An All-American girl, Kimberly enjoys some downtime near home in South Carolina’s mountains.
Home from Korea, Kimberly’s next step up the army career ladder was the Captains Career Course, so it was back to “Mother Rucker,” as the aviators called Ft. Rucker, to work on professional skills. Once again Kimberly found herself in the midst of a unique group of people whose personalities fit together as closely as pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. Unlike flight school, there was little homework and plenty of time for camaraderie. It probably was the most laid back, relaxed time of Kimberly’s adult life.
It was not high pressure. In college, it was always tennis, studying, ROTC. She was always under the gun, staying up all night. As an English major, she had a lot of papers to do and books to read. In flight school she was motivated and driven to do well and there was a lot to learn. The Captains Course was different.
There were about seventy or so new army captains in the course at the time. They were broken up into smaller groups of about fifteen each. Everybody in Kimberly’s small group meshed.
CAPTAIN LEO LESCH—
We all just became the best of friends. The guys were brothers and Kimberly was our sister. It was neat that way, because being in different units in the army, sometimes you just show up for work and you do your job and go home and you don’t want to deal with the people around you. This was just so different. We all gleaned from each other’s experiences. We couldn’t get enough of each other.
We planned trips together. We had a lot in common. Riding motorcycles. About 10 of us had motorcycles. We bonded that way. After class we’d go out and ride our motorcycles and hang out at each other’s house, or just go for pizza.
Everyone had Harleys except one guy had a Honda, and we harassed him for that. I had a Harley Ultra Classic. I got harassed. The other guys called my bike a ‘grandpa’s bike’ because they had the smaller bikes. We rode quite a bit. It took a long time to get Kimberly on anyone’s bike. She said if her parents found out about it they would kill us. It was always a big secret.
In the classroom, Kimberly was the consummate professional in dealing with individuals. She was very assertive, but she knew how to be assertive without being forceful. At times you have to make a decision and go with it. Kimberly had no issues with that. When Kimberly made a decision, you could bet she had thought it through and was going to stick to it. Unless you could come up with a really, really good reason for her to change her mind, it wasn’t going to happen.
She got a lot of harassment from us as far as a sister and brother relationship. She always took it with a big smile. She never took it personally. It was just fun. It just goes back to being a leader and not assimilating to the group think idea.
We were all A-plus-plus-plus personalities. That’s when Afghanistan was kicking off and where ever we had to go, we all wanted to get there, to catch up with whatever was ahead of us.
Our group pretty much stuck together. We didn’t have very many outsiders come into our group or very many people leave our group and hang out with the other groups.
You have PT in the mornings, at 6:00 AM. A big part of the Captains Course physical training is Ultimate Frisbee. You play that two days of every week and then there’s a big tournament at the end. When we got on the Ultimate Frisbee court, it was a lot of fun. Some teams just exploded on the court. We just embraced each other and played to each other’s strengths. That’s what the group always did. I think that kept us all together. Rather than focusing on each other’s weaknesses, we focused on each other’s strengths and their experiences and what they had to offer. We just melded into a fantastic group.
It’s not time that creates bonds. It’s events, personalities, and maybe crises. We created a family from the get-go and I still don’t know why or how it happened that way. Anyone from our time probably would say it was the best experience in their military career up to that point.
Kimberly’s group bonded like a high school clique. They watched Busch races on Saturdays and NASCAR races on Sundays. They made several weekend motorcycle trips to Florida beaches in Panama City, Destin, and Ft. Walton. During Beach Week they went to a time share condo on the Panama City beach and partied like twenty-year-olds on spring break.
They teased and tormented each other like siblings, and they teased Kimberly unmercifully, but they also took care of her. The men liked to get together and cook. Kimberly was no Betty Crocker. She liked to nap on the sofa while they cooked.
“Kimberly doesn’t have to cook. She has us,” one of the men told Dale and me during one of our visits. After Korea, it was good to have Kimberly at a place we could drive to and call whenever we wanted. Kimberly and I talked on the phone almost every day. Kimberly always had stories to tell me about their pranks. After worrying so much about her flying near the DMZ in Korea, it was so nice to be able to talk and laugh together and know she was in a safe and happy place.
One time, she told me on the phone, she was taking a nap and all of a sudden she heard the guys giggling. She knew they were up to something. They had mousetraps that they were snapping right in front of her face to wake her up. They were always up to something. It was like she had lots of mischievous brothers.
Kimberly decided to enter an Iron Aviator competition that spring. The guys tried to talk her out of it. It would be a lot of work, and it would be more fun to sit on the sidelines and watch, they argued. This contest was right up Kimberly’s alley and she stood firm.
Contestants had to ride a bicycle, run with a rucksack filled with rocks and swim. Kimberly started training about a month before the event. She rode her bicycle to class a couple days a week and worked on her swimming. Since she already was a serious runner and had a bicycle, swimming was her weakest area and she trained hard. She expected to do well in the first two legs of the competition and didn’t want to lose when she hit the pool at the end.
The others in her group all rallied around her. Kimberly was the racecar and they were her pit crew. Everyone woke up early on the day of the race to help load Kimberly’s bicycle and rucksack. They lined up their lawn chairs to watch and cheer her on. When Kimberly came into the changing area after the first leg of the race, her pit crew was waiting. They changed her shoes like NASCAR crews change tires on a car. One pulled off her left shoe and another pulled off the right one, new shoes went on and she was off again. When she returned to the changing area to change for the swimming event, she had the lead in the women’s division, but they could tell she was hurting. The long race was brutal.
Her pit crew went into action. One lifted her by the armpits. Others pulled off the clothing she wore over her bathing suit. She raced for the pool and dove in. Another woman was catching up fast. The men screamed at the tops of their voices to urge Kimberly on.
If Kimberly could keep up the pace, she had it in the bag, but swimming was her weakest event. Kimberly was a lap ahead when the next woman hit the pool moments later. It was nip and tuck. The woman nearly caught up when Kimberly pulled ahead again. The men were hoarse from cheering. The distance between the two women narrowed and widened, but Kimberly never gave up the lead. It was within a lap at times, but Kimberly was a lap and a half ahead when she touched the edge of the pool at the finish, smiling from ear to ear. The guys ran up and grabbed her up in a group hug.
Kimberly won the women’s division, and they shared in her victory.
May 22 was graduation day. The ceremony was at the aviation museum. Kimberly was an honor graduate near the top of her class, and her group had come in second in the Ultimate Frisbee competition. Dale and I watched the ceremony with pride in Kimberly’s accomplishment, and kept our thoughts to ourselves afterward as Kimberly and her group gathered all the motorcycles in front of the museum for one last picture together at Ft. Rucker.
“You aren’t riding those motorcycles are you,” Dale had asked her one time. She just shrugged. She never denied it, but she never admitted it. But Dale and I knew. The dead give away was a burn on her leg. She had hopped on a motorcycle with shorts on. It was so bad that she had to be taken to the infirmary. She couldn’t hide it any more.
The day was bittersweet, but it wasn’t quite time for goodbyes yet. The entire class traveled to Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas, for six weeks of training necessary for them to function as staff officers, including computer software instruction. The course was an easy task for the aviators, who had done a lot of this type of work in the Advanced Course.
Some of the guys rode their bikes to Ft. Leavenworth. One pulled a trailer with a bunch of others. Kimberly drove in her car. They timed their arrival so they could move into the same hallway. It was like living in a college dorm and the aviators made the most of their final weeks together, their last fling before going their separate ways and rejoining the real world as army leaders in a new War on Terrorism. They rode the bikes to Kansas City on the weekends, played golf, and kept creating memories.
They left Ft. Leavenworth on July 3. It was my birthday. Kimberly told me she was going to visit some friends after she left Ft. Leavenworth, but she drove straight to our lake house and arrived the next day. It was a birthday surprise for me, and Dale was in on the plan.
My back was to the door when Kimberly arrived with flowers and a cake.
“Wouldn’t it be nice if Kimberly could be here?” Dale casually asked me when he saw Kimberly walking to the door.
I was responding as Kimberly made her entrance and I screamed and grabbed her in a hug. The memory of that day is priceless!
Kimberly reported to Ft. Bragg in early August and rented a house in Fayetteville. It was a good sized suburban ranch style home in a nice neighborhood about a mile from Leo who also went to Ft. Bragg after the Captains Course. It had a large fenced yard and was more than what a typical single person might need, but Kimberly expected to be at Ft. Bragg for at least three years and hoped to get a command. If she did, she wanted a place big enough for troop get-togethers. She liked the big yard, too, because she eventually wanted to get a dog.
Kimberly worked in the S3 operations shop for the 82nd Aviation Brigade at Ft. Bragg, a coveted job for any upwardly mobile young officer because it offers the opportunity to work for a major and get to know the company commanders.
“That’s where all the movers and shakers hang out. It offers a lot of visibility and you are in charge of planning and execution of battalion missions,” Leo said.
Kimberly worked for Capt. Manuel Hernandez, who managed the operations shop. “Chief,” as everyone called him, had returned from Afghanistan about two months before Kimberly arrived at Ft. Bragg and was anxious to get an assistant. He was a senior captain and Kimberly was a new captain, so although he was her supervisor, they were peers. Chief hoped that wouldn’t be a problem.
It wasn’t. If Chief needed something, “Without hesitation she’d get it for me,” he said. “She wasn’t one to stand around and wait for work to be done. She would ask, ‘What do you need? What else do we need to get done?’ ” Kimberly wasn’t worried about rank; she was a team player and the goal was to get the job done and done well. Chief found it easy to be both her supervisor and a friend.
“Business was business, but as peers we’d go out to lunch often, several times a week, and spend that hour talking about stuff, our military careers and where we saw ourselves,” Chief said. It was a great working environment for both of them, but it was a challenging time for Kimberly. Working with Chief helped her through it.
Kimberly wanted a command in an aviation company more than anything else in the world. She was well on the way to her goal when a hernia popped out on her groin and interrupted her life. I suspected that it happened during the Iron Aviator competition, while carrying the heavy rucksack. The surgeon said the strenuous activity was more than she was accustomed to at any one time. It may have been a weakness Kimberly had since birth, the doctor said, but there was no way to know for sure. One thing was certain: Kimberly needed surgery.
The surgery was scheduled for the end of August, about four weeks after Kimberly started work at the operations shop. She was out of work for about ten days and was on medical profile for several months as she went through rehabilitation and physical therapy after the operation. Her physical activities were limited and she couldn’t fly.
As a result, Kimberly was recovering from the surgery at Ft. Bragg and couldn’t go to Airborne School to learn how to parachute from planes and become jump certified with other new captains. She watched as others who were jump certified went on jumps and she had to stay behind. She was unhappy with the setback.
Kimberly had hoped to go to Ft. Bragg fully qualified for anything she wanted to do. She was ready to jump. It’s expected that commissioned officers with the 82nd Airborne have their jump certification. She knew the missing credential would cause problems later as she sought a command … and she was right.
An All-American girl, Kimberly enjoys some downtime near home in South Carolina’s mountains.
She also worried that people would think she couldn’t carry her own weight. She was new on the job and already on sick leave and medical profile. Some people constantly have medical problems, and she didn’t want people to get that impression about her, Chief said. So the combination of being on medical profile because of the hernia and not getting her jump qualification at this critical time in her career “made it pretty difficult,” Chief said. “Her main goal was to get healthy as fast as she could and get back in the S3 shop so she could stand out.”
Kimberly worried that others would get a bad impression, but Chief could tell she wasn’t a chronic medical complainer. Hernias happen. He was there to give her support when she went in for the hernia surgery and when she got out.
The opinions of others were less generous. Kimberly wasn’t jump qualified, she was on medical profile, and she was a woman. A lot of people thought they’d have to carry her. When Kimberly returned to work after the surgery, Chief watched with satisfaction as Kimberly overcame her critics’ opinions with her work ethic and won their respect.
Other changes soon began taking place in Kimberly’s life. Capt. Will Braman, Kimberly’s commanding officer in Korea, returned to the States about three months after she did. He was stationed at Ft. Campbell and they kept in touch by phone, e-mail and an occasional visit. The friendship forged while working together in Korea started to evolve into something more.
“Is there anybody in your life?” Kelli asked Kimberly on the phone. Kimberly, always private and low key about her personal life, said yes, she was seeing someone and liked him a lot. He was good for her, Kimberly told her college friend.
The situation in Afghanistan was never far from her mind. A year had passed since the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and the crash of hijacked Flight 93 in a Pennsylvania field. American and Coalition forces in Operation Enduring Freedom had Al Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden on the run. Afghanistan was the place to be. Kimberly fretted that if her recovery from surgery was too slow, she’d miss out on the action.
That wasn’t a problem. Her doctor released her in time to go.