shift on the flightline at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Ariz.
Elsewhere on base, Staff Sgt. Nathan Claridge and Senior Airman Lucas Tripp began patrolling the Yuma area for the 355th Security Forces Squadron. Meanwhile, at the Brooke Army Medical Center at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, 1st Lt. Crystal Barron watched over babies in the neonatal intensive care unit.
These are just a few of the many Airmen on duty through the night year-round. They patrol base streets, care for the sick and injured, maintain and fly airplanes and work extended hours in deployed locations around the world. Because of their nighttime responsibilities, these Airmen often miss their children’s school events, time with their spouses, eating dinner with their families and other family activities.
“The military never sleeps,” said Master Sgt. Brent Brady, a 55th Maintenance Squadron production superintendent who works the swing shift at Offutt Air Force Base, Neb. “So many people outside the military, and some even in the military, don’t realize it.
“We’re fixing aircraft, changing engines and tires and tons of other maintenance on these planes to keep them ready for their sorties. People on night shifts in the Air Force are constantly working hard. About the only thing we’ll ever see when we leave, while people are sleeping safely in their own beds, are the security forces and gate guards. Other than that, the base is quiet.”
The Davis-Monthan flightline can be lively where Arizona Air National Guard Maj. Windy Hendrick works a 24-hour shift as an F-16 Fighting Falcon pilot on alert several times a month.
“This base is not quiet at night at all,” said Hendrick, an F-16 instructor pilot with the 162nd Fighter Wing at the Tucson International Airport. “The A-10s have a heavy night schedule, so they’re flying often at night. There are HC-130 [Kings] and rescue squadrons based here, not to mention the [Drug Enforcement Administration], and the Border Patrol has helicopters out of Davis-Monthan. The 563rd Rescue Group’s HH-60 [Pave Hawk] Reserve unit is also here, so it’s really busy.
“You’ll have moments of nice, peaceful quiet, interrupted by a complete adrenaline rush.”
The interruption for F-16 pilots at the Davis-Monthan alert facility hits whenever they hear the sound of the klaxon accompanied by a series of flashing lights. When she hears the loud warning horn, Hendrick doesn’t know if it’s for a practice, as it was earlier in the day, or for a real-world emergency until she’s sitting in her jet waiting for the scramble order.
“You can’t go outside the confines of the facility because you have a requirement to take off within a certain amount of time,” Hendrick said. “But it’s just that sort of detachment that is a constant reminder that any second the klaxon could go off, and you could be airborne. As comfortable as it is for us to spend our time here, the facility itself is a reminder of how important it is and the threats that are out there.”
It can get even louder elsewhere on base, at the 358th Aircraft Maintenance Unit, where Parrish is in the middle of his 3 to 11 p.m. shift. The swing shift is normally when the bulk of the unit’s maintenance is done. Every time a jet lands, it undergoes an intake and exhaust inspection, Parrish said.
“It’s loud because you’ve got the engines running,” said Parrish, a dedicated crew chief. “Once it gets quieter out here, that means it’s time for us to go home.”
The maintainers know to be vigilant when working at night. The wind usually gets stronger at night in the Tucson area, so maintainers will see a lot of what they call “Tucson tumbleweeds” – trash bags blowing across the flightline. Anyone working outside at night also has to be conscious of Arizona’s wildlife. They sometimes see scorpions, tarantulas and even black widow and brown recluse spiders. Lighting is also a concern, especially when working inside an A-10 engine.
One difference Airmen in all career fields have in common when working at night is they’re often trusted to make decisions because there isn’t as much supervision as there is during the day.
“On swing shift, they kind of trust you to do your job the right way without having to look over your shoulder,” Parrish said.
While many families watched “Dancing With the Stars,” the NICU was the complete opposite from Parrish’s work environment. The unit, which was at Wilford Hall Medical Center before its recent move to BAMC, was nearly silent as the nurses watched over the babies and the occasional parent sat with his or her child. The average weight for the babies in NICU was 3 pounds, but they had been as small as 15 ounces, Barron said.
“The best way I can explain the day vs. night comparison is it’s a little quieter, which is better for the babies,” she said. “They can get the nocturnal sleep pattern going on when it’s quieter at night and not as busy as it is during the day.”
The NICU nurses face one disadvantage when they rotate to the night shift. The doctors usually make their rounds during the day, so the day shift nurses have opportunities to give their input on the plan for the babies’ care. Nurses on the night shift don’t often have the same chance.
“A big issue is not feeling like I am part of the plan of care for the babies,” she said. “The doctors round in the morning and determine the plan. Most times, [they ask] for nurses’ input. So I don’t get this opportunity at night; doctors during the night don’t want to make changes.”
One of the biggest adjustments Barron has to make when she works through the night is with her own children. She juggles appointments, flight and squadron meetings, her children’s activities and her own sleep during the day after working the previous night.
“It’s like you’re always sleeping to them, even though we’re only working three days one week and four the next,” Barron said about the Panama schedule the hospital uses. “They don’t really get the concept of you’re up all night, so you have to sleep during the day.”
About the time most parents put their children in bed, Hendrick was spending some of her time in the alert facility’s small gymnasium, with its basketball and volleyball courts and full-strength training and aerobics area. She’s a major proponent of the Total Force Fitness for the 21st Century initiative created by Navy Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
“They’re now really starting to understand that our health and wellness is influenced by many different aspects,” Hendrick said. “Obviously, we cannot control some of them. We can’t control the fact that we may have to scramble and launch within minutes from a complete sleep.
“There are things we can control. For instance, not only does exercise and eating right help you stay physically ready, but I also  use mindfulness for helping to reduce stress and focus my attention. What I find is I’m essentially more alert in my sleep. So even though it’s a sound sleep and very restful, I’m able to come out of that sleep a lot quicker, and I’m more ready to take off in the minutes we have available to do that and perform my mission to the best of my ability.”
Last night, as most Airmen slept, Parrish was approaching the end of his swing shift with the 358th AMU, and Claridge and Tripp continued their patrol of the Davis-Monthan streets.
If they get sleepy, the security forces members roll down the windows of their patrol car or drink coffee. Often, it hits them about midnight of their 12-hour shift.
“Night shift is all I’ve ever worked stateside,” Tripp said. “I like it because it’s quieter, and if you do get called to something, it’s actually something you should’ve gotten called for.

“It’s always different. Weekends are obviously busier in housing because people are out barbecuing and drinking. But throughout the rest of the base, there’s really not all that much happening because all of the squadrons and buildings are closed for the most part.”
About 3 a.m., Parrish walks his wife to her car as she leaves for her job, even though he left work about 11 p.m. the night before.
“I’m up at 3 in the morning anyway,” he said. “My wife works from 4 a.m. to noon, so I get to see her about an hour to an hour and a half, then I’m at work. If I was on day shift, I’d be getting home about 3, and we’d be spending the afternoon and night together.”
When morning comes, Airmen on the night shift get their much-needed rest, which they often juggle with mandatory appointments, physical training and family commitments. They do their best to re-charge in time to be ready for their next night on their schedule.
Airmen on nighttime duty miss this time with their families, but know their sacrifices help keep operations on base running safely and smoothly. They leave it in the hands of the day shift and return home to rest so they will be ready for the next night.

Remember the Titan II

The moment Yvonne Morris stepped through the Titan II missile launch complex access portal, a scent from the past assaulted her senses. Some people associate air raid sirens and Emergency Broadcast System messages with their memories from the Cold War era. For Morris, it’s the aroma of sausage and eggs mingled with hydraulic fluid and stale cigarette smoke.
   Fourteen years passed between the deactivation of the missile sites and Morris’ return to the Launch Complex 571-7 control room, now a part of the Titan Missile Museum 25 miles south of Tucson in Sahuarita, Ariz. The bunker looked, and smelled, like Morris remembered. The big difference now is the noise level. It is considerably quieter than when the constant humming of equipment surrounded her when she served as a missile crew commander at sites near Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Ariz.
When the 390th Strategic Missile Wing deactivated its 18 Titan II missiles between 1982 and 1984, Morris had no plans to visit another missile site. Then she visited the museum with her uncle in 1998. She soon began giving tours as a docent and became the museum’s executive director six years later. Looking back, Morris is amazed at the responsibility she faced right out of college.
“When you’re young, you’re thinking, ‘I can do anything. I’m bulletproof. I can do this,’” Morris said. “Then you get so busy doing it, you really don’t have time to think you’re in charge of a $40 million nuclear weapon system.
"This was a job with the highest potential consequences for a mistake, but the Air Force was good at helping you either develop the maturity you needed or get you out of the system," she said." You either had to step up and perform as required, or get moved out of the program.
"It never occurred to me that I might not have what I needed to do the job.," she continued. "In retrospect, 25 years later, I’m now thinking, when I was 23, I had the most important job I’ll ever have in my entire life.”
In an era of “peace by deterrence” and “mutually assured destruction,” the Titan II held the largest warhead on an American ICBM. The 103-foot intercontinental ballistic missile could be launched in less than a minute from its hardened, underground silo 150 feet beneath the southern Arizona desert and reach its target 6,000 miles away in 30 minutes.
But it was more than a formidable weapon in the arms race against the Soviet Union; Titan II boosted all 10 manned Gemini space capsules into orbit in 1965 and 1966 and also lifted astronaut Edward H. White II when he became the first American to complete a spacewalk.
Beginning in 1963, the Air Force deployed 54 Titan II missiles in groups of 18 at three bases in Arizona, Arkansas and Kansas. All 54 Titans were on alert by the end of the year. Each site consisted of a missile silo, launch control facility and access portal, manned at all times by a four-person missile combat crew.
The Arizona Aerospace Foundation operates the Titan Missile Museum which opened in 1986. On display in the museum’s silo is N-10, which was the missile used to train everyone who worked on the Titan II program at Sheppard Air Force Base, Texas. The museum’s missile site is one of two ICBM sites worldwide open to the general public and the only remaining Titan II launch control complex. The site retained all ground command and control facilities above and below ground, including the seven-story missile and silo. Titan II’s 760-ton silo closure door, which protected the missile from a nuclear hit nearby, remains permanently half-open.
Like Morris, retired Air Force Lt. Col. Dwight Mears finds his surroundings inside the museum’s launch control facility familiar. Colonel Mears was also a missile combat crew commander, although his duty was at McConnell Air Force Base, Kan., and took place a decade before Morris’ missile duty in the 1970s. McConnell’s missiles became operational on Dec. 12, 1963, 20 days after President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Mears became a docent at the museum in 2003 after he retired from the military and a second career in computer security. He leads tours through the museum four or five times a month.
“When I retired, I always thought about what I needed to do to give back,” Mears said. “There are a lot of different things people are suited for. I think I’m best suited to help to tell the story of the Cold War.”
In Mears’ day, missile crews pulled six to nine alerts a month. Crews at the Kansas sites also had to deal with harsh weather, which sometimes stretched 24-hour alerts into 30 hours, and in a few cases, several days. The crewmembers were conscious of the grave responsibility of their job, but tried not to dwell on the possibilities of nuclear war.
“We knew what we were dealing with,” Mears said. “We felt a conflict would never occur, but we trained for that eventuality, thinking that if it did, it would be very quick.
"One side or the other would have to be extremely desperate to launch into something that they would lose everything in, as they would in the conduct of a nuclear war," he said." So, I think most of us were confident that it would never happen. The only thing we thought that could’ve happened was somebody on one side making an error. While I believed we’d never go to war, there was always the possibility.”
The Cold War continued into the 1980s, when Morris served as missile combat crew commander after she was selected to be among the first group of women recruited for Titan II command duty. Morris, an ROTC cadet at the University of Virginia, was selected in 1978. She graduated from missile launch officer training in 1981.
She said she relied on her humor and the fast pace to keep her mind from dwelling on the grim possibilities of the job, along with the weight of responsibility placed on her young shoulders.
“You had to walk a fine line by allowing the sense of responsibility to motivate you without getting so mired in it that it paralyzed you,” Morris said. “I think the Air Force was really clever in the way they handled it. There was as much human engineering that went into the design of the missile sites as there was physical engineering.
"They kept you so busy and focused on what was in front of you that there wasn’t time to dwell on the repercussions in case you had to do the one thing you were ultimately responsible for — launching a missile," she said. "The only down time was a long stretch between 11 p.m. and 4 a.m. The rest of the time, you’re training and drilling. If you’re focused on that, you’re not thinking about Armageddon.”
The quarters, which Morris and her crew called “Motel 2,” consisted of barracks-style bunk beds and a bathroom that offered a sink, shower and toilet. Motel 2 also had a small kitchen with a refrigerator, microwave, stove and toaster.
In addition to her duties as the museum’ s executive director, Morris is working on a book about the Titan II and Cold War that she has given the working title, “Missiles in the Backyard, Bomb Shelters in the Basement.”
For years after leaving that part of her life behind, Morris thought, like many crewmembers: “If I never see another missile site, it will be too soon.” Now, one Tuesday a month, Morris takes museum visitors through the site and tries to get them to see, hear and even smell some of what missile crews experienced while they were on alert during the height of the Cold War.
“After I moved back to Tucson in 1985, I knew the museum was there, but I felt no desire to visit,” she said. “It held no nostalgia for me. It wasn’t because I didn’t believe in the mission or the need for the missiles. But that was a very stressful time in my life.
"The demands placed on missile crews were very intense and the performance standards and consequences for even small mistakes were so high, we were constantly under unbelievable stress to perform,” she explained.
Part of the stress crewmembers faced was the acceptance that if there was an attack, they didn’t expect to survive. Each missile site was stocked with 30 days of food and water and a diesel generator for emergency power. But crews knew that a missile strike from either side would likely result in attacks on all missile sites.
“Realistically speaking, 30 minutes after an incoming missile launch is detected, every missile site is going to be a smoking hole,” Morris said. “That didn’t bother me very much because I’d read too much apocalyptic fiction, so I didn’t have a lot of hope about what a post-apocalyptic world would be like. Our expectation, or what we hoped for, was we’d live long enough to launch our missiles.”
Now, her mission, along with the museum, is to give visitors what she calls “a snapshot” of what it was like for a crew on alert.
Former missile combat crew commanders are available as tour guides each Tuesday. The museum also offers tours by night with its “Moonlight MADness (Mutual Assurance Destruction)” tours. Children can learn how to build and fly balloon rockets on Science Saturdays. And for $1,000, you can spend a night in crew quarters and turn the key in the control room. All of it is designed, not to advocate for either side in the nuclear weapons debate, but to make the museum more accessible to a wider audience and allow visitors to see and touch history.
“Interpreting the role of nuclear weapons in our nation’s history is probably one of the most sensitive and polarizing issues from the Cold War,” Morris said. “Everyone has very strong feelings about the development and potential use of nuclear weapons, but not everyone has a frame of reference.
"What we hope people take away from their visit to the museum is a frame of reference they can use in the future to make their own decision of where they think the United States should go with its nuclear policy," he said. "The museum doesn’t take a position pro or con on the development of nuclear weapons. We try to show people the genie’s out of the bottle, regarding nuclear weapons, and here’s what happened because of it: crews had to be on alert at these sites.”
Years have passed since Colonel Mears or Mears had to be on 24-hour alerts in a missile launch control facility. The memories remain, much like the scent of breakfast and hydraulic fluid. During each tour they give, Mears and Morris take on their newest responsibility in the launch control center, to share some of the memories of their days on alert and teach the role the Titan II played in a peaceful conclusion to the Cold War.
 “Former crewmembers here are treated like rock stars,” Morris said. “If I’m ever having a bad day, all I have to do is go to the museum and let it slip that I was a crewmember.”

Once An Airman, Always An Airman Some Airmen May Retire but They Find Ways to Serve

Retired Brig. Gen. Keith B. Connolly flew more than 170 combat missions as a Vietnam War-era pilot. He found a different mission after retiring from his 34-year Air Force career--meeting the needs of fellow veterans and their families in the Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Ariz., retiree community. The general attacks his new mission with the same relish he had as both a pilot and commander.

"The bottom line is I love it for the same reason we get volunteers," he said. "People love the Air Force and they want to give something back. It amazes me, but it's also the reason I'm doing what I'm doing. We've had to move five times before we got our own building, but now we have a place where we can bring people in and tell them this is our home and this is what we can do for you."

Air Force retiree activities offices work as a liaison between the active-duty elements on base and the retiree communities. They provide retirees with information and services, as well as a volunteer resource for the base. During the 20 years General Connolly has directed the Retired Activities Office at the base in Tucson, he's seen the RAO progress from one desk in one room to a building dedicated solely to retiree activities. Before he retired in July 1990, General Connolly was the 5th Air Force vice commander at Yokota Air Base, Japan. He also commanded the 313th Air Division at Kadena Air Base and was the Pacific Air Forces inspector general. After his retirement in 1990, General Connolly began serving the Davis-Monthan retiree community. In 2000, he added Arizona and New Mexico into his service area as the Air Force Retiree Council representative.

Like many other veterans who find ways to give back to their service in retirement, General Connolly has the philosophy of "Once an Airman, Always an Airman." Although RAO also has volunteers who are both Army and Marine Corps veterans, the staff members share the general's philosophy.

One RAO volunteer is likely the first person veterans see when they visit the office or the voice they hear on the telephone. Thirty-four years after he retired as commander of the 355th Wing, retired Col. Bill Hosmer is back at Davis-Monthan as an RAO volunteer. Like the general, Colonel Hosmer finds his new mission as satisfying as his active-duty career.

"When you're a commander, the people are so important, and this is still dealing with people," Colonel Hosmer said. "You have to be able to deal with people who need help and people who can give help and how to get them together and on the right frequency. I'm doing the same thing now, except it's more on an eyeball-to-eyeball level, and not as an authoritative figure.

"Our philosophy is to never say I don't know," Colonel Hosmer said. "I tell them to give me their phone number and I'll get the answer to them before I leave today. My goal is to get them the answer they need."

To demonstrate the reason for the RAO, Connolly tells a story that received considerable negative publicity in the Tucson media. An Air Force widow tried to get information on her entitlements after the death of her husband, but was unable to get any answers or suggestions to point her in the right direction to get the support she needed.

"If you hear just one of these stories, then you know why we're here," Connolly said. "Our retirees deserve more than what we've been giving them. We take care of the retirees and try to make sure they get all of their entitlements. The unfortunate thing is you get nothing if you're not aware of entitlements or don't apply for them. That's a shame because there are a lot of veterans out there who are in need and entitled to a lot of things, but haven't applied for them."

Almost 150 volunteers work out of Davis-Monthan's RAO weekly, with the average volunteer putting in an average of more than 20 hours a week. They work in a variety of places on base, including the hospital, pharmacy and security forces visitor center.

"That's really important on this base because of deployments," General Connolly said. "The (A-10 Thunderbolt II and C-130 Hercules) are gone all of the time, so we really have a fast beat here. There's a real need for volunteers. We've very fortunate here because success tends to breed success. When somebody is happy as a volunteer, they'll get a friend involved and get them to volunteer."

One of the biggest challenges involves placing the right volunteer in the right job. RAO volunteers work in positions ranging from filling prescriptions at the base pharmacy to visitors, passes at the front gate. RAO staff members check backgrounds of volunteers and make sure they're putting them in a position that fits both their own personalities and their responsibilities.

"Not everyone can do each one of the normal jobs the Air Force needs us to do," General Connolly said. "It takes a special person to help people get passes to the base at the front gate. You have to have a special kind of personality to be in that job. We don't just have people answering telephones. We have people working with computers and in technical fields because the Air Force is stretched so thin with the number of deployments we have here. I can't just put someone in a particular job without knowing a little bit about that person. The bottom line is we try to get the right volunteer for the right job."

RAO volunteers inform veterans and families on military benefits, Reservist retirement benefit, retirement pay and Veterans Affairs burial benefits for retirees. The office also has someone to help with tax returns and estate planning.

Skip Barkley retired from the Army and has been the RAO's Voluntary Income Tax Assistance on-site coordinator since 2001. VITA uses retiree volunteers to help elderly, disabled, limited English-speaking and Native American taxpayers, but the RAO can provide tax assistance for all active and retired military members. Almost 30 RAO tax preparers electronically submit 3,000 federal returns and 3,000 state returns through the office's VITA program annually. All volunteers are certified and tested annually by the IRS, Barkley said.

Barkley explained VITA began with a retiree who convinced the SJA Agency that he could start a program using strictly retirees and would serve not only retirees, but also the military community.

"The two things that make us unique are we are all retirees, therefore we have a high level of expertise because we have continuity," Barkley said. "Secondly, we're capable of preparing returns for all states in the union that tax military or civilian taxpayers. There's probably no better reward than sitting back and looking at a young lady or young man and realizing that they can have confidence in these people to file a competent return and get the best value in their return. We get them the maximum amount of money back."

Controlling rumors and getting facts to retirees is another aspect of the RAO mission. The most persistent rumors recently concerned the health care bill, with many questions from veterans worried about losing their medical benefits.

"I insist that we get them the factual word and not the rumor because there are already too many rumors out there and they really impact some of our senior citizens," General Connolly said. "You can't imagine what it's like for a widow living on the margin, with just Social Security and maybe a small retirement. She's already having to make choices between paying for her medication or her rent, and then she hears something might be taken from her. Even if it's just a threat, it's not a pleasant thing to go through. It's really an unfortunate set of circumstances because our people deserve better. They've given more, so they deserve more, and hopefully, that's what our office is all about."

When Derick Rogers retired as a master sergeant from the Army after more than 21 years on active duty, he found completing VA claims forms difficult. His job now as a benefits counselor for the state of Arizona is to help fellow veterans with the process of making their own claims and understanding their federal and state benefits. He spent much of his Army career as a communications engineer, but is proud of his new mission as a retiree, especially in serving the veteran as an advocate with the VA.

"Coming from dealing with antennas and radios in the field to sitting down on the counseling side of the house was really different," Rogers said. "But it's a great feeling because, as veterans, we've made a lot of sacrifices and the military is a serious wear and tear on your body. So when a veteran comes in here and I can help him or her receive educational, medical or financial benefits, it's a good feeling because I know I didn't have anyone there to help me. They know I can empathize with them. One of the first things I tell them is I'm a military veteran as well as a retiree, so I've gone through all of these processes you guys are going through. I have a little bit more insight and personal interest, as opposed to someone who's never been in the military."

Unlike Army retiree activities staff members, the Air Force program is completely unpaid.

"The good news is you get all of the overtime you want," General Connolly said. "That's what's kept me in it for so many years."

Whether the volunteer greets people at the door or helps retirees complete tax returns, the philosophy is the same--to answer questions and help veterans and their families receive what they're entitled. They often share a bond with the people they're helping because they served in the same military and have already been through the process of retirement.

"The biggest thing to me is we add the personal touch to it," Rogers said. "We build a rapport with everyone we deal with. Even though I have hundreds and hundreds of clients, as soon as they walk out that door, I remember the face and I remember their story. I'm able to help them even more because we have a personal relationship."