34. Still Going Well

Written: April 15 - 19, 2003

Tuesday, April 15th
Hung out in the tent most of the day due to a nasty sand storm that kicked up around 10:00 zulu. It lasted until 14:00 zulu.

LTC Franks talked to us and told us that Gabriel, our PR task force has been dissolved. The Apache pilots will return to their units and we will now start general support missions.

Watched some Sienfeld episodes then went to bed.

Wednesday, April 16th
Hung around and didn’t do much of anything today. Finished playing Medal of Honor.

Beautiful moonlight tonight. The moon is casting shadows on the ground because it is so full and bright.

Thursday, April 17th
Some flights went to Kuwait today so I sent my credit card so they could by me an X-box so we have something else to do in our spare time.

Randy Smith and I worked on creating some route cards and waypoint cards to use in our various trips throughout the area of operations.

Got on SIPPRNET and wrote a friend an email. He sent a quick letter saying he flew into Iraq around the 19th or 20th of March and that although he saw lots of bad guys, he came home with all his ordinance. I am interested to see what he did in the early days of the war and what he continues to do now.

Chilly outside tonight. Full moon and very bright.

Ate some Apple Jacks with milk! Was very nice. I have some frosted mini wheats to eat for breakfast.

Addressed about 10 envelopes this evening. I need to respond to some letters I received.

Friday, April 18th
Things are still going well. We are supposed to be moving north of Bagdhad in a week.

I just took a shower . I took my clothes off and had a buddy dump part of a 5 gallon water jug over my head. I lathered up with a bit of soap then had him dump the rest to rinse off. I at least smell a bit cleaner. It does wonders for your motivation.

Washed some clothes and hung out for the day.

Saturday, April 19th

Woke up at 0500 zulu. We packed up the Company CP and then loaded some of the stuff into aircraft. We endured another dust storm while we tore everything down.

I am sitting in my tent right now. It is the night of Saturday, April 19th and I just recently found out that tomorrow is Easter. It is 2036 zulu (12:36 am) right now and the wind is whipping our tent around. We have had about 3 dust storms in the past week and although today started off bad, it cleared a bit but now that the sun is gone, it is picking back up with a vengeance. We are preparing to move north in 2 days. We should fly out of here on the 21st but things constantly change so that (change) is the only real thing I can count on. The tent has dust in the air but it is slowly clearing out (I hope) as we had the outer flaps on the tent opened and I just closed them before coming back in here.

Today we were watching a movie (all buttoned up and sweating in our tent due to the dust storm) when we heard a loud, close BOOM followed by the tent moving from the shock wave. We all reluctantly grabbed our masks and kept them close by. It was just explosive ordinance disposal (EOD) blowing up some bad munitions of some sort. There were a few more after that.

The highlight of my day was receiving a great letter from Stef today. I got it when I came back in from the Battalion TOC where I was printing some maps and route cards for our flight north. Before I went to the TOC (Oh, TOC is Tactical Operations Center) I was able to get on the internet for 10 minutes where I was able to send out an email with 3 pictures attached to it. I was smart enough to pre-write the letter before going over there and put it on a floppy disc so I didn’t have to waste any time. As it turned out, it took me all of my time just to copy and past the letter along with the 3 pictures that I sent.