Once again I find myself still in Balad when we’re supposed to be starting a new mission. Flying is so unpredictable here. If there are no sandstorms everything runs like clockwork. The problem is accurately predicting when they’ll hit. A funny aspect of this is that in our morning briefings the operations officer includes the three-day weather pattern in his update. The other day he said, “The good news about August is that the sandstorms should diminish.” That must be later in the month.
Rather than stress about the situation I got on with business left incomplete. I also made certain to get my team arranged on another flight for tonight. Thanks to my many connections I was able to save us the “space-A” route. Instead, I got us manifested on the R&R return flight CH47’s going to Camp Taji. Our show time was 2000. Once I had that arrangement secured I told everyone to take care of personal business until time to meet at Catfish.
Truth is, it was ok that we didn’t fly the night before. I slept in. These late nights on mission were starting to mess with me. It was going to be another one. After we checked in we found out that the helicopters were being held for maintenance. Our flight to Taji would be delayed at least an hour. This proved to be two hours or more. It wasn’t until almost midnight that we finally crammed into the Chinooks. There were a lot of soldiers returning from leave. Many of them still had the tags on their body armor from when they stored them in Kuwait on their way home. Most of them had that “returning from R&R long face.” The flight gave them a few more minutes to reflect on their respective R&R’s. I hope everyone had a blast.
Arriving at Camp Taji proved to be an easy affair. I called the unit we were supporting. They promptly sent a soldier with a pick-up truck. He ferried us to our billets, which proved to be only about 100 meters from the pax terminal. I had him give me a quick tour of the facilities we’d be utilizing the next morning. Then I hit the fart sack. Our billets weren’t bad. All of us were housed inside a dorm-like building that had internal plumbing (a big deal for certain). I didn’t hear a peep out of anyone all night.
Rather than stress about the situation I got on with business left incomplete. I also made certain to get my team arranged on another flight for tonight. Thanks to my many connections I was able to save us the “space-A” route. Instead, I got us manifested on the R&R return flight CH47’s going to Camp Taji. Our show time was 2000. Once I had that arrangement secured I told everyone to take care of personal business until time to meet at Catfish.
Truth is, it was ok that we didn’t fly the night before. I slept in. These late nights on mission were starting to mess with me. It was going to be another one. After we checked in we found out that the helicopters were being held for maintenance. Our flight to Taji would be delayed at least an hour. This proved to be two hours or more. It wasn’t until almost midnight that we finally crammed into the Chinooks. There were a lot of soldiers returning from leave. Many of them still had the tags on their body armor from when they stored them in Kuwait on their way home. Most of them had that “returning from R&R long face.” The flight gave them a few more minutes to reflect on their respective R&R’s. I hope everyone had a blast.
Arriving at Camp Taji proved to be an easy affair. I called the unit we were supporting. They promptly sent a soldier with a pick-up truck. He ferried us to our billets, which proved to be only about 100 meters from the pax terminal. I had him give me a quick tour of the facilities we’d be utilizing the next morning. Then I hit the fart sack. Our billets weren’t bad. All of us were housed inside a dorm-like building that had internal plumbing (a big deal for certain). I didn’t hear a peep out of anyone all night.
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