On Sun, 7 Mar 2004 08:01:57 -0800, Jim Baker wrote:

Here's a thread within the thread that you may just be ill informed about
Art, since it's been 50+ years since you've been in the military. There's
no "volunteering" to go to war in the USAF. You go where your unit is
ordered to go. As a pilot, there's almost no chance to cross train into an
aircraft that is flying in a war from one that is not. Take this for the
truth it is from someone who served 20 years on active duty and missed DS
because his aircraft wasn't involved. There was no where I could go to
volunteer, no form I could fill out, to get into that war. Now, if the war
goes on for 5-6 years, you might have a chance...but we've not had one of
those in 30+ years, much longer than the normal AF career. So reevaluate
your thoughts on this concept you have that only slackers/cowards don't get
into a war...it's incorrect for 30+ years for all instances other than wars
lasting many years.

I was stationed at Clark AB in the PI when the Desert Shield deployments
started. I was working a swing one evening when we got a message that our
command (Electronic Security Command) was calling for volunteers in my
career field (Signals Intelligence Analyst).

I was newly married and had a baby but I *really* wanted to be part of what
was going on. I thought about it for awhile and finally told my
Surveillance & Warning Center Supervisor and my Flight Commander that I'd
be talking with my wife that evening but I was sure I would be volunteering
for the deployment. Neither of them had any objections and they both shook
my hand and wished me luck. That night I talked with my wife and she
didn't object.

The next day I came into work early to give myself time to talk to whomever
it was I needed to talk to about getting sent to Saudi. By then our unit
commander had seen the message asking for volunteers, had gotten a slew of
people asking to sign up, and had made a few phone calls. It turned out
that people in my unit were *forbidden* to volunteer for Desert Shield.

Here's what happened: When the Desert Shield deployments first started
there was a lot of talk in the news about how the personnel in Saudi would
be receiving Hostile Fire Pay. This made the Admiral at PACOM a bit upset
since all of his personnel in the Philippines were living under severe
restrictions because of the serious terrorist threat. He reportedly talked
to some Congressmen (that's the story - I don't know if it really happened)
who decided that we in the PI were getting killed off more often than the
people in Saudi Arabia (11 Americans were killed by the New Peoples Army
during my tour there) and that we deserved HFP also.

Once we started getting the money we were technically in a war zone, and
you aren't allowed to deploy from a war zone in one theater (PACOM) to a
war zone in another (CENTCOM).

The United States was building up for a war on the Arabian Peninsula and
those of us stationed in the Philippines were forbidden from playing.

In Art's world I should have done something (anything) like being
cross-trained to a new career field to get to the war. In the real world
my AFSC was critically manned so none of us were allowed to cross-train.
Desert Storm came and I had to sit that one out.

-Jeff B.
yeff at erols dot com