Boot Hill finds new home at Al Udeid

  • Published
  • By Master Sgt. William J. Sharp
  • 379th Air Expeditionary Wing Public Affairs
AL UDEID AIR BASE, Qatar (AFPN) --  The Boot Hill “cemetery” at Prince Sultan Air Base, Saudi Arabia, has gotten the boot.

For the second time in 11 years, the military’s tongue-in-cheek version of Tombstone, Arizona’s famous cemetery, has been exhumed, this time from the closed PSAB to its new resting place here.

Cemetery builders chose a small, unclaimed parcel of land behind the 379th Expeditionary Logistics Readiness Squadron fuels maintenance area.

The cemetery is primarily for worn-out work boots; however, petroleum, oils and lubricants airmen, the cemetery’s caretakers, have also dispatched unserviceable jet fuel bladders, uniform items and other miscellaneous memorabilia. Only unserviceable items are welcome at Boot Hill and only the caretakers or honorary members may contribute to the collection.

Boot Hill began in 1992 when 4404th Wing Fuels Management Flight airmen built it in Dhahran. When the wing moved to PSAB after the Khobar Towers bombing, Boot Hill moved with it. “Burials” have taken place at Boot Hill ever since. Legend has it that if a troop buries boots there, he or she will never have to return to the base, provided the person performs all aspects of the ritualistic ceremony correctly. The key is to not look back at the cemetery after the ceremony. If one turns back, all bets are off.

“PSAB wanted to keep the Boot Hill tradition going, so they boxed up the cemetery and sent it here before closing,” said Chief Master Sgt. Thomas Buchanan, fuels manager here. “We’ve got some motivated people here who took on the project to resurrect Boot Hill.”

PSAB’s cemetery had a Halloween look to it with a rickety picket fence, small rocks, old fuel hoses, elaborate markers, a plywood chapel and more than 200 boots. Many markers in the cemetery had inscriptions -- reminders of people who had served before, tributes to spouses who endured long deployments and poems.

“Walking through the PSAB cemetery, you could easily see the names of people you might know on various boots,” said Buchanan. “It’s like walking through history.”

He credits the entire fuels flight for bringing Boot Hill to life, especially the creative talents of Staff Sgts. John Eaton and Eric Peterson, and Airman 1st Class Camilo Romero.

Does Boot Hill really work? No one can really say for sure, or perhaps fear of a jinx keeps lips sealed. The fact is, some have managed to escape redeployment altogether, some have redeployed to the same base or another in the region and others, like Buchanan, have returned to Southwest Asia several times.

“We’d like to think that as long as POL members get deployed, there will always be a Boot Hill in the region for us,” Buchanan said. (Capt. Liza Barreto, formerly of the 363rd Air Expeditionary Supply Squadron at PSAB, contributed to this story.)