621st Contingency Response Wing marks 20 years with second Order of the Raider

  • Published
  • By Capt. Michael Hong
  • 621st Contingency Response Wing
FAIRFIELD, Calif. --  

FAIRFIELD, Calif. -- Airmen, spouses and local leaders packed the Green Valley Country Club Aug. 14 as the 621st Contingency Response Wing marked 20 years of history with its second annual Order of the Raider formal dining out. The wing held its first Order of the Raider last November at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, New Jersey.

The formal dining out is a military tradition that dates back to 18th-century British armed forces, when the dinners built fellowship among officers and honored distinguished guests. After World War II, the tradition spread and grew to include enlisted members as well.

Col. Justin Ballinger, the 621st CRW commander, opened the evening with a welcome that mixed humor and history. He thanked the team that pulled the event together in the middle of what he called nine named operations the wing supported this year, including Operation Midnight Hammer and an Ebola aid mission.

"This was a Herculean effort," Ballinger said, asking everyone who had a hand in planning the night to stand and be recognized.

He led the room through two of the wing's traditions: a shouted "Airpower!" every time a speaker on stage pointed up, and "Give 'em hell" as the answer whenever someone called out "Devil Raiders" — the nickname worn by everyone in the wing.

Ballinger joked about the milestone itself. "Twenty-one years is a serious milestone," he said. "Congratulations, Devil Raiders — you can legally drink, just make sure you get home safe tonight." In Air Force time, he said, that's roughly four uniform changes, seven email migrations, 13 versions of the Defense Travel System, and 100 wing reorganizations — "a thousand acronyms for personnel and equipment with a common theme: tough people making hard things look easy."

He summed up the wing's mission in one line: "Send us anywhere, anytime, without notice, and we'll build an airbase out of dust, pallets, and pure stubbornness."

Ballinger then turned to the two men the wing would honor that night, Col. Matthew Butler and retired Master Sgt. Greg Linam, calling them "exactly the type of people" who come to mind as icons of contingency response — Airmen "who could walk into a bare patch of land and somehow already know where the airfield, the flow plan, the forklift route, and the coffee station should go."

"Some people bring experience. Some bring motivation," Ballinger said. "Some people are Ph.D. police officers who shape the reorganization of our wing, and some dedicate 43 years to public service. These two brought all of that."

Brig. Gen. Douglas Jackson, director of operations for U.S. Transportation Command and a former 621st CRW commander, delivered the evening's keynote on behalf of Gen. Randall Reed, TRANSCOM's commander. Jackson traced the wing's history across two decades, from Airmen who deployed to Bosnia in the late 1990s, to those who opened airfields across Afghanistan after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, to the wing's response to the 2014 Ebola outbreak in Monrovia, Liberia, and its work reopening Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia in 2019.

"I may have removed my CR tab five years ago," Jackson told the crowd, "but I am certain this spirit still runs deep" in the hundreds of contingency response Airmen who have deployed in just the past year.

Ballinger later raised a glass to the room. "Ladies and gentlemen, I propose a toast," he said. "To the honored guests, distinguished members of the mess, and our inductees." The room answered back, "Hear, hear."

As part of the celebration, the wing inducted two more members into the Order of the Raider: Butler and Linam. Each year, the wing selects one officer and one enlisted or civilian member with no rank or time-in-unit requirement, chosen instead for the significance of their contribution to the wing's mission. Eligible members must have served with the 621st Air Mobility Operations Group, 615th Air Mobility Operations Group, 615th Contingency Response Wing or 621st CRW anytime from July 22, 1994, to today.

Butler, now commander of the 60th Mission Support Group at Travis Air Force Base, commanded three squadrons over his career, including the 571st Global Mobility Readiness Squadron and the defense forces unit at the largest U.S. military base in the Middle East. Linam served 20 years in uniform in communications and intelligence work before retiring, then returned after 9/11 as a civilian, eventually helping lead the planning that reorganized the unit into today's 621st CRW.

Accepting his induction, Butler thanked his wife, Becky, and turned to his fellow inductee.

"For anyone involved in CR during the past 20-plus years, [Linam's] name is instantly recognizable," Butler said. "Thank you for shepherding us through so many changes over the years."

The evening closed with remarks from Chief Master Sgt. Cody Green, the wing's interim command chief, the singing of the first verse of the Air Force song, and a celebration that carried on into the night.

The 621st Contingency Response Wing is a bicoastal wing headquartered at Joint Base Mguire-Dix-Lakehurst, New Jersey, with units also based at Travis Air Force Base, California. Its Airmen train to open airfields and set up air mobility operations anywhere in the world, often with little warning.