Filter by: Journalism Clips or Blog Posts.
Fay Observer: Families get a look at Bragg behind the scenes
Posted June 14, 2011 at 23:11 in clips
By April Dudash
Staff writer
The Fayetteville Observer
As an A-10 Thunderbolt jet aircraft roared above Sicily Drop Zone, a crowd of hundreds oohed as its firepower stirred up the dirt.
Friday’s 82nd Airborne Division demonstration was the rip-roaring finale to All American Week, where the pounding of artillery was felt within the chest and 3rd Brigade Combat Team soldiers sailed through the skies.
Onlookers pulled out video cameras and cellphones as a rumbling C-17 spit out two Humvees and M119 Howitzers. Attached to four parachutes apiece, they made their graceful descent onto Fort Bragg’s subtle rolling hills.
After a jump safety and squadron demonstration, members of the 3rd Brigade Combat Team overtook two wooden shacks in between bursts of gunfire and erupting smoke cans.
Leon Oliver and his family traveled from Alabama to participate in All American Week. At 82, he still remembers the rowdy bunch he served with at Fort Bragg between 1949 and 1953.
“When we landed out here, we had to walk back to the fort,” Oliver said as he overlooked Sicily Drop Zone. “It’s a lot different.”
His wife, Kaye, likes to tell his Army stories. There was one time when he didn’t get home from a night jump until the next day. When he came through the door, he was covered in scratches.
Turns out, he had been hanging in a pine tree all night.
“He said, ‘Woman, don’t tell anyone that story,’ “ Kaye recalled. “But I told everyone I know.”
In the grasses of Sicily Drop Zone, the 82nd also set up displays to showcase their weapons, from grenade launchers to sniper rifles, and machinery, from transportation to communication hubs.
Children in cartoon T-shirts awkwardly climbed up the side of an AH-64 Apache helicopter, grasping at the forest-green siding as they pulled their weight into the front seat.
Capt. Barry “Hoot” Busby, an 82nd Airborne Division chaplain, looked on as his 6-year-old son, Ian, clutched the control stick and punched the buttons with giddy fervor.
“They’re having a ball, seeing my soldiers and seeing their equipment, seeing what daddy does,” Busby said about his family.
A shriek erupted from the cockpit as Ian attempted to replicate the sound of a helicopter in flight.
“It’s a little more stressful watching them pull everything,” said Chief Warrant Officer 2 Vance Scruggs, who spent the day helping little ones in and out of the hulking Apache. “But it’s fun watching the kids get happy about it.”
Across the way, Capt. Adam Keller, the pilot of the OH-58D Kiowa Warrior sitting in the middle of the drop zone, also was fielding a barrage of questions from a particularly interested young crowd.
“Where do you shoot the missiles?”
“Do you fly this?”
“How do you tighten this?”
Three-year-old Jose Hernandez bounced in his seat, tugging on the control stick and flipping switches.
“I think they’d get mad at me if you started it,” Keller said as he peered into the Kiowa.
The field was dotted with camouflage nets, and underneath, soldiers and their families posed next to pieces of intelligence technology.
Sgt. RoShawn Siggal stood out of the sun where a Shadow spy aircraft’s “eye” rotated and captured images of people walking by. The small unmanned aircraft can fly up to 15,000 feet and can go as fast as 127 mph. Siggal, who talked about working with the plane on his Iraq deployment, said, “We were launching one every hour. It keeps you really busy.”
Next to him, Sgt. Abel Vang watched over the Joint STARS Common Ground Station. The command station, housed inside a mobile unit, uses map data to track enemy movement and ground forces.
He has seen the infantry “kick in doors” side of the Army, and now, working on the intelligence side holds special meaning after he was wounded on a deployment.
“Using this, we were able to find the guy who killed my best friend in Iraq,” Vang said.
They are the behind-the-scenes guys, the men who back up the firepower. Sgt. Thomas Scheffler, who serves in the Special Troops Battalion of the 3rd BCT, works with the satellites that transmits top-secret data and calls.
“Usually, the public doesn’t get to see our equipment. It’s not on display,” Scheffler said, and motioned toward a Humvee that had its windows covered in green tarp to keep curious eyes from viewing sensitive equipment. “We like to keep it quiet.”
To pass the time and create an icebreaker, Scheffler and his colleague told kids that the giant dome antenna on top of the Humvee was a bathtub.
“The commander takes a bath in that. We just haul it around,” Scheffler said. “We have to have a little sense of humor.”
Staff writer April Dudash can be reached at dudasha@fayobserver.com or 486-3569.