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Phillip Chapman Elizabeth Hinnant ENGL 1101-103 December 3, 2013 An Airmans Literary Evolution JTAC: Hawg 53, you are cleared hot! Pilot: Weapons away, thirty seconds. 30 seconds of silence and the sounds of flying shrapnel and a loud explosion are heard. These are the words that are spoken over the radio between a Joint Terminal Attack Controller (JTAC) and an aircraft over head. A JTAC is a qualified service member who is equipped with a radio and coordinates airstrikes from the ground to an airborne pilot. Once the required communication is completed with the pilot, a loud chest-thumping explosion is heard, created by an exploding bomb, on an unfortunate soul. This is the peak of a JTACs career, becoming certified to execute the coordination to direct and control a fighter aircraft to neutralize hostile military targets. It takes years of experience and training to get to that point. During my six years in the Air Force, there were several similar experiences that influenced and shaped my use of the English language. I know that literacy deals mostly with the ability to read and write. Through my experiences, I believe listening tentatively plays a crucial part in building literacy. When I started basic training at Lackland Air Force Base, Texas, the formula for success was to listen to given directions and accomplish the tasks exactly within the given parameters. I can remember when I was chosen to be dorm-chief (the class leader) and how the

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responsibility of leading a group of forty men made my basic training experience far more difficult and stressful. Directions from our instructor had to be carefully interpreted (normally while being punished in the push-up position), then disseminated to the rest of the team. After making many mistakes due to poor verbal communication on my part, I quickly learned to listen to my instructor with acute accuracy and diligence while trying to extract the full meaning from everything he said. Gone were the days of high-school listening, where I only caught half of what was said and then filled in the blanks. Learning about attention-to-detail set me up to be more receptive to learning how to speak, read, and write effectively throughout the rest of my Air Force career. Jump ahead in time two years after my initial enlistment and you will find me sitting in a seat at the JTAC-Qualification Course. This is by far the pivotal point of a JTACs career. This course is where you learn the technical aspects of the trade, such as detailed mission planning with Army leaders, and effective radio communication with a pilot. You are required to learn it in such great detail, it becomes what you eat, breathe, and sleep. Day in and day out, we had to prepare for class by reading and studying close air-support doctrine. This is the bread and butter of knowing what to do when you are talking to an aircraft and in reality, it can determine if your comrade will survive during a firefight. Ill be honest, I entered this course not knowing really what to expect. I was told, Dont worry about anything, youll learn it all when you get to JTAC-QC. Unfortunately, I listened, and walked directly in front of the information fire hose. As you could imagine, this resulted in tons of late night studying and early morning cramming for test and simulator training.

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With the help of a few all-knowing officers, I figured out that if I dedicated a few hours creating intricate notes and study guides, this would greatly increase my chances of graduating the course unscathed. I taught myself to dissect information from a page in a much more accurate manner than I ever have before; quite frankly, my career depended on it. Completing JTAC-QC four weeks later was crucial to the exercising and building of my reading literacy. Before attending the course, I was never in a position that required me to dissect reading material so meticulously. With the pressures of completing the course for career progression, I had no other choice but to buckle down and learn like my career depended on it. Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, I stood next to my Army platoon leader and told him, One minute out until landing. I was telling him that there were four CH-47 Chinooks about to land to pick up 150 soldiers. This would be an easy feat to accomplish during the day, in the foothills of North Carolina, but this was at two in the morning in the mountains of Afghanistan. I knew the helicopter pilots would have a difficult time location us at night, so I had to figure out how to tell them in few ten-second transmissions over the radio. Of course after telling the platoon leader that we were good-to-go for pick-up, the helicopters flew right over our heads. I had to jump on the radio and transmit a very clear and concise description of another landing site that was approximately 300 meters away. While the helicopters diverted to the new pick up area, I communicated the new location to the platoon leader, who then passed that information over the radio to his squads. Within a few minutes, we managed to run through a creek, up a small bank to the pick-up site and extracted back to base. Concise and effective verbal communication was the staple to the successful extraction that night. I am very

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thankful to have been taught techniques to effective verbal communication over the radio. Without the hours spent learning how to speak concisely, the extraction mission would have been a complete failure. Whether it is giving briefing to a commander or speaking at a loved ones funeral or graduation, effective verbal communication is crucial in all facets of life. While spoken words are temporary, written words can be kept forever. Evaluating a supervisees performance on a one page, limited character format can be quite a challenge even to the most seasoned writers. I was introduced to the Enlisted Performance Report (EPR) while attending Airman Leadership School (ALS). An EPR is the Air Force form that a supervisor must use to write about their subordinates performance based on his or her accomplishments or discretions throughout a yearly cycle. I was faced with the daunting task of writing about my Airman, who performed above and beyond the standard, with only one exception. Frankly, he was the best Airman in the squadron, yet he managed to get into a fight downtown when somebody made a negative comment about a commemorating tattoo on his arm honoring his deceased sister. My job was to use my writing abilities, along with the crucial mentoring from my supervisor, to write this Airmans EPR. I feared that I would write the report and it would drastically affect his promotion selection and overall career. Once I finalized the report, I rated him at a higher than average mark, with a single markdown (allowing him to be eligible for promotion). I learned an honest assessment that is composed with clear intentions, could be made without a negative career-ending affect. I now try and use what I learned through writing reports with honesty and accuracy in everyday life. Through the mentoring from my ALS instructors and my supervisor, my writing literacy

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has benefited greatly compared to my prior-military life. Through effective and constructive mentoring from my colleagues during my young Airman days, I was able to have the opportunities and experiences required to grow my literacy.