This is the interview of Matt Richards,
interviewed by Daniel Johnston, November 26, 2004.
Say hi to the recorder.
How's it going?
All right. So what branch were you in for your
military experience?
United States Air Force. Go Blue.
All right. And when did you join?
December 16, 1998.
All right. Okay. So what was your experience in
basic training? How did they treat you there?
Well, it was an experience unlike any other
I've ever had.
They start you off. You start off in San
Antonio. That's where we have basic training
for all Air Force.
And you start off, you get off the bus about
2:00 in the morning.
And the first thing you hear is a bunch of TIs
screaming at you about getting in line,
standing up straight.
And granted that you've been up since 6:00 that
morning, you're pretty tired.
And then they start you with the paperwork.
They get you through your financial paperwork,
and they get you to sign all the rest of the
papers that you need to be signed.
And they scream and holler, and you kind of
wonder why the hell you joined.
And then those are the nice people.
Then they get you loaded up on a bus, and they
take you to the actual training dormitories.
And each training dormitory has its own number
and a little mascot.
And ours, I'll never forget, it's 323, and I
stood in front of a Transmanian Devil.
Tasmanian Devil, my fault.
Forever just staring at it like, oh God.
I want to say it was like 4:00 in the morning.
And then we heard the click, clack, click,
clack of the sound that we'd be hearing for the
next six weeks of our lives.
Little taps on the TI boots.
The old Smokey the Bear hats coming around the corner.
I kind of froze, and I was like, oh hell, what
was I thinking?
And spend about 20 minutes picking up your
luggage, dropping your luggage, picking it up,
dropping it.
Because you just can't do anything right for them.
You get the same treatment the whole time
you're there.
You can't breathe, you can't fart without
somebody telling you to do so.
And so it was a pretty crazy time.
That's pretty good.
Okay, what was a typical day like once you
actually got into it?
Say day, week one, any day.
Oh man, let's see, week one.
By week one we had pretty much gotten into the
routine of things.
I mean you get into the routine fast, you don't
have a choice.
My chore, I had two chores in the morning when
I woke up.
By week one you wake up on your own.
You don't wait for them to come in throwing
trash cans at you or anything.
You kind of wake up 10 minutes before and start
making your bed.
And everybody helps each other make their bed.
And then you start on your chores.
I had a latrine duty, and I'll get to that in a second.
My other job was laundry, so I made sure all
the laundry bags on the ends of the aisles
were picked up and put in a laundry bag for
that laundry that I was going to do that day.
And then came latrine time.
They gave everybody enough time to get out and
shave and take a piss
and get out so I can get in there and clean.
And let me tell you, when I say clean, I was on
my hands and knees picking up pubic hair.
It's pretty disgusting.
And then you line up and you go outside and you
sing the Air Force song.
And then they take you out to the pad and you
do exercise for a good two hours.
And it's an hour of running and an hour of just
push-ups, sit-ups and all that good stuff.
And then they send you to chow.
It would be Monday, the first day of the first
week, and we'd be getting French toast.
That was Monday and Wednesday. Those were the
best days because the chow was awesome.
You don't get much time to eat, and the time
you do get to eat,
you spend trying to drink the three glasses of
water that they make you drink
so you don't dehydrate.
And then they go about their daily events
trying to teach you how to March
and take you here and there and teach you how
to do certain things.
My only fun time, actually, in Basic was after
lunch I would start laundry,
so I got to get away from the TIs for a while.
I had a little partner, a little shorty, this
little Hawaiian cat.
We'd do laundry all day.
And something about smelling another man's
drawers, it's not fun.
But it was better than standing out in the heat
with the TIs, that's for sure.
So was there a natural progression to treat you
any better?
By the fifth week, that's when you hit your blues.
The whole time you're in BDUs, that's your
Brattle Dress Uniform,
which is, you know, camouflage fatigues.
And then you hit your blues, and that's when
you know everything.
You're the fifth-weekers, you know, you're the
big boys.
They're looking at you a lot harder, but you
know your stuff.
You don't step out of line, you do everything
you're supposed to do.
I mean, you know what you're doing, and nobody
asks questions.
So let's see, that's week five.
There's six weeks of Basic, right? No.
The last week, what's that like?
Last week, you're on edge because, you know, if
you fail a locker inspection,
if you fail any inspection, you're going back
another week,
and you have to be there again.
It's called recycling.
That was the big fear in Basic, having to stay
there another week.
But that sixth week, I mean, you're on edge.
But you know everything.
You're just gliding down there.
You're ready to graduate.
You're pretty much getting the finishing
touches down on your marching
because your parents, at graduation day, you're
going to be marching in front of
all your parents, everybody's parents, and
you're pretty proud of yourself.
I mean, you made it through a tough time in
your life.
So graduation, do you get a break for that?
Yeah, graduation, after you do your march and
you're standing there,
and they tell you how proud they are that
you're now a United States Air Force airman.
You call that ease, and your parents and
friends just run to you,
and you don't know what to do because you've
been, you know, for six weeks,
you've been told, you know, don't get out of
line, don't even move your head.
So, you know, I got my mom wrapping her hands
around my neck,
and I'm afraid to move because if I break rank,
you know,
I'm going to get yelled at or something.
And yeah, it was a pretty touching moment.
They give you the day off, and so you get to go
around San Antonio,
and everybody in San Antonio knows the
Smurfettes are out because everybody's
dressed in blues and got their hair cut the
same way, you know,
they're all prim and proper and walking all weird.
You know, every time you walk with your mom or
your dad, you're trying to,
you know, keep step with them and stuff, it's
pretty funny. Smurfettes.
Yeah, that's all the San Antonio people call them.
They call them smurfs.
Whatever you just graduated.
Yeah, because everybody's in their blues, and
you just look like little smurfs out there.
So next step, after basic training, what did
you do?
Where did you go?
What happened?
Well, after we got back from San Antonio, we
kind of chilled,
and our TIs came up, and they actually treated
us like human beings.
It was pretty cool.
We got to talk to them and bullshit with them
for a little while,
and that was really, really awesome because,
you know,
you kind of look at this guy as a, oh, man,
like a godlike figure,
and he couldn't do anything wrong, and now he's
just BSing with you,
and telling you, hey, come on down and bowl
with me one night or whatever
because now we're airmen, you know, and then we
just wait for our buses
because now they don't trust you with anything,
so, you know, the orders are given to somebody else,
and they pretty much have a little, they kind
of hand walk you up to the bus
and pat you on the butt and tell you, you know,
good luck,
and they send you off, and I didn't have far to go.
My first half of my tech school was in Medina
Air Force Base,
which is a tiny little annex right outside of,
I mean, it was like you leave Lackland Gates,
you cross a bridge, and there's Medina, you
know, it's just this tiny little annex,
and I went there, and, man, I had so much fun
at that tech school.
Sergeant Willis, he was a senior master
sergeant who had been bumped down
to a tech sergeant for striking another person.
He beat the hell out of an airman because the
airman thought he could buck up to him,
and Sergeant Willis was old school, and, you
know, back in the old days,
you bucked up to a sergeant, and if they could
kick your ass, they would.
Nowadays it's all paperwork and red tape, but,
yeah, he got a lot of stripes taken away,
but he was a cool, cool dude, man.
He had the loudest yell, and for some reason
somebody found out my nickname,
and he found out my nickname was Monkey, so, I mean,
I'd be picking weeds out 20 miles away from
him, and I could hear, Monkey!
And I'd come running, man, because he had me
doing something.
He was a really cool dude, but I had fun at
that tech school.
And then from there, well, in Medina, I had
electronic principles training,
and that was hell.
I mean, it was, you get up at 4:00 in the
morning, do your running,
and then you go to school, and it's just like college.
I mean, you sit in the classroom, and they're
teaching you electronic principles.
And let me tell you, 6:00 in the morning, after
getting up at 4 a.m.,
listening about resistors and circuits, I mean,
you are just about to pass out.
It's hard to stay awake, man.
But it's fun, it's a challenge, and you get
through it pretty good.
And then from there, you take off.
I took off to Shepherd Air Force Base, which is
just about 30 minutes south of Dallas.
And I spent another, I spent 6 weeks in Medina,
and I spent about,
I think it was four months at Shepherd, and
that was my actual tech school
where I learned my job.
My job was a telephone systems journeyman.
I did phone work right here, Southwestern Bill
guy, whatever.
I was a pole climber.
What did they call you, the Cable Dogs as well?
No, the Cable Dog was another, they did the
back-breaking jobs.
They dug out in the ground and looked for the
big cables under the ground.
We were the smart kids, we were the wire dogs.
We stayed indoors, we did all your indoor
wiring and your telephone pole wiring
and stuff like that, switch work.
All right, so let's talk about liberty.
Did you get any liberty at all in tech school,
or was it a lot like basic training?
Well, you have phases.
Your first, I want to say your first three
weeks you're in phase one,
and that's pretty much like tech school or
basic training.
I mean, you don't get any, there's curfew on
you at all times, you can't leave.
You have to be in, you can't ever get in your
civilian clothes, ever.
And they pretty much, they treat you like crap.
And then you get to, after that, and this is
all depending on your MTI,
your de-instructor, Sergeant Willis was mine.
If they think you're doing good and you can
proceed, they'll give you a phase two.
And that means you have to be in, you still
have a curfew, Curfew's like 9:00.
And during work hours from four to, you get out
of school around,
you get out of school around 4:00 in the
afternoon, and then you hit chow.
And then after chow, around five, five-thirty,
you can dress in civilian clothes, which is, oh
my God.
After being in boots forever, putting on a pair
of kicks is really nice.
And then you get phase three, phase three is as
long as you're not on duty,
you can be in civilian clothes no matter what,
and your curfew goes up until eleven.
And then phase four, civilian clothes, whenever
you can start smoking if you want again,
you can start drinking again, no curfew on the weekends.
And then phase five, I hit phase five at
Shepherd, which was awesome.
I mean, phase five is not, you're a regular
airman, you can come and go when you please,
just follow the traditional rules, and be at
school, keep good grades and stuff like that,
or you'll get bumped out of phase, but other
than that, that's your phases.
All right. So after tech school, was there
another graduation, or what happened there?
It was like a little ceremony.
Good job.
Yeah, pretty much.
Our commander came out and did the whole shake
hands, salute thing,
and tell us how proud he was even though he
didn't know our name.
And then we get to go home.
It was the first time.
I got to come home a lot because I lived in
Texas, and so I snuck off base a lot,
which I wasn't supposed to, but, you know, yeah.
And then there's a, but that's the first time I
got to come home.
They gave me a plane ticket, and I came home,
or actually I drove home with some friends
because they all lived around the area or whatnot.
We came home, and I got ready to fly off to
Germany because that's what I got my orders to.
And that was a trip because I didn't know what
I was supposed to do.
They gave me this yellow packet that said,
here's your plane tickets, you know,
this is when you leave, report to Atlanta,
report to the airport at this such-and-such time
and be at Atlanta's airport at such-and-such time.
And after that, they didn't tell me what to do,
and that was a trip.
Because when I got on the plane in Houston, I
left, and it was no problem.
Kind of sad.
I got to say goodbye to my fiancé and my
friends and family.
And then I boarded the plane, got to Atlanta.
If you've ever been to Atlanta, that's a
hellhole right there.
I mean, it's so big.
And then I got to the gate at Atlanta, and they
were like, well, you know, here's your ticket.
Get on board.
It was a 12-hour flight from Atlanta to Germany.
And when I touched down at Germany, I had no
idea where I was going,
how I was going to get there, what to do, what
not to do.
Speak any other?
Yeah, I didn't know how to speak German.
I was at Rhein-Main Air Force Base, so that's
where I touched down.
So I didn't have to really worry about German
right away because it was an Air Force base.
But I was nowhere near.
Ramstein was the base I was stationed at, and I
was nowhere near it.
And all I had was $25 to my name because, of
course, when I was on leave, I splurged, spent
too much money.
Actually, I had $26.
But when I was taxing in, I was talking to a
lady next to me,
and she told me that a bus drove from
Rhein-Main to Ramstein, and it cost $25.
I was like, well, that's cool.
I got $26.
I'll be able to make it.
And so I hopped off the plane, ran straight to
the bus, and got on.
I didn't know that my shop, the one I was
destined to go to, had sent somebody to pick me up.
And he was supposed to be my little helper
there, the guy to get me around.
But I didn't know that.
Nobody had told me that.
I had never gotten a letter saying, I'm your
sponsor, and I'm going to help you out.
But this guy came up there looking for me, but
he was looking for a lost airman.
But I knew exactly where I was going.
I was going to hit that train, or not that
train, the little bus, and go to Ramstein.
And I get to Ramstein, and it starts to rain,
of course, because it's Germany.
And I'm standing out with all my bags and my orders,
and I'm dropped off in the middle of Ramstein
Air Force Base.
And I didn't know where I was going to sleep or
what I was going to do.
I was wandering around like a little kid.
I looked foolish.
I went up to some maid, and I was like, where
do I go?
And finally, they got a hold of my first sergeant.
And he got a hold of the sponsor, and they came
and got me.
But that was an ordeal.
It was a trip.
$1 to my name.
So, OK, you got to Germany.
So you had a fiancee.
How did that work in your personal life?
It was rough, because she was still in Texas,
and I was in Germany.
And we wanted to wait, because she was still
going to college.
And I didn't want to disrupt that or anything.
But it was pretty rough at first.
We adjusted, and then I came home.
My first leave, I came home, and of course, we
got married right away.
And it really ticked her parents off.
But she didn't come back with me.
We got married, but she didn't come back with me.
I went back to Germany, and we were making
plans for her to come back.
And it was just a big ordeal.
But it was pretty cool.
How long was it until she got there?
I think about three or four months.
What did you do until then?
Well, I got things ready.
I was a newlywed airman, so I had to get out of
the dorms and find a house.
And I found a little piece of crap house in Germany.
It was my first house.
It was awesome.
But I wasn't getting paid to be married, which
is one thing.
When you get married, you go from a single pay
to a married with dependents pay.
And I wasn't getting paid that, so off of my
little airman check, I was trying to pay rent
and all this other stuff.
And it sucked.
But after a while, I guess I went about six
months not getting paid the right pay.
And we were struggling when she finally got there.
But once all that back pay came, once I got a
couple $1,000 handed to me in one paycheck,
that was pretty nice.
So she shows up.
How's married life in the military?
I think it's really rough on the spouse
because, I mean, it's not like a regular job.
I mean, I had regular hours, but every now and
then, out of the blue, I'd get a call and I'd
be gone for a couple of days.
Or we were always worried that I'd have to be
shipped off TDY where she'd have to stay at
home and I'd be in some other country.
So, I mean, you're worried.
And on top of that, it's stressful because you
got friends and family back home and you're all
alone in this country with nobody but your spouse.
So it's rough, but I think it brings people
together too.
Yeah, it's pretty rough, but there's good parts
in that too, you know? Yeah.
So how about the good ones?
What was good about it?
You get to do a lot of things.
I mean, we were a newlywed couple.
I mean, how many newlyweds get to travel to
France every other month?
Or go to Switzerland and paraglide over a
mountain, look at a sunset over a frosted Swiss
Alps with swans in a lake,
or ship off to Amsterdam and get lost looking
for your hotel, you know?
I mean, it's a trip.
It was fun.
We got to see a lot of things.
A lot of things.
So did you ever see any wartime conflict or
anything like that?
I spent the majority of my time, I was Air Force.
And Air Force, not to put down any other
branch, but you got to be a different person to
the Air Force.
You have to have, you know, some brains and you
have to, they need those people to not get shot.
So they kind of keep the Air Force bases away
from conflicts.
And so I wasn't too, I never had to worry
about, you know, the Kosovo thing happened.
I didn't have to worry about that.
The big thing that happened for us was 9-11.
And that's when it didn't matter where you were.
Everybody was affected by that.
How did it affect you?
Well, that day, while 9-11 was happening, my
day was ending.
I had been up since, I think that was one of
our lifting days.
So I was up at 5:00 in the morning, got to
work, did my job all the way up until about 4
or 4:30.
And we were wrapping up our day, playing some
ping pong in the day room.
And this guy named Rick came in.
He was a little jokester, so nobody believed
him at first when he said, you know, the plane
hit a tower.
And we kind of just shrugged him off like whatever.
And then Judge Judy was on the big screen.
All of a sudden got cut off, and that's when
the breaking news hit.
And when the second hit, we were still kind of
stunned by what's going on.
But then when the plane hit the Pentagon, our
phones rang off the hook.
It was like almost instantly.
And we went straight into ThreatCon Delta.
And ThreatCon Delta is your under attack.
And, I mean, that's everything, every
precaution they could take, they're taking it.
We sent a squad out, and we looked, you know,
underneath cars.
We put the blockade, started going around the
bases, you know, keep people 15 feet away from
our bases.
And we kind of just stared at the TV like, you
know, what's going on?
And they sent us home, but told us, you know,
be ready.
We had 15 people in our shop, three of them.
Three of them were left after 9-11, after that night.
The rest were shipped off to SP Augmenty, which
is, you know, checking gates, walking around,
patrolling, real crappy job.
They work 12 on, 12 off, 12-hour shifts.
You know, I think it was, what was it?
It was like three on, two off, something like that.
It was horrible.
It was a horrible shift.
And I was the one guy that didn't get picked
for SP Augmenty.
And so I got the pager on the cell phone.
I was told to go home and try to get some sleep
because I was definitely going to be called out
that night.
And I got called out like two hours after I got home.
And so, granted, I'd been up since 5 that morning.
I went back to work.
The line was atrocious trying to get into the base.
And, oh, man, it was like a scene out of a movie.
As soon as we got in, as soon as I got up to
the base, you have an M60 pointed at you from
two turrets on either side of the gates,
which aren't usually there.
You've got SPs all over the place in full gear,
dogs going up and down the place.
You've got these lights.
They have all the lights turned off at the
gates except for these blaring lights in your face.
And it was kind of a dreary, foggy day.
And so it looked pretty menacing.
I mean, they have barricades everywhere.
I mean, people, I was surprised how fast the
whole place got deserted and barricaded up.
I mean, it was in a matter of three hours that
place was, you know, barricaded to the Max.
And they sent me into the switch.
And I stayed there for a couple hours.
And then I got called to the big room.
And that's the command post, which was about, I
want to say about ten stories below the ground.
And all the big dogs were there.
I'm talking, we're in Yousafie, Europe, which
is headquarters of Europe.
And then headquarters Asia.
And where else were they?
Some of the big generals from all over the
place came because that's where the big meeting
room is.
And I set up Securicom all around the building.
And I was there until about, I'd say about 12,
12:00 the next day.
They decided to let me go.
So it was a pretty rough night for me.
And I didn't even know what was going on.
I had saw like two hours of news.
And while everybody else was glued to their TV
watching what was going on,
I was pretending not to hear secret things
going on in a secret room.
So it was pretty nuts. Wow.
That's pretty interesting.
So how long did it take for things to get back
to normal on the base?
Things never got back to normal the whole time
I was there.
I was there for another year, about, not
another year, about, I don't know, I'm going to
say about six months I was there.
Because that was about my time.
I was going to re-up for another year and
that's when good old President Bush decided to
go to war.
And I didn't want to be part of the Iraqi war there.
So at what point did you get out?
Oh, yeah, it was December of 2002.
So over and all are you glad you did it?
Oh, yeah, it was the best experience of my life.
I had a blast in there.
I met a lot of really good people.
Did a lot of really cool and interesting things.
And, yeah, I think, me personally, I think
everybody in America, every male in America at
least, should serve at least two.
It'll teach them what life's really about.
Afterward, what were the benefits of being in
the military in your life?
Schooling was the big thing.
I mean, I'm getting paid to go to school.
I mean, who else could ask for anything better?
All right, I guess that pretty much wraps
things up.
Thanks for your time, Matt.