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Cannon NCO keeps 'dirt boys' going

  • Published
  • By Tech. Sgt. Amanda Callahan
  • 447th Air Expeditionary Group Public Affairs
SATHER AIR BASE, Iraq --  Sather Air Base's mission revolves around its airfield. The base that surrounds the flightline exists to get bullets and beans to the forces, and without the long stretch of concrete that makes up the runway and taxiways, the overall mission of Operation Iraqi Freedom may not be accomplished.

With a constant barrage of aircraft weighing up to 750,000 pounds, the occasional rocket and mortar attack and questionable original workmanship, the airfield needs constant maintenance to continue to hold up under the conditions the aircraft and environment place on it. The 447th Expeditionary Civil Engineer Squadron's heavy equipment operators provide that continuous upkeep by repairing the hundreds of runway spalls created by heavy traffic and indirect fire attacks.

"Basically, a pothole in concrete," said Master Sgt. Edgar Hugo, 447 ECES heavy equipment shop superintendent, currently deployed from Cannon Air Force Base where he is assigned to the 27th Special Operations Civil Engineer Squadron.. He explained that due to the poor quality of the existing concrete, the slabs tend to expand with each aircraft landing or rocket attack, causing the joints to deteriorate.

"What [the heavy equipment operators] are doing is repairing spalls quick and helping expand the life of the existing airfield," added Sergeant Hugo.

"This runway wasn't built for the day-to-day operations currently going on here," said Tech. Sgt. Patrick Reed, 447th Expeditionary Operations Support Squadron, deployed from Spangdahlem Air Base, Germany. "The in-house repairs take care of the most significant damage to the pavement to allow safe, continued operations."

The chunks of concrete generated by each spall could be detrimental to aircraft that land on the precious runway. Each fragment poses a threat of foreign object damage to aircraft engines, and it could become a soaring weapon from the gusts of rotary wing aircraft, injuring anyone in its path.

Aside from the FOD threat, the "dirt boys," as they're commonly referred, work for hours in the blistering heat doing strenuous manual labor.

"We don't bring equipment out there to break it out," Sergeant Hugo said. "The wear and tear on the guys is another big factor. Everything is done by hand, manually. It's important to keep these guys fresh; not worn out."

But the hard work doesn't go unnoticed. Even the Airmen sweating over jackhammers know the importance of what they're doing.

"With every spall we do, we are possibly saving an aircraft, and we're expanding the life of that concrete slab, giving more life to the airfield," stated Sergeant Hugo. "It's a band-aid fix, but it's a band-aid fix that stops a lot of bleeding. It's not a glorifying job, but the Airmen working out there see the impact of what they're doing and how it affects the mission out here; the cargo, the personnel, and just supporting the actual mission here in Iraq."

The dirt boys of the 447 ECES have a long-running count of the spalls they've hammered out and patched.

"When we started working out on the airfield, we set a goal that we wanted to reach," said Tech. Sgt. Paul Evans, 447 ECES and an Air National Guardsman deployed from Syracuse, N.Y. "Now it has become a challenge for us."

The challenge is to outdo the dirt boys of the past.

"Thus far, we've repaired 156 in one month," Sergeant Hugo proudly commented. "The rotation prior to us did 120; they were pretty proud of that. The rotation before them was proud that they did 60. So, every rotation is trying to compete on who does the most. We're on our way to 450, easily."

Sergeant Hugo admitted that, like snowflakes, no two spalls are the same.

"The spalls out there are all different shapes, sizes, lengths. Sometimes we can do 13 in a day, other times we might only be able to do five because they're that much larger."

Luckily, these dirt boys aren't going to stop simply because of a complex spall, heat, dust or sore muscles.

"These guys are self-motivated," Sergeant Hugo said with a smile. "I try to send a new crew out every month, but 90 percent of the team wants to keep going out there. They see the benefits, they see the rewards, and a few of them were recognized for it. They're self motivated, there's no doubt; they're a hard-working bunch of guys."



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