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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.