Aging warriors, new war: Guard unit bound for Iraq
By Karen Blakeman
Advertiser Staff Writer
Jack Sharkey, a Chinook pilot with the Army National Guard, was ready to retire when he learned his unit was going to Iraq.
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"I had to get a waiver," said Sharkey, a Vietnam veteran who will be 61 next month.
Chief Warrant Officers Jack Sharkey, 61, left, and Oliver Kaloi, 55, have been flying together for more than 20 years. As Chinook pilots with the Hawai'i Army National Guard, they are likely to be sent to Iraq early this year.
The chief warrant officer said it didn't feel right to leave the younger men and women and take his experience — which dates to the mid-1960s — with him. "I couldn't walk away," he said.
"I extended."
Nearly 200 members of the Hawai'i National Guard's Company C, 193rd Aviation, were placed on active-duty service this week in anticipation of deployment to Iraq early this year.
It will be the largest unit of Hawai'i Army guardsmen to be deployed since Vietnam.
At Wheeler Army Airfield yesterday, Capt. Joe Laurel, Company C commander, said veterans such as Sharkey, a retired Aloha Airlines
pilot, seem to be more commonplace in guard units than among regular Army units, and are almost guaranteed to have served longer together.
"At any particular time, I can look at the guy to my right or the guy to my left and say I've flown with him for 10 years," Laurel said.
The unit's first sergeant, Sonny Gollero, is also a Vietnam vet, as is Chief Warrant Officer Oliver Kaloi, another Chinook pilot.
"Jack and Oli have been flying together for more than 20 years," Laurel said. Sometimes, he said, the men pass along flying tips to him from military experiences that sound like they took place before he was born.
"I guess I went to war and never stopped," said Kaloi, a former Honolulu police officer.
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Sharkey said he joined the military because he loved to fly. Kaloi said that part came later for him.
Spc. Roxanne Shim, a CH-47 crew chief, moved up her wedding date several months after learning she would be deployed.
"I was a wild kid," Kaloi said.
He said he joined to keep himself out of trouble, afraid he'd end up in jail. He hadn't thought of flying until they tested him in basic training and told him he was qualified. After that, he was hooked.
The two men love to talk about flying. They joke about their ages — Kaloi is 55.
"My kids said, 'You're too old, Dad,'" Kaloi said. "I said, 'Oh yeah? Well let's go out and run five miles.'"
The two grow quieter when asked how the young people going with them to Iraq are likely to be changed by the experience. They think, begin to respond and then revert back to form.
"They're going to learn real fear," Kaloi said. "I learned how mortal I was.
"But you learn not to dwell on the dark side," he said, patting the helicopter behind him. "When you come back with bullet holes, you take a picture of the bullet holes."
He grinned up at the Chinook as if posing for a picture, then noticed a young officer sitting in the pilot's seat.
"Don't touch anything, Lieutenant," he said.
"When they come back," Sharkey said, "they'll be more mature. They'll be more aware of the political implications of things that happen. They'll be more interested in world events. ...
"More mature," he said. "Listen to me — getting ready to run off and do this crazy kid thing."
Both men have grown children. Sharkey said he was glad to go, rather than watch his kids go.
"I wouldn't like that," he said.
"I would worry."
Both men said their families were supportive of their decision to stay in the Guard and go to Iraq, but Sharkey said his daughter in the Air Force was particularly so.
"She understands," he said. "She accepts it."
The status of women in the military has changed a lot since the Vietnam era, the men said.
"I won't even repeat the things we used to say in those days," Kaloi said. "Now its completely different. It's not an issue, and I've learned not to be threatened anymore."
"I can't see how it makes any difference in how a service operates," Sharkey said.
Women have been so much a part of the military over the years, they said, they probably were the only men in the unit who remembered things were different once.
Spc. Roxanne Shim, a 28-year-old Chinook crew chief, is one of the women who will be going to Iraq with Company C. She said she, like the men in Charlie Company, will rely on Sharkey and Kaloi for their experience and leadership.
A Big Island resident from Ka'u, Shim moved up her wedding date several months after hearing she would be deployed. She married Terrence Javair of the Big Island on Dec. 12.
"I was a single parent," she said. "I wanted to make sure my family was taken care of."
She and her husband don't talk about the dangers she is likely to encounter in Iraq, she said. Her daughter, 11-year-old Staysha, has no delusions about what her mother could encounter.
"She watches the news closer than I do," Shim said.
Staysha, reached at her grandparents' house in Ka'u last night, said her mother's deployment made her sad.
"I love her," she said. "My whole family misses her. I pray every night that God watches over her and brings her safely back to us."
Company C begins training for deployment this morning. Their active-duty time is likely to last 18 months, about a year of it in Iraq.
Reach Karen Blakeman at 535-2430 or kblakeman@honoluluadvertiser.com.
