Thursday, late in the day, we started our first TDY ( stands for temporary duty assignment, or temporary duty yonder if you think your funny, but not, as we were told in the right start briefing, temporary divorce for a year….. and well to be fair, for us it would be temporary divorce for a month or so- Just kidding!)
Justin. Loading the truck?
Jodi- its going to get a lot more blurry before its all over.
We loaded up our gear and went to the PAX terminal on base. The way it works on Al Udeid, is that you have to actually emigrate out of Qatar to leave. We did this and then began out wait for the fine C130 we were slated to catch a ride on. Now a c130, you might well know, is actually not that big of an aircraft, and…. ta da! it has propellers instead of jet things on its wings. Needless to say I wasn’t to impressed with this feature, but after inquiry, no there is no way to upgrade your ticket Mr. Noury.
We loaded onto a bus, which brought us out to our fine plane. Now, here is the issue of gear. Since we do not want to be separated from our gear- I.E have it stuck on the pallet, and us not have any clothes, we all carry everything on our backs, including the body armor, kevlar, and our cool pistolas. Its a lot of crap to be walking on buses and planes with. Whilst waiting on the the bus to go on the plane, some wiseass from the flight line informed us that, if your bag doesn’t fit in your lap, then leave it on the bus. Are f#@*&! kidding me? Well nobody listened to that ass anyway. We then jammed ourselves on this plane, that I swear I just saw on the history channel last week, bravely dodging flak in the allied effort, and proceeded to sweat every last motherloving bit of moisture out of our bodies. This is my way of saying it was hot as hades in there waiting to take off. Kudos to the crew , by the way, who did get an AC unit in there to pump us some cool air, and all in all were very cool guys- no pun intended.
While waiting to take-off it appeared that, huh, some relay is blown or something, so we need to wait to get it fixed. Hey a broken plane- I know this story. Well they did end up fixing it and off we went- I swear someone outside yelled contact. Now flying in this venerable plane is a hoot. It basically feels like its trying to pull its own wings off, and vibrate you to death at the same time. After about an hour or so in the air, one of the flight crew came by and informed us that, hey, you know something is wrong, and guess what? we are going back to Al Udeid. Now I write that easily, however, the way it happened was us seeing the crewman over by our leadership, shouting something in his ear- its so damn loud you have to wear earplugs, and then leave. What followed was some convincing mime that went through the rest of the aircraft. Some believed it and some did not at first- once we were back in Al Udeid- all believed.
Klepacki- doing some reading in the c130. He left his coloring books in the luggage.
Ahh back home. Now, we had to emigrate back into Qatar, and be in-processed again. Before that got to underway, we were told that hey guys, we got you a seat on another plane in about an hour. By the way- an hour in military take off time basically translates into 4 hours or so- you know like dog years or something.
OK- on to plane number 2. Now this one was a big boy- C117. Also with jets. Ha, now your talking. We loaded on this fine aireomobile and took off again. This being a different flight, it was meant to get us to our original destination, but with one stop in between. No worries- direct flights are hard to find. This thing was a huge jet, with plenty of room inside, and even a loadmaster with witty banter and an actual safety brief before flying. We flew to our pitstop destination, and got off the plane and onto a bus. The bus basically drove us around and took us back to the plane. We got back on, they started the engines,… we were all excited to go,…. and - you guessed it, plane broke. WTF?! Seems one of the fine jet things was not working so well. Off the plane.
Look at us all take pictures of each other on the big jet. Nicer seats eh?
I told you it was big.
Tony!
Our pallet- the own with the plastic on it.
We were then brought onto the base which we landed and given rooms and food. The military is always good about that. Next, wait for plane to get fixed and fly out. Sounds simple. Hear me laugh uncontrollably.
Our new digs.
We assembled at o’dark thirty the next morn- Oh did I mention it, we are into Saturday now. We processed out went to the Pax terminal. Hey guys, your plane is fixed- looks like a couple hours before you go. Yeah, right. Those hours go by, and then, oh shit- one of the tires don’t look so good, so back on the bus, and we will call you later. Stuck again.
Waiting in vain- hey that’s one of our tunes.
Right now who knows when or where we will be going. If you noticed I haven’t mentioned any locations or times for the most part- OPSEC. This trip is so f’ed up anyway, it’s great for opsec- I can’t tell you anything, because I don’t know. Once we have actually gone to an area and performed I will post info and pics.
All for now. More on the bus off the bus, and on the plane off the plane to come. James.
No comments:
Post a Comment