Retired and proud of it (Part 1)

Editor’s note: This is the first of a two-part series by columnist Dan Grota detailing his life and career in the U.S. Army.

This year will be my tenth anniversary since retiring from the U.S. Army, a decade that seems to have flown by at warp speed. I have been thinking about the good times, the hard times and the really frightening ones that haunt me to this day. But what really gets me is just how much time has gone by since my enlistment more than 35 years ago in the summer of 1980.

I was only 19, and it was a very different world back then.

1980 was an election year just like this one — just with less vitriol. President Carter had his hands full dealing with the Iranian hostage crisis and his chief opponent Ronald Reagan. The home computer was rare and not even close to what they can do today. The Internet was a dream. Records were on vinyl or cassette tapes. The cell phone was science fiction.

Back then I was a lean young man of some 5 feet, 7 inches tall who weighed in at a light 110 pounds. I had the endurance of an athlete from years of long distance cross-country skateboarding all over the Seattle area and long, wavy locks of dark brown hair that made me look like a skinny mushroom in wide-legged jeans. I was fresh out of high school with no job skills to turn to for employment when I signed up for the delayed entry program. My goal was to learn how to work on Huey helicopters and make something of myself — with Uncle Sam’s help that is.

I left for basic training the day after my sister’s wedding in August. My family held a twofold send-off for my sister and I at our home in Kirkland featuring 300 people, four kegs of beer and three bands. One was a jazz-rock band called Head First, in which my brother-in-law Mike played sax and flute. We didn’t get one complaint from our nosey neighbors. That was something else, believe me.

This would be my first time traveling alone. After a long flight to Alabama, I was to become a soldier at Fort McClellan and later move on to advanced training for Huey mechanic at Fort Rucker in south Alabama. This, of course, provided I survived basic training — which by the grace of God and luck I did.

It would be the beginning of many adventures with the U.S. Army.

My first unit was Charlie company 3rd Aviation Battalion Combat of the Third Infantry Division. Now, that is a mouthful so it goes better like this: “C co. 3rd ABC 3rd ID.” It was a Cobra attack helicopter unit based in Schweinfurt, West Germany. Conn Barracks was the place a former WWII Stuka airfield with the old air control tower building converted into our barracks after the war. It had over 14 AH-1 Cobras, seven Oh-58 Kiowa’s and three UH-1H Hueys. The Army in its infinite wisdom trained me for working on the Huey and stuck me with Cobras, which we called Snakes.

The Cobra was really a skinny Huey, only 28 inches wide at the air intakes, but it retained the same engine and power train systems as its wider counterpart. It was designed for tank busting with TOW missiles along with 2.75-inch rockets sprouting from the wing pods and mini gun and a 40mm grenade launcher in the nose turret. It flew smooth and tight with just a pilot and gunner as flight crew. It wasn’t kind to mechanics, as everything was shunted to sides and covered in endless panels — making maintenance very tight and cramped. Heck, it took a couple of days just to de-panel a Snake for routine maintenance known as a phase. And we couldn’t use power tools, we had to unscrew 350 panels by hand. That’s a lot of screws.

Germany back then was divided by the powers of east and west during what was the last decade of the Cold War. The people, the food — and most of all, the beer — are what I remember most fondly of the those days. Eventually I would get that slot in the Huey section and learn just what it took to become a good mechanic and later a crew chief on the best helicopter ever made.

I did two tours of duty in Germany, the first from ’81 to late ’82, followed up a few years later from ’85 to ’88 in a different division and a totally different job. That was when I mistakenly signed up as a F.O. in the Field artillery (never show up in a field artillery unit wearing wings). Big mistake…but I did fall in love with going to the field with HHB 2/3 FA BN of the 3rd Armored Division. We lived in it all the darned time from the Fula Gap to Grafenwohr training area. Oh, I shouldn’t forget Fort Hood, Texas and D co. 502 CAB of the 2nd Armored Division (another aviation unit), that was in between both in ’82-’83. Memories are not linear so they tend to jump all over the place.

Daniel D. Grota is a retired U.S. Army veteran with over 21 years in service. He is also a Tuesday morning co-host on KVRF 89.5 FM, Radio Free Palmer. Write to him at news@frontiersman.com.