V e t e r a n s O r a l H i i s t o r i i e s P r o j e c t
A t C a l i i f o r n i i a U n i i v e r s i t y o f P e n n s y l v a n i i a
Veteran: Slaven, Sandra Louise
Interviewer: Baines, Brittany
Date of Interview: June 5, 2005
Location: Washington, PA
Transcriber: Amanda Lentz
Baines: Today’s date is June 5, 2005 and the interview is being taken place at my home in Washington, PA. I’m interviewing my Aunt Sandy, Sandy Slaven to be exact. Her birth date is January 3, 1963. I and she are the only ones attending this interview. I will be running the camera. She has served in Operation Desert Storm also known as the
Persian Gulf. She was a captain at that time and she served in a tiny country called United
Arab Emirates. Ok, we’re going to jog your memory a little bit. Were you drafted or did you enlist?
Slaven: I enlisted in the Pennsylvania Air National Guard. After my first year of college, it was a great opportunity to make money for school and that’s basically why I enlisted was for all the educational benefits.
Baines: Ok. Where were you living at that time?
Slaven: I was living right in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania but I was going to Indiana
University of Pennsylvania.
Baines: And why did you join?
Slaven: I joined for the educational benefits and actually some of my friends joined. So I thought wow if they can do it, this is a great opportunity for me too.
Baines: And why did you pick the service branch that you joined?
Slaven: The Pennsylvania Air National Guard has a unit right in Pittsburgh. They fly
Kasey 135 E’s which are mid-air refueling aircrafts and it was basically just for the location.
Baines: Do you recall your first days in the service?

Slaven: Yea I do. When I enlisted, before I went to basic training, there was probably about a six month time period between the two and I thought Oh my goodness this is very boring what did I get myself into?
Baines: Tell me about your boot camp or training experiences.
Slaven: Yea, that was basic training and that was a real treat. No not really. I think everybody has their different experiences in basic training. But after my freshman year in college, that summer is when I went to basic training and I just wasn’t used to people telling me what to do and when to do it. So it was a big adjustment, basic training.
Baines: Do you remember any of your instructors like personally or do you recall them?
Slaven: Yes, I do. I don’t think that anybody who has gone through basic training will forget their instructors. I had a… he was a big guy, probably about 6 feet, 6’5 or at least he seemed 6’5 to me, with big broad shoulders, very short blonde hair, and glasses that were so thick like at the end of a pop bottle glasses that made his eyes look huge. So when he was in my face yelling, he was very very scary and I wasn’t used to that. So when he swore that really made me feel uncomfortable and scared.
Baines: How did you get through this?
Slaven: This is a funny story. I had a friend in high school who had gone through basic training the year before and I just kept thinking if he made it through I can make it through. So that’s how I got through it. There is very good advice that somebody gave me before I left for basic training. And that was just, always do your best because nobody can ask more from you than that. So I just always did my best in everything and made it through just fine.
Baines: Ok, Your experiences now. Which war did you serve in?
Slaven: I served in Operation Desert Storm. Now when Operation Desert Shield came about our unit was activated and deployed but I wasn’t part of that deploying package.
My job was in public affairs. I was the keep of public affairs at our base, but it wasn’t a deployable position yet, at that time. But as desert shield moved on to desert storm, when we actually declared war and attacked Iraq is when I was activated and then deployed. So being deployed as a single person was unique in itself. Because I was used to deploying with our entire unit, but I had to get from Pittsburgh over to the U.A.E. which at that time was classified information and I had to do that myself. So it was a long journey. I took a commercial airline from Pittsburgh to Philadelphia and then a brown transportation which just means taxi from Philadelphia to Dover Air force base in Delaware and from there I flew a C-141 and we stopped in Spain to refuel and I have to share that experience because after that long journey, there was really no rest in between so it was just one long slew of hours and once we got into Spain to do our refueling, everybody was hot and smelly cause the airplane was just packed, the cargo and the people. It was a long flight and the USO set up a big tent for transient people to stay when they were waiting for their

airplanes to go through maintenance and get refueled. So walking into that tent was like
“LAAA,” the beams were shining down into the tent because they had things like toothbrushes and toothpaste and washcloths that you could wash your face and it was just such a refreshing sight. I will never forget that.
Baines: Ok, so you remember arriving and all that. What was your job assignment whenever you got there?
Slaven: When I got there, my job assignment was public affairs officer and I knew that before going cause that’s what I trained to do. What I had to do was set up some kind of communication device for our people that were deployed in that area but also keep communications going with our unit back at home because our commander was still back at home. He had all these airplanes deployed and he wasn’t there with them. So it was my job to keep him informed of what was going on in our unit. I also had to publish a weekly newsletter but the biggest job was to escort international media because they wanted to know what was going on in the war and what we were doing. And of course we were flying the KC135E which was a mid-air refueling mission and we refueled a lot of airplanes that were actually in combat, a lot of the fighters, a lot of F16s, and we took media up on flights with us every so often so they could take pictures. You know they wanted to write articles about what was going on.
Baines: Did you actually see a lot of the combat or were you more on the planes and behind it?
Slaven: Yea. They keep our planes pretty far away from combat because if you think about a mid-air refueler. We’re actually a Bowing 707 and we carry a lot of fuel because were dishing off fuel up in the air unto different aircrafts. So we’re just a big flying gas station up in the sky. So our airplanes are kept pretty far away from the fighting just to keep all that fuel safe.
Baines: There weren’t very many casualties in your unit then or…
Slaven: No, not in our unit, not in the air national guard. I think a lot of the ground units in the army, in the army guard; they see a lot more combat then the air guard does. We had a few air emergencies like we had a fire on the airplane once but really nobody got hurt. There wasn’t any damage.
Baines: Tell me about a couple of your most memorable experiences.
Slaven: Um, my memorable experiences…Well, we lived with an active duty air force so you had the air national guard, and if you think about the active duty air force as opposed to the, there’s a lot of differences. One, in the air force they follow the regulations very strictly like they’re to the book. In the guard, its not that we don’t follow regulations but a lot of things slide and in the guard, we’ve worked with these people for a long time because we don’t move from base to base. When you enlist and join a unit you are probably with that unit throughout your entire career 20-25 years. In the air force your

not with the same people all the time, you move every couple of years so just having to live with and deal with an active duty unit that was an interesting situation. Because our guard members just aren’t used to going by the book all the time so a lot of our troops would get in trouble doing things. One interesting situation because my job was to handle the media, we had media on our base or installation where we were staying and we called it sacs city because we were the strategic air command at the time and that’s where all of our tents were. Well one of our guys came out and saw the news cameras and though it would be very cool to moon them. So we had to deal with that situation and you know he didn’t really care but the active duty commander really did care. So that was a tricky situation. Just showing the international media around was just fun and a great experience. I didn’t speak all the different languages they did and there was one Italian news crew from Italy that probably took more pictures of me then they did of the airplanes and I did get a little “goose” from one of the Italian reporters which was interesting which I wasn’t used to at the time but I guess that’s very prevalent in there culture.
Baines: Where you a prisoner of war?
Slaven: No, we were so far behind the lines. We did fly; I wasn’t with them, our air crew all the time. It only took a flight, maybe once a week or once every two weeks but we did have to fly into combat airspace but no, I wasn’t a prisoner of war nor anybody that I was deployed with.
Baines: Were you awarded any medals or citations?
Slaven: Yea, yea. Just for being deployed and being involved in the Persian Gulf War. I did get a medal and a citation for that but probably the most, the award I was most proud of was, I got the Pennsylvania Air National Guard Woman of the year for my role as public affairs officer in the situation.
Baines: Ok, about your life. How did you stay in touch with your family?
Slaven: You know fortunately we had email capability and also the fax machine was set up so if family members or even my family members needed to get in touch with anyone, they would call out unit here in Pittsburgh so you know either a fax or an email would be sent to our unit.
Baines: Ok. What was the food like?
Slaven: When we first got there, we had to eat the MRES, meals ready to eat, and I didn’t really care for those much at all. I think I just had the peanut butter and the cheese crackers out of those. However, some people really liked those. You know they are so full of calories that some people gained weight right away. After that, a cafeteria and a dining hall was set up and the food was catered and the food was very, very good. You know In the United Arab Emirates they really did take care of us well.

Baines: Did you have plenty of supplies there?
Slaven: We did. We were very, very fortunate because our mission is critical to get the fighters into the contact zone and back home again. Our mission is critical and they do take care of us so we really had whatever supply’s we needed.
Baines: Did you feel any pressure or stress?
Slaven: They were long work days. No days off. You know you worked 24/7 and so because of those long work days. You do get fatigued somewhat and some stress does occur.
Baines: Was there something special you did for good luck?
Slaven: Me personally, well almost everybody went to church services every Sunday and our Chaplin was with us, so you know he was around. He walked around just to make sure everybody was doing ok. So I would just say praying is what everyone did for luck.
Baines: How did people entertain themselves?
Slaven: There was a nice gym facility so people did workout. There was a running track available so people ran, not in the heat of the afternoon but at night or in the evenings.
We had a tent set up where there were television monitors with VCRS so you know you could watch movies every night for a few hours if you had the time off. But it was fun because we were staying like I said before with an active duty unit so my big entertainment was watching volleyball. We had the young guys from the active duty, they were pilots, and it was an F-16 unit we were staying with. They would play our air national guard guys in volleyball. I don’t know they had a game every other day or so.
But it was really fun to watch cause the active duty unit guys were young and slim and trim and looked really good and our guard guys were old with beer bellies and trying to hang with those young pilots on the other side. I found that to be quite entertaining.
Baines: What did you do when on leave?
Slaven: Once the war was over, after the actual cease fire, we did have some time off before we were deployed back home and groups of use would go into Dubai, that’s where we were in the UAE. We were stationed at Dubai; in fact our planes were housed right at the Dubai international airport. So we had the opportunity to go into the city and shop and go to the beach and do what you do when you’re on a little mini vacation. So I have to say it was a fabulous experience once we obtained the cease fire.
Baines: Where did you travel while in the service?
Slaven: My whole career in the service. I had some wonderful opportunities. I got to go to Japan for a couple of weeks and this was while I was in the public affairs officer position. So I went to Japan for a couple of weeks. So again escorting the media on out

airplane which you know was always fun to brag and explain what we did to the media;
Spain a couple of times, England, Hawaii a few times, so it was a great, great traveling opportunity.
Baines: Do you recall any particular humorous or unusual event?
Slaven: There were always humorous and unusual events. Like I said, after the cease fire we had the opportunity to go into Dubai to spend a couple of days in the city and they really didn’t want the females, the women to travel to Dubai by themselves or together, they really wanted you to travel in large groups. It was a lot safer that way. But a friend, really wanted to go buy a book at a bookstore. In fact, we ordered the holy Koran; we ordered it with an English version to go along with the other version. So we wanted to pick those up at the bookstore so a friend of mine went with me and we were driving our little tiny cars into the city of Dubai and you could just picture the Middle Eastern people in their garb and their open markets and the streets were just packed because it was an open market so it was really hard to get around and my friend who I was with, she was a navigator in our airplanes, so she was navigating in the car also but she spotted somebody actually having a seizure, some kind of epileptic attack along the road and it was a Arab person and you know, superwoman that she is said stop the car and jumped out and went over to help him and he was with another fella. She picked him up and put him in the backseat of our car and said get to a hospital. So there was somebody with us to tell us how to get to the hospital. So we were on our way to the hospital and I was beeping my horn, trying to get through the crowd of people that were out on the streets in the open market. Fortunately, there was a person from Pakistan that knew how to speak English so he was translating and he saw this whole thing happen and he got in the car too. It was a small car with all of these people in it, very hot and we needed to crack the windows cause it was very, very stuffy and I’m beeping the horn. Finally got to a hospital, they were all praying to Ala in the backseat and we got to a hospital and the person that had the seizure he was actually unconscious but came to. And when he did he found himself in a car with two American women driving so you could tell that he was in you know utter shock. But we did get him to a hospital and I think it was his uncle or something or cousin that was with him took care of everything and we just dropped him off and the fella from Pakistan got us to the bookstore where we needed to go so everything worked out. It was an interesting situation.
Baines: What were some of the pranks you or others pulled?
Slaven: That was fun because you do ya know have to hang out together so we did play foolish kid pranks on each other, like leave rubber snakes laying around or little toy scorpions, things like that. Ya put a toy scorpion in someone’s boot. I know it’s not very nice but yea I guess that’s what people do when they are hanging out together. The tent city that we built, that was fun too, because people would put up prank signs in their yard like you won yard of the month, and ya know it wasn’t a yard at all, it was a plot of sand and we had little road signs that said so many miles to Pittsburgh and so many miles to
New York City. It was just I guess when you’re hanging out with a lot of people you make any situation as fun as possible.

Baines: Do you have photographs?
Slaven: Yea, I did. I took a lot of photographs actually that was part of my job too. We didn’t deploy a photographer so being chief of public affairs, photography was part of my job. So I took ya know a ton of photographs and I got them developed there at Dubai through the USO. I would visit the USO office and they would get my photographs developed for me. So I did that for our troops too. If anybody had film that needed to be developed they just gave it to me and I gave it to the USO. And that was all taken care of, that was very nice. But me personally I put together a scrapbook and so I did a lot of journaling with pictures too.
Baines: Who are the people throughout your photographs?
Slaven: Ya know all of the people that I was deployed with. The active duty, people I worked with, another public affairs officer who was from the active duty unit, and people from my unit. We were close before being deployed together and we remained close afterwards.
Baines: What do you think of the officers or fellow soldiers?
Slaven: That was interesting. Because you know in the guard we’ve never looked at rank as a big issue. Officers aren’t always separated from enlisted folk when you’re in the guard. But because we were staying with an active duty unit, rank became very important. Officers were separated from enlisted personnel, we had a separate dining facility, and we had separate areas on the base and growing up in the guard. I didn’t really care for it because I had a lot of really good friends that were enlisted. It was hard for me to be separated. I think I would have rather just stayed with them in their tent.
Baines: Did you keep a personal diary?
Slaven: I did jot notes down, but everything went into my scrapbook afterwards, when I put a scrapbook together. A friend of our kept an illustrated journal or diary and I used a lot of pictures from his diary in my monthly newsletter when I came back to our unit.
Baines: Ok, after your service, do you recall the day your service ended?
Slaven: I spent 21 years in the air national guard and yea, I do recall the day that it ended, my last day. It was a fun day. We had a little ceremony and a retirement party. It was very special.
Baines: Where were you?
Slaven: In Pittsburgh, I stayed at the PA air national guard base in Pittsburgh. I stayed there for 21 years that was my entire career.
Baines: What did you do in the days and weeks afterwards?

Slaven: After being deployed for operation desert storm I stayed on active duty for the whole next year right in Pittsburgh, so it was just a regular job. Ya know, but I just went into our unit everyday, continued to do public affairs things and also some family support because we still had people deployed other places around the world. So I headed up a family supports group.
Baines: Did you work or go back to school?
Slaven: After my tour was over, that’s when I got a job teaching. And I’ve been a school teacher ever since.
Baines: Did you make any close friendships while in the service?
Slaven: Yes, Yes most definitely. I think when you go through these kinds of experiences with somebody, it’s a true bonding. And you never forget it. You know, even if I don’t see one of my friends that I made for years, when we do get together it’s like there is no time between us and we just pick up where we left off. And have a good time.
Baines: Did you join a Veterans organization?
Slaven: I never joined a veteran’s organization but I do stay in touch with people in my unit.
Baines: Was you education supported by the GI bill?
Slaven: Not particularly the GI bill. But the Air National Guard certainly did help with educational benefits. They paid a percentage back to all of my student loans and just the money that I made while I was deployed helped me pay off my student loans right away.
So the reason I enlisted was for educational benefits and along the way you become very, very patriotic. So you really are there to serve your country and by the end, they ended up paying for all of my college education.
Baines: Did your military experience influence your thinking about war or about the military in general?
Slaven: Yes it most definitely has. You know being a teacher, teachers tend to think about things one way, I hate to use the left and right spectrum but teacher seem to be very, very on the left. You know serving in the military; you definitely have a different perspective about life and the world, politics and the stability in the world. So I think that
I’m very, very moderate and I can definitely see both sides of the spectrum. And it’s gotten me into trouble sometimes at school but you know I do like to voice my opinion.
Baines: And to end this how did your service and experiences affect your life?
Slaven: I would say discipline and taking charge and leadership. Those are definitely, definitely aspects you learn through the military. A lot of discipline on how to act and

respect, learning how to respect others thought, being able to use other peoples strengths, leadership qualities knowing when to take the initiative, knowing just when to do something, and when to ask permission to do it and also probably perspective, you know understanding a perspective of world affairs.
Baines: Ok, well thank you for your participation and cooperation in this interview.
Slaven: It was fabulous. Thank you Brittany.