Greg standing in front of BOQ, Minot AFB, North Dakota, April 1974

As I said, it would be more than three years before I would claim that room just behind me in this photograph.

Here I was, just six months out of OTS, at my first assignment as a 2nd Lieutenant.  I am smiling, of course, and was as thin as a rail in those days.  Not an ounce of fat, but after more than four years of eating poorly on alert and sitting on my posterior for hours at a time, I would get a bit chubby around the waist.

I think this picture was taken the day Tim and I arrived.  I got my uniform on and was headed to the Wing Building and my Squadron.  In one of the first monthly Squadron meetings I attended, Col. Kukowski, who would not remain as our Squadron Commander for too much longer, had me assigned as the Squadron Supply Officer, a position I would hold for the rest of my time in Minot.  It was my responsibility to make sure all new squadron officers would have their complete haul of cold weather gear soon after they arrived, especially if they arrived in winter, which was all but about three months out of each year.

In the first year or two that I went on alert, waves of crews went out twice a day, every other day.  One shift (designated A1) went out in the morning and relieved the night shift crew already on alert.  In the evening, the next shift (designated A2) went out to relieve the day shift.   The day shift would go topside and sleep in the crew quarters overnight, then relieve the night shift in the morning so that they could try and sleep during the day before returning to alert that night.  The relieved day shift would then return to base.  The night shift would return to base in the morning when relieved by the new day shift crew fresh from base.

These 36-hour alerts continued for a couple of years.  Then, the Air Force decided to save money by releasing as many missile officers who wanted an early out from the service.  Tim McConnell took advantage of this program.  For the crew members who remained such as me, they altered the requirement to allow one crew member per alert crew to be allowed to sleep at a time.  We would go out on alert in the morning and spend 24 hours on alert in the Launch Control Center, 60 feet beneath the earth.  The next morning we would be relieved by a new crew and would return to base.  There would be no more night shift crews and new crew sleeping in the crew quarters topside as a sort of standby. 

Twice before this new system was implemented, I was stuck on alert during a lengthy blizzard.  Once for four days and once for three and a half days.  Fortunately, we had a crew upstairs to relieve us and we could relieve them.  Every twelve hours we relieved one another, day after blizzard day.  By the final day, all of us were getting blurry-eyed and senseless.  Four consecutive days downstairs, with no other crew to relieve us, and the Wing staff might have had to lock us up.   

OK, just to clear this up to begin with, crews always slept on alert, one crew member at a time.  Yes, it was illegal or unauthorized and certainly frowned upon, at least officially.  But this was an early version of "Don't Ask' Don't Tell."  Nobody asked if any crew members slept on alert, and nobody told that they slept on alert.  Except in the very beginning of a new, or temporary, crew pairing.

My first crew commander was William Graham from South Carolina.  He was sharp.  But he also had a few enemies on the evaluation staff and that would soon impact me.  However, if there were an alert that he could not make, I was assigned to a temporary crew commander for that single alert.  Usually on the drive out, that new crew partner would casually ask, "Does Bill sleep on alert?"  He would not ask me directly if I slept on alert, just Bill.  By implication, if I confirmed that Bill slept on alert, that meant I did, too.  (As the deputy, you got the first sleep shift, always the hardest because you had to sleep first and then get up at about 1:00 AM and take the watch until the relief crew arrived in the morning.)

There were already "racks" in the LCC from the old days when crew discipline was much more lax.  What goes around usually comes around again.  One crew member at a time could sleep in the old days; and, toward the end of my tour in Minot, one crew member at a time could sleep on alert once again--legally.  This time around, they installed special tamper seals over the launch panels so you could tell if someone were trying to tamper with those panels while the other crew member was asleep.  But when we thought about this, it was all a bit insulting. 

We were all part of the Human Reliability Program, so our patriotism and integrity should not have been questioned.  But the Air Force felt it needed to offer proof to outsiders that nothing untoward was going on by one crew member when the other was sound asleep.  (The only commander I was temporarily crewed with who told me he did not sleep on alert went to his front crew chair when we arrived in the launch "capsule," sat down, opened a book, and promptly closed his eyes and slept.  He didn't use the bed; but he slept nonetheless, not much of a distinction to my lights.)

Believe me, as a deputy and then as a combat crew commander, had I been paired with someone I did not trust, I would not have slept on alert, even if I were allowed to.  We were both armed, although you could each hang your .45 holster up when the blast door was closed and it was just the two of you down there together. 


Missile Combat Crewman

Feeling more secure than any other living,
I have been where sun and moon
draw from the sea a motion
wearing the touching death edge of Point Loma

As far as I could be a Marine,

I shared enough to feel an equal
but declined to be complete.
I thought to save lives,
but the Coast Guard never chose me.
So I pound no earth and no surf.

I am from all that,
well beyond and beneath.
Underground is a new inspiring,
a source of unleashing to multiplied--
nearly absolute efficient.

I am one at the consoles,
and as others,
I await.

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