I figured three years flying in Germany should do it.
Naturally, Uncle Sam had other plans.
Im skinny, and I grew up in the Deep South.
Shown here is a CH-47D Chinook. Machines like this one took the author all over Alaska back in the day. It is equipped with skids to improve its ability to land on snow.
So, of course, I got orders for Alaska.
Thats the thing about military service.
The Big Green Machine doesnt much care what you want.
The author piloting a Chinook over the top of Denali. Also known as Mount McKinley, he advised that this flight was an undeniable rush. Note the use of oxygen, something not typically needed in a helicopter.
Everything is always the mission.
We could tell we had arrived when all the cars we encountered had electrical cords hanging out the front.
It took us nearly a month of driving just to get there.
A multi-ship air assault in CH-47D Chinooks would move an entire infantry battalion in a single lift. It took quite a lot of coordination, planning and pilotage to do that safely and effectively.
The place was at once both intimidating and unimaginably beautiful.
For starters, Alaska is really, really big.
My favorite bumper sticker read, If You Split Alaska in Half, Texas Would be the Third-Largest State.
The author was nearly killed when the hoist came apart while he was dangling underneath one of these machines. Testosterone may be the most potent poison known to man.
Alaska has three million lakes, most of which dont have names.
It is also home to some 50,000 Alaskan brown bears.
The first year we got 144 of snow.
This is one of the many brown bears that the author saw while stationed in Alaska. Predators, he said, were as big as Volkswagens.
The coldest it got was 62 degrees below zero.
Not so in Alaska.
We did Brigade runs at 40 below just because we could.
The author did a Form 1 and cut the barrel down on this slide-action 12 gauge shotgun to 12″. Stoked with sabot slugs, it was his constant companion when out where the Wild Things Roamed.
For this skinny warm-blooded Southern redneck, Alaska was a brave new world indeed.
And then there was the flying.
Alaska Gods Playground
Alaska was dichotomous for us.
Military service means hardship and time away from family. However, it also means some simply peerless friendships.
For two of my three years in Alaska, I was the operations officer for a CH-47D helicopter unit.
The grunt life was not nearly as sexy cool as aviating, but I made some simply incredible friends.
The natural beauty of the place really does defy my capacity to describe.
There arent a lot of places left on Planet Earth where you might do that.
I have actually flown night vision goggles (NVGs) at noon well above the circle.
You also have not lived until you have kicked back and soaked up the northern lights under NVGs.
It was so majestic it needed a soundtrack.
Mans art pales in comparison to Gods.
TheBoeing CH-47D Chinookis a serious helicopter that does serious things.
Unlike many lesser military machines, every time we broke ground it was to do something real.
We recovered two downed fighter jets.
One was a British SEPECAT Jaguar and the other a U.S. Air Force F-15C Eagle.
Both planes were fairly pulverized, but I did get some sweet swag from the Jaguar.
I also had the privilege of working with some great Brits from the Royal Air Force.
The aviation assets in Alaska are there to support a robust light infantry brigade.
That meant resupply missions, paradrops, and air assaults aplenty.
It made lesser challenges like medical school that came later seem easy by comparison.
Your Tax Dollars at Work
It wasnt all work, not by a long shot.
Picking up shed antlers for the enlisted guys back at the hangar was a perennial crowd-pleaser.
The rules were you had to be in uniform when dropped off and in uniform when picked up.
Anything else was fair game.
I carried a homebuilt, registered slide-action short-barreled shotgun forbear defensewhen I was out in the wilderness.
I briefly considered stoking it with those fire-breathing dragons breath rounds just for the shock value.
However, an old Alaskan in my church talked me out of that.
And speaking of wildlife…
Under NVGs, I saw packs of wolves running in formation that looked like a literally unstoppable force.
I popped the cyclic back and cleared the monster by maybe a foot or two.
We really did strive not to molest the wildlife.
The moose are thick as rats out in the muskeg and flee in terror whenever we got close.
Human beings are not at the top of the food chain out in that place.
As a compulsive student of history, the detritus of World War II was mesmerizing.
There were crashed vintage aircraft all over the place if you knew where to look.
Alaska is an unforgiving place for aviators, particularly back in the 1940s.
I found WWII-vintage graffiti while exploring some of the more obscure parts of the old building.
Ruminations
Doing all that cool-guy stuff meant a lot of deployments.
I averaged eight months out of twelve away from home and wandered as far afield as Australia.
However, I left the Army with enough stories to keep my grandchildren entertained until the sun burns out.
I was glad to move back someplace where I didnt have to plug my car in during the winter.
Additionally, if I ever see another snowflake it will be too soon.
