Your Brentwood is a series from the City of Brentwood highlighting the unique stories, hobbies, and interests of City of Brentwood employees.
It was a miserable January. Every day, the local Chicago news stations warned of snow, sleet, and freezing fog, and on Jan. 16, 2009, the city suffered a record low temperature of -24 degrees Fahrenheit. Meteorologists pleaded for people to stay inside; outside, Chicago’s notorious winds turned the city into a gray and white blur.
A few miles north, on the Lake Michigan shore, snow covered the U.S. Navy’s Recruit Training Command Great Lakes. The compound, known simply as “Boot Camp,” is the Navy’s only recruit training facility, and that day, white mounds covered the first-floor windows of the imposing administration building, with its tall, collegiate clock tower.
Paul Menard shivered, his feet squeaking against the snow, as he marched across the vast grounds. What was he doing there? Today, Menard works as a Brentwood Engineering Technician, but in 2009, he was 35 years old. That made him almost twice the age of his fellow recruits.
“I was the oldest person there,” he said. “I was older than my chief. I was the oldest in the room, out of all the jobs represented.”
Had he made a mistake, enlisting so late in life? He missed his family, and as he trained in the icy cold, hearing everyone refer to him as “Pops,” he wondered if he’d make it. Would he graduate?
“Those first couple of weeks, it was all about getting acclimated,” he said.
Menard grew up in a military family – his grandfather, his father, and his uncle all served. When he graduated high school, an 18-year-old Menard planned to continue this family tradition.
“In 1991, I tried to enlist in the Marine Corps,” he said. “But in 1989, I was in an accident, and I was in a coma for nine days. They wouldn’t let me enlist that soon. They wanted ten years after the accident.”
Instead of joining the military, Menard spent the next 16 years working as an auto mechanic or in construction. He got married, had a few kids, and eventually figured his time for enlisting had passed.
“But then my wife got sick a couple of years ago,” he said. “Our insurance wasn’t what we needed. I was like, ‘You know what? The military has really good insurance.’”
With his background in construction, Menard enlisted as a reservist in the SeaBees – the Naval Construction Force. He shipped off to Boot Camp in Northern Chicago that January, and as he struggled to keep up with 18- and 19-year-olds on the obstacle courses, he worried he’d made a mistake.
Fifteen years later, he knows it was the right decision. The insurance was a “God send” for his wife, but he also discovered, as one of the last Americans to leave Afghanistan, what he really wanted to do with his life.
The SeaBees
In 1942, during World War II, Rear Admiral Ben Moreell developed the SeaBees. According to the Naval History and Heritage Command (NHHC), Moreell created this force “to meet the Navy’s need for the construction of advanced bases in combat zones.”
The NHHC reported that for “more than 75 years, Seabees have been the Navy’s construction force, building bases and airfields, conducting underwater construction, and building roads, bridges, and other support facilities. They play a crucial role in supporting the fleet and combatant commands while carrying out the Navy’s maritime strategy.”
Menard acclimated quickly to the rigors of Boot Camp. The nickname “Pops” stuck, and he became a surrogate father to his fellow recruits, teaching fresh-faced kids how to properly shave.
“It was a dad thing,” he said. “But it was tough because I was used to being with my family.”
At 35, he’d also become set in his personality, which sometimes conflicted with his instructors’ intentions.
“The new kids, they were breaking them down,” Menard said. “With me, I was stubborn. I was yelled at for always laughing.”
“Pops” remained stubborn, ignoring the doubts in his head. A few weeks later, he graduated from Boot Camp. Sixteen years later, Menard is an Equipment Operator First Class Petty Officer in the Navy SeaBees Reserves, and he almost spent his entire career without deploying to a war zone.
But then, in 2021, someone knocked on his door.
‘Afghanistan is shutting down’
In late 2020, Menard boarded a plane for U.S. Central Command in Kuwait. At the desert base, the SeaBees were tasked with typical construction jobs, such as putting up new buildings. There was a rumor they might be going to Afghanistan, but his commanding officers dismissed the talk.
“They said, ‘You’re not going. Afghanistan is shutting down,’ so we stayed in Kuwait,” Menard said.
At 9 p.m. a few days later, someone knocked on his door.
“A guy says, the chief wants to see you,” Menard said. “And the Chief said, ‘You’re leaving for Afghanistan first thing in the morning.’”
It was the Spring of 2021. In a few months, the U.S. would officially end its nearly 20-year stay in that country. Menard and his fellow SeaBees arrived at Bagram Air Base – the largest U.S. airbase in the country – with orders to begin taking down different sections.
“It was beautiful, beautiful country,” he said. “We were right in the foothills of the Himalayas – snow-capped mountains everywhere. We got there and went to work, started retrograding stuff. We were taking specific tools and materials and parts and sending all that back to Kuwait.”
They worked, taking down buildings and putting heavy equipment into containers to be shipped other places. The war was still going on, with enemy mortars and rockets being fired at the air base. Few of the projectiles exploded inside the compound because the base was protected by six-barreled Gatling guns that fired up to 75 rounds per second at approaching ordinance.
“They would shoot a lot of that stuff out of the sky,” Menard said.
But as the weeks passed, the guns were also dismantled and packed away in containers.
“They were eventually gone, but nothing really got close to us,” he said.
Most days, he helped disassemble equipment or build mortar pits for base security. Menard drove a Polaris Ranger side-by-side across the khaki-colored terrain, hauling tools to his next assignment.
“I came driving around a corner one day, and a bomb tech was waving his arms for me to go somewhere else,” he said. “Someone had thrown a backpack over the wall with a bomb in it.”
Luckily, the bomb wasn’t wired properly.
Throughout the summer, U.S. military equipment was taken apart and shipped to different locations around the world, but with the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan less than a month away, the SeaBees knew they didn’t have time to get everything out.
“The day we left, I put electronics into an industrial shredder – computers, TVs, everything,” he said. “From 6 a.m. to 2 pm, we were shredding. When we left, everyone left.”
Menard returned safely home to his family, but as the months passed, he missed the work – inspecting construction projects, making sure structures were built correctly. In 2023, he found a safer, civilian equivalent when he joined the Brentwood Engineering Department as an engineering technician.
“It took 20 years of being out in the workforce to find where I needed to be,” he said. “I’ve been doing inspections for the military for years. Now I do it for the city of Brentwood.”
To read more Your Brentwood stories, visit https://www.brentwoodtn.gov/departments/community-relations/your-brentwood
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