Why You Are Here

  • Published
  • By Chief Master Sgt. Chris Williams
  • 3rd Maintenance Operations Squadron
ELMENDORF AIR FORCE BASE, Alaska --  "Why are you here?" bellowed the Military Training Instructor to one of the "rainbows" standing in the rag-tag formation in the parking lot outside the 3309th Basic Training Military Unit. The young man answered "I needed a job, sir!" The MTI quickly darted to another individual and hollered the same question. The response was "To go to school, sir!" The MTI stopped in front of me and barked "Why are you here?" Without thinking, I shouted "I'm looking for adventure, sir!" Suddenly, I had three Smoky the Bear hats with eyeballs glaring at me. "What did you say?" the MTI asked. "I'm looking for adventure, sir!" I repeated. 

One of the MTIs, obviously envious of my Roger Daltrey hairstyle, quickly went on the verbal offensive. "Look at that hair...I think there are animals living in there!" The clever remarks went on for what seemed like an hour but they probably lasted no more than a few moments. The MTI I now considered to be the ring leader of the "short hair club for men" clicked his way over to the sidewalk in front of the formation and announced, "From now on, if anybody asks you why you are in the Air Force, the answer isn't 'I needed a job' or 'to go to school' or (glaring at me) 'looking for adventure!' The answer is 'to serve your country! You got it?" 

He immediately jumped back into the crowd and once again started asking "Why are you here?" The responses were quick. "To serve my country, sir!" they answered one by one. He tapped danced his way over to me and asked me again, "Why are you here, nature boy?" I shouted "To serve my country, sir!" He just stood there and glared at me. I could see in his eyes he knew I wasn't buying it. 

The truth was I didn't buy it. I'd watched 'An Officer and a Gentleman' and to me this MTI guy was all ate up with patriotism, selling the company line. I'd grown up in the time when we did stand in class every morning, recite the Pledge of Allegiance to our flag and sing "My Country 'Tis of Thee." To me, serving my country was what John Wayne did in his movies. "Okay," I thought to myself, "'Serve your country is the Air Force answer to the 'Why are you here' question...got it." I knew our special moment was over when the MTI concluded with, and what would become, my signature phrase in Basic Military Training, "Son, get that grin off your face!" 

I don't know the exact moment in my career that I went from thinking "serving your country" was an Air Force answer, to a question, to actually internalizing the reality I was here for that purpose. When the Air Force finally captured our core values in writing, I do remember reading in the little blue book about "Service before Self" and thinking "That's it! That's exactly what that MTI guy was talking about!" 

Now it was different. Those words were no longer what people did in movies; they had become who I was and what I did. The answer to my inaugural Air Force question had become the foundation of why I did everything I did day-to-day. 

During my "adventure" in the Air Force, I've had the opportunity to see the world and realize how lucky we are to be Americans. Our way of life doesn't come easy or cheap. It's amazing to me that the most powerful nation on the planet has an all volunteer military full of people who don't have to be here but choose to "serve their country." 

Over a quarter of century has passed since that December night at Lackland Air Force Base. These days, there is more hair on the floor around my feet than on my head. The truth of a message I shall never forget from a MTI whose name I've long forgotten, still rings true. "You are here to serve your country."