fields were in dire jeopardy, and the president had announced additional call-ups from the Air Reserve forces. The bell had tolled for us less than twenty-four hours ago.
Pocketing his twelve rounds of ball ammunition (the Geneva Convention had outlawed hollow points), he interrupted the conversation.
'This sounds like. .' The talk stopped. Heads turned toward him.
'Like. . Armageddon.'
There weren't many biblical scholars in the room, but there were a lot of believers. A couple of people uttered affirmations.
I was still having trouble believing it was happening. Peace was supposed to be 'breaking out all over,' right? That was the fashionable phrase of the time. I had foolishly said as much myself to a large audience at Calloway High School just a few weeks ago, while awarding an Air Force Academy appointment to a graduate. Now I was hoping no one there remembered the faddish remark.
The call-up was no surprisewe had known for about two weeks that it would be coming. The Pentagon had planned to deploy several divisions of troops to the Persian Gulf area, and we knew, given the current level of airlift capacity, it would take thirty days to move just one division. Obviously, we were indispensable to the unfolding events 7,000 miles away. We all began to tie up the loose ends in our personal lives before the official word came. I had just returned home from a four-day trip with my airline job and called the Guard base right away 'What's going on?' I asked the flight scheduler. 'Do you think we'll be called up?' His answer was immediate and businesslike.
'You were next on my list to call. We're activated. Be here at 0900 tomorrow morning.'
It was five minutes before nine, and the crowd of crew members and support personnel began to flow toward the large theater-style briefing room next door. I walked down the aisle, found the row with my name taped to it, and slipped in beside the men who would be my crew for the next six weeks. I sat down beside First Lieutenant Robert 'Bones' Maloney. He had recently graduated from the University of Southern Mississippi and for the time being was Guard bumming until he could build enough hours to get an airline job. I hardly knew Bones and had never flown with him before.
Next to him was Master Sergeant Brian Wigonton from Haleyville, Alabama. Brian was a veteran jet mechanic from the active Air Force and had checked out as a flight engineer since joining the Guard. I reached across Brian and greeted the other engineer, Technical Sergeant Walt Chapman, the avid hunter from Meridian. Brian was older than Walt, but they complemented each other well and preferred flying together. I was tremendously glad to see them on my crew. Two good engineers would be a great asset and would make life much easier and would maybe even greatly prolong it. Sitting beyond Walt were Sergeants Jack Brown and Mike Gandy, the loadmasters.
In a few minutes Captain Jeff Carter, the first pilot, squeezed by and sat down, completing our crew. He worked hard managing his laundry business in Jackson and was worried about how an extended absence would affect it. There was no one else who could effectively take over.
Being in the Guard had always been a risk to Jeff. If something like this ever happened, he could lose the business that had been handed down in his family for generations. This crisis had to end quickly or he was in trouble.
After some opening remarks in which Lieutenant Colonel Bill Lutz, a lawyer until today, welcomed us to the 'longest UTA in history,' we began our inprocessing. They checked our emergency notification files for currency. They issued us green cards to replace our red identification cards, so that we were indistinguishable from regular Air Force personnel. We filled out forms, registering our families in government military medical programs. They checked our immunization records and medical files. We ragged and bantered with a few unlucky ones who, grimacing, were found delinquent and were pulled aside for shots.
The intell people made us review and initial our SAR cards. The cards were made primarily for fighter pilots, but just in case we crash-landed our behemoth jet in enemy territory and survived, the rescuers needed some way to establish our true identity via radio before coming for us. Bitter lessons were learned in Viet Nam when English- speaking enemy soldiers seized the survival radios of downed airmen and lay in wait for the rescue helicopters. According to plan, the cards would contain questions that the rescuers would ask of us. They were personal questions that we each had listed and would answer by way of survival radio. I don't remember all of the ones I listed. One was 'what color was your first car?' I had listed fire engine red, but that was unacceptable. They said that I would probably not remember it under stressful conditions. I shortened it to just red, and they accepted it.
Then they checked our dog tags. 'Is this all current?' the clerk asked. I looked at them.
Alan H. Cockrell
523-70-3180
20 July 49
Positive
Southern Baptist
'Hey, man, what could have changed?' I asked.
'Well, you could have converted to Islam, maybe. . Get outta here.'
At the next table a military lawyer offered to write up a will on the spot, but I told him I had one. I did sign a power of attorney, though.
The chaplain told us he was available for counseling and offered Bibles, but I had one of those already, too.
Finally, we filed into the big briefing room again for the chemical warfare briefing. When it began, the huge room fell quiet. We had sleepily sat through countless routine training classes over the years, but this was different. This time our attention was riveted on the briefer. Saddam had chemicals and had used them against some of his own people. He could use missiles, aircraft, or artillery to deliver the sinister gasses. Now, for the first time since chemical warfare training had been introduced years ago, we paid attention.
Plastic zip-lock bags were passed out to each of us. I knew what they contained, and a ripple of foreboding swept through me. I thought of my kids. I wanted to drop the bag with its repulsive contents on the floor and kick it away But I opened it and pulled out each item as the briefer instructed.
First was a packet of twenty-one pyridostigmine bromine tablets. Under the label was the note 'Nerve Agent Pretreatment Tablets.' The written directions were ominous.
Directions for use:
1. Commence taking only when instructed by your commander.
2. Take only every 8 hours.
3.
Next was the nerve agent antidote. The briefer continued. 'You have been issued three injectors of atropine and three injectors of 2-PAM chloride. You will self-administer this only [he emphasized 'only'] after exposure to nerve agents to counter their deadly effects. Injections are made through your clothes into a large muscle in the outer thigh or in the upper buttock.' He simulated giving himself an injection. The situation in the Middle East had caused an abrupt attitude adjustment among us. No longer did the thought of giving ourselves these shots seem so repulsive. Nerve gas causes an ugly death.
The victim's mouth foams, his body convulses, and he jerks and quivers, like a fish out of water, until sweet death intervenes.
The green injectors read 'ATROPINE INJECTION, 2 mg. For use in nerve gas poisoning only.' The second, fatter syringe read 'PRALIDOXIME CHLORIDE INJECTION, 300 mg, for use in nerve agent poisoning only.' I wanted to ask what would happen to us if we injected the stuff prematurely or by mistake, but I thought the better of it.
All the while, as I listened, questions fell through the cracks in the floor of logic and reality somewhere high above my head. This scene had to be a bad dream. The things this guy was saying didn't happen to real folks, let alone me. Why was I really there anyway? I blew off the standard old answers. Duty is as inherent in me as a bodily organ and patriotism is the fuel that sustains it, but the real reason I was there was categorically selfish: I'm driven by a passion to fly airplanes. But was this the price? The atropine became a symbol of all the absurdity and wickedness in the world, and yet without it I probably would never have been able to pursue and capture this dream
