David McDaniel

              Carla Zikursh:  Today is September 14, 2010. My name is Carla Zikursh, and I’ll be interviewing retired Sergeant Major David McDaniel of the Ohio National Guard. The interview is being conducted at the National Guard armory in Middletown—it does have a name, doesn’t it?

David McDaniel: The Patrick L. Kessler Armory. 

 Z: The Patrick L. Kessler Armory in Middletown, Ohio as part of an oral history project by the Ohio Historical Society to preserve the stories and experiences of service members and their family for future generations. So for the record, would you please say and spell your full name.

M: My full name is David A. McDaniel. Last name spelled M-C capital D-A-N-I-E-L. Sergeant Major was my rank. I’m retired.

Z: Why don’t we just start off—you could, if you didn’t mind, tell me a little bit about your background, like where you're from, if you have any siblings, where you grew up, maybe your parents—that sort of thing.

M: Okay, I’m originally from Franklin; I graduated from Franklin High School. Went to Franklin most of my life. I was an army brat way back when my dad got called up during Korean War. Korean War just ended as he got through with basic and his training. And I was born at Fort Benning, Georgia. Anyway, I joined the army in 1973—was my first experience. And I have two brothers. There’s four and eight years difference. I’m the oldest, and I have one sister; she’s seventeen years younger than me. It’s interesting to note that all of us boys have served in the army, except for my middle brother Mark; he decided to go to the air force.  Now, he’s retired air force, and I currently have a brother Dana McDaniel that’s a Colonel in the Ohio Army National Guard, and he just surpassed my service of twenty-seven years. So he’s going to make sure that he does one better than his big brother.

Z: Little brothers have a way of doing that, don’t they?

M: Yes, they do.

Z: So like you said, your family was a military family. What was your impression of the military, then, before you joined?

M: Before I joined was when I actually graduated in 1973 from high school. I joined in February of ’73. My first impression of joining the army—I joined the active duty army. I thought, “Boy, this is going to be an opportunity for me since the Vietnam War was just going down.” The Paris Peace Accords was signed in December of ’72. I thought, “Well, I'm going to go do my time and get it over with before there’s anything else.” Well, it was a new all volunteer army came about, and I was part of that new process, and I thought, “This will be a good opportunity for me,” and going through basic was very unique. When I went through basic, I was one of the last basic training cycles to have draftees in with us. I think there was one cycle after us that had the actual last draftees during that time period.

Z: How old were you?

M: I was eighteen, going on nineteen when I graduated from high school and went in.

Z: So it was just after high school?

M: Just after high school. I graduated the second of June of ’73, and I reported the twenty-seventh of June for basic training.

Z:  Didn’t waste any time.

M: Nope, no.

Z: So why choose the army rather than, say the marines or the navy or something?

M: It was mostly family tradition, is what it was. All my great-uncles had fought in World War II. Out of the eight siblings, I think three of them actually saw action. Some of them got farming deferments. That was on my dad’s side. My mom’s side—there was quite a few that was in the European Theatre along with my uncles from my dad’s side. That concept there just kind of snowballed and I said, “Well, you know, everybody else was in the army; I guess I’ll go in the army, too.” But thinking back on it, it seemed like the right decision to do at the time because it seemed like they offered me more. The army offered me more than what the other services offered. I certainly didn’t want to be a marine. God bless the marines, but I did not want to be a marine.

Z: What was your family’s reaction to your decision to join? Were they supportive?

M: At first, my dad didn’t really care. My mom was a little upset. My intention was to go to college. With my sister coming along, that kind of nixed the deal, and I decided, “Well the only opportunity for me to do college was through the GI Bill,” and I thought, “Well this is going to be an opportunity for me to take a hold of.” And going through that process of weighing out what the different services and everything, that seemed to be the best deal for me at the time.

Z: So is that what you did—you used the GI Bill to go to college?

M: Yeah. Yes I did.

Z: And what did you study?

M: Well I went to Miami University under the GI Bill, Hamilton and Middletown campuses—ended up getting a drafting and design degree. That was just an associate’s degree. I completed my degree in 1985 and went back to school in 1997. Pursued a bachelor’s degree with Park University in Fairborn—got that. Graduated in 2000, and in 2000 began my master’s program with Touro University outside California—got that right before I got deployed. Finished that program with an MBA.

Z: You said the drafting was your major. What did you do the second time you went?

M: Business management.

Z: Business management.

M: Yeah.

Z: You had already been in the military for a few years—

M: Yeah.

Z: Did you choose those majors to supplement your military career?

M: No. Well the first one—the drafting and design—I actually, when I got out of the service, I worked construction with my dad. That didn’t pan out because it was seasonal work—wanted to get into something more stable. Drafting seemed to be the way to go. I was a machinist apprentice at the time, so that went hand in hand. But that trade suddenly died in 1982. So I actually came back into the Guard, and then I became full-time in the Guard after a couple years. And then, the business management degree that I got from Park kind of helped out just in my career. Of course, the master’s really helped out because I escalated up in ranks from there.

Z: What was your MOS, and did you have the same MOS when you were in the army and the National Guard?

M: No, well sort of. I was a combat engineer when I first started out, and after I got promoted to E5, I had basically a career path to go to. Making E5 in the regular army in two and a half years was kind of difficult back then.

Z: E5 is a—

M: Sergeant.

Z: Sergeant, yeah.

M: And that was kind of difficult because there was a freeze on ranks supposedly at one time. And I think my hardest rank to get was PFC, which was an E3. But the career path was either a squad leader or a demolition specialist. Well, I opted to go with the demolition specialist. That’s you know, hey, explosives. I want to do that—go blow things up. So that was a good choice, and  then I had got out, came back into the Guard six years later, came in as a combat engineer, and then when I became fulltime, I had to switch into the career field of supply, or at that time, it was 76 Yankee.  But through progression again, I kept that MOS. That MOS eventually converted to 92 Yankee, which was supply for logistics. Of course, my last position was a 92 Zulu, which is a senior logistics operations NCO, Sergeant Major E9.  

Z: I know there’s a question in there. I kind of lost my train of thought. You joined the army, and then how long were you in the army to begin with?

M: I was in the active component from June ’73 through June ’76, got out, joined the army reserves in January of ‘77, decided I really didn’t care for that type of unit—wasn’t getting the training that—

Z: Why did you switch from the active army to the army reserves?

M: I got out to—my ETS came up. I thought I would make a career out of it, but during that time period, it just wasn’t for me, so I joined the army reserve because I missed the army. Was a six month little delay there, went in; I didn’t like the unit. They didn’t promise what they were going to deliver obviously. I got out in April of ’78. My little brother Dana talked me into joining the National Guard in July of 1981 because he joined too. In 1983, I got a full-time position with the Guard. And then from there, I actually retired in December of 2004.

Z: You stayed with the Guard, though?

M: I stayed with the Guard. 

Z: That’s—twenty years? 

M: Active Guard reserve for—yes, twenty-one years.

Z: That’s a lot of years. Do you have a particular first memory of your military experience?

M: The first memory I have was those drill sergeants. Everybody gets that first eye opener with them. Basic was all brand new to me. It was very physical for me. I was not a very physical person, so I got in shape pretty quick. As a matter of fact, I gained nine pounds at basic. And believe me, it was all muscle I gained. That was pretty unique. When I got to my first unit, a unique thing happened. I did not go through what they call advanced training. They decided that they were going to send me for OJT, or on-the-job training. So I went right from basic right to a unit. This was with the 1st Infantry Division at Fort Riley, Kansas. I was actually assigned to Company C—1st Engineer Battalion, 1st Infantry Division. And that was an eye opener because while I had all this discipline at basic, you get to your unit—your permanent duty station—it’s like no big deal. It’s just like a regular job. And it was a big eye opener to me. What a difference. So it’s up to me to discipline myself and what to do and how to do it.

Z: So what was your job then that you got?

M: That was a combat engineer.

Z: And what did that involve doing?

M: We built bridges, tore down bridges, did a lot of land clearing. Basically, we would go in and cut LZs. I did that a lot in Panama, when I got transferred to Panama. That was in February of ’75. I was down there until I ETS-ed or got out of the army in June of ’76. That’s when I became the demolition specialist. And we did a lot of clearing landing zones in the jungle at Panama. I got to blow some actual LZs, which was pretty neat—pretty neat stuff.

Z: What’s an LZ?

M: A landing zone. 

Z: Oh, I see. Yeah.

M: That’s where the choppers come in. Yeah. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the movies in Vietnam how the choppers would come in into the jungle—there’s a clearing. That’s an LZ or a landing zone that we would actually clear that out to do that.

Z: I had no idea. So, I know the general reason why you were in the Panama Canal Zone, but can you tell me specifically why your unit or you got sent there?

M: When you're in the regular army, you get transferred from post to post. 

Z: So it was just a regular—

M: It was a regular transfer. You come down what they call—when I was in Fort Riley, Kansas—you come down on what they call a levy. Okay. Well when I signed up to join the army, I had two options. I was going to be a combat engineer in station at Fort Riley, Kansas. My overseas assignment, I had to pick since I was in this new volunteer army. So I pick Spain. You know, I want to go to Europe, and I want to go to Spain because, gee whiz, I took Spanish in high school, okay. Well, I came down from levy—what they call levy—to go overseas at another duty station, but it was Germany. Well I take my levy papers—my orders. I go down to the levy section at the Headquarters, and I say, “Hey, this says I'm supposed to go to Germany.” I pulled out my little guarantee card. “I'm supposed to go to Spain.” And, well, the NCO in charge there, he looked at my card, looked at the papers and said, “Okay, well I got to go see somebody about this.” So he goes back and talks to somebody, and this full bird colonel, an O6, comes out at the desk. He looks at this card and looks at my papers and said—at that time, I was a specialist, an E-4, and he says, “Hey, he’s got this guarantee to go to Spain. I checked the reg back there, and we can’t do nothin’ about it, so take him off the levy.” I thought, “Oh boy! I’m not going overseas to serve!” Because at that time I was married, and I thought that’s a big expense, and being an E4, I couldn’t afford it. So guess what? Thirty days later I came from levy again. Well it says Panama. And I thought, “I’m just going to go back down there to the levy section and show them my stuff; I’m going to get out of this.” Well I go down there, flop the orders out again, flop my little card out, and the NCO just looked at me, and he says, “I remember you. You were in here about a month ago. Weren’t you?” I said, “Yep. Yep.” So he grabs everything, goes back to the colonel. Now, him and the colonel were back there for about twenty, twenty-five minutes, and I thought, “Hm. What’s going on here?” Well anyways, I'm standing at the desk. All these other soldiers have issues, too, and they’ve got other people waiting on them all these people kind of hanging back, looking. The colonel comes out; the NCO comes out, and there’s like two or three clerks coming out. Looks at the paper, looks at the card, and looks at me, and just goes, “Specialist McDaniel, looks like you're going to Panama.” [Laughter] I said, “Well, okay, there it is.” So I ended up in Panama. But during that process, you usually get sent somewhere. You're only guaranteed so much time at one post, and then you get shipped to another post, and it’s usually overseas. It’s either—in this case, Panama was a very ‘far and few between’ assignment. I was lucky I got that assignment, or I could have gone to Europe, or I could have gone to Korea.

Z: Tell me a little about the base you were stationed on.

M: At Fort Riley, Kansas?

Z: No, in Panama.

M: Panama. Well Panama was pretty unique. Basically, it had several different little bases throughout the Canal Zone.

Z: What was the base called?

M: The base I was stationed at was Fort Kobbe and also Howard Air Force Base. It was on the Pacific side of the Canal Zone. Another five miles right in the middle of the Canal Zone, you had Fort Clayton, which was like southern command headquarters. And then you had another camp, or another fort, that was on the Atlantic side; I can’t remember the name of it off the top of my head, but it was a different area. Where I was at, we were one mile from the beach. The Pacific side was very nice; it was very pretty on that side. The Atlantic side—it was just “bluck.” It sucked being over there. Not too many people were over there because it was basically a training site. Fort Clayton—I think it was Fort Clayton—the big Headquarters area. It was pretty luxurious and pretty nice to be on as well.

Z: It seems strange to me—not knowing military—that there would be so many military bases so close together.

M: I think the Canal Zone—that situation was very unique. The main air base with Fort Kobbe right there. We were like a consolidated—part of that base was strictly army; the other was strictly air force. You had the landing zones there, or the runways there, for the aircraft to come in to do whatever. There was a marine base there. There was a naval base there also. But there was only the one air force base there, which was right next to our little fort, or camp, Fort Kobbe.

Z: Did you have to share your base with other army units?

M: Yes, yes. You got all different units combined. We had artillery there with us, infantry outfits; of course, I was with the combat engineer unit. That was about the base of the army units there. And then the MPs and other types of units were at Fort Clayton, and then over on the Atlantic side, they had a couple different units, too. They had some more back in my infantry over on that side than what we had on our side. 

Z: How many people were at the bases on each of the different ones, approximately?

M: It was basically a brigade of soldiers down in the Panama station in Panama. I would say maybe six to eight thousand people, army soldiers; I don’t know how many airmen were down there or navy or marines. Actually it was a sub-base I think that was down located at the canal. I know I seen a lot of subs there. Where they dry docked or docked at—I couldn’t tell you where they docked at.

Z: Still, that’s a big military presence.

M: It was back in the mid-70s, yes.

Z: Did you have any friendly contact with the locals at all?

M: Yes, yes we did. We had quite a few of the locals actually work on the base in Panama. Each little unit had a guy that did shoe shining. They had their own seamstress there. We provided a little room for them to work in and out of at that time. We even—in the barracks before my wife came down—we had what we called house boys. Basically they cleaned our areas for us; they did the mopping and the sweeping and stuff like that. As far as our personal effects, we didn’t let them into our lockers or nothing like that. We did that, and of course, some of the nationals down there worked on base, but very far and few between besides those other little duties. So mostly it was civilian contractors down there doing everything else.

Z: Did you say your wife came down?

M: Yes, my first wife did come down, yes.

Z: How long did she stay for?

M: She came down—gosh it was like July of ’75, and she was down there almost a year before I ETS-ed or got out of the army. And I sent her back home. Since I was only there for a short period of time, I had to pay for everything; I had to pay for my housing; I had to pay for her airline ticket, which back then, was pretty doggone expensive for an E4. That was a big major expense was getting her ticket.

Z: How do you think your experience was different than your other fellow soldiers because your wife was there with you?

M: Yes, having a wife there, I had to go find an apartment off base. And that situation with the Panamanians at that time with the Canal Treaty—it was a little bit shaky. We got called on the base two times while she was down there because the Panamanians were basically, not necessarily rioting, but they were having demonstrations, so we got called on alert. So what that meant was, I had to bring her in twice during the whole time period I was down there. That experience plus the expense of living off base was not cheap. It put a strain on us, but we managed. What little we had, we managed.

Z: I know that the Panama Canal Treaty was signed in 1977, so you left a year before it happened. Do you think there was any sort of building tension while you were there because that was coming?

M: I think you could cut the tension with a knife down there at that time. The Panamanians wanted that canal—that represents them a lot of money for them to be able to work it. The thing that I had noticed, and I was told, and I witnessed—we had built their sewer system in Panama City. They couldn’t even maintain their sewer system, let alone, how are they going to maintain a canal? And that canal was huge. You had to constantly dredge the canal. I'm sure if you watch the History channel, and you see all the shovels going through the canal—well that’s constant. All that water coming in and out from the oceans and stuff and the lakes that were there. That builds up the sediment in the canal, so they have to dredge that pretty often. You’ve got that mindset: How can they take care of this? Sure, it’s going to be some money for them, but at the same time, we’re also going to lose a lot of people that are living down there as civilians. I didn’t know we had civilians down there until I was down there. We had all kinds of allied trades. We had electrical people, machinists, just all kinds of people down there to do all that stuff. It was just unbelievable, and the Panamanians wanted those jobs that bad to build their economy up ‘cause their economy was pretty weak.

Z: And it took a long time before the Panamanians were allowed complete control of the canal. They’ve had complete control since, what is it ’99?

M: I think so, yeah.

Z: So do you think that those twenty years gave them enough time to—?

M: I certainly hope so. It doesn’t look like anything stopped up down there, so, yeah, with the transitioning and our civilian contractors coming back and then training them up. As a matter of fact, I watched a little special on PBS not too long ago and noticed the flow was going there, and you could see the shovels doing the dredging and stuff. Yeah, it looked like it was okay. They actually had done some improvements because that canal was so old. We were doing improvements too, but it looks like they did a real good job of doing that—of maintaining it so far.

Z: So I know you told me a little about doing explosives while you were stationed there. What was your exact duties there while you were there?

M: We just trained up on different things. The platoon I was assigned to—there were three platoons. First, second, and third platoon, then we had a Headquarters platoon. First, second, and third—we were basically combat engineers. We trained day to day doing our little tasks that we were supposed to be able to know like how to maintain our equipment, maintain our personal weapons, just on and on—we had a lot of tools to take care of, chainsaws, all that good stuff. We did a lot of that. Then we did a lot of training with mines at that time period. Then the explosives obviously with dummy stuff. And of course, we had to qualify with our weapons. We had a lot of guard duty, too. We did a lot of guard duty because of that situation with the Panamanians. We had to actually go to the ammo dumps that we had around the canal and guard those intensively, so that took up some time. The first nine months I was there was great duty. You had every weekend off; you did what you wanted to do. With the situation with Panama—the political stuff going on—that all changed real quick. Much like with 2001, you go from being carefree to something’s gone on, it’s there. I experienced that somewhat from ‘75 to ‘76. Everything sort of changed, and now we put more presence on the gates—obviously more presence at the ammo sites and bridge sites as well, just to make sure nothing bad happened.

Z: Were there any times that anything bad did happen?

M: No, not really. Not that I was aware of. The one guy that I was a friend with—I guess he was the driver for our platoon leader, who was a first lieutenant. When he got out—he got out in ’77, a year after I did. When he came back home, we kind of palled around for a couple of years. His name was Dave, too. He says, “Dave, you know we weren’t far from ammo every time we went out in the field?” I said, “Really?” He says, “It was within a mile all the time, just about.” So in case anything happened while we were out there, we had quick access to live ammo. That was pretty interesting to find out years later.

Z: Sure, wow. What do you think that your greatest challenge was while you were stationed there in Panama?

M: Maintaining our sanity. It changed somewhat with the tension down there. They would say, “We may be on alert, this and that, and that.” Okay, whatever. It just got to be mundane after that: “Okay, we’re on alert, so what? Big deal.” That was about it.

Z: Let’s skip ahead a little. I know that you did active army, and then you did the army reserves, and then you did the Guard. So you were in the Guard for, gosh—

M: Since 1981. I was part-time Guard.

Z: Through—?

M: December of 2004.

Z: So if I have my dates right, the year before you retired, you got sent to Kuwait.

M: Yes.

Z: So you had been a career military man, and you didn’t get sent away until the very last year.

M: Mhm.

Z: Tell the viewers where you were sent and when.

M: We got deployed to Kuwait, and we actually got our mobilization order in February of 2003. I actually knew in October of 2002 we were on the list to get deployed. When I went to State Headquarters, on a routine delivery of some information, some of the guys that was in the office came up to me and started—doing the right shoulder, going like this on my right shoulder. I’m thinking, “What are you guys doing? What’s up?” They said, “Well, Mac, we got your number; you’d look pretty good with a combat patch there and this and this.” I said, “What are you talking about?” And then finally, the one guy—after they kid me for about ten minutes—they said, “You guys are on the list to get sent over,” they says, “We’re just waiting for a tail number.” I thought, “Ah, come on. I've heard this before in ’91, okay, with Desert Shield and then Desert Storm. Been there, done that.” They said, “Well, this is probably going to happen.” So anyways, from that point on, I went back to the office in Ketterin; that’s where I was stationed at. And I guess the AO there, the administrative officer who was also our commander, basically got the same word I did, only he was sitting there in Kettering. So we started to gather information and start putting things together—start looking at planning, and a week later, it was escalating. I told the wife; I didn’t tell her we were getting deployed, but I told her, I said, “We need to start preparing just in case because of all the stuff that’s going on.” CNN started broadcasting stuff about a November time frame about units going into Kuwait and Saudi Arabia to get training. Well, our next higher Headquarters, which was 3rd COSCOM, which was stationed in Germany, was actually starting to make contact with us and giving us paperwork and op orders or that type of information to start preparing. So with that in mind, I came home and told the wife, “We really need to prepare, so if I get deployed.” I kept saying, “if we get deployed.” And so we started making arrangements with my lawyer—went there and got all the paperwork ready so to speak. I started going through making sure my insurance was taken care of, everything was just right—everything dotted and crossed and all that. She kept saying, “Well you're not going to get deployed, and this and this and this.” Well, January starts floating around, and it’s looking pretty damn good, we’re going to get deployed, and she was still in denial. But anyway, we got the notification ten of February, I think it was. Mobilized. So I called and told her; I said, “Cheryl, we got mobilized. This is it.” And from there, she just went downhill. We sat in Atterbury for two months from February to April of 2003 watching CNN, watching the war start to enlarge. We’re ramping up, we’re preparing, we’re getting trained. We finally got a notification one night: “Hey, we got a tail number.” Well when you get a tail number, that means the plane is either on the tarmac waiting, or it’s coming. The next morning, we were getting our stuff loaded up—heading to the airport. Then we hit the ground over there in April.

Z: Where in Kuwait were you stationed?

M: The unit was actually stationed at Camp Virginia, Kuwait. That’s approximately sixty to seventy miles from the Iraqi border. Camp Virginia was actually, I think like five miles from Ali Al Salem Air Base, which was an old Kuwaiti air base. And we had gone in and taken over the air base in conjunction with the Kuwaitis. Thank God for the Kuwaitis to let us get into where we needed to go. Saudi Arabia was not that pro-American right then and there. We ran basically all our operations out of Kuwait—out of that theatre there. The unit stayed at Camp Virginia, but we had what we called LNOs everywhere. It’s like a liaison officer at different camps. We even had them up into Baghdad. We had a total of four people up in Baghdad with the 3rd COSCOM. Actually, two of them were with the 3rd COSCOM.  We had another two that was with the Fifth Corps, who was the theatre of operations commander there. Then there was all kinds of camps. You had Camp Pennsylvania, Camp New York, all these other little camps—Camp Udairi. We just had people everywhere at those camps, being liaisons also. The 371st support group was known as 5th Corps Rear. So we ran everybody in and out of theatre from our camp. We did all the tracking and all that type of information and supplied it back and forth to 5th Corps, 3rd COSCOM, so they could keep track of all that stuff.

Z: So that was your unit’s job while you were there?

M: That was basically our job. We coordinated a lot of the convoys that went in, up and down into Iraq. As the orders would come in from 3rd COSCOM, my section would receive it. We would take a look at them, figure out where they need to go to disseminate the information—here and there, gather the information, send it up, send it down channels, and then of course, the appropriate orders from there was: you got to go load up. Ammo to take up there. You got to load up water. We found a new site that was bombs and ammo and guns were buried. These are the grid coordinates; got to send somebody to go clean that up. That was all disseminated through us back in the rear.

Z: So what was your rank and job as part of that unit?

M: My rank was Sergeant Major E9. I was a senior logistics operations NCO. I was what they call the S23 NCO, which is basically Intel and operations. And like I said, any time an order would come in, my section and me—we would take a look at that and figure out where it needed to go. We had different other sections within the unit there. We had an S1 section, which was personnel. We had the S4, which was logistics. Then we had the support operations. Support operations branches are the ones that gathered all that other types of commodities that we had—the trucks and all that, the supplies. They're the ones that managed that type of stuff from there. Our S4 logistics—you think, well, why logistics? They just handle internal logistics. Our support ops handled all the external and theatre logistics, so they coordinate with other support groups within the area too.

Z: How many people were in your unit that you were with?

M: Our unit—I think the number that we ended up deploying with was one hundred twenty-two. We started out with one hundred thirty-five, ended up—I think we lost two at Camp Atterbury. We went to Camp Atterbury with I think one hundred twenty-four and ended up deploying one hundred twenty-two, thereabout. 

Z: What did you go to Camp Atterbury for?

M: That was our mobilization station. In February, after we finally received our orders to report to the mob site, mobilization station, that was Camp Atterbury. From February to April that’s where we were at—Camp Atterbury—training and getting our stuff ready to ship over. 

Z: What kind of training were you doing?

M: We were doing a lot of chemical training. Seems like I can almost do that stuff in my sleep today. It seems like all we did—MOPP suits: on, off; gas masks: on, off. That was our biggest fear going over there is the chemical attacks. We knew Saddam probably had access to all that crap, and that was very deadly stuff. The requirement for us to train that heavy—it was understandable. That situation. Once we got over there, never seen it of course. But you know, looking back, I’d rather have been prepared going over than go there and find out, “Oh, gee, I can’t put my gas mask on right!” So it was awesome. 

Z: So what was your first impression when you finally got to Kuwait?

M: It sucked. Well, let me tell you. We were on a commercial flight flying in into Kuwait City. The camp that we flew into—I can’t remember the name of the camp—but anyway, we were like twenty miles out, and the captain came out, and he gave a speech, “Thanks for your service; we’re coming into Kuwait City, blah blah blah.” I’m sitting there thinking, “Oh, God. We’re here. We’re finally going to hit ground.” Then he said—he told the civilian people waiting on us and stuff—the stewardesses—to prepare for landing. I’m sitting toward the middle of the plane, and there’s an escape door behind me. So I kind of got free range, so I’m stretching out. So this guy grabs his bag from underneath the seat, and he gets out this gas mask. And I’m thinking, “Holy shit! What is going on? He’s grabbing his gas mask! I didn’t hear no bells going off or anything like that. What are we going into?” And I’m looking around, and nobody else notices this. And he’s got his gas mask, and he’s checking it. And I thought, “Gosh! Man! We’re flying into a combat zone. This is supposed to be safe—what we’re flying into, but we’re flying into a combat zone.”  That’s when reality really set in—hey, this is it. You may get gas. You may get a 105 round right on the runway that’s got gas or nerve agent on it or whatever. This is it. This is what your predecessors went through. So that kind of shook me up just before we landed. Once we landed, everybody else just bounced along, and that guy finally puts his gas mask back. I thought, “Thank God.” But that kind of woke me up: this is it; this is it.

Z: So Camp Virginia—that’s where you were at, right?

M: Yes.

Z: Tell me a little about that base.

M: Well, that base was out in the middle of nowhere, literally. We were out in a desert. The camp was self-contained. We had our own electric. We had our own shower units. We had water units there. Fuel. We had our own, what they call DFAC or dining facility. Everything was trucked in to us—the water. You name it, it was trucked in. We were self-supporting. What killed me was, when we left the base where we flew into, we in-processed from there, and that night—the next morning, we were getting ready to go out to our camp, where 3rd COSCOM was. And it took like two and half hours to get there because the drivers couldn’t find the base. That’s how far out in the desert it was! So we’re like driving around in circles, and we’re just dying. We were in full battle rattle. We had our flak vest on; we didn’t have the body armor. We had the flak vest. I had two hundred ten rounds of ammo on me. I'm sitting there with all my MOPP gear ready to bust out of the bag in case we get hit. We were in a small bus, and before we pulled out, they said, “Close the curtains.” I’m thinking, “Why in the hell are we closing the curtains when they can shoot through the damn bus anyways? Open up the doggone windows ‘cause it’s—the air conditioner was on, but it’s still hot. Why?” So here we go. It’s just a soldier’s mentality. But anyway, we’re circling out in the desert for about an hour and a half before the drivers finally find out where the camp is, and we finally pull in the camp. Unbelievable experience. But we basically had all the creature comforts there. The camp was actually designed to hold eight thousand people. Sometimes we had ten to eleven thousand people there. You had to wait in line for everything. You had to wait in line to go to the bathroom. You had to wait in line to eat. I mean, you’re talking an hour to an hour and a half to go eat. You had to wait in line to brush your teeth. You had to wait in line to go take a shower. When I came back home, if I have to wait ten minutes at a restaurant, guess what? We’re walking out, and we’re going to someplace else because I don’t wait in line for anything anymore.

Z: Why was it so overcrowded?

M: It depended on what we call the surge—when units were coming and going. Camp Virginia was like a stepping stone to go from there to go to Iraq. Some of the other camps that I mentioned before that did certain training, or they held certain units. We were like what we call the ash and trash of units coming in. They would consolidate there, then move forward. Or when their deployment was over, they came back through Camp Virginia and got their stuff ready to ship from there. And then of course, right before we deployed back home—about three months before we deployed—there was another base camp that was like Camp Arifjan, which was right on the seaport. And they were basically the big camp that did all that from there once we left.

Z: So I know you said you had all the creature comforts, but describe your living conditions a little for me.

M: Living conditions sucked. Out in the middle of the desert, we had a tent. It was a twelve man tent. When we first got there, they had what they call fess tents; they actually looked like circus tents. You’ve got a hundred and some people living side by side in those circus tents. That was not comfortable. But since I was basically primary staff—I was an E9—I got to sleep in one of the twelve man tents when we first got there, which I was fortunate. So all of my people got as comfortable as possible. I got to go into this little twelve man tent; this one was air conditioned. But when it’s a hundred and thirty-nine degrees, it doesn’t feel air conditioned. Nothing’s going to help you when it’s that hot. Those living conditions were like that for a full year. After about three weeks, those fess tents—when units started really going out of the camp, we had what we call a pad. You had basically anywhere from ten to fifteen pads per camp. These pads represented these little twelve man tents or some type of a tent where people would sleep. That was your living area, okay. Your work site may have been somewhere else, which ours was. Ours was the tactical operations center right in the middle of the camp surrounded by barbed wire. That was where I worked at. And the living conditions—you had to walk a mile to go to chow every time. You had to walk less than a mile to go to work.

Z: How big was the whole base?

M: The whole base was probably, I would say, maybe six to eight miles. It was basically in a circle. Sand was pushed up on the sides about ten feet high. Then they had lookout towers surrounding the camp from the inside, of course, so they could look out and guard. After a while, though, we barely really had very little guards on the towers because during the draw down, the lack of surge—it was through October through December, our camp was very, very small. We only had like maybe fifteen hundred people there. We had like ten towers. And guess who had to guard those towers? Our unit had to, because people were coming in and out. We did the best we could. We only manned three guard towers at that point. Our people were just getting warn out with guard duty on the towers. And work was—we weren’t that busy, but we still had to do the reports; we still had to do the briefings every day, twice a day, three times a day. It was like, that part never let up, but we had additional duties to do. That sucked for the lower enlisted personnel because all my people were pretty much lower enlisted, and they had a lot of guard duty to do. Plus, we were moving people back home for their R&R during that time period, so it really got heavy.

Z: So how many people were under you?

M: I had twenty-two in my section. I had like seven officers and fifteen enlisted. I was a senior enlisted in that. I just can’t say enough about how well those people did. It was just amazing.

Z: You made some good friends?

M: Yeah.

Z: That’s a tough experience to go through and not form some kind of a bond.

M: Yeah, we had our moments. Seen a lot of people grow up. Seen a lot of people get old. It was a unique learning experience from that aspect of it.

Z: Sure. Now, stop me if you’re uncomfortable, but was there anything in particular that drew you guys together?

M: We had one leader that we didn’t care for. He got relieved out of our section and was sent forward to Iraq to work with the 5th Corps—the farthest liaison. I had some problems with him, and by the time it was all said and done, I think everyone, everyone, in the section had problems with him. So it just wasn’t me. It wasn’t something I’d said or done. I love the guy, but man, he just brought the section down big time. When he left, everybody recovered; everybody did a standup job. One of the guys that I had trained with for a couple years before he came in actually took over the section, and he did one hell of a job—one hell of job! It’s like he told me; he said, “We’ve got to recover from this. You guys are doing your job. We can do better.” And we did better. We did better once the other guy let up; we did a hell of a lot better.

Z: How long was that guy there?

M: He had just come to the unit about two weeks before we got deployed; he came to the unit new. I guess the commander handpicked his primary staff because we basically had all new primary staff. So this guy he brought in—I don’t think he handpicked this guy. I think this guy was put there by higher-ups. I didn’t know the guy to begin with, and after I found out just what type of person it is, I just didn’t care for him. I've been with some real buttheads in the army. I've been with some good people; I've been with some bad people. But this guy took the cake, he took the cake and just kept the cake. But, as a section, like I said, we pulled through. We did a great job—great job. I'm proud of every one of my people.

Z: While you were in Kuwait, and you had all that guard duty, was there any time that you ever felt like you were going to need to defend the camp?

M: No, except one night. It was a calm night. If the guards see anything, they shoot flares. Well, somebody shot a flare off. It wasn’t ‘cause they seen anything. I think they got scared ‘because the radio went out. Instead of saying to the person with them in the guard tower, “Hey, we need batteries,” they shoot a flare off. Well, you know, that puts the whole camp on alert. Needless to say, they were out from guard duty for about the next week.

Z: Wow. So your base was pretty big. Did you guys ever have any special entertainment or guests come through?

M: Yes, we actually had the Dallas cheerleaders come through. Doggone it, I missed them. There was some other entertainers that came through our camp, just a couple times because we were so remote. But they did have entertainers come into Camp Doha. Camp Doha before Camp Arifjan became the big logistical base. Camp Doha was the logistical base. They brought Robin Williams in. Gary Sinise. They brought the Dallas cheerleaders—I think they came in three or four times. God bless those women because they had to be some rough traveling with them because they weren’t only in Kuwait, but they went into Iraq as well. The entertainers did, too. You can’t say nothing about Robin Williams and Gary Sinise. It seemed like every time I turned around, I was reading something. “Oh, God. I’ve got to send more people to Doha to go see Gary Sinise. Alright, who has it been this time?” By the ninth month we were on ground, everybody had seen somebody, except me.

Z: Had you?

M: No. I’m a senior NCO. I’m holding the rock, and I’m standing on the rock. I’ll let these other guys do what they want to do, but I wished I would have gone and seen Robin Williams. I would have loved that one.

Z: That would have been really fun.

M: Yeah.

Z: So while you were in Kuwait, how did you keep in touch with your family back home?

M: We kept in touch through the internet, when it worked. My combo officer—God bless him, Major Loften. He got a hell of a job, but then the support ops guys—they had like an internet type section basically. A squad, whatever you want to call it. He helped those guys; he was assigned to those guys. That was his job: keep the internet up and down. We had a big van truck in the back of the tactical operations center that shot beams down to Doha so that we could communicate with the internet. You know of course in Kuwait, you’ve got dust storms going and all that crap, so it became actually a joke. We had regular internet, and then we had secured internet. The nipper, not secured, and then the sipper, the secured internet. So they had to chart because it would go up and down, up and down, up and down all the time. And then they would finally put arrows. Nipper, or sipper. If it was up, or if it was down. So we actually designed a little ribbon—combat ribbon—for him with arrows that can fluctuate up and down. 

Z: So was it mostly email that you used?

M: Yes, well, we had the capability of phone. You had to call back to like Camp Atterbury in Indiana through a DSN or give it, you know, the department that fits that work. And then they would hook you up with your wife or whoever. We had a couple people that had cell phones that they had brought that you had to do a special code to use over there. Well, my wife tried three times to get me a phone shipped over there. The third phone finally worked, and I was able to use that as well. Very expensive to use your own cell phone. The internet was great when it worked, and it worked most of the time for us. Looking back, when I first came into the service in ’73, and when we actually went to war in 2003, there’s thirty years’ difference. How I communicated with my fiancé and my first wife was basically through mail—snail mail. Now when I was with Fort Riley, Kansas, I got sent to Germany twice for exercises—a one month exercise. And I maybe got three or four letters during that time period before I went back home. And gee, when I went back to Fort Riley, Kansas, here come more letters—you know, a month afterwards. And then, in 2003, 2004—instantaneous with email. Sure it may have been a little bit delayed, but what a difference. That made a big difference, being able to communicate with your family that quick. It was awesome. It was awesome.

Z: How did your family handle your deployment?

M: My wife didn’t handle my deployment.

Z: What do you mean by that?

M: Like I said, she had some issues when she found out I got deployed. She had to get put on medication. God, love her. She did not want me to go, and she was in denial the whole time. We’re still married today; we just celebrated our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary last month. 

Z: Congratulations.

M: It’s a miracle, I guess. It’s been a blessing. Trials and tribulations, of course. The deployment was very hard on her, very hard. And it was hard on me.  I witnessed the December before I got deployed, my first grandchild was born, and in three months later, I had to leave. So I missed out the first year—the first fifteen months of my granddaughter’s life. I’m still trying to get that back. She wasn’t as close to me as she is with my wife. Sherry, my wife—she has no blood relation to this child, but that child just absolutely adores her. I think because I was gone, she kept the baby—the granddaughter—during the weekends when she was off. I think that’s what kept her sanity was that time period with her.

Z: So you have a step-son and a daughter and a son.

M: Yes.

Z: And how old were they when you were deployed?

M: Let’s see. That was seven years ago. My son would have been twenty-three. My daughter would have been twenty-five. And Jason would have been twenty-eight I think. 

Z: How was the deployment for them? Obviously, they probably had their own families by then, but—

M: No, not really. Just my daughter. My step-son—he just got married last year, finally. My step-son Jason—now, he worked a weird shift with his employer when he was here in Ohio. Him and my son—it didn’t bother. My step-son Jason—he was in the Guard. Then he got out, and I think he got out in time. After he got his discharge, then Operation Iraqi Freedom happened, so I think from that standpoint, it was good. In December, we celebrated my mom and dad’s fiftieth wedding anniversary in 2002. We had a party for them, and I took my son and my step-son Jason to the side, and I said, “Listen, Dad’s not going to be here in a couple of months. You boys have to step up ‘cause you’re going to have to help Sherry—your mom.” Jason said, “Well, Dad, I was thinking about joining.” I said, “No. You’re not going back in at this point in time. You wait until I get back. If you want to do it, then you do it.” I said, “She won’t be able to handle two of us,” and I was right. She wouldn’t have been able to handle with her son being gone as well.

Z: And did he end up joining?

M: No. Thank God. I think he seen the crap I went through and said, “That’s not for me after all.” I think what reality was—he seen what his mother went through, and I think that’s what cinched it for him not to go. Now, my son has joined the National Guard at the age of thirty. He’ll be thirty next month. He just went through basic last year. He’s may be on the horizon here in another year to get deployed.

Z: And how do you feel about that?

M: I have a little anxiety about that. Gosh, I'm not a soldier anymore. Well, yeah, I'm still a soldier. People say I never retired; I just changed uniforms. I'm okay with it to a certain extent, but as a dad as I sit back on my back porch now—drink my beer or drink my wine—gosh, Bubba, I hope you know what you're getting into.

Z: Joining today, it’s almost a certainty you’ll get deployed.

M: It’s about ninety percent sure you’ll get deployed, absolutely. Absolutely.

Z: Does he have a family?

M: No, he’s still single.

Z: Just you.

M: Yeah, as a matter of fact, he’s living with us. He’s been through some rough times. I think the Guard’s going to help him out quite a bit. He’s getting back on his feet. Just like with the economy, everything happens, so hopefully things will turn around for him. I think this is good for him.

Z: Is that why he joined?

M: Not necessarily, no. It’s something that he wanted to do, but he had to do it on his own terms. Well, I had talked to him during high school about joining, Jason joined in high school. Donavon, no. My son, no. You couldn’t talk to him. Now that he’s more mature, he realizes, “Well, I think I can do this. This is why, I want to do it now. Not because Dad wanted me to do it ten years ago, but this is because I want to do it now,” which is good.

Z: Are you doing anything in particular to preserve the history of your experiences in the military and your deployment for your descendants in your family?

M: Well, yes in a way and no in a way. I actually started writing a book when I was on my furlough. And it brought back some bad situations. Every once in a while, I’ll go back. I’ll put something in it. Then I’ll get depressed, and I thought, “No, I’ll wait.” But I had a friend of my wife’s. She was a teacher in Mason, and God love her. She kept everything I had sent, and she gave me a big packet of some of the letters I had. I did every two to three weeks—it was at least once a month—I did a letter that I called, “Dear Friends and Family.” And sent it out and let them know what we were doing, how we were doing. The basis of those letters is what I was trying to get this book written about, and I got probably into the deployment, maybe I’m on the fourth or fifth month. And after looking at these letters, I thought, “God, I've got to put this in at the beginning, because I forgot about this.” So this brings back some memories, it’s jogging  some memory cells. If I'm going to do this, I have to do it right, but I don’t know if I'm going to be able to finish it.

Z: You should!

M: I should.

Z: And you’ve got a built-in little timeline there to follow with your letters.

M: Yeah, and what I did; I know there were several people in the unit probably did journals. I started a journal the first day we were on our way to Atterbury. I said, “I can’t do this; this is too much,” because I had just too much on my plate. I said, “I can’t do it.” But I wish I had.

Z: But at least you had those letters to send back home. 

M: Yes.

Z: While you were there—I feel like I’m jumping around a little, but—

M: That’s okay.

Z: Was there any part of your job when you were in Kuwait that you really enjoyed doing?

M: I think just being a senior NCO was sufficient enough. Trying to take care of my people—that was a priority: making sure every one of those guys and gals came home, period. My section was big enough to where we ran three shifts. On the third shift, unfortunately, we put some people in there that didn’t require a lot of guidance, but still needed some guidance. We tried to key in a couple people that could handle that, and they did. God bless them. I try to tell one soldier, to this day, “Hey, that’s why we did it, was because we knew you could handle. You're only an E5.” We had an E8 that she had to handle. “You did it. You actually did it. You had to do it.” Because the rest of us were in the position where we had to be on the first shift—primary staff. I was a senior NCO, and I had to have my right hand man. Master Sergeant [INAUDIBLE]. He was my right hand man.  He had to be there in case I wasn’t there. I got called to meetings and do briefings, then he would be involved in other stuff, too. It all worked out, thank God. The most important part was just taking care of the people. That was the primary mission.

Z: That’s an important task. What was your greatest challenge overall?

M: Keeping my sanity.

Z: Yeah, did I ask you that already? Same answer for your Panama, is what it is.

M: Yeah, I’ll tell you why. Several people related the experience of the deployment to the movie Groundhog Day. It was the same thing. For us, it was the same thing over and over and over every day, every day. It was just trying to keep focused and doing your job. Making sure you did the right orders and getting the right information out, up and down the chain. That was our task, as far as my section was concerned. So we did it, and we did it well.

Z: So were there any medals or special service awards that you or anyone in your service received because of your deployment?

M: Yes, yes. We got the Meritorious Unit Commendation, finally, after seven years. That was awesome. We just received that this last weekend. That was a unit thing. Then we had several people I put in for a Bronze Star Medal. Most of them got them. There were a couple people that didn’t get it that I'm very disappointed, but you know, it is what it is. Several people also got other commendations— Army Commendation Medals instead of the Bronze Star. It was a tradeoff, so to speak, but at least they got something. And of course, we received the Enduring Freedom Ribbon, and also the Iraqi Freedom Ribbon, too. I ended up with four awards: the Meritorious Unit Commendation, I received the Bronze Star, Operation Iraqi Freedom Medal, and the Enduring Freedom Medal.

Z: So was there anything in particular, like a particular reason, that your unit received the Meritorious Unit award?

M: Basically, we did a hell of a job. We were actually put in for this award like November, December 2003. We came back home in March of 2004. Just for the fact of what we did, how we did it, how we achieved it. Like I said, we had people scattered everywhere—different camps. We were able to get all that information up and down and tasked the right units at the right time to get those supplies to where they needed. We just had people doing a hell of a job,  the unit got awarded for it. That says a lot about the unit.

Z: Is it usual that it would take so long for them to give this award?

M: No.

Z: So why did it take so long, do you think?

M: From what I understand, I guess the flow, the way the paperwork went, the wording, and how it was presented was not correct. They had to redo it several times. After two years have elapsed, you had to get what they call congressional sponsorship. They were able to do that, and again, several more opportunities for them to put the right paperwork in at the right time. It kept getting kicked back, and finally, they pushed it. And a three star got involved with that. Thank God. Thank God. It was well deserved as far as I’m concerned, well deserved.

Z: So did they have a big ceremony to present the awards?

M: Yes, they had a ceremony at the Green up in Kettering, or Beavercreek they call it, Ohio. The commander presented the award. We had some congressional aides there and congressmen there, local dignitaries, mayors, and council people. And some of the unit members that were actually deployed with the unit were there. I think we had, I want to say between sixteen and twenty-two people were there.

Z: Out of how many people that had gone?

M: Out of about a hundred and twenty-two.

Z: Why so few?

M: Well, I'm sort of like unofficial reunion guy now ‘cause I've been trying to contact as many people as I can and get the word out. I was able to contact maybe forty or fifty people. I kept getting emails back, “I can’t. I’m on vacation that day,” “Oh, gee. I got duty up at Camp Perry this weekend,” a lot of things go playing in that, and of course, there’s a lot of people that don’t want to be involved in that anymore. I understand that fully. You know, I understand that. It’s like I told the commander up there—she was in my section, and she’s now the commander, which is great for her—I said, “You know, I wish there was a lot more people here that could have been here for that occasion.” It was a special occasion.

Z: Yeah, absolutely. So, is there anything else about your deployment that I didn’t ask you about that maybe I should have asked you?

M: Gosh, there’s just so many things that went on. I could probably sit here for hours and talk about it.

Z: Tell me about one moment that stands out. Tell me about one thing.

M: Well I’ll tell you an incident that happened at Camp Virginia. We were guarding the line—and this is unofficial.

Z: Sure.

M: We were guarding the line, and, well, the enemy started coming through. And so what happened was, I broke through the defense, and ended up sacking the quarterback. I actually broke my shoulder doing that. So this was for flag football. [Laughter]. So I'm the only guy in the unit that gets hurt playing flag football, and I'm the one that sponsored the flag football. It’s like the wife says, “You go off to war, you get injured, you can’t even get a Purple Heart because you're playing flag football. What the hell was you thinking at forty-eight years old?” 

Z: Got to have a little fun.

M: Well, yeah, that was the key. Things had become so boring there. We had volleyball stuff—flag football, which only lasted one half for me. The first game, go figure. It was something to do. It was something to do. Yeah, I broke my shoulder, tore a tendon, and I'm a mess. Boy, I’m telling you. It ain’t been right since. I got five percent disability on that shoulder.

Z: So you were in the Guard for what, twenty years?

M: Twenty-one. Well, actually, twenty-three years total.

Z: While you were in, did you have a civilian job the whole time?

M: No, just from ’81 to ’83. I was a civilian from that standpoint. I was a machinist. Then they laid off machinists. Then they permanently outed the job of a machinist during that two year time period. Like I said, the economy went bad back then. That trade sort of like died in this area. In 1983, the Active Guard Reserve Program—the AGR program—started coming into play, and as a matter of fact, I was stationed right here. The First Sergeant said, “Mac, you ought to think about putting in for that.” I said, “Psh, I’m not supply savvy.” He says, “You can go through training. It’s not a hard job.” And you know what? I put in for the job. I was out of work for a year, and I got the job. I learned that trade very quickly, and I crafted that. I ended up being very successful for it.

Z: What it doing the same sort of thing you did while you were in Camp Virginia, basically?

M: No, after I got promoted to E9, Sergeant Major, in 1999—up until that time period from ’83 to ’99, I was “supply guy.” I was a logistics guy. Now I was basically a logistics manager. When I took that position in ’99, the commander/administrative officer called me into the office ‘cause I was in Columbus at that time as a Master Sergeant, so this would have been a promotion for me, so I went and talked to him, and he says, “Listen, Mac. You’re a logistics guy. This job does not really pertain to logistics. It pertains to operations.” I said, “Yes, sir.” He says, “You're going to have to learn the operations side of the house now.” “Okay, I can do that.” Well, it took me a while to learn that job. Every once in a while, he would say, “Sergeant Major, could you step in my office?” I said, “Sure.” This was Coronel Lee, who’s now retired General Lee. He says, “Alright Mac, I need you to do me a favor. I need you to put your log hat on for me.” I said, “Okay, you want me to get out of my operations mode, then go back into logistic.” He goes, “Exactly.” And he did that several times, and that just lets you know that, hey, somebody thinks pretty highly of your opinion and what you’ve done in the past. I still had it.

Z: You’re versatile.

M: Yes. I always kept my fingers on it, too. I was always in and out.

Z: So what is it that you’re doing now as a civilian job?

M: Well, now I’m a logistics analyst for Serco North America out of Fairborn, Ohio. And we are actually doing—there’s a project: the Expeditionary Combat Support System, where it’s basically approximately two hundred and seventy legacy’s supply systems in the air force and condensing them all down into one. And what I've been doing is basically looking at data and inputting that raw data into the Oracle system, which is driving this ECSS program. It’s very interesting. It’s been rewarding for me. I just started this job back in April. I've got basically five months on the job. Before I got this job, I had been looking for a logistical job for years into the air force, army, whatever, as a civilian. I actually retired from the city of Franklin with five years of service right on the nose—five years; sixty months. Got a retirement out of that, then came to this job here. This job basically just landed in my lap. Thank God. ‘Cause this is something I've wanted to do for a long time. 

Z: What were you doing for the city of Franklin?

M: I was a utility clerk—listened to everybody complain about their water bills.

Z: So this is much better.

M: Very much better. I mean, I miss that job. I miss working with the people. I miss some of the customers. There’s a lot of people I don’t miss; same ones month after month complaining. It is what it is.

Z: Is there anything you feel you're particularly good at, at your current job?

M: Being a logistics guy, I really haven’t been put to that task yet, but it’s coming. There’s so many phases at this program that’s coming. It’s like, I can’t wait for this to happen because after this point, then I’m going to get through this point, then that’s when I really get to put on my logistics cap and really get to do what I intended to do for the last five, six years now. It’s just a slow process, but until we get past a couple of these phases, that’s what I'm waiting for to key in on. That’s why they hired me.

Z: How did your military career help you?

M: Actually being in the logistics field. It’s not an absolute mandate that you have to be in logistics ‘cause we do have some people that came from working at airfields that know tools. But my supply background in supply chain management basically is what got me the position because when the air force looks at who this company is hiring for the contract, they have to figure, this ain’t the good old boys system where Snuffy Smith has hired his cousin and his two brothers to be able to get into this contract and get paid well for it. So my background justifies my job with the Air Force supply chain management. He’s good.

Z: Probably doesn’t even feel like you’re out of the military if you work for a military—it’s kind of a military company, isn’t it?

M: It’s—no, it’s not. It’s a civilian contract, but we do have a lot of people that have military ties.  But you can see that they’ve been retired for quite a few years. I guess I’m not the one with the least seniority there, that’s been retired the longest, but it’s like, well Dave’s army and so and so’s army; this is an air force project, so they hire the air force expertise: the SMEs, or the Subject Matter Experts, in that field. So I’m kind of learning their air force policies and supply chain management different from the army’s.

Z: Is it a lot different?

M: A lot different. 

Z: Wow.

M: Yeah. You think logistics is logistics. But it’s different logistics, and I’m learning that process. It’s been slow and painful, but I’m learning and doing data prep as well.

Z: So overall, as we wrap things up, how do you think your time in the service and all of your military experiences have affected your personal life?

M: Well, I think I alluded this before. People say I just changed uniforms. As far as my wife says I’ll never be retired. The way I talk to people about certain things—it’s like on a very professional level, like an NCO talking to someone. Not down, but as a peer or higher. They can see that. And I guess, just the way I walk; “Oh, that guy must have been military,” or, “Look how Dave never changes on how he carries himself because he always looks professional, or you can tell he has been in the military.” I think, I’m still in the military to a certain extent.  People ask me, “Well, what do you want to be called?” And I’ll say, “Well, you can call me ‘Sergeant Major’ or ‘Sarge,’ I don’t care, but don’t call me mister, okay, ‘cause I don’t like that title.” 

Z: So you told me a little bit about growing closer to some of your unit while you were in Camp Virginia.

M: Mhm.

Z: Tell me about any sort of friendships that you formed as a result of your military experiences and if you still keep in touch with them.

M: Yes, our command Sergeant Major, Dave Collins; we just had dinner with him and his wife. Me and Sherry. This past weekend after the ceremony, he was there. I conversed back and forth. And people that I've worked with in the past, I always keep a tie. It’s like Dave McDaniel is known for being a friend, and he’ll never forget you. I always try to keep in contact with all of my friends, and it’s hard, and it’s difficult because the older I get, it seems like the more friends I’ve got. And my email list is so doggone long. I try to keep in contact with everybody I've been a friend with, especially this last deployment. Like I said, I'm kind of like the unofficial reunion guy now that started this email list, and it’s growing by week. I just love to see soldiers I've had before, years ago, they’ll come up to me and say, “Sergeant Major, how you doing?” And I've got some on my cell phone here that I call from like ten, fifteen years ago. I've got a young man that calls me occasionally, at least once a year and says, “Sergeant Major Mac, how you doing? I was just driving by Columbus the other day and thought I’d give you a call,” because that’s where we were. He was like an E4, an E5, and I was an E8 at the time. Every year when he calls, he goes, “I can’t thank you enough for helping me with my career or giving me some pointers in life.” It’s a shame I can’t even teach my own kids that. I try to give them pointers, but I got people that call me up from years ago that say, “Thanks for helping me out or giving me some pointers.” It’s been rewarding; it really has.

Z: Was there anyone in your military career that was a mentor for you just as you’re a mentor for those guys?

M: Yeah, I think the biggest impact, mentor-wise, is Major General Greg Late. Matter of fact, he is the guy that hired me going from the engineers as a supply guy, from regular supply sergeant to battalion supply sergeant. I knew Greg was what we call high-speed, and when he hired me in here, it’s like, okay I know this guy is kind of highfalutin’, and he was only a captain then. This guy really seems to know what he’s doing. What happened was, after about a week when I was on the job here, he says, “Dave, I want you to get ready. Next week, we’re going to go. We’re going to be gone Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and coming back home Friday. We’ll go out and visit all the units.” I thought, “Gee, cool.” The battalion headquarters here has a transportation battalion. We had four separate transportation cubbies scattered all over Ohio. So we went to Eaton, we went to Mansfield, we went to Ashland, we went to New Philadelphia in a week’s time. We sat, and we talked to these units. We asked what their concerns were. I was here to help them supply wise. And then Greg not only did that, but he went and told me, “Okay, this unit here is a 1484 transportation unit. They’re reducing to a half company. This is what they do. This is how they do it. This is what they do to perform.” That detail on that week, I learned so much about what the transportation battalion does, what the units do than I could ever sit up here for six months and look at a book. Everywhere I went in my career, I was dragging on his coattail to follow him. I wanted to work for this guy because this guy was such an impact. Such a force to be associated with, and his knowledge—gosh. I mean, he’s just leaps and bounds above other people. Of course, now he’s the Adjutant General for Ohio. He’s just awesome. We still have that—whenever he sees me, “Hey, Dave!” Here’s a two star talking to an old retired Sergeant Major. Whoever he’s talking to, he sees me and the wife, and he just comes up and smothers us with affection so to speak. It’s just awesome—that relationship. That’s something I've always tried to emulate with other people. 

Z: What significant changes do you think have happened in the military since you first joined?

M: Oh, god. It’s like going out of the dark ages to space age basically. The communications, like I alluded to earlier, going from writing letters and waiting weeks to get a response to instantaneous email. That’s one aspect of it. The training—the way they train now is just absolutely, completely different from the ‘70s when I was in, especially in the Vietnam era. Those soldiers went through a lot back then, in Vietnam, and seeing how we trained then, it’s nothing compared to how we train now. The leadership—when you start mentoring people from E2s and E3s; you see the E5s today, the soldiers today, the people coming in today are brighter, smarter. They're just leaps and bounds of the people when I came in with. Of course, we had draftees. People that had an option of going to prison or going to the army; what you think they're going to do? They’ll be going to the army, literally. That’s what the type of people when I first came in with, I was associated with. The quality of the soldier today is so much better than it was in the ‘70s. I had some good leaders back in the ‘70s; don’t get me wrong. My platoon sergeant, my squad leader, they were leaps and bounds, they were Vietnam vets—not just one year, two years in Vietnam. God love them. I’ll never forget those guys. But the leaders we have today far exceed what those guys knew, and how these guys today treat their soldiers is totally different from when I first came in. By leaps and bounds.

Z: Is there anything about yourself that other people might not know that you’d like to share?

M: No.

Z: Open book.

M: Yeah, I’ve got some secrets I’d rather keep secret. 

Z: That’s fair.

M: No, I think everybody that’s come in contact with me just knows that I’m a pretty down to earth guy. If it’s black, it’s black. If it’s white, it’s white. I’m not going to tell them it’s gray. And I think the leaders I’ve been associated with have taken that in stride. I tell them the truth. I don’t tell them what they want to hear; I tell them the truth.

Z: Is there anything that I haven’t asked you about everything that you might like to talk about?

M: Gosh, I’ll probably go home and think of twenty, twenty-five, three hundred things, but—I think what you guys are doing is great. I see a lot of stuff on TV. I can’t remember the HBO series that had the—about World War II. Doggone, I can’t remember. I sat in Kuwait and watched it over and over, and I can’t remember the name of the series. Anyways, during each series, it had the actual guys that the series was about. It had Major Colonel Winters. They were talking about their experiences, and then, of course, they would cut to the show or the film. And I thought, “My God. That is so awesome to have those guys comment on what that film was about or how they felt.” You guys are obviously trying to do that, that is great—absolutely awesome that you can do that.

Z: Just in summary, is there anything you want to say for the record, for history? Something you want everybody to know?

M: Maybe not everything I want you to know but—coming in from 1973 and staying in until December of 2004. That’s basically four decades. I only served a total of twenty-seven years, and at times, it seemed like a lifetime. When you hit your five year mark of getting your fulltime status, and until your ten year mark and then you hit your fifteen year mark. When I hit that eight, nineteen year mark, and that twenty year mark, I thought, “It’s about over.” Of course, I sort of waited because the opportunity wasn’t there, but when the deployment hit, I thought, “Wow.” The one thing that I will tell you is that, I said my wife had issues during the deployment, and February when we were getting processed, a situation came up. I had a permanent profile for my knees, so I had to go to a medical review board. And this medical review board—there was five of us that went up to Columbus from Kettering. I’m thinking, “Oh, I've got to go all the way up there.” Of course, Sherry knew I was going up to the board and to make a long story short, I go into the board review, and they said, “Well, Sergeant Major. You’ve got a permanent profile on your knees. It doesn’t look like you’re really qualified to go. Would you like to say anything?” I said, “Sure. There’s a lot I want to say. First of all, I’ve trained with all of these soldiers. I’ve trained my entire career to do this. I need to go. I want to go.” And they kind of looked at me, and I said, “Listen, I wouldn’t be able to look myself in the mirror if I didn’t go.” So they convened. Three hours later, they called me back into the room. The head of the president of the board was Coronel McHenry. He had been my commander before, before Colonel Smith.  He says, “Mac, we’re going to send you.” I said, “Cool.” Out of the five that went, I was the only one approved to go. So we’re on our way back. Well I went home that night, and the wife’s already a mess. She knows. I go in, and she’s laying on the bed there. I go, and I just sit on the edge of the bed. She goes, “You told him to send you, didn’t you?” I said, “Yeah, honey, I did,” and she just lost it. I mean, she was out of control. I just went up and thought, “Hey, you know, this is me that has to do this from the inside. Otherwise, I couldn’t live with myself the rest of my life.” She’s going to have issues, I know. And come to find out why we were at the ceremony last week, she had revealed for the first time to me—we were sitting there with Master Sergeant Clark and his wife Mary Pat, Sergeant Major Collins and his wife Lil. We were at the Cheesecake Factory. We’ve been there like three hours sitting there telling these tales. But anyways, she says, “I’ll never forgive him for doing that; I prayed all day long because I knew exactly what he was going to do.” But I told her, I said, “Hey, I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t go.”

Z: Well, has she ever understood?

M: To a certain extent; I don’t think she realizes. We had people that got out of going; they didn’t want to be. They had no desire to go. Were they chicken? Were they yellow? In our eyes, yes, they were, [to] the ones that deployed, yes, they were. For what reason? They have to look at themselves in the mirror every day and figure that out. There was three of them that did that. They had the same opportunity as us. Two out of the three did not go to the review board, but they came up with these medical mysteries all of a sudden.

Z: And you think that going was the right decision despite everything you went through?

M: For me, personally, yes. It was the right decision for me and my mindset and my sanity. For my granddaughter, my daughter; I think my daughter kind of took the deployment kind of hard, finding out from my son years later. My wife—obviously, it hit her very hard. I think she’s recovered for the most part. My granddaughter, like I said, I’ll never get that time back. I haven’t bonded with her as good as my wife has. I’m jealous of that, to this day I’m jealous of that, but it’s something that I could never get back. What I did, I think, was the right thing for me at the time, and I still stand by that decision that I did the right thing.

Z: Well, Dave, is there anything else you’d like to add?

M: I think that’s it for now. 

Z: Well, thank you so much for agreeing to do this interview today. Thank you for sharing your stories with us.