13. Make Room for Twice as Many People

Written: February 28th and March 1st, 2003

Friday, February 28th
Woke up with Sam telling me to get out of bed and that it was time to eat. We went to breakfast then came back to the tent and wrote in my journal.

There are thousands of soldiers from the 101st Air Assault Division arriving over the next week and we are told that we need to make room for twice as many people in our tent. The 1SG wants us to move in to Alpha company’s tent but most of us agree that it would be better to maintain our living space in this tent and just tighten it up and let some other unit come in. Less moving.

Today, Team 1 is going to practice the things that we, Team 2, did yesterday. We are all going to show up at 10am and assist Team 1 in getting out then Team 2 will plan an NVG version of the same mission for tomorrow night.

We started the planning process and quickly found that we had some kinks to work out. We continued with the plan and completed the process in 4 hours. That is too much time to plan, but that was our first time putting this together from scratch so that is understandable. We worked through the issues then talked about how to do it better the next time.

The PR team received an intelligence update from CPT Halter today. There is a lot of great information on the Iraqi’s and how we think they will defend their country.

Fred went to Doha today. He was trying to get some patches made and to get on the internet to odrer some items from Blackhawk.com. I saw him when he came back and we had dinner together.

There are a lot more people here from the 101st now so just before dinner we were told to pack our stuff up because we were, indeed, moving in with A Co. At 8pm, we went to the A Co. tent and swept the floor. Each company moved into one side of the tent. We helped carry our stuff into the tent then set up our areas. We ended up moving our cots right next to each other to give more room on the other side. Some people found some plywood sheets so we put them between the cots to help further separate ourselves. Fred is to my right on the other side of the wood, and Chad is to my left. Chad and I live inside of our own cubicle. It’s not too bad, but it is tight with 60 people in one tent. Life goes on.

Found out that the war may start soon. Of course, it’s all rumors, but if things go as I have heard, we may lead in with a LRSD insertion on the 13th of March. We shall see. I don’t want to be stuck sitting here, doing nothing for 8 months.

Shaved at 11pm and made sure to let my sideburns and the side of my moustache go untouched. I am trying to grow it out a bit. We are also considering shaving our heads the day the air war starts (although we don’t know when that will be). Realized that when I took a shower the other night, I forgot to take my soap and shampoo with me so now I am without. I did pack extra soap and another squeeze bottle so I just need to dig it out of my box.

Fred knocked on the plywood wall between us and passed over his memory card from his digital camera. He had 3 pictures of the crash site. There were taken from far away, but there isn’t much to see. The aircraft is totally destroyed and the debris field is fairly small. Sad. I think about the crew often.

I was told that the Blackhawk guys from the 101st are staying in the hangers on the airfield for a week or so. My buddy Mike Siler should be here. I will have to look for him soon.

Lots of snoring here in this tent. Goodnight.

While I was writing a letter to Stef, Brock Geiger came in and said hello. He came down with Shawn in the first wave back in October. He was down in Qatar, but just came back today. He says that the other guys will return in about 3 weeks.

Saturday, March 1st
All settled into our new home, I woke up at 9:30 am and had missed breakfast. I wish they would hold breakfast until 10am for the people who are on a night shift. They did extend the dinner hours from 4pm to 8:30pm—afterall, they are now feeding approximately 10,000 people here now.

Hung out in my bed for a while before getting up. At noon I went to the Gabriel TOC to check in on things. I put a few pieces of information together for the mission today then headed to the tent to get dressed. Fred and I went to the aircraft at 2pm and did a preflight, run-up and hit check then sat around loading the commo frequencies for the local area. At 3pm we did a commo check between all aircraft in team 2, but found that we are still having troubles with having the correct fills. Its messed up that after 3 weeks of similar problems, we are still encountering this same issue.
Came back and then went to chow. Had hamburgers and fries.

I do notice that I am losing weight in the waist. Not sure if I am looking skinnier, but my belt seems to get looser by the day.

At 5:30pm I went back to the TOC to brief the mission execution for our NVG flight tonight. Shawn checked the weather and we found that we were not going to be able to fly due to low visibility and blowing dust-go figure. So we conducted the briefing then one person from each crew headed out to the aircraft to continue to work out commo issues. I worked with CPT Halter and CPT Hester on a PR exercise through mIRC chat—it’s funny that the Army is using a secure form of internet chat relay to pass information about the battlefield. It worked well and that was actually surprising!

Had a few cups of coffee then came back to a dark tent at 12:30am. Typed my journal then played a bit of “Real War” before heading to bed.

The weather over the past few days has been cold. I have read that it is high in the 60’s and low in the 40’s and I can feel every bit of 40 degrees!