This page is dedicated to the men and women of the 145th Tactical Airlift Wing, North Carolina Air National Guard. I had the privilege of serving with this unit as a Combat Arms Technician in the 145th Security Forces Squadron from 1978 until my retirement in December, 1999.

The Combat Arms career field started life with the Small Arms Marksmanship Instructors. SAMTUs were typically assigned to Mission Support Squadrons and handled weapons training, maintenance and inspection services for all base personnel and their assigned weapons. The instructors were known as Red Hats because of the red baseball caps that were worn for safety purposes to readily identify the instructors in the range environment. The primary mission remains unchanged, although the unit has been renamed Combat Arms Training and Maintenance or CATM. CATM was merged into the Security Police (now known as Security Forces) career field in the late 1990s. The red baseball caps were traded in for blue berets and badges, much to the chagrin of the Red Hats who had always considered themselves part of an elite group (the CATM specialty code has one of the fewest number of personnel in the Air Force). CATM instructors are now trained as Security Policemen first, and must meet certain requirements before they can be assigned to the CATM unit. CATM personnel are also commonly included in field deployments to combat areas to provide weapon support services. Weapons that CATM typically use in training include the Berretta M-9 pistol, M-16 rifle and GAU, the M-203 grenade launcher, the M-249 SAW, and riot shotguns. Other weapons may include, but are not limited to: M-2 .50 cal. machine gun, sniper rifles (including the .50 cal. Barret), MK-19 belt fed grenade launcher, 81 mm mortars, and any other weapon that is assigned to units on their base.

We covered many miles together, in good times and bad, in times of peace and war. Even though we're no longer together, I'll always be with you, just a thought away...