THE DAY. My gosh, this was one of the most exciting days of my life. I was so nervous, anxious, scared of everything. We went to have our final good breakfast, and proceeded back to the barracks. We were picked up by a bus with 6 random people already in it, they were the holdovers that were put back for various reasons, medical hold, leave, taking care of last minute stuff. The bus went to get weighed at the weigh station, and went to the military airport where we were to be shipped. The worst part of that was there are 4 different paths to this airport that they take, just because of security reasons. That makes the 30 minute ride into a 45 minute one. When we got there, I found out that I didn’t have my dog tags with me. I must have left them somewhere. And my other pair was in the duffel bags, where I couldn’t get to them because they were already packaged. Contreras had the same problem. So me and him waited for the longest time while the rest of the Chalk 1 left to board the plane. The C-17 had already come an hour early, so they were waiting on us. We sent the UA to go back and retrieve the dog tags while the ADAG called SRC to have them made. Those 2 hours were the longest 2 hours of my life. Not being able to go just because we didn’t have dog tags? I don’t know a lot about the army, but sometimes, they were full of it. At the last minute, they decided it’ll be wiser for them to board us and then get the dog tags delievered, especially since it was half a mile walk with 40 pounds on us to get to the plane. We walked inside the plane, and people were cheering for us, not knowing that we didn’t have the dog tags still. Well, so there we were, waiting anxiously for another 30 minutes while they told us we might have to get off the plane and go with Chalk 2. I didn’t want to do that especially since I didn’t know any of those engineers, they had 52 people going with them meaning less room for us, and it was set to leave 3 hours later. Thankfully, SFC Tashima, our UA, came in time. We had to wait another hour for them to reset some computer with the C-17 or something. I was just thankful the entire time we were waiting for that extra hour that Contreras and I had made it. The plane took off at around 1130 hours Central Time. The C-17 is a human engineering marvel. Not only is it huge, but it’s very intricate and beautiful inside, with millions of wires everywhere, but everything was organized. One thing that killed me was the cold. It was freezing inside the plane, and they only had about one heater going. I don’t think the pilots knew how cold we were, because they were always in their cockpits, and when I went up to take my pictures, the cockpit had its seperate temperature. I took the liberty to sleep on the floor as did everyone else. I mean how often do you get to do that? It was so cold, though, I had to put a poncho over me to use as a blanker, but it was still cold. I couldn’t take off my boots because they helped trap heat in. After about 13 hours in the air, we landed in Frankfurt, Germany to refuel and change pilots and their crew. There we stayed for three hours. I learned some things about Germany, but didn’t get to step outside of the airport. I learned to use the DSN lines. I had to call 112 or 113 to call the operator in Frankfurt, to have them transfer me to either Los Angeles Air Force Base or Travis Air Force Base for me to contact the DSN operator there to connect me to home or wherever I wanted to dial. Took about 10 minutes to get connected for every call, but it was well worth it. The German TV was a little bit weird. They must have had about half a dozen Indians as anchors because that’s all I saw except this one white dude. Didn’t really get to see much of Germany except for the skyline. Saw a C-5 in the airfield. My gosh, this thing is gigantic. I didn’t even know they made planes that big. Must be long enough to fit a football field in there or something. And where did the Air Force get so many C-17s? They just had them lying around as if they were M-16s. Well, maybe just 9 of them there, but still. From there, we got another crew to take us to Kuwait. That was a 7 hour ride. Another thing about the C-17 is that it’s loud. VERY loud. We had to practically scream to talk to the person next to us. The quiestest place in the plane, I found out, is the restroom. I kind of wished that I could stay in there cuz it actually smelld good and it was quiet. I got out, though, put my ear plugs in and tried to sleep. It’s kind of weird sleeping sideways, looking at everyone else in the plane. That and taking off/landing is a trip. It feels like you’re being pulled/pushed but you can’t really do much about it. The landings were a lot softer than some commercial planes I’ve been in, though.
Kuwait. During our 20 total air time and 3 some hours in Germany, we had forgotten that time had travelled forward as we flew and time also passed as we slept. So when we got out of the plane, it was already Saturday the 14th, 5PM Kuwait time, rather than Friday the 13th as we had thought it was. So when we landed and had various briefings, people made sure they told us the local time and date. It was hot. VERY hot. I’ve never seen anything like it. 5 minutes outside and you were crazy if you weren’t sweating or thirsty. I was pretty shocked at the way Kuwait looked. I had an idea, but didn’t really expect this. I saw a short bridge in the distance, but other than that, the skyline was empty, void of buidings and life. There were some city lights in the distance we could see as the sun set. The hangers were probably built 50 years ago during the great war and never been touched again. But soon we were accustomed to it and Camp Wolf, as they called it. There were hundreds of tents everywhere, and numerous trucks and humvees and various army equiptment. We were assigned to tent 10, two tents away from 8, which faced the British tent number 1, also adjacent to the Italians in tent number 2. We saw a few British and Italians in their funky uniform at the chow hall. But for the 80 percent of the people I’ve seen, most everyone was American. We got settled in and slept on the wooden floor. We’re moving out tomorrow, so we shoudln’t need cots just yet.