This sucks. It hurts to say it, but, we had to cancel the mission. For the first time this entire deployment, travel woes prevented us from mission success. Today was the last chance to make this one work. It was a no-go. We had a flight. Once again the weather stepped in. This time I used common sense. I'll explain.
Helicopters were flying up until around 1400. Then eerie silence descended once again over Camp Liberty. The culprits? Low cloud ceiling and a heavy ground fog that seemed to spring from nowhere. My NCIOC reported back to me about flight status at 1800 - weather hold. This was no surprise. Here's where common sense stepped in. I told him that we would be ready but for everyone to remain at their hooches. At 2030, he drove back by LP and checked us in for the flight. We were space A. The fog became worse. He stopped back by my hooch and we consulted. There was no way in hell we were going to sit at LP until 0200 for the fifth time this week. We agreed - nothing was going to fly tonight. We would not waste our time lugging gear around. Our intuition proved correct. All flights for the night ended up cancelling. We stayed snug in our hooches.
Now we're back to the drawing board. I'll pull out my calender and balance available days with personnel requirements. If we can make it fit, we will visit this mission again. One way or another we'll make sure we find a solution.
I'm glad to finally have closure on this week. It's been the most frustrating week of the entire deployment.
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