I'd been working in Apache units, first 3/6 and now 1/6, for about two years. I was commo--I was squadron tech support, builder of LAN infrastructure, virus removal, and everything else to do with things that go beep--which meant that while I worked around the birds, I didn't every work with them. The Apaches have their own tech guys, who were as different from us computer jockeys as night from day.
A lot of soldiers in Apache units (and, I suspect, units everywhere) try to act blase about the birds themselves. You don't want to be the rubberneck, y'know? And after a while you do actually get to be blase about it, but me and the guy who'd been sent with me to hook up LAN lines in one of the troop buildings (A? B? can't remember) weren't there yet.
There's only one other guy there, one of the senior pilots named Wallenburg. We let him know we were done and started to head out, and he stops us and says, "You guys ever see the inside of one of those?" Pointing out the window at an AH-64. His, I guess. We play it cool, try to act like we're not kids going into the candy store as we walk out across the blacktop to the bird. I sat in the cockpit, waggled the stick that (I think) controlled the 30mm cannon, and tried to not make machine gun sounds with my mouth. It was really, really fucking cool.
In August, the whole squadron got woken up in the middle of the night and were instructed to form up. A bird had gone down. We loaded up in trucks, drove out to a likely spot, and chickenwalked over an entire mountain trying to find it. Spent all day. It got dark, and we rolled into what I think was a little retirement home--one-story apartment building with a big activity room and a central kitchen. We broke out MREs and caught a few hours of sleep sprawled all over the chairs in the activity room. The next morning, the people who lived there cooked us breakfast. To this day, I have no idea what the deal with that was--did we pay them to let us crash at their place? How did we get in contact with them to begin with? "Hi, yeah, I've got an entire squadron of sleepy-heads, wondering if we could have them nap on your chairs."
After eating, we drove out to a new location and chickenwalked another mountain. Our troop commander, I'd served in HHQ at another unit while he'd been running A Troop, and at the time he hadn't impressed me. Seemed kinda full of himself. That day, he coordinated our search operation, watched over us for signs of exhaustion, kept us appraised of news from other searches, and made us feel like we were running on more than six hours of sleep (to his two or three, I'm sure).
Word came in they'd found the bird, both pilots dead. They'd gotten lost on a late, foggy night, and crammed into the side of a mountain. Troop commander asked for volunteers to stay on the mountain and watch over the site until a recovery unit could get in there. I was lucky enough to be one of the first to step forward; he had to turn most of the troop away.
We ran it like any other field exercise. Set up our canvas, divvyed up the watch order, squared away our supplies (box of MREs and a pallet of boxed milk). The only major difference was that the watch list rotated more often than a normal watch would. Everybody spent four hours up at the site itself. The bird was broke as hell--just a stripped fuselage on turned earth. Next morning we packed up and headed back. A few days later, we had the service for 1LT Shannon and CW3 Wallenburg in the hangar.
A lot of soldiers in Apache units (and, I suspect, units everywhere) try to act blase about the birds themselves. You don't want to be the rubberneck, y'know? And after a while you do actually get to be blase about it, but me and the guy who'd been sent with me to hook up LAN lines in one of the troop buildings (A? B? can't remember) weren't there yet.
There's only one other guy there, one of the senior pilots named Wallenburg. We let him know we were done and started to head out, and he stops us and says, "You guys ever see the inside of one of those?" Pointing out the window at an AH-64. His, I guess. We play it cool, try to act like we're not kids going into the candy store as we walk out across the blacktop to the bird. I sat in the cockpit, waggled the stick that (I think) controlled the 30mm cannon, and tried to not make machine gun sounds with my mouth. It was really, really fucking cool.
In August, the whole squadron got woken up in the middle of the night and were instructed to form up. A bird had gone down. We loaded up in trucks, drove out to a likely spot, and chickenwalked over an entire mountain trying to find it. Spent all day. It got dark, and we rolled into what I think was a little retirement home--one-story apartment building with a big activity room and a central kitchen. We broke out MREs and caught a few hours of sleep sprawled all over the chairs in the activity room. The next morning, the people who lived there cooked us breakfast. To this day, I have no idea what the deal with that was--did we pay them to let us crash at their place? How did we get in contact with them to begin with? "Hi, yeah, I've got an entire squadron of sleepy-heads, wondering if we could have them nap on your chairs."
After eating, we drove out to a new location and chickenwalked another mountain. Our troop commander, I'd served in HHQ at another unit while he'd been running A Troop, and at the time he hadn't impressed me. Seemed kinda full of himself. That day, he coordinated our search operation, watched over us for signs of exhaustion, kept us appraised of news from other searches, and made us feel like we were running on more than six hours of sleep (to his two or three, I'm sure).
Word came in they'd found the bird, both pilots dead. They'd gotten lost on a late, foggy night, and crammed into the side of a mountain. Troop commander asked for volunteers to stay on the mountain and watch over the site until a recovery unit could get in there. I was lucky enough to be one of the first to step forward; he had to turn most of the troop away.
We ran it like any other field exercise. Set up our canvas, divvyed up the watch order, squared away our supplies (box of MREs and a pallet of boxed milk). The only major difference was that the watch list rotated more often than a normal watch would. Everybody spent four hours up at the site itself. The bird was broke as hell--just a stripped fuselage on turned earth. Next morning we packed up and headed back. A few days later, we had the service for 1LT Shannon and CW3 Wallenburg in the hangar.
thedarkness:
Dude, that sounds hard to deal with.
trevallion:
This is a really good story. The part about going to the cockpit reminds me of the first time I, as an engineering guy on a submarine, got to hang out in Control. I wanted to play with the periscope so bad. Bummer about the crash though.