Biloxi Days: The Day I Couldn’t Get Myself Fired

It was a routine day at the office in the early 70s at Keesler Air Force Base in Biloxi, Mississippi. I had been transferred to the job of Organizational Maintenance Squadron Commander a few months earlier from Field Maintenance Squadron Commander when Sergeant Johns, the senior enlisted man in Field Maintenance, had asked his long time patron — and my top boss — Colonel Emery Taylor to move me to Org Maintenance as his last act of revenge on the flight line maintenance group before he retired after 30 years in the Air Force. 

During his final tour of duty in Field Maintenance (before retiring) Sergeant Johns and I had found ourselves on the losing end of an ongoing battle with our sister squadron (Org. Maintenance) which was overstaffed and underworked while we in the specialized maintenance/repair shops were understaffed and overworked. 

Despite our frequent gripes from the shops, Maintenance Control continued to dispatch our limited specialists to the well-staffed flight line to do ordinary gas station maintenance tasks (tire alignments, aeleron adjustments, canopy cleaning, engine run-ups, etc.) 

As a 20-something young lieutenant, I had no real business being put in charge of Field Maintenance in the first place, but the Air Force was short of maintenance officers at the time (most senior maintenance officers were in Vietnam), and suddenly being put in charge of Org. Maintenance was quite a surprise to both Org. Maintenance and me. But the grizzled and burly Johns had convinced Colonel Taylor (as I later learned through a mutual friend) that only Lieutenant Scaramella could “fix” Org. Maintenance. Johns had also demanded the transfer as a reward for this 30 years of service. To put it mildly, I was not welcomed warmly at Org. Maintenance — even then, I had a well-deserved reputation of being a frequent critic of their inadequate training and poor management.

The Air Police had caught and detained an Org. Maintenance flightline airman with an open bottle of wine going into the barracks. Booze in the barracks was a no-no. When I got the Air Police report, I summoned the airman to the Squadron Commander’s office to face the “charges.” 

Sergeant Johnson was Org. Maintenance’s First Sergeant. Johnson was a tobacco chewing old enlisted bureaucrat with a distinct southern drawl who accompanied the airman into my office and sat to the side of the “hearing” spitting globs of green goo, chaw, if you prefer, into a rusty coffee can he had placed on the floor as usual as I quizzed the airman. 

The First Sergeant is supposed to be the airman’s “representative” in these hearings, but in practice Johnson took a vague “what’s good for the Squadron” stand and didn’t concern himself much with justice for the “accused.” 

My predecessor in Org. Maintenance was another young lieutenant named Terry Spratlen who was overbearing and officious and basically an asshole. Chief Johns hated him and his flight line boss Chief Warrant Officer Rowland. Instead of Spratlen’s arrogant and clipped military style interrogation, I preferred a more conversational tone.

After a few friendly questions regarding the circumstances of the airman’s booze citation, he admitted that he had been driving drunk as he had begun consuming the contents of the bottle at a friend’s house, continued drinking in the car, and, when stopped by the Air Police, on his way from the car to the barracks, the bottle was almost empty. I told the airman that he was then guilty of a much more serious crime than just booze in the barracks. But, I said, if he accepted Restriction to Barracks for 20 consecutive weekends (signing in every 15 minutes) as punishment for the Booze in the Barracks charge, I’d forget about his drunk driving confession. He grumbled, asking, “Can’t you just fine me?” I said no, he probably needed the money (and he’d have trouble spending it while on restriction). He reluctantly agreed, signed the papers, and that should have been the end of it.

But Sergeant Johnson was pissed. After the airman was dismissed, Johnson angrily accused me of tricking the airman into his drunk driving confession by being friendly and cordial. He insisted that the weekends on restriction was excessive punishment for the airman, and then brought up a whole rasher of other unrelated pent-up complaints about my three-month tenure as Organization Maintenance Squadron Commander — too flexible in enforcement of uniform rules, re-assignments of some flight chiefs, the use of sign-ins to enforce restrictions, my insistence that rules and orders be explained rather than just issued, etc. He said that he wanted to speak to Colonel Taylor about getting the airman’s punishment reduced and, he added, “get a Commander in here who’s not playing games with the men.”

Rather than blustering about insubordination, I said, “Fine. Let’s go up to Colonel Taylor’s office right now.” 

Sergeant Johnson called what he thought was my bluff and we got in my car and headed off for Colonel’s Taylor’s office a few hangars down the street. On the way I started thinking out-loud about who might replace me. There was the dork Major in Maintenance Control, the nerdish Avionics Squadron Commander, a grounded pilot on temporary assignment, the occasional drunk who was the Maintenance Checkflight pilot… an unattractive bunch, especially when considering that maintenance people don’t like working for pilots who tend to blame maintenance people for pilot mistakes or minimize pilot errors which can cause a lot of extra work for the maintenance crews, if not aggressively resisted.

(Aside — One time a Lt. Colonel pilot came storming into my Field Maintenance office and threw some aircraft forms on my desk. 

“That’s not funny!” he shouted. “What’s not funny?,” I asked. He angrily flipped some pages and pointed at the last maintenance discrepancy which read, “Evidence of hydraulic leak in nose wheelwell.” The “corrective action” block which my hydraulic specialist had filled out read, “Evidence removed.” 

I stifled a giggle.

“This is serious!” he shouted. 

“Well, sir, there is a maximum allowable leakage in hydraulic systems,” I said. “He probably just wiped down the area to see if it was leaking and how much,” I added, “but I agree that he could have phrased it better.”

“I want him fired,” insisted the Lt. Colonel, “that system was leaking!”

“I’ll take care of it, sir,” I replied. 

After the Lt. Colonel left, I called the Hydraulic shop chief and told him to improve his shop’s forms entries.)

Back to the story…

When we got to Colonel Taylor’s office, his secretary said the Colonel was busy and we’d have to come back or wait 20 minutes or so. We sat on the hard couch to wait as the Colonel’s secretary busied herself with her papers. 

As we waited I rehearsed what I’d say to the Colonel — that Sergeant Johnson disagrees with my decision in this case and that he wants me fired because I’m not doing a good job as Squadron Commander. I never really wanted the job so I’d say I agreed with the First Sergeant that I should be moved up to an easy staff job in Quality Control or Maintenance Analysis or Records or Logistics Plans. 

As the minutes passed, Johnson, occasionally leaning over the couch’s arm-rest to sort of drool/spit his green gooey gobs of wet tobacco into his spit-can, apparently changed his mind, presumably after considering the unattractive alternatives — much as he disliked me. “We don’t need to see the Colonel, ma’am,” he told Colonel Taylor’s secretary. “You can cancel our appointment.” 

We drove back to my office in silence.

For the rest of my two-year Org. Maintenance tenure, there were no more major objections from Sgt. Johnson. But if there had been, I was perfectly prepared to try to get myself fired again.