fogleman.jpg /Daniel mode on

February, 1996. Maybe March. Possibly April. May?

Whatever.

It feels like it was a Friday, but if I’m wrong, that’s not the important part of the story. And it also feels like it was early in the morning, but I worked the swing-shift at the time, 4pm to midnight, so my concept of “morning” could be skewed.

Regardless.

It was early in the morning on a Friday. General Fogleman…

And it may not be Fogleman. We should look that up, but eh.

It was early in the morning on a Friday. General Fogleman, four-star general, Chief of Staff of the Air Force, arrives for work at the Pentagon. He strolls into his luxurious suite on the inner ring, picks up his freshly ironed copy of The Air Force Times newspaper, kicks back in his massive leather chair, and snaps open the paper with the authority that comes with being in charge.

He reads. He flips to another page, reads more. He stops. He sits up, puts the paper down, scrunches up his face, and thinks to himself,

“Who the f-ing hell is Airman Howell?”

December, 1995. I returned from my vacation following a three-month assignment to support to the United Nations in Bosnia to find out I was possibly authorized a new medal for my Bosnia-work. The stuff I had read said it was for personnel who supported Operation WhatsItsName in Bosnia, but didn’t say in what capacity one had to serve. I had been in England with my U-2s flying missions over Bosnia, but never crossed the English Channel, let alone set foot on the Continent. Was I authorized the new medal? Inquiring minds want to know. When one has a question about anything Human Resources-y in the Air Force, one goes to the Military Personnel Flight, or the MPF.

The MPF is where all the paperwork on your promotions and awards and retirements and assignments are done and kept. Want to see your performance appraisals, go to the MPF. Want to update your identification card, go to the MPF.

And in my case, I had a question about a medal. At the MPF, there are people specifically tasked to track awards and medals for the base. They are trained to determine if you’re been authorized, directly or indirectly, for unit and individual awards. So on a California morning, to the MPF I drove.

The MPF was open, but the entire Decorations section was closed. Kaput. Door locked, nothing at all. “Out for Training”. OK, then. What now?

Well, I had just purchased a Powerbook 5300cs with the money I had saved during my temporary duty assignment in England, even got the external modem to go with it. And I just happed to have a subscription to AOL, too! Perhaps there was some information there about my medal, or maybe someone who knew where else to look?

So into AOL I dove, the military bulletin boards in partiular, and searched for medal information. Nothing. I found a personal ad for a pen pal from a “Heyred1” to whom I wrote – I love redheads – but no medal information. So I wrote up a request and dumped it in a message board.

And a couple of days later, would you believe it, a member of an MPF section at another Air Force base read my request, found the relevant documentation, and posted it. I was indeed authorized that medal, thank you very much. Awesome!

The pen pal relationship with Heyred1 grew, but that’s another story for another time.

Fast-forward a few more weeks, and I got a “You’ve Got Mail!” message when I logged onto my AOL account. It was a message from a reporter from The Air Force Times.

“I saw that you wrote a post on the military forums on AOL about a medal-question that an MPF guy from another base answered. That’s some pretty nice use of technology!” (This was 1996, folks, calm down.) “Any chance I can call you and ask you a few questions for a story I’m writing?”

And who can turn down such a request? Not I. At least not at this point in my career. So we talked about AOL and medals and how I couldn’t get the information from my MPF because they were closed, so a nice E-7 in Texas came through and helped me out. Bingo bango bungo, interview over and I forgot all about it.

The reporter wrote his story, it got printed. And it contained a sentence similar to this,

“When Airman Howell couldn’t get answers from his local MPF, he went to America Online for help.”

And that’s the sentence that made General Fogleman sit up in his chair. He grabbed the phone and snagged the three-star general in charge of military personnel issues.

“Yo! Why are my airmen having to go on AOL to get personnel-answers? Read The AF Times, then fix it!” Click.

So the three-star stares at his receiver, not very happy at having his morning coffee interrupted by a terse call from The Boss. He nabs his copy of the paper, peruses it, sees what ticked General F off, and makes a call to a two-star general, the head of all military personal centers.

“Dude. AF Times got the Boss in a snit. You need to get this fixed.” Click.

And the two-star wasn’t pleased, of course not. So he waited a few hours and called the Beale AFB commander, a nice Brigadier General, and explained that the Beale MPF was causing problems of which the Chief of Staff of the Air Force was getting wind.

“What the h3ll’s going on out there, General? One of your airmen was reported in The Air Force Times as saying your MPF wouldn’t help him get information he needed. The Chief is in a snit and raining sh!t downhill. Find out what’s going on at your MPF, tell me so I can report back, and fix it.” Click.

Airman Howell was, of course, oblivious to all the hullabaloo and was comfortably abed, the morning sun casting long shadows inside his single-occupancy dorm room. Peaceful, quiet, serene. Until the phone rang.

“Hello?”

“AIRMAN HOWELL! This is your First Sergeant! Get in your dress blues and haul @ss to your Commander’s office NOW! Why are you on the phone! Get going! NOW!” Click.

Like a Scottish terrier injected with Mountain Dew, I showered and dressed at the same time, and basically teleported to my commander’s bunker on the flightline. His secretary said, “Go on in, don’t do your reporting statement, just stand there.”

Not doing a reporting statement to a commander is completely alien to any enlisted troop, so this really made no sense. That is until I opened the door and saw my first sergeant on a couch and my commander with his head in his hands while being talked down-to on speakerphone.

“Why in the h3ll are your airmen giving interviews to the press! I’m the godd@mn chief of public affairs and that’s MY job! When you allow your airmen to make idiots of the personnel people, I get yelled at! Do you think I like taking The Chief’s calls about an MPF in California at six in the morning? Where is that son of a b!tch, Major!”

“He just walked in the door, sir.”

…

Oh god. I’m the son of a b!tch. What the heck did I do…

“Airman Howell, are you there?”

“Yes sir.” I peeped.

“Did you talk with an Air Force Times reporter about a medal?”

“Yes sir.”

“Why didn’t you go to your MPF?”

“I did, sir, but they were closed.”

“But that’s not what the article in the paper says. It says, ‘couldn’t get answers from his local MPF’. Do you realize that makes it look like our MPF people are a bunch of fools?”

“But sir, that’s not what I said…”

“Of course it isn’t! And that’s why we have Public Affairs personnel, whose job it is to talk to the press and make sure the story is reported accurately. Now we’ve got the Chief of Staff of the Air Force wanting to know why his MPF people can’t do their job out there. There are a bunch of people who are getting shat on because of this!” And he listed the chain of shat, of which we have just previously written.

“Airman Howell, you are not authorized to speak to the press, do you understand that?”

“Yes sir, I’m very sorry sir.”

And the general on the phone sighed heavily. “Airman, you made a mistake. A very public mistake. A very high-profile, public mistake. Do not do so again.”

“Yes sir, no more reporters sir.”

“Well, hopefully this will get the sticky note of the Chief’s desk at least.”

“Sticky note, sir?”

“I’m sure the General has a yellow sticky note with your name on it somewhere in his office, so he doesn’t forget to make sure this little snafu is corrected.”

“Really? General, can I have the sticky note?” Seriously. I said it. To this day, I don’t know why.

“Airman, do you think you can get to the Pentagon, get the note from the Chief of Staff of the Air Force, and get back to Beale tonight?”

I knew exactly what I was going to say. I was going to say, “Sir, Airman Howell requests permission to get on a KC-135, fly to the Pentagon, meet the Chief of Staff of the Air Force, obtain the sticky note with my name on it, and fly back to Beale.” But I didn’t get the chance; my commander piped up for me.

“Not only no, but h3ll no.”

“OK. Major, good bye.” Click.

And the major looked me in my spit-n-polish official blue uniform and exploded,

“You cannot ask the Chief of Air Force Public Affairs for permission to fly across the country to pick up a sticky note with your name on it, signed by General Fogleman! What’s wrong with you! Chief, get this airman out of here!”

As I was escorted out of the commander’s office by my first sergeant, I asked him how the commander knew I was about to ask to fly across the country to get a sticky note.

He had the gall to say, “You have kind of a reputation around here.”