Oral History Interview with Douglas M. Mauritz

[Interview Begins] SPRAGUE: Today is May 17th, 2024. This is an interview with Doug Mauritz, who served in the United States Air Force from October 11th, 1995 to January 8th, 2000. This interview is being conducted by Luke Sprague at the Everett Roehl Marshfield Public Library. Did I pronounce that correctly?

MAURITZ: Yes, you did.

SPRAGUE: Roehl, I got to know that, being in central Wisconsin, in Marshfield, Wisconsin, for the Wisconsin Veterans Museum Oral History Program. No one else is present in the interview room. Okay, Doug, where did you grow up?

MAURITZ: Well, growing up is technically two different terms. I grew up, I spent a lot of time, you know, in grade school and junior high out in Washington state. But I did most of my growing up here in central Wisconsin. We we moved out here, oh, late 00:01:0080s, early 90s. So where I lived in Athens, Wisconsin, when we had our first house out here, and then, after we were in Athens for, oh, just about a year and a half, one of my friends had moved. School friends had moved up here to Marshfield, Wisconsin. And my dad, seeing the struggle from going from living out on the West Coast, in a bigger city where, you know, you have mass transportation, easy access to entertainment and things like that, he seemed to struggle with it. My sister and I were having adjusting to small town life. Athens is only about 900 people, at the time. It's not much bigger now, but, Marshfield was the biggest little city, closest to Athens. So, he found, found a job that he could afford a house here in town. 00:02:00And, eventually he ended up buying that house, for his own. We were there for renters for years. But it was my sophomore year in high school, when we started living here and then, graduated, you know, that senior year was '95. So, that's how I ended up in, Marshfield, Wisconsin.

SPRAGUE: Okay. And if you don't mind me asking before you got to Athens, where did you move from in Washington state?

MAURITZ: Oh, we lived in a little suburb, uh, Parkland. Parkland, Washington, which is right next to Tacoma. The street that we lived on, 96th Street, it was the actual borderline between Tacoma and Parkland, which put my dad's, the property that my dad was running in a quasi-farming 00:03:00community. So he was actually able to raise chickens and cows and, they leased, he had leased the property to some horse owners. And, you know, so they had, you know, was kind of a, we always called it the gentleman's ranch because we, he, he did gardening, taught, you know, taught my sister and I a lot about country living, being right next to the city. So it was really, really an interesting process, living out there.

SPRAGUE: Well, that's interesting, Doug, I know exactly where Parkland, Washington is, and I know exactly where 96th is.

MAURITZ: Yeah.

SPRAGUE: So I'm very familiar with that area.

MAURITZ: It's a small world.

SPRAGUE: It is. Okay, so but coming back here to Marshfield, you graduate high school in '95. What made you start thinking about getting involved with the military?

MAURITZ: It's 00:04:00a good question. And a lot of people were like, well, you know, you, you had so many opportunities when you were in Marshfield, go to tech school, go to college. And what it came down to was just a family tradition. My uncles were all Vietnam era servicemen. My dad and his youngest brother actually joined the Air Force to avoid being drafted into, you know, military service. So, a lot of that came from my uncles writing. "Tell Phil and tell Tommy to, you know, join the Air Force. Don't let him go in the Army. It's not a good time right now for, you know." And it was it really, you know, during the Vietnam era, they were struggling. They had a lot of, you know, a lot of people that were, you know, not happy with being told you have to go do this job. So being proactive, and actually, 00:05:00my dad and my uncle Tom, scored really well on when it came to the military test. The ASVAB, is what, the tool that they were using at the time. So, they scored really well on it and they said, "Yeah, we're going to do this for a living." So, both of them, but I think my dad was 16 years. I think my uncle Tom was about the same. So, it was looking at, you know, all the men, all the uncles on my dad's side of the family, they all had military service. My grandfather on my mother's side was actually in the Aleutian War up in Adak, Alaska. Found some found some wonderful memorabilia after he passed away that my cousins and I have been sharing, showing people. "Yeah, my grandpa was in was in the Army," 00:06:00and it shows that he was from the village, showed us where, what village he lived in and stuff like that. So it was just good family tradition. I wasn't a big sports freak, or I didn't, wasn't, wasn't overly enthused about, you know, the education process. I know that it's important, you have to get a good education. At the time, you know, graduating high school was a must, to get yourself into the working area. But then after I got out of the military, then it was like, okay, you need a college education now because it was, you know, four years, two months, 28 days later and they're like, "Yeah, you should go to school." Like, I got out of service because I didn't want to go to school anymore. But I opted in for the GI program, and that's, I found a found a place here right in central Wisconsin at, one of the 00:07:00local tech colleges that got me started, so.

SPRAGUE: Stepping back a little bit, did your father get out of the service at McChord, or was there any relationship there with McChord Air Force Base in Parkland? Or not?

MAURITZ: There was a relationship there, but it wasn't a good one.

SPRAGUE: Okay.

MAURITZ: He was a flying NCO. So he was actually a loadmaster on C-130s. Well, when he came back from Vietnam, he got stationed over, he got a long tour overseas to Anchorage, and then was on his second time being there. So you can you can, okay. I've been here from my first term, my first overseas tour. I don't like it. I want to move on. He opted to stay there because he had met my mother and loved 00:08:00the outdoors. I mean, Alaska is a wonderful place. I mean, beautiful scenic mountains. The base is really close to great fishing. And you're a stone's throw away from, you know, basically untouched wilderness. I mean, you drive, you know, an hour north, and you're into places where people have never walked, you know, much less driven cars or ATVs or anything like that. So he was he was totally enamored with the place. But they said, "Well, unfortunately you can't re up." And he goes, "Well, if you let me re up, I'll go to McChord after this because McChord will be opening up."

SPRAGUE: Oh.

MAURTIZ: And they're like, "No, you can't do that. You either have to go to this, go teach this school, or you have to go to take a European tour." And he goes, "Well, you forget that I've already completed my term of enlistment. I don't have to do anything. So 00:09:00I'm not going to drag my new wife, who, you know, has only been in this one village, take her to Europe," as it, he's like, "She's a good woman, but she won't like me that much." So we, that's why he didn't get out of McChord. He actually got out in Anchorage.

SPRAGUE: Okay.

MAURITZ: But he was hoping to get out of McChord. Because that's where one of his good flying buddies ended up. Well, I think I was about three years old when we moved down to, we moved to Seattle first. Stayed there till we, till he totally got established with his job. And then, we ended up in Puyallup, you know, and then from Puyallup moved to Parkland and spent the rest of the time in Parkland. There was a brief stint up in Kent, but that was the job, forced him to do something else. And so that's why we ended up in Parkland.

SPRAGUE: Mm-hmm. 00:10:00You mentioned a couple uncles, were they from your father's side or your mother's side, that tradition of service?

MAURITZ: The tradition of service for my uncles was predominantly on my dad's side.

SPRAGUE: Okay.

MAURITZ: All of his brothers served served in Vietnam era. And so, let's see, he had five brothers and two sisters. And then, so they were all on, all the uncles were in the military. My aunts, my my one aunt, actually, when she, she married a military man. He was a Seabee. And they were down in Waupaca, Wisconsin. And she got a job working at the King Home. So, again, not necessarily military service, but 00:11:00definitely a family that is about taking care of veterans and trying to help veterans. So.

SPRAGUE: If you don't mind me asking, is your father still with us?

MAURITZ: Yes, he is!

SPRAGUE: Okay.

MAURITZ: He's in his seventies now, oh, you know, but, so he's had some health issues, but he-- and he's actually at the King Retirement Home.

SPRAGUE: Okay.

MAURITZ: So he, he has his programs now that he's doing to try and finish up his rehab, and then he's going to make a decision here whether, see how things go, if he's going to come back to central Wisconsin or just kind of enjoy the rest of his time there.

SPRAGUE: Okay. Is his name also Mauritz?

MAURITZ: Yes.

SPRAUGE: Okay.

MAURITZ: Yeah. Philip.

SPRAGUE: Phillip, okay.

MAURITZ: Philip Mauritz.

SPRAGUE: Okay. Thank you. So what did your, how did your family react when you said, "I'm going into the Air Force?"

MAURITZ: My 00:12:00dad was pleasantly surprised. He thought, I'd, you know, he'd maybe shared enough stories of his time in the service that, he would either talk me out of it, but I, I really admired him for the stuff that he was able to talk about. He had one of those jobs where not everything you do right away you could talk about, when I was growing up, but, you know, that was his time. And it was, I was going in, it was a different time. It was peacetime. There was there was nothing, you know, this was post Desert Storm. So we were just, we had some air bases over in the Middle East. Kuwait. But it was, you know, all the major conflict was over. You know, we were just kind of making sure nothing dusted back up. So.

SPRAGUE: So, where did you go for basic?

MAURITZ: Being the Air Force, San 00:13:00Antonio, Texas, gateway to the Air Force is through San Antonio.

SPRAGUE: Okay.

MAURITZ: Whether you're basic training recruits or, any-- if you're going to be in the Air Force, that's where you start. So.

SPRAGUE: And, you entered, did you fly from Marshfield or how did that go?

MAURITZ: Yeah.

SPRAGUE: Or Mosinee, I should say?

MAURITZ: No, not from Mosinee. I, we took a bus from-- where did we get on the bus? It's over in Wausau. Got on the bus there. Went to Milwaukee. That, the MEPS center and then flew out of Milwaukee to the, I believe we flew right into San Antonio. But then we're on the bus and onto the yard, so.

SPRAGUE: What were your first impressions 00:14:00of Basic?

MAURITZ: I was kind of overwhelmed. The amount of instruction that was being given and the manner that was being given was completely new to me. I didn't, you know, being, being in high school, I never had someone yell at me like that. But even the first, even those first couple of days, it started to make sense. There were, you know, a flight of us. I think the flights at the time were, 48 people. He didn't want to have to say it, you know, our drill instructor didn't want to say this 48 times, he just said it real loud and you had to listen. So, that's why they were doing a lot of yelling. You know, they even told me that, because I was struggling, I thought, man, I just can't deal with all this, all this yelling, you 00:15:00know? And he goes, "Look, this is what I'm doing. It's nothing personal. You know, if it was personal, I'd be on, I'd be in your face," he said. But he goes, "You're doing fine. Just keep grinding it out. You'll be you'll be okay." So.

SPRAGUE: What was it like, being exposed from, to other people from around the country?

MAURITZ: It was actually really comforting. Growing up, you know, going to grade school and middle school out west on the West Coast, it was nice being around different people. You can definitely, you know, you can see that, you know, people from New York had a way about them, you know, East Coast folks, they were different cats. They they carried themselves and, very differently than the people that I grew up, you know, graduated high school with. But the people that I, you know, there was actually one went to, was actually in basic with a guy 00:16:00that I graduated with. We, it was kind of interesting. And you could tell that, you know, we were definitely, "Okay, this is different." But the West Coast folks, folks from California and the folks from, you know, Oregon and Washington, yeah, I picked them, almost picked them out of out of a crowd. They, you know, they had that, "Yeah. We're all crazy. We get it." [Both laugh] SPRAGUE: And that would have been, October of '95, roughly?

MAURITZ: Yeah. October of '95.

SPRAGUE: Okay.

MAURITZ: And we were in basic training until Dec-- yeah, it was six weeks. So it was like the first part of December before we left San Antonio.

SPRAGUE: Okay. Did you train with, other genders there or other sexes?

MAURITZ: We did, but it wasn't co-mingled. The women had their own flight, and the men were in their own flight. The 00:17:00only time that we were ever really integrated with them was during PT. It was kind of a motivator for me because, I'm going to be, at the time, I was pretty, pretty competitive. And I'm like, I'm not going to let a girl beat me. But then I realized these girls were running track. I wasn't a track star, so, but it was just kind of nice. You know, that was, like I said, that was the one time you got to train at the same time with them, so.

SPRAGUE: Do you remember any specific things that stick out in your head from going to basic?

MAURITZ: Phone calls. We would get phone calls periodically, call home. And you're waiting in line. And 00:18:00you're waiting, we were, we had one person that was right at the, there was the old paper, newspaper flier boxes. They were on either end of the line, and they had people waiting there. And one guy put his head down, fell asleep, started snoring, literally. And we were all, like, "[Code??] wake up. Code!" You know, trying not to, you know, and all of a sudden he just looked up. "Amen." Right as the TI stood behind him, he goes, "Yeah." Obviously, I mean, the guy was sleeping, but he, he, he played it off real, real quick like, "I was praying. Amen." You know. So that was, you're pretty exhausted. They, it wasn't, I mean, it was Air Force Basic Training. It's not like we were doing anything real, you know, we're just, they were just trying to strip 00:19:00you down from all your old civilian habits and build you up to a basic version of what the Air Force wants you to be. So there was, you know, some guys weren't used to being up at, you know, 5:00 in the morning for PT and go out and train for an hour and PT and then go back and do education classes. It's pretty exhausting, some of these guys. But, yeah, that was the one, the more memorable thing, watching that guy get almost caught sleeping on duty. [Both laugh] SPRAGUE: Did your family have a chance to come down for graduation or not?

MAURITZ: No. Unfortunately. By this time, mom and dad had gotten a divorce. And mom was, was in a good place financially to come down. She was very, she did send a couple cards, and she did send a few letters. But unfortunately, she wasn't able to make it down. And dad 00:20:00had just started another new job, being a construction worker. He was, you know, work when you can. So that way, when you're, when you don't, you have a little saved up that you can live on. So, unfortunately, he couldn't make it down either.

SPRAGUE: Good. What was your mail call like in the Air Force at Basic? Anything special or how did that work?

MAURITZ: Oh, it was-- we had a daily mail call after the first week, we started receiving mail and we could get mail, you know, letters are fine. You know, don't ask 'em to send you candy or, you know, any of the contraband stuff. [Sprague laughs] You don't have 'em, you know, trying to sneak a tin of chew in or a pack of cigarettes, that would have been, you know, a severe infraction and cause delays in your ability to get past the basic portion of it. But, I had a had a fiancé at the time, and she would write me letters all the time. My dad wrote me letters. My 00:21:00sister was still in middle school, junior high-ish. So she was, it was kind of implied, but I, I think she may have wrote a couple times, but a fam, you know, that was, you know, that was my family at the time. My mom, my dad and my sister, my fiancee. I had a couple friends write me from high school, but, I mean, me and Scott were, we were in the same class. We would just talk all the time. That was the nice thing is his parents were able to make it. So when, we had family day, I, they invited me along, and, TI said, yeah, you guys went to school together. You guys, that's fine. If they're willing to have you, you can go.

SPRAGUE: And you mentioned you graduated with Scott.

MAURITZ: Yes.

SPRAGUE: From Marshfield High School.

MAURITZ: Yep.

SPRAGUE: And what's Scott's name?

MAURITZ: Scott Hendrickson.

SPRAGUE: Okay. Interesting. 00:22:00Yeah. Okay. So another Wisconsin veteran somewhere?

MAURITZ: Yep. Yeah, he went into a different career field than me. I was, I went into aircraft maintenance, and I think he went into avionics.

SPRAGUE: Okay.

MAURITZ: So I'm not really quite sure where he ended up. That was after we split off from Basic Training. I really never saw him again.

SPRAGUE: Yeah. So, you get done at Basic, go through graduation, family day. Where do you go next?

MAURITZ: Go to Advanced Technical Training. So Advanced Technical Training or Advanced Technical Instruction was at Wichita Falls Air Force Base, Texas. So it's northern panhandle, right up by the, Wichita Falls, Wichita, Kansas. So it's right up there by the Kansas, Wichita, Kansas-Texas line. So 00:23:00that was, that was a long bus trip when we got on, you know. And that was just a, it's Texas. I think we went over a couple of hills, but forever it was, all you could see was desert. Yeah, it was interstate going north. So.

SPRAGUE: And that was, what's called Wichita Falls Air Force Base or what's it called? Sheppard Air Force Base?

MAURITZ: Yeah. Yeah. Sheppard Air Force Base.

SPRAGUE: Okay. Okay.

MAURITZ: Yeah. Yeah, because. Yeah, because. Because Scott went to Keesler or Kessler. And I ended up going to Sheppard Air Force Base.

SPRAGUE: Okay. And, help me out here, what made you choose aircraft maintenance? Aircraft--

MAURITZ: Aircraft maintenance, yeah.

SPRAGUE: Help me out, yeah.

MAURITZ: Yep. You know, I'm a victim of good recruiting.

SPRAGUE: [Laughs] Okay.

MAURITZ: My 00:24:00recruiter, I told my recruiter what my dad did, and he goes, oh, if you want to do that, pretty sure you have to go into the maintenance field. And I thought, well, loading airplanes is a type of maintenance. It sounds right. And why not? Well, you know, my dad, he's like, "This was a long time ago for me. Things have changed. They're completely different. If he says you got to go into maintenance, you got to go into maintenance." I'm like, well, that's what I signed up for then. With my ASVAB scores, it was an easy fit. They said, you know, with my scores, "Yeah. You definitely will be a great mechanic, based on this test." All right. No. "If you want to be a loadmaster, you need to go in a flying squadron. It's a completely different, it was a completely different school." But my recruiter made his recruiting numbers that month for enlisting mechanics, so. [Laughs] I, 00:25:00when I got in, I found out that, you know this, no, you have to go someplace else. All right. By this time, I'm signed on the bottom line, I'm in. So, let's just make the best of it. You know, I like working on stuff, I like bending wrenches, turning screwdrivers. So probably going to be right up my alley.

SPRAGUE: And, what was your Air Force Specialty Code?

MAURITZ: 2A654 was my journeyman level. So it's 2A6X4. Start off as an apprentice, which is three. You get a journeyman rating, which is five. Journeyman rating means, you know, you can be sent out and you go fix that airplane. All right. They trust you to go from the shop to that airplane and start working on that airplane. And then your seven level is, you're signed off. You're usually an NCO at that point. And I think actually at the time, I think you had to be a staff sergeant to get a seven level rating, which is 00:26:00now the five levels and the three levels, the apprentice that you're, you have people underneath you, and you inspect their work to make sure that they're doing it correctly. They're doing it by the book, which is the technical order, and that, you know, they're actually completing the tasks in a reasonable amount of time. Shouldn't take you know, every job has a specific time frame. It should take you to do this one specific thing. So.

SPRAGUE: And so when I looked this up, your, AFC. AFSC, sorry.

MAURITZ: Yep.

SPRAGUE: It listed aircraft fuel systems specialist. Does that sound right?

MAURITZ: Yes. It is.

SPRAGUE: Or not right?

MAURITZ: No. Yeah, fuels troop. This is aircraft fuels troop. There's 00:27:00other fuels troops that deal with getting the fuel from the storage facility onto the plane. My job, predominantly, was making sure that it stayed in the plane and got to the engine.

SPRAGUE: Okay.

MAURITZ: Or in one specific case, to the off load portion of the event. So I had to make sure that the wings and the fuselage weren't leaking fuel and that, all the assorted pumps, check valves and plumbing were working as advertised, getting from either the tank feeding the engine or the tank feeding the offload, which is, air refueling, boom operator. So.

SPRAGUE: Couple of dumb questions. How did you deal with, and, I don't know, possible fuel explosions? What did, I mean, I think about fuel, I think boom.

MAURITZ: Yeah. Well, the 00:28:00the great thing about modern airplanes is that they've evolved away from the more toxic explosive fuels. They were using predominantly JP-4. And when I was in, all the aircraft that I worked on were a JP-8. So it was, it was, it was a high-grade kerosene. If that means anything to you. So it doesn't have-- it does have a vapor content, but it's not really high like normal gasoline. The vapor kind of has a lot of vapors and a lot of off-gassing, but JP-8, and, like I said, I just worked with JP-8, so that was, that was the start of mitigating the problem. Is just working with a chemical that wasn't as explosive as other fuels. Then the other thing is just, realizing that sparks and fuel create flames. Because it's 00:29:00usually in an open air environment. So if you have the three things that, you know, fire needs to start, which is fuel, spark, ignition and air. So you limit the amount of sparks by, grounding. Every aircraft sat on the ground and it had a wire, like, looked like a speaker wire, an old RCA jack. And it was just, it was connected to the ground portion of the airplane. Like on a black, like a black part on the batteries. It was connected to that grounding portion, and then it went down to the ground. So if it were struck by lightning or if you were, you know, had any amount of static build up on you when you touch the airplane, it had an immediate path to ground. Didn't want to create a spark. And then clothing, you weren't allowed to wear, you know, clothes during during your work event, that 00:30:00would create static. If you had any type of synthetic clothes, they went away. All cotton clothes. Boots were made out of leather. Soles were, you know, rubberized. And then anything, you know, anything that you were taking into the tank, it was just all, it was all naturally made. So there wasn't, you know, again, you're mitigating the things that caused the sparks. So.

SPRAGUE: Any particular aircraft, or a bunch of aircraft that you worked on?

MAURITZ: A small handful, it was actually four.

SPRAGUE: Okay. What were those four?

MAURITZ: Yeah, when I, when I went to, when I went to my first base, the plane that I, the unit that I was assigned to didn't even have their plane yet, but that was an E-8C, and it was a, it was a specialized Army Air Force radar platform. But the E-8C was 00:31:00basically the same airframe as the KC-135. And that's, the first shop that I was assigned to, that's what that shop was predominately worked on. It's just 135s. So those were big airplanes, like 747-type airplanes. You know, you needed you know, you needed a special ladder to get to the, you know, you had to work on a, hydraulic platform to get to the access into the wings.

SPRAGUE: On the KC-135?

MAURITZ: And on the E-8Cs.

SPRAGUE: Okay. Yeah. Dumb question. You're talking about clothing. I was looking at this position, or, profession, that people and they had, like, on protective masks or something? Was that a requirement, or?

MAURITZ: Yeah. Because you were working, a lot of the planes, the bigger ones, you 00:32:00had to be-- Forgive me, just a second. You would actually have to go in tank. So it's an enclosed environment.

SPRAGUE: Confined space?

MAURITZ: Confined space, thank you. I couldn't think of the word! Confined space, yeah, confined space training. Part of your confined space training, working in a fuel-rich environment, you had to wear a respirator air. If you didn't, your ability to function lasted, was about five minutes. The fumes of any residual fuel that were left in the tank, they would make you feel pretty stupid. I mean, you hear people huffing gas or huffing paint, you're crawling into a fuel tank that was previously filled with fuel. We would go in, we would mop it up using, you know, try and get as much out of there as we could and then pat everything dry with towels and rags. But it was, it was still, I mean, this 00:33:00is all, it was, everything in there, the sealants, the parts and the components just smelled like fuel. And you couldn't completely get rid of it. I mean, there was, there were safe levels. We would do atmospheric monitoring and, okay, once it got down to X amount, you know, in so many minutes, then it was considered safe to work, you know, without a regulator. But if it was at or near that, then, you had to, you had to have a regulator on. Even if, even if you were just breaking it, the plane, with your, with your arms, because the fumes were just so overwhelming. But yeah, respirators, face masks, the face masks were put on where you keep your hair and any of your, skin oils from getting into the areas that you were working, because you're trying to get glue 00:34:00to stick to metal, and you go in there with this caustic solvent, methyl ethyl ketone, to clean this stuff. Again, another vapor-causing thing that you don't want to breathing. Methyl ethyl ketone is a known carcinogen. So you don't want to be breathing that. If you're going to be using that, you have to wear a respirator. Again forced, supplied air. So, uh, yeah, that was a big part of being a fuels troop, was going to respirator training.

SPRAGUE: And you're using the term fuels troop? I want to make sure I get that--

MAURITZ: Mm-hmm. Yep. Fuels--

SPRAGUE: Get that right.

MAURITZ: Yeah. Fuels. In the maintenance world, you know, fuel guys are, when they say, you know, we got to take plane down to fuel shop. They're not taking it over to the POL [Petroleum, Oils, and Lubricants] station. Those are gas passers.

SPRAGUE:[Both laughing] Oh, really?

MAURITZ: So, that's how we refer to 00:35:00them, you know, they got to go down the gas passers and get offloaded first, before they bring them here. We'd have a new crew chief that was getting, you know, educated on, you know, the different terminology, you know, "Take that down to fuels." And he would bring it to us, and we're like, "It's still full of fuel. We need to work on that tank, take it down to POL, down to the gas passers." "Oh, okay." But.

SPRAGUE: Oh, wow. I have to ask, what was it like being inside of one of these tanks?

MAURITZ: Interesting. It was, you're laying, think-- You know, there's a lot of structures, inside a wing fuel tank, that keep it, give it its shape, and then give it its rigidity. Now you have to lay on top of those things, so you're not necessarily in the most comfortable position. They do have some padding that you can lay down if you 00:36:00know you're going to be working in an area for a long time. But, you know, more often than not, you know, that was like, you know, we were a field maintenance. So we were, you know, we weren't there to, you know, we were there to troubleshoot and do immediate repairs. If an aircraft was going to go for, you know, a serious overhaul or, you know, be considered an ISO phase or ISO inspection, isochronal inspection, or a phased part of an inspection, every so many hundreds of hours, they would have to go in and be completely taken apart. Well then those guys, you know, they wouldn't worry so much about the matting, they would just take the skin off, because it had to come off anyways and they would sit in, you know, now it was a different environment, so you wouldn't need all that padding. But I thought it was really interesting. You're never really, never really got that on the fighters. There was, there was a little bit of in-tank 00:37:00maintenance, but not as much on the bigger heavy ones.

SPRAGUE: What? What were the materials inside the tank? Was it metal? Was it a bladder? What?

MAURITZ: There was, on the heavy ones, there was both. They had rubber bladders for the fuselage tanks and then for the wing tanks, it was just sealant and aircraft-grade aluminum. So the, you know, there were, you put all the nuts and bolts together and all the rivets and then cover it with a good sealant so nothing would leak, but things move when you fly. Wings flex, pumps, pumps cause vibration. There's all kinds of activity that you don't necessarily see that wear out the sealants that are attached to the metal components. But the, the 00:38:00bigger, one of the aircraft jobs that we had to do was, we actually had a 135 center bladder we had to change out. So the things were so big that you actually had to put a regular six-foot folding ladder in the tank with you, and then use that to tie it to the top. And there were all these special aircraft paracord lace. It was just, and you would have to lace it to the outside and then work your way from the top down, making all the connection fittings. But that was a pretty big job, and I was, I felt pretty lucky I got to do that at one of my first, one of the first planes I got to work on. They're like, "Oh yeah, you're going to love this, because this is part of your training, and we don't get to do it that often." So I got signed off on it right away. A lot of guys have 00:39:00spent a lot of time waiting for that job to come up. So.

SPRAGUE: So let's, you had mentioned it during the pre-interview, let's go to your first, posting or first place you were based.

MAURITZ: Mm-hmm. Warner Robins Air Force Base, Georgia.

SPRAGUE: And the unit?

MAURITZ: See, I was initially assigned to the 93rd Air Control Wing. Like I was saying before, when I got there, they weren't even there yet. The plane had been put into service during the Gulf War and it had finally made its way back. Okay. This is, you guys are going to be based out of Warner Robins Air Force Base because the planes were old and 00:40:00they had logistically, you know, there was a lot of maintenance that, modification had to be done. Warner Robins Air Force Base was a depot level maintenance base. One side did all, okay, you're in here for, you know, ISO inspection. That's, we're going to take the wings off. We're going to take, you know, completely change out the engines, take off, replace the boom, and we're going to do it all at once. So it was, you know, there was a lot of work going on. So the planes were broke, you know, hard for a long time. So, but having an older airframe come in that may or may not need a lot of modifications, that, those folks were right across the street. So comparatively, one side of the flight line was depot and the other side was active duty and guard.

SPRAGUE: So. And at the 93rd Air Control Wing, you may have told me this, what was the aircraft you were working on initially?

MAURITZ: It was an E-8C Joint STAR [Surveillance Target Attack Radar System].

SPRAGUE: Okay. That's right.

MAURITZ: Yeah. And, instead of the, the Air Force had two, 00:41:00had a couple of different radar platforms at that time. One was AWACS [Airborne Warning and Control System] and that was, everybody that was flying an aircraft, whether it be the Navy, the Army, the Air Force, the Marine Corps, if they had an airplane in the air, AWACS was their point of contact, they're air traffic controllers flying with, you know, during the event. But the Army and the Marines also had vehicles moving along the ground. So the Joint STARS, their radar looked at the ground and did passes on the ground. Now, I, other than that, I really, there was a lot of other things that the, you know, but I was like, "Is it leaking fuel? Is it, is 00:42:00it something that I can fix?" Because, you know, I really wasn't, there was so much being thrown at me at that time trying to learn just my apprentice-level material, trying to get my journeyman that wasn't, wasn't overly concerned about the ins and outs of all the avionics that were going on. I know that, I know that it was pretty, it was pretty, top secret kind of thing because, you you had to have that, security clearance to get into my shop. And then while one of those planes was working, they had guards posted around the entire perimeter. So every exit point and then, well, they closed off all the fire exits, so, not closed-- Okay, these doors are secured. This is your one-point entry. They had a guard there. You'd check your badge. I mean, the crew chiefs loved it because they actually got to come into the shop, because 00:43:00that that's the only way they could get in. So.

SPRAGUE: And, this would have been back in '96?

MAURITZ: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Early, early '96. Probably February, March. Okay, I know, I know, it's got to be February, March, because when we left here it was still snowing.

SPRAGUE: [Laughs] Okay.

MAURITZ: And we drove from, I'd come home and gotten married to my high school sweetheart.

SPRAGUE: Okay.

MAURITZ: And then we drove her car, a little Chevy Chevette, all, you know, all the stuff packed that we could carry in it. And we drove from here down to Warner Robins.

SPRAGUE: February and March. Yup. From Wisconsin to Georgia. Yep.

MAURITZ: Yeah, by the time we got south of, once we got south of Illinois, we were, "Oh, this is wonderful. It's not cold anymore," because the heater was broken on her car. The selector switch for hot and cold, you had to use a pair of pliers, a pair of ice grips to pull it out and then 00:44:00clamp it off so it wouldn't go back in.

SPRAGUE: Oh, my gosh. So, you're at Warner Robins. Do you stay with that unit? Do you go to another unit at Warner Robins? Or what happened?

MAURITZ: No, uh. Well, I was working we were working with the, 55th Air Refueling Squadron, the Black Knights. That's, that was our one and only fuel shop. And then after the 93rd got stood up, we were joint in that one shop. So it's not that I was ever assigned to a different, different unit on the base. It was just I worked in close proximity to the other unit that was a fuel shop. But that was all, that was all in the process of building and standing up that wing, because they were putting up a brand new, aircraft 00:45:00hangar that was going to be the fuel shop, and they were, the 135 guys were going to stay where they were at, and the 93rd was going to move down to the new shop. And then they were just going to however, logistically, they were going to play the hour of the 135s need to go in, you know, and there wasn't an E-8 in there being worked on then, you know. But.

SPRAGUE: But so just for clari--, make sure I'm squared away on this. You were with the, you were assigned to the 93rd Air Control Wing?

MAURITZ: Mm-hmm.

SPRAGUE: But you had stuff coming in from both units or multiple units, it sounds like?

MAURITZ: Yeah. Yeah. We would work on, it didn't matter what plane was, if it needed to be fixed and we didn't have anything actively going on with the 93rd, then we would go and help out the 55th.

SPRAGUE: Do you know if the 93rd Air Control Wing, was that part of, what was that part of? Do you happen to know, maybe Air Combat Command?

MAURITZ: Oh, you're talking about which command it was under?

SPRAGUE: Yeah, what? Yeah. 00:46:00MAURITZ: Yeah, it was part of the ACC, or Air Combat Command.

SPRAGUE: Okay, okay.

MAURITZ: And that was-- Yeah, I still have that first badge. It was, kind of a, I kept all the badges that I was assigned, because I was assigned to the Air Combat Command. And then later on, when I left Warner Robins, I went to the Pacific Air Command.

SPRAGUE: Okay. What, how long were you at Warner Robins?

MAURITZ: The shortest amount of time that I could be. [Both laugh] Being from Alaska and, you know, Washington state and Wisconsin, I was looking to go someplace cold. I didn't want to, I didn't put any place warm on my, dream sheet of "Where do you want to go?" I picked South Dakota, North Dakota, there was a base in Montana, or 00:47:00in Idaho at the time that I put in for, put it in for Washington, and I put in for Alaska. And for, I don't know, I thought it was kind of weird, like, "No, you got orders. You're going to Warner Robins Air Force Base, Georgia." I'm like, "Oh, well, when can I leave there?" "Well, you have to be there for 18 months." So I was, it was, the shortest amount of time that I could stay there before I requested transfer out was 18 months.

SPRAGUE: So that next move would have occurred in--

MAURITZ: '97.

SPRAGUE: Yeah. Mid '97 or late '97?

MAURITZ: Yeah. It was late '97. Yeah. It was actually, when I left the base, it was mid '97.

SPRAGUE: Okay.

MAURITZ: But, uh, had a good working relationship with the personnel staff at Warner Robins. We all lived on the same block. 00:48:00SPRAGUE: Wow.

MAURITZ: Because I actually lived on the Air Force base after a few months of living, living in downtown on the economy. But, they got a, you know, opened up a new set of base housing for the enlisted folks, and I was lucky enough to get one of the new, new houses. One of my neighbors was personnels, was personnel troop. And I'm like, so when can I apply to go to Alaska? They said, well, as soon as your 18 months is up, we can we can transfer you out, if you, if that's what you want to do. So as soon as I could, as soon as I could request the transfer, I did. And then and as soon as they could let me go, they let me go to Eielson Air Force Base, Alaska. But I knew that I was going from working on big heavies to working on fighters. I said, you know, the Fighter School is in Las Vegas. I said, "Wouldn't it make a whole lot of sense and make you look really smart if you got me routed through Las Vegas before I 00:49:00went to Eielson, so that the gaining command didn't have to spend more money to send me back to Las Vegas?" "You know, I'll see what I can do." And sure enough, it got worked out that I went from Warner Robins to Las Vegas for training.

SPRAGUE: Wow. That, wow, that was lucky to have that neighbor.

MAURITZ: Yeah. Yeah. And that, and being able to explain that. "Yeah. Well this is, I think this is how, you know, it would make sense for this to happen." But it's the military, I mean, you know, send me all the way to Alaska, I'll go to Alaska, then go back to Las Vegas. Sure. Yeah, that's fine, but it made sense. So.

SPRAGUE: Okay. So in Vegas, you, tell me about the training there, briefly.

MAURITZ: Went to Nellis Air Force Base. I was assigned to a training squadron. I don't remember the numbers. Training, the training squadrons, I 00:50:00barely remember the number. I, you know, they made us memorize them during the time, but, when we got well, we got to our duty sign, our real active duty assignments. They're like, "Don't worry about that. You have to worry, that'll be your nightmare. Don't worry about it. You just worry about where you're at right now." I'm like, "Okay." So then I was at Nellis, and I want to say I was there for the better part of 60 days.

SPRAGUE: Okay.

MAURITZ: It was a long time. But it was, it was the F-16 fuels training course. So, you know, it was another opportunity to fulfill a lot of your journeyman-level requirements. Was another school. Going to an overseas, a long, a long tour, overseas assignment, by the time I got there, I 00:51:00had already completed, you know, all of my apprentice-level stuff and was just wrapping up, some journeyman-level testing stuff. So, but that was learning the specifics of fighter components. F-16s are redundant. They fly upside down. They fly, you know, regularly, you know, wings up, then they fly upside-down. So you want to make sure that, you know, you have ways for the fuel, whether you're upside-down or right side-up, that the fuel can get to the engine, because that's all you're doing in a fighter, is making sure that it stays in the plane and gets to the engine. So you have multiple fuel pumps for inverted flight, you know, and then multiple check valves. So it was quite a redundant system. But then it only had one engine, so 00:52:00it had an emergency power, auxiliary power unit, which was in case you ran out of fuel or all your fuel pumps were disabled for some reason. You would you would fire your auxiliary power unit, and that was powered with hydrazine, which is rocket fuel. So being that, now that's another system I have to work on, there's another hazard involved. So you have to go through all the training to handle jet fuel. Hydrazine, you know, again, at the time, it was known to cause cancer. They didn't know what level of exposure was going to give you cancer. But you know that if you were exposed to enough of it, you're going to get it. So the, you know, you're trained and you're wearing a rocket suit basically to handle, hydrazine 00:53:00servicing, whether it be filling hydrazine tanks or cleaning up an inactivated auxiliary power unit. If an auxiliary power unit was fired and he came back, you know, the pilot had a problem and he had to fire that and landed. The waste was being leaked out onto the ground. The exhaust didn't run back through the engine, like, like the other fuels, but all the all the stuff that was coming out, the waste product, that was all, potentially had hydrazine in it. So lots of water, lots of, you know, lots of time in a rubber suit, a rubber mask. You actually worked with the firefighters at the fighter base because they did all of your respirator training because you actually would wear firefighter air masks, because now you're down at the end of the runway. There's no there's no air. There's 00:54:00no air tanks down there or, you know, supplied air to wear a respirator. You had to carry your own air. So that was a, it's kind of like working in a fuel tank, but now you only have an hour. So you had to learn. You trained with the firefighters to keep your heart rate as low as you can. The more you trained, it wasn't surprising when you walked up and, "Oh, the jet is still running. Oh, the jet is still, you know, still has active ordnance on it." So you did all the training ahead of time so you could keep, it wasn't a surprise. And you didn't get an elevated breathing where you're sucking an entire tank of oxygen in five minutes. So.

SPRAGUE: Help me out. Where is the APU (Auxiliary Power Unit) on the F-16?

MAURITZ: It's on the fuselage. The 00:55:00actual turbine is in the engine bay, but the fuel, the fuel tank, it's up towards the front. It's opposite of, opposite side of the Gatling gun.

SPRAGUE: Oh, okay.

MAURITZ: Because F-16 has a Gatling gun, so the APU's on the other side of it.

SPRAGUE: Okay.

MAURITZ: If I remember right.

SPRAGUE: Any interesting experiences with atrazine or hydrazine? Sorry, I'm--

MAURITZ: No, it was always interesting. It wasn't anything that was like, oh, we had an incident or, the one thing that was really nice about being at Eielson when I was at Eielson is that it was still an active duty base. They had the F-16s and the A-10s, had active fighter wings, stationed there. And then there was a refueling Reserve or Guard unit. I think it was a Guard 00:56:00unit, but they-- So they would have exercises once a year and everyone, you know, would come in and, I had heard that one of the older F-16 units had shown up. I was working on C and D models. The A and B models of F-16s, if they landed hard, the APUs would activate.

SPRAGUE: Whoa.

MAURITZ: I mean, this was new technology. They hadn't figured out all the kinks in in the A and B models, in the Cs and Ds, they did. So the Cs and Ds, it was just routine servicing, and they, I don't ever remember getting called out to an activated C or D unit that, "Oh," you know, "this guy, this guy, this guy's flying with problems," but none of them they'd ever had to fire an APU, where 00:57:00we, "Okay, this is a hot cleanup. You know, so get your head in the game." You know, it was just, like I said, it, you know, it was all training for me. So.

SPRAGUE: At Eielson, tell me about what unit you were assigned to there.

MAURITZ: 355th Maintenance, 354th Maintenance Squadron. The 355th was one of the units up there, they flew the A-10s and then the 18th Fighter Squadron, they flew the F-16s. And it was really weird because their patches were so contradictory. A-10s are the Warthogs, and they have this, you know, very ugly-looking plane. And that squadron had a falcon for their patch. The 18th Fighter Squadron, you know, that actually flew, you know, Falcons, one 00:58:00of the monikers for the F-16 was the Fighting Falcon. They had a blue fox for their patch, and I'm going, it seemed, but again, that was one of those just military nuances, I didn't design the patch. I didn't think it up. It was somebody else's brainchild. So.

SPRAGUE: So you would have gotten up in there in mid '97, roughly or late '97?

MAURITZ: Yeah, yeah. It was October.

SPRAGUE: Okay.

MAURITZ: I remember, because we drove, I left Las Vegas, went to, came back here to central Wisconsin, picked up my wife and then we got a different car because we got rid of, we definitely got rid of the Chevette. We weren't going to drive the Chevette up there. It didn't, I don't think, I don't even think it made it. No, we traded it in for another vehicle, but, got a newer vehicle and drove it from there all the way up to Eielson Air Force Base, cut across, to 00:59:00Washington, drove Washington up into, actually went through, Whitehorse, took a, so we came in. We missed all of the panhandle, all of that. We didn't go through that part of Alaska. We drove around that. But, yeah, it was October when we got there, because we got there and that, I think it was like midweek. Thursday, Wednesday, Thursday, by that weekend, we we still hadn't gotten into base housing yet. It was going to happen the next week, but we were still staying at the hotel and it snowed that weekend and it was there, end of, you know, like I said, it was middle of October, end of October. It's got to be middle of October because it had, it was the weekend before Halloween. Right. And it was permanent snow. It was snowed, it snowed that weekend. And we were still, when we were moving in and moving all of our stuff in, it was, you 01:00:00know, we had to shovel off the driveway because it was still snowing. And I'm like, this is what I signed up for. I wanted to go someplace with real snow. And it got quite a bit, but it was more cold than anything.

SPRAGUE: Mm-hmm. And Eielson's outside of Fairbanks? North Star?

MAURITZ: Eielson.

SPRAGUE: Eielson? Sorry.

MAURITZ: Yes, it's south of Fairbanks.

SPRAGUE: Okay.

MAURITZ: If I remember correctly, it's about 30-some miles. 32 miles.

SPRAGUE: Oh, wow. Okay.

MAURITZ: Yeah. So, you know, relatively speaking, you know, 30 minutes from here would be like going to Wisconsin Rapids.

SPRAGUE: Yeah. Of course.

MAURITZ: You know, driving up to Abbotsford. You know, it's not terrible, but, yeah, it's a bit of a hike, but, you know, it was an Air Force base. And, at the time, they were pretty self-sufficient. You know, if, once you got on the yard, the only reason why you left is because you were tired of being on the yard, you know, just like, because they had commissary, you 01:01:00know, you buy all your groceries there, and it was a much better price buying groceries at the commissary than it was to drive into town. The nearest town was North Pole, Alaska. It was only, that was only a couple of miles down the road. But their, you know, their grocery prices and gas prices and convenience store prices were, you know, significantly higher than buying stuff at the base exchange, or the commissary, or buying gas at, you know, the gas station on base. So.

SPRAGUE: Mm-hmm. And you had mentioned in the pre-interview that the 354th Maintenance Squadron was part of the Pacific Air Force?

MAURITZ: Yep.

SPRAGUE: And help out an Army guy here, so the 354th Maintenance Squadron, they were part of a group or not or a wing?

MAURITZ: Yeah, yeah, they're part of the 354th group.

SPRAGUE: Maintenance group, maybe? 01:02:00Yep. And then they were part of the 354th Fighter Wing.

MAURITZ: Yes.

SPRAGUE: Okay. And then they were part of 11th Air Force or not or right up to Pacific?

MAURITZ: Yeah, it's the 11th.

SPRAGUE: Yeah. I'm just trying to figure out how it was structured.

MAURITZ: Yeah, yeah, yeah. The different, there's, depending on what part of the Pacific you were in, like, if you were continental U.S. and you were assigned to the PACAF (Pacific Air Forces), I think you were 7. If you were out in Hawaii, Guam, you know, over and over in the, in Southwest Asia or anything like that, you were assigned to a Pacific Air, I think that was the 9th? It was odd numbers, and I think 11 was the Northern part.

SPRAGUE: Okay.

MAURTIZ: Anchorage had an Air Force base, and then Eielson and 01:03:00Elmendorf. Elmendorf Air Force Base, that was the one other active Air Force Base. And there was a training radar station. But it was like on its way out of being decommissioned. So not a whole lot of going on up there.

SPRAGUE: Yeah. Tell me about a typical day in that unit.

MAURITZ: Typical day? You either worked, it was a three shift system. Unless we were having an exercise. Then we were on 12-hour days. And so you either worked a day shift, eight hours, which usually started at seven in the morning, or you worked 01:04:00the swing shift, which worked three until, you know, I think it was like 10:30, 11:00. Eight hours from 3:00. And then there was nights. And, when when you were working night shift at a fighter base, that's where you got to do a lot of wrench bending. Day shift would catch a lot of the, you know, flying hour stuff. If there was something that immediately came up, they were responsible for that, they would turn anything over that was going to come in to the swing shift. The swing shift would then get us get it as far as they could turn it over to nights. Nights just had to fix it and make sure it was out of the shop before days got in there. That was always the goal. Don't want to turn anything over to the day shift, because if you did, they they were very meticulous because everybody and their brother was 01:05:00watching what was going on, on day shift. It's not that they weren't watching us on night shift or the swing shift. It's just that the focus was a little, seemed a little bit more relaxed. We still, everything was crossing Is, dotting Ts when it came to, you know, doing it by the book, filling out all the paperwork, making sure that, you know, the computer work was done, making sure that the logbooks were updated, but you just felt like you're doing a lot more of the maintenance aspect when you're working nights. And that's where I spent a lot of time, working on nights, just because they liked me up there. "You can get stuff done. We can trust you," because I had showed up as an A1C (Airman First Class), but at the time, in the Air Force, if you were an overachiever and did well and, demonstrated, you know, that you were worth it, you could get promoted six months early 01:06:00to a Senior Airman. And I had proven myself, at Warner Robins, by completing, helping complete a big maintenance repair that helped make, made the airplane safer. They were having problems with fuel gauges being inaccurate. They're swapping out a lot of fuel gauges. Come to find out, it wasn't the fuel gauges or the sensors in the tanks. It was actually the wires going to it. They weren't supported enough. So, me and the guys on nights on down in Warner Robins, we fixed all the 135s in a record amount of time. I think our maintenance superintendent was saying that it was less than half of the time allotted, and 01:07:00it was like, okay, we did this in like 4 or 5 months. So they had, you know, 8 to 10 months to do this. So it was good. That report and that medal followed me up to Alaska. So when I got up there, they're like, "Oh, you're going to work nights. We need guys like you on nights, the guys that can get stuff done." And we did a lot. I mean, working on F-16s, that was fun. We did a lot of stuff.

SPRAGUE: And what was the medal that you received for that?

MAURITZ: It was a meritory achievement.

SPRAGUE: Okay.

MAURITZ: Achievement medal.

SPRAGUE: Okay.

MAURITZ: And it was just for helping complete something that needs to get done. There was, you know, that's where that teamwork really, really shone through in your, in how all the different units work together. Our night superintendent, he 01:08:00started planning that, as soon as he was getting to turn it over to days. I need this, I need all these things taken care of so I can turn these three jets tonight, because I can only, it takes so long to get them cleaned out and stuff like that, but it worked out really well, and we didn't, I thought, we were having a lot of fun. I mean, a lot of, a lot of in-tank time, a lot of, you know, clean up and set up and got really good at it. So.

SPRAGUE: Who were some of your peers during that time that you were working with on your team? If you happen to remember any names, if you don't, that's okay.

MAURITZ: [Coughs] Excuse me. Can I get the water?

SPRAGUE: I'll get it, I got it, I got it. You're good.

MAURITZ: [Coughs] Thank you. [Clears throat] SPRAGUE: 01:09:00It's okay if you need to clear your throat, you're fine.

MAURITZ: [Clears throat] I work in a pretty dusty environment.

SPRAGUE: Oh okay.

MAURITZ: Currently, right now.

SPRAGUE: Okay.

MAURITZ: [Coughs] So excuse me. You're asking who were some of my peers at the time. Steve Ritchie. He was, he was my senior airman. He was, I was one of the apprentices. He was a senior airman and then we had Strudwick. 01:10:00I forget, I forget Strud's first name.

SPRAGUE: That's okay.

MAURITZ: But he was our he was our seven-level. And then occasionally, we would have Staff Sergeant Barry Stall. He was actually my first reporting officer. So he was my first NCO that I was assigned to. And he was, after I moved to day shift, he felt like it would be better if I had a day shift NCO as my reporting official. Another guy that I worked with, Aubrey Kelly, staff sergeant. But those guys were primarily the the ones that we were working with. There were a couple other guys, younger guys. But Staff Sergeant or Senior Airman Richie, he was a good old boy from Texas. Had a huge Saint Bernard, 01:11:00but he was, Staff Sergeant Richie was six foot, six foot plus, I think it was like six foot three. So he's like, "You know I'm not crawling in there. I'm here to make sure that you can get up in there." I'm like, "Whatever, man." We just got to get it done. But he was a good guy. But he was kind of going the other way. He was coming back off of Hill Air Force Base in Utah. He was coming off of fighters and going onto heavies and looking to sit still and retire, because he had gone a lot of places. He was, I think he was actually in Desert Storm when he was, when he was in, that was like one of the first things that he did. So he had a completely different experience than I did. And you could tell because he was very knowledgeable and very upfront about the reason why I'm doing this is because it's going to help you be better. Not 01:12:00because I'm being mean or, you know, anything like that.

SPRAGUE: Yeah. Yeah. I have to ask, while you were in Alaska, and I know they're not necessarily close together, did you have any opportunity to visit, family members in Alaska?

MAURITZ: I did, one of my aunts actually lived in Anchorage, so we'd made a couple of excursions. You know, we had a long weekend. You know, I was like, "All right, well, let's go to Anchorage," and we'd take off, you know, and I was on, if I was on, like one time was on day shift. So we got out, you know, we're on the highway at 3:00. Well, we're doing this during the summertime when it was decent. Well, it didn't get dark until, you know, 9:30, 10:00. Well, you're up, you drive all the way to Anchorage and beautiful scenery. You know, if it was good weather. You know, it's all kinds of great things to see down there. But I did get to see some of my, a couple of aunts, all 01:13:00my uncles were, down in the lower 48 at the time, so.

SPRAGUE: Yeah. So, during the pre-interview, you mentioned one of your deployments, with that unit. Operation Northern Watch?

MAURITZ: Yes.

SPRAGUE: Tell me about that.

MAURITZ: The, we're still enforcing a no-fly zone, and the A-10 unit, was tasked with going over there and providing, close air support for troops that were either on the ground or because there were still a lot of SAM missile sites, surface to air missiles, that Saddam Hussein was still actively, you know, manning, the A-10s were, you know, perfect for taking out, you know, ground-based targets and providing, you know, air support to ground-based units. So they, the 18th, the 355th went 01:14:00over there first, and then the 18th Fighter Squadron was coming in behind them. But they were actually coming in, for a different reason. And there were, there was another A-10 unit that was replacing our A-10 unit. And I went over there with the A-10s and got, you know, got to do a couple things. When you're in country and, you know, things, again, you know, within all safe limitations, they, they'd move the needles as close to red as you can. So some of the, you know, we definitely had, you know, if it was there was certain criteria, this is the bare minimum that we will allow. You know, obviously if a pump wasn't working, you know, you had to replace it. But a lot of times, you know, the big thing was that, you know, just they would 01:15:00start to leak. These things are hot. You know, they were just coming over from Alaska. When we came, when we got there, when we left Alaska, it was snowing, cold. And then, you know, all the traveling across, the temperatures, you know, made the metal change and developed a couple leaks here and there. But the reason why you were allowed to go is because you knew how to do those jobs quickly and efficiently. So that was the fun part.

SPRAGUE: Yeah. Talking about leaks, did you repair any bullet holes or anything like that, by chance?

MAURITZ: No.

SPRAGUE: Especially with the A-10.

MAURITZ: No, no, at the time there really wasn't any small arms fire or any anti-aircraft fire. And it was, there was another operation that kind of kicked off right towards the end of my time there, and it was Operation Desert Fox.

SPRAGUE: Mm-hmm.

MAURITZ: But again, you 01:16:00know, this was the A-10 hunting down either tanks or SAM sites.

SPRAGUE: Okay.

MAURITZ: So there, you know.

SPRAGUE: Yeah.

MAURITZ: And being an aircraft mechanic in a support role, I was so far removed off from any combat that, I got, you know, I got to see these guys leave with a bunch of, ordnance and then come back empty. And then they would go through what's considered a hot refuel, where they wouldn't even shut the engines off. They would just pull in, they'd get gassed up, and they would get reloaded with armaments again. And then, they'd be back out.

SPRAGUE: What was that like with the hot reload and the hot armaments?

MAURITZ: It was an interesting time because you knew that-- All right. Hot engines, there's your heat source. You can't, there's 01:17:00very little you can do to mitigate the heat that can spark a fuel fire. So now again, you know, you're watching this and you're thinking, what happens if this blows up? Well, you get some some videos in training of this is what it looks like when they blow up. And this is what it's gonna look like after it blows up. So you always try to keep that in the back of your mind, you know, how are those guys doing over there? You know, and every now and then you'd see him at chow hall or, you know, you'd be riding in the same truck or the bus on, on the way in. "Hey, you guys doing all right? You guys got enough water? You know what you're doing today?" "Yeah, yeah. We're good, we're good." "Good. 'Cause I don't want you blowing stuff up."

SPRAGUE: So you had originally, when you were in Alaska and your training was with F-16s, but you were working on the A-10.

MAURITZ: Mm-hmm.

SPRAGUE: What was, I mean, are there probably parallels or similar systems? Or you can do both or whatever.

MAURITZ: I thought because 01:18:00of the A-10 being the way it was. [Coughs] Excuse me. You know, the F-16 was so advanced. The A-10 was was still, there was no fly-by-wire at the time. They were talking about it, so everything was cable-rigged. You know, lot of redundant hydraulic systems. But, the one thing about the A-10s that I thought was really different than the F-16s, the F-16s only had a couple of tanks that had foam inserts in the tank. So what they would do is in these, in these rubber, bladder cells, they would take a type of, it's not polyurethane foam, but it's a type of foam that can resist being submerged in fuel. And they would cut it out and jigsaw it, so 01:19:00it would fill up all the space. It wouldn't slosh around. And all you're trying to do at that point is to keep it from splashing and creating a fuel vapor. Except on the A-10s. On the A-10s, the fuel cells were designed to absorb that any small arms fire. They actually had sealant built into the rubber fuel tanks. So if if they did take on, you know, small aircraft fire even, I guess it was even antiaircraft fire, it would try and seal itself up and part of that foam would get sucked out and it would seal around that. And it actually had some, you know, something to, to work with. But it was another chemical, another process to avoid causing vapors to spark.

SPRAGUE: Huh. And, where was this, when you were with Northern Watch, were were you working out of?

MAURITZ: It was 01:20:00Al-Jaber Air Force Base. Okay. In Kuwait.

SPRAGUE: Okay.

MAURITZ: Call it the Jab.

SPRAGUE: Okay.

MAURITZ: But it was, I thought it was really, that was the first time I ever got to go, to that I went to an NCO club that was at a deployment location. One of the units that was there was from Davis-Monthan. So their tail emblem was DM. Doug Mauritz, standing next to the Davis-Monthan tail wing that had got shot off.

SPRAGUE: Ooh.

MAURITZ: Yeah.

SPRAGUE: Wow.

MAURITZ: So at the NCO club, during Desert Storm, Desert Shield, one of the A-10s had gotten a wing shot off, a vertical stabilizer shot off. Well, when they ordered these things, well, better send them two, they don't know which one they got shot off or didn't indicate, so just send them both. Well, they took the one and stood it up in the NCO club. I got my picture taken next to that. I 01:21:00thought it was kind of fun.

SPRAGUE: That's at the NCO club at--

MAURITZ: Al-Jaber.

SPRAGUE: Al-Jaber in Kuwait. Huh. You got your picture next to it?

MAURITZ: Yeah. And it was just because it was DM.

SPRAGUE: Now while you were at Northern Watch, you were TDY (Temporary Duty Station) with the 355th or attached to them or how did, how did that kind of work?

MAURITZ: I was temporary duty with the 354th Maintenance Squadron.

SPRAGUE: Okay.

MAURITZ: But I was assigned to another unit that was a temporary unit. And again, I don't remember that number.

SPRAGUE: Yeah, don't worry about it. Yeah, you're good.

MAURITZ: But it was like, I was with the 354th. Well, when I was deployed, it was with a four-number unit. And because it was four numbers, that had some meaning in the logistical world that, okay, they are temporary, 01:22:00you know, it could be a conglomeration of different units put together, but they're, you know, just here temporarily. This isn't a permanent housing situation.

SPRAGUE: Yep. Okay. And then, you had mentioned it already. Tell me about, your next deployment. Were you deployed multiple times for Northern Watch or just once?

MAURITZ: Nope, just the once.

SPRAGUE: And then tell me about Operation Desert Fox.

MAURITZ: Yeah. So, Saddam Hussein had had enough of being told what he could do with his no-fly zone. You know, this is, you can't fly here. He says, "Look, if you guys continue to enforce this, I'm going to take action." They said, "Go ahead. See what happens." And, it was a joint operation with all the units that were in theater. There were some British, I believe there was even an Australian unit, but it was led by the United States. And they took out a bunch of the SAM sites. But 01:23:00it was, like I said, that was right near the end.

SPRAGUE: So maybe late '98 maybe?

MAURITZ: Yeah.

SPRAGUE: Okay. And where did you work out of then, if you can tell me.

MAURITZ: Same place.

SPRAGUE: Same place in Kuwait.

MAURITZ: Al-Jaber Air Force Base, yep.

SPRAGUE: Al-Jaber. Okay. Did you have any aircraft that were shot up or anything like that?

MAURITZ: No.

SPRAGUE: No, okay.

MAURITZ: Like I said, they would leave with a bunch of ordnance and then just come back empty. But nobody, I'd never heard of anybody getting shot down or shot at. I'm sure, you know, if they're, you know, unloading ordnance on, you know, Saddam Hussein's forces, then, yeah, I'm sure there's a good possibility they were getting shot at, but I never seen anything in person.

SPRAGUE: Yeah. Were you 01:24:00at all, and I've got to ask this question to make sure we covered the bases. Were you under fire while in Kuwait, at all? Like scuds coming in, something weird.

MAURITZ: No, we had our initial briefing. This is where you will go in the event of an attack. And at any given time during your time here, we'll conduct an exercise, make sure you know how to get there and what to bring. So we had, different MOPP (Mission Oriented Protective Posture) levels. We'd have our MOPP gear. You know, well, obviously, when they, you know, when we were doing exercises, they would announce over the radio first, "Exercise, exercise, exercise," and then give you, you know, this is what's going on. So, all right, I'm going here, grab everything. And as you're sitting there, you're really hoping that they end the exercise 01:25:00real quick because I don't want to put all this gear on because that's the next thing I got to do is put all this gear on. It's Kuwait and it didn't matter what time of the day it was, it was always about 95 degrees. So, you know, putting on, you know, a full chemical suit with a helmet and gas mask. It wasn't the most enjoyable experience.

SPRAGUE: Do you remember any, differences between, Northern Watch and Desert Fox?

MAURITZ: Not really. There were, you know, because the A-10s that I flew over there with, they were in support of it. The only thing that really might have changed was the flying hours. It seemed like that had a bit of an uptick. It went from just day to, you know, early evening ops ending to around the clock. But it was, you know, again, 01:26:00you know, you're sitting back in the shop saying, "Bro, you got anything to do?" "Nope." "All right. So what should we be doing?" We'd go out and we talked with flight line guys. "Hey, do you guys need help with anything?" you know. And we'd, you know, help out wherever we could, but a lot of times they were pretty busy. And once they started getting busy, then it was, okay, we have to get out of their way. So we'd go back to the shop.

SPRAGUE: Yeah. When Operation Desert Fox ended. What did your recovery or redeployment to, I'm assuming Alaska, look like? How did that go down?

MAURITZ: Again, I wasn't there for Operation Desert Fox, I was there for Northern Watch.

SPRAGUE: Okay.

MAURITZ: So my TDY was up. Okay. And it just happened to coincide with the Operation Desert Fox.

SPRAGUE: Oh, okay.

MAURITZ: So Operation Desert Fox was still going on when I left.

SPRAGUE: Okay.

MAURITZ: And then when I rotated back, I just rotated back to Eielson. 01:27:00SPRAGUE: Okay.

MAURITZ: Came home by way of Spain. Stopped in Spain overnight. It was young, like 21, you know, 22 years old. And there was a bunch of us on the airplane. We were on a, I think it was a C-5 Galaxy. So the thing was loaded with, you know, all the support personnel. And, they said, okay, everybody gets so many drink coupons and this is all you can buy at the BX (Base Exchange). Me and another guy we got tasked with, I don't, "I'm going to stay here and take a shower and, you know, not a deployment shower. You mind picking up a six pack of beer for me?" A lot of guys did that. We came back with grocery carts here and, like, oh, it was like a kegger party at a dorm or something. But we were, you know, we were back on a plane. You 01:28:00know, eight hours later, you know, all of this kind of sitting there going, "That was too much." So after you go drinking for almost 90 days without drinking. Yeah. It was like, six pack of beer, and you're like, wow, this is too much. [Both laugh] SPRAGUE: So then you flew back to Eielson?

MAURITZ: Yep.

SPRAGUE: Yep. In the C-5 Galaxy. What happened at Eielson after that, you get back, what do you remember your remainder of your time there at Eielson?

MAURITZ: It was kind of tough. My mom had gotten sick and had ended up in a rehab facility, and it was a pretty bad, the Red Cross actually got involved and asked me to come home. So I had only 01:29:00been back in the country about 22 hours when I got the phone call that I had to go home. [Pauses] So I, you know, had left my wife up in Alaska, for, like I said, about 90 days, I think I was like 89 days and then turned around. I hadn't even unpacked my gear yet and just grabbed it and left. Went, jumped on an airplane, came home. I was going to be down here until, you know, I think it was like 14 days. But, about halfway through, my wife came down and that's, you know, that's when things kind of took a turn for us. You know, so that that relationship, being young, married, dumping her in Alaska while I ran off to go do this job that, you 01:30:00know, she didn't quite understand. We ended up getting, separating. It wasn't because we'd only been married for such a short amount of time, in Alaska, you could actually dissolve a relationship, not divorced, just have it be dissolved and I'm like, oh. It was a lot cheaper. And as long as nobody was contesting anything, it was a good way to go. I didn't want it to go that way, but, you know, being in the military, it kind of happened. Well, I didn't take it very well. Had gotten into some trouble, went out, got pulled over for a DUI, and was shortly, was like, okay, I screwed up a very promising career because I'd done everything right to that point, was doing well, and I got this big 01:31:00blemish on there that it's hard to recover from. If you make that kind of bad choice in the military, it doesn't matter where you are. That's something that follows you around, and I didn't want to deal with it. There was a lot of things that I heard while I was in Kuwait that they were changing, you know, and I kind of figured that I was going to be going back to the desert, you know, some place really hot in the future. And they were like, you know, if you have, you know, tattoos down below your shirt line, you know, your t shirt line, you're gonna have to wear long sleeves no matter where you are. And I'm like, that doesn't sound like anything like I want to be involved with. And it was still in my mind, you know, something that was a choice. And I just decided, you know what? She was a big part of it. You know? I made this stupid mistake, and it's going to follow me around for a long time. I had the option, you know, to get out and go home 01:32:00and be around my family and kind of be done with this, and that's why I chose to do it. I was like, I just don't think it's for me anymore. There was a lot of the drive and a lot of motivation had left. So I was just going to, I just figured, you know what? I'm going to take advantage of all the benefits that I have available to me to try and get my life pointed in the right direction because the drinking had gotten a little bit the best of me. Obviously, if you get pulled over for drinking and driving, you're drinking too much, making some poor life choices. So, took advantage of some rehab and training from the military and got out shortly thereafter. I think it was like, yeah, came, I was down in California, January? Or no, December. It was December that I was in California 01:33:00down at Camp Pendleton and then, went home and, yeah, just got out-processed and you're done. Thanks for your time.

SPRAGUE: Yeah. Did you come back to Wisconsin or did you go to Alaska or what?

MAURITZ: No, I, oh, all of my family was here. Mom, dad, sister, they were all still staying in the area, and, I figured I might as well be around, you know, people that still liked me.

SPRAGUE: Yeah.

MAURITZ: And, had some friends back here, and yeah, so I came back. Came back this way. I remember when when I was out-processing, they said, "Where do you want to go?" I'm like, "I'm sorry?" They were like, "We're buying your plane ticket to your next point of, you know, your point of demarcation. Wherever you get out from here is where we're going to send you, because you can't stay here. Well, 01:34:00you can, but do you really want to?" I mean, I'm like, "No." Oh, it's too far away from family, and cost of living was obviously ridiculous. And, I'm just like, "Yeah, send me back to Wisconsin." They're like, "Are you sure?" I'm like, "What if I wanted to go to Hawaii?" And she went to type Hawaii, and I'm like, "No, no, no, don't do that." [Both laugh] Send me back to Wisconsin.

SPRAGUE: When you came back, you know, initially, what did you do? Did you use any of your vets benefits?

MAURITZ: Yeah. I had a little bit of downtime, that I was eligible for unemployment. And that gave me an opportunity to, okay, how different am I compared to, you know, where I'm at. Marshall didn't change that much. I was only gone for, I said about four years and change. So this place hadn't changed that 01:35:00much. But now, you know, I was different. And I was trying to figure out, what do I want to do, you know, what do I have available to me? And, yeah, I ended up deciding to go back to college, found a program that I liked and started here at Mid-State Technical College, ended up graduating from Northcentral Technical College in Wausau, Wisconsin, just down the road, about 45 minutes. But I was going to school on GI Bill, so I was making the equivalent of staff sergeant's pay while I was going to college, and that's all I did. So in central Wisconsin at the time, $1,600 a month was pretty reasonable income. And I was able to live like that. But then I finished college, you know, and then I was back off to work, find a job.

SPRAGUE: If you ever, you know, I've got to ask, did you ever think about going back to the military or pretty much? 01:36:00MAURITZ: I did. There was a time, right after 9/11 that I was thinking that, you know what? The Army units are going to need a lot of help. Maybe they would be able to waiver, you know, waiver me in and I could start over again with those guys. When I say waiver in, you know, just forget that I, you know, had this thing when I was in the military, but, no, they were like, we appreciate the effort, but, we're good. Just let us take care of it. So they, you know, they actually turned me down and they said, yeah, it's a bit of work. It's a bit work, a bit of work to get that type of waiver to get you back in the Army. 01:37:00I'm going, all right. That's fine. You know, because it was the Army, I'm like, I was in the Air Force. You know, you guys are going to be like, homeless compared to, you know, the Air Force. Yeah. But, yeah, I did think about it. But, it just wasn't in the cards.

SPRAGUE: No. Oh. That's okay. Did you continue, keep track of anyone that you served on active duty with?

MAURITZ: For a little while, but it didn't happen until they had gotten out. There was a couple guys. Though there was one guy in particular, when I was up in Alaska, Jeff McElveen. He was another one of my night shift staff sergeants. Great guy. Got to know him and got to be, you know, good coworkers, good friends, you know. Tracked 01:38:00him down, you know, when he rotated out. But, never really made it a point to do much more than a phone call. Called him once or twice. You know, "Hey, how's it going, you know? How'd it go?" "Oh, it went fine." "What are you doing now?" "Work, going back to work. I'm working as a contractor for, you know, a company that's doing military contracts." "All right, good for you." And that was the same thing with Tony Schreier. He was, him and I were in-processed to Eielson together. He was coming in a staff sergeant from another overseas short tour. But again, he knew, you know, he'd kind of been out and around the block. I believe the term was he'd been outside the wire. You know, I'm going, hmm, 01:39:00okay. So he had been to an overseas short base and then got deployed from that base to another support location. Came back and then, you know, I think it was Italy. I think he said he was, yea. If I remember correctly, was coming from Italy and he was, you know, everything that he'd done, he was over in Europe and he's like, "I'm getting assigned to PACAF. You guys don't know what you're doing over here," I'm like, "Really? Oh, really?" He goes, "They know it just fine. Just over in Europe, things are better." And he loved Europe. That was his thing. And he, you know, he was like, "I don't want to move up too fast because I don't want to sit behind a desk." He loved working on airplanes, so he was in charge. He was in charge of the shift for a long time, and he'd come out and help us, you know, when it made sense for him to come out and help us. But he loved it, you know, and he's great at teaching it and stuff like 01:40:00that. So, he'd eventually retired from the military and ended up down in Texas. And yeah, talked a little bit again, you know, a couple of handful of conversation. This is like the the start of social media.

SPRAGUE: Yeah.

MAURITZ: I found him on Myspace. If that makes any sense, what kind of time frame. Myspace had just gotten started, and that's when I had found him. Yeah. And he's like, oh, you know, but then, you know, he went about the rest of his, enjoying his retirement. And I was back here in Wisconsin working. So.

SPRAGUE: Tell me about your current involvement with the VFW and being a district manager.

MAURITZ: Ah. Yeah. So, because I was deployed, I had earned a expeditionary medal, which qualified me for membership in the Veterans of Foreign Wars. One of the first jobs that I had, 01:41:00after I got out of the service, one of the gentlemen there had asked me, you know, if I was, I'd be interested in joining. I said, "Well, are you a member?" "Oh, yeah. I'm a bartender down there." "Bartender?" Went down there and found a group of guys that were my dad's age, you know, Vietnam era veterans. But they were active in the community. We had a clubhouse. We did a lot of things. And it started, it re-sparked my volunteerism, helping veterans. When I was in high school, my dad had participated in one of their, a couple of their events, to help establish one of the local attractions, the High Grounds in Neillsville, Wisconsin. So I remembered some of these guys from the VFW, they were at this event, and when they seen me join, they were, "Oh, young guys. We 01:42:00love that! You want to be the commander?" I'm like, "What?" [Sprague laughs] SPRAGUE: Sorry.

MAURITZ: So being being involved, you know, my daughter was just born, 2001, so I was, I was an annual member for a little while, but then, they came up with a program where you could pay for a life membership in installments, and I signed up for that. And then this is about time I was in college and things like that. So I was like, all right, I'm a life member. And, I just loved the people, the camaraderie that the VFW offered. There were some financial benefits too, they knew how to get you involved for different grants in different types of, different financial situations where you can apply for this, and if you qualify, then you could get that and 01:43:00that could help out your costs with your cost of living expenses. Again, being in college at the time, I was, you know, I needed a computer and I was short, you know, I needed it for the start of the semester, and I was short. The VFW was nice enough to loan me the money to buy the computer. You know, and I told myself, look, I'll pay you back as soon as I can, but it's not going to be until this time. As soon as I had the money, I gave it back to them. And it's been, you know, that way. And like, every time I've needed help, the VFW was there for me. And I enjoy paying that forward. When I have an opportunity to help other veterans, then I do, you know, whatever, you know, but it starts off at the post level and then it goes to a district level and then it goes to the department level. Well, I had gone gotten involved at the district level. Was a post guy just working at a post helping with flags, funerals, things like that. And then now 01:44:00I'm working at a district level working with at the well, right now we're at 28 posts in the district for the district that I am the commander of, and I help coordinate, different programs and, you know, different recruiting events, different fundraising opportunities, work in conjunction with the Department of Wisconsin and get all that information passed down to the 28 posts. And then, you know, if there's posts that are struggling with different things, you know, this is, you got to remember, this is Korean War and Vietnam era veterans that are primarily the bulk of the the the membership that I'm coming into. There's not as many Desert Storm, Desert Shield. There's starting to be some, Operation Enduring Freedom, OIF, and Operation Enduring, or OEF. But 01:45:00again, these are younger guys. So when they get home they're doing a lot of what I did. They're going back to college. They're you know, establishing their families. So their level of time and commitment isn't as much as the older retired, you know, Korean War, Vietnam veteran era guys that have a little bit more time, you know, to volunteer and go to all these steak feeds and parades and, you know, funeral events and things like that. So, I help get those post coordinated and, you know, try to get them to use a computer. It's interesting. There's a lot of people that, "Why can't I just use a stubby pencil to do that? I've been doing it for that way for years." And I'm like, well, because, because we have to now. There was there was a time here recently where Covid, you know, basically locked down, you know, entire parts of the state of Wisconsin, you can't go outside. You're not supposed to go 01:46:00outside, you're supposed to stay home, but you still got to get the work done. So how do you do that? Well, you use technology. You have the internet, you have laptops, you have cameras. Let's utilize these meeting platforms where we can have meetings online and still, you know, be effective. So it's been, that's been my, oh, I started off as the judge advocate, which is a-- It's considered like a third commander. All you do is interpret the bylaws. What's going on? What's, you know, Robert's Rules of Order or demeanors, how you run the meeting. If you know people get uppity during a meeting, you have to, you know, do it this way. That's what you would do as judge advocate. But in the meantime, you're reading all the bylaws, you're reading all, how to run a meeting. Now you become a junior vice commander, and you're the guy who runs 01:47:00the meeting if the other two commanders aren't there. So it's a good start. But it's, you know, now you're in a leadership role. And that's what I went to school for. I was, my degree's in supervisory management. So it was fun to utilize, you know, the skills that I learned, and had the government pay for, working with a bunch of veterans.

SPRAGUE: Tell me about your twin passions for riding motorcycles and helping veterans.

MAURITZ: Ah, yes. Yeah, that was-- I've always been a motorcycle enthusiast. Whether, when I was a kid, it was dirt bikes. As I got older, it was the cruiser metric bikes at a, I stole a Virago from my cousin. Took that out for a joyride back before I got my license. But then it wasn't until, you know, my daughter and I, 01:48:00my daughter's mother and I had split up, and I found an old friend that she's like, "Oh, you still ride a motorcycle?" "No, but I'm going to." And then I started riding as soon as her and I started dating, that's it. I'm getting my motorcycle license and buying a motorcycle, and I've been on two wheels, oh, gosh, for the last ten years now. Yeah, about ten years. And in coming up through the VFW as a leader, I found out that, well, the VFW can authorize you to start a, motorcycle group, and you can get, you know, you can design your own back patch and, you know, ride around and promote the VFW and the auxiliary on motorcycles. Well, it's central Wisconsin. I mean, this is, Harley Davidson was, you know, invented, you know, couple, three hours down the road. And I love motorcycles. And all of a sudden, all of my veteran friends that, 01:49:00"Hey, do you want to go ride?" "Yeah, I want to go ride." Hold on a minute. Why don't we do this? Why don't we get together as a group? So I actually establish the Seventh District Riders' Group for central Wisconsin. And we started off there was only, it was only six of us. You have to fill all the positions. And one guy was actually holding two positions. He was a vice president and our road captain. But it's been, you know, we finished our first three years, because our when we wrote the bylaws, we were like, okay, how long? How long is your term? Well, riding season Wisconsin is only 3 or 4 months. So we made it last three, three terms that you would be an elected member of this committee, because you're a committee for the district. If 01:50:00you're at a post level, you're a committee for the post. And then because of my activity in that, and my being a district commander, the current district, the department commander at the time, Jason Johns, his past state commander was Donald Lynch. We were on a meeting. I'm like, you know, "You guys, you guys want me to wait until Jason's year or Corey's year to start this?" And Donald Lynch is like, "Get it started, Doug. Now!" So, established the Seventh District Riders, have been reelected as the president for that group. But then in the process of doing that, we had components from Kenosha and other riders groups. District Three had a riding group, Madison had a riding group, a post in Madison 01:51:00had a riding group. We all, we were working with Jason Johns, and he's like, "I'd like to establish a department level riders group." We're like, "It's new enough that it makes sense." Because you can't, when you apply for application to become a riders group for the VFW, you have to have enough people to fill all the elected positions. Now, if you don't have enough at a post level, then you have to do it at a district level, because you might have two guys, I'm just going to use my district because I know these. I might have two guys up in Antigo, but I have three guys in Wausau. But they, you know, and then the rest of us are in Marshfield. Well, we're not always going to be able to meet at the same time. We're not always going to go on the same rides together. But 01:52:00we can coordinate events and that's what we do. But I was actually part of the advisory committee to the commander at the time, Jason Johns, to establish the department, the Wisconsin Department Riders, and was the first secretary treasurer for the Department of Wisconsin Riders Group.

SPRAGUE: Tell me about, last September's Ride to Remember, what that was about.

MAURITZ: Ah, yes. September's Ride to Remember. Now, September. Now we have two rides in central Wisconsin. The Memorial Day ride, which is obviously over Memorial Day, and that's, and then the, there's another ride in August.

SPRAGUE: Okay.

MAURITZ: In August. And that's also at, at the high grounds. But that's, that's a, they call it the Ride to Remember. So we all meet at the VFW slash 01:53:00American Legion post in Neillsville. We have a gathering there. We do a small parade. We do a couple rides at, you know, you come in and you register for that day. And we do a couple tour rides and the Seventh District Riders have been leaders for that for a couple of different rides. But that particular ride that happens in August., everyone just shows up in Neillsville. And then we go on a couple of different rides around the area, but then we do a big parade through town and end up out at the high grounds. And out at the high grounds, that's when, the event staff for the high grounds, Chris and Bonnie, primarily. They're the part of the executive board there. Their staff do a wonderful job of, "Why are we doing this?" It's, "Why, what are we remembering?" And 01:54:00we go, traditionally, what we do is we go through and read off all the names of people that have, lost their lives on active duty or guard or reserve for the country from central Wisconsin, or, I think it's all of Wisconsin, but, there's, it's quite a few names. We have different groups represented, the VFW, the American Legion, different veterans, veteran-focused riders groups, the Seabees, Combat Veterans Association, Brothers by Choice have had people read names because it's, you get to read one sheet of names. I believe it's, we're up to like six sheets, and there's probably 50 names on each sheet. You know, it's just quite a bit, but that's another, you know, that's how I was able to take 01:55:00my motorcycle enthusiasm, find a bunch of co-minded people that, hey, we want to help veterans, we want to ride motorcycles. Let's do this. Let's go have some fun with this. And it's been a lot of work, but it's been a lot of fun. Just wonderful people, wonderful sites, different, you know, different places that I've gone.

SPRAGUE: Do you find that, being a veteran and being a rider complement each other?

MAURITZ: I do. There's a lot of history and nostalgia with veterans coming back from any conflict and going back to that motorcycle mentality. It provides you a sense of freedom. But at the same time gives you a very, almost exact feeling of camaraderie. The motorcycle community, you 01:56:00don't, you see motorcycles, you acknowledge them. If you see somebody on the side of the road, you stop and you try and help. You never know what's going on. They might have, you know, they might have a broken vehicle they don't have tools for, you might have tools. Just get them off the road. Get them someplace safe. You know, that's, in the military, that's, you're always looking out for one another. Motorcycle community, same way. And it gets even more specific when you get into the different types of groups. We're just a group. Everything is very relaxed. We're here to promote the VFW and the auxiliaries, so we have an image to uphold that we want to promote for the for both those organizations. You know, but, you know, MC cultures, the motorcycle, motor club cultures, those guys can be pretty, pretty hardcore when it comes to some of the things they do. But they all are very like-minded. They see, you 01:57:00know, they see a guy on a motorcycle on a road or a girl on the side of the road on a motorcycle that needs help. They'll stop and help. And that is, you know why motorcycles and military go hand in hand. There's so much there's so much similarity there. So.

SPRAGUE: What do you think your life would have been like if you hadn't served?

MAURITZ: Oh. [Pauses] That's a really good question. And I'll be quite honest with you, I probably would have been in the construction field. I, my dad worked hard to provide for my sister and I, you know, and that's what he taught me. He taught me construction trade, being here in Marshfield, there was two big manufacturing, mobile home manufacturing facilities, 01:58:00and I tried to get into one, but, um-- [picks up empty water bottle] that's actually kind of bothering me.

SPRAGUE: Annoying me, yeah. [Both laugh] MAURITZ: But I was, I think if I hadn't gone into the military, I probably would've ended up, you know, as a, just a blue collar construction worker kind of guy. I've, you know, probably would've gotten into motorcycles a lot sooner, which could have been different, but still would have been the same thing. You know, me strapping five gallons of fuel to a hot engine racing down the road at 70 miles an hour. Kind of crazy, but I'm sure I would have started that sooner.

SPRAGUE: Yeah. What motivated you to do this interview?

MAURITZ: The VFW and the partnership that the Wisconsin Veterans Museum has with the Wisconsin dislocated veterans, am I saying that 01:59:00right? WDVA?

SPRAGUE: Wisconsin Department of Veterans Affairs.

MAURITZ: Wisconsin Department of Veterans Affairs. Because I got out and was, like I said, I had a pretty vanilla career when I was in service. I wasn't, I wasn't shot up. I wasn't, know, doing, you know, 100 mile ruck marches or anything like that. Didn't see, you know, anything terribly catastrophic where I, you know, came down with PTSD or anything. I just, you know, I got involved in, like, "Hey, can I at least get a physical?" "Yeah. Yeah, sure." Well, I'm doing work, you know, I'm going to the WDVA to get my physical. And then I see, you know, the Wisconsin Veterans Museum at one of my VFW functions, and a lot of VFW functions, actually. And, one of the guys, and I think it was you, at the time said, "Hey," 02:00:00you know, "would you be interested in doing this?" And I'm going, you know what? There, this, it isn't glamorous what I did, but somebody should know that I did it. You know, my daughter and I are estranged. A lot of my younger cousins, though, have questions. My dad has, you know, all kinds of family. And I have cousins on my dad's side. You go over to central Wisconsin, you know, get down around Milwaukee, Madison. You know, it's pretty easy to find somebody I'm related to down there, but they all have questions. And this is an opportunity for me to just put that place marker there. I'm finishing up my, finishing up my tour as a commander. And we've finally connected at a point in time in my life where, yes, this is a good time to do this kind of getting getting done with my commander years, at 02:01:00the district level. And let's do this now before I forget about it and have to reschedule, you know, a half dozen different times. [Sprague laughs] SPRAGUE: Did we miss anything that you'd like to cover?

MAURITZ: No, I think overall, what I've shared, you know, the questions that you had about where I went, what I've done, I feel like I've shared, you know, the better parts of it. Obviously, you know, you can look back at the things that you were doing. Oh, you know, I was you know, some people were like, oh, that, you know, that deployment sounds like it cost you a marriage. No, that was somebody else's choice. My choice was to do what I wanted in the military. And because that person changed their mind about how they were going to support me and how they felt about me. I don't blame the military for that. That 02:02:00was, you know, that was just one of those things that happens. There's there's a high divorce rate in the military, whether, not just the Air Force, all across, Space Force, all the way out, all points in between. So it's not that, you know, I mean, I, like I said, I remember the good stuff. I know about all the bad stuff, but it wasn't really that bad. I mean, I've met in my time, I've met veterans, you know, that were deployed to, Afghanistan, Iraq. And have come back, you know, in pieces, literally missing, you know, both legs and part of their arm. And I, you know, now they are out there being motivational speakers and saying, you know what? We're asked, we volunteered to do this, and we don't necessarily know upfront that this is going to happen. Otherwise we probably wouldn't do it, but 02:03:00we volunteer to do it. And my stuff was really, really light, you know, very easy. Easy to maintain. There's people that are out there, you know, that I, I think had a lot worse, almost died. But then I remember the guys that actually died too. You know, I read those names a couple times a year. Not that I was personally close to them, but, there's a guy in my community that I went to school with his cousin, and we were close. Her, his cousin and I were close, locker partners. I'm like, "Oh, gosh, that was that was terrible," you know? And then I hear, you know, I hear about a couple other guys that I had served with, you know, had committed suicide. I'm going that sucks. You know, that's not good. But, you know, I got out, did my time, I pay my taxes, and 02:04:00I have access to all the benefits that I was promised. And I got people in the VFW and other veterans service organizations that are making sure that, you know, every veteran has access to those. So I'm really good, you know, especially, you know, the transition from being, you know, a four year veteran to, you know, how does that affect my life? I love how it's changed it. It's, I feel like it's made it better. You know, it's given my time there a sense of purpose. So it set me, set me on a path that, you know, got me to feeling very good about, you know, being a veteran. And you know what the different entities in our community do to support veterans. So.

SPRAGUE: Okay, well, from one veteran to another, thank you for your service.

MAURITZ: You're welcome.

SPRAGUE: And this concludes the interview.

MAURITZ: Thank 02:05:00you for your service. I appreciate your time today. [Interview Ends]