27. April Fools

Tuesday, April 1st
April Fools day, woke up early in the morning just covered with my poncho liner and sleeping in the position I fell asleep in while watching the movie. I got inside my sleeping back and fell back asleep.

At 8:55am we were all awaken by three loud booms that were fairly close. We all looked around, a bit alarmed, but chose to fall back asleep…we figured it was another EOD explosion. A few minutes later, we heard the frantic yells of, “GAS, GAS, GAS.” We all jumped up, put our masks on then our MOPP suits and stayed inside the relative protection of our tent (helps to keep some of the vapor or droplets off of us).

It’s interesting to note that when you hear, “GAS, GAS, GAS” you begin to think about what is in the air that you already breathed. You yell at people for leaving the flap to your tent open because that will allow contaminants to more quickly fill your area. You look around and try to see signs of an actual chemical attack i.e. dead animals (not many here anyhow), people acting strangely but it seems that your hearing becomes more heightened because you listen for people showing signs of duress, you listen for radio calls and you listen for signs of more attacks. It’s just eerie that the air you were just breathing may not be breathable any longer.

In the even of an actual attack, we would have an interesting task ahead of us. We would have to leave our area with only the gear necessary to fly. We would leave everything here and in most cases, it would all be bull-dozed and burned to ensure the contamination didn’t spread. We would then fly to an upwind, safe location and decontaminate our aircraft and personnel then wait on the supply system to kick in to replace all the stuff we lost.

We hung around for about 15 minutes before adventuring outside to see what the rest of the camp was doing. Everyone was in full protective clothing and we received word that a rocket was shot at Rams (our assembly area here) and a Patriot shot it down. So now we just had to wait on the results of the chemical tests to decide whether to stay in or get out of MOPP. Within 30 minutes we heard the, “All clear.” Fred and I stood and looked up the berm towards the Battalion TOC and saw them take their masks off so we did too.

Went back to relaxing, eating, shaving and getting ready for the days events. We heard that the LRS mission was cancelled last night due to weather and there may be another Deep Strike by the 101st tonight.

Went out to the aircraft to run up and prepare for our coverage. While we were out at the aircraft, someone came to us and said there was a real world PR mission in the making and that we needed to get to the TOC. I left Fred at the aircraft and I ran into the TOC. I got tired and walked half way but was thinking that someone’s life is on the line so I better run. Arrived at the TOC and they told us it was a miscommunication. Great.

Walked back to the aircraft and finished everything up then came in. There was a large lizard near the Alpha Company tents so we all looked at it.

Got an intelligence update from CPT Halter: the Republican Guard Divisions are in a weakened state. We have attacks going to take them on tomorrow above Karbala.

CPT Hester and his crew flew the 82nd Airborne Division Commanding General down to his area then came back.

Randy and Chris Monteiro are back with us now. Haven't seen them since they left us back in October to become the vanguard of our operations here in this region. They just came back from Qatar where they were staying at recently. Nice to see them all again—we had Shawn Holmes shave their heads to welcome them back. We also got a new WO1 - Philip Pillittere. He is just coming out of flight school and was a crew chief in Hawaii prior to this. I gave him a nick name of Mr. T because he has a big gold chain on.

One of the guys had a bunch of movies so I copied them to 5 CD’s: Seinfeld, Southpark, Bugs Bunny and Scooby-Doo. Good to have Seinfeld.

We were told that we may be able to fly to Udairi tomorrow. So we started planning for it. Mid way through the planning CPT Hester came into the CP to tell us that there was an F-14 crew that was down. He gave us a grid and we plotted it—117 miles due west of here. Just out of our range without a FARP. We told the ABCCE this and they said stand-down. They put Air Force assests (helo’s) in the air to get them. They will be picked up.

We are all pissed off that we were not able to get them. This was a perfect package for us. It was almost within our range (if we pushed it we could have got them) and it would have been the first mission we actually had where we picked live people up. We are all pissed that we don’t have the equipment like the Air Force has and that it takes us so long to launch. It seems that they launch and get data pushed to them in the air via some high speed communications.

Went to bed after watching a Seinfeld episode and writing in my journal.