Pete had met Jill when his mother’s friend invited him to a dance put on by the local LDS (Mormon) stake, and although he was introduced to many girls that evening, Pete and Jill spent most of the time dancing and talking together. By the end of the dance, Pete had asked Jill out on a date and she had accepted. Pete learned a lot about Jill during their first date. First of all, she was only 16 and a sophomore in high school. Pete 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 him and they kissed in front of her house. It was an innocent kiss, but it left a mark on his soul. Pete started worrying that this might turn into a serious relationship ending in marriage. Because he had spent his life around the Air Force and mixing with enlisted men, he 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. He didn’t want that. However, he didn’t want to hurt Jill either, and she had a lot of dreams that would never happen if they married. Pete was confused as to what he should do.
After a few months not hearing anything from Base Personnel, Pete decided to visit Base Civil Engineering. What he learned shocked him. 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 Pete in drafting.
Because he had been guaranteed assignment as an engineering draftsman in writing by the recruiter, the Air Force was in breach of contract. Pete went back to Base Personnel to complain. Of course, they laughed at him. They told him he had three options. First, he could stay in Base Supply and make the best of his situation. Second, he could formally protest the breach of contract, in which case he would eventually be released from the Air Force to be immediately drafted into one of the other branches (yes, he was still eligible to be drafted). Third, he could go over to a bulletin board there in Base Personnel and select another assignment in the Air Force (provided he was qualified).
Pete didn’t like either of the first two options, so he 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 him. However, one of the cards intrigued him. Amazingly, Pete 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 he had just completed early. It required that applicants must qualify for a secret or higher security clearance, which Pete had just been granted for his 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 he 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 Pete had acquired through Scouting and hunting throughout his youth).
Pete 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, Pete had received his orders. He knew that he should go see Jill and tell her what had happened, but that scared him more than anything else. He knew that he wouldn’t handle it well if she fell apart or was crushed by the news, so he decided to just go to the assignment and see what happened. He might be right back if things didn’t work out, or he might not ever be back. Either way, he thought a little time away might be good for both of them. He was wrong, and Jill was deeply hurt when he just disappeared without saying anything.
Pete showed up at the wing headquarters for the First Special Operations Wing (1SOW) waiting for somebody to tell him where to go. There would be a school where he would learn more about the assignment, but for now, he would just have to wait until everybody else arrived.
Pete was advised to get out and run a good distance every day, and to spend time at the gym getting into shape. He would be doing a lot of running and exercise during his training. In reality, Pete ran everyday anyway, and he 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 their way around in the forests and swamps in the dark. It wasn’t anything new to Pete and even though he was the lowest ranking student in the class, he 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. Pete 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 they would be called) would be inserted into areas near the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Laos or Cambodia and they 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 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.