Free Afterburners by William Robert Stanek Page A

third wartime missions. The days passed in a blur of activity and confusion. I never fully realized how bizarre or wonderful our modern electronic age is. Here we were at war with Iraq and I was at an air base in Turkey.
        I remembered an old black-and-white clip issued by the war department during World War II. It was a special on the Memphis Belle. The narrator described England as an air front. I guess that’s what Turkey was, an air front.
        In my mind, the Gray Lady stacked up to the Belle point for point; yet our missions can’t be measured in payloads or tonnage dropped, but in lives saved and planes returned safely to base.
        It seemed we were segregated from the war and that we only jumped in and out of it for short spurts. Then things happened that reminded us just how insecure we were even though we were hundreds of miles away from the war zone.
        Iraq was again accusing Turkey of unprovoked aggression. They said that by allowing U.S. warplanes to attack Iraqi targets, Turkey was being drawn closer to war. Iraq threatened certain retaliation. Defenses around the air base had been bolstered, and reports said a Patriot missile battery was already here although I’d seen no reassuring signs.
        We were directed to start taking our pyridostigmine tablets every eight hours for seventy-two hours. The powers that be believed Iraq would indeed attack Turkey. If the attack came, they believed it would come in the form of a chemical or biological attack. The experimental drug in the tablets was supposed to counter side effects that would otherwise cripple us in the battlefield.
        Late in the afternoon, I awoke to the sound of screaming sirens. The sirens’ wail, a wavering tone, told me attack was imminent or in progress. It signified Alarm Red.
        Still exhausted from the early morning flight, it took me a few moments to orient myself. Shortly I remembered, as did everyone around me, words from our briefings on the unconventional warfare threat, “All attacks should be considered chemical until proven otherwise. Take immediate cover and don protective gear.”
        Real world chemical gear is carefully sealed in government plastic bags, each piece separate. The full chemical ensemble includes overpants, overjacket, plastic overboots, mask, hood, cotton glove inserts and plastic overgloves, all worn over the top of a standard uniform or flight suit. Over the top of all that went a protective helmet and a web belt with canteen, medical kit and a pouch containing nerve agent antidote: pyridostigmine tablets, three atropine auto-injectors, and three 2-pam chloride auto-injectors. In short, it was everything we needed to survive.
        Plastic bags were being ripped apart all around the room. Many like me had already gone through a previous Alarm Red. We had our masks at the ready, our gear close by. Others who had arrived only recently were scrambling and tearing open bags.
        Chemical hoods, part of the full ground-crew ensemble, are not only carefully packed in plastic but also packed with baby powder to preserve them. The filters for our particular type of masks, the full-face type, were packed in tin cans. There were about five or six people that were opening the tin cans and baby powder was everywhere.
        I went for my mask first and messed with the ground-crew ensemble second. Then I huddled on the floor in the quasi-dark of that small room, waiting for the sirens’ wail to end.
        I glanced down at the pouch containing the irksome looking auto-injectors. I remembered from demonstrations and training that beneath the safety cap was a hidden needle over two inches long. The needle wasn’t thin, but rather thick to prevent breakage and to allow the antidote to inject more quickly. To activate it you were supposed to slam the needle end of the injector hard against the side of your thigh until the needle triggered, then hold it there while the