so i figured i would go ahead and start keeping you guys informed as to what i have been up to so far and what i have experienced and seen.
so here is a small bit for now, enjoy.
we have to wake up at OMG early and load on to buses with our 2 bags and weapon. luckily no body armor or second weapon. then we roll out for about an hour and a half to the airfield where we sit for a couple hours whle the civilian plane gets ready. during these 2 hours everyone is saying their last goodbyes on their cell phones before having their service put on a military hold while they are deployed. so yes its a total mess of emotions spreading like a disease through the hanger as everyone says goodbye to their loved ones.
we finally get the order that the plane is ready and we can start boarding so we step out into the cold, windy, dark early mississippi morning and commence boarding. thankfully the plane is huge and we have half as many people as there are seats. so everyone has space and is fairly comfortable.
the stewardess for my section comes by and introduces herself and of course being the normal soldiers that we are, we fire back with comments such as "thats what she said" and "thats the way your momma likes it". and this lady rolls with it! and even fires back a few of her own. she is very witty and sharp of tongue which pleases us all greatly and gets everyone upbeat and able to get their minds off the goodbyes they said moments earlier. after some time in the air everything starts to calm down and people start to succumb to the emotional drain they have been through and start to fall asleep, as do i.
sometime in the flight i wake up and find it to be dark and quiet with most everyone sleeping and i see the stewardess coming down the aisle handing out meals so i decide to stay awake and get some food. she eventually makes her way to me and asks me if i would like pasta or chicken? no im a fairly picky eater and not really fond of chicken unless its cooked a certain way, so i ask her what kind of pasta is it? to which she gives me an are you kidding me? look for 2 seconds and then says "honey, what do you think this is? you think we got a chef in the back throwing this stuff together? its cardboard with gravy on it."
i got the chicken.
to my surprise it actually wasnt bad cause it was a chicken pot pie type of food.
after the food and bathroom break i go back to sleep.
i wake up again due to some turbulance and look into the aisle to check everyones behavior so i can adjust my panic level accordingly. about half the soldiers are awake and i find my stewardess in the aisle again with the serving cart and she is acting normal but still doing her best to stay standing and serve drinks or something. after a few minutes the turbulance gets worse than anything i have ever encountered before and i start to get pretty concerned. everyone is awake now and the stewardess has given up trying to do her job and is now bracing herself with her back to one seat, her leg up on the arm of the seat accross the aisle, one hand on the overhead storage compartment and the other hand trying to keep the serving cart under control. i stare at this lady for probably 15 minutes straight with out blinking just waiting for her to bolt into one of the open seats and buckle herself in, cause if she does im gonna . . . . well i dont know what im gonna do but im sure it wouldnt be pretty.
after a few more minutes everything calms down enough for the stewardess to go back to her duties which allows me to breath, moisten my eyes, relax every muscle in my body and pull my fingers out of the arm rests. after doing all this the phrase "this sucks" comes outta my mouth and i fall back asleep.
i wake up again but this time to the pilot over the intercom saying that we will be landing in ireland in about 30 minutes. so we start throwing open window shutters since its daylight now and start taking in the sights that ireland has to offer. but we are still above the clouds and it takes us a few minutes to get below them. once we do we find that is raining, but we can still see the beautifull green fields, little cottages and herds of cows, sheep and goats. the pilot starts making his final approach and we are excited cause there is a 3 hour layover and we are landing at an actual airport. we start coming down and down and down and everything seems normal when all of a sudden BAM!!! we hit the tarmac so hard that we bounce back in the air long enough for me to think that we no longer have a landing gear and we are hosed! the smell of fear permeates the air in the cabin . . . maybe it was just urine and some feces. finally the pilot touches down the rear again and then the front, our "bounce" must have messed up his landing because we are hard on the brakes now and with the wet tarmac we are also sliding from left to right about 4-6 feet in either direction and the pilot is having a hell of a time keeping the tail of the plane from passing the nose and doing cookies down the runway!
finally we get under control and to our terminal so we can offload and stretch while the plane gets more fuel and a fresh crew.
we make our way into the main lobby of the airport and there is a bar there that serves food, coffee, soda, and booze. as im in line watching people get coffee, food, and soda i start thinking of how i can get a stiff drink but be discreet about it? im looking at the coffee menu board and see that a coffee and bailey's is available, score! then i notice that they have a tea menu as well and i see a drink called a hot toddy, i dont know what this is so i ask the server guy what it is before i order my coffee with bailey's, to which he replies its hot water with rum, a slice of lemon and some cloves.
i had him make me a double and go light on the water.
So now i have this strange but much needed concoction disguised inside of a paper coffee cup and so i set about taking in the sights of this foreign place im in while sipping on my soothing drink. im checking out the bathroom and i cant remember much details but its vastly different than anything ive ever utilized before. i go about my way checking out the way their signs and advertisements differ from ours and i end up in a shoppette that has all kinds of trinkets that would never be found on our shelves along with rediculous amounts of booze everywhere.
about half way through my cup i find myself at a magazine stand and im going through an average looking mag when i come upon a jean advertisement, this page is pure white with the name of the jeans up top and a model facing me wearing a pair of the jeans, and thats it! totally with out clothing from the waist up, nice! so i start going through various types of mags and they ALL have the same exquisit taste in advertising.
i start contemplating the prudeness of the american culture and its inability to embrace and display the lovely human nude body when i suddenly get bored, or maybe it was a brain cramp, and i continue on browsing with my hand full of warm rum looking at all the strange foreign stuff and finish off my warm cup of rum and water and im starting to feel better about being me when we get the call to board.
we all start making our way to the plane and as im doing so, im thinking of how the next 6 hours of flight time are gonna go.
everybody boards and takes their original seats and makes sure that their weapons and other belongings are there after the flight crew switch. everyone is good so we take off. i pretty much pass out shortly after takeoff, i wake up once maybe twice for bathroom breaks but other than that its pretty uneventfull and i sleep until we start making our final approach into kuwait. as we are coming in everyone wakes up and starts getting excited and opening the window shades to try and catch a glimpse of something but no such luck cause its about 0100 in the morning. what do troops do that are confined and have some excess energy and excitement? they get creative with their ways to expend said energy which very quickly involves every passenger on the plane.
it starts out with one airline supplied pillow being tossed and another and another and another till the whole cabin is involved in a pillow fight as we are landing. the flight crew is strapped in for the landing and powerless to do anything, i doubt they could have if they werent. so now we have pillows flying everywhere, getting stuck in the ceiling, the overhead shelves, everywhere is just total caose. then one soldier gets creative and takes one of the airline supplied blankets and wraps up about six or seven pillows into a big ball and throws it into the air behind him and yells GRENADE!!
of course the grenade happens to land in my seat, about 5 rows back from the tosser and explode, i cant breathe im laughing so hard!
so now we have grenades flying through the air along with individual pillows, total mayhem.
moments before touching down the cabin finally calms down and then we land and taxi in. as we are standing up and securing our gear i notice that my left side above my belt line feels kinda weird, so i reach back and feel it and i scream"OW WTF!". SPC webber in the same row but accross the aisle to my right says whats the matter SGT bailey? i look at him and say idk but that my side hurts and i turn around and pull up my blouse and shirt and ask him if he sees anything? to which he replies HOLY SH!T SGT you have a huge blister! im like wtf? so i gingerly touch it and as im doing so im looking at my seat for protruding objects and feeling my belt for an explanation when i grab my surefire flashlight thats clipped to my waist and realise thats its warm, no hot, no really f'ing hot! and thats when i come to the conclusion that as i was sleeping i must have been laying on it in such a way as to be pushing the momentary button long enough to burn me and now i got this huge blister, of which to this day i have a nickel sized scar.
anyways we offload and wait for the baggage detail to unload the plane of our main gear(aka the 400 pounds of stuff per soldier we had to bring) and load it onto an 18wheeler for transport. once done we all load onto the scooby doo buses and are transported to an outdoor holding area to wait for another set of buses to take us to our final destination.
scooby doo busses are these tiny little buses no bigger than a 15 passenger van but someone found a way to fit 30 seats in the damn things and so people automatically assume 30 joes can be packed into this thing with their 2 bags and weapon . . . . yeah about that. foreshadowing anyone? well for me it could have been but not for you guys since i put this in after the second sardine fest.
anyways there we are in the middle of the desert in the middle of the night cold, tired, hungry, excited, and for some people(smokers) a serious nicotine deficiency.
we get told that we have a 45 minute wait till the buses get there so people start milling around bs'ing, hydrating and getting their nicotine levels back up.
Finally the real buses arrive and we load on them and head out on a 3 hour drive to where we will be for the next few days acclimating before going to iraq.
im wired and cant sleep so my head is on a swivle trying to catch a glimpse of something middle eastern. i see a few road signs with their crazy writing on them and some traffic but nothing amazing.
we roll into the FOB at about 0500, get broken into different lines and we have to pass our ID's forward. then we get taken into a tent for a mind numbing death by powerpoint briefing. finally done with that, we get loaded on more scooby doo buses and driven to the 70 man tents are that we'll be staying in. go inside, get assigned a cot, drop what bags we have then go back outside to sort through everyones gear to find your own stuff and then drag it all back to your cot. after doing all this we are told that we can finally relax which most people immediatly pass out. a few of us decide to rush to the chow hall to get some breakfast before they close.
For the next 3 days we rest and acclimate to the sand/heat/time zone/cultural diversity.
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