Joe Priester didn’t set out to become an Army pilot. He spent six years as an Air Force AWACS crewman, troubleshooting communications equipment on a radar plane that never got close to the fight — a job he describes, without much sugarcoating, as one he never really wanted. When 9/11 happened, he was locked down on base at an Air Traffic Control course, watching the news unfold on a chow hall TV with everyone else. By the time he left that room, he’d already decided what came next: he was leaving the Air Force to become an Army helicopter pilot, even if it meant walking away from a promotion, a $35,000 re-enlistment bonus, and starting over at the bottom of basic training.
That decision eventually put him in the cockpit of the OH-58D Kiowa Warrior — a small, fast, heavily under-powered scout attack helicopter that Joe describes as doing nearly every mission in the Army’s playbook despite its size. His first deployment to Iraq was, by his own account, almost anticlimactic; his call sign became “the White Dove” because nothing ever seemed to happen while he was in the air. Afghanistan was a different story from the very first flight, which took RPG fire before he’d even gotten oriented to the terrain.
The centerpiece of this episode is a two-day stretch in August 2008 — a vehicle-borne IED at his base’s gate, a danger-close CASEVAC mission flown under direct fire to pull wounded soldiers out faster than the Medevac Black Hawks could reach them, and a follow-up engagement that stretched past 20 hours. It’s detailed, intense, and, by Joe’s own admission, the mission he’d spent his entire career waiting for.
What makes this conversation land, though, isn’t just the combat — it’s what Joe does with it now. He’s since retired from the Army, flies helicopter EMS, and talks openly about mentoring his own son, now serving as an airborne infantryman, through the weight of that same uncertainty. It’s a story about switching lanes, chasing a harder path on purpose, and figuring out what to carry forward once the mission’s over.
Episode 52 of Ask A Vet is available now on YouTube, Spotify, and everywhere you get your podcasts.
If you’re a veteran who’s struggling, dial 988 and press 1 for the Veterans Crisis Line.