Accidents, Incidents, and Beauty
The military life isn't exempt from deadly accidents. It's also unexempt from silly screw-ups by its young people, or from either wanton terror or unexpected beauty, if you know where to look.
Helicopter Accident
Missile convoys were a common sight in the South Dakotan countryside in 1986. Missiles contain hardware always in need of maintenance. Maintaining these beasties required a large organizational footprint at Ellsworth.
Many of these maintenance sorties required more security protection. To keep the security tight, convoys protected these extra-special pieces of equipment. The photo below depicts one such convoy from Minot AFB, in more recent times.
Still, the basic convoy configuration remains the same. A US Marshalls' and convoy commander's vehicles run point. Security vehicles ride before and behind the tractor trailer they protect. Each security vehicle carries a fireteam of four, security specialists. Each security specialist carries either small or medium weaponry. A helicopter, carrying another fireteam, flew overwatch. These were the elite or at least I saw them as such. They had to undergo special flight training. They wore flight suits. They looked sharp. Off from the picture, another fire-team scouted the convoy well ahead of the convoy.
Working on convoys was fun and I was always excited when our Dispatch Center called me to tell me I was to support one. But, on May 26, 1986 I wasn't. Instead, they 'd assigned me to a Camper Team mission, one I was becoming to dread and hate. As usual, we had the change-of-mission guardmount, what we called our musters, in SP parlance. At that time our headquarters were an old truck docking shack near the Pride Hangar.
I saw the entire Bravo Team that morning, my team at the time. Everyone had gathered for their own particular mission brief. I made a mental note of the air fire-team gathering for their own thing.
Later that day I we had settled on a missile site somewhere out in the eastern vastness from the base. We got a call on the landline from our Dispatch. This meant we had to access the noisy underground utility building next to the missile silo. From the call I learned that the overwatch helicopter, which carried our airborne fireteam, had crashed. The crash took place in one of the fields outside Sturgis, near Bear Butte. All hands but two were lost. Three members of our fireteam met their deaths. The one survivor had been thrown away from the still careening helicopter. Her own comrades might have done her this last favor. Doing so ensured her ultimate survival. The others had no time to jump.
I was speechless and I had no words to convey my shock. So, I babbled without coherence for a couple of minutes, remembering the morning. I couldn’t process the event.
"This is real" - it dawned upon me. "We can die, at any moment, anywhere in this business. Any guardmount morning might be my last." I shoved the thought in that part of my memory which I use to store long-term without ever forgetting them.
I would make two helicopter rides. These took place during shift-changes and relief, never while providing convoy security. They ensured I would never forget our tragedy.
Incidents
Incidents were more tragicomical. They usually involved one screwing up. Like the one I got embroiled with at the Kilo 4 launch silo. I loved the Kilo flight area because many of its silos had been built in the Black Hills. Their surrounding terrain was idyllic, covered by pine forests. Wild animals, not cattle, often approached the fence out of curiosity. The missile site in Montana on the more recent picture below bears a strong resemblance to what I saw at Kilo 4 back in the 80’s.
But let’s talk about that fence. The fence I would have a hand in bending at an awkward angle.
A situation with the site's ground alarms required a two-man security team. We would work 12-hour shifts. We'd landed the dayshift.
We'd nothing much to do. To pass the time, my companion and I started driving our Peacekeeper vehicle around the site. Winter was gone, but the dirt embankment around the site was wet, muddy, and slippery. The Peacekeeper being the unwieldly pot that it was, veered toward the fence, hitting a fence pole. The bent also resulted in the cyclone-fence and its crowning barbed-wired to come off the pole.
With my great, vaunted intelligence, I analyzed the situation. I then had the bright suggestion of using the Peacekeeper's left fender corner to catch the bent pole. Driving the Peacekeeper in reverse, I thought we would re-erect the pole. We would leave it to future maintenance crews to come in and retie the wires to the poles. No one would have been the wiser, except...
Except that the Peacekeeper's fender's corner's weld didn't hold. Peacekeepers were also equipped with a winch and hook. They were seldom used because they tended to overheat the Peacekeeper's engine. In this instance, the hook hung from the affected fender corner. The metal corner itself hung in pitiful pendulum motion from the hook and line, just off the ground. The fence pole was in worse bent. We were aghast.
Paperwork and reports followed. Since I was still a rookie, my sergeants limited my discipline to a verbal admonishment. My ranking mate - he was a Senior Airman - received a reprimand. He cleared it from his record soon before he transferred over to Guam. I never saw him again.
I did get to visit Kilo 4 again. The pole still sported the ugly bent we had given it. The periodic maintenance crew limited its fix to reattaching the wires to it.
Beauty
There's no doubt South Dakota is home to the most scenic places and views. The tourist sites are easy to spot, like Mt. Rushmore. Others are happenstance. Many included the weather.
Like that day a powerful storm came from the north and crossed I-90 with our trailer in the way. I'd never seen darker clouds. The wind started howling. We knelt in prayer in the middle our living room. I remembered Papi's stories about his mother kneeling in their homestead, as their house shook during the 1918 earthquake. Here, we were doing the same thing I thought. Kneeling, after one hailstone after another broke every glass window facing the stormfront. We weren't hurt and came off from it with juvenile bravado. Since then, we never looked at dark clouds with trailing dark tails in the same way.
I got to see many a spring thunderstorm rolling into the unending prairies. Their thunderclouds towered under the rolling hills. Huge, "mothership" shelf clouds hung ominously in the sky, their beauty stark. Lightning bolts illuminated its skirts, and we watched for tornadoes. I never got to see one, though.
Another time, it was just a single cloud, discharging a curtain of rain on to the ground. Blown by the slight wind, and the sun right behind me, the little cloud had its own rainbow trailing. One moment, it seemed to stop right in front of the single tree on the hill. The rainbow covered the tree with its ribbons of colors until the cloud passed the tree. The tree returned to its own true colors, its browns browner, and its greens, greener. The passing raincloud bestowing colors also left a trail of wonderment tears on my face.
Other beautiful sights were astronomical. Like the Moon rising very fast behind ancient bluffs in the Alpha flight area. Yellow, full, big it reached the zenith that night, white-blue as ever. Or the night we had Northern Lights. We were driving so I couldn't see them well. All I saw was a milky iridescence on a sky growing cloudy due to upcoming weather.
Yes, I had moments I do detract in my memory but there were others that ranged from terror to religious awe which made me a better man.
Bonus Videos
1986 Music Video Hits.