BATMEN REUNION

Kudos to my old pal Erik Nilsen for organizing a reunion for all the reprobates, like me, who served in the 6988th Electronic Security Squadron.   Since late last year Erik has tracked down about five hundred of us.  The shindig is scheduled for the end of June at Jude's Ferry, a pub near the airbase in England our unit was located at.  Click here for details.

It's been twenty years since many of us served at the '88th, which was an Air Force intelligence unit.  Most of us were linguists who collected military radio signals leaked out into the ether by the Red Menace.  I was there for three years during the mid-Eighties at the climax of the Cold War.  Erik and I went through Russian language training together and shipped out to the '88th as our first field assignment along with five other buddies of ours.  We were the "Magnificent Seven" rushed in as newbie replacements for a slug of experienced operators who were rotating out of the unit after serving during the Solidarity uprising in Poland.

In fact, we were the vangaurd of a host of wet-behind-the-ears linguists sent to the unit to meet the demand for intelligence collection as Reagan sensed Soviet weakness in the wake of the Solidarity crisis and upped the stakes against them by commissioning the installation of Pershing missiles in Europe.  The crush for field instruction of so many new airmen was so great that both Erik and I were upgraded to trainers before we even finished our own training.  In light of all the medals we new guys received and the outstanding unit award for the '88th during our watch, I don't think we did too bad of a job.  But then we enjoyed the leadership of some the best men in the Electronic Security Command.

Our primary job was to fly along the coast of the old Soviet Union and collect radio signals from its air force, army, and naval units.  I usually manned the "fighters" station on the RC-135, the military version of the Boeing 707 (pictured to the left).  That meant keeping track of Soviet fighters as they scrambled to intercept us and then pretend to shoot us down.  Some of those planes were older than I was, and the Air Force still flies them in special circumstances.  It was an exciting mission, and a serious one.  Indeed, we were among the few Air Force personnel to wear the "combat crew" badge, because our sorties against the Soviets were, in effect, wartime missions.

We got the nickname "Batmen" because of the design of our unit patch (pictured above).  It represented the necessarily cryptic nature of our mission that during the long decades of the Cold War entailed the unsung deaths of some of our comrades, even those downed by enemy fire.  The golden rays behind the bat commemorated some of those who had fallen during the early days of our unit.  Fortunately, I never encountered any serious threat of harm.  By the time I was flying against the Red Menace, the Soviets had criminally degenerated to taking on only civilian airliners like the ill-fated KAL Flight 007.  Little wonder Ronald Reagan sized them up as the Evil Empire.

I was born the year the Berlin Wall went up.  I never thought it would fall so early in my lifetime.  I'm glad I played my (very) small role in bringing that about.  Volunteering to fight the evil of the Soviet Union remains one of my proudest achievements.  I turned down slots to study physics at MIT and law at the University of Michigan to do so, and I have never regretted it. I thank my old friend Erik for providing me the opportunity to remember what shouldn't be forgotten.