A distinctive feature of the Air National Guard is its dual mission, serving both state and country, which creates unique opportunities for service members. This structure allows Airmen from all 50 states to converge for specialized training, such as the demanding Cold Weather Operations Course (CWOC), forging bonds in challenging environments. These shared experiences become particularly meaningful when, months later, many of these same individuals find themselves deploying together to serve on federal missions overseas. This unique cycle of training with and later deploying with familiar faces builds a level of trust and camaraderie that is a hallmark of the National Guard experience.
This is the very situation nine Citizen Airmen from three different states—New Jersey, New York, and Minnesota—found themselves in, first at the CWOC at Camp Ripley, Minnesota, and then months later deploying to the Middle East. There, in the warmer desert heat, they all linked up to share their stories about the course and relive their hypothermia exposure plunge—a shocking, full-body submersion into a hole cut in a frozen lake that served as a final, brutal inoculation against the cold.
Among them were Col. Brian Cooper, New Jersey Air National Guard; Maj. Brian Ibbs, New York Air National Guard; and from the Minnesota Air National Guard, Chief Master Sgt. Casey Erickson, Senior Master Sgt. Benjamin Nyen, Tech. Sgt. Lucas Nordquist, Tech. Sgt. Duane Southworth, Staff Sgt. Tylin Rust, Staff Sgt. Noah Lukan, and Staff Sgt. Thomas Lee.
Cooper spoke about his experience vividly. “Whether it’s arctic cold or the desert sun, the environment is just another crucible trying to break you. The climate may change, but grit doesn’t. What carries you through isn’t just your training, it’s the bond with the men and women beside you. Resilience is forged in shared misery, earned trust, and teammates who refuse to quit on each other. Ice or sand, the mission demands the same thing: Executing disciplined violence of action and the will to endure together until the job is done.”
That shared crucible of ice and snow forged an unspoken connection. They learned to rely on and trust one another. They survived by sharing knowledge, gear, and the grim humor that only comes from true shared hardship.
Months later, the setting could not have been more opposite. The fine desert sand replaced the deep snow drifts, and the sun was a relentless adversary. The nine of them reunited in a world away from the Minnesota winter.
The stories began to flow, each Airman reliving their tales of how cold they were. Cooper jokingly suggested they should recreate the plunge as a tribute to their past and motivate the incoming CWOC class, and Rust, one of the alumni of CWOC, quickly turned that joke into an opportunity to train. All of the CWOC alumni lined up at the edge of the pool on a December day, ready to relive their arctic plunge from that sub-zero temperature training at Camp Ripley. Although the water at the deployed location was a much warmer 53 degrees, the connection was still the same.
“Reuniting with the CWOC Airmen was great, we got to relieve the plunge we were all working towards at the end of the course,” Rust said. “Even though the temperatures were not the same as it was back home, we still felt it coming from high desert 90 degrees just weeks prior.”
Rust explains this unique experience as something the Air National Guard can provide, becoming a cohesive unit, a family, forged in the ice, coming out stronger than before, one that tied them together even in the desert heat.
“We found each other and shared that bond enabling us to operate and understand one another, knowing that if we had done CWOC together, we could forge head, cowboy up, and complete any mission through the strength of persevering.” Rust said. “Also, knowing we have each other to lean on when we need an additional boost.”
It was a connection that followed them to the desert, a testament to the fact that the harshest conditions can create the strongest bonds. They were brothers and sisters in arms, their connection defined not by the heat of battle, but by the shared victory over the unforgiving cold.