Most who know me would tell you that I am often too blunt for my own good. A good friend often remarked, "are you learning how to win friends and influence people?" whenever I had a "disagreement" with some entity. This blog will be no different. Whether anyone other than a few polite friends will read this doesn't really matter. What does matter is that I will vent my frustrations on the keyboard instead of doing it to my own detriment. Then again if anyone of importance reads this and recognizes the storyline they might feel hurt and decide to injure me. Do I care? Negative!
So this is my first installment detailing my deployment this summer to a forward location. In order to not divulge anything of military importance I'll keep the locations general if I'm talking about ops in a particular area. My mom always fears I'm violating OPSEC/COMSEC (that's operations or communications security) whenever I have talked with her about anything military. I think she's watched too many movies over the years and she of all people should know better as she lived around, and worked for, the military. It's often senior military officials who allow the media to say, film the Navy SEALS as they make a beach landing during Somalia (the media stumbled on the emptiest piece of beach in the middle of nowhere by chance?).
So without further ado here it goes.
I have been waiting for this deployment for about six months and had all kinds of preconceived notions as to how it would go. So far reality 1, preconceived notions 0. I originally came from the strategic airlift world, flying C-5 galaxies, which doesn't deploy. We had to be willing to go on a moments notice and be gone for as long as possible in order to get the cargo where it needed to be. C-5's have global reach and I was often gone for weeks at a time followed by a couple of days off and another trip for several weeks. Long story short: I was often gone from home for more than 240 days during the year.
Now I belong in the world of tactical airlift, which deploys to forward locations and conducts intratheater airlift to distribute the supplies that planes like the C-5 bring in to a forward supply point. We do deploy and often stay in tents or modified shipping containers. We have regular missions to various areas and kind of know what the schedule will look like. In C-5's you went on a mission with a billion stops and any one stop, or all, of them could change depending on the needs of the user.
Now you know the difference between "strat" airlift and "tac" airlift. So here I am on my first deployment with the Herk (C-130 Hercules). Our deployments aren't like an Army or Marine unit's. We leave home for about four months or so. It doesn't make it any less stressful on our families as we often fly into harm's way, but four months is better than a year or more so I'll take it!!!
The boys just called about dinner and they have decided on a lovely German restaurant.....did I say German restaurant? Yes, I am forward deployed to somewhere in Europe, but don't think everything is gravy (although there will be gravy tonight). As I take my meals when they're available I'll sign off for now and write more later.
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