Last week’s story brought to mind an incident highlighting my long history of putting my sizable foot in my mouth.

During my 34+ Air Force career there was one job I did longer than any other and that was Chief of Stan/Eval.  I know I’ve explained the job before, and for this story it’s not particularly relevant except that one of Stan/Eval’s duties is to relay time sensitive, higher headquarters, flying related safety issues to the aircrew.  More on that later.

The Wing I was a part of at the time had a flying squadron, which was made up of all of the Pilots, Navigators, Flight Engineers and Loadmasters needed to fly the airplanes, but we also had an Aeromedical Evacuation Squadron or, AES.  An AES squadron is designed to man missions which pick up the wounded and move them, while providing inflight medical care, to a facility capable of dealing with the severity of their wounds or injuries.  It’s made up of Flight nurses and Med Techs who work together as a crew in the back of the airplane and maintain a close relationship with the “front end” crew.  It’s a natural symbiotic relationship that works best when they are collocated with a flying squadron.

Front end crews have very formal schools to attend that train them in their particular crew position and when a new guy returns from school he’s pretty much ready to plug right into the flying schedule.  At the time, however, AE crews didn’t really have that luxury.  They would attend a ground school but there was no flying training.  They would return to their unit and then begin the long process of getting trained and checked out at the local level.  It was a continuous flow of new nurses and new med techs  waiting their turn for the next sortie.

The fun part of training the new young ones was you never knew how they would fit in to the culture or whether they would be able to hold down their lunches once they got into the back of the bouncing C-130 for the first time.  The nurses were usually highly motivated but personalities ran from the stern Cratchetts to the spouse shoppers and everything in between. So, one lovely spring day, in walks a brand spankin’ new Lt Flight Nurse and it was obvious she was what I would call “bubbly”.  She was outspoken, friendly (some might call flirty)and it was obvious she enjoyed what she was training for.  An all around good attitude.  Her training progressed normally over several months and I always enjoyed being Supervisor of Flying (SOF) when she was flying because she brought a little sunshine to the front counter.

Well, all new crewmembers finally grow up and eventually the day of her checkride arrived.  Checkrides are, of course, very stressful for all crewmembers.  You have some looking over your shoulder, listening to your every word, and taking notes the entire time.  A necessary but painful process.  Luckily she took the whole thing in stride.  She and her AE crew of eight arrived at the SOF counter early and I was lucky enough to be SOF that day.  It’s time for the Stan/Eval part of the story.

That day we had received a new “special interest item” from Air Mobility Command, which usually means that someone on active duty did something stupid and they wanted us to remind the crews to not do the same stupid thing.  I had just added it to the list of things that all aircrew had to be briefed on prior to flight.  This particular item involved a flight nurse who had failed to removed her earrings (something you were always required to do) and during an emergency egress the earring caught on her headset and ripped her earlobe off.  I hate to overstate the obvious and tell folks to do things they already know there required to do so I always tried to interject some levity during my SOF briefings.  Rewind a bit.  This was the decade when body piercings were coming into popularity.  Folks were getting nose piercings, lip piercings, and tongue piercings.  But, of course, Air Force members weren’t allowed anything but a single ear piercing.  Fast forward.  So there I was giving the briefing and I got to the special interest item and I said, “New special interest item.  Make sure you remove jewelry from your piercings, wherever they are.”   There was a chuckle from everyone on the crew except our new flight nurse who gasped and simply, slowly looked down.  All eyes turned to her, looked down as well, and then slowly turned to me.  It was then that I realized piercings must be happening in places I had never imagined nor wanted to imagine.  My face turned beet red, at least it felt beet red, and after what seemed an eternity I finally spit out the words, “But the ones we can’t see are OK”  I wasn’t sure that was Air Force policy but it was the best I could come up with on short notice.  She looked up, smiled and said, “Great! Is the briefing over?”  “Sure”, I said and she bounced down the hall with her crew in tow.  She passed her checkride.