So Many Memories

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We must live in the present, for that is where life happens.  The joys, the sadness, the triumphs and defeats are now.  Just ask the US and Japanese Women’s Soccer Teams, where they thinking about yesterday or tomorrow?  But the present becomes the past and is replaced by the future.  Thoreau tells us “You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment.”  But at some point we should step out of the present and review the past if we are to prepare for, and shape the future.

How do we know what is right, just, and moral, if we are convinced to condemn the memories because they offend? Where will our context for future evaluation come from?

One sun drenched morning in 1980 I climbed down the steps of an aircraft that had taken me a thousand miles into harms way and had brought me home.  Without men – this aircraft was nothing, but without this aircraft we were just individuals.  Together we formed a group united in purpose and willing to do whatever was asked of us.  We carried the hopes of a President and an unknowing nation into an effort that, at best, was assessed as only a little better than a 50% chance of success.

As I sat under the wing of that aircraft, limp and still as the heat rose off the hard packed desert, I was flooded with the memories of the last 15 hours and let those events flow from me.  The complete and overwhelming sense of failure, the sense of pain for those we lost, and concern for those we brought home severely burned and wounded.  I spent some considerable time in prayer seeking to understand why.  God doesn’t seem to tell me the why’s to a lot of my questions.

Little did I imagine this would be the opening salvo of America’s long religious war with the Middle East and radical Islam?  But perhaps that is too smug an idea.  The west has been at war with Islam since before the crusades, but like a fire it ebbs and flares.  Today, with modern weapons it just seems to be noisier as we replace secular states allowing fundamentalist’s to gain power and they in turn exert their powers on their neighbors.

So here we are now 35 years later and I’ve added so many more memories yet these initial ones continue to offend me for the tragic nature of their origin

Antelope Island

There is an island in the Great Salt Lake.  I am told Jim Bridger named it Antelope Island after the native wildlife he found when he discovered it in the early 1800’s.  It is reached by driving on a long causeway from just south of Ogden.

One warm and sunny day around 2002 I finished work early in a conference I was attending at Hill Air Force Base.  I decided I would take a ride over to this beautiful spot to see what I could see.  Imagine my surprise as I reached the island and the first thing I see is a monument with an Air Force Special Operations Command Shield and a Ranger Tab on it.  I pulled in to see what it was all about and the memories came flooding back.

In early 1992 I was a mission commander for a small task force charged with providing search and rescue support of US Air Force fighters and cargo aircraft flying from Incirlik Air Base, Turkey into Northern Iraq as part Operation Northern Watch.  I had under my command three MC-130P Combat Shadow aircraft and four MH-60G helicopters, along with combat controllers and PJ’s.  During that time the leader of the helicopter force was Lt Col Roland Peixotto, "Randy" was the DO of the 55^th Special Operations Squadron from Hurlburt Field, FL.  We had a very good working relationship and I came to rely on his opinion and advice.  Randy came from a family of US Army Generals, all from West Point.   He had graduated from West Point and served a number of years with the Army, but had made the decision to transfer to the Air Force when his career would have required him to stop flying and lead ground forces.  After about six weeks I rotated back to my unit and soon after Col Peixotto and his men loaded up on a C-5 and flew back to Hurlburt.

AFSOC was not a very big command and most of us seemed to end up serving or overlapping with each other on assignments.  I expected I would see Randy again.

I think Randy was given command of the 55^th that summer.  The following October, elements of the 1^st Special Operations Wing, including the 55^th SOS, and elements of US Army Special Operations Command, including elements of the 160^th Special Operations Aviation Regiment and 75^th Ranger Regiment were conducting a training mission from Hill AFB into an objective area across the lake.  The weather on the day of the mission was not forecast to be bad but it did have low ceilings, light gusting wind, light rain and no moon illumination.  This led to conditions where their night vision goggles where only marginally effective.  The Air Force MH-60G’s were leading US Army MH-60Ls carrying a small force of Army Rangers into the objective area.  The formation took off from Hill AFB at approximately 9:15PM turning west towards the objective area.  A little less than five minutes later it is believed the pilot flying the lead MH-60G call sign Merit 81, developed vertigo and flew the aircraft into the lake, crashing just north of the causeway and Antelope Island.  Twelve men were killed, and one survived.  Those 12 men are memorialized on the Antelope Island.

Their names:

US Army:  Col John T. Keneally, LTC Kenneth W. Staus, Sgts Blain A Mishak and Harvey E Moore, Jr., Specialist Jeremy B. Bird.  All were Rangers

US Air Force:  LtCol Roland E. Peixotto, Jr, Capt Michael L. Nazionale, TSgt Mark Scholl, Sgts Phillip A. Kesler, Steven W. Kelly and Mark G. Lee, and Sr Amn Kerek C. Hughes.  All were Air Commandos

This link is to a geo-caching site that describes what you find at the memorial.  

Memorial on Antelope Island, UT