Anthony Dyer

Anthony Dyer flew gunship close air support over three war zones, then wrote a book about what happened when he came home.

Dyer came on the SALTYmf GOAT Podcast to talk about that book, and inside a few minutes he and Brad had worked out they were from the same corner of North Carolina. Dyer grew up in Sylva, deep in Appalachia, in a town he says you could throw a baseball across. Brad's family roots are up the road in Brevard. Both of them know the version of a small town where everybody is in everybody's business, which Dyer says cuts both ways.

His father gave him the talk in his senior year at Smoky Mountain High School. Get a job, go to college, or get out. He went to an Army recruiter first. Then a Navy recruiter mentioned six months on a boat, and Dyer joined the Air Force instead. He was still new when the towers came down. He saw it on a TV and assumed the networks were promoting a film, then understood what he was watching. The next day he was loading air-to-air missiles onto F-15s. He ended up in the 16th Special Operations Squadron flying close air support over Afghanistan, Iraq and East Africa. The squadron walls were covered in letters from men on the ground who made it home. One was from a Ranger holding his baby daughter.

On June 8, 2018, in East Africa, his crew saw the best and the worst of combat search and rescue inside one night. They brought five men out alive. An American died on the operating table after they got him back. Dyer came round to the front of the aircraft, saw the pilot's face had gone white, and knew before anyone said it. He remembers the crew hunting for enough OSB board to build a casket. Then the service ended and took his sense of purpose with it. Two or three beers at the weekend became a pint a night with sleeping medication on top. His wife told him it was her and their daughter, or the bottle. He picked them, then sat down with a psychiatrist who made him write the whole thing out and say it aloud until he could get through it without coming apart.

He picked up a pen when the craving hit and kept going until there was a book. He published it thinking it might help one person. Men and women he flew with message him now to say they are carrying the same thing. Asked what he would tell a seventeen year old leaving Sylva, Dyer gave the two words an instructor handed him after he flew his first gunship sortie so badly he was told he was the reason airliners brief seat belts. Perseverance and repetition.