6. First steps in a long journey...

Written: February 8th - 10th, 2003

Saturday, February 8th
I woke up Saturday with a sense of relief that we finally had some days off where I would be able to relax and spend time with my family. I woke up, took a nice warm bath. While in the bath, the phone rang. Stef answered it, took some notes then came up stairs to tell me that I had to leave tonight (Saturday) instead of Tuesday.

Great. I still hadn’t packed yet and still didn’t have any time off to spend with Stef.

We spent the rest of the day running around trying to make sure that we had everything taken care of and by 5pm I still wasn’t packed. I had to show up to work at midnight.

Stef took Benjamin and Anabelle with her to the PX on Giebelstadt while Emily and I packed my bags. She helped me decide some things I should take and some things I should leave but most of all it was fun to show her the equipment I had to talk to her about leaving. I am glad we had some time for us to be alone for a change. The past weeks left me little time to spend with anyone other than the guys at work so this was a welcomed change. As we packed, I saw Emily sneaking notes into my bags with little messages like, “I miss you Daddy” (and a picture of a girl crying).

Stef stopped by the Chicken lady to get some chickens to eat for dinner. She got home at 6pm and we ate. My packing was 99% completed. My mom called and I did not lead on that I was leaving. I would leave that to Stefanie once we were all gone and safely in Kuwait. Over the past few days we have heard about many plots to attack troop movements to the Gulf region and we did not want to be the “lucky” ones.

After dinner I took a bath to try to relax and gather my thoughts. Everything was rushed because of the quick notification. We tucked the kids in bed and finished last minute household tasks until 11pm. I loaded my bags in the van then helped Stef rustle the kids out of bed. At 11:24pm, the kids and bags were all loaded so we drove to the hanger.

On my way out the door I sent a quick email message to say goodbye to everyone. I did not specify where I was going but just confirmed that I was.

When we arrived, it was a mad house. There were cars and family members everywhere. I parked the van near the hangar and had Stef and the kids standby while I unloaded my bags. My left shoulder started to pop out of socket but I was able to stop it from coming out all the way. Like usual, it hurt badly. I really need to get it fixed when I return.


Sunday, February 9th, 2003
We are still at the hangar and it is just after midnight. After unloading the bags I got Stef and the kids from the van and brought them upstairs to my office to relax while I gathered all the stuff I would have to carry with me.

I was issued my pistol, magazines, a box with communications equipment and my night vision goggles and heads up display. We all have a lot of stuff to carry. Add to that my backpack to carry on (it has my laptop and a blanket in it), my load bearing vest, helmet, flak vest, protective mask etc…and you can imagine how cramped we would be on this trip.

We had a formation to get accountability and were then allowed to spend time with our families for a few hours. I took some pictures with Stef and the kids then we went to the van to spend our last few moments together.

Emily and Stefanie were visibly very sad. Benjamin and Anabelle don’t fully understand the impact of my leaving so they are acting normal. As I am saying goodbye to Stefanie I can see Emily crying in the back of the van. She is trying to hold the tears back but through the glare of the street lights I can see her eyes glistening from tears. I went to the back of the van and sat with her and gave her hugs and kisses for a while and tried to make her laugh. It breaks my heart to see her so sad and know there is nothing I can do to stop it. It also makes me sad that she is so strong that she would try to hide those tears (probably a product of me being away so much).

At 2:15am I give them my final kisses and they drive away into the dark, cold night. I watch as the taillights disappear into the distance.

I go back inside the hangar and gather all my equipment and wait. We form a line and load the baggage into the busses that will take us to our point of departure. The buses are all packed tight with people and all the extra equipment they have to carry. There is no room for comfort. Each bus has a trailer with the rest of our bags. We are traveling with all that we will have to live with for as long as we are gone. There are 2 to 3 bags each.

We drive into the morning for 3 ½ hours. Everyone has to pee but the buses won’t stop until we get where we are going. We arrive at a personnel holding/processing area about 30 minutes from Ramstein Airbase. We all pee, unload the bags then reload them into a flat bed trailer. We then move inside to be processed for manifest.

The holding area consists of many buildings with cots in them for sleeping. They also have some games, cards and a tv. We move into a building and lay down on a cot for about 30 minutes before being called to leave. We are all tired from being up all night but our trip has only just begun. We saw a private crying. CPT Cushwa came and asked us (Chad and I) how our kids took the news. It was much different then when I left for Honduras for a year. It was almost as if I prepared to leave for the year I was in school but now it is much quicker. I think it is better this way because it happened so quickly and our unit is together so it’s not like any of us are leaving alone but still hard to see Emily so sad. We talked about our experiences and went to sleep.

We load back in the buses and are driven to the airbase to load our plane. We move into a USO building and wait for a few hours before getting back on the buses again. The USO has snacks, drinks, games, post cards, paper, and envelopes. They are volunteers and are very nice to us. I wrote a letter to Stef and to Mom then rested until noon. We load another bus and are driven to the plane. We are flying a Civilian 757 from ATA (airline name).

A few soldiers are pulled to load the bags into the aircraft. We stand around for an hour while everything is loaded. There is not enough room in the hold below deck so some of the bags are put into the seats in the cabin. We can only sit in rows 24 and forward because of the baggage in the other seats. Again, we are packed and have to sit with all of our gear. It seems even more uncomfortable than the bus. The Stewards are rude and telling us that we are being slow—this statement almost incites a riot as all the soldiers are already pissed off at the whole situation. One of them said, “Don’t take any crap from these soldiers, if they give us any crap they will not fly on this flight.” I overheard this and assured him that none of us wanted to be on this flight so go ahead and kick us off of it. So much for patriotism and doing your duty for your country.

We finishing loading at 2pm. We are packed like sardines and it is a 6 – 7 hour flight to Kuwait. Kuwait is 2 hours ahead of us so we will not arrive until at least 11pm. No real sleep since the night of the 7th and this is the evening of the 8th now. I have a window seat on the left wing. It is a sunny day and pleasant outside. I can see some small hills around the airbase and there is a constant flow of aircraft landing and taking off.

At 2:10pm the Captain (pilot) boards the aircraft and I knew we were on our way soon. We took off at 2:42pm. We took off and tried to rest as we flew. We passed the Swiss Alps! That was pretty cool to see. The mountains rose up out of the clouds and seemed to reach up and touch us as we flew over. We got served a snack which was a 4 inch sandwich with salami, turkey and cheese and a drink. We watched, “West Wing” and “Fraiser” then started watching, “Minority Report” before my body took over and made me sleep. I woke at 6:45pm. It was dark outside. Most lights were off inside the airplane. We passed over the Nile River in Egypt and could see the Luxor all lit up—similar to what you see at the hotel of the same name in Vegas except that this was the actual monument.

Dinner was served and as we at it and watched Eddie Murphy and Owen Wilson in “I Spy” the movie stopped and the pilot came over the intercom: “We are going to ask you to close all the window shades and we are going to turn off all the cabin lights for our approach into Kuwait.” It was 10:28pm Kuwaiti time. The movie continued and the cabin became very dark. This was the first indication that this was for real. We still had another 30 minutes to go before we would land, but this snapped people into realizing that we were heading into the real thing.

We landed at 10:56pm (Kuwaiti time) and were told that we were at ThreatCon C (threat condition) – no formations, no saluting. We grabbed our bags and moved passed a vehicle with a soldier in it who was taking our names to begin inprocessing us. We were put into another bus. We were at Kuwait International Airport. We all moved into a large Bedouin tent where we were briefed on basic information. We all then moved into another tent to rest for an hour until we were called to come unload the bags and reload them onto some trucks for their trip across the desert to our new home.

Monday, February 10th,
We have essentially been in transit since the 8th and it was now 1am on the 10th. We were all tired. I ran into Glenn Siegrist who was on the flight after mine. We talked for a while and took a picture together. He will be staying at a different location than we will. We played games with the baggage, unloading it then separating it then reloading it. I accounted for all my bags. Our bags were destined for Udairi and theirs were going to their location (I think Arifjan).

The night was cool but not like Germany. There were a lot of aircraft arriving and departing and all of their lights were off. It is all pretty surreal.

At 4am we finished playing with the bags and were allowed to sleep. I curled up on the wooden floor of the tent between CPT Cushwa and Smith. We shared my poncho liner to stay warm and fell asleep for a few hours.

At 6am we were all woken abruptly and told, “If you are going to Udairi you need to get on the bus now!” We gathered our gear and headed outside, into the bright morning and loaded onto another bus. This bus was driven by a Kuwaiti civilian and ours was just one in a line of many. We loaded the bus at 6:45am and at 8am we were still sitting there, packed like sardines again, when the driver decided that we had a flat tire. We all got out and switched buses. We moved out and began our drive. We were told that it will take many hours and we will be driving through open desert.

We all try to catch some sleep but it was scarce. I woke up with my neck cramped and I cannot lift my head up so I push it slowly with my hands. It hurts and is stiff. We are all wearing our helmets and flak vests along with all the other crap we have.

The bus was bouncing around over sand dune and we finally arrived at the gate to Udairi. Our new home. The buses stopped at the gate, were searched then allowed to drive to our tents. We all got out and looked around at our new home. Very desolate, a lot of tents and trucks and flat for as far as you can see. It is very bright with the sun glaring off the white sand.

Our camp is the northern most camp of all the US Forces. We are the closest to the Iraqi troops—only 18 miles and will remain here until we are needed but we have no idea when that will happen.

We found cots and moved into our new tent. The tent is supposed to sleep 60 people but we put 35 in it—just our Company. We walked back to where the buses dropped us off and moved our bags into our new house.

It is a pleasant day, warm and sunny. After moving in, we toured the area and ran into Shawn Holmes! He took me to Mark Wyckoff (a buddy from Honduras) and we all talked for a while. Also ran into another guy from the 82nd Airborne who I was stationed with. We all hung out and sorted our things. We had a great dinner in the dining facility!

There was a half moon and we saw an unmanned aerial vehicle launch into the night.

To end the day, Perry Alliman gave us a briefing on how he was shot down in Somalia. He was hit by an RPG and crashed inside the city. His crewcheifs died and he and the pilot barely escaped. They were escorted to a U.N. tank and saved before they got captured. He and the other pilot were burned badly but still fly to this day.

Went to bed at 10pm. I found many notes from Emily throughout the day! They were hidden in my gear. She also left me a message about St. Christopher, the patron saint of the traveler—she put it in my flying gear! She is so smart!