This is the fourth in a series of stories tracking Nevada Air National Guard units during a training mission in Europe. Two squadrons - civil engineering and medical - from the 152nd Airlift Wing are doing their annual two-week training in Germany. The Nevada Appeal will tell some of their stories.
Dayton High School graduate Shaun Merrill joined the U.S. Air Force because he didn't get his scholarship forms filled out by the deadline.
"That's honestly why I joined up," he said. "I waited too long to fill stuff out, and I knew if I stayed in town. I wasn't going to do anything."
After finishing basic training in San Antonio, Texas, Merrill requested he be stationed on the West Coast. He ended up at Spangdahlem Air Force Base in southwest Germany.
"I think maybe they lost my wish list," he said with a laugh on Wednesday. With engine grease on his arms and blue coveralls tied around his waist, he took a break from being a mechanic on aircraft tow tractors, street sweepers and cargo loaders.
His duties vary.
"I do everything from picking up trash on the side of the road to rebuilding an engine," he said.
While many soldiers would gripe about being asked to collect garbage, Merrill has responded by offering to do even more. He's done volunteer work and continued his education beyond Air Force requirements.
His unit's leaders took notice, entering him among about 100 others for a below-the-zone advancement. Along with two men from the refueling unit, Merrill was given the award.
"I'm very proud to have gotten it," he said. "But everything I did I did because that's what needed to be done. Not because I wanted a BTZ, but because that's the way I was raised.
He gave credit to his parents, Art and Lorie Merrill, who raised him in Dayton. They lived about a block from the high school, where he competed in relay races on the track and as a pole vaulter.
His parents are in the middle of a move to Arizona, where his mom was transferred by her employer, FedEx. She's already down there. Dad will be leaving in the next couple weeks.
Airman First Class Merrill isn't sure if he'll follow them to Arizona or if he'll return to Nevada. He signed on for six years, but he'd like to go to school.
"If I don't go back in (to the service), I'll look at going to school because I have the Millennium Scholarship waiting for me and now the G.I. Bill."
He's not certain, but with his mechanics background, he's considering a career in mechanical engineering.
But that's a ways in the future. A more immediate concern is his upcoming deployment to the desert. By September, he'll be in Iraq.
"It'll be my first time," he said. "So I'm a little nervous."
About 1,000 members of his unit, the 52nd Fighter Wing, are going down. A little bit of each squadron is going, including some of the A-10 Warthogs and their pilots and some air controllers. Merrill's group is called the logistics-readiness squadron. A few of his closest buddies on the base are going, too.
They spend a lot of their down time playing games like Risk and spades. Then there's "Washers," a game invented by one of the airmen in the shop. They toss large washers at a can inside a box. If they get it inside the box, they get one point - inside the can is three points.
Merrill liked to play back home in Dayton, too. He used to ride his quad in the hills above town and take his ski boat - a '78 Glastron - out to both Lake Lahontan and Lake Tahoe.
Those big toys are waiting for his return from overseas.
He dreams about being stationed somewhere where he could still use them, but he doesn't seem to regret joining up.
"(The Air Force) has been good to me, it really has," he said. "I've met a lot of good people, and I've learned a lot. I'm doing pretty good for myself."
Karl Horeis is a reporter for the Nevada Appeal on assignment with the Nevada Air National Guard in Germany. Reach him at khoreis@nevadaappeal.com
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