916th history maker gives hope, saves lives

  • Published
  • By Master Sgt. Wendy Lopedote
  • 916th Public Affairs Office
SEYMOUR JOHNSON AIR FORCE BASE, N.C. --  A young mother carefully leads her children through the dark and dangerous streets of a war-torn Iraqi town. The family cowers with each gunshot and explosion they hear.
The mother heads toward the bright lights she sees in the distance. The tall fence surrounding the lights does little to mask the strange sounds and smells contained therein.

Signaling her family to follow her, the mother wriggles through a small opening in the fence which her seven children then pass through with relative ease. Would this unfamiliar and imposing place be even more dangerous than the one they were escaping or would going forward be their only hope for survival?

The new territory turned out to be extremely dangerous, yet it was still a life-saving choice for the mother, a mixed-breed stray dog named Fatoon, and her seven puppies who had just crossed the perimeter fence and into Kirkuk Regional Air Base, Iraq.

An active airbase is no place for any stray animal. Maintaining a safe environment for personnel and aircraft usually meant the offending animal was trapped or worse yet, exterminated.

Fortunately, the young family had a guardian angel looking out for them in the form of an Airman assigned to the 521st Air Expeditionary Advisory Squadron in Kirkuk at that time. Capt. Kirsten L. Ellis, now a KC-135 pilot with the 77th Air Refueling Squadron, was serving in Iraq as an instructor pilot for the Iraqi Air Force when she saw the dogs hanging around dangerously close to the flight line.

She knew their future was bleak.

"There was no way I could leave them here. If they stayed they'd be shot," said Ellis. "I had no choice; I had to rescue those guys."

So Ellis started a campaign to raise the $5000 it would take to get the dogs rescued and flown out of the country. Her efforts almost came too late.

Five of the puppies got sick and died before she could get them out of Iraq. But Fatoon and her two surviving puppies, Massoud and Ellis, made it out okay and are now in their "forever homes" stateside.

Of course, rescuing canines was not the real reason Ellis was in Iraq. However, she said her primary mission was just as fun and rewarding as helping out Fatoon and her puppies.

As the first female instructor pilot in Iraq, Ellis found that building good relationships with her students was a little harder than the ones she had with her furry friends.

An accomplished pilot with more than 2,700 flying hours and seven years as an instructor, Ellis knew she was fully qualified to teach the new Iraqi pilots. Getting those pilots to trust that a female could teach them proved challenging though, she said.

"I gained the respect of the younger pilots pretty quickly," said Ellis. "The older ones were a little harder to win over."

Eventually, her skills as a pilot and teacher were validated.

She said she enjoyed seeing in her students the passion for flying that seems to be universal in the pilot world.

"I loved it when one of them 'got it,'" she said. "They'd grin from ear-to-ear and would get very excited."

Although the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq has ended the pilot training mission, Ellis wishes she could see how the pilots she helped train are doing.

"They are a work in progress," she said. "With us being out of there now, I just hope they're continuing to train and grow to the same standards we taught them. It's up to them now."

Fortunately, Ellis is able to check on how the dogs she rescued are doing. She keeps in touch with their owners and says the dogs are fully grown, accustomed to life here and completely spoiled.

The puppies just celebrated their second birthday in February, and May 2013 will mark the two-year anniversary of their arrival in the states.