After waking, I gathered up all of the things which would make the trip to Iraq with me. I had previously sent a foot locker ahead that was full of things which I figured I would either NEVER need, or at least not need for a few months. I dragged three full-to-bursting duffels out to "the shed" and lined them up for loading onto a truck. On my person I kept a backpack and - of course - my trusty M-9.
After depositing my belongings, the waiting began. We sat around CRC for another several hours while our bags were whisked away, and we finally formed up to load our busses at around 1030. We then made the bus trip to Freedom Hall (Waiting Terminal pictured at right) where commenced the hours of waiting to board the plane. During this time, there are a myriad ways of occupying oneself. There are 11 large television screens, a local church group has free books available, and there is Wi-Fi internet available for $10/day. In addition to that, we were fed twice and moved into a briefing room to learn that we should not attempt to hijack the aircraft.
They tell us that operational security will not allow them to disclose the actual time of departure. Should this information fall into the wrong hands, the outcome could be disastrous. I presume this is also the reason that we sat in Freedom Hall all day; the actual hour of departure was thus well-protected. During this time, we also went through security screening to make sure that we weren't carrying anything more dangerous than an M-9 pistol or an M-16 assault rifle.
Finally, it was time to board the aircraft. We returned to the briefing room we had previously been in and were called by name to board the aircraft. Upon reaching my seat and stowing my backpack in the overhead bin, I sat down and suddenly realized that this aircraft was insanely hot (Freedom Flight at right). After baking for about fifteen minutes, the plane was finally fully loaded, the doors were closed, and the engines spun up providing some degree of air conditioning. And, finally, it was time to leave Ft. Benning.
The first leg of our trip took us to Maine where we landed at around 2230. We were greeted by a host of retired military and other supporters and went through their receiving line. It was certainly nice of these folks to be out there at that hour. We hung out in Maine for about an hour and a half before it was again time to board the plane. This time, when we went wheels up, I knew that I was leaving American soil and wouldn't return for quite some time. While the gravity of this realization may have spurred some profound contemplation earlier in the day, I was quite tuckered out by now. I crossed the Atlantic in my sleep.
We arrived in Leipzig, Germany in the afternoon on Saturday, 30 August. Again, we were allowed to deplane for about an hour and a half. I walked around the airport a bit, but there wasn't much to see or do. My first trip to Germany was a bust. We again boarded the plane, this time bound for Kuwait City. This was a relatively short leg - about four hours. As we made our approach into Kuwait City, I remember thinking that it looked just like any other city from that vantage point. Downtown was brightly lighted, the red brake lights of thousands of cars dotted the highways. We may as well have been flying into Minneapolis for all I knew. That all changed after we landed.
Stepping out of the cabin door of that DC-10, I drew my first breath of Kuwaiti air, and the most profound utterance I could conjure was, "Holy shit." Not a particularly forceful expletive, it was more a measured understatement - an attempt to relay my own inability to yet assimilate the day's events. It was 1930 on 30 August, and exiting that plane and breathing the air of the sovereign Kingdom of Kuwait was, I thought, the beginning of the end of this epic journey which began over eighteen hours and 8000 miles ago.
Of course, more busses were in our future. We were taken to Ali Al Salem airbase and unloaded. Here, we were officially "scanned in" to theater. This was Day 1 of deployment.
Unfortunately, we arrived at Ali Al Salem at 2330 and didn't get scanned until one hour later. My official arrival date, therefore, was 31 August. After listening to a few briefings about not drinking in theater, we went out to gather our belongings off of the baggage truck (Kuwaiti Baggage Claim above). A lucky few of us were heading to Camp Buehring prior to continuing on to our final destinations. We set our bags aside for yet another bus ride.
Bus rides in Kuwait are not much fun. We are required to keep the curtains closed and are not allowed to look outside. I'm not sure what the reasoning behind this is. Perhaps they are protecting us - if no one knows who is in the bus, it won't be a target. I'm sure that a caravan of large white busses leaving from a military installation on a regular basis wouldn't raise the least suspicion in the mind of anyone bent on wrongdoing. On the other hand, there isn't much to see, anyway. Sand is sand is sand. My travels finally ended at Camp Buehring, Kuwait at approximately 0230 on 31 August, 2008. We settled into our large tent and bedded down prior to beginning our training about twelve hours later.
