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Scott's Air Guard unit on duty in southern France

ISTRES, France (USTCNS) --- Master Sgt. Bob Rizzo's overseas travel book looks glamorous to the outsider, showing repeat trips to Turkey, Germany, Iceland and France.

But these are just typical tours of duty to Rizzo and members of the Air National Guard. And now he and his Illinois unit from Scott Air Force Base are finishing up a two-week tour of duty at Istres, home since 1994 to a small U.S. Air Force detachment located on a French air force base less than 100 kilometers from the French Riviera.

For the 126th Air Refueling Wing and its KC-135 tankers, it's almost business as usual -- refueling military airplanes. Only instead of taking off over the fields of mid-America, their flight path takes them over the Mediterranean and Adriatic Seas to gas up U.S. and NATO fighter planes patrolling the skies over the Balkans.

"It's not as routine as some may think," said Rizzo, a "boomer," the one who operates the extension boom that pumps the gas into the fighters. "These are operational missions. They really need that fuel; otherwise they have to abort or divert somewhere else."

This deployment is one of many the Air Guard has absorbed over the past 10 years as the Air Force cut its active duty forces while taking on more taskings. The Guard units that deploy here support a larger Balkan patrol mission called Operation Joint Forge. The 126th flies three or four missions a day in the KC-135 Stratotanker, which can carry up to 200,000 pounds of fuel and gas up a handful of fighter planes.

The Guard's 17 refueling units take turns pulling two-week rotational duty at Istres; Keflavik, Iceland; and Incirlik Air Base, Turkey, where they refuel U.S. and British aircraft that enforce the no-fly zone over Northern Iraq. The Guard units also alternate two tanker aircraft at a NATO base in Geilenkirchen, Germany, to support the E-3 Sentry aircraft, the air battle command and control plane that continually monitors Europe.

And the change in mission location sharpens the skills.

"Back home, we do a lot of Guard lifts and fighter
drags," said Rizzo, O'Fallon resident and full-time Guard
member for 12 years with more than 3,000 flying hours.
"When a Guard unit deploys, we carry their people and
cargo and refuel their fighters on the way. Over here,
there is no routine training mission; they're all different -- location, pilot, type of plane. And if one of our tankers doesn't take off, it's the domino effect: four or five other flights could be cancelled."

The Scott unit has spent the past month running the flying mission here, changing out nearly 100 people -- mostly air crews and maintenance people -- midway through the month. On March 25, they deploy back home after handing over the mission to the 117th Air Refueling Wing from Birmingham, Ala.

Most Guard units, by virtue of their all-volunteer design, can only spend two weeks away from home base. Though some work for their state military full-time as civilian technicians, taking care of daily base operations, many are traditional Guardsmen, donning the military cap one weekend a month and two weeks a year. But that doesn't stop the units from voluteering for missions. The 126th spent one month in Turkey in October 2000 and is slated to go back this November, condensing three years' worth of deployments into 14 months.

"We really, more than anytime before, rely on our employers to allow us to do this," said Lt. Col. Pete Nezamis, operations officer for the 126th here and full-time 108th Air Refueling Squadron commander at Scott. "We're all volunteers for this duty; many of our people have full-time
private-sector jobs. But they still have that desire to serve, and there's never a shortage of volunteers. We love doing this stuff."

Master Sgt. Frank Lamm Jr. is on his first Guard deployment, joining as a traditional Guardsman seven months ago. He keeps track of aircrew flying time and training, the same job he had when he served on active duty for 11 years. He left the service from Scott AFB in February 1998.

"Getting in as part of the Guard is like being part of a family," said the full-time software designer at Unisys Corp. in Fairview Heights. "I missed the camaraderie of the military; it's in my heart. When the Guard called me and said they had a job for me, it was just what I needed."

This is not the first time the 126th has pulled duty at Istres, deploying here twice in 1998. At Istres, the 126th blends into the main unit, the 16th Expeditionary operations Group. The group numbers anywhere from 150-200 U.S. Air Force people, about one-half pulled from the active duty forces that stay for three-month tours.

Lamm said he'd be one of the first to volunteer again.

"It's all along the lines of what's in it for the unit, not the individual. People volunteer to participate before they're asked. That's what makes these deployments great. We all want to be here." (FROM AIR MOBILITY COMMAND PUBLIC AFFAIRS).

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