I was in Mons, Belgium, four or five different times back in the ’90s, serving as aide-de-camp whenever my boss was summoned to NATO Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe—SHAPE. We’d usually hop his Blackhawk VIP helicopter from Germany, about a ninety-minute flight. One trip was through a snowstorm over the Ardennes, the same forest where my grandfather had fought in the Battle of the Bulge. One night about 2100 returning after a meeting…the pilots under night vision goggles and on our private intercom channel (boss was busy reading stuff and thinking) told me we might be going back to Belgium to sleep… told them we can’t… He’s got a meeting with the Division Commander immediately after PT tomorrow morning… I remember gripping the seat thinking, Great—my grandpa survived this battlefield, and I’m about to die over it.
We survived…. At SHAPE we always had a liaison officer—a cool intel major assigned to the headquarters—who became something of a friend. I can’t recall his name now, but he was one of those good-natured types who knew how to make things happen quietly. Whenever we landed, my driver would already be on the ground waiting for us, but I couldn’t exactly use a government vehicle for personal errands—especially not to pick up Belgian beer. I wasn’t about to get my boss in trouble over Chimay.
So the major would toss me the keys to his beat-up old BMW—his “hooptie,” as he called it—and I’d make a quick run to the Belgian beer store. I’d load up my rucksack with as much of the good stuff as I could carry, haul it back to the helicopter pad, and stash it under the seats for later. Once the boss was done for the day, meetings wrapped up, and he was tucked in for the night—we’d crack a few open. The old warrant officers and young crew chiefs I flew us were salt-of-the-earth types. They taught me more about leadership, risk taking, loyalty, and laughter than any field manual ever could.
The boss didn’t need to know—but I think he knew. 😎
Those were the cool days—the kind of small adventures you could still get away with back then. A snowstorm over the Ardennes, a borrowed BMW, and a rucksack full of Belgian beer. Not exactly in the NATO handbook, but definitely one for the memory book. As a stupid 1LT you could still ask for forgiveness…
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