The Oldest Pilot In IRAQ
Jack Sharkey was supposed to retire at 60, but when his National Guard pals were called to Iraq, he had to go too
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any tracer looks bright. You can see a tracer from 20 miles away and it looks close because they really blossom in the goggles. You couldn’t tell whether they were theirs or ours. You don’t know who is shooting at what.”
Sharkey explains that the crews eventually got used to it. Something he and Kalop, a Leileihua High grad, had plenty of experience with.
“This is nothing compared to what it was like in Vietnam,” he says. “I didn’t hardly worry about anything over there because if one of these bullets have your name on it, it’s your time, otherwise I’m not going to lose any sleep over it.”
And if the shooting did get close, you’d be hard pressed to hear Sharkey complain about it. The man whose call sign is Mako (buddy Kalop is called Olliewood) speaks directly, but not critically, about some of the things that could have been done better.
“The Army doesn’t have any standardization,” says Sharkey in regard to some of the technical problems they faced. “Each unit buys its own equipment. They get funding, you go out and buy it, and this unit will not have the same things as the unit next door. Sometimes one couldn’t talk to one another.”
The biggest difficulty came when it was time to take to the air and to get updates on any hazards or special information from the computer system.
“There are no dead dates. So it comes out on the site and it never dies. We had stuff that was years old that would say, before you go here, talk to this unit there, and that unit hasn’t been there in a year. You had to make judgement calls. You had to rely on experience.”
This forthright commentary is not his first. While in Iraq, Sharkey was interviewed for an article in the Christian Science Monitor. In his published remarks, he said the war was being fought in the wrong way and that “… you have a lot of staff people in front of computer screens micromanaging things. They are control freaks — but by doing that they essentially lose control.” He then counters, saying warfare is inherently confusion and things not going right, and people have to know this and accept it before going in, and they can’t get excited about it.
Sharkey said a few noses were bent out of shape when the article was published, but as Kalop said with a laugh, “What were they going to do? Send him home?”
Eventually they did — along with everyone else — in March. After the necessary outprocessing, where medical officials screen people for Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome and any other health needs, and a few weeks of mandatory leave, he officially retired. So what’s next?
“Fixing problems in my house,” he says. “We had four leaks and a damaged ceiling while we were gone.”
Water problems seem to follow the Sharkey family. Years ago
while on vacation a sprinkler head broke in their yard and had been running for days before a neighbor called the Board of Water Supply. “We had a $700 water bill when we got back.”
So once the mopping is finished, it may be time to sell their Waialae Iki home and find something to do with his days.
“I’d love to fly, but who’s going to offer me a part-time job to fly?” he asks. “I’d like to have seasonal work, like going up to Alaska or fighting fires on the Mainland, and when the season is over you can travel. But that’s probably just a pipe dream. I’ll probably end up working on my yard.”
A worthy effort to while away the hours, unless you’re used to scraping the tops of trees in a 32,000-pound aircraft loaded with 18,000 pounds of gear. Then maybe a little more is in order.
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