CAOC historians preserve past for the future

  • Published
  • By Capt. Nicholas J. Sabula
  • U.S. Central Command Air Forces-Forward Public Affairs
AL UDEID AIR BASE, Qatar (AFPN) --  Philosopher George Santayana once wrote, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

With the volume of events from operations Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom, someone has to decide what details from these operations are filed away for future leaders to draw upon years down the road.

This is the dilemma Master Sgt. Paul Witt and Tech. Sgt. Jason Axberg face each day. As Air Force historians deployed to the Combined Air Operations Center here, they are the caretakers of all information related to air operations in the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility. They archive and preserve current events for future reference.

“Our job here is the central point for everything that happens (within the) OIF (AOR), OEF (AOR) and the Horn of Africa,” said Sergeant Witt who is deployed from Whiteman Air Force Base, Mo. “Every rocket that’s shot at us, every bomb we drop, every plane that’s flown ... we track and write about all of it.”

The historians’ primary workload consists of looking at a mountain of information to determine what is and is not important to keep. The information they save could be used for research or military planning 10 or 20 years later.

“We’re the only people between the boss and the delete button, or whoever and the shredder,” Sergeant Witt said.

They said the hardest part of their job is trying to determine what information really needs to be saved, since information might be used by the coalition for operations today or decades from now.

“Information may be interesting but unimportant to a decision maker,” said Sergeant Axberg who is deployed from Royal Air Force Mildenhall, England.

The historians archive monthly reports covering a complete history for the entire AOR, versus a six-month report back at their home stations. These reports are sent to the major commands and to the Historical Research Agency at Maxwell Air Force Base, Ala., where they are permanently stored. Reports can become quite large, with information from just a single event filling five or six CD-ROMs. Eventually the data will be available digitally, allowing a researcher to find everything online.

Sergeant Axberg said one of the great services historians bring to the warfighter is being able to track down historic concepts for use in future operations. The information requested on a daily basis is used to analyze past missions while planners map out upcoming operations.

“What makes our job exciting is having to find the things that other people can’t find, bring them out and write the story about (them),” Sergeant Axberg said. “If (the information) isn’t electronic, we need to go find it. That’s where conducting interviews comes in and other ways of gathering information.”

Some of the information they collect concerns munitions.

“(We record) what bombs we’ve dropped, where we’ve dropped them and what happened with those bombs,” Sergeant Witt said. “It’s not just important for future researchers, but also for those who are part of operations now.

“Recently, I heard the new interim Iraqi government has petitioned the American government for a listing of where all the bombs were dropped during the war,” he said. “If it weren’t for a historian, that information possibly wouldn’t be available.”

There are historians at some other locations in Iraq and Afghanistan collecting information, but everything related to the AOR ends up here, Sergeant Witt said. While wing historians focus more on specific operations and aspects of a single base, such as construction projects and infrastructure, the CAOC historians focus on the larger picture.

“We concentrate on what’s going on throughout the entire AOR,” Sergeant Axberg said. “If we tried to keep track of all the construction projects at all the different bases, we might go nuts.”