Don Stevens grew up in the Cincinnati, Ohio, area. His father served in the Air Force for twenty years, first as Security Forces and then, during the second half of his career, in physical fitness, where he trained Air Force boxing teams. When Don graduated from high school in 1990, he decided to follow in his father’s and brother’s footsteps and join the Air Force. That November, he began basic training. He deployed multiple times to Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, and central Africa. He is a chief master sergeant in the US Air Force’s Special Operations Command. Don is also the chief, or senior enlisted leader, for the Special Tactics Training Squadron, which takes care of training combat controllers, pararescue men, special operations, tactical air control parties, and special reconnaissance operators.
You’ve got to be ready every day. Every single day. There are no excuses.
When I land at the Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan in 2008, I drag my boxes to my mud and rock accommodations. It looks like the Alamo. It’s got a metal door with a latch and that’s it.
I’ve been on the ground for maybe an hour and a half when the base starts receiving 105-millimeter rockets—big, gigantic rounds that shake the earth.
This is my second trip to Afghanistan. I’m a war-fighting singleton—a JTAC, or joint terminal attack controller. I control aircraft and, using sensors and aircraft imagery, pinpoint where the enemy is and put ordnance on targets.
I meet my new teammates. As we go out on our mission to find these rocket cells, my lungs remind me that I’m now nearly thousands of feet above sea level. These guys have been here for four months, so they’re acclimated.
On top of that, I’m wearing the required plates and armor, carrying a radio and batteries on my back, so I’m not as light as the others. I’m really glad I’ve put in the effort to get in physical shape.
I’m also thirty-seven, older than most of these guys. Back in late 2003, when I was thirty-two and working in the Air Force’s Security Forces, I decided to make a drastic career change and made the move to combat controller—a rigorous two-year retraining process.
I’m physically and mentally prepared—which is good because these guys are watching. They don’t want a liability on their team. I’ve got to earn their trust and develop relationships.
My vehicle rolls over an IED. The vehicle behind me gets the brunt of the explosion, but the blast still jars my skull.
I look out the doors and hatches. Fortunately, everyone appears to be okay.
Right now, I’m basically in a black hole, without any aircraft support. I scan for threats.
I don’t see any.
What I do see is a nearby hill. If I’m going to establish comms, I’ll have to make my way up the higher ground, get a signal. I exit the vehicle.
We get ambushed.
Start taking effective fire.
To get out of this alive, I’ll have to run up that hill.
I have no choice.
I make my way up the hill. Rounds flying all over, I use my satellite radio to call our command and control (C2) node while returning fire. It’s not easy, but it’s what I need to do in this moment of conflict. Prioritizing my part in a given mission has become second nature for me—as it does for every soldier. I have to protect myself and the team.
“You’ve got two F-18s en route,” the C2 node says. “They’ll be on station between five and ten minutes.”
Relief washes over me.
Then I see the enemy. They’re very close to me, their faces vivid. One of them looks like a kid. He could be nineteen, maybe even twenty-five, but to me he might as well be fifteen or twelve.
I take him out. I don’t even think about it.
The F-18s push the enemy back. When I get to the top of the hill, I get an aircraft on station, and together we get a clearer picture of the area. Dropping a bomb is out—the area is too densely populated to handle that—so the team uses an MK-19 grenade launcher to take out the rest of the rocket cell.
We’re only six klicks away from the Forward Operating Base, or FOB, so we bring in an armored vehicle that can tow our damaged vehicle. I have an AC-130 overhead for support. Nobody is going to mess with us now.
An 18 Delta medic on my team took a 7.62-round right below the base of his skull. It cleanly passed through his neck, just underneath his jawline. He barely even bled.
The fact that he survived is pretty remarkable.
When I arrive back at the base after the firefight, it takes me a while to figure out that I need to stop, take a knee, and talk to a psych doc, chaplain, whomever. I need to get over what I did to that kid. I wish it hadn’t happened, but those men were trying to kill me—kill us.
In 1994, when I was a young airman stationed in Turkey, two Black Hawk helicopters carrying twenty-six people were shot down in a friendly fire incident in northern Iraq. I was part of a team that had to deal with handling the remains.
About 50 percent were in body bags. The rest were charred parts and pieces. We had to recover them, these body parts of people I knew—people I had been playing cards with the night before. It was my traumatic PTSD-type experience.
These days, formations are staffed with clinical psychologists and clinical social workers. Proximity to danger and violence affects different people in different ways. The sight of a 105-round exploding a hundred meters away might scar one person for life. Other people can simply move on. And there are others who can’t—or won’t—talk about it.
The Air Force hasn’t lost as many as the Army or other forces. I can’t imagine coming back from a deployment and finding out half your guys are gone. On the other hand, the Air Force is a lot smaller, so any loss is huge to us.
Two guys I know from the Air Force are killed in action. One guy, Tim Davis, gets blown up by an IED while I’m in Afghanistan. I help load Timmy’s body onto the plane for dignified transfer back to the States.
During my next rotation, I train guys at home, at the Special Tactics Training Squadron, to get them ready for combat. I work with a kid named Danny Sanchez. We do everything we can to get him ready.
I end up deploying with him and the rest of the guys to Afghanistan. When I redeploy back home, I find out that on his first mission, Danny was shot in the back of the head as he got off the helicopter.
The next of kin haven’t been notified. I get on a tiny plane, along with a chaplain, the commander, and another officer, and fly to El Paso, Texas, so we can tell Danny’s mom and little brother that he isn’t coming home.
When we land, we get to the Suburban and change into our blues. My heart is pounding. Man, I don’t want to do this.
It’s evening when we pull into Danny’s neighborhood. As we get out of the vehicle, we can see his neighbors looking out their doors, wondering what the hell is going on. They’re a tight-knit community. They know Danny is a combat controller and that he’s deployed overseas.
I rap on the door. A little boy answers it. He turns his head back inside the house and says, “Mommy, there are soldiers outside.”
You can hear the oxygen just leave the house. And a gasp. Just a gasp, as the mom comes to the door to learn the fate of her son.