An Airman at South Carolina’s Shaw Air Force Base has been confirmed dead, according to the commander of the 20th Fighter Wing.
“Here we are again, I can’t believe it,” 20th FW commander Colonel Derek O’Malley said in a Facebook video, announcing the death of one of his Airmen. “I wake up everyday, my command team, we wake up everyday to try to make this place a better place. There’s so much we try to do, so much more we need to do. But none of that matters right now because we lost another one of our own.”
While O’Malley did not identify the Airman out of respect for the family and did not state the nature of the Airman’s death, it was heavily implied that the cause of death was suicide.
“In the days to come, let’s try to have a productive dialogue,” O’Malley said. “And let’s be kind. Truly kind. And remember once and for all that we are all on the same team.”
In short, O’Malley lamented that he could not personally reach out to all men and women under his command.
“I wish that I could know every one of your names, and know your stories and know your problems and be there for you,” O’Malley said. “And I try to do that, but I can’t. I know that’s not possible. But together we can do that for one another.”
The US Air Force recently had a branch-wide safety stand-down related to suicide awareness, and the most recent death at Shaw AFB marks the fifth fatality to hit the base.
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quick have another “tactical pause” in the middle of the goddamn work week where nothing productive happens
Or make someone stay after mid shift to go to the “tactical pause” brief, and do nothing but rob him of sleep. This isn’t resiliency, it’s madness. You want people to stop killing themselves, don’t make them work 70 hours a week and cap additional duties.
My favorite is when I was active duty, those of us on mid-shift got held over so that our chief could talk to our entire division. The “talk” wound up being a mass ass-chewing by the chief because a guy in our division got a DUI the night before. It started with him getting red-faced while screaming, “What the fuck is wrong with you guys?!” and went downhill from there. The result was 80 guys standing there asking themselves, “I didn’t drive drunk, why am I standing here getting my ass chewed?” Then when he went stomping off, we’re all standing there going, “What the fuck was that.” We all figured he went off like that because he was scared for his job. And people wonder why the military is all fucked up. With “leadership” like this, it’s no mystery.
Everytime I visit the local AFB, I see these pretty-boy E-9s and just know they spend way more time filling squares and getting degrees than they do leading their troops and being involved in their lives. Where have all the actual Chief’s gone? Leadership better figure out how to start growing Chief’s again and not growing even more career-centered E-9s.
So wait, from your “visit” to the local AFB you were able to ascertain HOW a CMSgt spends his/her time? During your VISIT, you were somehow able to form such an informed opinion on the quality of today’s CMSgts?
Wow….as a retired AF guy, I wish I had those same kind of superpowers to be so enlightened as I walk from my parked car into the Commissary or BX.
Sorry to say, Bob, he’s not far off, at least in my experience. I’ve worked with about 12-15 retired E-9s in civil service. For the ones that were worth a shit, you could count them on one hand. What I found odd is that they run really hot and cold, the 5 or so good ones were damn good. The rest were totally fucking worthless. Most of them are really taken aback at the concept that they had to work with people, they couldn’t just roll in and start ordering people around. I’ve had a good number of them start off with, “I told you…!” and I cut them off with, “We’re co-workers, you don’t tell me shit.” It also drove them insane that those of us making flight-safety critical decisions don’t alter those decisions to make retired-E-9 Jackoff’s metrics look good.
To be fair, most aircraft mechanics that come into the civil service to be Equipment Specialists are fucking worthless, too. Most of them come in with the attitude that the job is just an income-kicker and they’re going to coast because they’ve already done their duty. They don’t think of themselves as employees, they think of themselves as retirees. All they want to do is sit around and talk about their VA appointments and COLAs. They refuse to make decisions and refuse to take any ownership of the weapon system. Air Force core values my cracked ass, most of the retirees need to move on to Wal-Mart and call-centers where it’s accepted up-front that they don’t give a fuck.