Saturday, June 30, 2007

Wounded Tech. Sergeant's Will to Fly Remains Undaunted

By Linda D. Kozaryn
American Forces Press Service

June 29, 2007 – Despite being shot down over Iraq and nearly losing an eye,
Air Force Tech Sgt. Christian MacKenzie remains committed to the Air Force and his love of flying. For nearly 10 years, life was good for MacKenzie. He'd found his dream job as a special operations flight engineer aboard an MH-53 Pave Low helicopter, flying low-level, long-range, undetected flights into enemy territory, day or night, in all kinds of weather, to insert, extract and resupply special operations forces.

After graduating as a flight engineer in 1994, MacKenzie flew missions in South Korea, Bosnia and Croatia, and took part in exercises in Qatar and Bahrain. He flew combat missions over Kosovo during Operation Allied Force and over the southern Iraq no-fly zone during Operation Southern Watch.

"Being a Pave Low flight engineer was the best job I ever worked my tail off for," he told American Forces Press Service during a recent interview.

The 38-year-old non-commissioned officer racked up 2,300 hours of flight time, including 500 hours in combat. He served in a combat zone every year since 1996.

"You didn't see us in the news," he said. "There were no parades or big flag-waving ceremonies or anything like that. We went in. We did our job. We did what our country needed us to do.

"You could see the smiles on the guys' faces - we never knew their names. We pulled them out and they went about their business," he said. "At the end of the day, that's what it was all about. Without somebody patting you on the back, taking your picture or shaking your hand, the job itself rewarded you for doing those kinds of missions."

Rough Flying in Afghanistan and Iraq

When duty with the 20th Special Operations Squadron called MacKenzie to Afghanistan, he said, the country's rough terrain presented some major challenges. "It was the toughest flying I ever did," he recalled. "You were flying at the aerodynamic edge of your aircraft in a way that there was no room for error."

The crew had to calculate fuel and the weight of personnel, he said, along with the distances, altitudes, the harsh terrain, unpredictable winds and the number of people they had to take in. On some missions, the Pave Low, which burns 3,000 pounds of fuel an hour, would get down to 300 to 400 pounds of fuel.

"It was down to the wire," he said. "We would actually go up to altitude to dump off fuel to trim our weight down to get in, and then we'd get down there and the sand dunes would have moved or the (landing zone) would have changed. We'd only have enough gas to make one, maybe two attempts at it.

"We really didn't have a lot of options," he said. "Our noise signature and the people we were working with, everything had to be on time, on target. There was not a lot of room for error"

Because they flew at night, he said, people often shot at the noise even though they couldn't see the helicopter.

"One night, a team of 11 guys had been compromised in Afghanistan. By the time we launched, it had been an hour and a half since anybody had talked to them. We were going on their last set of coordinates. By the time two ships got in there, pulled them out and got back home, we'd been engaged by enemy fire 23 different times."

In 2003, MacKenzie deployed to Kuwait, where he began flying mainly resupply missions into Iraq. Daylight flights, heat and sandstorms became part of his routine.

"We'd go out for a six- to eight-hour mission and practically have to get an IV bag to get rehydrated when we got back, even when we were drinking water the whole time," he recalled. "The temperature would be around 120 to 130, and we'd be loading cargo, bringing supplies and equipment."

From Kuwait, MacKenzie's next rotation took him into Iraq, which had become increasingly more dangerous. During one mission from Baghdad to Fallujah, fate delivered a nearly fatal blow that changed the course of MacKenzie's life.

Entering the Fallujah Hot Zone

On April 13, 2004, MacKenzie's Pave Low went on a night mission to deliver supplies to a team in Fallujah, a desert city crawling with armed insurgents.

"
U.S. Marines were moving in. People were getting beheaded. You did not stop there. You either flew around Fallujah or you flew across in certain areas. It was in and out. There was no messing around. There were rockets. There were so many enemies that just wanted to shoot anything in the air," he said.

From Fallujah, they were to pick up the remains of a team sergeant major who had been killed in Mahmadiyah, a town south of Baghdad. MacKenzie's Pave Low, however, never made it that far.

"We were about 180 feet off the ground, when an insurgent stood up about 300 feet in front of us and fired an RPG straight into the nose of the helicopter," MacKenzie said. "It blew about a four-foot hole in the helicopter. It hit right in front of me."

Luckily, MacKenzie said, he was looking down working the navigation system when the rocket came in.

"It broke my face in three places and tore my eyeball apart. I had flash burns from the explosion, shrapnel all up and down my arms and superficial burns. I couldn't hear. I couldn't see. I had no sense of touch, no sense of smell."

Air Force Capt. Tom Lessner, the co-pilot on his right, lost control of the helicopter. "It blew his helmet off his head," MacKenzie recalled. "He lost his night vision goggles. It peeled the roof back over our head, so we had no throttles, no way of controlling the engines.

"After we got hit, a second RPG went right between us and the second helicopter behind us," MacKenzie said. "They said we went 80 degrees nose up and then started falling out of the sky."

Air Force Capt. Steve Edwards, the pilot on MacKenzie's left, with wounds to his arm, the side of his face and his leg, "was able to maintain his night vision goggles and regain control of the helicopter." On the ground, with about 45 insurgents in the field, a second Pave Low came in to rescue the downed aircrew.

MacKenzie was rushed to a nearby medical unit in Baghdad before being flown to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany. "When they took off the bandages a day and a half later, I had 20-400 vision, blood in my eyes and corneal abrasions," he said.

"I talked to my wife when I was on the table in the recovery room from Baghdad, and I apologized to her, because I was more concerned about what she was going through at that moment than me. I was just happy to be alive," he said.

From Landstuhl, MacKenzie moved to Wilford Hall Medical Center at Lackland Air Force Base, Texas. "This is where the battles began to become real. I was trying to save my bad eye, trying to save my face," he said. "My goal was to fly again."

Since his boyhood in New England, MacKenzie had always wanted to fly. He had planned to join the military after high school, but love led him to his future wife, Jennifer. She and his baby daughter changed his plans.

Knowing he still longed for the open skies, Jennifer encouraged him to reach for his boyhood dream. In 1991, he earned his wings with the Air Force.

"I guess deep down inside, I just wanted to do something for my country," he recalled. "I wanted to make a difference. There's more to the world than just hanging around home, and I knew that the only way I could fly was in the service of my country."

For most career airmen, losing the vision in an eye signals the end of military service. Though MacKenzie's eye was damaged, he was determined to fly again.

All 'Jacked Up' But Still Alive

MacKenzie learned quickly that to recover from the serious battle wounds, he would have to overcome physical and mental anguish.

"Every day, when you go through something like that, you have to make a decision, 'Do I get out of bed or do I just stay here?'" he said. "I'd wake up and think, 'I'm in pain. Things hurt. I didn't sleep well. I can't sleep the way I want to. I can't do the things I want to. I can't even pick up more than a half gallon of milk. What am I doing? I'm never going to fly again.' All that negative stuff runs through your head."

But every day he got up, knowing that was the first step to getting back to the life he loved. He told himself, "OK, I'm all jacked up, but I'm alive, so the rest is trivial."

MacKenzie's will to fly again remained undaunted throughout his recovery.

"Pretty much everybody said, 'No way,'" he noted. "From the beginning they said, 'Your left eye is too damaged. We really need to just remove it. I said, 'No, you don't. Work at fixing it and if it fails after all you can do, then I'll let you take it out."

The doctors went to work, performing seven surgeries on his eyes and two surgeries on his face.

"Right now, I can see lights and shadows," MacKenzie said. "They finally got my retina to stay attached and maintain its own pressure. I can see movement. It's still my eye. I can see perfectly with my other eye."

In July 2005, a medical board approved MacKenzie's request to remain on active duty. In August, he was returned to flying status and reassigned to Andrews Air Force Base to work as a flight attendant, which is a far cry from being a special operations flight engineer flying clandestine chopper missions.

But MacKenzie said he doesn't mind.

"That was just a phase of life. In an instant, it was over," he said. "I don't compare this job to my last job. They're two completely different worlds. This is a new phase and I still get to fly.

"I think I'm the only 'one-eyed' flying guy in the
Air Force," he said with a smile.

Home-front Group, Supporters Honored

By Samantha L. Quigley
American Forces Press Service

June 29, 2007 – The Defense Department recognized a troop-support group and two of its key players at the Pentagon yesterday for their outstanding support of the nation's servicemembers. John Gonsalves, founder of Homes for Our Troops, received the Office of the Secretary of Defense Medal for Exceptional Public Service. His organization has built or adapted 18 homes for servicemembers severely injured while serving in the
global war on terrorism.

Mark Savan, president of Simonton Windows, and Frank McKee, president of the McKee Group, also were on hand to accept the award on behalf of their organizations, which support Gonsalves' efforts.

"This country is all about citizens helping citizens," said Gen. Robert Magnus, assistant commandant of the
Marine Corps, before he presented the men with their medals. "I want to thank, quite frankly, America Supports You, for providing the framework. But this framework would be a hollow frame with no picture if it wasn't for the efforts of thousands of folks and organizations (like) the great Americans we're ... giving an award to today.

"You're exemplars," he added.

Acknowledging that he was honored to receive the award, Gonsalves was humble in accepting it, saying what he's doing is his duty as an American.

"The
war on terrorism, it's not just for the men and women who are out there fighting it," he said. "It's something that all Americans really need to be a part of.

"It's not the military that was attacked, it was us as citizens, and we need to take notice of that, ... and we need to stand up for the people that are standing up, fighting for us," he added.

The organization has another 20 houses in progress, each of which will include features geared toward each individual servicemember's specific injury. The group is anticipating taking on another 10 to 15 houses in the near future.

Homes for Our Troops is a member of America Supports You, a Defense Department program connecting citizens and corporations with military personnel and their families serving at home and abroad.

Gonsalves, whose background is in construction, founded the organization after searching the Internet for a group building or adapting housing for injured troops. What he discovered astonished him.

"I was just going to donate a couple of weeks of my time and help with a house somewhere, and that's when I found out that nothing like this had ever been set up," he said.

So he founded Homes for Our Troops. And when he's asked the future holds for the group, Gonsalves is quick to share his vision.

"We failed a whole generation of veterans that returned from Vietnam. I'm hoping that, as a country, we've learned from that and we'll never let that happen again" he said. "My goal from Day 1 was to make (Homes for Our Troops) sustain after I'm dead and gone.

"I think that the men and women who serve in the military and come home injured, they deserve this," he added.

Gonsalves also is working to put an endowment together so Homes for Our Troops can sustain itself, he said.

Currently, the organization operates on donations and has a consistent staff of nine. If he counts his supporters like Simonton Windows and the McKee Group, his "staff" skyrockets into the hundreds, Gonsalves said.

And those groups are happy to help, though they're as humble about their roles as Gonsalves is about his accomplishments.

Of all the people involved in this, Simonton Windows is probably the least deserving of recognition, Savan said of his company.

"We're doing a very small part. There are plenty of people out there who are just doing an amazing job," he said. "For us just to be able to be a small part of it is an honor in and of itself."

Frank McKee agreed the McKee Group's involvement with Homes for Our Troops has been a "galvanizing experience" for the employees.

"It's been a remarkable journey for all of us," he said. "It's been a very rewarding experience for us."

Military Roots Run Deep For Top Enlisted Servicemember's Wife

By Fred W. Baker III
American Forces Press Service

June 29, 2007 –
Military life is all Cindy Gainey has ever really known. And that's just fine with her. Born in England into an Air Force family, she moved often as a child, making friends and learning from other cultures in the United States and abroad. At 18, she married a 21-year-old soldier, and so began her 30-year-plus "enlistment" in the Army.

"It's a lifestyle that I love. For me it's a normalcy," she said.

Last week, Gainey spent her 30th wedding anniversary on the South Korean peninsula, touring camps and bases, and talking to troops and families. She was accompanying her husband,
Army Command Sgt. Maj. William J. Gainey, the senior enlisted advisor to the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman.

This was their second trip to Korea, and both times the couple spent an anniversary there. On this anniversary, however, in front of a host of distinguished
military guests and their spouses, the sergeant major, on bended knee with a suitably sized diamond ring in hand, asked his wife for another 30 years - although they mostly will be spent as military retirees.

Last week's visit to Korea will be her last trip there as a soldier's wife, as her husband plans to retire next year.

As the two look forward to a new future together, Mrs. Gainey said, she looks back with no regrets.

She was a young military wife long before many of the programs available to Army family members now had come into being. In fact, when she married her husband, privates were not even authorized housing. Luckily, she said, her husband had made sergeant before tying the knot.

Still, she said, life was good, and the two depended on each other and on other
military families for support.

"Even though they didn't have a lot of the programs, we didn't really miss them. We didn't realize what we didn't have. We just depended on each other," she said. "I look back now and think about some things that me and my friends went through, and it's like, 'Wow. How did we do that?'

"You just do it. I don't know how," she continued. "I didn't think we had it hard. I thought we had it great."

Any hardships along the way forged a bond between the two that Mrs. Gainey said may not be as strong if not for their time in the
military.

Military family substituted when relatives couldn't be near, she said, such as when her son was born in Germany and her husband could take only two weeks of leave.

"We always made friends when we got somewhere. There's a community that just kind of welcomes you when you move in somewhere," she said. "We would always have the neighbor or the best friend who lives down the street. I think that most military families are like that. They are going to help out. They don't think anything about it."

Mrs. Gainey met with young wives of servicemembers stationed in Korea during her trip. A handful of spouses, both command- and non-command-sponsored, met with her and other leaders' wives. In an informal capacity, she listened to their concerns to bring back issues to the respective service chiefs.

She saw the same determination in them as she had as a young military wife, Mrs. Gainey said. Because of the relatively few command sponsorships in the country, many families agree to accept the financial costs of relocating and living on the economy.

"You just do it because you want to be with your spouse, and you will do whatever it takes to do that," Gainey said.

U.S. Forces Korea officials are expected to soon ask the Defense Department for more than double its current allowance for command-sponsored families, from 2,800 to nearly 6,000. Some 3,000 non-command-sponsored families already are here.

Overall, Mrs. Gainey said that the wives voiced no major concerns.

"We asked them 'What is your biggest challenge?' I was really surprised. They had no big issues," she said. "They were so smart and bright I couldn't believe it."

Gainey said that benefits now are very similar between command- and non-command-sponsored families. Non-command-sponsored family members are not authorized family housing and are placed in other military programs on a space-available basis. There are also other health care benefit differences between command- and non-command-sponsored family members. All are eligible for exchange and commissary privileges.

Some of the wives are using the Internet to help prepare spouses relocating to Korea, Gainey said.

"They go into chat rooms and give honest advice to those considering coming," she said. "I was so impressed. They were really very smart young ladies."

USFK leaders have asked Congress to extend the tour length from a one-year, unaccompanied hardship tour to a three-year, normalized tour. Building is booming at installations to add schools, health care facilities, shopping, housing and other amenities. Mrs. Gainey said that would go far in making Korea a "tour of choice."

"I don't see why people wouldn't want to be stationed here for three years. Come and bring your family. I think it would be awesome," she said. "This is going to end up being the place to come."

Mrs. Gainey never was stationed in Korea. Her husband had orders to go there a handful of times, but they were always cancelled. Her favorite duty station overseas was Germany, she said. She was stationed there twice. The second time, she said, her children were older and could enjoy the travel and culture more.

Truthfully, Mrs. Gainey said, she has enjoyed all of her duty stations.

"Every place I've been, I've loved. It's been sad to leave."

Her favorite place in the United States is Texas, where she plans to retire with her husband next year, Mrs. Gainey said.

"The people there are so warm, and we just had a good community there," she said.

Mrs. Gainey said she doubts she and her husband will be removed from the
military altogether. Their son is in the Army, and their daughter married a soldier. She serves on the national board for the Armed Services YMCA, and as advisor for some other family agencies.

Still, she said, "There comes a point where you just want to leave it in good hands -- to someone else coming up."

Their plans include spoiling the "grandbabies" and sitting on a back porch overlooking a valley view near Fort Hood, Texas. The couple will experience a first in their marriage. They are building their first house together.

Still, only time will tell if after a few years, they will be able to resist the rambling urgings of a veteran military family.

"I'm sure retirement is going to be hard, because you get those itchy feet and you are like, 'I like it here and I have great friends, but I wonder what it is like over there,'" she said. "After about three years, I am ready to move."