39. Everyone Has Their Place

Written: May 2 - 13, 2003

Friday, May 2nd
Last night we were told that we had to trim our “out of control” mustaches to within Army regulations. They were getting pretty out of control and we knew it would only be time before we would have to trim them up. We all took turns trimming them but in the end, most people shaved them off. I left mine on, just trimmed it up a bunch.

Spent most of the day relaxing. Not much going on.

Satruday, May 3rd
Spent the day relaxing. I guess right now we are all in consolidation operations--getting our units together and arranging our new living areas? Just not much external going on.

Sunday, May 4th
Woke up at 0500z and ate breakfast then Chad and I talked to Sam about tabular data for the PPC. We spent a few hours making it harder than we needed to then finally came upon the common way to teach it to everyone else.

Shawn Holmes and Chris Montiero left to go on leave today. They arrived here as the advanced party in October of 2002 so its certainly been a long road for them. I gave Shawn a few letters to take to Stef and the kids and I also gave him my broken camera to take home too.

Taught 2nd Platoon the tabular data then played hockey on the X-box.

Received a mission to fly to Baghdad, Talil Udairi, Al Jaber then stay the night at Doha. Fred and I spent 1.5 hours planning it then headed back to the tent to play a little more (Xbox--"Desert Storm") then sleep.

Monday, May 5th – 12th
Woke up at 0300z and prepared for the trip to Doha.

On the way, Javier accidentally shot a SAW (machine gun) round through the floor of my helicopter. What a fiasco that was. Its a long complicated story and I just can't believe that my aircraft has a bullet hole from the inside out...nice.

We landed in Doha and worked on getting the floor fixed. The contractors stayed on the aircraft all night fixing it and by the time the morning came around, it was done except for some painting and final touch-ups. They did a great job.

We ended up staying in Doha until May 11th due to mission support and waiting for Fred’s engines to get replaced on 077. The engines were totally messed up and were going to fail soon.

While in Doha we did some impromptu classes but for the most part ate Subway and drank chocolate shakes. Its good food but gets old after a few days. Plus, being here in Doha--the HQ of this operation makes you kinda sick because of all the people running around in pressed uniforms, shined boots and so on. Then to watch the way they act--like they are awed a debt of gratitude for being in the rear instead of out front...everyone has their place in this war but if you saw their actions you would understand better.

Monday, May 12th
First day back from being in Doha. Flew NVGs with Billy, CPT Cushwa and Randy Smith tonight. We flew the local points around Balad and then did an instrument approach at the end.

Tuesday, May 13th
Relaxing day. We got a commercial air conditioning unit and spent the day helping Dave come up with a way to split the a/c for all the tents to use. He came up with a splitter box that did just that! He is a smart guy!