The Long Journey

So after reading a book to each of my boys, I headed for the gate. Just made it by the 3pm timeline they told us. Evidently there was an issue with the plane, because we didn't start boarding until 4:15. They started the boarding by calling out ranks, starting with the highest first. To my surprise, by the time they had gotten to CW3's, not many people had boarded. I was actually seated in Business Class! I was looking around, checking out my "new home" for the next 20 or so hours, and the person seating the soldiers came up to me. He told me and another guy to "rock, paper, scissors". The other guy said no, go ahead. So he moved me up the the last FIRST CLASS SEAT! My prayers for fairly painless flight were definitely answered!

The flight seemed a lot quicker than the last deployment. Took us right at 10 hours to get to Germany. They played 5 movies in a row, and I watched the first 4. I guess I fell asleep for number 5. We were able to deplane in Germany and stretch our legs for a while. Two hours after we landed we were back in the air. Six more hours and we landed in Kuwait City. There we loaded on buses, traveled an hour and a quarter, then filed off the buses. Got into formations to be told to be back in formation in half an hour. The old Army "hurry up and wait." After a couple of briefings we were assigned our tents. Tents with air conditioning, that is. Which is good, since it was still about 105 degrees at 0100 in the morning.

So we finally get settled in our tents at about 2 am. We had to be up by 6 to be at another formation. You get the picture. Every couple of hours we had to be somewhere. At the 6:30 formation they said be back at 8:40 to be manifested on our next flight. So when do we come back? That's right, at 8:35. Evidently, they moved up the time to 8:00 and we missed the flight. Maybe tomorrow, they told us. You really shouldn't leave the manifest test. Silly us. So, we did the only thing we could. Set up a rotating duty to sit in the manifest tent. I head back to my tent to catch a few Zzzs. At 10:30 my commander woke me to tell me that they got 2 C-12s (my airplane) and I was on one of them. I had 5 minutes to get my stuff together.

For any of you who have ridden on a C-12 (King Air) and a C-130, you know you will always opt for the C-12 when given the chance. Loaded our gear, got a quick lunch with the pilots, and an hour and a half later, we were home. Our First Sergeant picked us up at the aircraft and took us to our CHUs. A CHU is a Containerized Housing Unit. Basically a 20' by 12' container with a window, door, and electricity. Kind of like a trailer home. Darryl was again assigned as my roommate, which is good. He is a good roomie. Top (affectionate name for First Sergeants) took us all to our CHUs and gave us our keys. All except for one. He couldn't find my key. No problem, I'm sure it will turn up. So I ride around with him for another 2 hours trying to find a key for my room. We finally give up and just have KBR (billeting people) use a master key to open the room so I can at least get in it. And what do I see hanging inside the locked room? Two sets of keys. So, I start unpacking, then decide I had better start cleaning first. Not that it was too dusty, I just wanted to start with everything clean. Worked on cleaning/unpacking till dinner, then bedtime. I was able to stay up till 10pm, trying to adjust to the 7 time zone change my body has gone through.

Here are a few pictures of how my CHU looks today. Really not a bad setup.

Here is the outside of our half of the CHU (there are 2 rooms in each CHU). Notice our nice porch. Not every CHU has one.

The other end of porch. That's our neighbor's door you see.

Here's inside of our porch. One air conditioner per room.

Looking in from our door. That is a narrow wall locker facing you. The left side is Darryl's, right side is mine.

Here is a shot from just inside the door looking at my half.

Here is my desk area. Very organized.

Looking back at the door from my bed.

And finally, my wall lockers. Not a bad setup at all. We'll discuss the chow hall and sandstorms next time.