Air Force reunion: Jackson veteran helps plan convention for pioneering convoy unit

Most members of Detachment 2632 haven’t seen each other in 20 years. A Jackson veteran is helping to reunite them.

For the majority of 2005, some 165 U.S. Air Force personnel were assigned an unusual task: conducting ground convoy operations in Iraq to maintain supply lines between military bases while under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Army. Jackson resident Scotty Migét, owner of Tee’ED OFF Golf and Performance, was one such member of this group.

“We did things that not a lot of people have; especially for the Air Force,” he said. “We were kind of the redheaded stepchildren. The Air Force didn't like us because we worked for the Army and had weapons; the Army didn’t like us because we were Air Force, so we had to be tight and close-knit and take care of ourselves.”

Migét is overseeing the venue for the event. The group has decided on holding it in July somewhere in Tennessee. Lon Russell, a hockey coach and retired sheriff’s deputy who lives in Gillette, Wyoming, is handling merchandise, acquiring shirts, bracelets and engraved cups to sell at the reunion. Other retired airmen are in charge of different committees.

Just like in Iraq, it’s a group effort.

Airmen on the road

Detachment 2632 drove multiple missions per day, ferrying equipment and supplies between different bases while operating from the Anaconda Logistical Support Area, a joint base north of Baghdad in Balad, Iraq. It was the U.S. military’s second-largest base in the country and, in its heyday, was the world’s second-busiest airport after Heathrow Airport in England.

Though Migét and Russell served in 2005, they were one of several different cycles of airmen tasked with the Detachment 2632 routes. From 2004 to 2006, the group drove more than 5,000 missions and covered more than 4 million miles.

“The truth is it was historical, but it’s such a weird thing people wouldn’t necessarily think about, moving logistics through a combat zone in such a massive theater of operations, and they excelled at it,” Russell said.

Driving between bases in Iraq was anything but a casual jaunt.

“You had to be hyper-focused from the point you left your base to the time you got to the other base. You had to see everything. You had to see cracks in the road, new concrete in the road, trash in the road, dead animals on the road,” Migét said.

He said enemy forces strung fishing lines from overpasses with the aim of decapitating gunners and put parachutes on grenades to more accurately target the convoys. The convoys were also commonly attacked with improvised explosives and roadside bombs. Migét said there was an arms race over the months between the Army armoring their vehicles and the enemy finding new ways to destroy them.

“As the years progressed during the war, our mission changed from the gun trucks … to the line haul, the tractor trailer missions. Then we were doing the actual cargo movement and then the Army would be doing the gun trucks,” he said.

Russell was a military police officer assigned to Detachment 2632. While the majority of the detachment’s airmen were truck drivers and mechanics, the military police such as Russell were there primarily to manage security during the operations.

“The Air Force doesn’t have any infantry, so really, who’s the best trained for gunfights and field maneuvers and vehicle protection. It’s going to be law enforcement … we were a smaller subset of that unit and they just sprinkled us in,” Russell said.

Cause for celebration

Russell said a fellow staff sergeant named Craig Grant spearheaded the idea for a reunion. He first reached out to a handful of detachment veterans through social media.

“We had a really, really good response to the question and then it’s like, now what are we going to do? It’s more than just a couple guys meeting up to play some pool and get a hotel room and visiting. It could be half the unit and some of their families, and now we’re looking at almost 200 people or more,” Russell said.

The organizers have so far gotten in touch with around 90% of the detachment, with the majority of them planning to attend the reunion. Many of them were fresh out of high school when they first deployed — and now they’re often married with children and living far from where they were 20 years ago.

Russell recounted how one friend was engaged at the time of his deployment and soon afterward got married. Russell and his wife have never met the man’s wife in person, and the reunion will be a chance to finally meet her.

Migét said the event will serve as an opportunity not only to reconnect with old friends, but also to let their families learn more about what they accomplished.

“The Air Force convoy mission, over all of those years, delivered more cargo to all of those bases than all of the Air Force cargo aircraft combined,” he said. “… We had to write the book, essentially, on convoys.”

Though he served in the Air Force until 2023, Migét said his time in the detachment was unlike any other assignment he’d been on.

“I’m more decorated with Army (commendations) than I am with Air Force (commendations),” he said.

Retired airmen from the detachment live all across the country. Reunion organizers have started a GoFundMe page to help with the cost of travel and lodging for the attendees.