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What it means to me to be back in the Air Force – The grass is not always greener

  • Published
  • By 1st Lt. Bradley J. Landry

At 38 years old I know I am one of oldest, or as I like to refer to it, “most senior” active duty lieutenants around.   Considering the journey I’ve taken just to get right where I am now, I would say I feel the deepest privilege just to do what I do each day here in the Air Force.

It was the end of my senior year in high school in the tiny town of Brusly, Louisiana and it was obvious to most everyone but me that I had no goals, no direction or even a thought or care for the future.  I only went to college because my friends did, and not surprisingly, I flunked out. 

Directionless, I found myself at a recruiter’s office just after the events of September 11th, 2001 to serve my country and I enlisted in the Air Force.  My parents were afraid and I was scared. My friends said goodbye and I never looked back. 

I was given the AFSC 3E9X1, Emergency Manager and was PCS’d from tech school to Grand Forks, North Dakota, in mid-January, without a car.  Fantastic, I thought.  WHAT did I get myself into? Can I umm, just quit please? May I go home?  Turns out, that’s not how the military works, as I soon learned. 

That assignment taught me how to bear down on the things that make one uncomfortable, and stare them in the face.  Yes, you are away from family.  Yes, it is remote.  Yes, you flunked out of college.  This ‘Air Force’ thing, being enlisted forged my resolve in the winters of North Dakota and taught me how to stick with things.  I learned how to see things through because the Air Force called upon me to do good work, and called on me to be excellent.  I achieved senior airman below the zone, finished a bachelor’s degree in the evenings, and then completed an executive MBA while enlisted active duty.  I made friends at my base, was deployed to Iraq in 2003 and also made friends there.  I also became a part of the community in a way that would not settle into my consciousness until much later in life.

By 2007 I said goodbye to the Air Force, separating from active duty and I severed ties completely.  I thought to myself, ‘Now I can really do the good stuff’ and I just knew the worst was out of the way and the best was yet to come.  I had served in the military and boy was I glad that was behind me. 

Nepal – 2009; Hiking the Annapurna Circuit in the Himalayas

Fresh out, I got a job in Oil & Gas, I made great money and I felt like a success story.  I was proud of myself and was rolling along. 

About a year or so after separating from the Air Force I begin to ‘feel’ something.  Something confusing, something I could not pin down to what exactly it was, or where exactly it was coming from.  I began running triathlons.  I went to mountaineering school in Washington State and then went to fly fishing guide school.  I traveled to Nepal and hiked with a porter through the Himalayas for a month and then I backpacked through Thailand for a month. 

It was a strange and exploratory journey through the life that was my own, but strangely I felt like a passenger.  The money was good, I had bought a house and some apartments.  My investments were sound and my profession had me on business travel, and I could support my adventures of exploration.  I funded more adventures: India, Cambodia, Iceland, and they were mostly all solo trips.  I was searching for something--whether I knew it at the time or not.

In 2013 a friend had told me about Outward Bound and their Veteran trips and I had been out of the Air Force for six years by this point.  I thought it would be great to get back and do a sailing school and a dogsledding school with some of the best folks on earth—veterans.  I met some active duty and separated Air Force veterans on those courses and after the first course was over, it hit me like a ton of bricks what it was I was looking for—community.  Among a whole list of great attributes, there exists a special quality within us Air Force types, and I believe that is our commitment to each other.  That commitment gives life to that uncommon sense of community we experience with one another.

Outward Bound Veterans Course – Maine Sailing.  Me on the right. (https://www.outwardbound.org/veteran-adventures/outward-bound-for-veterans/)

It was then, six years after I had separated from active duty that I took a chance on myself and applied to OTS to be an active duty Air Force officer.  The process was long, arduous and I would be cutting it close—by the time my package was in and I was finally accepted, I was 34 years old and the commissioning cutoff age was before 35. 

I quit my job and prepared my wife for the coming changes, and we have never looked back since.  My class date to Maxwell AFB was such that I would commission on graduation day, that day being the day before my 35th birthday and this was completely by chance.

I am now four months from promoting to Captain and stationed at Arnold AFB, Tennessee as a 63a Acquisitions Manager where I manage capital investment projects for wind tunnels and hypersonic test system upgrades and modernization.  I love my job, live on base and love my Air Force community, and my wife has come to realize the community within our Air Force family and she is absolutely in for the long haul.

Since I’ve ‘come back’ to the Air Force, my sense of purpose is renewed and I actually feel more balanced then I ever have—I really wouldn’t want to be doing anything else.  Once upon a time I punched out completely, wondering and dreaming of the green grass on the other side.  The grass was not greener and I feel that every day, and I am thankful for the privilege to serve. 

My wife Erin and I – Air Force Ball, Arnold AFB 2018

You see, for me, being here is a lot like the insightful words of the wonderful T.S. Eliot: “We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.”