JOINT BASE CHARLESTON, S.C. -- With the statement, “This will not stand” by President George H. W. Bush, the largest mobilization of U.S. Air Force Reservists since the Vietnam Conflict was initiated to respond in support of Operation Desert Storm Jan. 16, 1991.
For, then, Charleston Air Force Base’s 3,618 Reservists, 1,413 Airmen were called upon to serve in the efforts to liberate Kuwait in what would later be known as the Gulf War. Still serving today, Reservists remember their experiences from that time.
As a part of one of the first flying squadrons to get the call, Chief Master Sgt. Bryan DuBois, now the loadmaster superintendent for the 317th Airlift Squadron here, was assigned to the 701st Airlift Squadron as a brand new Airman.
“It was a busy day and everybody was in an uproar,” said DuBois. “We came into the auditorium and there were some senators and some congressmen from Charleston who came in and welcomed us to active duty and gave us a little pep talk. Here I went from a guy who was new off the street, a young student, to being on the first flight out to Germany. We then headed out on a C-141B to get pre-positioned for the flows of aircraft that were going to be coming.”
In a six month time period, Air Force C-141B Starlifters from Charleston AFB flew over 568 missions. These missions included 3,240 sorties with 633 of them being inside of the area of responsibility. The crews endured numerous challenges, which included friendly fire, SCUD attacks, world-wide terrorism, air-to-air missile attacks, airway congestion as well as sand storms.
“A typical mission was we’d leave here, go state side somewhere, load cargo, go to MaGuire [AFB], crew rest, another crew would be waiting,” said DuBois. “They’d take your aircraft within three hours or sooner. We couldn’t get enough. They had planes that were coming straight out of depot that they didn’t even have painted. They needed airlift so bad that they said, ‘Hey send them, we’ll paint them later.’”
The 38th Aerial Port Squadron here was another unit that was mobilized to contribute to the mission. They were sent to support one of the largest ports in the AOR, which was based out of Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, according to Chief Master Sgt. Deborah Cole, 38th Aerial Port Squadron senior air reserve technician.
“When we first got there, there were no services,” said Cole. “We had chow hall tents. We did our laundry in buckets and used to hang up our clothes. We lived out in the middle of the desert. We had a tent city, that’s it.”
The 125 aerial port members that were deployed to service approximately 120 aircraft a day and were required to work 12-hour shifts, said Cole. From loading cargo to passengers, the aerial port squadron remained busy with no notice of what was happening next.
For the flying squadrons, the days were also lengthy with little rest periods, said DuBois.
“It was like a 24-hour day,” said DuBois. “We would go from Spain or Germany, down to Saudi [Arabia] and then back. You would do it in one day. You would leave and it would be snowing up there in England or wherever and then you’d land down there and it would be 120 degrees and then you’d go right back to the snow.”
At Charleston AFB, the 315th Aerospace Medicine Squadron was busy with their tasking of establishing a 250-bed Aeromedical Staging Facility, said Chief Master Sgt. Ann Hamilton, 315th aerospace medicine squadron superintendent here.
“We were initially activated with everybody else for six months,” said Hamilton. “They brought in three other units from other areas to back-fill the Aeromedical Staging Facility that we had set up. The intent was for patients to air-evac [from the war zone] to Charleston.”
During the Desert Storm operational period, Reservists had numerous memories of events that stayed with them 25 years later.
“I remember going into one airfield in Saudi Arabia and having to go out one night to put the struts down and I remember an F-16 taxiing by and I just happened to look over,” said DuBois. “He was loaded down with bombs and rockets, there was nowhere else to put anything on it. I remember getting goose bumps and thinking ‘those bombs aren’t coming back,’ and I watched as it turned and hit the afterburners as it took off.”
The fighters were also memorable to Cole.
“When the fighters would take off, we would count ‘two, four, six…10, 12, 14,’ all the way to 24,” Cole said. “Well, it took them two hours to get up to Iraq and back. When they came back, ‘two, four,’ we would count. When 24 hit the ground we would go: ‘Whew, we’re all back safe!’”
As they reflected on their deployments, Desert Storm Reservists were left with feelings of pride and patriotism for the service that they were able to accomplish.
“No one told us when we were leaving,” said Cole. “One day in June, the commander came in: ‘Get your bags packed. There’s two C-5s on the tarmac and they’re leaving in two hours.’ I said ‘really,’ and he said ‘you need to tell everybody, Col. Czekanski’s (315th AW Commander during Operation Desert Storm) here, we’re going home!’”
“When there’s a need in the world, regardless of what it is, the United States military airlift capabilities can be utilized, not just in wartime, but in peacetime and humanitarian missions,” said DuBois.