Photo By Sgt. 1st Class Tawny Kruse | Sgt. Ryan Hoover and Sgt. Sean Hary, flight engineers with Company B, 2nd Battalion,...... read more read more
In 2011, Iowa and Minnesota National Guard aviators stationed in Iraq saw the world through a monochromatic lens. Darkness was their friend. Each night around midnight, they departed Camp Taji in CH-47 Chinooks and flew all night long. They wore night vision goggles, painting the flat terrain in shades of green.
“You can see for miles, and when you approach Baghdad, there’s just this massive influx of lights,” said Master Sgt. Layne Marti, “and then you look everywhere else and it’s just dark, black.”
Marti, of Donahue, Iowa, served as a flight engineer instructor with Company B, 2nd Battalion, 211th General Support Aviation Battalion. The company’s Iowa and Minnesota detachments merged to support Operation New Dawn, which marked the official drawdown of U.S. troops in Iraq and the transition from combat operations to stability operations.
Heavy-lift aviation assets were crucial to complete drawdown efforts. Company B provided the only Chinook helicopter support for the entire Iraq theater leading up to the operation’s official end in December 2011.
Between November 2010 and November 2011, Company B flew a total of 7,723 hours between training and combat missions. They moved 49,500 passengers and transported over 4 million pounds of cargo. They set a record of 1,039 flights hours between August and September.
“During regular drill weekends, a flight engineer might, on a good year, fly 100 hours,” said Marti. “We flew 600 hours in nine months, not even a year’s worth of flying. So, you can grasp the pace of what we were doing over there. It was unprecedented.”
Maj. Benjamin Winborn, commander of Company B at the time, described it as “more work with fewer resources.” The drawdown scaled back the number of Chinooks in the country, but aviation support was still necessary to close down outposts and move troops in a small amount of time.
But beyond the impressive numbers, the deployment had a lasting impact on the Soldiers of Company B. They created a legacy that made waves both in Iraq and around the world.
Before the unit arrived in Iraq, they went through their pre-mobilization process at Fort Hood, Texas. Knowing they would only be flying night missions, they made their call sign “night long.” Soon after, Sgt. Ryan Hoover and his fellow flight engineers created their slogan: All Night Long. Drawing inspiration from the 1983 musical hit “All Night Long,” he found a stencil of Lionel Richie and incorporated elements of a flight line to create a logo. It took off from there.
“Hoover kind of became our mascot while we were deployed,” said 1st Sgt. Charles Iams, who also served as a flight engineer. “Everybody knew us around the country. The special operations guys would see our patches and trade stuff with him.”
The patch, which features Richie wearing night vision goggles and a Chinook flying overhead, was so popular that it was hard to keep up with demand. Winborn reordered several batches throughout the deployment. The logo can be found stenciled in various places around Camp Taji and Fort Hood, and on the brown undershirts Soldiers wore under their uniforms. There are stickers that have made their way around the world, including on a bike pump station just outside Madrid, Iowa.
“They did a great job of promoting esprit de corps and people noticed it,” said Winborn. “After we came back, in 2012, Hoover and I had an opportunity to go out to Los Angeles and meet Lionel Richie. You never know what to expect being around famous people, but he was super nice. Talked to us one-on-one about our careers and family.”
During the live interview with CBS, Winborn and Hoover presented Richie with some “All Night Long” swag. To this day, a music record with Richie’s autograph and trophies awarded to Company B for their accomplishments in 2011 are proudly displayed side by side in the Davenport flight facility.
While the public recognition and awards were unique opportunities to represent the unit and even the National Guard aviation community as a whole, they were hard earned. Behind the creative stencils and glowing accolades is the hard and often exhausting work that the Soldiers of the 2-211th GSAB put in during their time in Iraq.
Command Sgt. Maj. Chad Stewart served as the production control noncommissioned officer in charge for Company D out of Georgia, which provided maintenance and inspection services for Company B. Keeping 16 Chinooks ready to operate every day was a monumental and often thankless task.
Stewart described the dynamic between the flight engineers and mechanics as an ongoing negotiation, the push and pull between needing to complete missions versus making sure it was safe for the crews to fly. The crews flew until the crack of sunrise and rested for a short time just to do it again the next night, while the mechanics worked to keep the aircraft functional all day and night.
“It was a tremendous amount of hours; 12-hour shifts, six days a week, trying to keep up with maintenance,” said Stewart. “On average, of the eight helicopters flown each day, four needed massive attention when they returned just to be flyable for the next night. It was a constant struggle, but we never missed mission. The mechanics worked their butts off.”
The aircraft weren’t the only things that needed attention. As the platoon sergeant for Company B, Master Sgt. Todd Isely was responsible for taking care of Soldiers. Sometimes that simply meant making sure they were fed and well-rested, and other times it was about rearranging flight schedules when Soldiers had to attend training or got sick.
When flight crews left in the middle of the night and returned in the morning, it was tricky getting hot dinner or breakfast at normal dining facility hours, so Isely and other staff would make food runs and pack portable coolers with sandwiches and snacks.
“Oh my gosh, all the energy drinks,” said Isely. “They love sugar, caffeine. And the guys really liked shot coffees. We’d go around and barter during the day, offer Gatorade for coffee.”
Mostly, Soldiers went through their daily routines in peace. In their small amount of downtime, they played bags, participated in poetry nights and spoke to their families when they could. The drawdown in the country meant combat operations were steadily decreasing, but threats remained. Camp Taji was a common target of small, random mortar attacks, many of which were inaccurate.
On May 4, 2011, nearby insurgents fired over 70 mortars and artillery rounds at Camp Taji. Some minor injuries were reported, but Marti said they were “very fortunate” it wasn’t worse.
“You hear that distinctive thump, and I remember my friend Landon was like, ‘Oh, that was kind of close,” said Marti, “and then the next one landed, a little closer. And you kept hearing it in the distance. This was not normal.”
He and some other Soldiers took cover under a concrete structure on the flight line. One mortar struck not far away and rolled underneath an aircraft, but never went off – avoiding a direct hit.
While Company B didn’t lose a Soldier that day or throughout the rest of their deployment, they still experienced loss in their lives back home; and in an aviation unit, burnout is an occupational hazard. Stewart admitted it can be hard to retain service members when they cycle through deployments every three to five years.
“When you have children, wives, husbands, it’s difficult to walk away from them every few years and say, ‘This is my last one,’” said Stewart. “And then turn around and leave again.”
One way the Soldiers in Company B deal with loss and the hardships that come with serving overseas is by being there for each other, whether that’s in person or by keeping in touch with a simple text.
When Master Sgt. Shad Meyers, one of their flight engineer instructors, passed away in a motorcycle accident two years ago, Iams remembers the amazing show of support at his funeral. Soldiers came to Davenport from across the state, and members of their sister unit in Minnesota traveled hours to pay their respects.
The crew isn’t together anymore and the 2-211th GSAB has since been renamed to the 1st Battalion, 171st Aviation Regiment, but the camaraderie they built and the legacy they left in Iraq 11 years ago will last forever. When Iams got married in Jamaica last April, he was surrounded by aviation members – not just fellow Soldiers, but people he considers family.
“There was a lot of fun, a lot of shenanigans, but there was a lot of work and hard times,” said Iams. “Those are the people you can depend on to be there when you need somebody to talk to or just sit around and joke about foolish stuff you did on deployment. I would move heaven and earth to help any one of those guys or gals out.”
The deployments will keep coming and the faces in the formation will keep changing, but the memories from over a decade ago still remind Company B of what it was like to fly All Night Long.
Winborn remembers it well: the sound of the pilots and crew yelling out pre-flight check lists; the feeling of sweating through your uniform on a hot night as the microclimate cooling system pumped antifreeze to keep them cool; the friendly banter exchanged over the radio and the taste of cold water and energy drinks on a long flight; the constant scanning of the horizon, their necks heavy with the weight of their helmets; and the feeling of protection in the darkness as their worlds turned green.
“I’m just really proud of what our team was able to do and honored to have been the commander for that time,” said Winborn. “It was a once in a lifetime kind of thing.”
| Date Taken: | 03.21.2022 |
| Date Posted: | 03.21.2022 14:21 |
| Story ID: | 416855 |
| Location: | JOHNSTON, IA, US |
| Hometown: | ANKENY, IA, US |
| Hometown: | CEDAR RAPIDS, IA, US |
| Hometown: | DAVENPORT, IA, US |
| Hometown: | DONAHUE, IA, US |
| Hometown: | DUBUQUE, IA, US |
| Hometown: | ELDRIDGE, IA, US |
| Hometown: | ERIE, IL, US |
| Hometown: | IOWA CITY, IA, US |
| Hometown: | LE CLAIRE, IA, US |
| Hometown: | ST. CLOUD, MN, US |
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Chinook
Pilot
CH-47 Chinook
Aviation
Flight Engineer
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