AMERICAN GIRLS CH. 01

Nobody in this story (that had sex) was underage.

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Chapter 1 -- The Early Years

Hi. I'm Pete. I was born in 1949 to a father who was an Air Force pilot and a stay-at-home mother. My dad piloted mostly multi-engine planes, and because of that, spent my career in either bombers or cargo aircraft. It was a good career, and my father was one of the best pilots around (according to those who had flown with my father). There were a lot of times when crew members would tell me that they trusted my father more than any other pilot they had ever flown with.

What my father's career meant to me and my siblings as we were growing up was that we were never in one place for very long. I went to ten different schools growing up. Because most of my friends were also Air Force brats, either my father or their father would get orders, and I would never see them again. The result was that I became very skilled at making new friends, but had no idea how to maintain long-term relationships. This shaped a lot of what I did throughout my life.

I got into the Boy Scouts when I was 10 ½ years old. I loved it immediately. The first Boy Scout troop I joined was sponsored by my father's bomb wing, which meant it had good adult leadership and lots of boys. It was known as a "no match" troop. In other words, boys had to start their fires using methods that did NOT require matches or lighters. I became very proficient starting fires with flint and steel, friction and magnifying glasses.

The troop also emphasized survival skills, since the scoutmaster ran the survival shop on base and pushed these skills. I learned orienteering with maps and compass and traveling in various weather conditions, both day and night. I became quite good at hiking at night because I had excellent night vision. I went on and later led dozens of night hikes with the Boy Scouts. I also learned about what could or could not be eaten, how to make water safe to drink, and how to avoid venomous critters. I had no idea that this training would save my life later many times when I was assigned to ferret out NVA strongholds along the Ho Chi Minh Trail ... all while avoiding becoming a casualty. However, that was far in the future.

I enjoyed Scouting, and I did well. During my time in Scouting (in three different troops due to transfers), I held every leadership position in a troop that was possible for a boy, and I was elected a vigil honor member of the Order of the Arrow (Scouting's service organization). I took three important traits from the Boy Scouts: outdoor skills, leadership, and service to others.

It wasn't until I got to my final high school that I finally got into sports. My parents had started me in school early, so I was always younger and smaller than the other boys in my grade level. Therefore, I was usually always chosen last when it came time to pick teams.

I transferred into my final school midway through my junior year of high school, and I was finally starting to catch up with my peers in strength and coordination. I got into football and wrestling and did well, even though I was a novice at both.

I also became an object of desire to the girls in my new school (isn't it always that way with new boys and girls at a school?), and I suddenly found himself being paired up with cute girls in my new school. There seemed to be a lot of gossip, and I often overheard girls talking about this girl or that girl's attraction to me.

Unfortunately, I really had no experience in how to handle the opposite sex, and I muffed it pretty bad. I was intimidated by girls, and I didn't want to do anything that might reflect badly on my father (who by that time was a colonel). Therefore, I was hesitant to push a girl into doing anything she might object to. Since this was in the 1960's, that covered a lot of territory.

I had dates for proms and dances, but I never became intimate with any girls I dated. I never even kissed any of them. I have to rack that up to naivety and inexperience. Once I found out what I had been missing, I made up for it in spades (see the Filipinas series).

After I graduated from high school, I got a job as a backpacking guide in the Sierras. My summer after graduation was spent leading people around the wilderness areas of the Sierra Mountains to the west and south of Lake Tahoe. It was a happy time. I hadn't done all that well in high school, and I was pretty sure that I would fail if I went directly to a university. I had done well enough in high school to get into a university, but not well enough to sustain me through to a degree. Therefore, I decided to start out my adult life by going into the military like my father had.

My father had joined the Army Air Corps during World War 2 as an enlisted man, but then went through Air Cadet training to become a pilot. He served as a B-24 pilot during the war, and then went on to fly 28 different planes during his Air Force career. This was the world that I was born into. I didn't turn 18 until the fall after I graduated, so I waited until my birthday to visit the Air Force recruiter's office.

While at the recruiter's office, I took the aptitude tests and also a bypass test to become an engineering draftsman, which I passed. I did well enough on the aptitude tests that I was deemed qualified to go into any field the Air Force offered. Passing the bypass test gave me an automatic 3-level in that specialty code, an ensured promotion soon after basic training, and a guaranteed assignment in engineering drafting.

Reality hit when I reached my first assignment after basic training. My orders sent me to the personnel section on the base instead of directly to the Civil Engineering Squadron, which should have been a red flag for what was to come. However, I still believed that the system would treat me right, so I accepted being assigned to the Base Supply Squadron "until there was an opening" for a draftsman at Base Civil Engineering.

I kept himself busy and learned my job and everything I could about logistics while I was in supply. I quickly earned a 3-level in inventory management and then turned around and completed the course to earn a 5-level. That meant that my pathway for promotion was clear for the foreseeable future, since I had already learned that promotion qualifications allowed that promotions could be given regardless of where the required skill level had been achieved. I also got a secret security clearance because of my job in Base Supply.

It was during this time, that I was introduced to a cute Mormon girl who lived in the nearby city by a friend of my mother (who was also a Mormon and the wife of another colonel who had flown with my dad). Jill was a beautiful girl with long, dark brown hair and dark eyes that were captivating. Amazingly, Jill's Mormon parents liked me even though I was a Catholic. They trusted the mutual friend enough to believe that I would be a gentleman with their daughter. However, they set strict rules on what Jill and I could and couldn't do while on dates. For one thing, Jill was not allowed to ride on the back of the motorcycle that I had just purchased. Another rule was a strict curfew. It just meant that Jill and I had to walk or take a bus and plan our dates out a little better.

I had met Jill when my mother's friend invited me to a dance put on by the local LDS (Mormon) stake, and although I was introduced to many girls that evening, I and Jill spent most of the time dancing and talking together. By the end of the dance, I had asked Jill out on a date and she had accepted. I learned a lot about Jill during our first date. First of all, she was only 16 and a sophomore in high school. I was only 18, so that wasn't too much of an age difference, but it still presented obstacles.

After a few dates, Jill professed her love for me and we kissed in front of her house. It was an innocent kiss, but it left a mark on my soul. I started worrying that this might turn into a serious relationship ending in marriage. Because I had spent my life around the Air Force and mixing with enlisted men, I knew what happened to guys who got married during their first enlistment. They were trapped, and they usually ended up in unexciting jobs with no future. I didn't want that. However, I didn't want to hurt Jill either, and she had a lot of dreams that would never happen if we married. I was confused as to what I should do.

After a few months not hearing anything from Base Personnel, I decided to visit Base Civil Engineering. What I learned shocked me. The drafting section was double-staffed, and the lowest ranking person there was a staff sergeant (E-5). There was absolutely no chance that an opening would ever exist for me in drafting.

Because I had been guaranteed assignment as an engineering draftsman in writing by the recruiter, the Air Force was in breach of contract. I went back to Base Personnel to complain. Of course, they laughed at me. They told me that I had three options. First, I could stay in Base Supply and make the best of my situation. Second, I could formally protest the breach of contract, in which case I would eventually be released from the Air Force to be immediately drafted into one of the other branches (yes, I was still eligible to be drafted). Third, I could go over to a bulletin board there in Base Personnel and select another assignment in the Air Force (provided I was qualified).

I didn't like either of the first two options, so I went over to the bulletin board. Most of the potential assignments were pretty hazy, but it wasn't too difficult to figure out what they were. Unfortunately, most held no appeal for me. However, one of the cards intrigued me. Amazingly, I qualified for every requirement listed for the assignment, even though the actual nature of the assignment wasn't spelled out.

The assignment required high score on the recruiting aptitude tests. It required that the applicant already hold a 5-level in some Air Force Specialty Code (AFSC), which I had just completed early. It required that applicants must qualify for a secret or higher security clearance, which I had just been granted for my job in Base Supply. Most interesting, though, were the other requirements. Applicants had to have a perfect score on the range with a rifle (which I had accomplished in basic training), and they had to have good orienteering skills such as map reading, compass orienteering and range estimation, and it required survival skills (which I had acquired through Scouting and hunting throughout my youth).

I took the card to the sergeant at the desk and placed it in front of him. The sergeant looked at the card and asked, "Are you sure this is what you want? You have a comfortable life at Base Supply."

"I'm sure," I replied.

"OK," the sergeant said. "I will process this, and you will receive orders if you are accepted into the program. This looks like a dangerous assignment to me, and it is classified, so you won't even know what it will lead to until you are already into it. Oh, and there is a school required for this assignment. I don't know how long the school is."

A month later, I had received my orders. I knew that I should go see Jill and tell her what had happened, but that scared me more than anything else. I knew that I wouldn't handle it well if she fell apart or was crushed by the news, so I decided to just go to the assignment and see what happened. I might be right back if things didn't work out, or I might not ever be back. Either way, I thought a little time away might be good for both of them. I was wrong, and Jill was deeply hurt when I just disappeared without saying anything.

I showed up at the wing headquarters for the First Special Operations Wing (1SOW) waiting for somebody to tell me where to go. There would be a school where I would learn more about the assignment, but for now, I would just have to wait until everybody else arrived.

I was advised to get out and run a good distance every day, and to spend time at the gym getting into shape. I would be doing a lot of running and exercise during my training. In reality, I ran everyday anyway, and I was already in good shape, so this wasn't a hardship.

The school started a few days later near a place called Rock Hill out on the Eglin AFB Range. It had an abandoned airstrip and several WWII era buildings. It was to be the Air Force Scout School for the next couple of months and the airstrip was to be the rifle range. Much of the first week was spent running, exercising, shooting and finding our way around in the forests and swamps in the dark. It wasn't anything new to me and even though I was the lowest ranking student in the class, I did well.

By the end of that first week, the class had already lost about twenty of the original 105 students. The next three weeks were increasingly grueling, with harder and harder tests as they progressed. At the end of the first month, the class was down to less than sixty men, and the school leadership sat the students down and explained what the mission would be. It was a classified briefing, so regardless of each person's decisions, what was said had to remain classified. I found it interesting that even the instructors were not present for the briefing.

This was an all-volunteer unit, and all a student had to do was lay down his rifle and hat on the front porch of the school building, and they were gone. After the briefing, the class was given the next two weeks off to decide whether or not each person would continue. If they stayed, the instruction would get tougher and they would be fairly locked into the program (although they could still opt out).

The mission was simple. Air Force Scouts (as we would be called) would be inserted into areas near the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Laos or Cambodia and we would try infiltrate NVA areas to pinpoint likely targets for Air Force aircraft to strike. These targets were well camouflaged from the air, so it required boots on the ground to find them. If an Air Force Scout found a target of opportunity (such as a high-ranking officer), he could take it out using his scoped rifle.

The original plan (that they outlined for us) was to send the Scouts in two-man teams, but that fell apart quickly when three teams (six men) were caught and killed within a few weeks. After that, Scouts were then sent in one at a time. It was a terrifying mission, and the Air Force wanted only men in the detachment who wanted to be there.

At the end of the two-week break, there were only twenty men left in training. The training became even more intense, and by the end of the second month-long block of training, we were as prepared as the school could make us. All twenty men "graduated," but there was no ceremony, no pins and no certificates. This whole program was highly classified, and the Air Force thought the less paper trail the better.

Much like the US Navy SEALS at the time, Air Force Scouts were not given a unique specialty code (AFSC in the Air Force). They simply kept whatever AFSC's we already had. Unlike the SEALS, no record was kept of the schools the Scouts attended.

So, thus began my journey that took me to the Philippines, Thailand and Laos multiple times during my enlistment. The detachment was originally split up between five Air Force bases, with four Scouts at each base. In each location, there was an officer who kept track of the training regimen and took care of administration. The number of bases shrank as the number of Scouts decreased. When I first became an Air Force Scout, there were twenty men in the detachment. When I left the Air Force, there was only one other surviving Scout. I felt that I had already used up twelve of my nine lives, and it was time to get out.

Shortly after I was discharged, the Air Force Scout program was discontinued. Later, in 1985, when the president ordered the records of the "secret war" in Laos and Cambodia to be declassified, The CIA and the Air Force found it easier to just destroy all records that still existed about the war on the ground because there were so few survivors. FOIA requests all came up empty ... no such records exist.

I was discharged from the Air Force early because I had been accepted to a university starting right after New Year 1972. By the time I received my acceptance letter, though, almost all of the flights back to the US had been filled for Operation Santa Claus. There was one seat available the day before Thanksgiving, which was only two days away when I took my acceptance letter into Personnel. I took the seat. I had used my "off" time to take college classes while in the Air Force, so I had acquired over thirty semester credit hours when I got out. I had applied to several universities, and chose the one that best fulfilled my desires ... BYU. It sounds funny, but BYU, a Mormon university, accepted students from other religions at the time, and I (a Catholic) got accepted.

Fate sometimes gets in the way, though. Even though I was planning to go to BYU for its engineering programs, as soon as the Air Force learned of my imminent discharge, my father received orders to Southeast Asia flying AC-119 gunships. I was very familiar with these planes. Probably the only reason my father hadn't been sent to the war zone previously was that I had been in the theatre of operations on the ground, and the sole-surviving-son law would not allow the Air Force to assign my father. As soon as I was no longer going into Laos, my father got orders (within days).

Because of my dad's assignment, I decided to stay with my family while he was in Southeast Asia and go to a local community college for a year. I arrived home the day after Thanksgiving Day. My father had always wondered what I did in the Air Force. I had been promoted to Staff Sergeant (E-5) in only 34 ½ months (which was unheard of), and my father knew that wasn't possible without being in combat. However, because my job was classified, I could never tell my father what I did.

Even after my father read through my DD 214, he still had no clue how I had been promoted so quickly. None of my training or assignments had been documented in my DD 214 except those from my bypass test, my original assignment in Base Supply and the bases where I had been assigned. TDY's to Southeast Asia and training connected to being an Air Force Scout were omitted.

So, because I had earned college credits while in the Air Force, I started my Sophomore year at the local community college in January 1972. I had contacted BYU to make sure that my acceptance there would still be valid the next year. It was.