18. Freshly Cooked Bacon

Written: March 13 - 16, 2003

Thursday, March 13th
Today was a good day. I didn’t report to work until 3pm so I spent the morning washing my clothes that I wore yesterday. They were all filled with sand so I took the time to wash them while I was waiting for my duty day to start. I ate lunch with Sam and Fred in one of the tents.

Ran into two more friends from Honduras—Pete Barr and Leroy Thompson. I took pictures with them. Looks like they will be staying here in Udairi so I will have to get them together to go say hello to Mike Siler and Mark Wyckoff. It’s like an Army family reunion.

I grow more and more frustrated with the Army by the day. So many things seem to be wrong with all that we are doing. I am not sure if it is just that I am at a higher level so I see more of what appears to be messed up, but some things are really messed up and the leaders don’t seem to know how to fix them.

Talked to Steve, the Stars and Stipes reporter. He was interested in some of my pictures so I told him he was welcomed to use them in his stories.

Went out to preflight our aircraft for tonight’s mission. We were conducting a PR mission to pick up 6 guys. Problems with the BASS system—seems that we may have to take it out because the General doesn’t want us to fly with it.

I grabbed mine and SGT Hester’s gear and knocked my shoulder out of socket while carrying it. Too much weight on it.

We attempted to start our aircraft and the APU failed twice. It was already struggling but now it won’t start so now that aircraft will be down until it gets a new one. Who knows when that will be. We searched for another aircraft to fly and moved to the next one. We preflighted it, sorted our gear out then found that one of it’s windshields was cracked. Another bird down. We then moved to another one and found that there were still screws out from the BASS installation so at that point we decided that 3 strikes is too many and someone was telling us not to fly tonight. We told the Commander that we didn’t feel right about flying and he said no problem. We tied the aircraft down then went inside to help with the exercise. There was some confusion but we eventually got the information and Sam and the Commander prepared to launch. By the time they were ready to go, it was too late-the training area was in use by someone else so they were told not to go. Funny how that all worked out.

While I was working on the mission, Fred and Sam went to dinner and brought back two hamburgers. CPT Hester and I shared them.

Spent much time in the Gabriel TOC working on the computers and getting maps for Falcon view.

I called Stefanie for a few minutes on CPT Gibbons cell phone. She was tired and sleeping but it was great to hear her voice if only for a few minutes.

Got a letter from Mom today—dated February 15th. Took almost a month to get here.
Went to bed at 2am. Flying tomorrow night with Mike Polk to practice dust landings to get him more comfortable with them.

Friday, March 14th
Planned to fly with Mike Polk today. Planned the flight and went to the flight line but found that we had a problem with the aircraft so we did not fly. We will plan to try again tomorrow.

Spent much time trying to get the printer in the Gabriel TOC to work with the new Panasonic laptop that we got. What a pain in the butt. No one can get it to work and we really need that printer.

At midnight, CPT Gibbons and LT Rovins went to the chow hall to get some bacon. After about 20 to 30 minutes, they returned with a tray full of freshly cooked bacon and some loaves of bread. We all went outside and ate. I hadn’t had bacon in a long time and it was awesome. Fred and I made a sandwich then came back in.

A few minutes later they left again and this time came back with Pepsi and juice! Went to bed after that.

Saturday, March 15th

Woke up and started working at noon. Planned to fly with Mike Polk today to give him some more dust landing training. Guided Benny and Billy through planning a mission. Printed maps and packets then went out to preflight and load radios. Finished preflight then came back up to brief the mission. The weather was great. We headed out and flew for 2.3 hours. Flew a 40 minute route then landed in LZ Peter which was full of fine, talcum powder type dust. We stayed there for almost an hour then came back.

Closed out the flight plan then settled down to watch, “Duece Bigalow” with CPT Cushwa. We put headphones on and watched the movie until 1:30am.

Hear rumors that the new attack date is March 21st. Supposedly Bush is going to address the world on the 17th and give Saddam a certain number of hours to comply. Then we go. It is getting hotter so we got to go soon!

Sunday, March 16th
Woke up at 10am to a hot sleeping bag. I unzipped and threw the bag off of my body then put my poncho over me. Went outside and talked to Kamran for a while then typed some letters to the kids.

It is very dusty here but today it rained so it knocked a lot of the dust out of the air.

We have a news reporter from CBS. His name is Bob Martin and he is assigned to our Battalion and takes his own movies and does reports that he sends back to the States. I sat with him for a few hours today and showed him the 2 videos I made. He liked them and suggested I send them to MTV. I showed him some of the videos that I have and he wants to use them in his news reports but is even more excited about making another music video with me. He is a cool older guy. I would guess he is in his 50’s. He sleeps in a small North Face tent near the TOC. He has a satellite antenna to get on the internet and send his newscasts back.

Worked on a few things for tomorrows mission and finally saw a bit of success when the commo people ran a lan line and got the computer in the Gabriel TOC to bring directly to the huge printer in Flight Ops.

It is 3:30am and I am writing in my journal and just got done writing a letter to Emily.