COB BASRA – When one loves one’s art no service seems too hard.
That is our premise. This story shall draw a conclusion from it and show at the same time that the premise is incorrect. That will be a new thing in logic, and a feat in story telling as old as O. Henry - but enough about Mr. Porter. This is a story about Chief Warrant Officer Mathew Rowley.
Rowley is a pilot deployed to southern Iraq who happens to be a photographer from Great Falls, Mont., or perhaps it’s vice versa.
As a UH-60 Black Hawk pilot, Rowley is fulfilling a life-long dream. As a photographer, Rowley takes photos, good ones, the kind you’d find in magazines or calendars or inspirational posters.
More often than not, you’ll catch him wearing his aviator uniform, a goofy smile and an olive-drab satchel. Inside this bag is his Canon, his batteries, grips and three lenses: a standard lens for bright shots, a telephoto lens for candid shots and a wide-angle lens for everything else.
As a boy, Rowley came out of the great arid flats of Montana pulsing with a genius for pictorial art; with his first camera, he says he captured the essence of a hat.
“I was six,” Rowley recalled. “I took photos of this straw cowboy hat in a tree – like all different angles of just this cowboy hat.
“I thought I was the greatest photographer in the world,” he said.
When Rowley grew up, he got a job with the local TV station, KTGF out of Great Falls, before hopping across town to work for the Great Falls’ country station, KMON. After that, he left to open his own photography business, where he happily snapped weddings and senior portraits and family gatherings.
Then, when a brokerage firm had an opening for a layout and design artist, he decided to give a try. Six years later, he felt burnt out from inflexible bosses, he recalled. After years working in television, radio and visual arts, Rowley felt he needed a change.
That’s when he decided to fly helicopters.
“One of the guys who worked at the company used to be a [pilot],” Rowley says. “He was telling me all these stories about when he was in Vietnam. I kept hounding him and hounding him about flying helicopters. Finally, I think he just got tired of me talking about it, and he says, ’Why don’t you talk to the recruiter about it?’”
Rowley went to his recruiter and told him he wanted to fly.
“I wanted to serve my country again,” Rowley recalled. “I’ve always wanted to fly helicopters and I’ve always wanted to serve my country.”
His prior service in the Marine Corps helped his case, and the recruiter was able to get him into an aviation unit, albeit as a fueler.
“I told everyone that I talked to that my only goal was to go to flight school,” Rowley said, and he kept working and eventually got his ticket to flight school at the age of 31.
“Aviation has pretty much taken over my life,” said Rowley, who considers himself a third-generation pilot . “I’ve always wanted to fly. This is the most challenging thing I’ve done.”
Then in a surprise twist (although not really), Rowley the pilot was chosen to be his unit’s historian, public affairs representative and de facto photographer. In between his shifts as a Black Hawk pilot for “A” Company, 1st Battalion, 189th Regiment, Rowley captures his unit’s history with his camcorders and cameras.
It’s not uncommon for him to work two or three hours after his shift, Rowley said, a feat duly recognized by his peers.
“If he put half the effort he put into photography and put that into flying, then we’d have something,” one of his coworkers joked.
It’s as if Rowley’s art keeps catching up to him.
He can start flying helicopters; he can deploy to the other side of the Earth, and still he winds up with a camera in his hand.
When one loves one’s art, whether that art be photography or aviation, no service -- even a deployment -- seems too hard.
December 
