The road to PJ part two: What's a PJ?

Published Dec. 2, 2012
By By Staff Sgt. Anna-Marie Wyant
920th Rescue Wing Public Affairs

PATRICK AIR FORCE BASE, Fla. -- Less than a week after Staff Sgt. Brandon Forshaw signed up to join the Marine Corps Reserve, the U.S. came under the infamous terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, which left thousands of American citizens dead and injured and the rest of the world in shock. Forshaw and his family were no less in shock than everyone else.

His parents, who were unfamiliar with the U.S. military, were worried about the fate of their first-born. Because Forshaw was 17 when he enlisted in the Marine Corps Reserve, he needed a guardian's signature, and his mother supplied that signature.

"Mom got a little scared," Forshaw said of his mother's reaction to 9/11. "Dad wasn't real happy, but he'd done it (served in the military) 30 years ago. My family was concerned, but nobody was trying to talk me out of it. Everyone was very supportive."

Their support would help him get through the whirlwind of a year that followed. While the country was embarking on a new war in Afghanistan, Forshaw was finishing his senior year of high school. Initially, he was slated to leave for Marine basic training after he completed all his finals but before his graduation day. After successful completion of boot camp he would then attend technical school to become a vehicle operator. In almost the blink of an eye, his plans changed again.

"I actually got into a dirt bike accident that changed my situation quite a bit," Forshaw said.

While he was initially scheduled for basic training in May, due to his leg injury his date was pushed back to July, giving him enough time to recover from the accident. Instead of becoming a vehicle operator, he was told he would have to change his career to working in supply. After his leg healed, Forshaw began Marine Basic training and graduated on Oct. 4, 2002, his nineteenth birthday.

Forshaw completed supply tech school and began drilling with his Reserve unit and taking college courses. Then on Martin Luther King Day 2003, Forshaw received another life-altering call from the Marine Corps.

"I got a call saying, 'Pack your bags, you're getting shipped to Iraq and you'll be leaving in a couple weeks,'" Forshaw recalled. "Previously I'd thought, it's the Reserve, we're not getting deployed."

After telling his parents the news, his mother couldn't contain her emotions.

"Mom cried a lot initially," he said of her reaction to his upcoming deployment. "It was foreign to all of us. We didn't have any aunts or uncles or cousins in the U.S. military; I was the first one. We knew I was going to Iraq, and I was going to get shot at, but that's about it."

Forshaw left for his deployment to Iraq in February 2003 with a nuclear biological chemical decontamination team for a rifle company. Although his job title was supply, Forshaw said that 'supply' had very little to do with his actual job.

"I still to this day couldn't tell you a thing about supply, because I never did anything in supply," laughed Forshaw. "We were a (decontamination) unit. If the front lines had gotten contaminated, we were right behind them to take care if that."

He said he didn't know what to expect because he had no personal experiences to draw from. While he said it was a good experience overall, there were certainly conditions he did not enjoy.

"It was cold and dusty, the sandstorms sucked, it would rain while there was a sandstorm going on, we'd get shot at all the time ... it was just uncomfortable," Forshaw said of Iraq during his first deployment experience.

Forshaw left that deployment unscathed, but just a couple years later, he would receive a call to pack his bags again, this time to go to Djibouti, in the Horn of Africa. He didn't know that would be the last time the Marine Corps Reserve would call him for activation.

On this deployment to Camp Lemonier, Djibouti, Forshaw encountered a group of people who would, again, lead to many changes in his life, including the uniform he was wearing.

"We were guarding the gates to Camp Lemonier, and we were always told for the Air Force PJs, just let them through the gate, don't inspect their vehicles," Forshaw said. "I didn't even know what a PJ was."

He said for nearly four months, he waved PJs through the gate, unaware of their mission, or really anything else about them. He did notice, however, that they seemed to enjoy whatever it was they were doing.

"There I was standing in my helmet, full battle rattle, two weapons, hating life in a hundred and twenty-five degree heat, and these guys would come through in board shorts and flip flops and big smiles on their faces."

After watching them continually drive up with Zodiac rafts and dive gear on their vehicles and ride on four-wheelers with parachutes hanging off the back, Forshaw's curiosity - with maybe a hint of envy - peaked.

"I finally stopped one and asked 'What do you guys do? I don't know what you do, but you look like you're having a much better deployment than I am,'" said Forshaw, who was a corporal at the time.

The man he stopped was then 1st Lt. Quintin Nelson (now a major), a combat rescue officer from the 304th Rescue Squadron at Portland Air National Guard Base, Ore. The 304th RQS is a geographically-separated unit of the 920th Rescue Wing at Patrick Air Force Base, which was approximately two hours away from Forshaw's home. Nelson offered to show Forshaw around the PJ complex within the camp, an offer Forshaw couldn't refuse.

Forshaw was immediately intrigued by the rescue mission. After the tour, Nelson gave Forshaw the phone number for a recruiter at Patrick. Forshaw was so excited about the prospect of becoming a PJ that he couldn't even wait to finish his current deployment to learn more; he called the recruiter from Djibouti.

"I called and said, 'Ma'am, I'm a Marine, I'm deployed to Africa right now, and I'd like to become an Air Force PJ. What do I have to do?" Forshaw recounted. "She said, 'Well, get back to the states first, then we'll start from there.'"

And a few months later, start from there they did.

This is the second part of a three part series. Learn more about Forshaw's journey to becoming a PJ in parts one and three.