Veterans Oral Histories Project
At California University of Pennsylvania
Veteran: Boardley, William J.
Interviewer: Faulk, Christopher D.
Date of Interview: May 22, 2005
Location: California University of PA, California, PA
Transcriber: Donna Hoak
Faulk: Good Afternoon I am Chris Faulk from Washington High School in Washington
Pennsylvania. It is Sunday May 22nd and I would like to introduce Brigadier General
William John Boardley of the 171st Air refueling wing. I will be interviewing him at his
home today in Avella, PA. So how are you today?
Boardley: I am fine how about yourself?
Faulk: I am pretty good thank you. Ok, start, what war were you in and what branch of
the service are you in?
Boardley: I was in the Gulf war when I was in the air force for the first six years of the
military I was in the United States air force and I got out in 1978 and I joined the
Pennsylvania Air National Guard and I have been in that unit until the present and until
recently in March of 2003 I participated in Operation Iraq Freedom.
Faulk: Now you’re a Brigadier General?
Boardley: Yes.
Faulk: As a Brigadier General what are some of your duties?
Boardley: Well my responsibility overall is to make sure the unit is trained, equipped,
organized in order to do their mission whatever, whenever our country calls upon us to go
anywhere on a moments notice throughout the world and I ensure our people have the
capabilities to do what tasks (inaudible)
Faulk: Now you said throughout the world, where all have you traveled since being in
the service?
Boardley: Well that’s playing on my memory here but obviously the far west Pacifica,
Japan, Korea, I was in Southwest Asia, I’ve been all over Europe, South America, the
countries are almost to numerous to mention (inaudible)
Faulk: So you basically been just about everywhere?
Boardley: Pretty much.
Faulk: So how did you come to join the arm forces?
Boardley: Well it’s an interesting story, one of the people to learn from it was back in
college, it was 1970 this is before you’ll remember but they had the draft naturally they
instituted the draft the year I was in college and on national television pictured the
birthdates out on TV to determine what your number was going to be as far as draft
eligibility was concerned well it just so happened to be that the 5th number they pulled
out was 18 October which is my birthday so my draft number being number five at the
time I didn’t have any knowledge or interest in the military but since I knew eventually
when I graduated from college or if I quit college I was probably going to be serving I
decided to start looking into opportunities that were available in the military. After
pursuing that knowledge I decided that I was going to go into the military I would want
to go in as an officer and stay in college and get my degree and do so that is what I ended
up doing.
Faulk: What made you choose the air force though?
Boardley: Well to be quite candid I thought at that time I would probably end up going
to Vietnam because I was in that peer group of folks and I thought if I was going to go to
Vietnam I would rather fly over there as opposed to being on the ground.
Faulk: Yeah, that is probably a good idea. Where were you living at the time?
Boardley: I was a college student at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. I was a
Washington native still and I was going to college at that time.
Faulk: So do you recall your first several days in the service once you went into training?
What was that like?
Boardley: Well it’s like anyone who has ever been in basic training you can relate to it
your away from home and they start you out bright and early in the morning with
trumpets blowing and getting you going all the sudden your life your schedule and your
activities are not your own. Your being directed and told everything that you’ll do I was
in office candidate school I went in directly after graduating from college so for 13 weeks
I was in concentrated training to be an officer.
Faulk: Did you, you said being away from home, did you miss your family and friends?
Boardley: Well sure you were away from your entire peer group and they provide you
with your support and your kind of on your own you meet new friends but you have to be
able to adapt into your new environment but that was probably one of the biggest
challenges and even though I have been away to college and different things like that it
was kind of on my terms not somebody else’s terms.
Faulk: Okay, so let’s go to the Persian Gulf, you were flying refueling planes?
Boardley: Well actually I am a navigator that is primarily my job, during the Gulf War I
was picked to be a staff planner and I planned the missions that our folks would fly
against the Iraqi’s I actually went to Riad in Saudi Arabia and got classified briefings and
was sworn to secrecy and never talked about it and I probably forgotten all about it
anyway, I won’t tell any secrets in this conversation, we had to plan all the air tracks and
route to and from in order for our folks to be able to provide refuelings for the fighters
and bombers going in country and out of country.
Faulk: So you planned missions for…
Boardley: Our unit.
Faulk: For your unit, did you actually ever fly a mission?
Boardley: I forget how many but I flew enough missions that I got an air medal most of
the folks in our organization.
Faulk: I heard you have several medals?
Boardley: I have about 22 ribbons.
Faulk: Wow. So on your missions; you were in a sense above the war when you were
flying? What was that like being up in the air?
Boardley: Well I tell you it one of the things the air force tries to do is what we call air
solventry we want to be in charge of the air space and for a while anytime you go into a
battle like that you don’t know if you have complete dominance and so the mission
changed rapidly on us cause we got air dominance pretty quick in the gulf war. We got
air dominance because we had so many air force and allied air planes at one time we had
over two thousand airplanes in the air flying against the Iraqi’s it would rapidly change
from being worried about being shot down from the Iraqi’s to having a mid air collision
with one of our own airplanes because we had so many doing the missions and that was
one of our biggest challenges to deconflict airspace for our airplanes entering and exiting
the airspace the problems you run into is when you have weather and if you can’t find the
weather you have to change your altitude and start changing the missions around because
of those types of things it gets to be even more challenging to make sure that you don’t
have an accident.
Faulk: Were there ever any casualties in your particular units?
Boardley: We didn’t have any casualties, we had some post-mid air collisions where we
actually had if you can believe this in the Gulf War a Fed-Ex airplane flying through our
particular part of the area (inaudible) track that came close to hitting one of our airplanes,
but that is as close as we came to actually having a casualty as far as flying is concerned.
Faulk: So while you were in the Persian Gulf how did you stay in contact with your
family?
Boardley: It was not like this day and age of email and almost instantaneous
communication, when I was gone my wife could probably tell you better than I, left and it
was probably three weeks before I even talked to her again, you could write letters and
the mail was very slow and sometimes it would take two to three weeks before the mail
would catch up. But once we got established in a particular location we did have rights to
make phone calls back about once a week we’d make a phone call back.
Faulk: So while you were away from home again, being in war, there must be pressures
that you have thinking about your men thinking about… what did you feel did you feel
any pressures, stress in missions?
Boardley: There’s lots of concerns that goes with the whole game when we got into the
gulf war, for example you talk about stress we had a briefing from a team that came in
from higher headquarters that talked about the missions we were going to fly, the tanker
is what we call a high value asset we don’t in to the actual combat zone area where they
are shooting at you we’re supposed to be further away because the asset is we get gas to
airplanes coming in and coming out so that they can get back to their original destinations
other wise the logistics training (inaudible) to support the missions is thrown out. We had
a lot of the challenges of this war was they were putting us closer to the theater then they
did in the past and they actually briefed us that look around the room and that twenty
percent of the people in this room will not come back. They were wrong. Every one of
the people in that room came back. That’s stress you know you go into it thinking wow,
this is for real.
Faulk: Have you become more worried?
Boardley: It made people pay attention when briefings were given, intelligence briefings,
briefings on the mission whatever that may be people listened, and they do their
homework and we prepared the best we could and every time we would go up we’d have
a (inaudible) flight, and we’d change the (inaudible) flight based on the intelligence
because there may be some SAMS out there we’d have to divert and what have you. We
were lucky, we were always lucky we also worked hard like I said we were able to bring
everybody home safe. That’s stress related. There is concern making sure as a planner
that the mission I gave to the crew that went out to fly that they had everything in their
favor to be able to successfully complete the mission and come back safe.
Faulk: So even though your unit was never actually involved with the combat their
mission was mission was every bit as vital as the guys actually flying over the combat
zones.
Boardley: Well we were our (inaudible) tracks I guess I can say now were right on the
border of Iraq and actually you may you won’t remember your father might remember
when airplanes from Bagdad were flying to other countries they were being intercepted
by fighters now our tankers were going in county before those fighters could get them the
legs to intercept those airplanes flying out of Iraq. So our tankers were all on the borders
of Iraq fully, but as the war progressed they started going into the theaters as well.
Something as I said being a high valued asset piece of equipment they didn’t do in past
wars.
Faulk: So did you or any of your men or your friends did you guys have any good luck
charms before you took off? Did you carry anything with you?
Boardley: I think that most of us had pictures of our families…
Faulk: Is that common?
Boardley: Pretty common.
Faulk: So how did you guys entertain yourselves on the ground? Or was there even time
to entertain yourselves?
Boardley: Yes there were times at the beginning of the war that we flew so many sorties
that the crew would fly they would go in to crew rest so they could rest until the next
mission and that was a constant thing they would just have enough time to get on the
ground get something to eat, sleep and get ready to go again. Now as the war started to
wind down there were fewer and fewer sorties you did have to have something to keep
you busy and you know people did lots of things, exercise, we had a volley ball court
there and you’d play in the sand and that was a big form of activity trying to keep
yourself in shape, eating got to be the high light of the day for a lot of people, a lot of
people gain a lot of weight from the Gulf war if you can believe that. You’d spend time
writing letters, back in those days you’d get cassette tapes from home and send cassette
tapes back we’d tape recording and stuff like that, and we had CNN TV program we’d all
gather around this big room like a dining area where we could all watch the news
together and we would talk about the war and different things like that.
Faulk: When you were over seas did you ever miss a holiday… I mean Persian Gulf did
you ever miss a holiday. Christmas?
Boardley: Actually when we left for the Gulf War we started leaving right after
Christmas the 26th of December and we took off out of here I will never forget when I
was flying on New Years Eve, I was flying over Portugal on New Years Eve you could
look down and see fireworks all over the place that was something I will never forget.
Faulk: Was that tough to be away from your family and friends from home? Did you get
to celebrate the holidays with them?
Boardley: That does happen and I can tell you that any body that serves in the military
any amount of time has missed a wedding or a birth of somebody in the family or a
birthday, anniversary what ever it may be, I had a friend when we left to go to the Gulf
War, his wife was due in six days and two weeks after we left he was a father and he
wasn’t there for the birth he was mobilized and had to go to the war. So people who serve
in the military make a lot of sacrifices like that they won’t be there for special occasions
all the time.
Faulk: So while you were in Iraq, you said you traveled and were always moving around,
at least always moving around, what major engagements were you in while you were in
the Persian Gulf?
Boardley: Well the major engagements you’re talking about is the actual Operation
Desert Storm. Well we were engaged from the very first night of the war. Every mission
we flew we were engaged in we were flying, we actually operated out of Dubai United
Emirates and we would fly our missions all the way up to the Iraqi border offer our gas
and like I said it could be a pre strike or a post strike, pre strike meaning you would give
the gas to the bomber or fighter who was going to drop bombs or hit a target and then
another one of our tankers would go up and do what is called a post strike where after he
dropped his bombs he’d get out of there (inaudible) because he was avoiding SAMS or
what have you, so he would be looking for the tanker the tanker would be there post
strike to give him the gas in order to get them back to their original departure base. So we
did that everyday of the war.
Faulk: From the men that you met from your time in the service have you stayed in touch
with many of them over the years?
Boardley: That was the first six years of the air force I have been at Pittsburgh
International Airport in the National Guard since 1978 so I see a lot of the folks who have
served as long as I have I still see them and a lot of the retirees they come around a lot we
stay in touch with each other there is a bond that is hard to describe to the average person
but periodically we will get together just to tell war stories. To see how the families are
doing and what’s changed in their lives and what have you.
Faulk: So what have you been doing lately in the service have there been any new
programs that have been going on or anything that is new in the service?
Boardley: Well we do, it’s hard to say I’ve been a wake commander here in the 171st for
the last ten years so pretty much everything I do is responsible for running the wing, and
my realm of responsibility is now branched out to that I am not only responsible for
making sure people are trained to go to war but no only have the right facilities and
equipment a lot of my responsibilities have gone out in to making sure our buildings have
been modernized in order to support the people when they come out to do their training.
We just went though a conversion where we have an airplane that is over forty years old,
older than you we have the modern version that has the newer engines on it. Makes it
now compliant for environmental issues as well as it is more efficient for burning fuel we
could fly longer, its like the equivalent of having an extra engine on the airplane
compared to what we used to have, so we can fly further we can offer more fuel so it is
my responsibility to get that type of equipment and that type of facilities in order for the
unit to be better able to meet the mission if called upon, like I said I have people that
work for me that are now the specialist I have a guy that is in charge of the flying
operations and reports to me about the training and what have you, and a person logistics
commander that’s responsible for the maintenance of the airplane and he reports to me
and I have a support group commander who reports to me and actually this is a lady the
first female in the state of Pennsylvania to actually had that kind of position but she is
responsible for the security forces on our base and military personnel (inaudible) the
people who keep our records straight and what have you, and I have a financial guy that
reports to me for the budget of the base as well as expenditures to operate the base we
have a 28 million dollar payroll for the people we have over there when you count all the
construction and everything we do you’ve probably seen some of the stuff on the news
lately about some of the (inaudible) and the bases closing and talk about the economic
impact the unit has and the economic impact last year for Southwestern Pennsylvania was
62 million dollars, so that is the kind of stuff I am involved with now, so I have moved up
the ladder from being a navigator flying missions, preparing missions to now to
overseeing the total operation.
Faulk: So what are your future plans, you’re planning on retiring?
Boardley: Yes, anytime from now to the next few years I am planning on retiring.
Faulk: What do you think you’re going to do after that?
Boardley: I haven’t thought that far, I have been in the military all my life so like when I
go when I graduated from college in 1972 in August of 72, September of 72, I was in the
air force so I don’t know another life besides the military after I got out of college so I am
not going to rush into anything obviously but I will have to keep my options opened and I
will always stay busy the type of job I had I not one of those couch potatoes who can sit
and do nothing…
Faulk: Always have to be doing something….
Boardley: Exactly.
Faulk: One more question about your medals… What was the biggest award that you
have been presented?
Boardley: That is hard to say, when you look at a lot of them you earned with your peers
you take a lot of pride in the fact you got the same medals they did sometimes you’ll get
a medal that they didn’t but you go back and realize that you got that because of what
some body else did. I have a legion of merits which is fairly high medal but I got the
legion of merits because I am the commander of 1400 what I call superstars, I wear a star
on my shoulder because I have 1400 superstars in my unit because they do all these
wonderful things but because I am the commander I get recognized for it. I go back, I got
a bronze star during the gulf war but I look around at so many other people that I served
with that as far as I am concerned they deserve the bronze star (inaudible) so I guess what
I really appreciate about all those medals is the opportunity to serve with such good
people they are selfless they sacrifice they do wonders for the country that people don’t
recognize the sacrifices that they make, that’s my satisfaction I’ve earned those while I
was working with those folks.
Faulk: So if you had to go back to September of 72 when you first joined the service up
to the present day would you do it all again if you had to?
Boardley: Oh you bet, I go back to those time frames when people were dodging the
draft some were going to Canada some were joining different units because of the draft
opportunities what have you, I’ll be honest I didn’t know, I didn’t know anything about
the military I didn’t know what I was getting into. It just tells you there’s a lesson in life
when you’re given a couple paths it takes some time, the path you take may not be one
you desired to take but when you go out and try to do your best at it, it may work out and
if you would have told me back in 1972 that I be a brigadier general I would have smiled
at you and said yeah right. So, a lesson is always just do your best and see what happens.
Faulk: So it sounds like you have had quite and extraordinary military career been all
around the world seen lots of things I would like to thank you very much for letting me
interview you and good luck with the rest of your career.
Boardley: Thank you.