A valuable experience

Aegis Living Madison resident Bob Elliott might not have engaged in combat during his Air Force career, but his time in the military was not dull.

Elliott, 82, enlisted in the Air Force straight out of high school when many people were being drafted, which gave him the latitude to choose which branch and the length of his enlistment.

“Basically, I chose it because it was four years, not like if you got drafted, where it could go on and on, forever,” Elliott said.

He enlisted in the Air Force, he said, because it gave him the greatest opportunity to follow his lifelong interest and passion: travelling.

In basic training, Elliott learned he had an aptitude for communication work and from there he went to San Angelo, Texas, and studied communication intelligence and cryptography for 15 months before choosing an assignment on Crete.

“We had dots all over the world, but being on the southern tip of Europe would give you a lot of opportunity to get around and do things,” Elliott said.

Cutting-edge technology

While stationed in Crete, he spent most of his time working in and around Greece, Turkey and North Africa, with a little bit in western and eastern Europe.

Elliott said he and a small team of people operated cutting-edge technology that allowed them to listen in on communications from countries that were considered both adversaries and “of interest.”

Although he enlisted in the Air Force, Elliott said he really worked for the National Security Agency and was a communication crypto analyst.

Elliott said part of his team’s job was to keep the National Security Council advised on foreign communications, much of it Russian and Arabic, with the help of linguists.

Elliott said, while the communications they listened in on were fairly routine, the technology was so new and advanced and involved machine cyphers and “fabulous listening equipment” that it marked a key evolutionary point in communication intelligence work.

“It was right on that nexus when everything was going directly to that new technology,” Elliott said.

Because he was in communication intelligence, his work was top secret.

“Even the base commander could not come into our compounds; nobody could come in,” Elliott said.

He said when he learned what he was going to be doing as his job, working with state-of-the-art technology, he couldn’t believe it. He thought he was going to be a guard.

“I was just a young kid and wanted to see the world, and I was amazed when I found out what I was actually going to be doing,” Elliott said with a chuckle.

He did get to see the world, however. When he was working, they were granted three days on and three days off, and he spent his days off in Athens and other places sightseeing.

“It was charming,” he said. “The weather was great.”

When he was on leave, he traveled to other countries and met his wife on a fly-fishing trip in Patagonia, Chile.

Watching history get made

Toward the end of his enlistment, he was offered a job in Maryland working for the National Security Agency, but his wife convinced him to look closer to New York, where he grew up.

Before he got out of the military, however, he was sent to the Florida Keys in 1962 during the Cuban Missile Crisis, where he set up and operated equipment to allow the U.S. military to listen in on Russian and Cuban communications.   

“You got to see some of world history turning on its ear,” Elliott said, adding if the work he did in Greece was routine, what they were doing in Florida “was scary important.”

He said the accommodations weren’t fancy, either. He and his wife were living in a small trailer in a trailer park filled mostly with Jehovah’s Witnesses and farmers. Elliott said his wife cried for three hours when they first arrived. He said, when she went outside to bathe in the outdoor shower for the first time he heard her let out a blood-curdling scream and ran outside to find out what was wrong. It turns out she was startled by four scorpions climbing up the walls of the shower.

“It was a wonder she didn’t get on a plane and go home the next day,” Elliott said, adding she stuck it out and they went on to settle in and find enjoyable things to do.

Elliott said his time in the military was fairly tame compared with others’.

“The only time I touched a gun was when I was in basic training,” he said.

 It was valuable to him, nonetheless, and Elliott said he thinks the United States should implement a required national service for young adults like other countries.

He also believes it is important for people to recognize Veterans Day and appreciates the effort Aegis Living Madison does to honor veterans every year.

“I’m really impressed with what they have done here,” he said.