Left in the Dust

Dirt covers every crevice of the ancient Dyess Air Force Base (AFB) 7th Logistics Readiness Squadron (7 LRS) warehouse that lacks both heat in the winter and air conditioning in the hot Texas summer. Walking up those five narrow steps onto the loading dock, you punch in a code on the door to enter the Receiving section. Receiving had been my job for two years as I counted and receipted in aircraft parts, turned in excess parts that maintenance had ordered too much of, and fixed a significantly large amount of quantitative errors for unaccounted aircraft parts. I was glad to move on to the Storage and Issue section that would fulfill my last two years in the Air Force. However, the change of jobs wore off quickly as I went through the motions of working in yet another unimportant, tedious job.

I reluctantly had to enter the Receiving section everyday to get to Storage and Issue’s work area on the far right side of the warehouse. The first things you notice as you walk through the door are the pallets and large boxes of parts covering the old gray concrete floors. The area is covered with thousands of parts that have been shipped in and are waiting to be counted before being moved to Storage and Issue’s holding bins that are directly behind Receiving’s area. The parts that fill these holding bins are waiting to be counted once more by Storage and Issue and then put away in their specified location, which is based on their part number, size, and quantity. There are storage rows on either side of Receiving’s area and Storage and Issue’s holding bins, the only difference being that the rows on the left are spacious for large parts or high quantity parts, and the rows on the right are filled with thousands of bins for medium and smaller sized parts. It’s detrimental to the warehouse’s inventory, the maintainer’s order, and the upkeep of the aircrafts that reside at Dyess AFB that the airmen of Storage and Issue pull the correct quantity and part that were ordered. For that reason, I was always fixing everyone’s mistakes regardless of what section I was working in while enduring my six years in logistics, better known as supply to Air Force personnel.

The dirt and dust of the 388,000 parts consuming the warehouse kills your spirit with its thick black breath that fills your lungs and makes you despise your reality. It suffocates you and fills your chest with anxiety and hopelessness. The heaviness is as thick as the layers of black dust covering the warehouse, which has been accumulating for decades. Unable to be wiped clean, it will always remain as it haunts you while walking throughout the warehouse. 7 LRS stands as a collection of dirt, cobwebs, and imprisoned souls. With nowhere to run or hide, you’re forced to submit to a power that enslaves your body and mind. You never had a chance. Just like the parts in the warehouse, you are only a number—fixable if needed as you’re stripped of your worth and spirit.

Both rows on either side feel cramped and confined as you retrieve parts for the B-1B Lancer (a bomb dropping jet known simply as a B-1 to 7 LRS) and C-130 Hercules (a military transport aircraft designed for troop, medical evacuation, and cargo transport, referred to as just a C-130) from shelves extending all the way up to the ceiling, totaling $211 million of parts surrounding you and dictating your life. If ever parts went missing that you couldn’t “fix” or essentially make disappear within the outdated Small Aircraft Transportation system simply known as SATS, it became an endless search party for a $100 piece of Air Force property. Technically you’re Air Force property as well, but what exactly are you worth, and would they look for you as extensively as they do for missing parts if maybe you decide to disappear for a little while? Of course they would, who else would do the dirty work? That’s what stripes are for; with rank comes power, and with power comes laziness. They sit in their cushy offices, laughing on the phone with their spouses and scheduling their lengthy “appointments” (also known as extended lunches and going home early), while you bust your ass. You either freeze or sweat to death depending on which of the two seasons it is in Texas, because in Abilene, Texas there’s only winter and summer. There is no in-between, no comfortable, no relaxing, and especially no disappearing, as you get lost in the bin rows searching for parts. You can’t hide from the weather in the warehouse, and you sure as hell can’t hide from the stack of papers you’re given called pulls, which is just a simple name for the documents that identify the various parts you need to retrieve for the customers or maintainers that work on the aircrafts.

When you finally decide to suck it up and get everything done, you strap the annoying neon-yellow harness around your arms and legs; something you often try to avoid putting on when no one is watching, as it only confines you even more. But someone is always watching. Sure, it was for safety in case you fell off of a stock picker, but far too often it would lock in place and not allow you to move at all. Trapped within the harness, and confined within the bin rows, it was similar to that of a caged animal. Once unlocked from the damn harness you ascend higher and higher in the red stock picker filled with scuff marks from airman running it into things. Looking for the part, you can’t help but want to stay up here for the rest of the day, alone and unbothered as if it were a hiding spot at the top of the warehouse. Aside from the dust and cobwebs, it becomes a place to be alone with your thoughts as you try to breathe through the dust, gossip, and power trips that come with the stripes of higher-ranking assholes. Instead, you take a deep breath, reassure yourself that the day, the week, or your enlistment is almost up, and grab the parts you need, which often involves tediously counting thousands of tiny, stupid screws, washers, nuts, bolts, or bulbs.

Why was I here? A monkey could do this. I felt like I had no purpose, intelligence, or skill. “You can’t fly without supply” is often said to make the airmen of 7 LRS feel important or needed, but just like the job the words are meaningless. But of all the things you can find in the warehouse, morale is not one of them. However, there is plenty of work to be done at all times of the day or night. Being in Storage and Issue isn’t your normal nine to five job, we’re open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and have three shifts to divide up the work. C-130s have been around for 61 years, making them one of the oldest aircrafts still being used and made, so they undeniably need parts often. Furthermore, Dyess AFB is the only base that houses the 51 B-1s still being used out of the 100 made between 1986-1988. Each of the B-1s alone cost the Air Force over two hundred million dollars to make, not counting the amount of money they accrue in upkeep. You do the math. Even for their age, the B-1’s are still one of the most widely used aircrafts in the Middle East as they currently fly at top speeds of Mach 1.25 dropping up to 477,000 pounds of bombs over ISIS in Iraq and Syria. However, in the 7 LRS warehouse, you don’t get to see the bigger picture; you never even get to see the aircraft up close. Instead, you see only what is in reach: aircraft parts, cobwebs, and the dustpan you’ve just been given to dust off the truth before a general walks through the warehouse on Monday morning.

Your uniform is now soaked from sweating all day after cleaning off shelves, bin rows, and parts that are covered in a black veil of dust, making you cough up a lung and sneeze uncontrollably on 12-hour shifts during weekend duty. In the real world, this would be considered overtime that you would also get paid extra for, but in the Air Force it’s just what you signed up for. After going home exhausted and knowing that tomorrow you’ll have to get up and do it all over again, you look in the mirror and see yourself covered in the black dirt of the warehouse. It seems to now be in every crevice of your body rather than on the shelves and parts as you blow your nose and what looks like tar comes out. It’s as though the warehouse hasn’t just trapped you; it has become you. Right up until the very end of your enlistment, everything begins to become gray and hazy as you forget who you were before the 7 LRS warehouse drained the life out of you.

I have allergies and asthma to thank the warehouse for as I continue to search for the girl I was when I entered that warehouse in May of 2007. She’s long gone, trapped forever amongst the lonely souls that roam the 7 LRS warehouse by the hot cloud of dust that overpowered your lungs and forced you to submit to it’s power. It doesn’t take long to suffocate. The bright-eyed, happy, and sweet girl who began her adult life in that warehouse will never find her old self again. In place of who she once was, she’ll find a woman who has grown bitter, cold, and lost over time. Suitably, the B-1 logo, which is painted largely in the center of the warehouse, consists of a symbol that states a simple Latin phrase: MORS AB ALTO, Death from Above. The phrase couldn’t be more fitting when accounting for the life that warehouse suppressed inside of me for those six grueling years that felt like eternity. Much like it had destroyed me, the B-1s destroy the lives of many individuals both innocent and not; there is no mercy or immunity. The B-1 targets and I never had a chance; the purpose of Mors Ab Alto was that you never saw it coming. And while you can try to fix the destruction, it will never be the same.

 

References

7th Bomb Wing Public Affairs. (2006, April 24). Emblem of the 7th Bomb Wing of the United States Air Force [Photograph]. commons.wikimedia.org. Retrieved May 19, 2016, from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3A7th_Bomb_Wing.png

Seaman, Richard. (20). B1 afterburner takeoff wallpaper [Photograph]. richard-seaman.com. Retrieved May 19, 2016, from http://www.richard-seaman.com/Wallpaper/Aircraft/Bombers/