Prose

We Will Make You Stronger

written by: stylerider22

To know about life in the United States Air Force as an aircraft mechanic specializing in the powerplant section(the heart), you first have to understand what it means to be in the military in general.

First, forget about your rights, because you have none. You signed those away on that dotted line when you joined. You are now government property, meaning they can do whatever they want with you and put you anywhere they like: hello Afghanistan!! You're Freedom of speech, gone! If you were to talk trash about the President, your Commander in Chief, it is punishable by court marshal and a dishonorable discharge, which will end your life/career in the military. You get a sunburn, have to miss work, that's destruction of government property and you will pay the price for it. When you are told to do something by somebody that out-ranks you, there is no discussion, you do it and you do it fast.

Now that you know just a little bit about how you are owned for the next 2-6 years of your life, depending upon your enlistment, lets move on to being the mechanic on million dollar aircraft. The mechanic, known colloquially as the grease monkey has to be a tough person. They have wits, brainpower, strength, and thick skin, a good sense of humor and appreciation of sarcasm. They absolutely have to have these traits in order to survive or else they will not last long; otherwise they'd probably end up driving themselves crazy.

As the new guy on the team at your first base and you have absolutely no idea what is in store for you. You have about ten people on your shift from your specialization, engines, ranging from your Lead Technician, the veteran know-it-all, all the way down to you, the new guy, the know-nothing-at-all. Your leadership will break you all the way down to nothing and make you feel like a piece of dog crap on the bottom of somebody's shoe. For the time being, you become lower than low, and you are made to think you know nothing. Everyday you will be the grunt, checking out a 70lb toolbox and lugging it around everywhere they need to go. This at least makes you stronger, but reinforces the fact that you are there to serve. Your office is the flightline, you are right in the middle of it all, planes taxiing by you with deafening volume and taking off just a short distance away from you, this isn't a quiet little room where you can concentrate.

All of this makes you a strong, disciplined soldier and worker. The system is designed to find your weaknesses and exploit them so you can stand up to anything. You will learn to take everything with a grain of salt, eventually learning to laugh at yourself and even make fun of yourself. Laughter and humility are the keys to being successful in this job because if you can't take a joke, you will not last long. In this career and military life, sexual banter and joking are a part of the life, and you learn to laugh at it. Remembering that you are now in a career field where it is 90% male, there will be times where you are working hard and have both of your hands stuck elbow length in the motor and your butt is sticking out and guess what, your fellow co-worker is behind you humping you like "Thumper" while the rest of the guys are laughing their asses off on the ground and taking pictures of the scene! It has nothing to do with actual sexuality; it's just a bunch of boys being stupid. The maturity of the grease monkey's, is very low.

The humor amid the discipline and stress is a release valve for the pressures faced by people in the military. When you have been seeing how things work, you learn more about the engine and propeller systems and the work life; you start to see why your co-workers are so sarcastic. When you are deployed overseas in the Middle-East and working twelve hour shifts, six days on and one day off and its 120 degrees outside, it is so hot that planes are starting to sink into the blacktop on the flightline. Supervision is constantly on you because planes need to fly. This is it, you are in the shit now, and everyone needs to be on top of their game. You hear gunfire in the not so far away distance, F-22's soaring by in assault takeoffs nearly blowing your eardrums, Captains are screaming at Lead Techs and they are screaming at your supervisors who in turn are screaming at you; all this while having to focus on fixing an airplane. This is where the thick skin comes in: you can't stress, you just have to laugh it off. You start to realize why everyone is so sarcastic, because if you took every little thing that everybody throws at you to heart, you would have a heart attack by now. It's serious work and it has to be done right, but that doesn't mean you can't laugh and have fun while doing it.

Though seemingly low in the chain of command, people learn that you don't mess with the boys in the Engine Shop! Since the engines are the hearts of the planes, if you piss the boys off, guess what, the planes don't fly. We have the power to ground planes for hours and hours and sometimes even days. Sometimes new supervision comes in and they don't realize that, the boys have to teach them a lesson every now and then. It's the mechanics that run the flightline and we make the planes fly, they don't! Sometimes they want you to go by the book, step by step, which could takes hours, when you know the problem all by yourself and could have it fixed very quickly. That sends them running like chickens with their heads cut off trying to get planes in the air. The last thing the shop needs are indecisive and ignorant people telling us how to do our jobs. We don't like hypocritical people, you tell us to do one thing one way and then change your mind, we are pissed and planes won't fly.

Life on deployment isn't just hard on your psyche, its hell on your body. By the time your shift is over and you have actually made it back to camp, you have probably put in about 14hrs. You smell like crap, because you have been sweating all day and working hard. You get to the chow hall and everyone is staring at you because you are covered in grease from head to toe from doing an engine change today. Limited water supply cuts short your dreams of a long hot shower: you get a whole three minutes. By the time you crash in your bunk, you've been moving for almost 16hrs, you can imagine the only thing that you want to do is sleep and guess what, you get to do it allover again the next day and the day after that until your deployment is up.

Life in the military also deeply affects your home life. When you are deployed, you don't get to go home for Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years or any of the major holidays and events in life. To make matters worse, it's probably the first time in your life you have ever actually had to work on these days and do it all in the desert no less.

Make no illusions, here; the hardships mentioned are just another day at the office. Military life may not seem fair, but it's not supposed to be; this was our choice to give up our freedoms so our loved ones and everyone else in America can have the freedoms we don't, it's supposed to make you a stronger person. This life breaks you down to nothing, but brings you back up together as a family and as a team. There is a brotherhood among the members of the service that watches out for each other and takes care of each other. Back stabbers and overly selfish people will not be tolerated here as conditions and hardships are bad enough. We don't need somebody trying to make themselves look better at the expense of throwing somebody else underneath the wagon. The worst parts are made better by the end result of a stronger you supported by the people around you with whom you have experienced so much with.