I Served: Two Longs, Two Shorts, and Eight Deployments

By Doug Wise

While growing up in rural Montana, Doug Wise never imagined he would eventually study engineering at Montana State University and be commissioned in the US Air Force as a civil engineer officer. But as he soon came to discover, life has a way of presenting us with unexpected opportunities that guide us to our destinies. In a fascinating chronicling of his military career, Wise discloses how support officers contributed to the success of the many exercises, operations, and strategic initiatives completed by the Department of Defense through the 1990s and into the aftermath of 9/11. Wise details how he overcame numerous hurdles to ensure mission success, all while revealing a glimpse into his personal transformation from a young man without direction into a military officer and leader who traveled the world with his family. I Served shares the true experiences of a military veteran that reveals the benefits and hardships of military life while providing perspective on what it means to serve.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu Publishing Services
• Release date: Nov 4, 2018
• ISBN: 9781483488127

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WISE

Copyright © 2018 Doug Wise.

Cover by: Tim Mosholder, Mountain View Photo

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted by any means—whether auditory, graphic, mechanical, or electronic—without written permission of the author, except in the case of brief excerpts used in critical articles and reviews. Unauthorized reproduction of any part of this work is illegal and is punishable by law.

This book is a work of non-fiction. Unless otherwise noted, the author and the publisher make no explicit guarantees as to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and in some cases, names of people and places have been altered to protect their privacy.

ISBN: 978-1-4834-8811-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4834-8813-4 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4834-8812-7 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018907961

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Images from Shutterstock and the Map Division, Library of Congress.

Lulu Publishing Services rev. date: 10/18/2018

Recognition

To my family. For all your sacrifices.

Acknowledgments

I could not have written this book without the support and assistance of a wide range of people. This includes many of the people whose names appear in this book, as each of them reviewed some or all of my manuscript and provided thoughtful and constructive feedback.

Throughout my career, a positive can-do group of individuals surrounded me with one primary objective: complete the mission. They helped me to understand the many facets of every decision to move forward toward a common conclusion. Without their continued support and assistance, none of my overseas experiences would have been a success. This not only includes my fellow US military and civilian coworkers, but also the people from each of the countries I visited that were trying to make a better life for themselves and their families. Sadly, some of these individuals never returned home.

I take complete and total responsibility for any errors in this book. I made every effort to verify information and facts surrounding each of my experiences.

Finally, I appreciate the faithful support of my family who made the writing of this book an easier task. They provided my top cover while I spent several years writing, re-writing, and endlessly polishing this book.

How I Became an Engineer

and USAF Officer

Hit Me with Your Best Shot

I was so drunk! So much alcohol coursed through my body that I faded in and out of consciousness. Even though I still stood upright, I verged on passing out. I staggered over, drink in hand, and picked up a pool cue. Just one more drink …

What the heck was I doing here?

I closed one eye to see clearly, especially to see the broken glass. Focus, close the left eye, focus. You know, the broken glass on the pool table. Someone broke a beer bottle on the pool table, and Paul Williamson and I were picking it off so we could play a game of pool. Focus, squint, focus. One piece at a time. Be careful, or you might end up with a piece of sharp glass stuck in your blurry fingers. Focus, close the right eye … No better, focus. Ouch!

What was I doing at the Rockin’ R Bar?

The bartender yelled at us to not touch the broken bottle on the pool table. We didn’t listen. Dan March sat at the bar, doing what we later termed the casual puke. His conversation was punctuated by streams of vomit. As he talked to us, he repeatedly leaned between his legs and threw up, though it didn’t stop him from completing his sentences. Hey, you guys need to be caaareful, or you will get glass stuck in your finnnngers, Dan exclaimed.

Between Paul and me picking up glass and Dan’s casual puke, the bartender finally shook his head and went back to serving drinks to his less-inebriated customers.

What was I doing in Bozeman, Montana?

Paul clumsily racked the balls for the break. Concentrate on the cue ball, and just try to hit it, I thought. Focus, focus. Holy cow, I felt so inebriated. Despite this fact, Paul and I continued to drink. Just a few more drinks as a finale to the last Walk for Mankind. I can do this.

What was I doing going to school at Montana State University (MSU)?

We started out earlier that evening on the other end of town on our last Walk for Mankind at a hotel bar near I-90. We then headed south on Seventh Avenue to the Cat’s Paw, ending up at The Hofbrau. From there, we drank our way down Main Street to The Black Angus, American Legion Hall, Eagles Lodge, and The Crystal Bar—among others—finally ending at the Rockin’ R Bar. A dozen of us started out that evening, but as we walked from bar to bar, many fell out along the way.

Why was I in school?

The year before, we initiated our first drinking excursion, which we dubbed the Walk for Mankind, and walked from one end of the main drag of Bozeman to the other, having a different drink at each bar along the way. Not different kinds of beer but different types of drinks, mostly shots. The first year, we only made it to about ten bars, but this year was different. This outing was our final Walk for Mankind, and we were going out in style!

What was I doing becoming a civil engineer?

In preparation for this last Walk for Mankind, Paul and I had started going to bars the previous fall, winter, and spring, hitting every happy hour in town. During a typical week, we went out three or four nights a week, imbibing in happy hour drinks, whatever they might be. Our livers were ready for the Olympics … and the final Walk for Mankind! Almost all of us were in our last year of school, and this would be our final drinking expedition. That night, the rest of the group made it to the first eight to ten bars but then started to drop like flies. Though I only weighed 150 pounds, my liver was in incredible shape. Just one more drink. I could do it.

Why was I going into the US Air Force (USAF)? I mean, really, what was I thinking?

By the time we got to bar number thirteen, there were only a few hardy souls left. Even the big guys who could drink all day could no longer hang with us. The last men standing consisted of Paul, Dan, and me. We staggered to the Rockin’ R Bar, our final destination, and Paul and I ordered a few more rounds. Dan sat at the bar and performed the casual puke. Paul and I tried to play pool. We did it!

How did I get here?

In my inebriated haze, I thought back to my youth and how I ended up studying engineering at MSU. Also, how I ended up in the Air Force Reserve Officer Training Corps (AFROTC). I thought back to my years growing up in rural Montana and to the many opportunities and experiences that shaped the person I became.

The Wonder Years

I was born June 1, 1965, the youngest of four children, to my parents, Bill and Donna Wise. My older siblings are Sharon, born February 12, 1957; Carole, born August 13, 1961; and Bill, born October 13, 1963. About the time I came into this world, my parents had a beautiful brick home built in Helena, Montana, on the upper side of Mount Helena, overlooking the city. The neighborhood consisted of middle-class families, most with children. I spent a majority of my free time playing with neighborhood kids or with Carole and Bill. It was a great place to grow up, with fond memories and lots of social activities.

Though my parents weren’t originally from Helena, they both moved there as children. They attended different elementary and middle schools and graduated from Helena High School. After high school, my dad went to Carroll College in Helena, where he earned a degree in pre-med. He ultimately received a doctorate in internal medicine. Not only was he the first in his family to get an advanced degree, but he was also the first to even graduate from college. His parents didn’t have a lot of money, so my dad worked at various summer jobs, making enough money to pay for school. He married my mom on August 28, 1954. My mom worked as well, helping to support their new family. After I was born, my mom went to Carroll College, earning degrees in art and Spanish. Later, she also studied art in London and Rome.

My mom is an amazing artist, whether with sewing, knitting, pottery, or painting. Over the years, she painted in pastels, watercolors, pen-and-ink, acrylics, and oils. Some of my favorite memories as a teenager were tagging along with her to art fairs. She brought along some of her paintings, and I brought my stained glass, a craft I learned while a freshman in high school. We never sold much but always had fun together.

Though Dad worked very long hours, he always made time for us kids, playing sports and taking us fishing, skiing, or on backpacking trips. Anytime he worked on a project, Dad invited us to assist. Invariably, several little helpers tagged along behind him, ready to lend a helping hand.

My parents are two truly amazing people. I am lucky, honored, and blessed to call them Mom and Dad.

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From left to right: Bill, Doug, Carole, and Sharon.

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From left to right: Dad, Muzz, Bill, Carole, Doug, and Sharon.

When I turned nine years old, we moved from Helena to Clancy, Montana. This change made a significant impact on my life. We didn’t really move to the town of Clancy; my parents bought approximately forty-three acres of land seven miles south of Helena, midway between Montana City to our north and Clancy to our south. The main reason we moved was to raise and breed Arabian horses. Ugh, horses. I never liked horses.

Our new home was in a relatively remote location, especially to a nine-year-old kid. To give you an idea of the small size of our community, our post office box was Box W, in recognition of our last name: Wise. In Helena, we lived in a cozy neighborhood, I had numerous friends, and we had TV … all four stations. Now we had no neighbors, no other kids to play with, and no TV reception. But we did have square miles of beautiful land to explore, rock escarpments to climb, trees and rock niches to build forts, and creeks where we could play and fish.

My parents’ land lay to the west of the I-15 corridor. Our house abutted the northern boundary of their property on a south-facing hillside. The upper hillside, owned by our neighbors, rose behind our home to a ridge of decomposed granite escarpments. To the south of our home spread a beautiful green valley with open pastures bordered by dense stands of aspens, black birch, and several lowland marshy springs. A beautiful burbling brook—Jackson Creek—ran through this valley from west to east. And after going through a narrow constriction at the northeastern most point of my parents’ land, emptied into the much larger Prickly Pear Creek, which demarcated the eastern boundary of their land.

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Aerial view of my parents’ land, including their house, barn, and an old cabin.

Over the next ten years, I helped my family build a barn and hay barn for our horses, put up miles of fence (post and board/rail, jackleg, and stock fencing), partially demolish and rehabilitate an old cabin, start and tend two large gardens, build a greenhouse, build an expansive deck along the backside of our home—and then expand it, construct a passive solar addition to our home, construct multiple log and rock retaining walls, harvest cockleburs, and even build a dam. With each project, I took on more responsibility, with the dam being my capstone. A few of these projects include a special mention, especially the dam, as it proved a formative experience in my life.

When we first moved to our new home, we worked together as a family to construct fences around our upper and lower pastures. My dad bought an old green John Deere tractor with a post-pounder attachment that mounted on the back. My dad would hold the post in the pounder, the hydraulics would lift the pounder attachment, and the entire assembly would drop on the post, pounding it into the ground … Usually. If things didn’t work out right, my dad would invariably start cursing, swearing, and throwing things. My sister Carole aptly named this the rip and tear, curse and swear.

Any time that my dad became upset, Carole, Bill, and I would start laughing at him, calling out, Rip and tear, curse and swear, rip and tear, curse and swear, rip and tear, curse and swear! Our taunting didn’t help matters much.

Anyway, this project took a bit of time to complete, and we shattered more than one post in our rocky decomposed granite soil, accompanied by much cursing on our father’s part. We pounded these posts every ten feet and then placed two 1 x 6 rough sawn boards between the posts, one board across the top of the posts and the other board midway up the posts. We then put two nails in the end of each board, securing them to the posts. A year or so later, the boards started to warp and pull away from the posts, so my dad asked me if I wanted to make some money, adding one more nail to the end of each board. He offered to pay me a penny for every nail I put into the boards. I agreed.

My dad gave me an opened box of one thousand sixteen-penny nails, and I went to work. When he got home that evening, I put out my cramped and curled right hand and said, You owe me $8.64!

I used up every nail in the box, adding additional nails to the fence around our entire lower pasture and part of our upper pasture. My mom voiced her displeasure with my dad, as not only couldn’t I open my right hand all the way after clutching a hammer all day, but my right wrist started to swell from bursitis. I don’t think my dad realized that I would go through the entire box of nails! After a few days, my wrist and hand returned to normal.

My dad didn’t ask me to finish the rest of the fence.

I’m Stuck on You

We had a problem with weeds on our land—at least from my father’s perspective. My dad didn’t like weeds of any type and spent many hours spraying them. Actually, he showed a somewhat fanatical streak when it came to weeds. One of these weeds—the cocklebur—became a considerable nuisance. Though there are many types of cockleburs, we had a genus of cockleburs equivalent to the Sequoias in California. I don’t know the Latin name of these burs, but it is probably something along the lines of Cocklebur Giganticus. Our cocklebur plants grew up to six feet, and sometimes taller, branching out like a small tree with clusters of cockleburs at the ends of each branch.

The cockleburs themselves were round and about the size of a ping-pong ball. Each bur consisted of a small seed pod with numerous spikes sticking out. If you looked closely at the spikes, you could see that the ends were hooked. Anyone that got too close to these plants would suddenly find these monstrous buggers stuck to them. Pulling them off your clothes proved easy enough, but our horses had a propensity to enjoy the lush grass along our bottomland, right where the cockleburs grew. Every year, we would have to cut out massive mats of cockleburs from our horses’ manes and tails.

My dad finally made us an offer: he would give us twenty-five cents for every cocklebur plant we cut down and took to the dump. None of my other siblings were interested, but I went to town. The first summer I made almost seventy-five dollars! My mom and dad voiced their surprise that there were that many cockleburs on our land. The following year, I found even more hidden stands of cockleburs and my profits climbed to around $175.

At this point, my dad told me that we needed to renegotiate our agreement. We finally reached a compromise of ten cents for the small cocklebur plants and twenty-five cents for the large cocklebur plants. Despite this renegotiation, I continued to make $125 to $150 every summer. What we didn’t realize at the time is that cocklebur seeds remain viable for years … and they just kept coming back. I made so much money off this and other summer jobs that my older two siblings—Carole and Bill—started coming to me for loans. Of course, I happily complied with their requests for loans … with ten percent interest … compounded weekly! I know, what a turd.

The Damn Darn

Again, the dam turned out to be a distinct formative experience for me as it helped to determine my future career. One summer, when I was about eleven years old, my sister Carole and I decided to build a dam across our creek, Jackson Creek. After placing about a half-dozen six- to twelve-inch rocks across the stream—and filling in all the gaps between them—we had built a little dam, about four feet across. This started me thinking … Wouldn’t it be neat to build a larger dam where I could play, swim, and fish? I mulled this over the rest of the summer … and fall … and winter, until I realized that we already had a natural location for a dam. The valley below my parents’ house widened into an open sloping pasture and then abruptly necked down to a narrow ravine. A road formerly crossed this narrow point, leaving a further constriction perfect for a dam site. Some of you might think that building a dam at a location where a road washed out might portend bad things to come. At the time, I didn’t have that foresight! Anyway, this natural restriction, coupled with the old road embankments, proved a perfect location for a dam as it minimized the width of the dam while maximizing the pond behind it.

The next spring, I got to work—just me, a wheelbarrow, spade fork, shovel, and pick … and a lot of energy. As we didn’t have Google back then to tell me how to build a dam, I studied the job site for a while to determine the optimal location for my dam and source material. After clearing the tall grass and small trees from my dam site, I had a good idea of its location—the upstream side of the old road embankments at the narrowest constriction.

My idea: use the sod from the location of the future pond to build a sod wall as a dam face and then continue to dig down in this area to provide backfill material behind my new sod wall. Voila, I would have an earthen dam. It sounded good in concept, though a sod wall probably wasn’t a very realistic or permanent solution for my dam face. First, I started digging up the sod. Using my spade fork, I cut the sod into long strips approximately one foot in width. I then cut these strips in one-foot increments, making one-foot by one-foot sod squares, about three to four inches in thickness. I then laid these sod squares in a bricklayer fashion across the face of my future dam building my sod wall. I planned my future pond on a relatively flat and open area, so I had ample source material for my sod wall and earthen dam. At least I thought so at the time.

Looking downstream toward my future pond, the widest part of my dam stretched from the left embankment to the existing stream bed, approximately thirty-five feet across. I started my work there. After a few months, my dam began to take shape; I completed the wall from the left embankment to the edge of the existing stream bed. Where my sod wall met the stream edge, I made a ninety-degree turn downstream, building up the wall along the stream bank. This kept the backfill—behind my sod wall—from spilling into the creek.

During the second phase of construction, I dug down into my future pond site and used this spoil to pile behind my left sod wall. This provided two benefits: a deeper pond and an easily accessible location for my dam backfill material. I quickly realized I had a few problems with my soil material and dam construction. First, the soil consisted of a sandy-rock mixture. This shouldn’t have been a surprise as I was digging into sediment material deposited by the meandering stream bed. As a result, my hole started to fill with water that seeped from the adjacent—and higher—creek. This kept me from going more than a few feet in depth for my fill material. So much for my really deep dam for swimming … Maybe a wading pool would be more in order!

Second, the fill material did not pile up well behind my sod wall; it tended to wash or spread out. I ended up with an angle of repose on the backside of my dam of approximately thirty degrees on a downhill sloping dam site. Consequently, my dam backfill increased significantly, which in turn increased the volume of required fill material. Whew! More digging.

Third, I couldn’t dig too close to my sod wall as I would then undermine it and increase the likelihood of catastrophic collapse. Therefore, I left approximately two feet between my sod wall and my excavation, which lessened my concern with undermining and failure of my wall. This also meant that I had to bring the backfill from a longer distance. In turn, it became too difficult to shovel it over the wall, so I now had to use my wheelbarrow to cart it up and around.

Fourth, my sod wall did not provide a permanent solution; I became concerned that my sod wall would fail or topple from the pressure of the fill material pushing against its backside prior to the equalizing force of the water in my dam. I then started hunting around for some materials to protect my earthen structure. Several years before, we tore apart sections of an old ramshackle cabin on our land. This meant that I had an excellent source of construction material for the face of my dam. This included wood boards and posts. I sank these posts in the ground immediately in front of my sod wall and nailed the boards across their fronts. Next, I filled the void between my sod wall and my new wood dam face. Eventually, I built my dam up to approximately three feet in height.

As my hole for excavation had filled with water, I started looking around for other fill sources. I found one across the road leading to my parents’ house, but the digging proved difficult … and I don’t believe that my parents were too thrilled with the borrow pit being dug into the hillside below their home. After searching and digging at several locations, I found a great soil source of decomposed granite up the abandoned road on my parents’ land. I could fill the wheelbarrow to the brim with dirt and skid it down the old road to my dam site, the soil was loose and easy to excavate out of the hill, and no one could see my excavations as it was off the beaten path. In hindsight, using decomposed granite as fill material for my dam was one step below using the sandy gravel from the pond location.

During the next phase of my project, I started on the other side of the running stream, from the stream to the right embankment. As my sod source ran thin at this point, I built the wall section entirely from wood—instead of sod—and backfilled behind it with fill material, completing the wood wall from the existing stream edge to the right embankment. This section was much shallower and proceeded quickly. The abandoned road also backed a portion of this section, further reducing the needed backfill. When finished, these two walls—from left to right hill embankments—extended over sixty feet in length and went from three feet at the deepest point tapering down to a foot at each embankment. The dam itself had a crest of a little over sixty-three feet.

I then had to determine how to make the spillway. My dam came into shape on each side of the creek, but I needed to figure out how to stop up my dam to create a pond. If you took a bird’s-eye view of my dam, or looked at it in plan view, I had two walls across the face of my dam, which turned downstream at a ninety-degree angle on each side of the creek bank, leaving an approximate three-foot gap between each side of my dam walls where the stream still ran.

About this time, we started referring to my dam as the darn, because my Muzz jokingly said we shouldn’t use that kind of language. My creative sister Carole coined the term Muzz. Not sure where she came up with this name, but it stuck, and we call our mom Muzz to this day. I would lightheartedly tell Muzz that I was going to go work on my damn darn and head down the hill for another day’s work. It was all in good fun.

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Having fun with Muzz … at her expense!

So how to solve the spillway problem? I found some angle iron and rough sawn 2 x 6 boards. I set the angle iron vertically into the wood structure of my darn walls on each side of the stream bed with one flange anchored into the wood wall and the other flange protruding into the stream bed. I then cut the 2 x 6 boards to fit across (horizontally) between the angle iron mounted on the opposing darn walls. My idea: the water pressure would push against the 2 x 6 boards, holding them in place against the angle iron. Pretty slick! The 2 x 6 boards formed my spillway.

I diverted the creek into my excavation site and then set the first 2 x 6 board in place across my spillway. I continued to stack 2 x 6 boards on top of the first board to raise my darn height … and held my breath. As the darn filled, I noted my eye level for the darn crest did not match reality. The dam listed like the Titanic. I scrambled a bit to add some wood to one side of my darn and add backfill. I then added one last 2 x 6 board to bring my darn to its full height.

After a few days, I noted that my darn seeped a bit. In fact, it developed several wet spots on the downhill side of the darn. I guess I should have paid a bit more attention to my carpentry work when placing the boards across the face of my darn! Also, the sandy gravel and decomposed granite backfill didn’t do much to impede the water flow. Luckily, we had some excess plastic sheeting lying around from a hothouse my dad and I built the previous year. I used this plastic sheeting to face the darn. I also found a clay outcropping and used it to seal around the base of the darn, especially in front of the spillway.

Over the next year, the area in front of the spillway continued to develop leaks. I probably should have excavated the rocks and pebbles from the stream bed prior to placing my spillway boards as the water sought this path of least resistance. At one point, the water barely overtopped my spillway as so much water went under it. The following summer, I added additional pea gravel in front of the spillway to fill the larger voids and then sealed the entire area with an extra layer of clay. Though my darn still had a few minor leaks, the majority of the water exited over the spillway, even in the driest summer months when our two-foot-wide creek would narrow down to a mere trickle. My only other operations and maintenance activities consisted of removing one or two of the spillway boards during the spring runoff to allow additional water outflow to protect my darn.

Over the ensuing years, everyone enjoyed the pond. In the winter, Carole, Bill, and I made trails on the ice and played Fox and Geese. We also ice skated on the somewhat uneven frozen surface. In the summer, I caught and threw grasshoppers into the pond and fed the trout that made it their new home. At one point, I counted over thirty fish in the deepest section of the pond. I also practiced my fly fishing, catching and releasing these fish, which varied in length from four to eight inches. Several years after building my darn, we experience an extremely frigid winter; at one point, the temperatures hovered around thirty to forty degrees below zero Fahrenheit for several weeks. The coldest day: forty-two degrees below zero Fahrenheit, which did not include the wind chill.

This sustained arctic blast caused the pipes leading to our house to freeze, over three feet below the ground! We didn’t have running water in our home for almost two months. Instead, we went into town to Chalmers and Mable Wise’s (my dad’s parents) house to shower and my dad brought home jugs of water for drinking and for cooking. We also took an ax down to my darn and cut a hole in the ice. We took some of our large rubber buckets from the barn and filled them from my darn. We used this water to flush our toilets. Most people don’t realize this, but you can flush a toilet by pouring in a bucket of water. It provides the same gravitational action as emptying the water in the toilet tank when you flush your toilet.

One spring, about six years later, we were sitting on the back patio of our parents’ home when one of us noticed a strange sound coming from our creek. We