Courtesy Photo | Pfc. Lee Younger checks a pump at the Forward Arming and Refueling point on Forward...... read more read more
KHOWST PROVINCE, Afghanistan — An explosion rattled the ground only 100 meters from thousands of gallons of fuel.
U.S. Army Pfc. Lee Younger, barely a year in the Army, and a month into his year-long tour in Afghanistan, scrambled down from the cab of a fully-loaded fuel tanker. His buddies ran for bunkers and shouted for him to move faster as an enemy mortar landed dangerously close to the Forward Arming and Refueling Point.
“That was pretty scary, cause it could have hit again, and I was in the fuel truck,” said Younger, 20. “Had it been a hundred meters closer, it would have been over.”
As an Army petroleum specialist, he’s willing to accept the risk of working and living around thousands of gallons of fuel, stores of rockets and the still-spinning blades of helicopters landing for fuel.
On the outer edge of Forward Operating Base Salerno, he can see right in to the open doorways of homes just outside the fence line. He works and lives, quite literally, on the edge.
Just a year ago, Younger graduated from Hiram High School in Douglasville, Ga., without a plan and felt grades barred him from ever going to college. He just wasn’t interested in high school, so he let his grades slip down to the 2.0 range.
That’s where his mom, Mikki, stepped in.
“She said, ‘You go to college, which you know you can’t get into, because of your grades, or you join the Army,’” said Younger. “She gave me six months to decide, then I was out of her house one way another.”
He felt like he’d let his mom down many times over his life, and knew his chances of success in college were low, so Younger headed down the road he thought would make his mother proud.
“For her to say, ‘I want you to join the Army, this is what I want you to do, and you’re either going to college or do this, but I really hope it’s the Army ... ’ Well, I knew what I had to do,” said Younger. “I wanted my mom to be proud of me.”
Younger’s grandfather had served during Vietnam, but his family was mostly unexposed to the military. Younger’s mother, however, did her research before trying to convince her son to join.
“She kept putting into my mind the travel, the benefits, and the guaranteed pay check,” said Younger. “That’s all she knew, but it sounded better than messing up in community college, and I’d have a skill and a good career.”
So she and other members of his family pushed him to try something no one else his family had done, earning him some notoriety.
“My great-grandmother’s especially proud of me,” said Younger. “I like the attention I get, I guess, that I receive for doing something outside the box and doing something my family isn’t really used to. I like it. I’m making people proud of me.”
Mikki has been the driving force behind her son’s success, and when he almost gave up and was nearly booted from the Army for failing physical-fitness tests, she was the one who encouraged him to keep pushing on.
“She wants me to stay in,” said Younger. “When I was almost chaptered out for not passing my P.T. test, she was really disappointed. She begged me to stay in. I saw a way out, but I couldn’t disappoint her again.”
His mother says that while seeing him commit to the Army and deploying to serve his country makes her proud, it was the choice he made in the beginning that really makes her happy.
“I’m proud of him for making that choice,” she said. “Even though this is what I wanted him to do, it was always his choice. I didn’t put a gun to his head and make him do it. He went through with this on his own. I’m so proud of that, and I’m proud he’s over there with other soldiers, trying to serve and protect us back at home.”
Now in Afghanistan, his platoon sergeants selected him to give visitors tours of the FARP. He explains each function with detail and confidence. It’s a far cry from the slacker he says he was.
“The [landing] pads are hooked up by this main line here,” explained Younger, as he strolled down a dusty, rocky road; pointing out key sections of the re-fueling operation. “Next I’ll take you down here to the pump section, where someone’s always standing when we have birds in. They operate the pump. When we have a bird in, we signal for him to start the pump, sending fuel through each pad, and that’s how we get the birds in and out of here.”
He pointed out the different nozzles they use, the difference between “cold fuel” (that’s when a helicopter shuts down to fuel) and “hot fuel,” when the blades keep turning and they have to operate amid the noise and wind to re-fuel the helicopter.
He’s also sure to point out the mammoth fire extinguishers on hand and the big, metal clamps running to the end of each concrete pad.
“This is the grounding cable,” he says, picking one up with his right hand. “It’s for the static electricity. Most of the time you can actually see it at night, when the birds are coming through. You can see sparks of electricity up in the rotors. It’s a reminder of how dangerous this is. You don’t forget to ground it.”
He smiled as he walked, gingerly picking his way across the large rocks surrounding the fueling pad on his way back to the road.
“What do I like about this job? It’s the adrenaline rush,” says Younger as he stared at an empty pad. “Like with the medical helicopters. When we get them, we really get out there, get them fueled, and get them out. You never know if they need to get out to save someone’s life.”
The Army, however, appears to be just a stepping stone at the moment for Younger, who sees himself trying to combine two very different career fields when his enlistment is up in 2013.
“I really want to be an actor so bad,” he said. "You just can’t do too much with that on a work schedule like this. That, and I want to be somewhere I can focus on going to school for law.”
The kid who shunned high school now has his sights set on law school. Although he hasn’t started classes yet, he’s begun the paperwork to enroll in college. He says it was the lessons he learned through the Army that finally pushed him to it.
“I learned discipline and patience,” said Younger. “Patience was key, really, because I never had that before. Things don’t always happen as quickly as you want. The Army’s ‘hurry up and wait’ all the time, so it takes patience and discipline to make it through each day successfully.”
He said the change in his attitude was most evident when he went back home to Douglasville for vacation just prior to deploying.
“The same person I used to work with at this fast food place was still working there,” said Younger. “Not to knock her hustle, because you have to earn money however you earn money, but I’m out here taking care of life, and she’s still back there doing the same things. I don’t want that for myself.”
That realization has led him to some create his “five-year plan” and even a “10-year-plan.”
“In five years, I would like to have an apartment out in California, and I just hope to be on somebody’s TV. If not, then I’ll be in law school. In ten years, I’m going to be somewhere. If I’m not on T.V., then I will of course be done with law school, working at a law firm, trying to establish my own law firm, because that’s what I really want to do with my life.”
Younger said working out at the FARP, with little to do in his downtime except think, has led him to look at the world a little differently.
“This experience here, it is what it is,” said Younger. “It’s most definitely time away to think about life and realize all the things you took for granted, especially seeing the things that are going on out here. Back home, I never thought about soldiers in Afghanistan or Iraq, but now that I’m here, I hope someone’s thinking about me and praying for me- it’s a big deal. So, it’s a lesson learned to go back home and never forget the people that are over here.”
| Date Taken: | 11.23.2011 |
| Date Posted: | 11.26.2011 16:54 |
| Story ID: | 80581 |
| Location: | KHOWST PROVINCE, AF |
| Web Views: | 147 |
| Downloads: | 2 |
This work, A Soldier’s Story: Finding a future on the FARP, by SFC Eric Pahon, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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