Crafted by Valor

After the long, miserable days and hours of work at the sweltering port in Kuwait City getting our helicopters off cargo ships and ready to fly, unfolding rotor blades, swapping out stabilators, running back and forth between the port and Udairi Airfield, it was finally time to knock out our dust landing training.

Udairi was wild. A brand-new, modern airfield dropped in the middle of nowhere. No roads even led to it. Just an expanse of hot black asphalt in the middle of endless beige nothing.

We’d just left a chilly German spring, basically still winter. And now here we were. A landscape so foreign it felt like another planet. Flying here was going to be different. Way different.

See, in the desert, landing a Black Hawk kicks up a ridiculous cloud of fine sand and dust. So thick, so fast, you completely lose sight of the ground during landing. You can’t see shit. And you have to learn to deal with it. We call it a brown out or dust landing. 

Every aviator had to do it, multiple dust landings during the day and again under Night Vision Goggles (NVGs). And they had to keep doing it until an IP was satisfied they met the standard. That they were safe. That they could handle the mission in those conditions.

And of course, our training would be led by none other than Papa Cook, our SP. The Standardization Pilot. The guy who trains the trainers.

If IPs are the bad asses of the bad asses, SPs are gods. Papa Cook was one of them. He was J. P. Cook, “P” for “Papa.” That’s what we called him. Papa Cook. He reminded me of my dad, same build, same swagger. And like my dad, he was my aviation mentor. My standard.

I felt confident. Hell, I thought I was an expert in dust landings. I’d done multiple rotations at the National Training Center in the California desert as flight lead. Back when we were training to fight the Russian horde, every landing was a dust landing. That desert had what we called “moon powder”, the finest, lightest sand imaginable. It hung in the air for minutes.

So yeah; I’d done this.

With all that experience and the reassurance of flying with Papa Cook, I figured I’d breeze through training and be released ahead of the pack.

And then the desert smacked me in the face.

Even the daytime dust was a shock. Kuwait’s terrain was nothing like the California desert at the NTC. No rocks. No shrubs. No variation. Just flat, featureless beige. Even in the daylight, it was hard to see the horizon. Everything blended: the sky, the sand, the air.

It looked like coffee with too much cream, melting into a hazy blue. You couldn’t judge altitude. Depth perception was gone. The dust clouds we kicked up? Immense. They swallowed the aircraft whole. Pilots and crews disappeared into the monster.

My turn in the pilot seat came and went. Quick. Not much time to process, it was all about moving fast to train the next in line. I assumed I did okay. If Papa Cook didn’t trust me, he wouldn’t pass me.

So with shaking knees and adrenaline pumping, I strutted back toward the waiting pilots.

I told them the dust was big, but the landing? Piece of cake.

And then night fell.

I was first in the seat when night fell on Udairi Airfield. The familiar rhythm of preflight helped me settle in; normal checklists, crew coordination, radio calls. All that standard stuff lulled me into a false sense of normal. We were still in the airfield bubble. Still safe.

But just beyond those runway lights was something waiting for me. Something I couldn’t name yet, but it was out there.

We took off and turned left on our crosswind leg, out into the black.

That’s when fear gripped me.

I mean really gripped me. Like my ass took a bite out of my damn seat cushion.

What lay ahead wasn’t just darkness, it was nothing. An endless, ravenous void.

It swallowed everything. My training. My confidence. My swagger.

I was stunned. Frozen. Speechless. Sitting there with my jaw slack, mouth open like some rookie. Me, the guy who grew up on an airfield. Who flew hundreds of hours before I was even tall enough to see over the dash.

I was born to be a pilot. Jet fuel in my veins. Turbine engine for a heart.

But not in that moment.

In that moment, I was a scared little boy who wanted to leap into his mom’s arms.

What the hell was I thinking? How the hell was I going to get through this?

And worse, how the hell was I going to teach everyone else how to land on the surface of the damn moon?

I started talking to myself.

This is the same as the daytime landings, I told myself. Nothing’s changed except now I can’t see a damn thing. That’s all. Just keep going. It’s the same.

But it wasn’t the same.

The view through my NVGs was a green haze filled with static. The goggles were trying their best to amplify any shred of light and coming up empty. There was no horizon. No depth. Just the void.

I turned to my instruments for comfort, my center console panel. My gauges. My friends.

And they helped; for about a second.

Then I noticed I was 300 feet higher than I should be. I adjusted. Too fast. Too steep. 

Suddenly I was fighting the aircraft, wrestling her through the dark.

I tried to breathe deep to calm my chest. But the heat was brutal. Sweat formed thick drops and rolled down my face, soaking into my flight suit. My body armor vest clung to me, tight, unfamiliar, stifling. It cut across my thighs, dug into my gut, choked off circulation.

But physical discomfort was the least of my worries.

The crew was silent.

Not a good sign. That kind of silence means everyone’s in their own private hell.

Papa Cook finally broke the hush. “Use your Heads-Up Display,” he said. “Watch your altitude, rate of descent, and airspeed.”

I tried. But even with that info blazing in my eye, it was too much. Too overwhelming. I was locked in, scanning for something, anything to orient myself.

And then I saw it.

An old refrigerator. Just sitting there in the middle of the desert.

And a tire. A few meters away.

God bless them both.

I latched on. These two objects became my lifeline. I made a plan. I would use that spot for the rest of the night.

If I thought it was bad during the day, hell, I didn’t know anything.

As we descended and the dust cloud took hold, the darkness didn’t just return, it deepened. It swallowed us whole. I didn’t know black could get darker.

Papa Cook called out altitudes from the radar altimeter as I came in to land. Cool, calm, professional. The crew chief updated us; dust forming at the tail… at the cargo door… now at his door… and then swallowing my door.

Total brown out. Or I guess, total green out, NVG static hell.

And then, bam. We touched down.

Main landing gear hit the desert floor, embraced like long-lost lovers.

I stomped on the brakes. Dust particles surged into my nose and eyes. Everything burned. I couldn’t see, couldn’t think.

And then Papa Cook again. Calm as ever.

“Perfect job. Just the way it’s supposed to work.”

Holy shit.

We lifted again. Two more terrifying, white-knuckled landings. Then back to Udairi to switch out. I had a whole cue of pilots and crew chiefs waiting for their turn with me.

The problem?

I wasn’t okay.

Not even close.

Inside my head, a full-blown war was raging. The idea of flying back out there and handing over the controls to other pilots, especially the rookies, made my stomach churn. I was barely keeping it together myself. How the hell was I going to trust someone else?

But there was no option. There was no backup plan. I had to press forward with the plan.

The internal dialogue wasn’t really a monologue. It was two full-on personalities going at it like a bad divorce. Authentic Matt, terrified and vulnerable. And Bad Matt as the cocky, fearless, showman.

Guess who won.

I started up another Hawk. Headed back out into the black.

At least this time, I knew where my refrigerator and tire were waiting.

Each pilot got about four landings. I rotated them quickly. Not because they were all solid, most of them weren’t. I just wanted the night to end. Wanted it over.

And then it was Brentlinger’s turn.

The opposite of a pilot. A disgrace of a human being. A terrible officer. An embarrassment to the Warrant Officer Corps.

We were oil and water. I despised him. Hated flying with him. Could never reach him in the cockpit. Nothing I said ever landed. No aptitude. No work ethic. No improvement. He had no business being in a helicopter. I’d saved him for last on purpose.

But by now, I was finally starting to feel more comfortable. The repetition had helped. My refrigerator and tire hadn’t let me down yet. I still didn’t like handing over the controls to this guy, but that’s what I got paid to do. So, I passed them.

I gave him very specific instructions, pull in the collective smoothly. Not too slow, not too hard. We had to lift vertically out of the dust cloud, break through it, then push the cyclic forward to gain speed and altitude. We weren’t going high, maybe 100 feet. Enough to stay out of the soup, but low enough to maintain some visual reference.

The takeoff was… almost good enough. I let him settle in. Even I was still struggling with the darkness, so I tried to cut him a little slack.

Then we got a radio call from flight following. I’d missed my 30-minute check-in. The timing had slipped past me because of the crew swap, the chaos, the training tempo.

I looked down, switched my ICS panel to VHF radio 3, and replied, “Iron Man 33 is operations normal.”

My eyes stayed down too long.

Too damn long.

And I wasn’t guarding our attitude.

Something in my gut twisted. A sinking sensation. Unease. I couldn’t name it, but I felt it in my body before my brain caught up. I snapped my head back up and looked out the windshield.

Nothing. Just green fuzz.

I turned left. Still nothing. Scanned right, nothing.

Where’s my refrigerator?

Where the hell is my tire?

And why couldn’t I lean forward?

It felt like something was holding me flat in my seat. My head felt heavy like a bowling ball welded to my spine. I couldn’t move it. Couldn’t lean into the glass.

I was in a daze. Confused. My body knew something was wrong, but my mind hadn’t caught up yet. It all felt just wrong.

Then I looked hard left again and what I saw didn’t make sense.

The ground looked 90 degrees to my left.

Like we were straight vertical. Nose pointed at the sky. Falling backward. About to slam into the ground… tail first.

That couldn’t be real.

My brain argued with my eyes. There’s no way we’re vertical. No way we’re about to fall tail-first into the desert.

But slowly, painfully, the truth crept in. We were.

Nose-up. Almost 90 degrees. Falling backward. Certain death only nanoseconds away.

My heart nearly exploded in my chest. My brain screamed, What the hell am I going to do with this?

Time slowed. Everything moved like molasses.

But my body didn’t wait.

My hands and feet acted with lightning speed. I slammed the cyclic forward and yanked the collective up.

The engines roared. And then; that sound.

The low rotor RPM horn.

That steady, dreadful tone. We hear it during startup all the time but not now. Not in the air. Not like this.

It means the big fan up top is slowing down. Too slow to keep us in the air. That sound means death is about to punch your ticket.

I’ll never forget it.

And the red lights, the pretty red warning lights flashed in my eyes beneath the Night Vision Goggles. A final indicator. A last-second “brace yourself” before slamming into earth.

Inside, I was still arguing. Still wondering, What the hell is happening? What do I do now?

But my hands kept going. Pumping the collective. Feathering the cyclic. Up, down, forward, aft, like some primal dance I didn’t even know I’d learned.

We missed the ground by inches.

The rotor speed came back. The nose came down. Airspeed built. The blades bit into the night air. Somehow, somehow, we were flying again.

We were 5 feet above death.

And then I heard it; screaming in my headset.

My crew chief was losing it. He was shouting profanity, venom in every word. And I didn’t blame him. I’ll never forget the deep, booming voice as he demanded to know which of the pilots had the controls. He was a large man and the gravity of the situation matched his immense size and presence.

He wasn’t supposed to be there. His ETS, his separation from the Army, had just been canceled before deployment. He wasn’t meant to be in that helicopter, in that sky, in that moment.

I’d almost taken him from his family.

Hell, I almost took everyone, our pilots, our crew, me.

It was all my fault.

And worst of all, I still had to keep training. Brentlinger hadn’t even done a landing yet.

Somehow, I settled the crew down. My voice came out calm, so calm it scared me. I couldn’t believe it was mine. I deserved a damn Oscar for that performance.

Because inside? I was raging.

Raging like a beast over a fresh kill. Shaking. Pulsing with fear and fury.

But I kept going.

I flew a few more traffic patterns. Gave Brentlinger his precious landings. Then we headed back to Udairi.

When I finally stepped out of that aircraft, my legs were jelly. My whole body was vibrating. I was furious and relieved all at the same time. The cocktail of emotion was too much. My brain felt like it was going to blow a seal.

I couldn’t believe I almost killed everyone on board.

I looked at each of them and I could see their families. I imagined the aftermath. The wreckage. The ripple of pain.

Then I thought of my wife.

And Mia. My baby girl.

The light of my world.

I almost erased them both.

The grief hit like lava,hot, slow, and unstoppable.

And then something bizarre happened.

The guys started cheering. Grabbing me. Slapping my back. Hugging me.

“You’re a legend, Hastings.”

“You’re a goddamn hero.”

“I don’t know how you pulled that off.”

They thought I was a genius. A master pilot.

Inside, I felt like the worst IP ever minted at Fort Rucker:

• I hadn’t used my HUD. Couldn’t even see it.
• I hadn’t been able to reach Brentlinger, though any decent IP should’ve been able to teach him something.
• And worst of all, I hadn’t told Papa Cook I wasn’t ready. That I needed more training. That I wasn’t confident. That I was scared.

The blind had been leading the blind.

I should’ve been fired. Court-martialed. Anything but praised.

But then Bad Matt stepped in. Took the credit. Soaked it up.

It was the Army’s training, I told them. Muscle memory. Repetition. Neural pathways.

Bullshit.

I hated myself.

Right then and there, I wanted to turn in my wings and go the hell home. I’d almost made my wife a widow. Left my daughter without a dad. Left them to rebuild their lives without me.

And that, that right there is when I got stuck.

Twelve years later, I can still point to that exact moment. On that new airfield, in the middle of the Kuwaiti desert.

That’s where it happened.

That’s when I stopped trusting myself. Stopped trusting other pilots. Stopped liking who I was.

That’s when Bad Matt took over. Pushed the real me, the authentic me into the background. Into hiding.

The war hadn’t even started yet. Iraq lay ahead. Unknown missions. Unknown dangers.

Somehow, I had to pull it together.

I still had people to train. Landings to teach. Zero illumination. Zero contrast. NVG approaches to the surface of Mars.

I told myself I’d make it home. That Mia would know me. That I’d see her grow up. Walk her down the aisle. Hold my grandkids.

That day; I put on armor.

The uniform became my superhero suit. And when that suit was on; I was on.

Real Matt went away. Bad Matt took command. He’d stay in charge until the war was over.

But the war never really ended.