A-10s over Kosovo (illustrations removed)

We all quickly adapted to our new office space, and the mission was unaffected. It was actually nice having everyone together in one location. At a home base, the support guys are rarely around when a jet lands, so they feel slightly removed from the mission. Not at Gioia! The pilots had to walk down the “support” hallway to drop off their flying gear, and the transportation, personnel, and civil engineering troops would come out into the hallway to ask how the flight went. Most of the time the pilots were more than willing to take the time to swap stories and play hero with the younger troops. It really built up camaraderie between the officers and enlisted folks.

Support personnel had to accomplish many tasks while the pilots flew their missions. Being in charge of the comings and goings of more than 900 folks was no easy feat, but the Air Force has a deployable computer system designed for just such a task. Of course, in the 100-plus days we were there, we never received all the parts required to make the system operational. We didn’t have to resort totally to stubby-pencil tracking, but I did have to design a database to meet our needs. Support folks fixed thousands of such problems as this with equal ingenuity.

When I wasn’t trying to track our people, I was getting ready to host our many visitors. One might think Gioia del Colle was too small for most people to find, but we had our share of “very important people.” Secretary of the Air Force F. Whitten Peters and Lt Gen Michael Short, joint forces air component commander, were two of the highest ranking US people to visit. Our visitors were not limited to Americans. The British were on the bottom floor of our dorm/office building, an arrangement that prompted Prince Andrew to pay us a visit as well during his tour of RAF operations. He appreciated the chance to see an A-10 up close and to talk to some of our members. Rock star Joan Jett also made a support appearance at Gioia, puting on a wonderful concert for the troops.

\Photo: Capt Dawn Brotherton greets Prince Andrew

As an executive officer, I tried to deal with the minuscule things that go unnoticed to the untrained eye, such as storing mattresses, allocating office space, and playing peacemaker between operations and support personnel when they didn’t understand each other. I also dealt with all the administrative paperwork that goes hand in hand with any organization.

There were big problems to deal with and not-so-big problems. One of the funny inconveniences of our deployment was the lack of a place to wash our clothes. The Italians didn’t have Americanstyle laundromats, and the hotels charged ridiculous fees to wash even a shirt. The extra money the Air Force was paying us to cover expenses like this wasn’t going to hack it. People came up with some humorous solutions to the laundry problem. I heard of some pilots taking showers while wearing their flight suits so they could wash them at the same time. Others discovered the additional floor-mounted sink in their bathroom (known to most European travelers as a bidet) and used that to wash their clothes. Now is that creativity, desperation, or just cheapness? A few people mailed packages of dirty laundry to their wives, who usually returned clean clothes. I wouldn’t want to be on the receiving end of those packages! I am sad to say this little problem was never really solved.

There was definitely an upside to being deployed with this group of professionals. Walking around the area and talking to the airmen about their different jobs was enlightening. I’ll never forget the looks on the faces of the maintainers when their jet came back clean. The pride was evident: they bragged to one another, just as if they had dropped the bombs themselves. They were also concerned if a jet was late returning or if they could see the bombs still hanging as the A-10 came in to land.

After we had been in place a few months, things slowed down just enough to give the senior leadership a chance to hold a few meetings. Lt Col Chris Haave was the 81st commander, referred to as Kimos in most of this book—but support officers typically didn’t call pilots by their call signs. Colonel Haave briefed the troops on how we were doing against the Serbs and what impact the A-10s were making. He showed gun-camera videos that depicted bombs being dropped on targets, and he described a typical mission. Folks were on the edge of their seats. For the most part, these airmen had never been close to combat, and the briefing made it all the more real. Having a lieutenant colonel thank a group of enlisted and support officers, while explaining how they were really contributing to the war effort, made us feel needed and appreciated. It sure made coming to work for 12-plus hours a day more worthwhile.

Chapter 4. ENEMY ACTION

Introduction Lt Col Chris “Kimos” Haave