Encoded for the Experiencing War web site for the Veterans History Project.
The recording of the interview with Thomas E. Billimek was digitized.
This transcription was encoded with minimal changes to the original text in an effort to preserve original content and idiosyncrasies of the person interviewed. Period language and terminology are also retained. Encoding is literal with regard to the transcriptionist's capitalization, punctuation, and spelling. Spelling errors are indicated with [sic]; however, recurring errors in spelling within a single document have been marked the first time and not subsequently.
What is your name?
Thomas E. Billimek.
What is your birthdate?
September 12, 1945
What war did you serve in or branch of service?
I served in primarily the army reserves. I was mobilized during Iraqi freedom in 2003. I served in active duty for fifteen months in that capacity.
Your highest rank achieved?
Colonel. I got into the army reserves in 1968 and served in a number of different units over that period of time, I had eight years of enlisted service. And after I finished my masters degree I got a direct appointment as a civil affairs officer and I served in that capacity for several years. Then I got into te ligistics area and had several assignments including a group S-4. I don't know if those titles mean anything or ifit will be of any help to you. A group S-4 works as a staff officer in a unit commanded by a full Colonel. And is responsible for anything that has to do with supplies, transportation, maintenenance, the whole gammitt. I served in that capacity that went up to an assignment with the 90th army reserve command here in town and in that capacity was the supply officer and eventually became the chief of supply and services which again is a very global assignment. Then I was given command of a supply and service battalion out of Corpus Christie. I served in that for about 3 12 years until I was selected for promotion for full Colonel. In terms of active military service I was selected to command a garrison support out at Fort Hood and initially the function of that type of unit was to augment garisson staff. Now every military installation at least on the army side there is a staff that basically takes care of running the whole post facility and so it covers everything from housing, personell, maintenance, you name iUt covers the whole field. Our job was to augment the garrison commander staff. So I had soldiers for example working in the ligistics area. I had soldiers who supported operations in the air field at Seaport. I had military police working for me. I had personnel specialists, pay specialists. I had attached to me medical personel. When Iraqi freedom was being proposed my unit was mobilized in January of 2003, and because everything was changing quickly we basically we basically had to reconfigureour organization from a supporting staff organization to a brigade headquarters. It's a unit again commanded by a full Colonel that's offpretty much on its own. And our mission at that time was to, we had total responsibility from mobilizing national guards and am1Y reserve soldiers. We had responsibilities for insuring that they were trained prior to employment. We had to do all of their inprocessing that included getting military LD. cards for active duty and all their pay documents were correct. So anything you had to do to get on active duty we had responsibility for. We also had a medical section assigned to us including physicians and dentists who would screen soldiers when they were mobilized so that they were in good physical condition, So we could deploy them. And we also were involved in getting them ready to ship out to deploy. And like I said we had folks working the air field at Fort Hood. We had soldiers working mostly out of Beaumont assisting in the loading of ships to transport equipment. Then when soldiers would start to come back we would reverse the process, so we would then make sure all their equipment got back and receive the maintenance it needed and so on. So that's what we did that whole year. It doesn't sound like a lot until you look at the details that were involved for one thing. There really wasn't a book out telling us how to do our job. We knew how to assist the staff officers at Fort Hood. But in terms of becoming basically a mobilization headquarters in the capacity we had to work. We had to train ourselves up at the same time we were providing support for the soldiers we were responsible for. I used to have the title of Mayor of North Fort Hood. If you've never been to Fort Hood that might not sound like much, but North Fort Hood is a National Guard training facility that's used primarily in the summer and so the facilities were very outdated and needed a lot of work to get them in usable status. We had all that responsibility as well. And we did that for over a year. My command tenure was up and so I had a new guy come up and I was given another assignment and that basically brought me to the end of my military career. My dad was in the military in WWII and his main assignment, because he spoke german and he was a military police officer as well. His job was to work with German POW'S, so he could translate for the military.
Then after WWII he was out ofthe military and he was a civil service worker in Kelly.He was born in High Hill Texas, which is around Schullenburg. My mom was born in Shiner and was basically a mom and a housewife. I have one brother and 2 sisters.I'm the oldest so I left first. My brother served in the coast guard a number of years ago. I think he fulfilled his enlistment and then got out. My father-in-law was drafted into the Navy in WWII and was assigned to the marines then he got to do the Island tour in Iwo jima.
He got I think two purple hearts as a result of that. I've got uncles who were in the service during WWl1. One of them was fighting in the pacific and he got a purple heart. 1 don't know if any of the others were wounded. They all were army. In terms of joining the military I was, when I was in college the military draft was still in effect and there were college deferments. We were under graduates and this was toward the latter part of the Vietnam conflict. And I had been accepted back at school at Trinity University with an assistanship, which is wonderful because I couldn't have afforded to go ther otherwise. And that was the time that the draft board decided get rid of school deferments for anybody except physicians, lawyers, and for a very specific school group. Psycologists were not a part of that.
So I at that time elected to try to find a reserve, just so I can finish my education. In those days it was verv difficult to find a reserve unit. You either were drafted or got into the reserves. I finally did get a position here in the Civil affairs unit in San Antonio. And so I got into that in August of 1968. In September of that year I went to basic training in Fort Leonardwood. In terms to adjusting to military life it's a little bit different I never had that much of, it wasn't traumatic, it was just a different way of living. I went to a private high school and it was a boarding school and so we lived in dormitories, so the barracks were not that big of a change from a dormitory. And living with a bunch of other guys in the same basic area. The food I don't remember a problem with that. It was always more than what you could eat. The quality was good. It was just like any institution, the more you eat at the same place, the lousier the food gets.! went to Leonardwood in September and left there I guess the end of October the beginning of November after I completed basic training.
But the acclimatization to the military wasn't that much of an issue. I didn't have any problems with self discipline. That's always big. Also I was older because I had finished my undergraduate degree. In some cases I was maybe four or five years older than some of the guys who were just out of high school and coming in. So I had that advantage.
Military life has got it's own unique challenges, there's a security with it. So there wasn't a real problem with that that at all. Some of that like with any organizations you question why did they make those kind of decisions. It's not anything major but I remember we had a week offield training that was part of basic training cycle. And when we went out to the field this was in late october I guess somewhere in there and for some reason a cold front came in and we couldn't put on long underwear because Seargent didn't say we could and that was like a day or so and we weren't freezing, it wasn't like ice or frostbitten it was just a little cold and I can remember when they finally said we can put on our long underwear it warmed up. But they said we could put them on so we had to wear them.
It's a little thing and it's no big deal but you could either roll with it or you can get upset by it. I like to think I get upset by things I influence and not get upset about things I don't. you either accumulate to that or you just get eaten up by it. It's just not worth getting eaten up by. I knew enough to get through my training and not to question authority. Basic training is basically getting you used to a different kind of life. It wasn't particularly traumatic. I had friend so that worked out allright. And then once I finished that I went to Fort Benjamin and was trained as a military journalist, which was interesting becauseit was a department of defence activity so we had Airforce , Marines, Navy, Army and so as well as havingstudents from all those different branches. The faculty there came from the different branches for example for one of my journalism classes I had a navy chief petty officer for speech class. I had an an army lieutenant colonel so you had a good mixture.
It was a good opportunity to intermix with the other services. I did not serve abroad, everything was in this country. I did not serve in combat. One of the jobs I had in Fort Hood was that I had to deploy people to combat and to the best of my knowledge I would not know who he was ifhe walked in the room. I do know one soldier I shipped who was killed over there and his name was specialist Jonathon Cheatomon. I finally saw a picture of him later on so I don't feel guilty about that but there's still a real connectionto people who do that, who have to be involved in that. The friendships whenthe higher up you are in command, the more limited your friendships become. I had good working relationships with a number of officers who were in my rank who were working at Fort Hood but there is such a high turnover rate to say that I really developed a strong friendship with ~mvhoclv not in that Sf'nse we ,vere more acmwintances. But ther is a commaderie that unless you experienced military life whether it's in combat or not it's really difficult to explain. We really do become like family. We really do. Even for people who might not personnaly know and if! may give a couple of examples. One of the things that I really low doing was welcoming back soldiers. Any time that we would have and there was a program and for the life of me I can't remember the name of it. There was a program that we would have where people would come back not neccesarily as units but we would have plane loads come in and so that was a very nice duty. They either wanted a general officer or a full colonel to go out and meet the plane and they would land at Fort Hood and when these folks would come off and I knew none of them personally, but we would welcome them back and shake their hands. I had one captain when he came down gave me a hug and I don't know who he was but he was just so glad to be home. There was a young female. I think she was a aspecialist ofE-4. She was in her full combat regalia. Helmet, flap jacket, weapon, pack. And on the back of her pack she had strapped a teddy bear. So there was a real humanist there. I didn't know her but it was like welcoming a daughter home. And so it's that kind of aspect of family.
It was always nice seeing the families getting reunited at the welcoming ceremony. On another occasion in this family I did we have mobilized a unit from San Antonio and we were shipping them out to Iraq and so we were boarding them on the 747and it was still a little while before the flight went off and so I got on the plane and I was talking to some of the solidiers. I kind of made the rounds and then came back toward the front and there were three or four female soldiers sitting there and I was shaking hands with them. And one of the soldiers would not let go of my hand and so we were talking a little bit and I thought, "Well okay she's afraid to deploy. I understand that you are going to a place that's not nice." As we were talking I found out she was not afraid to go any where she had never flown before. And she was afraid to fly. But you get those things. That's the human side that unless you've been in that experience you really don't understand, oecause you thmK. tiley are killers out that s nght Ll1at s wnat we are llamed h) do. BUl there is a human side that's there and a gentle side too. And in spite of what's happened and that's what would impress me about these people coming back. I don't know the peanuts character. One of the peanuts character he always had dust flying off of him. Well when you pat soldiers on the back and they would get cleaned up before they got home, dust would come flying off of them. So there really is that family experience even if you personally don't know someone there's a bond that's there. Again I can't speak about being in war because I wasn't.
Some ofthe things about coming home we were lucky most of my soldiers, actually about half of my soldiers lived around Fort Hood. I also had a contingency out of Norman Oklahoma and some of us were scattered. Some lived in Dallas, some lived in San Antonio and so on. But what I tried to do as much as we were able is to let folks go home on weekends. As long as we did not have a work load that prohibited that. Cause I can come home pretty much every weekend because I leave my executer officer in charge and he came home a weekend I stayed back. So we get to do a lot of that so it wasn't like we were totally seperated from our family. Not like you were deploying somewhere off in the distance. It was always sad to watch families say goodbye to their husbands or wives or moms or dads or sons or daughters. In reality you didn't know if you would ever see them again. It's hard to describe that unless you have been there. When you get people to talk about religion, Christianity says we're supposed to love our brothers and sisters. It's hard to find a greater love and respectfrom people as part of a family than what you see in the military. It really is. It's just amazing. People who are so committed to what they are doing and although we worked primarily with National Guard and Army Reserve soldiers we did have some dealings with the active duty soldiers. For example when some units would deploy, it would not make any difference if they were active duty or National Guard or Army Reserve units. They were all soldiers who were deploying. We had good working relationships all the way around. Readjustment to civilian life, I had a number of chaplains who were working for me and one of the things they tried to do and actually some of my chaplains at Fort Hood. Fort Hood at that time had three headquarters. It had fort infantry divisions and first calvary division and Garrison had a chaplain core headquarters it had a chaplain. Division had several chaplains so when those folks left we had to consolidate. I did have a couple of my chaplains who actually were in charge of the families that served. Some of the chaplains talked to these families when someone from their family was killed or injured. That was a very difficult job.