Days of Yore

One of the most pleasant assignments I had in the Air Force was with the 27 TASS at George AFB near Victorville, CA. Don’t bother looking, the base fell victim to the first BRAC and is no longer there, as such. The F-4G Wild Weasels were mothballed and the OV-10 was about to meet the same fate. A shame really, but the realities were that the F-4 wasn’t getting any younger and the OV-10 had a limited role for the USAF. The marines made better use of them in the long run.

Squadron life was the best. Many ached for higher level assignments at wings and head quarters for advancement sake, but I never really cared all that much one way or the other. I plodded my way to Master Sergeant and knew that was as far as I would go. I don’t regret a minute of it. I was a Technical Sergeant when I took over the Intelligence shop at the 27 TASS. TASS stands for Tactical Air Support Squadron. The OV-10 was primarily a Forward Air Control aircraft for directing fighters into their targets on the ground, generally trucks, tanks, troops in the open, and other mobile kinds of targets.

The mission certainly impacts the pace and character of squadron life, but there are some common threads. Those threads stand out in songs by Dick Jonas and Dos Gringos. There are/were other music groups and singers out there such as Bull Durham that also portray the pilot’s plight through music. I really enjoyed the traditions that went along with belonging to the squadron. Fliers new to the squadron get a nickname or call sign during a naming ceremony. I was fortunate enough to pick up a few myself because of my close association with the fliers. The last one was “Anthrax Bob”. The name is usually derived from an incident that the “namee” has experienced, a physical attribute, or just a play on words with their name. Mine came from a bad reaction to the anthrax vaccine, for instance.

Other traditions include soaking a pilot down with a fire extinguisher after his or her final or ”fini” flight with the squadron, never using the word “head” (and I complain about subcultures suborning the English language) , and inserting the phrase “so to speak” after making nay comment that could have a sexual connotation. Best of all was just the general respect and camaraderie within the squadron. A lot of this was built on Friday afternoons after work in the squadron bar. Many of the songs got their start there late in the evening when the hard-cores would sit around the bar and talk of times gone by.

Now in the civilian world I have yet to encounter anything even close the traditions and spirit of an Air Force squadron. Maybe that is because civilians are nine-to-fivers, or they just work to put beans on the table. I don’t know what the reason is, but I do miss the laughter and goings on of squadron life.