This afternoon I was the last person in the building tying up some administrivia for the unit when a young female Airman First Class walked into our lobby seemingly lost. I stepped away from my desk towards her and and asked if she needed help. She immediately explained that she was looking for the passenger terminal because she’s catching a flight out from here and replacing someone for a deployment. She saw the sign on my bldg as the cab she was in was driving by and figured she would ask for directions because the cab driver seemed to not know where to go. I said I could give directions to her and the cab driver outside so the meter wouldn’t run unnecessarily. I asked her what unit she was from as we were walking out the door and also spotted her last name on her ABUs.She apologized for taking my time and I told her to not worry – she’s at a base other than her own by herself, and that it’s perfectly fine to have stopped and asked for directions. Besides, we're in the same career field so we take care of each other, right? After explaining directions to both driver and the A1C, she thanked me as she got in the cab (loaded with her gear in the backseat and also the trunk) and they drove off.
I stopped for a moment and thought, ‘Are we sending A1Cs by themselves to Ports of Embarkations and downrange these days? What’s up with that?’ I figured I’d better give her unit a call.
I went back into my office, looked up the operator’s DSN for her base and called. I got the numbers for the airman's Ops, Training, First Sergeant and Mobility sections. Then I dialed each number in the order just stated. Well, of course with it being Friday, the only person that picked up the phone was the last number I dialed - the mobility section. An NCO answered and I identified myself by rank , name and unit up here. ‘Yes sir?’ he said. I asked if he had an ‘A1C so-and-so’ assigned, and he said, ‘Yes, we do!’ I then said, ‘Well, she was in my building a few minutes ago asking for directions to the pax terminal and is on her way there as we speak, but I just wanted to follow up with someone from her unit just in case.’ He replied, ‘Oh! Thanks for calling us – yessir, she just called me, but we’ve been in touch since she got up there last night, so everything’s good. She’ll be traveling by herself this time, but she won’t be coming home alone since she’s meeting up with our people over there. Usually we get our people over to Baltimore, but because this replacement was short-notice, we saw there was a flight up from your part of the country this afternoon heading over the pond so we sent her up there.’ ‘Oh – ok,’ I said, adding; ‘we don’t normally get troops that young out here on their own from other bases jumping off downrange, so I just want to let you know she stopped by and we got her pointed in the right direction.’
We talked for a little bit after that and after wishing him a good weekend and he doing the same, hung up the phone. He was a mission-oriented NCO that hung up by saying, ‘Out.’ I replied ‘Out’ as well - understanding that NCO being gung-ho and responding accordingly.
Then I stopped and thought on how I PCS’d from South Dakota to Okinawa (connecting in Denver and Oakland and over to Yokota AB, Japan then onto Korea for leave first since my dad was stationed there) as a 19-year-old A1C by myself back in the day without a hitch. What would make me think that an A1C today would be any less capable of doing mission travel alone?
Yeah, the generations are different, but Airmen (as in E-1 to E-4) are still capable of accomplishing tasks if given proper direction and follow-up by their leadership, or if they're blessed enough to have self-sufficiency as a built-in instinct. My faith in today’s bureaucratic deployment process has left me cynical in every way, especially when it comes to airflow, so that’s what made me call her unit. In the end, she was being guided and taken care of by a responsible NCO, something that I sincerely enjoy seeing after all these years of serving.
A couple of hours later after getting everything shut down and locked up, I walked out the door under a clear warm evening sky, and heard a heavy taking off from our base's main runway. I glanced over to the right to see what it was, and it was an NWA 747 heading upwards and northbound, gear going up - the charter that the female airman was on.
I prayed she had a good flight and a safe return, along with the others on her plane. ~
