|
 As
Lt. Col. John Jansheski (left), 423rd Security Forces
Squadron Commander, looked back on his career leading up to
his promotion to lieutenant colonel, he recognized that
adapting to changing circumstances has been key throughout
his Air Force journey.
“The only constant in my
career has been the new,” said Jansheski. “Be prepared for
new all the time. Everything is new, every section I've gone
into is different. I'm on my third command now, if you count
the one I was deployed to, and they were all different. They
were all different structures. They were all different
jobs.”
Starting his career as an airman first class
in 1999, Jansheski has seen a great deal of change, both in
his own work and in the Air Force as a whole.
“The
things that I was told to do or the positions that I was put
in when I first commissioned always felt significantly
different from anything that existed when I first came in,”
said Jansheski. “I was only enlisted for two years, but it
was so different. I joined in 1999, I was at my first base
by 2000 and I went to get commissioned about ten days after
September 11th,” Jansheski paused, reflecting on the
tumultuous time. “September 11th changed everything,” he
said. “There's this thing called airbase defense where you
come in and set up an airbase, I'd already been deployed so
I was pretty sure that airbase defense just didn't exist
anymore. When we went to Saudi Arabia that base was already
set up, I was at the gate, it was hot and that was the whole
deployment."
Once Jansheski commissioned however, the
Air Force he had come to understand changed all around him.
After 9/11 the way Airmen executed operations drastically
shifted.
“We went over airbase defense in tech
school, which was fun,” said Jansheski. “But a year later I
was deployed to Iraq doing airbase defense, setting up a
base from nothing. None of the people I had worked with
prior had done anything like that. They'd all planned for it
or exercised it, but nobody had done it.”
As he
continued his career, new challenges leapt in his path,
sometimes in ways he never saw coming.
“At one point
I was the one-man security detail for the F-16 training
mission in Egypt,” said Jansheski. “Somehow I ended up
getting tied into the Suez Canal, transiting on whatever
U.S. flagship happened to be coming through. Sometimes they
were traditional Navy ships, but sometimes they were just
big civilian freighters that for whatever reason were taking
U.S. flagship status. One of those ships was docked down in
Port Suez with some Navy Masters-at-Arms on board for
security.”
In Port Suez, when ships are docked,
smaller boats will often come up and try to sell goods, an
practice that could potentially leave the ship open to an
attack. It was a nerve racking situation for the
Masters-at-Arms, said Jansheski, especially after the attack
on the USS Cole in 2000 where a small boat rammed the Navy
ship, killing 17 sailors.
“The Masters-at-Arms
reported that some boats came towards this flagship,” said
Jansheski. “Since they didn't know the status of the boats
they obviously didn't want to let them get close enough to
strike. First they used a loud speaker, which worked for all
but one boat. So they fired off a pencil flare, but it still
didn't turn around. So they went to their final option and
fired off a few warning shots from their .50 cal. They
counted their shots, saw them all hit the water, and then
the boat turned around and went back.”
What seemed to
be a resolved incident quickly spiraled out of control.
“I got a phone called a little later from an Egyptian
agency saying that one of the men on that boat had been
shot,” said Jansheski. “Obviously the Egyptians were quite
upset, and at this point we had very conflicting statements.
Nobody on our side believed we had shot him, so we asked to
do an autopsy. But, in Islam they want to bury the body
within 24 hours, so initially they refused to have one
performed. It took a call from the major general I worked
for to convince them to get one done.”
“I had a
problem though,” Jansheski continued. “I was in Cairo and
the autopsy was in Suez,” he said. “We were prohibited from
driving at night because of the dangerous roads in Egypt,
and I didn't even know if I could find the place. So I got a
driver and the whole drive down I'm on the phone trying to
figure out what I'm walking into, it was a situation that I
could have never prepared for. We finally managed to find it
and it was a circus in there. It was a royal mess. It ended
up that he had been tagged by some sort of ricochet from the
warning shots. They didn't know how but they'd hit him. It
was a crazy situation.”
While not without struggle,
the ordeal was resolved and from it came part of a valuable
lesson for Jansheski.
“There have been a lot of those
situations where you just have no idea what to expect,” said
Jansheski with a smile. “Through those I've become better at
relying on others. I don't think that that's a skill I
brought with me into the military at all, being able to
trust others and letting them surprise you. We bring some
great people into the Air Force and I've been very lucky to
be able to lean back on them.”
Even now Jansheski is
constantly faced by new challenges and change.
“Being
overseas, my squadron is always shifting,” said Jansheski.
“Most people are only here for two or three years. Since
I've been here I've had at least three different staffs, and
that's just the people who work in the back office. I've had
to learn to rely on them because I can't be a do-er anymore,
at my level if I'm still trying to do everything I'd be a
pretty big failure as an officer, and as a commander in
particular.”
However Jansheski is still looking
forward to what he has yet to learn.
“I want to
continue to learn,” said Jansheski. “I want to continue to
do interesting things. There are many things about the Air
Force that I don't know. There's so much new left, and the
more I learn the more I can help my Airmen. That's what I'm
here to do. I'm here to help the Airmen.”
By U.S. Air Force Airman 1st Class Zachary Bumpus
Provided
through DVIDS
Copyright 2016
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