27 January 2008: Mission via space A? NOT!

Some days are like the skip on a broken record. Today was almost an exact duplicate of yesterday. When our flight cancelled the night before, we began scrambling for alternatives. The clock becomes a real factor when there are multiple missions stacked on one another. We had a small factor of safety that allowed us to lose a day but still make the mission. Unfortunately, personnel can't manifest themselves on multiple flights to the same destination. If your flight cancels, you have to submit another request that takes 72 hours to process. In the meantime, space available is the only option. Given that all flights cancelled the day before, every person who was attempting to get to our destination yesterday was now attempting to fly space A today. That meant competing for space with everyone who was already manifested and the personnel who were attempting to get out with us the day before. The prospects were bleak. We knew that going in. The good news was that helicopters were flying. Only one flight was going where we needed to go though.

We signed up on the space A list at Liberty Pad as soon as we learned of the flight. My team started seventh on the list. We reported back to LP at 2100 to wait. The place was packed, but the turnover of personnel was steady. The stream of helicopters was continual. I had my NCOIC drive me back over to the Liberty PX food court. I bought everyone coffee and hot chocolate for the wait. It was right at the temperature where you feel fine, only to realize an hour later you're cold. We had about two hours to wait.

An interesting conversation suddenly began. It was strange that it took almost our entire deployment for this topic to come up. We began speculating how much money we would be making if our team was all contracted. Even the youngest, junior enlisted man on my team would probably be making $150k or more if his position was contracted. His knowledge and skills, coupled with our constant travel and the risks associated, would make his salary very lucrative. The intricate knowledge that I have on the entire process of brigade redeployments would certainly command a lot of money. It was amazing to all of us when we put our collective thought into this. Oh well, we do this for each other and for our fellow warfighters who depend on our services to get home. We can definitely hold our heads very high when we go home for a job well done. There are thousands of grateful soldiers back home that we assisted. It certainly wasn't for the money.

So what ended up happening with our flight? I'll get back to the story. At 2355 we lined up. Two CH46's landed. Seven people exited the aircraft. The crew chief spoke to the KBR lady holding the manifest/spaceA list. She came back and announced that there was room for six. Remember what I said earlier? Yep, my team started at number seven on the list. We looked around with anxious glances at one another. Then we shrugged our shoulders, picked up our gear, and loaded back on the truck. This isn't the first time. Shit, how many nights like this have we had in the past year? Fifteen minutes later, I was in my hooch. I sent an e-mail to the unit that was expecting us. No-go on the flight. We'll have to work another alternative course of action. Actually, I already did and it's already in motion. For now, we'll just continue to wait (like Chuck Norris) in Camp Liberty.