Posted on 05/08/2008 8:11:11 AM PDT by americaprd
It was particularly memorable, Craig Williams said, the night he almost died.Williams, 44, is a Concord resident, and, among many other accomplishments, is a former federal prosecutor and the endorsed Republican candidate for the 7th Congressional seat, U.S. Congress, House of Representatives.
The year of his near death was 1991, it was the dead of winter and he was flying across the icy North Atlantic with his squadron, the VMFA(AW)-121 Green Knights.
He was a first lieutenant in the United States Marine Corps, flying as a Weapons and Sensor Officer in the back seat of a two-seater F/A-18D Hornet, on his way to serve in the Gulf War.
On his way to Kuwait and Iraq.
He almost didn't make it to the War.
His squadron was flying some hundred miles out over the Atlantic Ocean when Williams' F-18 began to, due to aerial refueling problems, run out of gas.
The F-18 was forced to turn around and make, hopefully, an emergency landing in Bangor, Maine.
Williams, however, downplays his near death event, and said that it was not at all relevant compared to what his fellow Marine, Frank Ritchie, who was flying another F-18 with the squadron headed for Kuwait, did on that same night.
The heroes, Williams said, are the guys like Ritchie who do incredible things.
Moreover, Williams does not discuss his 56 combat missions flown during the Gulf War and will not talk about his seven Air Medals, two for particular acts of valor and heroism during combat.
"I was just doing my job," he said, "like everybody else."
Just like his dad and stepdad (both decorated Vietnam veterans who flew Cessna 0-l Bird Dogs), Williams would rather talk about the Marines he served with and their heroism.
"It's just the culture I was raised in," he said.
A culture filled with humility, loyalty, love and service to country.
Williams' dad, George, served two tours with the Air Force in Vietnam; on the first tour he flew enemy surveil-lance, just above the jungle's treetops, as a forward air controller in a Cessna 0-1 Bird Dog.
On the second tour he served as part of a special operations group, the Ravens- a covert forward air control squadron-who flew a variety of different aircraft out of Laos and Cambodia; Williams' dad was awarded the Silver Star for his service with the Ravens.
"It was all very secret," said Williams who was just a young boy at the time of his dad's Vietnam service back in the '60s and '70s. "To this day I don't know exactly what he did because he doesn't talk about it."
Williams says that when his dad thinks about Vietnam, he thinks about friends; the same thing is true with Williams' stepdad, Bill Clarke, who, too, flew the 0-1 Bird Dog and received the Distinguished Flying Cross for saving a Marine patrol in the jungles of Vietnam.
"I don't get a whole lot out of them (about their war experiences)," Williams said of his dad and step-dad. "For them, it's about service and love of country."
Furthermore, Williams younger brother, Scott, was an infantry platoon officer, actually on the ground engaged in combat, serving in Northern Iraq during Desert Storm; he transitioned, after Desert Storm, to fly an F-18 Hornet.
"(There's) not much out of my brother about his action in Northern Kuwait," Williams said. "He (too) talks about the Marines he served with and their heroism."
The United States of America is the home of the free because of these brave men and Williams is very proud to be part of his family's military tradition.
And takes his 1991 near death event in stride.
"There were six ships (F-18s) all flying (to Kuwait) together across the Atlantic behind these two KC135 tankers (aerial refuelers)," Williams said, "and (while aerial refueling, Williams' F-18 developed) a problem with the probe (and) couldn't take gas at all."
Thus, his F-18 was running out of gas. Technically, the F-18s have a probe that bangs into a basket, which is attached to a hose going up to the KC135; the pressurized hose, filled with fuel, shoots gas into the F-18's probe and into the airplane.
The F-18 turned around and flew back to Bangor, first climbing to a higher altitude to conserve fuel, with Williams and the pilot praying all the way that there was enough gas to get them back to land; ultimately they landed in Bangor with both fuel lights on.
"We were definitely 'feet wet'," he said. "And Bangor had snow and ice on the runway."
It was the middle of winter and if they'd gone in the ocean they would have never made it.
Meanwhile, while also aerial refueling over the Atlantic, Ritche's F-18 probe hit the KC135 basket, which then tore away from the hose; the hose was left dangling without a basket and began shooting pressurized fuel down both of Ritchie's engine intakes.
The F-18 caught fire.
Yet Ritchie flew the F-18 back to Bangor, with both engines on fire, Williams said, alternately shutting one engine down to at least make sure that it didn't completely melt while the other engine controlled burned.
Ritchie brought his jet home, scorched and burned, landing safely, with two live crewmen, back in the United States.
"(Ritchie) went back down to South Carolina and got another jet and flew that to Iraq," Williams said. "I've wondered whether he got a medal for bringing his jet home."
Frank Ritchie's story never made it to a newspaper or even online to a Marine newspaper; but that's, Williams said, just who these people are.
Every day they quietly put their life on the line.
Frank Ritchie didn't shrink from flying and, as far as Williams knows, Ritchie is still flying today as a Marine colonel.
Too, Williams' dearest friend and fellow flight officer and Green Knight, Brad
"Pig" Kelly, is another American hero whose story never made it to the newspapers.
Kelly was the first Marine to come out of flight school with an assignment to the two-seat F-18; thus he earned the nickname Guinea Pig or "Pig" for short.
Following the Gulf War, Kelly and Williams' squadron was deployed to Japan for six months. From Japan, the squadron deployed out in detachments, four or six planes each, to various exercises.
Kelly was on an exercise in Singapore, the exercise ended and his plane was refueling in air, coming back from Singapore to Japan to reunite with the squadron and go on to the next mission.
The KC135's basket, which attached to the F-18 probe, broke off from the hose and, unlike Ritchie's plane, fuel did not go into the intake but the electrical wiring coiled around the hose became un-spooled.
"Kind of like a thread on a suit," Williams said.
The pilot worried that the wire was going to start wrapping around the flight controls so, like Ritchie, Kelly's pilot alternately shut down the left and right engine to make sure the wire didn't go down the intake or foul the flight controls.
They immediately turned around to go back to Singapore.
"Brad had unstrapped from his seat so that he could turn around and look the flight controls over carefully to make sure the wires didn't get wrapped around them," Williams said. "As they slowed down to get into their lane of configuration the airplane just got too unstable, flopped over on its back, and headed straight for the ground."
"Brad was killed that day," Williams said. "I took him home to his family and buried him in Illinois."
These are the American heroes that Williams served with every day, people just taking care of business and getting the job done.
Williams' strong sense of service to country is clear, as is his commitment to family and community service, as well.
He was born in 1964 in Selma, Ala., not the least bit ironically, he said, at Craig Air Force Base. His parents were originally from North Carolina and his dad went into the Air Force, as a way of paying for college, and finished flight school.
Williams grew up as an "Air Force brat", living in Panama during the Carter days and eventually in Anchorage, Alaska, where his stepfather was flying C-130s at the time; in addition to Scott, Williams has a "baby brother" Kevin, who is 14 years younger.
Following high school, Williams went to Duke on a Navy ROTC scholarship, which he later changed and went with Marine option, which is in the same Navy ROTC department.
"I went down to Duke a week before school started because you have to go through ROTC orientation, and (it was there that)I swore to defend the Constitution for the first time," he said.
As a student at Duke he was part of the Blue Devils varsity football team and a decathlete on the varsity track team. He majored, at first, in biomedical engineering and later, due to surgery which kept him out of class for four to six weeks, switched his major to Public Policy, which combines political science with economics.
"My stepdad says that 'God writes straight with crooked lines' and (it was) that crooked line took me straight to (Duke's) Department of Public Policy, where I first started thinking truly about policy," Williams said.
Williams, while at Duke, completed Officer Candidate School, a rite of passage that allows the candidate to become an officer upon graduation from college.
Following graduation from Duke in 1987, he was commissioned as a second lieutenant and sent off to six months of infantry officer training at Quantico, Va.; every marine officer is trained first as an infantry officer and then goes off to specialized training.
"That's what convinced me, by the way, that I wanted to be an aviator," he said.
Following graduation from infantry officer training, he went off to flight school at the Naval Air Station in Pensacola, Fla. on a, due to less than perfect eyes, flight officer rather than pilot track; he graduated first in his class and, as a result of his academic excellence, was sent to El Toro, Ca. to train as one of the first students with the first squadron of the two-seat F-18s.
Before that time, the Marine F-18s had only a pilot.
"That's where I met my best friend in the world, 'Pig' Kelly," Williams said.
The F-18 two-seater program at El Toro was so new that there was no syllabus for the fresh-faced F-18 students and neither was it clear exactly what the mission was going to be-the thought was, Williams said, that having two guys in an F-18 was a better idea than one guy.
Presently, however, there are five or six two-seat F-18 squadrons in the Marine Corps.
Williams trained with his squadron in El Toro for not quite a year and flew a couple of short deployments, readiness workups, exercises, and mock wars.
In the fall of 1990 Desert Shield was well under way-the ramp up to Desert Storm-putting large ground forces on the ground in Saudi Arabia, preparing for the land war to retake Kuwait.
Williams said that the brand new squadron knew they were going to Kuwait but had no orders at that time.
"So tons of us went down and basically descended on the Marine Corps Air Station, in Yuma, Az. for about a week or two and fought this enormous mock war over the air spaces around Yuma, trying to perfect our game plan for the war in Kuwait," he said.
The squadron received their orders just before Christmas of '90.
They were going to Kuwait in January, '91.
Only half the Green Knights squadron-six ships (as the F-18 planes are called)-was going, initially, and Williams was the only first lieutenant selected to go.
And so, despite his F-18 refueling problems on that January night in 1991, 1st Lt. Craig Williams arrived at the War, flying combat missions over the deserts of Kuwait and Iraq.
His squadron often flew at dangerously low altitudes over Kuwait and Southern Iraq to locate the enemy, mark targets with rockets and direct bombers to enemy positions.
Just getting the job done. "The first day that I'm sitting on the tarmac (in Kuwait) in my F-18, I'm strapped on, the motors are already blowing and we're programming our computers about where we're going," Williams said. "OK, we're going, we're going, and then we took off and it's like I'm talking on the radios and we're starting to get things done."
Just like flying over Yuma, Az.
Except this time somebody was shooting back.
"(But) now you have something to do and you just start taking care of business," he said. "You've got a choice to shelve the fear and get on with the mission or be overcome by the fear so that you can't perform."
All of the people that he knows choose to get the job done.
Williams returned to Pensacola in 1992 for two-and-a-half years as a flight instructor. In 1994 he entered the University of Florida College of Law, graduating with high honors in 1997.
Following law school, he was selected to attend the Naval Justice School in Newport, R.I., for follow-on training to become a judge advocate general (JAG) -in the Marine Corp they are called judge advocates - which is basically a community of lawyers in the Marine Corps or in the military; he finished JAG training, first in his class and went on to Camp Pendleton, Ca. to become the chief prosecutor for the largest base in the Marine Corps.
He left active-duty service with the Marines in 2000 and enrolled, while continuing to serve his country in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserves, in the Columbia University School of Law to study for a masters degree in legal philosophy, graduating with high honors.
In 2002 he had a clerkship with the Honorable J. L. Edmondson, chief judge, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit; he next served the Department of Justice as an Assistant United States Attorney in Colorado and Philadelphia.
Williams married, in August, 2004, the love of his life, Jennifer Arbittier Williams, a fellow federal prosecutor; they have three young children, Clayton, Emma and baby Charlotte, who are the center of this gifted young couple's lives.
"The kids very happily consume all of the downtime, very happily," Williams said.
In 2005-06 he was mobilized back to active duty service with the Marines to become deputy legal counsel to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and served Gen. Richard Myers, U.S. Air Force and Gen. Peter Pace, U.S. Marine Corps.
For his service to the Chairman, Williams received the Joint Meritorious Service medal.
Recently, while working as a federal prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney's office in Philadelphia, he had approached the Republican party leadership intending to help the local Republican candidate running for Congress.
Williams told the leadership of his experience in national security and the war in Iraq and foreign policy and thought he could help.
"Well, how about (running) instead?" he said they said.
So he and his wife talked and talked, a lot, and went back and talked a lot more; then they thought how the campaign would impact their family and talked some more.
"Then, finally, we said we'd like to do it," Williams said.
The umbrella of their family philosophy, he said, is about service to the community and to the country as well.
As a federal employee, however, he was precluded from starting a campaign or raising any money, anything along those lines, until he left the Department of Justice.
So he left the Department of Justice about mid-January of this year.
Since then he has set up a staff, a campaign headquarters and been endorsed by Senator Arlen Specter and former Homeland Security Director and Gov. Tom Ridge.
His top issues are: the economy, immigration and the Iraq War.
He thinks the United States citizens are correct to want the war to be over-he wants the war to be over; he wants the troops to come home.
He wants them to come home, however, with honor and dignity-the same honor and dignity that he was treated to when he came home from the Gulf War.
"I couldn't go into a bar or restaurant without applause and people clapping me on the back," he said.
He wants that for every Iraq and Afghanistan veteran as well.
Furthermore, he restates, every time he speaks to a group about his congressional race, that it is about service.
"I'm not looking to use this election or this post or office as some sort of stepping stone to something bigger and greater," he said. "I care about the people I live with because I don't think they have a voice right now (in Washington, D.C.), (and) I want to be that voice for them."
Nor is his congressional race, he said, a promotion, for him, to a new class of society, rather, it is about being picked from his community of peers to personally go down to Washington, D.C. and represent them.
It is, he said, the same way he felt as a federal prosecutor protecting the community from criminals, and the same way he felt as a United States Marine and the nation needed protection.
"It's something you grow up with, it's something you live with every day," he said.
That sense of purpose and service to your nation.
Ha!
Usually it is. Accidents happen.
This one was TARFU, edging towards FUBAR.
bump
Sloppy seconds? ;^)
I was a Marine Corps Aviation Officer Candidate just long enough for them to discover my eyeballs weren't any good. So God pointed out this thing called the Musician Enlistment Option and told me that's what I was supposed to do.
Next week, the 15th, will be 19 years since I arrived on Parris Island. That's kinda hard to believe. Whenever we were in the Pit, I always scanned the sky for F-18s out of Beaufort. Whenever I saw one, it seemed to make that time go a little easier for some reason.
Wow that sounds like it was fun???????????????
Having sex on the world's largest water-bed?
A gentleman would never tell. (And I won’t either!)
You win.
Pa. ping (7th District has a strong candidate to take down Sestak.)
Bump
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