This four-part speech, delivered by Commandant of Cadets - Brigadier General Mark Welsh - August 26, 1999 was sent to me with the following words:
"I am retired Air Force, so I occassionally receive items like this one from old Air Force friends. I think General Welsh comes close to capturing the essence of military service (in all its dimensions) within this one speech.
I hope you can find 10 minutes to read it. I know you'll be glad you did."
BG Welsh is the new Commandant of Cadets at the United States Air Force Academy (USAFA), and this is a transcribed speech he made to the cadets. He says quite a few things that make you think.
... over the years I've been asked to talk about Desert Storm and not long ago I was asked to give a presentation on my personal lessons learned from my experiences in combat.
Well, to put this list together I sat down -- I spent about an hour and a half making this list and I kept thinking and thinking and thinking... What can I put on there? Great lessons I learned I wanted to pass onto future generations and when I finished I had about 15 items, just items about that long, and I realized that none of them were lessons learned. Not one of them. Every one of them was a person, or an event, or just a feeling I had.
But I have never forgotten, and never will. And that's what I want to talk to you about today.
It's important before I start for you to remember that combat, any kind of combat, is different for everybody. You know aerial combat happens at about a 1000 miles an hour of closure. It's hot fire, cold steel, it's instant death, big destruction, it happens like this and it's over.
Ground combat's not that way as you can imagine. And those of you who've heard infantry soldiers talk about it know it's kinda endless time, and soaking fear, and big noises and darkness. It's a different game. And you need different training to do it, and different types of people to handle it well and to provide leadership in that environment. So it's different. But it doesn't matter how many people you have standing beside you in the trench, or how many people you have flying beside you in the formation -- combat, especially your first combat is an intensely personal experience.
First slide please, Fred.
You don't have to see this picture very well...it's an F-16 parked on a ramp with a helmet on the canopy rail. One week before desert storm the air campaign actually started we were flying missions called taco bell. Because we'd go fly up north up in northern Saudi Arabia and practice dropping simulated bombs at night on targets in the desert to see how well the army was camouflaged themselves against our radar and to see if we could find them so we could all get qualified in that for those of us who didn't do it full-time.
And then we'd all line up and how many airplanes we had, 6 or 8 or 10 F-15's we'd do it at higher altitudes, the air to ground guys would do it at lower altitudes, everyone would push it up to 500 knots at the same time and we'd all run straight for the border. (Laughter).
And we'd take a lift through the signal intelligence gathering platforms and how the Iraqi radars and air defense systems reacted to this. And folks, we'd collect data on this and that's how we helped put together the air campaign plan for the first night of the war.
On this particular night when we were done with our run for the border we hit a poststrike tanker heading back to the base I was staying at which was about an hour and ten minutes south in the United Arab Emirates almost 400 miles away. We got gassed up by the tanker and climbed up to flight level 420 about 42,000 feet plugged into mid-afterburner cause we had a full tank of gas and we could burn it up, put the auto-pilot on and lean back in that 30 degree tilt back seat and just kinda stared at nature.
And it was a gorgeous night. The moon was big and full and directly overhead and I remember thinking I can't believe how bright the desert moon is. And out around the horizon, something I had never seen before and still haven't seen to this day, was a halo. A beautiful, huge white halo that went all the way around the moon. Completely unbroken. I talked to my wingman later and he said he did the same thing I did we just stared that thing all the way home going, ...I can't believe how beautiful this is... It's one of those moments you have flying airplanes. And you don't forget. I'll never forget the halo.
I also won't forget that when I landed that night Major JD Collins my assistant operations officer met me at the bottom of the ladder and said, "boss, we lost an airplane." You can't see the name on the canopy rail but it's Michael Chinberg. Captain Mike Chinberg had joined us only 2 weeks before that in the desert because he'd stayed back in Utah to get married. He and his wife April had been married 2 weeks when he told her that he had to go to the war and join the boys and he headed over to join us, he'd just finished his 3 ride local checkout and he was on his 2nd night ride. We think that somehow Mike got a light on the ground confused with his flight lead's rotating beacon and he tried to rejoin on as he headed for the tanker. Chins hit the ground going 675 miles an hour 60o nose low inverted and full afterburner...he died relaxed.
This [slide] was at his memorial service. 2 days later. I don't think dying relaxed, go back one Fred please... I don't think dying relaxed was good news to his wife April when I called her and told her after we had confirmed he was in that smoking hole. Or to his mom and dad. When I called them and told them. I won't forget those phone calls. And I won't forget sitting here looking at this airplane with the helmet with Chins name on the visor cover, his name on the canopy, and his spare g-suit hanging under the wing with his crew chief saluting the jet while bagpipes, the bagpipe tape of amazing graze played in the background and every fighter pilot on base had these big stupid sunglasses on so nobody would know that they were bawling their eyes out. And I won't forget staring at this airplane thinking, how many more of these are we going to have when the war starts?
Next slide Fred.
The night before the war started the squadron commanders got told by the wing commander that we were kicking it off tomorrow morning. So we gather our squadrons together at about 5 o'clock in the afternoon. We gave most of them the first briefing they've seen, the first real mission that we were going to fly, which we'd preplanned and only a small group had seen it.
And then I did what I thought was a real commanderly thing ...I told em all to go back to their rooms and before I gave them the tail number of the morning, they had to hand a letter to me to their family. And in that letter the game plan was to shed all of the emotional baggage you'd take with you into combat. "I didn't tell my wife this, I didn't hug my daughter, I didn't do this, I didn't call my parents." Because the phones were shut off at this point. And I told them they didn't fly until I got that letter. Which shut em all up for the first time since I'd known them. And they headed out the door and I'm feeling pretty proud of myself and patting myself on the back and my ops officer Lt Col Adams came up to me and said, "what a great idea." And I nodded knowingly and he said, "by the way you can give me a letter before I give you your tail number in the morning."
Now if you haven't had the pleasure of sitting down and thinking about your family, this was mine at the time - it still is, it just changed sizes (laughter). If you haven't tried to tell your children that you're sorry you won't be there to see their next ballet recital or watch them play little league baseball, or high school football, or graduate from college, or meet their future spouse, or get to know your grandkids, or if you hadn't had the pleasure of telling your parents how important they were to you, and trying to do it on a piece of paper at midnight, 9000 miles away from them, or try to tell your spouse how the sun rises and sets in her eyes, then you haven't lived. I'd recommend it. I won't forget writing that letter.
(Tomorrow: Part II of "Next Slide, Fred!")
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Thought for the Day:
"Take up the White Man's burden."
(Rudyard Kipling)