“Today is Saturday, September 10th, 2011. I am Priya Mirmira and I am interviewing Dr. Scott Phillips at the Park Tudor School. Dr. Phillips is a family friend. Dr. Phillips is 47 years old and was born on December 9th, 1963. Dr. Phillips served in the Gulf War and is currently a flight surgeon with NASA and is in the Air Force reserves.”
Priya Mirmira: Ok, so to start off, could you tell a little about yourself such as where you grew up and, you know, a little about your childhood and what your inspiration was for joining the military?
Scott Philips: Sure. Well, I grew up in a town called Logansport, Indiana, about an hour and a half north of Indianapolis and in Logansport there is a lot of people who have been in the military, but actually, my father was in the Air Force. When, when he got out he had some pictures so I got to see them and what my dad looked like when he was young, and so I thought that was pretty neat. And as life went on, I ended up going to Butler University, here in Indianapolis, for undergraduate for my bachelor’s degree and when I was graduating from school at Butler, I knew that I wanted to become a physician, but, of course, it’s never a guarantee that you’re going to get into medical school, and so I had been thinking about “Well what would I do with my biology degree if I was not able to get into medical school?” One of my backup plans was that I might go into the military for a while and do some military service and then see where I wanted to take my life because when you’re 18-22 years old, you’re not really sure sometimes and that was kind of my backup plan. And as luck did have it, I did make it into medical school and about the first or second day that I was in medical school we had these, this room full of mailboxes and everybody had their own mailbox and an Air Force recruiter had come and had stuffed all of the mailboxes with these little flyers saying “We’ve got an Air Force scholarship that will pay for medical school.” Well, at that point in time, I, to get through Butler, had a scholarship and had three part-time jobs, you know. So, and my family helped me out as well, but between all of us, we were able to get through Butler, but, yeah. Pretty much all of our finances were exhausted by that point, and so it was all about student loans and I really didn’t want to take on a huge debt and I thought “Well, my backup plan was the Air Force anyway, and I think that serving in the military would be something that would be right to do to kind of give back to the country. And so, one thing led to another, and I went ahead and filled out the application and it was a, a competitive process, and I was competitive enough that I got selected! So, from there on out, the Air Force paid for the rest of my medical school as well as paid me a monthly stipend to live off of and so I didn’t have to live off hot-dogs and macaroni and cheese for the next four years!
[Interview interrupted by laughter]
And so that’s how I ended up joining the Air Force was through the scholarship program to medical school.
[0:02:54]
PM: So, that’s really cool.
SP: Thanks!
PM: So, do you recall your first days in service…?
SP: Oh sure.
PM: What did they feel like? And what did or did not meet your expectations?
SP: That’s a great question. Well, you know, I think everything really did meet my expectations to a certain degree when they sent us off to our, our basic training. Of course, when we showed up, we had to learn how to make our uniform and fold things properly and so forth. And we had drill sergeants, but we were actually of lucky compared to just about anybody else that is entering the military. Because, and in the military, there are really, there are two different groups. There’s the enlisted and the officers. The officers are ones, the ones that are in leadership positions, in general. The enlisted are the people that carry out the work and do most of the hard work of the military. And so, the people that are the trainers, the drill sergeants and so forth, they are enlisted. But, they are always taught to be very respectful of officers, because they report to the officers. Well, unlike any other part of the military, the doctors are commissioned and given their rank before they ever get to basic training. So, we were already an officer being trained by enlisted guys. So, you know, if you are coming in through basic training, they can yell at you, they can, you know, try to teach your right from wrong, and other sorts of things that basic training does. But, here, we outranked them already, so they couldn’t yell at us, so they weren’t quite sure how to handle us. So that was kind of a surprise. But, when I went down there, was to San Antonio, Texas, where basic training was for us, and it was very much what I expected. There was a lot of classwork during the day. We learned about the Air Force, the heritage of the Air Force as well as what the different missions were that the Air Force provides and they spent a great deal of time trying to teach us how the medical side fits into the big picture. Because, you know, the medical doctors are not out there on the front lines, and by Geneva Convention we are not allowed to fight. But we had to take care of those that are, so we had to learn what our position was, what we are and are not allowed to do, and what kind of positions we are and are not allowed to hold. And of course there was a lot of physical training that goes along with that, and there was a leadership reaction course, which was something really cool. We were divided up into groups of about ten people and given obstacles that we had to figure out ways, as a team, of getting everybody taken care of. It kind of applied to what would happen if you found yourself out in the middle of nowhere and something, you know, was happening to you or your men and, or women!
[Interview interrupted by laughter]
And how that would go, how you would work your way through it. And so, you know, it was things such as…for example it was things like ‘such and such bridge is out and you have this amount of equipment, and you have to get all of your people across without touching the water or touching this mine field, or, or something like that. So, it was all about problem solving kind of like Destination Imagination in a way…
PM: Yeah
SC: One of the things that I remember that did kind of catch me off guard…when we first entered there, our first day of class, the instructor stood up and read off kind of a long paragraph, it was like a job description. And he said, “Help!” It started like “Help wanted. We need somebody that will work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week whenever you’re called. You will go wherever you’re told, whenever you’re told and you will possibly have to give up your life.” And it went like that and it was very serious but it was written as if it was a ‘help-wanted’ ad. And he said, “If you haven’t figured it out already, this is exactly the job you just signed up for.” And it kind of gave me chills, you know, because it really is. You can be told to go anywhere, whether or not you want to. If they say you go, you go. You can be told to do any job and you have to do it. You give up certain rights, as a member of the military. You don’t have the right to freedom of speech, not necessarily. For example, if I didn’t like what President Clinton, President Reagan, President Obama was doing, I’m not allowed to say anything about it because he’s my commander and chief. I report to him. So, as a military member you actually give up a lot of your freedoms and rights that people don’t really think about until after they hear about what the military does. But it has to be that way because of order and discipline and making the mission work. So those were my first days in the military, and it went on from there.
[0:07:31.3]
PM: Cool. So you served in the Gulf War. Where were you stationed and where did you go?
SC: Well, I was stationed in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. And while we were there, we branched out to different places. One of the places was Kuwait City. Another was over to Riyadh there was another air base there. And what we did was, we had several air bases where we were sharing with the Saudi Arabian Air Force. So, in Dhahran, was one of those bases and that’s where I was stationed and then, we had some stuff that we had to take back and forth to Riyadh. I was available to drive. I was lucky because as a doctor you get the vehicle because if somebody gets hurt you have to go get them. You know, I had a little white Jeep Cherokee is what I had and it even had a little red light at the top and everything in case I had to drive out on the flight line. And I had some really cool experiences and cool opportunities. One of them was driving from Dhahran over to Riyadh. And actually what I was doing is I was taking an intelligence officer, you know, the intelligence side of the community. They’re the ones that have all the secret stuff and they know where, you know, the enemy’s staying, or what the battle plans are and stuff. And I was actually escorting one of the intelligence officers who needed to get over to Riyadh and take something that was important, important enough that they couldn’t talk about it over the radios. He had a briefcase that was locked and everything like that and so I got to be the person to take him over there. As you might know, I had a flat tire on the way over there and it was about 118 degrees or so out in the desert, and here we are driving along and we had a flat tire. So, of course we had a spare tire in the Cherokee and I got it out. When we put it on, we found out that the rim on the spare was bent and so the tire just wobbled. And people thought that the tire was going to fall off. So we’re driving down the highway between the two cities and people were honking their horns at us and pointing to the tire and we were like “We know, we know.” Because the wheel was kind of wobbling back and forth like this because the rim was bent. But, it was perfectly safe to drive on if you drive slowly, which, of course, made the drive a lot longer. So that was kind of fun because since you had a vehicle and vehicles were in short supply, anybody that needed anything, if I wasn’t busy, was like “Hey doc! Could you take me to so-and-so at such-and-such place?”
[Interview interrupted by cell phone]
So it was one of those, it was one of those things where suddenly, you were everybody’s friend because you got to…have you ever heard of a movie called MASH? A TV show that was called MASH?
PM: Yeah
SC: And there was one of the guys, one of the characters there was Radar O’Reilly, was his name, and he was the guy that was always helping out and always making deals to get whatever they needed for the medical unit and that was part of the story of this show called MASH. Well, he was always trading and so forth to get what he needed, and actually, I got to experience that. One of the things that we needed but didn’t have was an ambulance and there was another unit down the road that did have an ambulance, but they didn’t have a way to get off base, but I did. And so, the guy that was in charge of things, he was actually—he couldn’t leave base and it had been a long time since he had everything, anything besides just the plain food that they were serving in the chow hall. And so I told him, “Okay, here’s the deal. I’ll go get you a whole bag full of cheeseburgers from downtown if you can get this ambulance transferred over.” The next day we had our ambulance. So I was able to trade cheeseburgers for an ambulance for our unit and get it transferred to us so we would have that available for our men! So, that’s one of the stories that I kind of remember from when I was stationed. Am I rambling too much?
PM: No, no.
SC: Oh, okay
[Interview interrupted by laughter]
PM: That was funny!
SC: Yeah!
[0:11:28.6]
PM: So, what was your job assignment while you were there? Did you get to see any conflict?
SC: The answer is—I was a flight surgeon for a Special Operations Unit and so, yes. I was sent there and placed in a forward position anytime the men were placed in harm’s way. And so, I was usually dropped off or stationed someplace close to where they could get to me if something was wrong. And so, I personally was never shot at. We had batteries of patriot missiles around us and those are anti-missile missiles because Saddam Husain had this type of missile called a SCUD Missile and he was known to from time to time, fire them over at us. Fortunately, in the time that I was there, I was never shot at or had any missiles, but it happened all around us. I just happened to get lucky for the few months that I was over there. So, it did happen from time to time.
[0:12:23.7]
PM: So, could you tell me a little about your involvement with Operation Desert Storm?
SC: Sure. Our unit—it was all about Special Operations and Special Operations—the job is to get secretly in and out without being noticed and doing whatever the mission would require and it was actually our units that led the ground units over in across the border into Iraq when the war kicked off. And so, they have all of the gear that it takes to get in under radar, seeing in the dark with infrared, and night vision goggles and so forth. All that sort of stuff is technology that they had. At the time—you’ve heard of GPS satellites, right?
PM: Mm hmm.
SC: At the time, GPS was completely classified and only able to be used by the military, it wasn’t opened up. And so, you have GPS everything now. You can open up your iPhone and see where you are. That wasn’t allowed back then, it was all for use by the military. And we had radios. Everybody on the aircrew, like for example, had a radio. And if they crashed, or something like that, our group was all about rescue. And so, if you had your radio activated, we would be able to come and find you and land our helicopter within three feet of your location.
PM: Wow.
SC: That’s how exacting GPS was back then, but as I said, it wasn’t opened up at that time for civilian use. It has been, thankfully, since then. It has been a wonderful boon in technology. So, we were all about search and rescue and try to find someone like a down pilot. In the back of the helicopter that I flew in, we had enough room. It was a very big helicopter and it has enough room for me to have had six patients on stretchers, three on each side.
PM: Wow!
SC: So it was a pretty big helicopter. And so, I had all the medical gear that I needed to take care of up to six patients if we had to rescue that many patients.
[0:14:28.5]
PM: Is there any specific rescue mission that kind of sticks with you, that’s really profound?
SC: You know, nothing that was really profound. Certainly—we had—well actually we did some fun exercises that kind of stick out because it made it really real for both the pilots of the fighter aircrafts. So what they would do from time to time, for exercise purposes, is they would take a pilot with all his survival gear that he would have if he had ejected from his fighter aircraft, and they would dump him out in the middle of the desert and we would have to find him, and only the people that were running the exercise would know where he was. But he didn’t know where he was. We didn’t know where he was, but we would go through the exercise. And they would have—they actually gave him fake injuries such as a broken leg and that sort of stuff and they had the fake broken bones stuff that applied to his leg, blood and all that sort of stuff. And he was basically told, “You can’t use that leg as if it were broken.” So he would climb around, trying to get to his supplies and so forth and try to keep himself alive until we could get to him. And so that—
PM: Oh wow.
SC: Yeah that was really exciting and that was when we used that radio I was telling you about where he would activate his radio and then we would go through all of the steps in order to find him and we would land. I worked with a group of people that are called Pararescue Men. And the Pararescue Men would be the first out of the helicopter in order to—they’re like paramedics with a whole lot of extra training and they know how to jump out of aircrafts to get to the patient and so forth. So, in theory, not with the helicopters, but with some of the other units, well actually with the helicopters, they could jump or repel out of a helicopter to get to the patient while we found a safe place to land and we would be able to take him, extract him, and get him back to safety without ever being noticed. We can do it under the cover of darkness without night vision goggles and everything like that. One of the things that as a doctor stood out to me is that I had to learn how to start IVs, you’ve seen IVs and so forth. But I had to learn how to start IVs under night vision goggles in zero light.
PM: Oh my goodness.
SC: And so, that’s a skill that very few doctors ever get to master, but I got to learn and do that.
PM: That’s so cool!
SC: Yeah.
[0:16:43.6]
PM: So, the form that you gave to me said that you sustained injuries. What were they and how did you get them?
SC: Oh, great question. The only, and this is kind of a technicality, but because of some of the loud engine noise and medical care I had to give on the flight line when I was near aircraft, I’ve lost some of my hearing. And so it was not an injury like I was shot up or broke an arm or anything like that, but I have permanent hearing loss because of some of the duties that I had to perform.
PM: Oh my goodness.
SC: Yeah
[0:17:13.9]
PM: So you also said on your form that you were in Guantanamo Bay.
SC: Yes I was.
PM: So, what did you do while you were there? What was it like to serve in Guantanamo Bay?
SC: Oh! That’s a great question. Well, back in 19—, I believe it was 1996, the leader of Cuba, Castro, he decided to open up the flood gates and let a bunch of people who wanted to be refugees go. About 50,000 of them, so they had rafts and makeshift boats and everything like that and they had a mass exodus away from Cuba. And they were all hoping to make it to the coast of Florida. They were hoping to make it to America. The Coast Guard found out about it and mounted this huge rescue effort because a lot of these people were drowning. There were storms and, you know, rough seas and so forth. So if you could imagine, you know, ten or fifteen foot waves and you’re in something to the equivalent of a rowboat or a raft, you know what I mean? And so the Coast Guard went out and rescued all of these refugees, brought them back to Guantanamo Bay, which is part of Cuba but it is actually land owned by the United States. And so it’s a base. It’s lined by barbed wire and mine fields all the way around it and it’s actually the United States base down there. And they set up huge tent cities and these tent cities were where all of these Cuban refugees lived until they could be processed to be brought legally into the United States. And so the immigration and naturalization service and so forth all had their offices down there and all had everything set up. And so that’s how all these people landed on Guantanamo Bay. Now, interestingly enough, remind me to tell you about, have you hear of Camp X-Ray? Have you heard about that at all? Well, that’s where now the people that were captured had something to do with September 11th and the bombing, that’s where they are being kept right now. And Camp X-Ray sounds really scary, you know, X-RAYS! Well it was just because in the phonetic alphabet, the name of X is X-Ray. So you have Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta, you know, ABCD. But every letter has a word that’s associated with it. So, like over the radio, if you say “E” and they’re like “Did he mean E or C?” Well is it Charlie or Echo? That’s so every letter has a word. Well X is what they called it, was the prison. That was the prison camp. And so that was Camp X-Ray. And so that was where the prisoners were. I’ll tell you about that in a second. Anyway, so what I did at Guantanamo Bay is I went down there and rendered care to all these refugees. And so I did surgery on the ones that needed surgery. There were like, several people had like, fractured noses and stuff like that from falling off their raft and hitting the boat and all these rough seas and everything like that. I did some ear surgery while I was there and some of the pictures I showed you were pictures of me operating in a tent hospital, it was there. And so, what I did was basically give medical care to the refugees and I will tell you that these people were not, you know, people that were dumb. They were actually some of the smartest. A lot of them were artists. But Castro did not feel like there was anything important about art and so he didn’t see that they had any value in his society. So he shoved them out of the country. And so, what I can show you someday, if you would like to, over at my house I’ve got some paintings that these artists did. One of the most poignant paintings and all they asked for was oil paints and we would go, there was a small thing called the Base Exchange where the Post Exchange or the Navy Exchange is. The Exchange is a store on a base that’s a lot like a K-Mart or a Target. It has a little bit of everything. And the artists would actually paint for you or paint just to be painting if all you had to do was supply them the paint, the canvas, and the brushes and they would do the work. It kept them busy, it kept them happy while they were sitting in these tents waiting for weeks and months at a time to be basically brought to the United States as legal, legalized aliens. And so I’ve got a painting that they made for me. And what it is, is that all of them, all of the refugees were given these little, they were called DMPTS. D.M.P.T.S. And I don’t remember what DMPTS stands for off the top of my head but it was like Defense Military Patriation…DMPTS was what it was. But they looked like watches without a face. And so they were black wristbands and a black circle thing here that looked like a watch but they had a chip in them, a computer chip, that had an identifier on them. It had their name and a unique number that they were assigned. And so, they were tracked, and they knew who was who that way. And they were not removable, you know, like the bands that you get when you go to the hospital the only way that you can remove it is cut it. You couldn’t take it off. So they all had their DMPTS bracelet and one of the paintings he did was a painting, it’s a very dark painting with very rough seas and you see this arm coming out of the sea with its DMPTS bracelet on, grabbing onto a United States flag.
PM: Oh…
SC: And that was his, the artist’s rendition of what life was like for him. He found himself in tumultuous seas and his only means of survival and his only rescue was the United States. Pretty cool isn’t it? So that’s the painting that he did. And so a lot of PhD’s, a lot of physicists were there. So as I said, he got rid of a lot of people that our society really would value. And all they wanted was a chance to work and live in the United States. And so, it was really pretty cool.
[0:23:08.5]
PM: That’s cool. So what was the Camp X-Ray thing?
SC: The Camp X-Ray story, that’s where when somebody was picked up and it was found that he actually opened up the prisons and shoved them out as refugees as well, Castro did. And so we found out that along with the good people that were in this refugee, a lot of them were prisoners, people that were convicted of murder and heinous crimes and so forth. They were placed in the prison camp, Camp X-Ray. And what happened was is Castro did not want them back. And so of course the United States wasn’t about to take murderers and thieves and so forth and turn them into US citizens and so, unfortunately, what happened is, is they would be, what do you call it? Deported back to mainland Cuba. What they knew what happen, and unfortunately what Castro did was as soon as we would take them on a plane, get them off of our base and bring them back to mainland Cuba, and they would get off the plane, they would be standing along the runway and shot down. Castro had them executed the minute they got off the plane. And so what those guys did was they would do anything they could not to be deported. And we couldn’t deport them unless they were well because we had, by convention, had to provide them care. So they would smuggle knives and they would cut their Achilles tendons, right back here. So they hobbled and they couldn’t walk. If they couldn’t walk, they couldn’t get on the jet and they knew that they had a couple 2-3 months to live while they were healing up from their self-inflicted injuries. And so, that’s what they were trying to do to survive because they knew the minute they got back to Cuba that they were going to be killed.
PM: Oh my goodness.
SC: It’s a scary thing.
[0:24:52.1]
PM: It is a scary thing. So, did you ever have any supply or equipment shortages?
SC: You know, we were very fortunate. In Guantanamo Bay, since it was a fixed base that had been going for a long time, we really did not. In Saudi Arabia, we didn’t either but it was because we were part of a special operations unit. So we got special favor, I’d guess you’d say. We were always a self-contained package. We always took what we needed with us. And so, whenever we went any place, we always had everything we needed already that we brought along. So we didn’t fall under the normal supply chain but supply problems were part of the war. There’s not question about that. There were many units that did not but we were very fortunate with ours.
[0:25:30.9]
PM: That’s good. So could you tell me a couple of your most memorable experiences from like serving in the Gulf War? Is there anybody or a particular person that stood out to you?
SC: Yeah. My commander was someone that stood out to me. He was an amazing leader he was excellent. And he had been part of mission called Operation Just Cause and Just Cause was when, you may have heard of Black Hawk Down, you may have heard. We actually went in to get out some people under a guy named Noriega. He was part of the [--?] and unfortunately because of and intelligence leak, they were ready for us and it was a massacre. The United States military took some very hard casualties and he [the commander] was part of that. So he shared a lot of previous experience with me because when I was doing this, I was still pretty fresh out of medical school and just brand new to the military. When I had gotten over to Saudi Arabia, I had still only been in the military for about two years, so a lot of this was brand new. So he was somebody that took me under his wing and taught me the real way the Air Force works, what our mission really was, and how I fit into it. And he listened to me, which was really cool. Me still just being a young doctor, I didn’t realize how much influence I had. When it came to medical things he would actually come to me and he would give me the final say even if I didn’t want it.
[Interview interrupted by laughter]
For example, there were people that felt in a certain area of responsibility that we needed certain vaccines. And so, he put me up to the task of researching whether or not this was truly a necessity or not because he knew that some of our men, some of my unit’s men, were going to be going there. And I was able to research and find out if they needed it and if they did, how to procure it in time to get them vaccinated before they went into the area. Being needed for my knowledge was just an amazing honor to be taken seriously and actually feel like you made a difference. And then I also told you about some of the other stories like taking care of my guy with the broken arm, taking care of somebody that needed to be traveling someplace else in Saudi Arabia and getting a flat tire that was very memorable as well. But actually, just being over there and feeling like you really mattered because you know, in the United States, you know I was at this big medical center and going through my internship and stuff and it’s like ‘well, that’s not much different than being down at the IU Med Center or just a big referral center.’ The only difference is that you’re wearing a uniform every day. But you’re just doing patient care in a clinic and it didn’t seem so special. But when you’re out in a place like Desert Storm, when you’re out in the desert and you’re taking care of people that are hurt, that are actually in harm’s way and could be shot down at any point in time, then it really seemed real and it really seemed that I was actually making a difference.
[0:28:26.3]
PM: That’s cool. So while you were in Saudi Arabia, how did you stay in touch with your family?
SC: Oh, that’s a great question. That was before the Internet. So, nowadays, people do it with email. Actually, you were allowed to make a phone call every week. And so, once a week I was able to call back home and talk to Tracy and let her know that everything was ok. And then we also wrote letters a lot. And almost every single day, I got a card or a letter from Tracy. She wrote me a card almost every day. And it took about week to a week and a half to make it to me. But it was kind of one of those things where you’re away from anything familiar. Everything is brown. There are no trees and if there are, they’re pretty scrawny with very few leaves. Everything is covered in dust and there’s very little that’s familiar. I mean, the sky is still blue but that’s about it. You know all of the writing on all of the buildings is in Arabic. I learned a few phrases in Arabic just so I could know where I was walking to and what I was doing and I learned how to read all the numbers, which is kind of cool. The writing is from right to left except for numbers, which are left to right, as you probably know. And, you know, when I was driving on the highway, of course I had to know what the speed limit was and I to know what the numbers were for the speed limit signs. That’s the way we communicated was mostly through letter and once a week, I got to make a five-minute phone call just to talk back home.
[0:29:55.8]
PM: So what was the food like while you were there?
SC: Actually, the food was pretty good. It was, the problem was it was the same all the time. So there was plenty of food and there was actually a lot of Indian food because it was Indian contractors that came over and supplied us and manned our chow hall and such. And so we got a lot of Indian food, a lot of rice, a lot of saffron rice, the bright yellow stuff. And it tasted really good for about the first week because it was something new and different. And you know, the second week it was ‘Ah, this is ok.’ And the third or fourth week it was ‘Oh, not again.’ But we had a lot of fresh fruits and vegetables and from time to time, we were able to go downtown into Dhahran, the city and go eat there and I really enjoyed eating off the local economy. So shwarmas, they were sandwiches that were fantastic and there were vendors right along the road and they’d carve off their meat and make you a shwarma and hand it to you right there. There was a restaurant chain kind of like McDonald’s, but it was fast food Arabic food, you know. They had shwarmas and some other things that I don’t remember how to pronounce and it was called Haba Baba’s. And they were just little restaurants kind of like what a McDonald’s would look like. And they had this one drink that I absolutely loved and I wish I knew what all was in it. But it was blenderized that they had that they made with a sort of milk, some sort of powder, and bananas. And it was to die for! It was so good! And I’ve never been able to find out what it was. I’d love to be able to.
PM: That’s disappointing.
SC: Yeah, but maybe I will someday. You never know! One of the other things that made it seem a lot like home was not far from the airbase was a small city or town that was a town of Americans that worked for this company called ARAMCO the Arab American Oil Company. It was like a walled-in city where all of the people they brought from the United States that worked for their oil company lived. They got kind of homesick for other Americans and so they would invite us over to their house for dinner. It would kind of like having two or three servicemen in everybody’s home. We’d all go in like a big bus and go out to different people’s homes in this compound and they would cook American food for us! They were happy to see us and we were happy to see them and it was a lot of fun.
[0:32:36.6]
PM: That’s cool! So was there anything special you did for good luck before you went out into the field?
SC: No, not really, come to think of it. You’d think that there would be and I’m sure that there are some people who do. But, you know, really the only thing that you did to try and ensure your good luck was to be well prepared. Be sure you knew what you were going into as best you could and to be prepared for it.
[0:32:56.9]
PM: So how did people entertain themselves? Were there entertainers?
SC: You know what, there was occasional entertainment from a group called the USO, Uniform Services or United Services Organization. But it’s a private group that actually hires entertainers and brings them over to people that are deployed. They’ve done that for many years during WWII and it’s been around for a long time. The USO actually provides a place for military people in airports to sit down and relax and it’s all completely run by donations and volunteers. It’s really cool and it’s been going on for many, many years. It’s a volunteer organization. So they brought entertainment and the other thing that we did a lot of was we had a couple of guys who were good at playing the guitar and they brought their guitars along. So we’d sit around at night and listen and play and sing along and stuff. We had a few TV’s and a couple boxes full of VCR tapes of movies so we’d watch movies. But we ran through those after about a month and you get tired of seeing the same movies over and over again. But that’s what we did. We would watch movies. We had live feed from CNN and so forth. So we kept up with world events on CNN by just watching TV a little bit. And a lot of people spent a lot of time, me included, working out. So I was the in the best shape of my life while I was over there and you had a lot of extra time and when you’re back home, you’ve got something taking up your time everyday all the time. You’ve got family, friends, you’ve got work and all kind of responsibilities. Well over there, all of that’s removed. That’s all the way back in the United States so once you were done doing whatever it is you needed to do, whatever your work was for the day, well if you’re sitting around you might as well go hop on a bike or go lift weights or something like that. So we spent a lot more time staying in shape.
[0:34:49.7]
PM: So what did you do when you were on leave?
SC: We didn’t have leave.
PM: No?
SC: Nope. We weren’t allowed to have leave. That’s a great question but pretty much we worked every single day while we were over there to some degree. Sundays, when we were off, we’d only work you know, half a day or something like that. If we were getting away, we’d get away to the ARAMCO families or a couple of evenings we actually got to over to the Persian Gulf, the actual gulf, the sand, the ocean, and everything like that. That was pretty interesting too because in Saudi Arabia it’s very much a segregated society. Men vs. Women. And I’m sure you’ve experienced that too when you’ve traveled overseas. But the men and the boys would make campfires very close to the ocean and the women had to stay back. They weren’t allowed to go up to the water and the daughters too. So the boys were allowed to play in the ocean and campfires and such. And they were very interested in us. The Saudis were. I remember one man invited us over to their fire and they were cooking chicken on their fire, which was delicious by the way. And they also had this tea that they drank and it was something the men did together. Your men friends would all get together and you sat and drank this tea that they would brew over the fire. And they invited us to come and sit and have tea with them, which was quite an honor really. They wanted us to talk in English to their sons because they knew how important it was to learn English because it’s so much more of an international language than Arabic was. So they wanted their sons to hear Arabic, I mean English, and sit and chat with us and learn a little bit about Americans.
PM: That’s cool!
SC: I thought it was pretty cool too. So that’s some of the stuff we did for entertainment instead of going on leave because there was nowhere to go.
[0:36:42.9]
PM: So you do recall any particularly humorous or unusual events besides the cheeseburger one?
SC: The cheeseburger’s a pretty good one isn’t it?
PM: Yeah!
SC: I’ll have to think about that for a second or two.
[Pause]
Humorous? I mean we had fun all the time. You had to, to keep yourself sane, I guess. I think really sitting around with the guys with the guitars that was fun. But humorous? No, I think the most humorous story I’ve got is trading cheeseburgers for an ambulance. That’s probably the best one.
PM: That’s was a good one.
[Interview interrupted by laughter]
[0:37:25.1]
PM: So, do you recall the day your service ended?
SC: Well, do you mean while I was in Saudi Arabia or just in general?
PM: Yeah. Just kind of like when you left Saudi Arabia. What was it like coming back home?
SC: It was very exciting. You had to pack up all your gear and get it all boarded in a truck and unload the truck next to the aircraft and then load your stuff onto the aircraft, so it was a lot of work as you were leaving. But it was kind of a sense of happiness, you’re just so happy that you’re going to get to go home. On the airplane, we actually transferred from the military airplane, in Germany, to a civilian contract airplane. And it was a huge plane. It’s something called an L1011. And it is something that is specifically made for big flights overseas. And you’ve probably been on those as you’ve traveled something like an L1011 or something just as big. It was one that had, gosh was it, eight seats down the middle aisle and four on either side. So there’s two aisles. You know what I mean? Those real big jets? And what they did was they segregated the jet, front and back. If you were wanting to stay up and socialize, you went to the back. If you wanted to sleep, you were told to select a seat up front. So you could sleep and they would keep the noise way in the back, which was kind of cool. It was a very festive time and although alcohol is not a very big part of my life, many people were very excited that once we took off, they were able to have beer and wine and so forth. So the back of the plane, they all had beer because you know, they serve beer on the airplane. And once you’re out of sight of Saudi Arabia, you could have alcohol again. I don’t recall that I had one, but that’s what was going on back there in the back. Then we flew all night and it was just after daybreak that I woke up and I was looking out my window and we flew over the Statue of Liberty into New York and landed, I think at LaGuardia where another military plane came and picked us up. And then we were flown on a military plane back home from LaGuardia. And I remember the first thing that really stuck me, just incredibly dramatically was how green we have it here. There’s not green over there. In fact, the golfers, they carry around a piece of astro-turf for their putting green. I don’t play golf, but they were playing golf. They’ve the tee and a hole and then it’s all sand. It’s sand from here to here. And when it’s time to putt, then you rolled out your astro-turf and you would put on astro-turf. That’s what struck me when we were in New York and of course when we got back to Florida where I was staying was just how green everything was. It was all bright green that you hadn’t seen in months. That was one of things that really struck me as I ended my duty with the Gulf War.
[0:40:30.3]
PM: That’s cool! So after the Gulf War, what were you doing? Did you go back to work?
SC: Uh huh. Yeah and then I had some leave. I had about two weeks that I took off and spent with Tracy, and this is before Lauren was born. We spent time at home and got acclimated to being together again. That was what we did and then, yeah, after my two weeks was up, I went back to work and started seeing patients in my clinic again, which were all my fliers, my air crew, because I was a flight surgeon. So I took care of the aircrew on the planes and got ready for whatever the next mission was and I don’t even remember what the next mission was but nothing that was as long as the Gulf War was.
[0:41:13.4]
PM: Yeah. So did you make any close friendships when you were in service?
SC: Absolutely. I’ve got many close friends and many that we, all we do now is able to stay in touch by email. For example, one pilot that, we became very close just a couple of years ago. His son was interested in playing soccer for IU and so even though I hadn’t seen him in over ten years, we still kept in contact and he said, “Well, we might be coming up.” So he and his family came up and stayed with us while he did his school interviews in at IU and while he was looking at colleges and so forth. So, yes, I have many friends in the military, you bet.
PM: That’s cool.
SC: And it’s a bond that really is tighter than most people ever get to make with a friend.
[0:41:58.8]
PM: Yeah. So did your military experience influence your thinking about war or the military in general?
SC: Well, that’s a great question. I don’t know…. The question is, did it influence it? Well, I think it would have to, because you’re living it every single day. You really get to appreciate how important the military is and protecting the lives of everybody back home. So, I think that there’s no way it couldn’t influence you. I would have to say that you have the opportunity with every scenario or any experience to be influenced either positively or negatively and that’s your choice. And I choose to think of everything, that my military experience, for the most part has been a positive, you know, life-shaping experience.
[0:42:40.6]
PM: So, are there any awards you received that really meant the most to you and how did you get them?
SC: Yeah, that’s a great question. When you talk about military decorations and war, I think one of them that probably meant a great deal to me; there were two that stand out. One is something called an Aerial Achievement Medal. It’s pretty unusual for a doctor in the military to be able to get one of those, but you get it for flying in combat or combat support missions. But all of the missions that we flew in patrolling the No Fly Zone and me going forward with my units and so forth, all were combat support missions. So after I had flown in fifteen combat support missions, in the aircraft, I was awarded an Aerial Achievement Medal. And so, that meant a lot to me because that’s something that doctors don’t usually get to do, or get to be awarded. I think the other one, was a medal that I was awarded for—it is called the Humanitarian Service Medal. I actually was awarded it twice. One was when I got to go into Turkey. There was group of Iraqis called the Kurds. And they were not favored by Saddam Hussein’s regime and they were actually, pretty much, attacked. And so, they fled the country over into Turkey as they were being attacked by their own military basically. Which is quite scary if you think about it. It would be just like the United States military saying—the president decided that he didn’t like Indian, people of Indian decent and now the military’s going to attack everybody that has an Indian heritage. That’s kind of what it was like for these poor people these Kurds. They had to flee their homes and try to get out of the country and so when they got over across the border into Turkey, of course, they had very little with them except what they could carry. And so we had a—it was a mission called Provide Comfort. Operation PROVIDE COMFORT was to get them supplies, get them food and medicine and so forth. So I got to be a part of that and we were awarded the Humanitarian Service Medal for that. And then also providing humanitarian aid to those Cuban refugees you were asking me about, so I got awarded that medal twice. So I think those are probably my two favorite medals.
[0:44:53.8]
PM: That’s cool! So can you tell me a little bit about your experience as a NASA flight surgeon?
SC: Oh sure. Yeah, I’d love to. What I did was, as you know, I provided rescue support for the astronauts. When the space shuttle takes off or when it lands, there’s always a chance of crash during take-off and landing. And so, NASA contracted with the Department of Defense to provide rescue services. And so, ever since, all the way back to the Mercury support, all the way back in the early 1960’s, the Air Force has provided rescue services for NASA. And so, with the space shuttle program, what they deemed necessary was for every two astronauts on the space shuttle, there was one helicopter that was loaded with medical gear, one doctor, and two of those Pararescue men that I mentioned before. And so, we were standing by at the, basically right along the runway at the landing facility, to be there to rescue the astronauts in case something went wrong. I don’t know, how much more do you want to hear? I can talk all day about that to you I’m sure.
[0:45:55.6]
PM: So what was it like, because you also do a refueling in air, right?
SC: Yes, uh huh.
PM: What is that like?
SC: Oh that’s very exciting. In fact, I can give you more pictures. I just went on a mission last Wednesday night, as a matter of fact. We were practicing with some bombers over Iowa, as a matter of fact. So what the idea is, is that it’s much more efficient if you can refuel mid-air an aircraft that, for example if we are, right now, if there was something if some sort of war broke out in Europe what would happen is, is that we would scramble our fighter jets, which can only fly for a couple of hours on the amount of fuel they can carry. But the tankers, which is what we are, we’re aerial fueling tankers, we can carry a great deal of gas, actually about 180,000 pounds of gas. It’s measure in pounds, not gallons. That’s well over 150,000 gallons of fuel. And so, we would take off and we would fly into a designated area and basically be circling around in an orbit at a certain altitude and we would be making what’s called an air bridge where you would have tankers stationed at certain places along the route over the, over the Pacific, over the Atlantic, whichever direction you’re going. And the amount of space is right for these fighter jets or bombers or stealth fighters, stealth bombers, whatever is needed and so we would be stationed there, so when they were getting ready to need fuel, we would be positioned there, refuel them, and they would be able to keep right on going instead of, you know, if it’s over land, having to land to try and refuel or over water, there’s no place to land. So you have to have that. And so that’s what we do and so, really what’s happening is, is that out aircraft and the other aircraft are flying in very close formation and they come up behind us and we’re going about 400 miles per hour, mind you, and they will fly up behind us and be matching the exact speed. They’d come up, come underneath us and we have a, basically a metal pipe called a boom. And the boom has little tiny little ailerons on it that they actually can change how it moves. So, they can steer the boom and in the top of the airplane there is a receptacle and you pop that boom into the receptacle and refuel the airplane. It’s like a big hose, but it’s not, it’s a not a hose but a pipe that you plug in and you fill up their tank and they leave.
[0:48:26.0]
PM: So what was it like your first mission on the refueling jet? Was it like nerve-racking?
SC: It is! It’s very scary to think how “You know, they’re getting a little close here!” You know and I showed you some pictures and they are right there! They are within twenty feet. You’re flying big jets or small jets or whatever you’re refueling within 20 feet of each other at 400 miles per hour. And, you know, when it starts getting bumpy, you’ve felt turbulence in an aircraft before, and when it starts getting bumpy, it’s like “Well it seem awfully close to me!” But they’re very good. They’re very professional and it’s an incredible skill. They’re very, very well trained.
[0:49:01.4]
PM: Have there been any major accidents while you were there?
SC: Sadly yes. I was party to a very bad accident. When, this was during training for another mission, during the first Gulf War, we were training to do a mission and it was going to be joint between the Air Force and Army helicopters were all involved. And one thing led to another and unfortunately, there was an aircraft that went down and it was being practiced over in at an Air Force base in Utah, just outside Salt Lake City, Hill Air Force Base. And one of our helicopters that was carrying four aircrew and eleven army rangers crashed into the Great Salt Lake.
PM: Oh my goodness...
SC: I didn’t know any of the rangers but the four aircrew men were my friends. And I was the first doctor on the scene. Fortunately, there was one person that survived and he was the only one. My squadron commander and two very good friends perished. They died in the accident. And so, that’s one of the most poignant memories I have during training was I was onboard a bigger plane called a C-130 carrying, 4 engine propeller plane. And we landed and it has a door in the back that opens off cause it’s a cargo plane, so they load cargo on or take cargo off. They put the ramp down and immediately I heard them say, “Where’s the doc? We need the doc?” When you hear somebody say that, that’s never a good thing. Something wrong happened. And I got off the plane and they explained to me what was going on and they whisked me and my medical equipment and we went to go try and find any survivors. And they found one.
PM: Oh that’s really sad.
SC: Mm hmm.
[0:50:44.4]
PM: So, how do you like your reserve experience? What’s it like being in the reserves?
SC: I like it very much. It’s a great way to continue to be able to participate but still being able to have a little bit of the freedom that you would otherwise not have as a civilian because, you know, they wouldn’t make me pick up and move someplace, they’d offer it to me but I can stay here with my practice and still have a chance to serve and help out when needed. So, it’s a good experience, it’s a great group of people. It’s not quite as close knit as the group was when you’re on active duty because you spent every day together whereas now, I spend one weekend a month with these people, but still, you become very good friends and you look forward to seeing them, seeing your friends once a month.
PM: So what is your favorite and least favorite thing about being in the military?
SC: Oh gosh, my favorite thing would probably be the comradery between you and your friends and being able to feel like you’re giving back to your country, you know, there’s a great deal of patriotism that I was taught since I was very young and service to the country was something that was very important to me and my family. And so, being able to continue to support making my mom and dad proud, you know, anybody wants to make their parents proud. And so, that is something that is very nice about being in the military is if it’s important to your family then they’re proud of you and that’s a very good feeling. Probably, if you ask me the thing that I probably hate the most it’s the PT test, you know, having to sit and do push-ups and sit-ups and run a mile-and-a-half and stuff, I hate that. That’s me. Some people love it. Some people run for fun, I hate it. There you go, that’s my least favorite.
[0:52:30.7]
PM: How did you get through that? Did you just kind of have to?
SC: You just had to.
PM: You just kind of had to suck it up?
SC: Yeah. That’s exactly what you had to do. Just suck it up and do it. And that’s the part I hate.
[0:52:41.2]
PM: Yeah. Is there one thing you want Lauren to take away from being in the service? Is there like, you know, a value or a message you want to instill in her?
SC: Yeah I think that the Air Force has many values that they teach. This is one that I definitely want Lauren to take away or really anybody to take away is service to others before yourself. And if more people understood that concept and adhered to it just imagine how much of a better place it would be if we’re all out looking after each other instead of looking out for what’s best for yourself instead. So that would be a service before self.
[0:53:22.5]
PM: So is there anything else you would like to add that we haven’t covered yet?
SC: Great question. I can’t think of anything right now, but if you have further questions, you’re welcome to let me know.
PM: Ok, well we didn’t get it on record, but would you go ahead and explain what the pictures were again?
SC: Oh yeah. This is a picture of me walking out in the desert and this was just for fun. We drove out in the desert and wanted to experience what it was like out there. There is a group of nomads called Bedouins and the Bedouins they just roam from place to place and take their tents and everything and their camels with them. And so we ran into a group of Bedouins and this was their camel or camels as you can see another camel there in the background. So we got to meet them, talk with them a little bit. They had very poor English skills but we managed and I got to see their camel and see how they lived and appreciate how much better life is, in my opinion, for us. They were very happy. But it was great to experience what life was like for them and to appreciate how good you’ve got it. So that’s that.
[0:54:32.3]
SC: We went out in the desert and I brought along something to show you, I don’t know if you’ve ever seen one before.
[Interview interrupted by bag crinkling]
SC: Have you ever seen one of those?
PM: No.
SC: This is something that they call a Desert Rose. And you can see why because it looks like a desert but it’s actually a mineral deposit that occurs when the saltwater and the minerals that are in the sand bake for a long time and it turns into these lovely little rocks. So, I’ve a couple of these at home that I dug up. You start digging a hole and, you know, after you dig a few holes you’ll find them! You can find one or two and you just dig them up and wash them off and that’s what they look like. So that’s what that looks like and that’s what we did on that trip out there. This is a picture of me and my white Cherokee out in the middle of the desert on that highway that goes between Riyadh and Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. You can see the flat tire here and I’m getting ready to change a flat out in the very middle of the desert. And it was very hot, I can tell you. You can see I took my outer shirt off just because it was so hot. And then this is a picture of me taking care of a guy, taking care of a patient while we were over there. This is a picture of the compound where I lived it was called Khobar Towers. And these, they were big apartment buildings as well, they really were and they were beautiful. The king of Saudi Arabia had these apartments made for those Bedouins so they’d have a place to stay and live. So he was trying to give them a better life. One of the problems was is they traveled with all of their animals and they couldn’t bring their animals into the buildings and so “Uh, no thank you.” Believe it or not. And one of the other problems was, and they didn’t think about this, a lot of the more, what would you say? More stringent followers of their religion believed, one of the things that was a great insult was to show somebody the bottom of your feet. Have you ever heard that?
PM: Yeah.
SC: Well, the problem is, is because these are multi-story buildings, they said, “Well, whoever’s above us, their feet when they’re walking will be facing towards us and we won’t have that.”
PM: Oh, that’s true.
SC: Yeah and there’s no way around it. I mean, if somebody’s on the second floor, their feet will be facing towards you, which would be insulting to them. So that was another problem. So they really never lived there and so these beautiful apartments were there and that’s where we had to live. We brought our beds with us, you know, our cots and stuff like that so it wasn’t bad because at least it was not a dirt floor. It was very nice and we had running water, which was very nice. And air-conditioning, they were air-conditioned. So we got to sleep in air-conditioning too. And we also had these little, you see, like those little terraces or little balconies. And I used to sit out on my balcony and look over this park that was out there, that was beyond the walls since I was at the very corner. And so, at night, the Saudi women would bring their kids out and push them in the swing set and everything like that. And they were in their black burkas, you know. So like, how unfair is this? All the men get to wear white and all the women have to wear black and keep covered up, you know. It’s not fair. And so nighttime was when they would bring the kids out to the park and we bring kids out during the day, you know. But it was so hot that they would just come out at night. So I used to sit and watch them play with their kids and it was very entertaining for me. Unfortunately, that’s also the park where several years after I was there, the bomber came up and had this truck loaded with explosives and set it off and basically destroyed my building and killed many people. So, of all the buildings I lived in, it happened to be the one that they blew up.
[0:58:16.7]
PM: Wow. How did you, what was your reaction when you heard about that?
SC: You know, I was kind of shocked and amazed when I realized it was my building, especially because it happened in Khobar Towers, and you know, you have kind of a feeling like “Gosh, that could have been me,” you know. I was just a few years ago, it was 1995 or ’96, so it was just 4 years after I had lived there, it wasn’t any time real close. And I guess the other feeling was “How could we allow that to happen?” You know, with the security that we had but it was just that they had enough explosive power and they were able to get close enough. And so, this is a picture inside the refueling aircraft. This is me standing here and down here you see how there’s kind of a stairway that kind of goes down. This is the area where the boom operator lays. You know you lay down flat and he’s got his joystick here and he’s looking out a window at the airplane coming up behind us and that’s out he refuels. And so I’m standing there, that’s me in the aircraft getting ready to go down. I’m going to lay down, there’s three positions back there, there are like three cushions that are the long enough for you to fit laying flat, like laying on your belly. And so, I was getting ready to go down and sit and watch him do his thing. As a flight surgeon in the Air Force, you’re required to spend a certain amount of time flying with your aircrew so you know what they conditions are during their experience flying so that you can better treat them for anything. For example, you have to be able to tell the aircrew you can’t fly today if you have a cold because of the pressure changes in the aircraft they can get a sinus block or they’d get very bad, stabbing pain and be incapacitated. Well, you don’t want your pilot incapacitated. So that’s the kind of stuff the aerospace medicine side of things does. That what, when you become a flight surgeon, you get trained in aerospace medicine. So that’s the back of the refueler and I told you about the window that you look out the back, so this is the window looking out the back and that’s the aircraft coming up behind us. And then, that’s really about that as far as the pictures. That’s what’s going on there.
PM: Awesome! Well thank you very much.
SC: You’re welcome! I’ll ask the same question of you, are there any questions that you have that we didn’t get to yet?
PM: Um, no, I think that’s everything.
SC: Great! Well thank you for the opportunity, Priya.
PM: Thank you!
SC: And it’s very nice to meet you too!
Rebecca Chen: I think we just hit stop.
PM: Ok.
[Interview ends at 1:00:38.0]
