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DRUNK – FALL – DIE, Crisis & Alcohol Do Not Mix
By Major Van Harl USAF Ret
Wisconsin –-(Ammoland.com)- I was sitting in the base barber shop on Columbus Air Force Base, in Columbus Mississippi.
There was a young man in the seat next to me having a conversation with the barber. The young man was an Air Force officer who had been stationed on Columbus AFB and was currently at another air base.
The barber asked him if he missed flying and the young officer made an attempt to tell her how well his new posting and non-flying job assignment was going. At that moment I figured out who this clown was.
Columbus AFB is a small base with only one mission and that is to train new baby pilots. The young officer sitting next to me had been a student pilot until he got drunk and ruined his flying career.
No, he did not get caught drunk driving or get in a violent confrontation with someone while under the influence of alcohol. What he did was get drunk at the officers’ club, fall off the loading dock in the back of the club, hit his head and knock himself out.
You get knocked out in the AF, and that can pretty much end your flying career, especially if you are found unconscious because you screwed up royally.
I listened to the young officer try to tell the barber how great his new AF career was. After a while I had had enough and told him he was full of Bravo Sierra (BS). He could have been a pilot and instead he was a drunk who totally and completely destroyed his flying future.
I was very unimpressed with this foolish junior officer. Out of full disclosure I do not drink alcohol. This was a problem for me as a young Air Force officer back in the late 1970s and 1980s. Back then we were coming out of the Vietnam era, when the Department of Defense consoled itself and floated on alcohol.
I once worked for a Colonel who had been a pilot in his early days, but had been knocked out and lost his flying status. He was the junior pilot in a two man aircraft. His lead pilot showed up drunk to fly the mission (this happened in Vietnam) and proceeded to close the aircraft canopy on top of the junior officer’s head knocking him out. The junior pilot never flew again, but he stayed in the Air Force, made Colonel, was meaner than a snake, and took out his personal grief on everyone in his way for the next twenty years.
The drunken senior pilot’s failure that day damaged someone permanently, but the vicious ripple effect spread out to hundreds of unsuspecting subordinates who then suffered also.
An article in the 11 May 2015 Milwaukee Journal Sentinel stated “drunken falls surpass crashes in state deaths.” 223 people in Wisconsin died in alcohol related traffic deaths, while 349 people died from being drunk and falling. In most cases they hit their head and died. Sort of like how the junior officer at Columbus could have wound up—dead–not just getting a new job assignment.
My first couple of commanders in the Air Force were (allegedly) alcoholics, and felt I needed to drink when I was in their presence socially. Back then when you told people you did not drink because of personal choice not to, you upset the drunks. You were making a statement about alcohol that they did not like or want to hear, so you received even more harassment from the drunks.
I was not a Mormon or a Baptist so I could not use that as an acceptable reason not to drink, so I invented myself as an alcoholic. After that, for the rest of my military career people whispered behind my back about not offering alcohol to me because (say it quietly), “he is an alcoholic.”
For me it was funny but it worked. If you make a stand on a serious issue and you are not “broken” (afflicted by addiction or demonstrated bad behavior) on that issue, the “broken” people do not like that. Now if the “broken” people happen to be your senior officers it makes life difficult. So you invent yourself “pretend-broken” and now “they” can rationalize in their alcohol soaked brains, just why “they” can forgive your failure to drink with them.
I have a feeling there are 349 families in Wisconsin that wish their “late” family members had chosen a different path.
In time of crisis, security is first, safety is second and nobody wants a drunk with a weapon watching their back as the world is falling apart.
Major Van Harl USAF Ret. / [email protected]
About Major Van Harl USAF Ret.:Major Van E. Harl USAF Ret., a career Police Officer in the U.S. Air Force was born in Burlington, Iowa, USA, in 1955. He was the Deputy Chief of police at two Air Force Bases and the Commander of Law Enforcement Operations at another. He is a graduate of the U.S. Army Infantry School. A retired Colorado Ranger and currently is an Auxiliary Police Officer with the Cudahy PD in Milwaukee County, WI. His efforts now are directed at church campus safely and security training. He believes “evil hates organization.” [email protected]
Source: http://www.ammoland.com/2015/05/crisis-alcohol-do-not-mix/
