My Cold War Years (Part Four): Missile Field Duty, Real World Events, Exercises And Recalls
- Tracy's Thoughts
- Jan 9, 2019
- 4 min read
Updated: Jan 16, 2019
When I first started out in the missile field, female Security Police were not allowed, but at some point they were. There was a time when my Flight had the first female assigned and there were some others who resented and disrespected her. We had a chance to work together a few times and I thought she was a good Airman. She eventually transferred to Italy with the Ground Launched Cruise Missile (GLCM). Some of the other females on different Flights decided they couldn't handle life out in the missile field and ended up getting some back-office jobs in Squadron Headquarters. This made the resentment of females in the field grow a little more from some of the guys that had worked in the fields for a long time and were looking to get some of those same back-office jobs.
To me it was kind of interesting to be out in the middle of nowhere in South Dakota working in the missile field when major world events happened, such as the bombing of the Marines barracks in Beirut in 1983. When things like this took place, even for us way out in the missile fields of South Dakota would go into a higher level of security. On any normal day we would only be dispatched to an LF for an alarm or routine checks. However when this particular incident happened we went into a heightened level of security. We were required to constantly patrol our flight area for the entire 12 hour shift wearing helmets, flack vest and with our gas masked strapped on our legs. Of course we were always carrying M-16 rifles anytime when we went out to any of the sites on a regular daily basis. But I often wondered what some of the locals may have thought that may have seen us decked out with all of that gear on just riding down those roads in South Dakota.
There was a word that was repeated three times that have been forever etched into my memories that would always heighten my senses. "Recall, recall, recall...". When anyone heard this whether it be in person or by phone we were required to get all of our gear together, report to our duty station and stand by for further instructions. Was this just another exercise or was there some world event that took place and we're all about to board a plane and fly off somewhere in the distance? Perhaps it could be an incident somewhere on or near the base. There were usually easy ways to tell if we were really about to leave the Country or not, so most of the time you would know almost immediately if it was just another exercise.
While there were many others, I do remember one such event when there was a "recall" due to a planned protest just off base on some property adjacent to the flight-line in which there were several hundreds of people expected to take part in. Since there were 3 squadrons of Security Police at Ellsworth, there was a very large presence and I think that everyone that was off duty at the time had been recalled for this event. I 'recall' being assembled at different locations throughout the base, went through briefings and riot control techniques and training. At the planned hour of whatever was supposed to take place, little to nothing ever did. There were some rumors I heard that a phone call ended up being made to the Base Commander asking what would happen if the protesters climbed or crossed the fence onto Air Force property. The Base Commander most likely told the caller that the people would have been detained. As it turned out, the night before, there was a slight wind storm that knocked down several of the protesters tents they had been camping out in and most had left before the planned event of the hour. There were said to have been less than a hundred people left to protest. There was certainly a higher number of Security Police on hand to protect the base. So everyone pretty much played one of the military's favorite games of "hurry up and wait" yet again.
Other recalls would be due to the Strategic Air Command's no-notice Operational Readiness Inspection (ORI). Which, the part you had to play in, may last for several hours or even days. This would be a base-wide exercise to test and evaluate the response times to simulate wartime conditions, much like what was depicted in the 1963 movie "A Gathering Of Eagles". See, there's another mention of movies here. Remember I'll tell more about that a little later. But for now on the subject of movies, I always found it interesting watching any military related one at the base theater. Especially those many that came out in the 80's where it was the Americans versus the Russians. Of course the Americans would always come out as the victors. Just imagine all the whooping, cheering and hollering with a bunch of GI's there watching!
For the most part my time served in the missile field was really uneventful and somewhat boring. I do remember one of my supervisors, a Master Sergeant, that was sharing a story about when he was a young Airman on his post and his supervisor asked him if he was bored. When he said that he was, that supervisor told him that was good and that meant he was doing his job at keeping the area he was responsible for secure .
[NOTE: This is Part 4 of a 10-Part series of stories about some of my memories of when I was in the US Air Force from 1982 to 1988 and stationed at Ellsworth AFB near Rapid City, South Dakota.]
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