Homeward bound

This is it. My last post. As I write this I am sitting in my hotel room in St. Johns, Newfoundland in Canada just one evening away from being reunited with my sweet wife. I have a lot to say, but it may not be interesting as there are no combat tales in this post. What I write today is a reflection on my experience.

A few days ago we had our outbriefing and I looked on the screen in front of the room and the Director of Operations had encapsulated everything we had done as crews for Operation Enduring Freedom. Although I had felt at the time that we had been underutilized, we had accomplished quite a bit for only having three crews and two aircraft. Had missions not cancelled, we could have classified this as a really ball busting deployment, but instead can list it as a somewhat cushy vacation.

I'd really like to tell all of you that I made a difference in the war on terror (I hate that misnomer), but I'd be hyping a load of manure. We worked hard when we flew. The missions we flew on the Horn of Africa were demanding. Most days were 16 hours long. The temperature was routinely 100 degrees at 6 am and many of the legs were 3-4 hours long and we would do four legs in a day. The airspace wasn't too bad, but lots of unknown aircraft and terrible air traffic control. There are other unmentionable things that cannot be said because of their sensitive nature, but it was not a cake walk.

The true workers are the men and women deployed in support of Air Expeditionary Operations that spend their entire deployment in places like Djibouti, Bagram, Balad, Al Udeid. They are under threat every day and put up with miserable conditions and I want all of you to think of them instead of me.

I really enjoyed my time with my crew. They are the BEST crew I have ever had the privilege of flying with. I am not kissing as because they may read this blog. They won't because no one on the deployment has the link and most don't even know about it. Every one of them flew like a professional no matter what the heck was thrown at us. We had a new copilot and navigator and a first time deployer as a loadmaster (he raced across the desert in 03 as a Marine munitions troop re-arming Cobra gunships). We had many opportunities for Murphy to bite us in the ass and it never happened because we all looked out for each other and performed as one unit. Early on someone nicknamed us "Team Varsity" and it really stuck. We broke one time and you read the post about it. We got a waiver, got back to the DJ and had it repaired and finished the mission. Talking with the Navy SEALS we support they really appreciated us pushing it to the limit.

I am fiercely proud of my crewmates. They deserve credit and I will now take the opportunity to give it to them. I processed the awards and decorations (medals) for everyone on this deployment, but if I had to write citations for individual awards this is some of what I'd say about my teammates.

Major Roark Endlich- An arrogant son of a bitch, but he took damn good care of the crew. He put pressure on you to get the mission done and learned quickly that he didn't need much as we were high speed. He had a can do attitude and always pushed it to the limit, but at the end of the day you knew that everyone respected the job you'd just done because they knew you would do whatever it took to get the mission done and support those on the front lines.

Captain Travis Adams- I'd run through a wall of flames to get this man out of a burning plane. He is a competent pilot, but he is definitely one of the finest aircraft commanders I have ever worked with. He didn't get in my business or tell me what to do. He listened to me and let me do my job 120 %. I gave him the facts and let him make the decisions and he always made the right ones. He went to bat for us everytime, NO EXCEPTIONS. When I wanted to go to the plane and get it ready instead of having breakfast because they didn't alert us at a reasonable hour, he said, "plan for extra weight with that breakfast your going to eat." He never ordered you directly, he just had a way of making you want to do it that way.

Captain Joe Bennington- He was on his game. He had a lot of learning to do and a difficult environment to do it in. He backed us all up and asked a lot of questions about what was going on. He had questions for me as an experienced Non-commissioned officer about how things worked between me and an aircraft commander. He will make a great aircraft commander one day and I would fly with him in the shit any day of the week and twice on Sunday.

First Lieutenant Phil Bledsoe- For some reason this guy who is 12 years my junior has earned my complete respect and admiration. He gets the job done and never breaks a sweat (except in the morning in Djibouti before takeoff). He's a new navigator and yet he performed like he'd been at it awhile. He was always thinking ahead and had things done way before they needed to be. He'd load the secrets in the combat tracker and mode four, the  pilots never had to lift a finger with the flight plans or routing. The guy is a natural. He worked hard and he played even harder. He knows the value of having a good time when we're not flying and can put his game face on when it's time for business. I never EVER worried about accidently bumping into an evening thundershower because he was always on top of it. He kept us out of restricted airspace and around thunderstorms. I couldn't spill my diet coke if I tried due to turbulence associated with the storms we were skirting.

Master Sergeant Shawn Gardner- The other old man on the crew. He was my voice of reason for all the wrong we saw. We've both been at it a long time and he just kept me grounded. He could load anything that the 130 could carry. Many times we got a crazy object to load and he just did it. More than once he saved a mission that someone said couldn't be done with his can do attitude. We never waited on Shawn to take off. He could get us out of the assualt strip in under 20 minutes most days and the one time we had to shut down it was because God couldn't have loaded that air conditioner during an engine running offload!!!! He taught me so much about what happens behind the cockpit and how loadmasters operate the 130. I have a lot of respect for what the loads do in the aircraft. It's not like packing your car. If grenades and bullets get loaded together and an enemy round would have made it through our armor it would have been good bye Charly as my mother-in-law says.

Last, but not least, Staff Sergeant Michael Culp- Marine to the Corp, pun intended, he took all the bullshit in stride because he has had it a lot worse than any Air Force crew will ever have it. He took every opportunity given to him to grow as a loadmaster and he soaked up as much knowledge as Shawn could dish out. He took leadership and got things done when Shawn was handling another crisis and we never had a late takeoff because he was waiting for direction. I admire his work ethic and his abilities as a loadmaster. He and Shawn are the two loadmasters I want sitting in the troop doors riding the harnesses looking for missiles and rocket propelled grenades when we take off in a hostile area.

I have a profound love for each of these guys and a respect that cannot be given it must be earned. They earned it easily and I don't know what I'll do next Christmas when I'm flying in Afghanistan without them.

Which brings me to my op ed piece.

Today I watched an interview with the first living Medal of Honor recipient since Vietnam. Staff Sgt. Salvatore Giunta. He is as humble as any who have earned the medal before him. What he did is heroic. I am in awe of what he did and what he stands for. He deflected any praise for himself and put it on the others involved in the fire fight that day. That's what real heroes do. They never think that what they did was important or newsworthy. I completely understand his point that it is what he was trained to do and was just doing his job.

That is all I have done. I will never be a hero and it's important to say that. I am just a regular guy who was looking for a cool job and found it. I would probably run like a coward if faced with what SSgt Giunta was facing. I would definitely be thinking self preservation as most of us would. I am ok with that. I accept that and am proud of what I have done in the service, but as I have said to friends who think that what I do is heroic, "If I am a hero then what are the men and women who have suffered and lost in battle?" What are all of those soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines who reside in Walter Reed Medical Center who are trying to put their life back together? They are the heroes.

I will say that many of us who serve in harms way are a special breed. My family will never know the bond that I have with those I fly with. Until now, the guys I have flown with over the years knew more about me than my family or friends. The men and women of the US Armed Forces do what many are unwilling, or unable, to do. They are the one percent that get out of bed at all hours of the night and day, everyday, and stand watch over the citizens of the United States and our Allies. Many who were serving on September 11th, myself included, watched with horror as the events of that day unfolded. Many citizens say their lives have changed forever, but I see little evidence of that.

I do see how life has changed for those of us in uniform. We deploy every year for anywhere from four months to a year. We leave our families behind to pick up the pieces of our lives when things go wrong. My wife had a very sick dog to lovingly heal back to health (he's practically our kid) as well as fix things around the house, make decisions concerning both of us and just getting up everyday and doing her job as well. Others have lost pets on this deployment, had medical issues at home and other disasters. We don't get to go home because of that. We have to get on a plane and fly knowing that our beloved pet is on the brink of death and yet the mission comes first. One of the people I deployed with has a wife at home who is having a hard time as this is his fifth deployment in five years.

I am not asking for sympathy, just acknowledgement that those of us who choose to do this do so willingly despite the setbacks and pain we have to deal with in our daily lives and that it is so damn tough. I don't want 20% off. I don't want free tickets to a ball game or a standing ovation. What I want is for the public to say thank you to those vets that don't get the public attention I have gotten on this deployment. My face plastered on a 30 second segment of Armed Forces Network doesn't even begin to tell the story of what went on behind the scenes.

As the last night with the guys approaches I feel a sense of excitement at seeing my wife, but also a tinge of sadness about not seeing the guys I've lived and worked with for 126 days on Saturday when I wake up. For me the task ahead is to become reaquainted with my wife and be the best husband, and a better citizen, in the months to come.

This quote by Samual Adams, a founding father and signer of the Declaration of Independence, in my mind, spells out what it means to be an American:

"It is not unfrequent to hear men declaim loudly upon liberty, who, if we may judge by the whole tenor of their actions, mean nothing else by it but their own liberty, - to oppress without control or the restraint of laws all who are poorer or weaker than themselves. It is not, I say, unfrequent to see such instances, though at the same time I esteem it a justice due to my country to say that it is not without shining examples of the contrary kind; - examples of men of a distinguished attachment to this same liberty I have been describing; whom no hopes could draw, no terrors could drive, from steadily pursuing, in their sphere, the true interests of their country."

Stand up for the rights of others as if they were your own for one day they just may be yours at stake. I do it everyday and will continue to do so for as long as I can. Be a good citizen and get involved wherever you can. I thank the power that created the universe everyday that I have been able to serve in the capacity that I do and feel privileged to do it alongside some of the best men and women America has ever seen. I thank all of you for giving me the opportunity to share some of my experiences with you. I also want to say that it really means a lot to me knowing that many of you think about us as we conduct our daily operations. I ask that you continue to think of the men and women I leave serving on active duty in harms way and keep them in your prayers.

Good luck in all of your endeavours and I hope that your life is as rich and full as mine has been and will be. Take care of yourselves. I hope to see many of you in the year to come.

Martha Stewart's guide to tent living for the deployed

So, here we are. We're finally in the tents. Every other crew has been in them and they've complained about our good fortune for the last couple of months. I'm happy to oblige whiners as usually they're hypocrisy stands out!!! As usual team Varsity handles it with style. We just got our tent assignments and went and checked our tent out.

It's not the Hilton but compared to what the marines and soldiers suffer through at remote outposts I'll take it. It's got pretty decent ac. I froze my ass off because I initially didn't want to zip up my cold weather Marmot sleeping bag.....Stupid is as stupid does!!!! It's got bright flourescent lights so I took some initiative and built my fort first. All the linens look like I went to a Salvation Army center. Pictures will be forthcoming. I got a heavy blanket and made a little hanging curtain.

It's tough trying to sleep because everyone sleeps in a different way. Some go to bed early, some late, some never. Half the lights are on till well after 1-2 in the morning so not making yourself a little curtain is tantamount to the onset of insomnia. I didn't put any earplugs in as I was tired to begin with after being up 18 hours and for operating an aircraft for 16.5. 12 hours of flying and 4.5 of ground gaggle. So I fell asleep quite readily only to be awoken by a cold draft eminating from the ceiling blowers. The outside air temperature had fallen to 96 F (32 C for you Canadians:) and the movement inside had ceased long enough for the cooldown to begin. That will not happen this evening as I am getting up at 2:45 am to go fly tomorrow.

We were greeted by the Djiboutian Anthem promptly at 8 am followed by the national anthem. OMG is it loud!!! Very military sounding BTW. After that it was off to the showers. Any of my flying buddies will tell you that showers vary from bad to worse. As far as these go they are awesome!!! Water so hot it burns Djibouti film right off of you!!!! They are actual shower heads with a single adjustable handle and the sinks are decent. Last time I was at Djibouti it had smaller tents and solar still showers!!! Now you can shower without worrying about getting water in your mouth for fear of throwing up your chow!!!
It's actually posted by the environmental health technicians that the water is now potable and you will no longer use bottled water. Is that just like the announcement that there are no ill effects of the burn pits at all the lovely places I've stayed at, or transited, in the middle east? As Austin Powers says, "Riiigghht."

After showering, Shawn and I took a lovely stroll in the beautiful sunlight and 105 degree heat. Did I mention that it's a desert so it's really a dry heat? Except that it's adjacent to the Gulf of Aden so we have that pesky little thing called humidity. We found the computer place where you take your laptop to have it configured to work on the mil net. Then it was off to order some morale patches and such at the little souvenier shop.

That's right. The Phillipinos have opened an embroidery shop where the guy does it all by hand. I'm having an arabic nametag made with my wings on it. The things you do to entertain yourself. After that it was off to Brunch at the chow hall. What a great way to spend a Saturday? I had a tasty turkey breast with potato wedges and gravy. Then I snacked on spaghetti sauce with meatballs and put in this awesome garlic bread. Believe it or not the food is excellent unless you are in the fast food line. Then it's buyer beware as I just had a snack of onion rings that were made four hours ago.....Pepto!!!!

Now we're hangin' at 11 degrees north, a morale, welfare, and recreation oasis. They have fast wifi and everyone in here is lounging around bangin' out on their keyboards or catching up with Family Guy. Some are waiting to skype the family back home as dawn approaches. It's 14:29 here so my sweet lady isn't up yet, unless the dog is licking her face right now. Okay this is ridiculous. They are playing some really stupid piano music like, "We've only just begun"!!! Are you f*ing shittin' me? Is that what the troops need to hear? It's just the kind of music i like to play on my Ipod as we approach an assault strip for a tactical landing!!!!!!!!!!!! NOT!!!!! Throw some Halen or Iron Maiden in there and I'm rollin' Let one of those bad dudes throw something our way we'd have the SEALS send them packing. This music would just embolden the enemy to attack us while we're all holding each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So, not even halfway through my day and that's where I've been and what I've done. On tap for the rest of the afternoon before I shower and sleep......chow!!!!! I regret not getting French toast this morning. That also will not happen again. 20 days until I see my sweet bee!!!!! Then I take a year off and do it all over again in September. But that will be another blog entirely. Tomorrow it's the assualt strip and buying Tuskar beer!!!

Last Horn of Africa Rotation

I am sitting in the cockpit at 21000 feet flying over the Red Sea after just exiting the Egyptian FIR (Flight Information Region) boundary. We're headed almost due south. The sky is absolutely clear tonight. About 30 minutes ago I decided to play with my NVG's because I was bored and the stars are spectacular. Tonight you could see the Milky Way so crisply it was absolutely breathtaking!! We were all sitting there silently when we looked to our left and watched the moon begin to creep above the horizon. You get a sense of how fast the moon is moving relative to the earth when you see how long it takes to move above. As I speak it's already a few degrees above the horizon of the earth. The color was a brilliant orange due to the moonlight passing through the atmosphere and the curvature of the earth. It's nights like these that I feel so blessed to be able to fly.

Flying has been the best job I could have ever chosen for myself. It didn't start out that way, but somehow I fell into it. I'd say I can't imagine doing anything else, but I can because I quit for awhile. I can't regret that decision because it led me to the most wonderful human being on the planet: my beautiful wife. However, I can say that there are absolutely no regrets for having jumped back into the game. I am having the best time on this deployment and as everybody's widgets on their computers count down the time until we are reunited with our loved ones I am struck with a sense of sadness. The guys on my crew are the best I've ever flown with. We have gotten the job done time and time again and we've had an absolute blast regardless of the shit we're in. I truly am going to miss flying with them.

It's not that I'll never fly with them again. It's that I probably will never fly with these exact crewmembers in a deployment again. Anyone who has ever spent a lot of time with the same group of people over a long deployment the wrong people equal a very large ass pain. Not once has anyone jumped in anyone else's shit over something. When one of us is angry about something we all just make him laugh and then we give him shit later once he's cooled down. We move as a group and we're flexible as hell. No matter what has occured this deployment we just shrugged our shoulders and made a funny comment and moved on.

Now we are on our last rotation to the Horn of Africa. It's a melancholy feeling coming down here one more time. The squadron we are deployed to is deactivating at the end of our deployment and the active duty squadron at Ramstein is going to take on sole responsibility for Africa missions. This is probably the last time we will see Ramstein either. I grew up in Europe. I have spent much of my career flying in and out of Ramstein and though much has changed over the last 23 years of my career, it's still like home to me. When the lights go out for the last time at the squadron a lot of people are going to have hay fever all of a sudden!!!

Things have gone wrong since the start of this trip. 617th the squadron responsible for flight planning us has fucked it up again. How many colonels can you get in one room without it collapsing due to them sucking the air out? Right now the answer is.....no shit.....about 15 full bird colonels. No wonder nothing gets done. They had us fragged for an earlier departure and we had hazardous cargo. Rockets and lots of em, but some shithead didn't contact Souda Bay in Crete to tell them until later. It was then they learned that there is no haz cargo ramp because of construction taking place. WTF? Don't you call, because it's required, and notify the arrival station that your coming loaded for the Taliban? Apparently not. Way to go team Ramstein. Your country can be proud of the way you impede Operation Enduring Freedom. Who needs the Taliban when you have 617th.

So they pushed us back a day and we have no haz on board. We have nothing on board for the DJ. That feels so strange because usually we have cargo and passengers. Not this evening. Tonight we get there, jump off the aircraft, get to our tents and run to the chow hall for midnight chow. I can almost taste my roast beef and provolone sandwich....mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm! I was worried for a bit because we have several runs to make while we're down here and I didn't want them to short change us as some of us need a few more missions for aerial achievement medals. Also we get back to back months of tax free. It's the little things that count. Hot chow and tax free.

In addition to 617th doing the haz dick dance, they also showed us flight planned to complete the trip in one day, which we usually do, but that was with us still going around Italy, through France, along the Med to Souda. The shot to DJ was straighter until Cairo redirected us away from Luxor. Weather ahead I'm jumping off so that my laptop doesn't go flying. I should have just picked up my nogs and taken a look. We hit a cloud layer and so we climbed out of it at 23,000 feet and road on top of the cloud deck.

After almost seven hours of pain we approached DJ. The copilot was fllying this approach and he briefed it for runway 09 and commented that it will obviously change to 27 once we contact approach control. Sure enough the DJ controller calls 27 the active, but we were able to get the visual,which cuts out a lot of ass pain. We landed and had a bus waiting. Got to our tent and that's another post.

Pat Tillman

****Warning This Post contains Rantings of a Passionate Military Member******

What prompted this post was an article by NBC sports concerning a documentary on the Pat Tillman coverup. I'm not here to argue politics or even to change anyone's mind. I am writing this post to honor the memory of a true Patriot. I cannot call him a hero even though what he did would definitely put him up there because he made it clear to his family that heroes are extraordinary people and he was a man with faults like the rest of us. You've read my post on the word hero, but in my book he's pretty damn close to one!!!!

No background on Tillman. You should know it and if you want to learn more I urge you to find the truth for yourself. If your American and you do not know who he is that is because you have looked the other way while many of your countrymen have engaged in two wars and were making painful sacrifices. If you are not an American then it would make sense that you may not have heard of Pat Tillman. BTW, Tillman absolutely disagreed with the Iraq war and his reasoning was sound. Yet he still did his duty as a soldier. Imagine that: Personal responsibility!

So, I read the article which focused on the fact that Tillman's father had finally had enough when he read the "report" commissioned by congress. The general in charge, who actually signed the report, had promised the family that he would personally look into it. Well he did and if you read any of the official reports, it was clearly a cover up. The investigators have declared it an unfortunate incident and the general by signing off on it agrees with that assessment. Tillman's father declared that the general, along with some members of Tillman's platoon, are not fit to serve or be identified with the Army Rangers. More to the point he told the general to go fuck himself. Literally!

As with all the content on the web today, people are entitled to espouse their opinions with little regard to honesty and decency. Several people belittled Tillman himself for joining saying that he gave up his career to go "play" soldier and that he got what he deserved. If one person makes another person angry and the angered party decides to shoot and kill that person, does the person who is shot really "deserve" to be shot? Really? Hmmmm, check your value system. No decent human being would buy off on that.

Many of those who commented want the family to get over it because accidents happen and the truth is always hard to find in the fog of war. Yes, the truth is hard to find. It may never be found, completely, in this case. But one truth is for certain. Knowing that PFC Tillman was killed by members of his own unit, the highest ranking members of the US Army overseeing the execution of the war in Afghanistan, including that disgrace of a general Stanley McChrystal, said nothing to the family in private and even used his funeral as a photo op. President Bush absolutely was aware and all of them decided it would be one hell of a recruiting story....like...Jessica Lynch (does she ring a bell?). That's absolutely immoral no matter what your ideology is.

Given those facts can you blame a greiving family that they are angry they were lied to even years afterward? If you can then God help you if something like that ever happens to you. I hope that it never does because the pain of losing someone you love so deeply must be absolutely agonizing and it appears to never go away.

Friendly fire will always happen. No matter what. That doesn't mean that we have to act like it didn't happen and then make the victim a false hero. If you read Where Men Win Glory: The Pat Tillman Story, a lot of Pat's thoughts from his journal are in there. He had many misgivings about the Army and the war. The last thing I think he would have wanted is for himself to be made a recruiting poster. They attempted it when he was alive and he refused.

There is so much to say on this story that I wish I had an open dialogue with all of you because I feel it needs to be said and understood clearly.

Pat Tillman was a courageous man. He did something that hasn't been done since Vietnam when Rocky Blier left the Pittsburgh Steelers and got his legs blown off in Vietnam. Pat Tillman gave up a multi-million dollar contract with the Arizona Cardinals to serve his country in her time of need. If you listen to his family and read his own words there was no regret. He felt that all citizens should make sacrifices for their country no matter what the cost. He even had an opportunity to re-enter the NFL but he refused to go back on his word and break his contract with the American people. Notice no other elite, well paid athelete stood up and did the same thing. No actor, politician, talented, rich individuals did what he did. What counts for even more is that he didn't expect anyone to lavish praise and he didn't condemn others for not making the same choice.

Pat Tillman paid the ultimate sacrifice for the idea that democracy is not passive. It requires attention, and at times sacrifice to maintain itself. I believe that he believed that it was everyone's responsibility to nurture it no matter what their station in life.

To that end I say to all, you don't have to wear the uniform to be a solid citizen. You need to engage and be passionate in whatever it is that you believe in. Stand up and try and make a difference. Democracy may not flourish no matter how hard you try, but it will absolutely falter if you stand idlly by and do nothing. Vote, be active in your community, get involved. But remember that your voice can be powerful. Choose your words wisely when you comment on the tragedy of those who attempted to do something for someone else at great cost to themselves and their loved ones. We should never judge those that put their money where their mouth is.

I didn't have an awesome career to give up when I joined the military. I chose to serve as my career. I have no regrets and I don't know if I would have been the kind of man Pat Tillman was if I had a great job and suddenly saw America attacked and plunged into conflict. I'd like to think that I would, but no one knows their courage or inner strength until they are tested.

I love what I do and if tomorrow I paid the ultimate price I would want someone to comfort my wife with kind words. After all I am a citizen just like you. I have hopes and dreams and want to fullfill them just like everyone else. I would think that my wife would deserve some sympathy and respect even if you disagreed with my occupation. Pat made me realize that all the things I complain about are ridiculous and that I am so damn lucky to have what I have. But I'd give all that up to know that my wife, my family, my friends would be safe from harm.

When I find myself complaining about the slowness of the ops tempo, or the pay problems, or even missing my family, I think about what Pat Would say. I admire him. I want so very badly to have his courage and to be the man he was to all those who know me.

So tonight before I go to bed, as I think about all the complaints and problems I had throughout the day, I think, as I do every night, "What would Pat Tillman Do?"

I know the answer, but will my heart have the courage to follow it?

Mr. and Mrs. So and So we regret to inform you

The title of this post are the words that several families heard on the 28th of this month. Early in the evening on the 28th of July a C-17 taking off from Elmendorf AFB in Alaska crashed. All four airman on board were killed.

Shortly after that their families would hear those words uttered as they were being told of the tragic mishap. I know what that scene is like. I lost several friends on August 29th, 1990. They were flying a mission for Desert Shield during the preparation for the first invasion of Iraq in an attempt to liberate Kuwait. They died and the families they left behind were absolutely devastated. I remember crying to my dad on the phone at the loss of my mentor and friend. The very person who got me to be an engineer was on his retirement flight and his best friend went with him. Both died together.

Whenever I would pass the memorial outside the squadron I couldn't help but think that it can happen to any of us at anytime. Even flying combat missions crews get the invincibility shield, which is folly. What we do even in peacetime is dangerous. The reason aircraft don't crash more often is that we train constantly for just such a thing and we have luck on our side.

These four men died doing what they loved. They were practicing for an upcoming airshow, which I think sucks. Me, I'd rather go out while conducting an airdrop at a forward operating base under heavy attack. At least I'd get those guys the supplies they needed.

No matter. When you read this post I'd ask that you reflect on all the men and women who get up everyday in all walks of life who put their lives on the line for all of us and give silent thanks for their service, whether it be military serving in combat or police officers patrolling your neighborhoods. And for those that believe in prayer say one for the families of the C-17 crew because they have a long and sad road ahead and they need all the support they can get.

In the words of John Gillespie Magee:

High Flight

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth

And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;

Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth

Of sun-split clouds - and done a hundred things

You have not dreamed of - wheeled and soared and swung

High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there

I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung

My eager craft through footless halls of air.

Up, up the long delirious, burning blue,

I've topped the windswept heights with easy grace

Where never lark, or even eagle flew -

And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod

The high untresspassed sanctity of space,

Put out my hand and touched the face of God.



Pilot Officer Gillespie Magee

No 412 squadron, RCAF

Killed 11 December 1941

Assault Strip

The next morning we got up at a reasonable hour as the assault strip is day visual only. It was raining, which could have been bad  if the ceiling dropped near the strip as we would be unable to descend and fly the approach. The field is located in an area where there are several dirt strips used by all kinds of folks, good and bad, and the traffic wouldn't be on radar. So we have to have the visibility and be able to maintain eye contact with the ground at all times.

As I mentioned we had absolutely nothing to do other than to jump in the plane and take off. We did just that. After a short 45 minute flight we were buzzing the field in the brilliant sunlight (no weather to speak of near the coast) and banking to make our approach. 140 miles an hour and 700 feet off the deck in a 60 degree bank pulling a few g's!!!! Exhilarating. The forward air controller cleared us to land at our own risk and we did. We taxiied back on the strip, made our familiar turn into their little ramp and backed up for an ERO. It was a truly awesome time! 19 minutes on the ground from the time the wheels hit the touchdown zone until we taxiied back onto the runway and lifted off. We do not mess around!!!!

On our way to Mombassa we began to encounter the weather we had seen that morning in Nairobi. Mombassa sits right on the Kenyan coast and it was raining so hard we couldn't see the outboard engines! That would almost be like flying in a hurricane. We popped in and out of the clouds and couldn't see the ground.

We were shooting the ILS (instrument landing system), which is a radio signal that gives us centerline and vertical information. When the crosshairs are lined up your on centerline and at the right vertical descent to touchdown nicely on the runway. We set the radar altimeter to 200 feet. If we descend to the runway and hear the GCAS (ground collision avoidance system) scream, "minimums" we execute a missed approach, or go-around.

On final approach with checklists done, I earned my money and the respect of my crew. I called my first go-around of my Herk career. We shot out of the clouds above minimums, but it was raining so hard you couldn't tell for sure it was a runway in front of you. As it was we were well right of the runway and high. The pilot overcorrected putting us well to the left over the grassy strip separating the runway from the taxiway. At that point he aimed for the runway and had us in a bank with a low nose angle and high approach speed, well down the runway that we really couldn't see other than to know it by it's definite shape and size. There could have been a vehicle on the runway or another aircraft and we wouldn't have seen it. At that moment I knew we were completely shit out of luck and that we were about to become a statistic so I shouted over intercom, "GO AROUND!" Initially the pilot was still locked into the approach and didn't push up the throttles. I yelled, "GO AROUND NOW!!!" and he pushed the throttles forward. At that moment I had been prepared to put my hands behind the throttles and push them up because I wasn't about to make my wife a widow.

We had plenty of gas. The entire go around and re-establishment of the approach burned 700 lbs of gas. The only nagging thought I had in the quiet of the aftermath was what if this weather got even worse and we couldn't see the runway at all? Then we'd have major issues. As luck would have it, we popped out of the clouds and the rain dissapated enough for a clearer look at the runway. The approach was nice and stable this time and we landed uneventfully.

I began flying in 1993. Since that time I have heard many haunting cockpit voice recordings of crews that paid the ultimate price. Often no one was assertive enough to break the chain of events that led to the accident. I made up my mind not to be that guy that everyone talks about in hushed tones as the guy who should have spoken up. I have the best seat in the house and I'm not invested in the approach. Pilots always try to make it happen. As a pilot myself, I have done equally dumb things trying to salvage an approach.

We taxiied to the military ramp and picked up some Navy personnel who obviously weren't ready and didn't give a shit. I could have drop kicked the lot of them for their shitty attitudes. Our loadmasters had to rebuild their cargo pallet because these morons had it all jacked up. We'd been Djibouti'd, Kansas Guarded, Nairobi'd and now we got Navy'd. The nice thing was we got an escort into the terminal where I got myself and my sweet wife Tusker Beer shirts!!! Ah the little things in life.

Gassed and ready to go I went to the bathroom on the airplane and was making my way forward in the cargo compartment when a funny thing happened. Well, not really, but it is now. I was making my way around this pallet and was beside the left troop door when I inexplicably went out of it. I grabbed for the door frame and thank God grabbed the door track and broke my fall. I had one leg touching the ground, barely, and the other stuck in the plane. I wrenched my left shoulder trying to prevent my falling completely out and onto my head. I smashed my right thumbnail and bruised my sizable ego, but other than screaming like a sissy I was physically intact!!! Shawn turned around when he heard my cry and said, "what the fuck are you doing back there?" Thanks for the help Shawn.

All in all we made it happen. We ended up hitting the assault strip only three days late whereas had we stayed in Nairobi to fix the brake we would probably have gone back home and those guys would have had to wait for their perishable food items and bullets until August 5th. We moved the mission successfully and completed all of our taskings and for that I am proud and thankful.

Next stop Djibouti for a short rest then back to our deployed location:)

Flying AROUND the HOA

The brake was replaced Saturday morning less than 24 hours after we broke in Niarobi. At 2 am the next morning we showed back at the DJ putting up with the monkey business.....I mean force protection that the Kansas guard provided, ready to go. At ATOC they repeated the itinerary as Mombassa crew rest, then the assault strip and back to Mombassa then on to the DJ for the next day. We were jazzed about a crew rest in Mombassa along the coast so we thought one thing might go right today.

 While the cargo handlers and the loadmasters loaded the cargo an ATOC rep came out and told us we were going to Nairobi. We scratched our heads because the computer itinerary we had showed us going to Mombasa and crew resting. Oh yeah, we didn't have dip clearances for Ethiopia either so we had to fly around the horn of Africa and that's why we were crew resting; we didn't have the duty day. Perhaps you might think that isn't so far. Take a closer look at a map of Africa the next time you have the opportunity. You'll notice that Somalia's coastline is a long one. It takes six hours to fly from Djibouti, right next door, to Kenya, on the other side of Somalia. Here's where the drama starts.

As mentioned, ATOC showed us going to Mombassa and crew resting then taking the assault strip in the morning and returning to Mombassa for fuel. Our computer sheet told us the same. But there was cargo for Nairobi. What cargo? Oh, this little 21 inch carry on luggage? Yep. That's right American taxpayer who feels beaten down by the government, but supports anything the Pentagon chooses to do with your hard earned money because that must be a sure sign of patriotism. You collectively paid over 100k to move a bag that could have been sent commercial. No critical supplies or perishable items, just a bag that got left behind by some embassy marine. Yeah!!!!!! So because of this bag, we flew to Nairobi. They officially claim that it was to preposition for the assault strip. We've had crews fly to the strip from Mombasa several times.

The loads finished putting the cargo on and here was this little red carry on. We needed a ton of fuel for the 7 hour flight to Mombassa; we requested 52000 lbs for the flight. Another thing we couldn't figure out was why we were going to Mombassa if we weren't picking anything up there until after we went to the assault strip the next day. Our illustrious handlers at the MAJCOM said that if Kenyan controllers gave us permission we could fly straight to Nairobi. Of course that would make our day four hours shorter so we didn't want to get too excited because that would make too much sense. Finally, loaded, fueled and ready to go we started the show.

The show. I don't talk about all that happens when we start up and taxi, but it's really an amazing thing. People are milling about with no direction, talking or doing something and then I lean down from the flight deck and yell, "checklist!" Suddenly everybody flows like one unit. The loadmasters jump on headset. I'm flipping switches in the cockpit in anticipation of the Before Starting Engines checklist. The copilot is requesting start clearance and putting our flight clearance on request with ground. The pilot is waiting for start clearance to call for checklists. The navigator is banging out coordinates on the onboard computer and checking the flight plan. Start clearance is given and the pilot calls for the checklist and items are quickly rattled off. Within five minutes all four engines are started, air conditioning is on (it's often only 116 degrees with 65 percent humidity) and the loadmaster has closed the crew entrance door. We call for taxi clearance and as soon as ground gives it to us the copilot flips the taxi lights on, I upspeed two engines (or four if we're backing up) and we're moving. Within two minutes all other checklists are done and we're just waiting to lineup on the runway. As soon as we're given clearance to lineup, I upspeed the other two engines and roll into the lineup checklist. Takeoff clearance is granted and we push the power up, I make sure the torques are good on all for engines and off we go. For our crew that takes a total of 10 minutes from my yelling for checklists to pushing the power up. I love the calm before the storm. It's an amazing process and I don't see it repeated often in any other career field.

We took off for Mombassa on our seven hour journey. We were scheduled to land in Mombassa for no reason. We couldn't get gas since we were going to the assault strip. We had nothing to pick up or drop off. It was just another part of the crew harrassment program. As soon as we were handed off to Mombassa from Mogadishu control we requested to overfly Mombassa and go to Nairobi. We weren't hitting the assault strip so Nairobi made sense. We recieved permission and that shortened our day by three hours. We got to Nairobi uneventfully and prepared for crew rest.

We all changed and waited for a bus to take us to the hotel. Of course we had security here as well and they actually made us put our luggage through a scanner on the way out of the airport. Really? The ride to the hotel reminded me of Dar es Salaam. Very modern city with crazy traffic and pedestrians. The hotel wasn't bad. Hey it's not a tent right? And they paid us 118 dollars a day per diem. It's good to be the king!! We found a Brazillian Churrascuria downstairs and it did not disappoint. Man I didn't know I could eat that much meat and still walk. After dinner we sat at the bar and had several delicious Tuskars. It's practically the national beer of Africa. Like Budweiser or Miller except that it tastes good!!! The hotel overlooks the national park. You can see Giraffes and other widlife, but the lions stay away from the businesses along the fence line. If we broke we all planned to go on a safari, which we all agreed would be the highlight of our lives and this trip. Of course 3022 didn't break because she's an awesome gal!!!

The next morning she sat silently waiting for her crew. Ready to take us into harm's way and back. But that's another post.

Assault Strip part Deux

What strikes me as odd is the fact that when we enter Camp Lemonier, the Kansas guardsmen always say something different. What makes it more odd is that none of our officers just get up in their faces. We were told once that it was due to a new Lieutenant that we were being screened. Then it was that the scanners for the bus were down during the early morning hours and hand screening was required. We even had one of these idiots tell us an "incident" had occured earlier in the evening that required us to be screened. Then of course we had sargeant Hyde tell us that was procedure.

The ironic thing is the Djiboutian bus drivers never get scanned and the bus never gets searched. We're screened by a bunch of Djiboutian idiots and the military security just sits behind the glass not even knowing what the hell is going on. I say idiots, before you get offended, because the other day a strap from one of our bags got hung up on the conveyor just outside the exit to the bag scanner. The man turned the machine off and tried to reach in and undo the strap. The woman walks over and gets in on the action and turns the machine back on with the guys arm inside. I would have slapped that bitch silly!!!! When you see how they scan our bags it's obvious that they are getting paid and aren't effective at all. They have no idea what they are looking for. We carry knives as an occupational hazard and they never asked to open one bag. We had knives on our person and they let us walk through the metal detector and it beeped. The part that enrages me most is they are scanning us with x-ray machines for full body scans. The dosage isn't as big as an x-ray for medical purposes but who oversees the machines? I'm sure it's my favorite contractor to the government: Halliburton. Their business slogan should go something like this: "If we can't electrocute you while your deployed, we'll radiate you to death. Remember, at Halliburton NOTHING is TOO good for our troops!!"

Of course that made us 15-20 minutes late to ATOC for the cargo brief, fuel request and flight plan, but we got there and made due. Since the galley is closed from 2-4 am we had no chow whatsoever for the flight; it's the Navy's way of helping us out. I will be posting my pictures for this trip on Picasa and if you see one that shows three styrafoam containers with eight pieces of bread, six pieces of cheese, ten pieces of lunch meat, and enough Miracle Whip to cause a marathon runner to have a massive coronary, that's the "Quarterdeck's" answer to food for 15 people for a 16 hour day.

We arrived at the airplane and loaded the cargo for the assault strip and some cargo for Nairobi. In spite of team Djibouti once again trying to make us late, we took off 15 minutes early and flew an uneventful trip.....did I say uneventful? I meant a very EVENTFUL trip to Nairobi. I'd use mark through, but wordpad is a tad lean on fancy touches. As we approached the airport from the west, a commercial airliner kept querying Nairobi approach about some traffic that was potentially conflicting with his approach. In true Kenyan style, the controller shrugged off the warning and told him the traffic was "no factor", which means it will not converge. Well, Nairobi is one cloudy place on most days and today was no exception. We had mostly cloudy conditions at our altitude and we were searching for this traffic on our TCAS (Total Collision Avoidance System) and we saw some traffic at our 10 o'clock position. The captain of the commercial airliner by this point was very adamant that this was indeed life threatening and he was about to take evasive action. About that time our TCAS alarm sounded and we spotted a small commuter aircraft flying co-altitude left to right in our path. JESUS! Are you kidding me?!!!? The controller then instructed us to evade, but of course we never wait to do what these controllers suggest. We do our own thing because quite frankly, they have no idea how to conduct the flow of air traffic. The ring on our TCAS display was set at 40 nm. At 210 knots of indicated airspeed we could have easily converged at 3 nm per sec in just over 12 seconds. What the F over? Many midairs have happened over Africa. The best known for the US Air Force was a German TU-154 and an Air Force C-141 over west Africa. The controller cleared both to the same altitude. The Air Force crew was ending a very long day and probably didn't hear the other exchange. At the time TCAS didn't exist let alone on Air Force aircraft. Even today we have it, but it requires the other plane your conflicting with to have a transponder capable of "chatting" with the TCAS computer.

As if we didn't have enough of a bad morning, we landed at Nairobi after a shortened final approach that put us too high and too fast. We continued the approach because their is 13889 feet of runway available and we could land on the 10000 marker and roll out!! We did almost that. As we shut down and the crewchief's installed our wheel chocks, one of the loadmaster's yells out over the intercom, "We're done!!!! We blew a brake line and there is hydraulic fluid all over the ground!!" One of our other crews had just had the same problem three weeks ago in Entebbe, Uganda during their rotation on the HOA. Back at home I told people that I would request to cap the brake and take it back to Djibouti versus staying wherever I was and waiting a week for the part to arrive; that was of course hypothetical because it hadn't happened to me yet.

Now my moment had come. I told my aircraft commander that we should cap it. I explained to him how it would be done and what kind of aircraft performance we needed to have. This is a flight engineer's bread and butter. A good engineer can move the aircraft, SAFELY, and accomplish the mission. A bad one can get someone killed, or delay a mission uneccessarily. I got my performance manual and calculated my takeoff parameters and determined we'd have enough runway to abort the takeoff if we had a catastrophic failure prior to our liftoff speed. I also calculated what landing distance we'd have if we had to execute a no flap approach back into Nairobi. We had more than enough runway for that as well. Armed with those numbers and the airfield information, my aircraft commander made the call back to the unit that has operational control over us and our mission. As always there is one douche bag back there who feels "uncomfortable" with the idea. It is not a normal procedure. It is considered a "hostile equipment repair" or better known as "combat" repair.

We waited agonizingly long for a decision. Seven and a half hours we gyrated. We couldn't put gas on to go back to Djibouti because if we did and they wouldn't let us, we would have too much gas onboard when we were finally repaired and ready to go to the assault strip. If we didn't put the fuel on and they let us do it we wouldn't have the time in our crew duty day to get the gas and takeoff. For you Star Trek fans that is the Air Force operations version of the Kobyashi Marue; completely unwinnable. We were on the satellite phone because our cell phones wouldn't call out. Then they would call us on the cell phones and ask questions like, "would you be carrying passengers?" and "what do you need to get it fixed there?". Both really bad questions when your leaning toward going. Yes we hade passengers and we were able to tell them what we needed.

The problem with staying and getting fixed is really simple: IFA! That's short for In Fucking Africa! If a brake assembly was even on the continent, the unit at Djibouti wouldn't fly it down because they are special operations and their mission of personnel recovery, PR, is paramount. They literally stand by day and night in case one of us goes down so that they can fly in to help protect us if we're alive and get us out safely. God him/herself could not order the HC-130's sitting alert to take a lesser mission and I for one am glad. If I go down and actually live, I don't want to die at the hands of the enemy knowing that the bird that could have gotten me was busy taking a brake to some crew sitting in Nairobi. So, the brake would have to be flown in opportune cargo. That means either a plane is coming down to the HOA, NOT, or they'd have to task a mission special for that purpose only. The last crew languished seven days and were only a couple of miles from the bombings in Kampala!!! I'd say that's reason enough to get out of there!

Eventually the AC kept talking to someone who assured him that we were leaving and that they didn't want us to stay there because of how long the repair took last time. But that isn't the same as the A3 for the MAJCOM (major command) actually putting it in writing. The A3 is the director of operations for whatever MAJCOM is tasking us. He finally put it in writing in the late afternoon and by then we wouldn't have the crew duty day so our AC had to request a waiver for a two hour crew duty day extension. We got it and the ball started rolling. They never refuse the crew day waiver requests. They always grant them and when a crew does something really stupid because their tired....they hang the crew out to dry!!!!!! We all felt rested and ready so it was no big deal (really mom)!!!

The crewchiefs capped the lines and I verified there were no leaks. They then fueled the aircraft and we started her up and taxiied out. We finally got to line up and we did a standing takeoff which involves holding the brakes until power is set. Even at reduced power the aircraft crept forward, but we had to take what we could get because we had only 2000 feet to spare, which I wanted every bit available if we rejected. That way we could coast to a stop and reverse whatever engines were operating (in case we aborted for an engine failure) and not using the brakes as much. We took off and flew four hours back to DJ landing at 18 hours into our day.

The next day the crewchiefs went and got the part. They had a brake on DJ and all the equipment to change it. Thank God for Moody Air Force Base maintenance. Our guys had us repaired less than 24 hours after we blew the line. We were set for an early morning alert to finish the mission we started, but that's another post.

The next mission on the HOA was to Entebbe, Uganda. The first stop was Dira Dawa, Ethiopia in the mountains of northern Ethiopia. I have written about the airport in a previous post, but this time was a different experience. The flight is a quick one, only 45 minutes from the DJ.

What made this visit different was the Rhesus monkeys that came onto the tarmac to visit us. It was pretty cool seeing the monkeys running around. I took a lot of pictures and I can't tell who is more interested in whom. Here we are a war machine and we're running supplies to soldiers who are engaged in fighting and a bunch of grown men act like kids at the sight of monkeys! On this high desert plateau, at an airport with little activity, exists a group of primates who seem pretty content and protected. One of them had a baby attached to her belly and she came right up to one of the guys and took food out of his hand. Most of them got within two feet of a group of ten people!! It was like being at a zoo with no bars.

The ground time was short and we soon left the monkeys behind, and took some with us (some of our passengers acted like monkeys), for Entebbe. The cargo compartment was empty except for 20 cases of water that were broken down off a pallet and floor loaded. We assumed that when we arrived at Entebbe we'd pick up a lot of stuff like we had done previously. Once again we were basing our assumptions off of the past. And once again we were absolutely wrong.

We arrived at Entebbe and were parked on the UN ramp. A Navy representative met us and his crew downloaded the water. After that we waited for the load and nothing arrived. The Navy Commander informed us that we had absolutely no cargo and no passengers to carry back. Say what? Nothing? Unbelievable!!

We had flown 3.4 hours down and had another 4 hours on our return leg. The total fuel burn was around 39000 lbs of Jet A-1. Divide that by 6.8 lbs per gallon and you get roughly 5700 gallons of fuel. The going rate of Jet A-1 in Africa is around 5.80 a gallon. That's about 33000 dollars in gas alone spent to get 20 cases of bottled water to a forward operating base next to the second largest freshwater lake in the world. WOW!!! If we shipped it via DHL it probably would have cost 1000 dollars. Had we bought the bottles outright in Kampala it probably would have cost 500 dollars. The US government just spent 60 times what it cost just to ship freshwater next to a large freshwater lake.

This is the part of my job that I can't stand. Someone with a little rank seems to think that it's pretty damn important to waste taxpayers money. I could write a thousand posts of all the money spent, as witnessed by the crews that fly the tangible objects of this spending spree, on things that seem out of place in a war zone. A couch to this base, workout equipment to that one, water over here, expired MRE's flown from one base back to a larger one just to be tossed in a burn pit. Yet we took years to properly armor vehicles and by then the enemy got way fuckin' smarter and found out how to increase the explosive yield that made vehicles like the MRAP just another taxpayer boondogle. I keep hearing the haunting words of that idiot Rumsfeld, "you don't go to war with the army you want, you go with the army you have." Dumb. If you believe that either war is justified in it's current or former state or that it's been executed, at any point, by any president, successfully or properly, check yourself in immediately to the nearest mental health facility because your delusional.

If the previous sentence insults you, you should feel ashamed for insulting those of us intelligent enough to open our eyes and say, "who the fuck needs a leather couch in a war zone?" I just read an article about how one platoon lost half their members defending an indefensible, small base in the mountains of Afghanistan. The enemy attacked right on schedule and knew when and where they were patrolling. My wish for the troops is that Americans really asked what is going on there and giving them the support they need to execute the mission as it unfolds. That means no putting me in harms way so some idiot can get some mundane item, or making me fly a mission that is completely uneccessary.

Having made that speech, I'll continue with the rest of the story.

We couldn't leave Entebbe early because the runway was NOTAM'd out of service for a few hours while crews removed excessive rubber from the runway. Too much rubber on the runway causes it to be slicker than normal and reduces our braking effectiveness. We knew when we left that we'd be able to land at midnight so we planned accordingly. I took that opportunity to call my wife and parents on the sat phone.

At the accorded time we fired up the motors and proceeded to make our way back to DJ for a midnight arrival. When Nairobi passed us off to Dira Dawa controllers, they informed us that we could not land in DJ as the runway would not be open until 0030. That's 30 minutes later than we were scheduled. NO midnight chow!!!! We haven't had it the whole trip. We have been sooooo Djibouti'd on this trip that we became accustomed to being screwed. So, we pulled the power WAAAAY back as if we were flying search and rescue and proceeded to entertain ourselves. I will not divulge exactly how we wasted our time crawling to DJ, but suffice to say we didn't fly past any checkpoints, or miss any radio calls. As soon as we came within range of DJ controllers we heard planes flying!!! What the F over? It turns out Dira Dawa gave us incorrect information. Suprise, African controllers had no clue about something and we actually listened.The power was pushed up immediately and we landed well after midnight with no hot chow to be had. Unbelievable. We fly more than seven hours for a little water, don't get a hot meal, and get lied to by people who have no clue how to flow air traffic. Bottled water next to a freshwater lake, 33000 dollars, Pulling the power back because an Ethi controller is incompetent, 10000 dollars, flying in Africa: PRICELESS!!!

Next in the rotation, Assault on Kenya Two!!

Assault Landings in the bush

Our second mission of this HOA rotation was to a remote assault strip a couple of miles inland from the Kenya coastline. We normally have a three am bus, but the mission was cut for a two am bus this time. This rotation we're flying with a new aircraft commander; He's heard stories and seen facebook postings about us so he didn't want to fix what wasn't broken. I  made the mistake of describing to him how things had been previously. Nothing has been close to the other HOA rotations. It may sound superstituous, but that was a major faux paux! Starting out this run started a little earlier which meant the chow hall wasn't open until right before takeoff. Also the bus was a little late and everyone was tired already because we'd had a hard time sleeping. We were starting off the aircrew way: situation normal all fucked up (SNAFU).

We showed at ATOC and the load plan looked problematic. They had three bars stacked on top of some already built up pallets of cargo. We couldn't imagine what they were so we went to the aircraft and proceeded to wait for the load to show up. I am always anxious because I need the actually cargo and passenger weight to compute my takeoff and landing data. I did a quick thruflight and made sure the plane was ready to go. This time the crewchiefs had gone in on our day off and refueled so all we were waiting on was the cargo.

The loading is done by a contractor called PAE which is based in the Phillipines; they are a subcontractor to Lockheed. I love small government. These guys roll up with a giant 780 lb bar that is used at checkpoints sitting on the cargo. They laid it right on top of a bunch of cardboard boxes on the pallets. The bar was crushing the boxes. Wow, how smart do you have to be. Anyone of you would have been livid if you knew someone was smashing your luggage or shipment on it's way to you. I'm sure SOCOM (Special Operations Command) would not have been happy to know that these guys just threw it up there willy nilly.

The bar was just laid across the top. It loosened the netting that holds the cargo in place. It was strapped down, but as it smashed the cardboard boxes beneath it loosened it's restraints. One evasive manuever in response to the missle warning system and we'd have a 780 lb missile INSIDE the cargo box. The loadmaster attempted to explain to them that we had no way to get it off the pallets. At the assault strip they have a huge forklift, but can only remove one pallet at a time. the bar would have to be removed first, but it sits eight or more feet above the cargo floor and 780 lbs is a lot to move by hand when you can't even reach up and lift it. If they pulled it straight off, it would rotate up and punch a hole in the cargo door and we'd be grounded. Finally, Shawn put his foot down and refused it. They jumped up and down and said that J4 said this was essential cargo to get down there. If you watch tv even a little you'll know that a checkpoint gate never stopped the enemy. How many of our guys have been killed at checkpoints by Bombs? Exactly.

The contract loaders had a heck of a time removing it themselves and I couldn't help but comment directly to the supervisor. I asked him why they didn't just pull it off as we were expected to do when we got down there. He had nothing. He knew at that moment that I had just pinned the tail on a donkey!! These kinds of things might sound trivial, but if the MWS system sounds a warning and we break left or right suddenly, pulling over two g's in a 60 degree bank, that bar would kill several people. To calculate force, multiply the weight of the bar by 32 feet per second squared and you'd see that it suddenly becomes over 20,000 lbs and is moving at least 50 miles an hour. We'd be lucky if all it did was kill some passengers. If it punched into our computer rack and navigation equipment and that stuff caught fire, we'd crash.

I took the opportunity to call my folks and my wife while PAE was impressing us with their lack of understanding and ability. I always laugh when I get dad on the satellite phone. He always asks, "who do you want to talk to" as if someone who you don't know calls and says, "Hi dad how are you?" I've never received a phone call where a telemarketer called me dad and asked how I was doing. The sat phone makes you sound different and the caller ID indicates Hawaii so it might throw someone off. At least he didn't hang up on me this time. While I was calling a sandstorm whipped up so I'm crouched down behind a truck on the ramp, in the dark, yelling into the sat phone trying to talk with my mom. I had a mouthful of sand after that call!! Then I called my sweet wife and talked with her for a few minutes. She gets a kick out of my calling her from the aircraft inflight or on some remote airfield. On a side note, we pay a flat rate for the sat phone, but the cell phones that we use for all other communications costs over 5 grand a month. Lunacy!!!!

Finally we were loaded, the O's showed up and we all changed into our flightsuits and got to our stations. Luckily the sandstorm wasn't one of the giant ones that obscures visibility and grounds us. Engine start and taxi were uneventful and we took off, on time, for our first stop Nairobi. The flying was uneventful down to Nairobi and the weather was fabulous. Nairobi has a higher field elevation and it's inland so it has low humidity and temperature. You go from 45 C to 21 C and it's a welcome change. Usually we take stuff off and then wait to go to the assault strip an hour's flying time from Nairobi. This time we had some stuff to take. I get a lot of ribbing from the loadmaster's because they're back there breaking a pallet down and offloading by hand and I have food in my hand. I've given up trying to be helpful. They don't sit in the cockpit for seven hours and do my job so I'd say it's fair.

Assault landings are not your normal fare. It's not like flying Continental into Atlanta and jamming on the brakes. We come in fast and drive the aircraft onto the very edge of the runway. We have a rule, at least the main wheels have to touch down in the first 500 feet of the strip or else your pushing up power and going around. It's exactly like landing on a carrier except we don't have a tailhook!!! We picked our way through rainshowers to get to the airfield. Luckily we maintained visual contact with the ground and made it to the field. We don't just land. We first make a low....LOW pass over the airfield to assess the conditions on the runway. Once we verified it was dry and there was nothing on the runway we circled around for the approach and landing. At that point I'm shouting out checklist items as we drop the gear and run the Before Landing checklist. I'm calling out, "Landing Gear" as we're a quarter mile from the strip. "Down indicators checked, Pilot, copilot" and then I call out"checked engineer". At that point we threw the flaps down to 100% to slow us down and the pilot drove it into the ground. As soon as we hit the deck the pilot's on the brakes and I'm watching the torque gauges to let him know he can throw the props into reverse. If he just went to full reverse and a propeller stayed in the flight range we would spin like a top and depart the runway. In this case it would be fatal. We stopped the aircraft in a thousand feet!!! Definitely a cool landing!

We taxiied to the end and made a turn around in the cutout at the end. There is no room for error on this field. It's not a dirt strip, but it's actually smaller than required. We normally operate on 3000 foot strips or longer. This one is less. We got to the end and turned into their little ramp to position for offloading. This time we shut down because we had a large item to load that required winching. I personally like engine running offloads as they leave you exposed for a shorter amount of time. It was not to be this time because they had a 8000 lb generator that had to be brought back and Shawn needed time to figure out how he was going to do it.

While they were loading, some of our crack security team, the Ravens, decided to go into the treeline and play with the baboons. They fed them all of our pop tarts then one of the brain trust threw a gatorade bottle. Hmmmm!! I can't see a Gatorade commercial with a Baboon running and sweating yellow, or blue gatorade with a caption, "Is it in you!" It was obvious that the primates were the smarter ones in that exchange.

The loadmasters attempted to winch the generator onto the plane, but the angle was off. Luckily the forklift driver knew what he was doing. He got behind the generator and as the winch pulled, the forklift driver lifted the generator up to give more clearance and took the stress off of the winch. Then came the "extra" baggage. People show up for the flight and it's hard to gauge how heavy their stuff is. At least they were aware of the maximum weight we could get off the strip with. I won't divulge any classified stuff, but we can get off quite heavy. Usually they don't care about that and load us with stuff and underestimate the weight. That's fine unless an engine blows up on takeoff and you crash into the trees doing a max effort takeoff. These guys actually seemed concerned and it was our turn to say, "bring it on, we can handle it!" Finally we were loaded and ready to go.

We started engines and ran checklists at the edge of the runway. Once all the checklists were complete we lined up at the very edge of the runway and I shut the bleed air off. We don't want to rob the engines of any power so we close the bleeds. It also adds power because there is no load on the engines. The pilot held the brakes as I called out the temperatures and monitored the torque. When I was satisfied we'd made takeoff power I called "power set" and we barreled down the runway. We jumped off like a rocket and climbed out assault style to avoid obstacles and keep our profile as little exposed as possible. Another uneventful takeoff and landing at LC1. I wish it were a dirt strip. It's awesome to go four wheeling!! All you see is a cloud of dust and the nose of the Herk and it's four props spinning out of the dirt like a ghost. You call, we haul!!!!

On to Mombassa for some fuel and then home. All of that was uneventful other than it poored like a Monsoon. we made it home at about 15 hours into the duty day. We had a sandwich and something to drink and went into crew rest for another day.

Congo bound

After dealing with the base security, the contract bus company, the crazy ATOC people, we finally make it to the actual Enduring ramp on base. There sits the most beautiful piece of machinery: a C-130 Hercules; our "Herk". But what is that next to her? A f'ing C-17 Globemaster III! We call it Barney. The taxpayers white elephant. The showcase of the Air Force. It's being unloaded and fueled.


The night we arrived in Djibouti we had finished out a 16 hour crew duty day. We'd been up probably another three or four hours before we were alerted for the mission. It takes four hours to get to Souda Bay, Crete for a gas stop and then seven hours from Souda Bay to get to the Horn. Maps are decieving. Anyhow, we'd had a long day and so the aircraft commander and I decided that the crewchiefs should fuel the morning we went to the Congo. Well, well if Mr. Murphy didn't rear his ugly head again. We didn't know it at the time, but Barney stole our gas truck. I guess it is karma as my wife says. I was in the desert during Afghanistan and stole a fuel truck from a C-17, which made them late I'm certain.

While at ATOC I heard the controller call for the fuel truck and told them we'd be out immediately. When we arrived at the aircraft we kept asking for the fuel truck every ten minutes and nothing. No load either. This was becoming a bad day. When we show at the aircraft we have two hours and fifteen minutes to get loaded, fueled, calculate data, input the flight plan in the computer, sit in our seats to run checklists and finally taxi and takeoff. We can takeoff up to 14 minutes past scheduled takeoff and it counts as on time. No one cares down on the HOA, but our crew does as a point of pride. This entire deployment we had one late take off and made up time and landed back at DJ on time!!

The load finally shows up and won't take long and so does the fuel. Normally we concurrently service fuel while loading operations are in progress, but our crewchief mentioned that he wouldn't put fuel on as long as the milk stool was under the ramp. The milk stool is a big yellow, rectangular wooden object that the loadmasters slide under the ramp to support the initial force that's placed directly over the end of the ramp when a pallet first slides onto it. It takes the force off the giant actuators that open and close the ramp and just saves a lot of stress on the airframe. Now I'm faced with additional issues. My friend Shawn wants to load...scratch that NEEDS to load and the crewchief wants to fuel. Since he got started just before the load was ready to push onto the aircraft I let him keep going. Shawn was not happy to say the least.

When you load an aircraft it never goes as easy as it looks like it should. There is always something wrong. In this case the load plan didn't look the same as the one we'd looked at when we first arrived at ATOC that morning. We made a note at that moment to start asking them for a copy of the damn thing before we go out to the aircraft. Finally a break in the fueling as we needed about 30,000 lbs of fuel and the truck was empty. We made a compromise to get loaded before finishing the last of the refueling. Everything slid on like butter and Shawn was happy. Then the fuel truck came back and that was taken care of. I already had data done and the officers showed up. We jumped in the seats as soon as the O's changed from their civies into their tans and we ran checklists, taxiied and took off....ON TIME! Team Varsity strikes again in spite of Team Djibouti. Who needs terrorists disrupting operations when you have contractors to do it for them?

The DROC is located in the center of the continent. It's a long way down for a C-130. About four and a half hours later we arrived. On the approach you could see it's beauty. The lush jungles where at one time a thriving population of Silverback Gorillas had lived. Now you could see the clear cutting and burning of the jungle as the locals try to eek out a living after gaining independence. The few Silverbacks left are located in a preserve north of the airfield where they still are poached by man. There are a few villages surrounding the international airport. These villages have thatched roofs and the streets were are of red clay. The airport was fairly modern, which suprised even me and I've been a lot of places in the world. They parked us on a corner of the ramp that had seen better days. The major issue with the ramp is that the UN considers this airport to be hazardous to crews as there is unexploded ordinance, or UXO, in the grass surrounding the runway, taxiways and ramp space. Nothing like stepping on a land mine and ruining your day. As soon as we shut down some street vendors came under the number three and four engines and started opening their bags. Our security detail quickly ran over there and kicked them out. They seemed harmless, that's a loaded term given the bombings in Kampala, Uganda, but I agreed with the Raven as he doesn't tell me how to do my job. They had some really cool hand carved statues and I would have liked to look at them. It didn't give me a warm feeling that they could waltz right up to the aircraft though. Nothing against Bush 43, but it's not due to our superior intelligence gathering or military might that we don't get struck by a terrorist attack. It's sheer luck!!

We were greeted by our users enthusiastically as they had not seen a plane in over four months. The last time they saw a herk it delivered them Christmas cards...in March; that's snail mail! We quickly offloaded the pallets and the guy in charge had a power cart they wanted taken back. At first it was, "sure we can do it" but then it turned to "how the hell are we going to do that?" The problem was the front wheels had a shorter wheel base then the rear. In order to winch it up the ramp they would have to be close enough in spread so that both the front and rear wheels would ride up the ramp extensions without hanging off the side. After a quick measurement determined this was not our day, the powwow ensued. What was absolutely hysterical was the Congolese ramp guy that stepped over the measuring tape as Shawn and Mike were making an accurate measurement to see if it would fit on a pallet instead. He steps over the measuring tape, which was stretched along the length of the cart and he uses his feet to judge the distance. I have determined that what was six and a half Congolese feet is actually five feet two inches!!! Shawn felt it wouldn't fit securely on the pallet enough to put it on one and load it. Trust your loadmaster! The ramp guy asked why we couldn't put it on the little loader and then roll it on. That's what we thought he was advocating. It turns out he put it on a pallet anyway. When they tried to push the pallet on, all the weight of the cart was in the forward, left hand corner of the pallet and they had to have people stand on the aft, right corner to get it to roll somewhat. It went on and the wheels were barely on the pallet. Shawn just said the hell with it and they chained the sucker down. I'd name a book about loading with foreigners, "Lost in Translation" but it's already been taken!!

While we were deciding exactly how to load the power cart the fuel truck driver pulled right in front of the ramp and got out to fuel. We were trying to tell him to pull under the aircraft tail to get out of the way and he gave us the equivelant of ,fuck you in Congolese. Least you think I'm joking he did. Either that or you are insinuating that he's just an ignorant bushman, which I can confirm is not the case. He grabbed the fuel hose like he was going to war and started dragging it to the plane with a determination that said, "get the f out of my way" so we all just let him go. The funny thing was that they had fire guards standing by 20 feet from the fuel receptacle in case of a fire when there is a fire truck 50 feet away. Nothing wrong with it, it's just different. We felt sorry for the firemen because they are baking in the sun in these black firefighting uniforms with full gear on so we gave them the African currency for a thank you: orange Fanta. The fuel truck emptied a few thousand shy of what we needed so we sent him back for more but returned the f you he gave us. We decided that if his smiling ass didn't show back up by the time we were loaded, which was about five minutes, we were going to press on without it. Sure enough we were in the seats ready to start checklists and he just pulled up. We told him no thanks and I'm sure he was pissed.

We started engines and backed out of the spot, whipping around like a car in the Fast and the Furious and taxiied out of Kinsangani International Airport parking!!! A short taxi and we made it to the runway. When we landed at Kinsangani a UN herk pulled out on the runway as we rolled out. There's a little cutout on the runway threshold so that departing planes can pull out in front of arriving ones and the arrivals can skirt by into the ramp. On the way out we did the same thing for an arriving aircraft. It works.

We took off and flew another 4.5 hours to get home. We arrived home 13 hours after we left, but it wasn't an easy way home. Afternoon thundershowers again. We picked our way home and it seemed that as we chose our deviation angle, mother nature shifted her cumulonibus clouds our way as if Zeus were throwing lightening bolts. I think I mentioned before the fact that a mature thunderstorm can belt out lightening as far as 20 nautical miles. We tried to steer clear of these big guys by a wide margin but it just so happened that they were directly in our route of flight and as we scooted to the east we were fast approaching Ethiopian restricted airspace. Being a prepared individual I had us all check out night vision goggles, or Nogs, before we left homestation. Some crews don't take them on the HOA because all the airfields are restricted to day visual flight rules, VFR, only. Well maybe the fields are day VFR, but suppose your stuck there and you are taxiing in low light conditions. Nogs collect an amazing amount of light. If I put them on in a closet with no door space it would still be pitch black. But if I put them on in a closet with a door space and the only available light was outside the bedroom in another room, and it still looked pitch black without them, I'd see everything in the closet. The same with thunderstorms after sunset. At night just after the sunset we couldn't see where these guys were exactly. But with nogs you can see every towering cumulonimbus for a hundred miles. That really helps because you can determine the edges of these guys so you don't clip one with your wing.

After battling mother nature and her graciously letting us win, we got to the DJ and went to the chow hall. This time no dinner, just sandwiches. They have a do it yourself Subway of sorts in the dining facility. I make a mean roast beef and provolone sandwich on an awesome hoagie!!! My mouth is watering just thinking about it. I washed it down with a diet coke and had a Galaxy triple chocolate bar to end the evening. Another beautiful end to a successful mission on the HOA. It doesn't get any better than this when your deployed!

Return to HOA

Another HOA


It was our turn in the barrel for another run to the Horn of Africa. I didn't explain what we're doing there in previous posts so I will in this one. As part of Operation Enduring Freedom, the United States has set up shop in Djibouti along with Espana, Germany, France, Japan, and other nations. The coalition is named the Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa, or CJTF-HOA; we call it HOA for short. The primary task is to combat anti-piracy through maritime interdiction. That's fancy for chasing down pirates and killing them... I mean capturing them in order to protect the assets of all nations whose commercial marine assets transit through the gulf of Aden and the Red Sea. If your a pirate reading this post...pray to whomever you do that you don't run into any coalition naval vessels in the gulf; your life will be forfeit.
Some of you may feel sorry for these pirates because many of them are from neighboring Somalia and Eritria. I agree that the world has dealt them a shitty hand and that the developed, rich countries of the world have had a hand in political and economic woes of Somalia and many African nations. I agree with a woman I saw on BBC denouncing the aid that flows into Africa as modern day slavery. We should leave and allow the continent's many nations to duke it out and figure out who gets what. However, as long as civilian merchant vessels travel international waters if a pirate decides to hijack one I don't care how sorry he is, he's going to end up like those Somali pirates who attempted to hold the captain of the Maersk Alabama. A well placed shot in each of their foreheads by well trained navy seals on a rolling ship ended their dreams of loot.

Moving right along. The second tasking is for us to support counter terrorism operations; our guys are going in harms way trying to combat these smaller factions of terrorists who want Al Qaeda's blessing. The Al Shabbab that just carried out the bombing in Kampala, Uganda is one such orginization. Our mission is to resupply the men and women who are forward deployed on the continent who are carrying the fight to pirates and terrorists. We take a lot of "stuff" in and out of remote outposts and it's a challenge. The spec ops warriors whose equipment we take like to have odd stuff so we end up scratching our heads to figure out how to carry what they've got. It's been a really challenging summer because you get all kinds of crazy stuff that doesn't meet how the book tells the loadmaster to load it.

It's amazing how many times we go into these places and the troops on the ground haven't seen mail in months or regular news. They slog it out in intense heat, with an overwhelming threat of malaria present. The beautiful streams in places like the Congo are a death trap for any human that chooses to dip in one. I can't even pronounce the viruses and parasites that are there. No matter, if you get one it won't help you to know the name of what maimed or killed you. While it all sounds rather unpleasant, the troops love what they do and wouldn't trade it. They are definitely in very unique circumstances and challenging experiences and that's what they live for.

So, we fly around and help them get "MRE's and bullets" and take mail in and out. I wish we were down on the HOA the entire four months, but someone saw fit to put us elsewhere. I am merely an instrument of policy. Speaking of policies the base is as screwed up as can be. Perimeter security is tight and the guys who guard the base are on their toes, but they keep hassling us. We aren't assigned to the base so the Navy doesn't give a shit about us. Our Air Force handlers give us all kinds of pamphlets detailing operations while we're on the Horn, but nothing is ever consistent.

Take our busride in the other morning. We park and the guys are searching the underside of the bus for bombs and a guy comes in and checks all of our ID's. He looks right at them. They are US military identification cards. He tells the guy on the concrete wall how many of us there are. The guy on the wall says we have to take our luggage in and be searched because we're not American. Then the guy who checked our ID's comes back on the bus to ask us if we're American!! Really? I don't normally call anyone out on any post, but why not? If you ever come into contact with the Kansas National Guard run the other way. I'd hate for them to be called out in a disaster because they're a walking disaster themselves!!

We get inside the luggage screening area and they make us show our id's again. This time these little punk ass privates and specialists got me pissed because when our officers showed their id's they didn't render any courtesies, which are required by military protocol. Instead of "thank you sir" they got a "yep". We had to have ours bodies scanned and our bags x-rayed. Then SFC Hyde, an idoit to be certain, sees my id holder in the box where I was asked to put it. He sees my concealed carry permit, which I am required to carry when I am locked and loaded with my M-9 pistol, and asks if I have ID. Are you fucking shitting me? What kind of school system do they have in Kansas? Rhetorical! So I tell him I do have one and "how the hell do you think I got in here?" Then he tells me it must be displayed at all times so I lashed out and said, "yeah, I've been doing this for a while." This poor specialist saw what was going on and realized how much of an idiot her boss was. She happened to follow us out to the bus and we were ripping her unit a new one. I actually felt bad for her. I hope she told that cotton headed ninnymuggins what we said. I'm sure we'll have to go through it again

On to the Democratic Republic of Congo, or the DROC for short.

The Anchor of deployment

Recent events in the life of my family have reminded me of who really deserves the thanks for what we do: Families! Without them carrying on the daily routine back home, we couldn't come out here and complete the missions we're tasked to do. They are the anchor on which we ride out the stormy seas.

Spouses get the kids to school, nuture them, protect them. Grandparents pick up the slack for stressed spouses. Friends help spouses take care of the homefront as well. My buddy Steve back home helped my wife build a fence so our dog could run around in the freedom of our backyard. Without him, my wife would have spent tons of money and had to wait three months for a contractor to do it. Thank you Steve, that meant more to me than I can say.

My wife is dealing with finances, home stuff, her busy career. She has research to conduct, a tenure package to put together, an article or two to write. On top of that our precious dog has gotten sick. She handled it for several weeks without telling me because I was flying. She has suffered immeasurably and I love her for her strength. I admire those spouses who take on the world while we're away.

It's absolutely nerve wracking to be so far away and have my dog, my best buddy, going through something potentially life threatening. I still don't know how it will turn out. I agonize everyday, but my wife is there to take him to the vet, research, ask questions and also reassure me. I can't stand it at times. Flying to Kosovo yesterday was the toughest it's ever been. I had to compartmentalize my feelings and function as a member of the team. On top of that we had a minor malfunction and I had to figure out what to do. At least my mind was occupied.

I wrote this post to give thanks to my wife and all the other family members who do the dirty work and pick up the pieces while we're gone. Without them the system would have broken down a long time ago. If you know anyone who has someone deployed or feel like supporting the thousands of troops who don't have an anchor at home, get with the USO. I can tell you nothing beats knowing that you have a crowd supporting you and your team when your trying to do your job.

Happy Birthday America

Actually the true birth of the United States occurred on July 2, 1776. On that day the Continental Congress voted unanimously to declare independence from Great Britian. It was announced on July 4th and we celebrate our independance on the 4th ever since.

I am a little bothered by the different points of view concerning our constitution and it's powers, or lack thereof, but that is for my blog when I walk across America next summer to raise awareness of the US Constitution (I think citizens are woefully lacking in constitutional knowledge). What bothers me almost as much is how people treat today. I am a Rockwellian. I understand that Norman Rockwell painted scenes of an idealized America, but that's the point. We aren't where the Constitution says we are entitled to be, but we are striving to get there. It's like Buddhism; you want to attain enlightenment, but you will probably never get there. It's all about the journey and what kind of character you display.

I do see the 4th as a chance to celebrate with family and friends and acknowledge the huge experiment that began 234 years ago it Independence Hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was/is quite an achievement. I love watching fireworks, and grilling and generally spending time with the family. My problem is that many look to the holiday as just another three/four day weekend to screw around. Most people I've ever interacted with ooh and aah at the fireworks, but never stop to question what it all means, or how did it almost not happen. Or even what they've given in return for such a wonderful gift.

On Christmas Day, Christians give praise to the birth of Jesus and go to church. Christmas Eve mass is usually a bit of story and a lesson on how we ought to conduct ourselves. Same with Thanksgiving. My family goes around the table and says what they are thankful for and thinks of others who are less fortunate. So, I believe, my personal opinion and nothing more, that  we should be asking our ourselves how we can be better citizens. What are our obligations. It's like we've been given a plant, that requires sustanance and nuturing, and we've left it in the corner expecting it to grow. Grow it may, but it will never be healthy.

It is not my place to point fingers. These are merely my observations about all the 4th's past and how I see others just treat it as a day off to grill and drink. I look at today and I marvel at the grand experiment and hope that others awaken to it's awesome design and help nurture it.

Last thoughts. Many in the military say this is a day to think of those who have given all for independence. I say to you sirs and madams: NO WAY! That is what Memorial Day is for (you can/should try to remember everyday) and of course we have Veteran's Day. I think of my fellow squadron mates who came up for their turn in the barrel and are spending today in the 130 degree sand with no celebration, but as for those fallen they have their day(s). Today is to honor our founding fathers for their work so long ago that gave us the ability to pursue life, liberty, and happiness (in case rep John Bheoner is reading, those words are in the Declaration of Independence, not the Constitution).

Today I would ask that you remember the hundreds of thousands of servicemembers far from home who are serving, often in harms way, to defend our liberty and freedom. They are celebrating in their own ways and are thinking of you and many are happy to be where they are so that you can enjoy today in peace. Also remember that their are coalition troops who serve, and sacrifice, alongside our troops and that they are also protecting our freedoms as well as those of their own countrymen. Especially my second home Canada. Sorry I missed Canada Day, but I hope to be there next year having a tall, cold "Trad" with my favorite Canadians!!!!!!!!!!

It is raining today, but our barbeque is on schedule for this afternoon. Youngstown's deployed will be whooping it up and having a good time. So enjoy the festivities and be thankful for whatever you wish to be thankful for. I personally am thankful for the support of all of you and the many who make what I do possible.

Happy Birthday America!!!!!!!1

Down Time

As the world turns, flying schedules change. We were scheduled to go to Jordan. That was scrapped as we had a plane broken in Aviano and the Africa mission had yet to return. They decided in the meantime that we would go to Qandahar, or Kandahar for the westerners, but the F'ups up the chain of command didn't think that an H model C-130 could color in the lines so they scrubbed us. Then they put us on a one day KOO (pronounced coo) mission, which is a Kosovo run. At least it would be tax free for the month.

With all of these changes we decided to continue our holiday and went to Heidleberg. What another wonderful day! We went up the hill to the castle and roamed around. It was a good thing there was a steep climb and lots of walking because we had to sweat out the beer from Thursty Nellie's the night before; we went downtown to watch team USA get it's ass kicked by Ghana.

After a fine workout and lots of looking around, we found the wine cellar in the castle. They have a huge wooden cask in there that held 220,000 liters of vino and has a dance floor on top. Man what an aircrew party that would be!!!! It's pretty impressive that they built the thing in the 16th century and it stands today despite being in a cool, dank cellar. Of course it leaked so they discontinued using it after only 20 years or something like that; it was never full either because they filled it from the local vineyards on the surrounding hills. I think it's cool that the vineyards that filled that cask are still surrounding the castle and that the grapes that are growing today are from the same vines.

After our workout we found a nice little restuarant in the main square and we had a nice meal. I never tire of eating pork schnitzel and french fries with gravy, washed down with a....bottle of wasser, no gas? Yeah, I wussed out because I had one too many KilKenny's the previous evening:) While we dined, we got to enjoy Germany versus England and watch the German fans go nuts.

Man when Germany won I was excited for the fans!!! They were ecstatic and blowing their horns. Lots of flags and face paint. The streets filled with cars full of fans waving German flags. I'm probably in the minority, but I was happy for the German people. They work hard not to display  any form of nationalism. I don't know how long they should not fly their flags or show their pride. I hope no one forgets the atrocities of World War II, but a lot of the people celebrating that night should not be punished for the sins of their fathers. Anyway it was great. I kind of hope they win the cup.

After that, it's been back to boredom and running. As I write, we are scheduled for a Afghanistan run after all. The idiots at the top did the math and realized that H2's get the job done!! I am looking forward to flying any mission just to do something.

In the meantime enjoy the pictures I have posted and take care of yourselves.