Master Sgt. Aaron Poeschew greets his 8-year-old daughter, Julia, in Spangdahlem Friday night. About 150 members of the 606th Air Control Squadron returned from Iraq on Friday. (Russ Rizzo / S&S)
Master Sgt. Aaron Poeschew greets his 8-year-old daughter, Julia, in Spangdahlem Friday night. About 150 members of the 606th Air Control Squadron returned from Iraq on Friday. (Russ Rizzo / S&S)
Senior Airman Sarah Charles hugs her 2-year-old daughter, Ariel, and her husband, Jean-Max Charles, at Spangdahlem, Germany, Friday night. (Russ Rizzo / S&S)
SPANGDAHLEM AIR BASE, Germany — Under the fluorescent glow of lights in Air Force Hangar 3 Friday night, children chanted “daddy, daddy” as adults waited nervously behind them.
Two men in blue jeans clutched bouquets of flowers. A girl held a neon green sign that read “McGinnis girls” with an arrow pointed to her and her sister. And Katie Brock stood waiting for her husband in a customized pink T-shirt that read, “I Love Kyle.”
Then with the piercing sound of a horn, about 150 men and women of the 606th Air Control Squadron filed in, marking the end of their deployment to Iraq and the official start to making up lost time.
“It’s the greatest feeling I ever, ever, ever, ever, ever had,” Senior Airman Sarah Charles said as she embraced her husband, Jean-Max, and her 2-year-old daughter, Ariel.
The men and women of the 606th Air Control Squadron — called the 332nd Expeditionary Air Control Squadron downrange — were essentially the eyes and ears of the skies for U.S. operations in Iraq.
If soldiers were bogged down in the Sunni Triangle and needed air support, it was their job to provide the coordinates to pilots to make that happen. And if a fighter jet needed fuel, it was their job to get a tanker to them.
Most of the air control operations took place at Balad Air Base inside high-tech trailers called operations modules. That’s where Staff Sgt. Rickey Walkes and others monitored the skies on screens in front of them and communicated by radio and a secure chat room to troops throughout the country.
For Walkes, the U.S. operation in Fallujah last fall was as tense as it got. Marines under attack on the ground 80 miles away relied on the men and women in these high-tech trailers to clear the skies and send in fighter jets to deliver firepower.
In a typical scenario, an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle occupied the air space above Marines in trouble. So Walkes and his crew would identify the aircraft, direct the controllers to move it out and give the go-ahead for fighter pilots, providing them with coordinates they used to fire on the enemy.
It all happened in the matter of minutes. And it happened often: about 14 times a day during the Fallujah campaign, Walkes said.
“We were bombing stuff left and right and taking no names,” Walkes said.
In four months, the squadron was attacked more than 100 times, said squadron commander Lt. Col. Scott Fischer. One member of the squadron, Tech. Sgt. David Hogden, was wounded when a mortar shell landed about 20 feet from where he was riding an all-terrain vehicle in Balad, Fischer said.
Asked what was most surprising about her experience in Iraq, Charles, a surveillance technician, said: “All of us made it.”
