15. Of All Places in Kuwait

Written: March 4th - 6th, 2003

Tuesday, March 4th
Woke up around 9am. The tent was shaking due to the wind blowing very hard. Today was a scheduled no fly day so we could move aircraft on the ramp into new parking spots. At noon, SFC Cross came in and said they were ready to start moving so we all got dressed and walked to the flight line.

I took a lot of video while walking out there. The wind was blowing from the south east. Sand was everywhere and it was hard walking into a head wind. About half way to the flight line, we could see 2 Chinooks attempting to land. The visibility was extremely poor but somehow they made it into Udairi and were able to land.

Sam and I walked over to them to see how the weather was elsewhere. It appears that Udairi has this unique ability to have the crappiest weather of all places in Kuwait. Go figure. The Army decides to build a base to operate 90% of it’s helicopters from and it has to have the crappiest weather.

We spent the next few hours walking from the center ramp to the north ramp—at least a half mile each way. When we were finished, Sam and I went to the hanger to see the BASS system. BASS stands for ballistic aircraft shielding system (or something like that). We helped the crew chiefs unload the boxes and sort out the pieces. It is basically a bunch of heavy plates that lay on the floor of the aircraft and help to stop rounds from penetrating the aircraft. It adds about 700 pounds to the weight of the aircraft.

After we were finished, we walked back to the tent. CPT Hester, Sam and I needed to go to Camp Virginia to talk to the LRS guys about the mission.

We got a HMMWV and a hand held GPS and I drove. We headed out the gate and drove off through the desert while loosely following an old road. We passed the south check point—near where the aircraft crashed and kept on going. After an hour of getting jostled around, we arrived at the berm surrounding Virginia. We looked for the entrance but missed it. We ended up driving all the way around the entire perimeter of the camp before we found the entrance. We entered the camp and parked. We went in the CORPS ops center. It was amazing. A huge tent with tons of people working at computers. Inside one of the rooms there were large screen, flat panel, plasma screens with all the current situation showing live. There were also televisions with CNN and other news sources on them. Pretty impressive. We saw CPT Shore there.

We finished our meeting with the LRS guys then drove back. I drove much faster because the sun was setting soon and we didn’t want to get caught outside of our camp at night.

Sam and I stood in line for dinner—3 meatballs and some rice. Not too filling but better than nothing.

I got my hair cut then went to the Gabriel TOC to send a friend an email on the SECRET email account.

Came back to the tent and watched South Park with Javier and CPT Smith then wrote in my journal before going to bed.

I think we are taking a day off tomorrow.

Wednesday, March 5th
Spent the whole day relaxing. Fred and I watched, “Dogma” and “Van Wilder.” I took a shower in the afternoon and although the water was cold it was nice because it was pretty warm outside.

Got an email on the SECRET account from my friend. He seems to think that March 17th is the new day for the War to start. He told me about a friend's crash. They were practicing a gun run and basically ran out of power and crashed.

Had a great day relaxing although it seemed to go much faster than normal. Took a shower and lost my Smallpox scab.

Flying with Benny and Mike tomorrow night. Fred and Billy are going to fly also. We will fly formation and dust training under NVG’s.

Thursday, March 6th
Today was nasty, windy and dusty right from the start. I woke up around 9am with the tent shaking.

It rained like mad today so we thought the dust would be down a bit, and it was, but only for a short time. Pretty soon, the warm air mixed with the high winds dried it all up and it began to blow worse than ever. Can’t see anything.

As the day progressed, so did the dust and the wind. We preflighted and prepared to fly but we made a decision not to based on the weather. As it turned out, we are lucky we did because it was horrible and we would have been caught in a mess.

We had beef steak and mashed potatoes for dinner. It wasn’t too bad. We ate in the drash tent.

Put together a small mission for tomorrow. We are going to fly day time and refuel via a Chinook-called Fat Cow-out in a desert LZ.

By the end of the night, the wind was blowing from all directions and the sand was in everything. Inside the tent, it looked like smoke and dust was embedded into everything.