Army veteran Bill Warganich has found a post-battle home in the tranquil Smokies
As Bill Warganich fluidly casts a fly line across the glistening surface of a heaven-kissed Smoky Mountain river, his face wears a contented smile and a look of serene joy. By contrast, the day in 1991 when he flew his Apache attack helicopter across a stifling, bone-dry hellscape amid the heat of the Kuwaiti desert, his face was fixed with a look of steely focus.
The two divergent scenes are reminiscent of another East Tennessean who once spent four silent, reflective days at a Kentucky monastery, and then, on the drive home to Knoxville, glimpsed the International Space Station in the night sky as it passed overhead. That’s about as far apart as you can get within an hour, he thought.
As for the chasm spanning war and peace, Warganich, a West Coast native who has called Gatlinburg home since 2021, much prefers the life he has come to know and love as a grateful veteran, a passionate angler, a fly-fishing guide, a husband, father, and granddad whose deep faith has brought him a wellspring of peace that seems so very far from the long-ago fog of battle.
‘I Wanted to Be a Pilot’
Born April 8, 1964, Warganich grew up in the Northern California foothills near Coloma, where the Gold Rush began with James Marshall’s 1848 discovery of shining flecks in the tailrace of water from the sawmill that he and John Sutter were building.
Warganich felt like he had struck it rich with the abundantly active upbringing he enjoyed. “We did a lot of fishing and fly-fishing in those foothills of the Sierras,” he recalls, “along with snow skiing and surfing. My brother and I headed for Santa Cruz a lot to surf. There was also skateboarding, and Dad taught us to waterski.”
His father, a grocery-store produce manager, had earned his private pilot’s license at age 26, so Warganich started riding in a plane when he was about 8. “Ever since I was 5, I knew I wanted to be a pilot.”
As he grew, his dad helped pay for flying lessons, leading to Warganich completing a solo cross-country flight. “I felt pretty comfortable flying.”
He earned a two-year junior-college degree and went to work, but in 1987 he applied to the US Army’s warrant officer program and was accepted as a Private First Class. He endured basic and advanced training, followed by a year in flight school, where he learned to operate helicopters.
Meanwhile, he met and married his wife, Rhonda, who he credits for standing with him through years of far-flung assignments while taking care of the couple’s three daughters. “She has been so, so supportive of my aviation career, both in the army and after,” he says. (The family now also includes five grandchildren and one on the way as of this writing.)
Warganich would end up piloting several different machines, beginning with the Hughes TH-55 Osage,
a light training chopper (he logged 50 hours); followed by the Bell UH-1 Iroquois, better known as the “Huey”—the instrumentation presented a steep learning curve; along with the Bell AH-1 Cobra attack helicopter.
For a time his unit was based at Hunter Army Airfield in Savannah, Georgia. It was only a matter of time before he would take the cockpit of the big prize, the Boeing AH-64 Apache. “The Apache was the deal, dude,” Warganich says with a note of reverential appreciation. “It was an awesome aircraft.” That would be his primary ride for the remainder of his military career.
Fast-forward to August 1990 when the Gulf War began, waged by 35 nations led by the U.S. in response to Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. The combat phase, Operation Desert Storm, officially spanned January 17 to February 28, 1991.
Warganich was part of the 24th Infantry Division’s attack-helicopter battalion, “basically the security force for the 24th,” he says. He was stationed in Saudi Arabia at first before moving into Iraq as the operation escalated.
Hellfire and Conflagration
The conflict mentioned at the beginning of this article remains vivid in Warganich’s mind. The Battle of Rumaila took place on March 2, 1991, two days after President George W. Bush had declared a ceasefire (which Iraqi forces breached), near the oil fields in the Euphrates Valley of southern Iraq. U.S. forces, mostly the 24th, defeated a large column of Iraqi Republican Guard armored forces.
Warganich recounts the day: “We were in our tent when the captain came in and said, ‘You guys gotta get in your aircraft.’ So we fired up the Apaches, went in there, and lit ’em up. We destroyed several tanks and light-armored vehicles (LAVs). I was a front-seat gunner [in the two-pilot aircraft], and we took out 14 of them in tanks and an LAV. We carried 16 hellfire missiles and other weaponry. The mission was a success.”
A few weeks earlier, Warganich had been part of a defense in an OH-58 Kiowa helicopter—which was geared for observation, utility, and direct fire support—while providing forward-area security. The soldiers were at the ready to neutralize any imminent threats when clearance came to destroy a five-ton truck carrying a dozen Iraqi soldiers. “I was on the TADs [the target-acquisition designation system]. I got a visual on it and the commander said, ‘Okay, put a hellfire in that.’ We took it out.”
Another memorable aspect of Desert Storm were the raging fires after the Iraqis ignited the oil fields in Kuwait. “There was so much smoke in the air from the oil that you could look directly at the sun and see the sunspots.”
After the smoke of battle cleared, literally and figuratively, and Desert Storm came ended, Warganich was awarded an Air Medal for aerial achievement. “It’s pretty cool, and it was an honor,” he recalls. Oh, and daughter Danielle had been born while he was deployed, so he had the blessing of meeting her for the first time some seven months after her birth.
The wake of the war was bittersweet, though, as Warganich and his fellow fighters mourned the losses of cohorts killed in battle. Desert Storm resulted in 350 U.S. casualties, according to the Defense Casualty Analysis System.
One in particular, fellow pilot Hal Reichle, died on February 20, 1991, in a training mission. “That was tough losing him. We had spent time together in Savannah before Desert Storm.” Another friend was shot down later in Iraq. “A lot of pilots I’ve known have been killed over the years. It’s the ultimate sacrifice that we all knew we might have to make.”
As for any misgivings about combat, Warganich frankly observes, “When we took out combatants, that was just part of the deal. It’s war. We knew what Saddam [Hussein] was doing to the Kurdish people and others, so I got over it pretty quick.”
Looking to the next phase of his service, he put in a request to take the test-pilot course for Apaches and did so in 1992. He ended up stationed in Germany with his family, an assignment “we really liked.”
Well-known test pilots have included all-stars like Chuck Yeager, John Glenn, and Jean Boulet, but the job is “not so glamorous” as some might imagine, Warganich says. “It involves a lot of ground runs, checking systems, making sure the rotors are good—boring stuff like that.”
Four years later, in 1996, after nine years in the service, he realized “it was time for me to get out.” He would miss “that tight bond” with his buddies and fellow pilots—several of whom he keeps up with decades later, like Dave Curtis and Chris Campbell—but civilian life was calling. And it didn’t mean an end to flying.
A Flight Path Toward Tennessee
Warganich’s post-service roles included Army National Guard duty in Houston and then jobs with PHI, which provides aerial transport, search and rescue, and more; and Horizon, flying offshore to and from—ironically?—oil rigs out in the Gulf. Next came a move to Kentucky for a test-pilot job at Fort Knox. Yes, he had struck gold again: the role suited him well.
Two years later, in 2000, the opportunity to serve as an EMS pilot in California enticed Warganich to return to his home state. As it turned out, “that was the most rewarding job I ever had,” he reflects, helping to save lives.
During his tenure, though, several crashes involving fellow pilots in the area clouded the experience. By 2002, after colleague Clay Watson was killed, Warganich turned to Rhonda and sighed. “I don’t think we need to do this anymore.”
He returned to a test-pilot role in Alabama, where his daughters finished growing up, and was there from 2002 to 2021. At that point the now empty-nesters, drawn to the beauty of the Smokies, bought a cabin in Gatlinburg and relocated to God’s country. It was here that Warganich nurtured a longtime love of the water, joining Smoky Mountain Angler as an expert fly-fishing guide.
Along the way, he and Rhonda also grew in their Christian faith, becoming part of Pathways Church in Sevierville and seeking to love and serve their neighbors in the community.
When the subject of his military service comes up, Warganich says, “I don’t boast about anything I’ve done. I tell ’em I used to fly Apaches, but God has helped me to get over myself and be more about others.”
He leans on the Bible’s promise in Matthew 28:20, in which Jesus reminded his followers that he would always be with them. “I know I fall short, but knowing God is there and he’s got me, that’s huge,” Warganich says. Not to mention that every new dawn casting a fly line into the cool rush of a mountain brook makes the heat of warfare fade into the distance like a distant desert mirage.
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