43. “Train as you Fight”

Written: May 25 - 26, 2003

Sunday, May 25th
Woke up at 6:30 am, shaved, gathered some information from Operations then went to the aircraft for preflight and commo check for tonight's LRS mission (actually early tomorrow morning). Commo check went well so I came back inside and gathered final information for the briefing. I am flight lead for this mission with CPT Cushwa. Fred and CPT Hester are flying behind us. As Lead, it is my job to organize, plan and brief the mission (with help from everyone else as needed).

We started the brief exactly on time at 11:00am. CPT Cushwa led off with a time hack to make sure we were all on the same time. He counted down as we hit 11am exactly and then CPT Hester took over for the first part of the briefing. He then passed the briefing to me where I covered the phases of the operation in detail. LTC Franks was present as well as our air crews, our PR standby crews, CPT Todd from 3-158, and many other pilots in the Battalion. When you're mission is the only show in town it becomes the "thing to do."

The briefing lasted about 45 minutes and went very well. I talked slowly and clearly which is hard for me to do (talk slowly) even when I consciously think about it.

Tried to sleep at 2pm in my tent, but it was 106 degrees. Picked up my sleeping mat and pillow and went to the jet hangar and laid on the floor in one of the side rooms to sleep…

Dave came in and woke me up—Stefanie was on the phone! I ran to Battalion in flip-flops, a t-shirt and shorts and got to talk to her for about 20 minutes! I also got to talk to the kids. Anabelle asked me, as she always does, “Daddy, when are you coming home?” I wish I knew so I could tell her. I told her soon and that I would keep sending pictures until then.

I went back to the hangar to sleep and fell in and out of sleep as I was savagely attacked by biting gnats. I finally got fed up with it and grabbed my stuff and went back to my tent at 6pm. I rolled around trying to sleep and finally went to bed at 8pm but could not fall asleep until at least 10pm due to the heat.

Monday, May 26th
Woke up at 1:30am to prepare to take off on the LRS extraction. We got everything together and things were looking good for take off on time. We did our update briefing then got in the aircraft on time. We taxied out to the runway but as I turned on the taxiway, we heard a large explosion that obviously came from our aircraft. It was pitch black out and we didn't see a flash so we ruled out a bomb. Kenneth Martin looked back and slowly announced in his slow country-drawl that the tail wheel exploded.

We stopped right there and I hesitated to go back to parking to exchange aircraft for the spare. We flew it back to parking and shutdown while Shawn Holmes and Phil Pillittere ran up the spare aircraft that was prepared to fly just in case something like this happened. We shut down the now broken aircraft. I grabbed all my gear and ran to the spare while the crew chiefs did the same thing. Instead of flying with CPT Cushwa, I would now be flying with Shawn Holmes.

We got the other aircraft up and running within minutes then took off on the route. We took off at 4:25am, only 13 minutes late. It was extremely dark and made it hard to fly. We were both having difficulties seeing the ground and holding airspeed and altitude due to the darkness but we managed. We could not tell the difference between the horizon and the ground and we could barely see the ground or anything coming up in front of us. Shawn flew while I navigated and kept us pushing toward the LZ. We tried to keep our speed up but the lack of references in front of us made it hard to go faster when the bodies natural reaction is to go slower. We passed near a few towns, over some wires, across a few prominent ridge lines then made our turn for landing into the LZ (landing zone). We slowed down as we drew nearer to the LZ. It was 5am, still 55 minutes prior to sunrise, but through our goggles, we could see the first signs of light beginning to peak up under the horizon. We were scanning for our people on the ground when we saw their signaling device. We turned the aircraft, lined up on the soldiers and landed right in front of them.

We landed at 5am, only 10 minutes late (we made up 3 minutes enroute). We were on the ground for 1 minute and 12 seconds. This was a seats out operation meaning that we removed all passenger seats to aid with loading and unloading the aircraft. The inside cargo area was totally open and for added protection we installed an armored blanket on the floor. They quickly jumped in and closed the doors.

We lifted off and began on our exit route back to Balad. As we flew back, to the west, we could see that the sun was getting closer and closer to peaking up above the horizon to our back which made it hard to see during the period where it was too light to wear NVG's and too dark to fly without them. We crossed a few more ridge lines, a large river, some more wires, a few towns when suddenly we could see an image emerging from the dark. I squinted to make out the silhouette and asked Shawn if he could see it too. As we drew nearer, the distorted image took on the resemblance of a missile launcher pointing right at us!

My heart dropped as my brain processed this image. By this time, we were only a few hundred meters from it so there wasn't much to do to avoid it. My heart was pounding and it seemed like an eternity as we flew over it...but as we flew over it, we realized that it was just a tractor with a conveyor belt-rig behind it. Whew. We continued along our route, relaxed a bit and then finally turned towards our airfield. By this time, we took our goggles off and flew night unaided. It was bright enough to see but still before sunrise. We landed, shutdown, debriefed then had breakfast.

After breakfast, Fred and I were talking about the mission and we both came to the same conclusion that all the training we have done over all of our years of flying has really contributed to making this all feel like training as well. While in Kuwait, we trained extremely hard. We trained under zero illumination in the worst conditions I could ever imagine and have ever endured. Before this unit, I was in the 82nd where we did some awesome missions and trained all the time as well. The big Army motto is “Train as you Fight” and a lot of times we laugh at that because we don’t follow that motto all the time, but in this case, at least for the flying stuff, it seems like we are training as we are fighting.

So the bottom line is that we were doing a Combat, NVG, LRS extraction from an area where aircraft and soldiers on the ground have been shot at within the past week...and the whole time we were doing it, we thought nothing of it (except for the tractor thing). Yes it was challenging due to the lack of illumination but other than that, it felt just the same as any other mission we have done in the past.

I spent the morning driving around with Fred. We went to the LRS compound and chatted for a few hours then drove over to Glenn Siegrist's living area on the other side of the airfield. He is living good. He gave us some pop and a bug lamp to take back to our area. We hung out and talked for a few more hours before coming back to our tents. We had been up all night, but it was too hot to sleep so we would have to wait until the night to do so.

When we got back to our living area, we found that we had finally been approved to route the air conditioner into all three large sleeping tents. It took a few hours but we had help from the whole company. We finally turned it on and it seemed like it was flowing evenly between all tents! Now we will have to wait until the night to see how it cools.

Received a mission to go to Mosul and Tikrit tomorrow.