Kuwait to Iraq

we spend a few days in kuwait shaking off the jet lag and getting acclimatized while doing a bit more training such as more IED(improvised explosive device) identification training, both mounted and dismounted. as well as some more shooting with the M4, 240B, 249, M2, 9mm, and 320. i suppose i should explain what all those weapons are.
M4 is similar to an AR15 or M16 and shoots a 5.56 round either single shot or 3 round burst http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M4_carbine
240B is a full auto machine gun and shoots a 7.62 round and is belt fed http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M240_machine_gun
M249 or SAW(squad automatic weapon) is a full auto machine gun and shoots a 5.56 rounds and is belt fed http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M249_light_machine_gun
M2 is full auto or single shot and shoots a .50 cal round and is a monster! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M2_Browning_machine_gun
9mm is your common pistol
M320 is a hand held grenade launcher that shoots 40mm ammo. it can be a handheld weapon or mounted to the bottom of the M4 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M320_grenade_launcher

so then we get to finally get to fly into iraq which is about a 2 hour flight and we get to do it in a cargo plane, yay!!! to make it even more wonderful we get to do it with all our body armor on, 1 computer bag, 1 back pack, and your weapon. some of the unlucky f!@#$%s(of course this includes me) get to do it with an additional weapon which happens to be the 240B, yay!!! we start walking up the ramp into the plane and i see the plush and luxurious seating we get to recline in. first you need to imagine how cramped the normal civilian is on a normal flight and no one wants to be in the middle of those 3 seat sections, now imagine our reality of 6 seats side by side per row with as much leg and elbow room and seat quality as the cheapest seats available on a normal commercial airliner, yes we still have our bags, weapons, and armor on us and yes it all has to be in the seat with us and on us, yay!!! so we get all packed in like 10 pounds of s#*t in a 5 pound bag, hit the taxi way and take off which is really smooth. so im screaming at the guy to my left telling him how smooth i thought the take of was and he screams back "YEAH, JUST WAIT TILL THE COMBAT LANDING!". why are we screaming you ask? cause we are in a huge military cargo plane that is not insulated and is powered by 4 propeller engines which requires us to have earplugs in. i dont feel like losing my voice trying to find out what a combat landing is so i just sit there and imagine that it will be an aggressive landing, boy was i mistaken.
so as we level out to our cruising altitude of to high to live from a crash, i find out that these wonderful seats we are sitting in are on a pallet system which means that 120 seats are bolted to a piece of metal and then the metal plate is slid into channels on the belly of the plane with stop locks mounted in front and behind the slab of metal we are bolted to. i figure this out cause as we level out, we all slide forward about 3 inches on our plate of metal from the rear stop locks to the front ones.
eventually one of the flight crew that is in a chair facing us gets over the loudspeaker and announces that we will be landing in 15 minutes. thank god! my body is screaming from pain after being packed in like a 2 pound trout in a sardine can. so with about 10 minutes left in our flight, the combat landing begins.
first we do a dive bomb, and as we are hurteling towards the earths surface and im trying my best to not scream like a 12 yr old girl, i think to myself that as long as there are no flashing lights or warning sounds/sirens/buzzers then everything must be ok. so i keep a close eye on the one flight crew person i can see to judge my panic level based upon his reactions to the unfolding events. he is cool and calm even though we keep diving and diving and diving and diving. after what i feel is way to long in this death dive, i start silently screaming at the pilot to PULL UP MOTHER F$%^&R, PULL UP!!! and i swear to god it had to be the last possible second before we all became a smoldering crater that he finally does. so now we make a vertical U turn which slams our pallet of seats to the rear 3 inches but feels like 2 feet and we are now going straight up and the G forces are so strong that it feels like my guts are gonna get squished right out my brown star fish! eventually the pilot starts to level us out,just before the engines stall out im sure, and the G forces start to return to normal i think what else is in store for us? just as i finish that thought the pilot banks us HARD to the left. if we had windows to see out of im sure that on the left we would see nothing but ground and the right nothing but sky cause im pretty damned sure we are 90 degrees to mother earth now, and then we go to the right, HARD! at this point im thinking to the pilot, dude this aint a f*&^%$g fighter jet! when the pilot levels out again i conclude that the crew member ive been watching this whole time has been sitting back like he is at home watching tv and that all this is normal, so me and a few others start getting into it and throwing our hands up in the air combined with whoops and hollars as we go through the aerobatic manuevers. others in our group didnt look so joyful and im pretty sure there were a couple that started crying and maybe even one crap their pants, but surprisingly no one puked. after 9 minutes and 30 seconds of going up, down, left, right in various differnt ways we actually start our landing decent . . . . which means we are falling like a rock! but this time the planes nose is elevated sightly above horizontal and we are gonna slam ass first and end up looking like a smashed beer can or at the very least we are gonna bounce hard and who knows after that. the landing ended up being the smoothest one ive ever had, but i still needed help pulliing my fingers out of the seat in front of me.