19. Now We Wait

Written: March 17th & 18th, 2003

Monday, March 17th
Happy St. Patrick’s day. It is 3:11 am. It is quiet here. Most people are sleeping but I just got back from getting some more tasty bacon from the cooks. CPT Dave Smith and I walked over to the Kuwaiti cooks and asked them for some food for 10 people. They spoke some English but mostly it was like someone talking German to me so it was hard to understand them. We asked them for bacon but they ended up giving us a huge plate of bacon, 10 hard boiled eggs and 2 huge plates of rice. They had a huge pot that they were cooking rice in. This pot was bigger than a garbage can. It was round and about 4 feet across and about 3 feet high. It was like a little swimming pool. We walked back with the food and set it down outside the tent on the wall that is around us. I went inside and got Shawn and CPT Mike Cushwa and we all stood outside under a full moon eating bacon sandwhiches! What an amazing thought--to be standing in Kuwait, on the verge of war and we are enjoying bacon sandwhiches like we are a bunch of kids. It tasted great and was a great moral booster.

Today was yet another rumored the War would start. Again. nothing happened. We did hear last night that President Bush is supposed to speak to the World to give Saddam an ultimatum tonight. The newest rumor is that we will not go in any earlier than the 19th of March but we are expecting the 21st or so. We shall see.

Flying our final Personnel Recovery training mission tonight. As always, Fred will be in the cockpit with me. Our duty day doesn’t begin until 4:00pm so it is going to be hard to sleep during the day because it gets so hot in the tent.

The days / nights are bleeding together again because we are flying missions late into the night/early into the morning so when I write my journal I sometimes forget if I am writing for today, yesterday or last night.

Tuesday, March 18th
Flew the PR training mission with the Apaches. This is it. Our last training flight for Task Force Gabriel. Unless the war is delayed again (which it could) our next flight willl be in combat. We are ready to go. We have trained extremely hard here in Kuwait over the past 27 days and we are ready to do this. Besides, we hate waiting.

Flew into Udairi at 3:30 am and debriefed the mission. CBS Bob and Mary Beth Sheridan from the Washington Post flew with us tonight. We dropped Mrs Sheridan off at the Brigade HQ on our way back. CBS Bob had a treat in store for us and when he returned he went to work on setting up his satellite dish and projected a live internet broadcast of President Bush’s speech onto a white sheet in one of our tents. The speech gave Saddam 48 hours to comply then it’s ON!

It was just after 4am when the speech began. Everyone was intently listening to the President's words and it seemed like there were some very solemn faces--then again, it was 4 in the morning. I could feel chills throughout my body when I heard the President say that Saddam had 48 hours then we would remove him from power.

After the speech, CBS Bob asked Fred and I for an interview so he could prepare a story to send out to his home station in Albequerque, New Mexico. In exchange for the interview he let us use his sattelite phone to make calls home. That was a great treat especially on the eve of War to be able to let my family know I am ok. I called my wife Stef, my Mom and then my Dad! I was on the phone as the sun was rising. Exhausted, I went to bed around 7am.

It was actually the morning of March 19th by the time I went to bed and ended this final day of training.

Now we wait...