“... but the people who know their God shall be strong, and carry out great exploits.”
~Daniel 11:32
Last week, my son David called and asked me what I knew about his grandpa’s time in the military. (My dad, that is.) He needed the information for an essay he was writing to submit for a possible Air Force promotion. I told him I had started to write this post because I also wanted to get this information down for posterity. From our business restoring family Bibles, I know that military service is an important part of a family’s history, so there are often pages specially devoted to that subject in those Bibles.
I could write about my Uncle Samuel Atanasio, who was in the United States Navy, and last time I talked with him, he told me he was on a ship heading for the Bay of Pigs way back when, not very happy with President Kennedy because it looked like he was trying to get him and his shipmates all killed.
But I’ll save that for another day. Today, let me tell you what I know about my dad ...
My father, Daniel Atanacio, served in the United States Air Force for twenty years, retiring as a tech sergeant. As a member of the American Armed Forces, he kept us safe from our enemies. Growing up, I loved nothing better than the feeling of safety I had living near a flight line and hearing our planes roaring overhead.
Me, holding onto my Air Force daddy, with my little brother and sister,
at Travis AFB, CA
The tale I heard from my mother, which was later confirmed by my father, was that he and some of his cousins had gotten their draft numbers and decided to go sign up for the military together instead. When it came to the branch he specifically wanted to join, my dad considered whether he would rather be on the ground fighting an enemy (Army and Marines), in a ship on the ocean being bombed by an enemy (Navy), or flying over the enemy (Air Force). And in the end, he (wisely) chose the U.S. Air Force. This shows my dad had some common sense!
The year would have been 1953. The USAF had only just been established as a separate branch of the Armed Forces in 1947, so it was barely six years old when he joined at age 18.
Dad wasn’t a pilot, so he wasn’t exactly engaged in dogfights with enemy planes. He did take some trips overseas, but he said he always had nice commercial flights.
There’s so much more to the military than just combat. Dad had a supporting role and he did it well. When you ask him what he did in the military, he will tell you, “Not much.” He believes his time in service was boring, because there aren’t a lot of stories of great heroism to relate. But he was essential all the same.
Dad told me he always had his requests in for cold places, like Alaska or Iceland, but was always sent to hot places, like the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and the American Southwest.
“But Dad,” I objected, “we were stationed in Iowa! That’s a cold place!”
“Yeah, but I was never there!”
Which was true. While we lived in the cold place, he was somewhere else. Such is the life of a military dad.
His initial training (tech school) was in Wyoming, where he learned how to fix and build things, as a civil engineer.
Dad’s first station after tech school was Nellis AFB in Nevada, and as a young airman, he met a red-headed high school girl in church and finally stopped her before she walked home because he wanted to get to know her. After he shipped out to Saudi Arabia, he continued to write her letters.
When Dad left for Saudi Arabia, he was instructed to bring an entire toolbox with him on the plane. That’s what he would be using during his assignment. When he left, he was instructed to leave the tools behind. Who can understand the minds of those who work in the Pentagon? You just do what you’re told and say, “Yes, sir!”
Upon his return to the States, Dad married the red-headed school girl (now graduated) in Washington, D.C. and was stationed at Andrews AFB. I was born at Walter Reed Army Hospital in 1956, the same place President Trump went for treatment when he had Covid-19 in 2020.
When I was nine months old, my parents and I set out across the country towards Travis AFB in California, hauling our home behind us. My mother wanted us to have a home that didn’t change with his various assignments, so she talked Dad into buying a trailer. That would move with us and lend some semblance of stability to our nomadic lifestyle, the same way it had done for her family as she grew up. After all, Travis would be Dad’s sixth residence since he’d joined the military! But when we finally reached Travis AFB, we settled into the base trailer court and actually stayed there for seven years.
Here’s an article about Dad and his job, working with the maintenance team in base housing, when he made the news because they got a new truck for him to use to make his rounds. Yes, this is really him, even though they misspelled his name.
And here’s a picture of the truck he finally got, to replace his bike.
Dad tells a story of the time he was teasing a young airman he supervised. There was an electrical appliance that didn’t work and the young airman didn’t know why. Dad, pointing at the cord, told him with a grin, “There’s your problem! There’s a knot in the wire and the juice can’t get through!” Hearing this, the young airman set to work untangling it so the juice could get through and the appliance would work.
While we lived there in California, Dad used his skills to build us a vacation trailer with pieces and parts and a used axle he’d acquired – because he could. And because we needed to take it places when Dad took some of his 30 days of paid vacation, like Donner Pass, or back across country to see his family in New York.
He and my mother also served in the Civil Air Patrol as military members, and we little kids would go with them on their search and rescue missions. That’s when Dad did get to fly – not as a pilot, but as the “eagle eye” watching for downed planes on the side of a mountain. Mom cooked meals for the whole unit out of the tiny vacation trailer Dad had built.
Both trailers were left behind when we moved to the Philippines, and it was the first time in my whole life that we lived in a real house. Grandpa’s apartment in Hawaiian Gardens was close to being a “real house,” but it was still just an apartment.
While Dad was stationed at Clark AFB in the Philippines, he worked as a base termite inspector. To be sure, when you are an American child living in another country, you learn about that other country. So yes, we learned the Philippine National Anthem and danced the tiniklings, but we also learned a few words in Tagalog and two of them were these:
It’s “Bukbok” in the bamboo.
It’s “Anay” in the wood.
I don’t know if I’ll ever need that knowledge, but it’s an important childhood memory that I am sharing with you, just in case you’re ever inspecting for termites in the Philippines.
If you show Dad a picture like this:
… he can tell you that he was making these housing units, though he can’t really tell you if that picture was from Thailand or Vietnam. Considering that the albums I have are in chronological order, I think it’s a sure bet that they were in Thailand. That’s when he was TDY with the Prime BEEF team for eight months, while we lived in Iowa.
Dad, in Thailand
In 1968, nobody really wanted to go to Vietnam, but for members of the military, it was probably inevitable. Since Dad had already been to Southeast Asia, he only had to go to Vietnam for four months, with the RED HORSE team (Rapid Engineer Deployable Heavy Operational Repair Squadron Engineer. Dad said that the team was fully equipped with people in every job you’d need to accomplish a particular mission. Mom told me the team was building an airport there, at Cam Ranh Bay. Dad told me he was building barriers (revetments) around each of the barracks (or “hootches”) so that if a bomb hit one, it wouldn’t affect the others.
I’ve heard these builders were fearless and a little crazy – doing advance work out in the open, for the troops who would come later to occupy what they’d built. Maybe that seems boring, looking back, but it was courageous, and their work was well-appreciated by those future troops.
Dad’s final station was Luke AFB in Arizona, another hot place! I’m sure it was still all about base housing again, but I don’t know specific details.
Because of promotion freezes and other reasons, Dad’s rank stayed pretty “stable” over quite a few years. One reason he gives is that he didn’t play supervisor the way his superiors wanted him to. When he made the rank of staff sergeant, Dad became an NCO – that’s a “non-commissioned officer,” which means he was one of the “guys in charge.” As an NCO, one of his chores was to speak to the younger airmen about why they should reenlist. Well, he wasn’t a really good salesman for the military. Though he stayed in himself, he could not bring himself to beg these other guys to stay in, when they were grumbling and complaining all the time. His usual approach was, “Do you want to stay in? No? Then get outta here!” Retention wasn’t very high, but morale was – the grumblers and complainers left in a hurry!
Technical Sergeant Daniel Atanacio retired in 1973, with an honorable discharge. And I am proud of his service to our country. More than that, his service also inspired me to join up when I was looking for direction after high school.
Me, at Age 3, trying to fill my dad’s shoes
There’s more than one kind of warrior. Not all warriors trudge through a swamp with a weapon in hand. Some are lesser known, unassuming, but who do their assignments with honor.
My brother Mike is also my brother-in-arms, and being a few years older than I, also spent some time in Southeast Asia, shortly after he met me in 1972. Because he has firsthand knowledge of the things of which I speak, and because he saw that my dad had downplayed his role, he told me: “Do not take your Dad's word on the importance of what he was doing or the dangers that he faced.” Being a bit overcome by his words, I asked Mike to write a little on his perspective:
Hi, Margie asked me to write a bit to I guess add a bit of "color." You see, I was in Thailand for a year, and have a bit of insight on a couple aspects of this story.
First, RED HORSE: I was stationed at NKP, or Nakhon Phanom in far northeastern Thailand. To be clear, I worked on the flight line so I never worked with any of their troops directly, but we knew what they did and the conditions under which they operated. They were the Air Force equivalent of the Navy Sea Bees or the Army Combat Engineers. They would go into "forward areas" and build the infrastructure that would be needed when everybody else showed up. Four months in RED HORSE was a very long time. It was an incredibly dangerous job and everybody knew it -- perhaps that is why RED HORSE had the reputation for being a bit wild at times.
Second, "Hootches:" AKA barracks. The building shown under construction in the picture was actually almost done. The upper framed-in parts of the walls were simply covered with mesh like on a screen door. The buildings were unheated and uncooled, but they kept the rain off you during the monsoon and were at least bearable in the hot dry months -- of course Thailand gets cold too…
I don't know if Margie's dad ever worked on the hootch that I lived in, but if not him, it would have been one of his brothers. Very Cool.
You’ve heard of “prayer warriors”? They are no less important in God’s kingdom than those who lead evangelistic crusades. But they get less recognition for their service to the King of Kings – until the end, when the rewards are passed out. I have often sung the familiar Sunday School song, one the variants of which says,
I’m too young to
March in the Infantry
Ride with the Cavalry
Shoot the artillery
I’m too young to
Fly over the enemy,
But I’m in the Lord’s army.
(Yes sir!)
Like it or not, as Christians, we are already in the service, and when we wield the Word of God to fight off temptations from the enemy of mankind, that is our weapon. Battles are fought to save men’s souls when we are on our knees. It is time to take our service seriously and do exploits for our Commander-in-Chief.
“... but the people who know their God shall be strong, and carry out great exploits.”
~Daniel 11:32
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