Soldier Up (26 page)

              The Colonel froze and didn’t move a muscle, AF Security was at a loss they didn’t know what to do.  Colonel Maitland asked, “What do you men want?”

              “Cheeseburger and a coke!” Staff Sergeant Hernandez was smiling.

              “Shut up Hernandez!” The Lieutenant said.  “Colonel we are under orders from Major General Watkins to one, ensure this plane remains secure and two, to make contact with any legitimate military units.”

              Staff Sergeant Hernandez lowered his weapon and Colonel Maitland pulled back out of the plane and realized his AF Security were gone and where were his pilots they should have been here by now.

              “Colonel that would probably be our A-Team.” said the Lieutenant.

              “A-Team? A Special Forces A-Team?” now the Colonel was concerned.

              Captain Lawrence, US Army Special Forces stepped out of the lounge smoking a cigar, “Yes that would be a US Army Special Forces A-Team.  We have the Security men and pilots they are safe for now.”

              The Colonel raised his hands, “Alright, alright I give up.”

              “What no welcome to Travis?” Captain Lawrence was smiling. “Please put your hands down Colonel.  Do you have a military ID?”

              Colonel Maitland pulled out his ID and showed it to the A-Team Commander; he took it and looked it over, looks just like your picture in the lounge.  “Lieutenant the AF Security guys and pilots check out too.  Why don’t you unload and secure the tower and terminal.”

              “Yes Sir.” said the Lieutenant.

              With that the paratroopers exited the plane the Lieutenant sent a squad to secure the tower and another to look around the perimeter of the terminal and hangers. 

              The Captain handed the ID back to the Colonel, “Thank you Sir I appreciate it, what is your position here?”

              The Colonel looked over the Captain, “Alright Captain I’ll play along.  I’m the Commander of the 60
th
Air Mobility Wing; I’m the Senior Officer on Base.  You work for Ted Watkins?”

              “No Sir I don’t, I work for Colonel John Clayton at Camp Parks 19
th
Special Forces Group, now he work for General Watkin’s.” Captain Lawrence was smiling again.

              Colonel Maitland shook his head, “What can we here at Travis Air Force Base do for the General?”

              “Sir we need to know where your loyalties lay?” asked Captain Lawrence.

              “Loyalties? What do you mean Captain?”

              “Sir I am a member of the US Army I obey the orders of those appointed over me, I’m sworn to defend my country and the constitution of the United States, that’s what I mean.”

              “Rest assured Captain that Travis Air Force base being what it is remains clearly under the control of the United States Military.  You see that flag right there? We don’t fly it for how good it looks we fly it because it represents who we are and we are the United States Air Force.”

              “That’s great to here Sir would you mind taking a short trip with us back to Oakland Air Force Base?”

              “Oakland doesn’t have an Air Force Base Captain.” said the Colonel.

              “It does now Sir and General Watkins is there for the day to see how the operation goes. If we found a legitimate military force here we were to ask the Commander to come back for a meeting with the General.  You’ll be returned here no later than this evening or the morning, you’ll get all of your questions answered there Sir.”

              “And my men?” he asked referring to the Security men and pilots. 

              “Once we checked there ID’s they were let go as far as I know there in the lounge having a drink with my men.”

              “Figures,” said the Colonel. “Why am I not surprised.  Let me get my XO down here and explain to him that I’ll be gone the rest of the day.”

                “Yes Sir.” said Captain Lawrence.

              It took thirty minutes for Colonel Maitland to wrap up the meeting with his XO and prepare to leave for Oakland Air Force Base.  Once the 184th and the A-Team were loaded into the plane Colonel Maitland joined them.  The plane taxied to the runway and took off, heading southwest to Oakland, they were fortunate they had a tailwind and they were back in Oakland within twenty minutes, they had radio communication with the tower and notified them that the CO of Travis was aboard.  The plane landed and made its way to the terminal and stopped.

              General Watkins, Colonel Clayton and Major Baroon met Colonel Maitland as he disembarked the plane.  They all introduced themselves and shook hands, Colonel Clayton directed everyone to the conference room where they could talk.  Before entering the building Colonel Maitland got a brief look at everything going on at the airbase, it was quite busy compared to his own. 

              The General’s staff was waiting for him in the conference room and after General Watkins, Colonel Clayton and Major Baroon entered and took their seats Colonel March took over the meeting and introduced everyone to Colonel Maitland. 

              Colonel March then went into an hour briefing of Camp Parks, Fort Irwin, the refineries, the FOB, the railroad and the current status of the Army, Navy, Marines and Air Force.  Colonel Maitland was definitely impressed Travis AFB was no way near the level that Camp Parks and Fort Irwin were, it was even questionable that Travis was better off than the new Oakland AFB. 

              It was a lot to take in all at once they had made a lot of progress over the last year, Colonel Maitland’s problem, at least he felt it was, that they had no real mission, none of their planes at this time were aviation capable.  He had a handful of P-51’s and P-52’s that he had managed to get out of museum in Sacramento and a lot of civilian Cessna’s and Pipers.  That was the extent of his Air Force and for such a large base that had huge air resources to this. 

              Colonel Maitland thanked Colonel March for an outstanding briefing and he was very surprised, happily how far they had come.  He wished he had good news regarding Travis; he went on to say that the Air Base was struggling at best.  He then started his briefing, the night of the event the base was quiet there were no exercises going on nothing at all to speak of normal everyday operations. 

              Then as soon as the event happened several planes that were on approach dropped out of the sky, there was severe damage to neighborhoods in Fairfield and on base.  It was horrendous the damage and loss of life, there were thousands of people killed that day from aircraft that were in the process of landing or in the flight path to land.  He felt he had a pretty good idea of what happened that night some sort of EMP event, nuclear or Solar, you pick it, it didn’t really matter which type at the time.

              At the time, Colonel Maitland explained, Fairfield had a population of over a hundred and seven thousand people, most of them worked at Travis.  The inclination by those families was to make it to Travis where they felt they could be taken care of; well most of the people who didn’t work on Travis and lived in Fairfield had the same idea regardless and started walking to Travis.  Please keep in mind that Travis was the largest military installation between Sacramento and San Francisco.  

              The base was overwhelmed with people that there was no way they could take care of, as the days passed even more people started showing up from Sacramento and San Francisco and their surrounding areas.  At the height there were probably close to two hundred thousand civilians huddled in and around Travis.  We had over ten thousand service members already on base at the time the event happened, imagine trying to feed that many we didn’t have enough MRE’s, TRATS  or anything else to feed that many people on an ongoing bases, we weren’t the Army or the Marines who had to live in the field.

              We were unprepared admittedly for everything that followed, we certainly had the work force but the masses of people that kept showing up for help we couldn’t handle them all.  Our medical facilities as well as Fairfield’s were just overwhelmed with civilians.  People thought it was going to be over soon and thought the government was going to step in to help, they were certain we could help them.  We wanted to help everyone and anyone who showed up, but after three weeks we realized that they were depleting our resources faster than we could find new ones.

              Patients in the medical centers surrounding the area were dying and they were looking to us for help to come to rescue them somehow, they were slow to recognize it wasn’t going to happen.  We started pushing people away and out this caused rioting, our Security Forces which were a thousand strong at one point, since we had no aircraft to speak of we turned more airmen and woman to Security but to be honest with you many of not most weren’t cut out for the work, they often wondered by the Army couldn’t be called in to do this.  I can’t tell you how many times I explained to the service members we have no way to contact anyone in the outside world and there is no Army installation remotely close to us and the Marines are in San Diego and I was sure they were dealing with their own issues.

              Colonel Maitland paused for a moment looking around the room at the faces who were looking back at him, “Go on Colonel, please.” said General Watkins.

              “Yes Sir,” he responded.

              Colonel Maitland took a deep breath and continued, the rioting over took the security forces eventually their hearts weren’t really in it these were their fellow countrymen and woman, they were hungry and scared they just wanted help.  The rioting went on for weeks, they ravaged the base and took almost everything that wasn’t nailed down, and then they simply disappeared realizing there was nothing here for them any longer.

              When it was all said and done there were 15,000 dead bodies everywhere, not just on base but in Fairfield and the surrounding communities, as we got final tallies the number was well over 15,000 it was close to 65,000 and as we learned later on it was not all due to the rioting it was also due to gangs running around killing and raping anything, there wasn’t much we could do.  What troops I had that remained, which was only 1500, we pulled back to a corner of the base and sat it out, then two months later we started to send out patrols and we found nothing and no one around, everyone had left.

              We moved back to main post and started to put what we could back together, it was staggering what we found and didn’t find, almost every single aircraft had been vandalized in one way or another.  The large transports people had moved into and made their homes and in some cases it was also their tomb, it looked like many of the people were attacked in them and killed.  I won’t go into any more detail about that.

              Travis had underground facilities were supplies were kept and I made sure they were secure before we pulled back, now you may want to condemn me for securing those supplies but we were going to need them in the long run, I’m sorry I realized to late that our mission was to survive and still be able to protect the country, we had to exclude the civilian population we gave them everything we could and they kept taking, if I didn’t secure those underground warehouses we wouldn’t be here now.

              General Watkins held up his hand to stop Colonel Maitland, “Colonel no one here is judging you every single Officer and NCO in the room has had to make some very difficult choices.  There is no way you or any of us could have saved everyone, you did the right thing.”

              Colonel Maitland sighed, “Thank you Sir I appreciate you saying that.”

              Colonel Clayton asked, “You had eleven thousand service members and ended up with fifteen hundred, were the rest killed or did the go AWOL? I’m asking because we had a lot of Air Force service members show up at Camp Parks a few hundred actually, is it possible some are yours?”

              Colonel Maitland wondered where all of the Air Force personnel here at Oakland came from, “It’s certainly possible even probable, the riots were chaos there was no way that every Commander could keep track of their people and when we pulled back I was sure we were leaving people behind but we were outnumber 20-1 at a minimum. But you say there were hundreds, we are talking thousands that were killed and another two-thousand that are missing.”

              “Colonel Maitland do you have a list of MIA?” asked General Watkins.

              “Yes Sir I do back at Travis.”

              “Major Baroon would you please give the Colonel a copy of your entire personnel lists.  Not that we are removing anyone but the Colonel does need to reconcile his MIA’s and then find out what happened and how they got here.” said the General.

              “Yes Sir I’ll get someone on it right now.” she got up and left the room for a few minutes.

              General Watkins looked at Colonel Maitland, “What do you want to do Colonel?”

              “I’m sorry Sir I don’t understand the question.”

              “Colonel you are the ranking Air Force Officer present you currently control two Air Force Bases, Oakland and Travis, what’s your call?” responded General Watkins.

“What about the Major?” asked Colonel Maitland.