Army pilot from HS featured in documentary

The Sentinel-Record/Richard Rasmussen FROM WAR TO TV: U.S. Army Capt. Dan Culbreth, formerly of Hot Springs, talks to The Sentinel-Record on Tuesday about his experiences as an Apache helicopter pilot during two tours of duty in Afghanistan, including one encounter which is being featured on an upcoming episode of the military docuseries "My Fighting Season."
The Sentinel-Record/Richard Rasmussen FROM WAR TO TV: U.S. Army Capt. Dan Culbreth, formerly of Hot Springs, talks to The Sentinel-Record on Tuesday about his experiences as an Apache helicopter pilot during two tours of duty in Afghanistan, including one encounter which is being featured on an upcoming episode of the military docuseries "My Fighting Season."

U.S. Army Capt. Dan Culbreth, a 2001 Hot Springs High School graduate, has flown his Apache helicopter through two tours of duty in Afghanistan, and will soon be flying into many living rooms as one of the soldiers featured in an upcoming episode of "My Fighting Season," a war documentary series on AT&T's Audience Network.

Culbreth, who serves with the 82nd Combat Aviation Brigade, stationed at Fort Bragg, N.C., will be in the Aug. 2 episode of the six-part docuseries, executive produced by actor Ricky Schroder, which is a sequel to Schroder's earlier "The Fighting Season," and follows U.S. Army soldiers in Afghanistan from the unique perspective of their own cameras.

"It was an interesting experience," Culbreth, who was in Hot Springs for a week visiting his parents, Tim and Sally Culbreth, told The Sentinel-Record Tuesday. "I didn't know what to think of it. I wasn't too sure what they were looking for, but these are stories that are worth being told."

Culbreth noted that his interview for the episode was about six hours, but his sequence lasts about six minutes. He was able to watch the final cut Monday and said, "It's good, but definitely edited. It's very accurate, but very simplified."

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Submitted photo LOCAL HERO: U.S. Army Capt. Dan Culbreth stands near his Boeing AH-64 Apache attack helicopter on the day he was promoted to captain. Culbreth, a 2001 graduate of Hot Springs High School, is featured in the Aug. 2 episode of "My Fighting Season," a military docuseries executive produced by actor Ricky Schroder.

He said he would never have agreed to the interview if it had not come through official channels and "had division's blessing." They asked him several questions which dealt with "rules of engagement," a lot of which are classified, so "I was tense trying to describe what happened without divulging information that gives someone a tactical advantage they could exploit."

He said about a week after his interview, Schroder called him. "I was quite surprised at who was at the other end of the phone. He had been editing my footage and could tell I was tense about what I was talking about.

"He wholeheartedly wanted to make sure I understood what his intentions were and that he wasn't going to twist the video or leave any question the guys we engaged that day were enemy combatants. That it was not going to be agenda driven, but soldier story driven."

The episode deals with a day of fighting by ground troops that occurred during Culbreth's first tour between August 2011 and September 2012. He would later return for a second tour from August 2014 to May 2015, which was "almost exclusively special operations missions" involving specific Taliban targets, with hardly any ground patrol missions.

In the episode, a ground patrol unit was "just off Route Georgia," which led from Pul-i-Alam, the district capital of the Logar province, through the Wardak province. The route "went through what we called the wild west. We called it Indian country. It was a bad area where patrols got in fire fights every single day."

He said the Taliban were "experts at hiding heavy weapons. Hit-and-run tactics. There were a lot of hedge rows, deep green valleys. A billion ways to hide and move through that valley."

He said the patrol team "got into trouble" and was pinned down. "We got a call about some insurgents on a hilltop firing down and that was the only info we got. I had a grid of where they were, but I didn't know what they were shooting at. I didn't know the team was out there at first."

He said he never talked to the team members, but was finally able to make contact with their commander and "provided air support once I figured out where they were. I don't want to go into more detail because it will be covered in the episode. But basically they were in trouble and I came in to support."

Culbreth said he later took some of his footage from the video cameras in his Apache to show to the intelligence officer for the ground units "to show them what I see and how I see things. Aerial is not a better vantage point. It's just different. So we could discuss how to improve my response time and how to handle situations better."

He stressed that "everything in the Apache is recorded. If the video isn't working, my weapons may as well not be working. If I pull the trigger without the video running, I may as well sign my own tribunal."

Schroder's first series involved footage shot by embedded cameramen, but the new one comes completely from helmet cams and digital cams worn by the soldiers. The footage Culbreth gave them was consolidated with other footage and eventually made it into the hands of the show's producers, who were interested in the aerial footage and the "new perspective it offered," so "the hunt was on" to find the source.

He said the show's associate producer, Jim Raybon, was a former 82nd Airborne Brigade commander, so "not only was he a fellow aviator, but 20 years ago he would have been my boss." He said Raybon recognized some of the call signs Culbreth could be heard using in the footage and tracked it to him and "within 48 hours I was in Los Angeles" to film the episode.

Asked about how he ended up an Apache pilot, Culbreth said, "I had always wanted to join the military. It was family influence, mostly my grandfather, with his stories and memorabilia. It was always something that fascinated me, particularly to be able to fly. What kid doesn't want to be a pilot? I just never lost that desire."

He was a freshman at the University of Central Arkansas when 9/11 happened and "I knew a lot of guys who enlisted," but he was recovering from the third of four knee surgeries so "I figured my military dream was over." He "dabbled in different stuff" and worked for more than a year as a real estate agent in Hot Springs.

"I was 21 years old and it was not what I wanted to do. The military bug was still itching on me. Wars were raging in Iraq and Afghanistan. I just felt stuck and didn't want to be there anymore." He said he started mountain biking, running and working out and "got in pretty decent shape. I felt good."

He enrolled at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville in 2006 and enlisted in the Reserves, making the leap to active duty in the infantry after about a year. "Afghanistan was becoming more and more unstable and the Army across the whole surged," he said, so there was a shortage of officers.

Some of his NCOs recommended him for Officer Candidate School, which normally would take 12 to 18 months to get into, but within four months he was on the list in an aviation slot, and two months later was going to OCS. "I went from enlisted soldier to officer in 10 months."

There were other options as a pilot, but "I really wanted the Apache. It's got so many capabilities. The support you can provide to the soldiers on the ground is just phenomenal."

"My Fighting Season," which premiered July 5, is available on DirecTV and AT&T U-Verse and Culbreth's episode airs at 7 p.m. Aug. 2.

Local on 07/17/2016

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