55. Taking Fire!

Written: June 11, 2003

Wednesday, June 11th

Flying with LT Camp and Phil tonight. We prepped the flight and took off at 9:30pm. The traffic pattern was filled with people training and it was hectic. We took off and left the airfield on a route that Phil planned. We climbed to 600’ and found that it was 111 degrees and the sun was already down. The wind was also very stiff and we found that we had a 50 knot head wind at times. The moon was showing about 60% which made it much easier to fly and navigate. We flew around the base at about 10 miles away. There were many tracers and flares firing into the air. As we turned towards our last checkpoint, we could see, in the distance, a large streak of tracers flying into the air. There were two bursts and they were long and constant like the things you saw on TV when Baghdad was hit by air strikes. I think this came from Samarah. We continued to fly, hit our final checkpoint and turned around. When we turned, we saw tracers flying up out of the city next to us. The rounds then appeared to be aimed at us and went right over the top of the rotor system. SPC Vazquez told me that we were being fired upon- "Taking fire from 9'o clock!" I quickly banked the aircraft to the right and dove to get closer to the ground. The rounds seemed to follow us (or at least the sound of us cause it was too dark to see us) as we dove away. I could not see them because they were just beyond my sight, but Vazquez was acting as my eyes and letting me know where they were at. We would all love to shoot back at them, just once, to scare them but unless we can see the target, we will not chance firing into a town. They eventually stopped and we continued on with our training. This still gets me that we are training in an environment where we are getting fired at! It doesn’t seem to pass the common sense test, but it’s also a catch 22. If we do not train people we will be in trouble because people are coming and going like normal.

After that, we linked up with Glenn Siegrist who was flying traffic patterns in his Chinook! He flew behind us on the same route then we followed him back into Balad. Was the first time we flew together since flight school (but we didn’t actually fly together there either). It was cool.

Came back from the flight and told CPT Halter about the AAA in Samarah and about us being shot at--actually told him about that at dinner the next night because when I came back from the flight, there were minimal people in flight operations. The NCO went to get the Intelligence NCO but she was sleeping and it took her 20 minutes to get to me. By that point I was pissed and went to bed without giving her a full account. This is typical of the support that we do not receive. At any given moment, if you go into operations (the supposed HEART of the Battalion) you will find up to 3 computers playing Age of Empires. It is so ridiculous. I don’t understand it.

Went to bed at 3am.