48. 170lbs

Written: May 31 - June 1, 2003.

Saturday, May 31st
Got out of bed a 5:10am. It had been raining off and on all night and the ground was still wet. The sun was just beginning to come up and we could already see that the visibility was going to be a problem for flying today. We headed out to the aircraft to preflight for a 7:50am take off. Dave went to check the weather while I looked over the aircraft. From our end of the runway, we could barely see the control tower so we estimated the visibility to be 1 mile. I finished preflight and we briefed our mission for the day. Dave confirmed the weather to be right at 1 mile so we decided to put our flight on hold until the visibility improved.

We all went to breakfast and had sausages, eggs and peaches.

As it turned out, the visibility never improved, and by 8am my stomach was starting to hurt. Our mission was cancelled and I decided to lie down and rest. As the day went on, I became more and more tired and achy and my stomach continued to feel like it was tied up in knots. At noon, I suddenly walked out of the tent and made my way across the street to a secluded patch of sand. I scrapped out a hole with my shoe and threw up. I did this a few times, covered the hole then went back in the tent to lie down again.

Outside, they got a new tent called a Temper tent. With that tent, they will be able to tear down the small tents and move everyone into those. The temper tent is designed for desert environments and should work out nicely once they get an a/c in it.

I tired to work on some flight records but spent most of my time with my head on the table. I ended up spending the rest of the day and night in bed trying to get comfortable. Everyone was a great help, they got me water, asked me if I wanted any food and Billy went to the Doc and got me some Phenegrin to help with the upset stomach.

I am happy that we had a/c in the tent because it helped make me feel better.

Sunday, June 1st
Woke up a few times throughout the night but didn’t fully get up until sometime around 11am. I feel much better although not 100%. I took some hot water, a carton of milk (the kind that can sit on a shelf for many years), a carnation instant breakfast, and a cappuccino mix and combined them in my canteen cup for breakfast. It actually tasted really good and I slowly drank it. I opened a package that I received yesterday. It was from Stef’s parents and it had lots of goodies in it. I held off from eating the goodies and opted to stick with the carnation breakfast until I get back to eating normally again.

Spent most of the day lying on my cot just relaxing and talking to Fred and Sam. We all keep hearing rumors that we may be going home in August. Of course, no date has been said but we all like to believe the rumors especially if they have us going home fairly soon!

Time to send out family letters again so I think I will look over my journal and then prepare some of it to send out.

I found a scale sitting outside so I weighed myself. I now weigh 170lbs. I came here weighing about 188lbs. I think I just lost a lot of fat from all that great German food I was eating and the German beer I was drinking.

So far, we have flown all over this country. We have been north to Mosul, east to an undisclosed location 5 miles from the Iranian border, south to the border with Kuwait and west to Al Asad. There really isn’t much more for us to see. We are ready to go home…and have been for quite a while. Our Brigade commander is in Giebelstadt right now and is supposed to talk to the spouses tomorrow. They do not know what he is going to tell them, but, of course, everyone speculates that it is something about our redeployment. We shall see.

Watched, “X-Men 2” that someone got a bootleg copy of! Was nice. We watched t.v. and ate popcorn.

Went to bed at midnight.