En Route

It’s 6:00pm, and I just said goodbye to Tricia and Caitlyn. “I’ll see you in a month,” Tricia told me. The reality was that we wouldn’t see each other for about eight months, but taking it a month at a time is how she’s choosing to deal with this deployment.

I never told Tricia, but I was fighting back tears as we said goodbye, and as she drove out of the parking lot, I muttered something like “Wow, that’s tough.”

7:00pm – I go to the arms room, along with the rest of the people in my unit who are deploying, and I draw my M4 rifle, and my company commander gives me a fee 60-minute phone card. Hopefully, I’ll be able to use it soon.

8:00pm – I get a in a van with the others I’m deploying with, and we are taken to the place where the busses will pick us up. The busses are expected at around 11:30pm, so we settle in for a long wait.

11:00pm – We are informed that the busses are stuck in traffic on the Autobahn, so we’re going to have to wait longer.

11:45pm – Still waiting for the busses…

12:15am – Still waiting…it also just started snowing.

12:45am – Busses still aren’t here…

1:15am – After nearly five hours of just sitting and waiting, we are finally loaded, along with our luggage, onto the busses.

2:00am – We are taken to the gymnasium parking lot, where we are separated into four different groups. I am in the “Males who need the smallpox vaccine” group. We are herded in a semi-orderly fashion into the gymnasium, which is set up with a number of stations we have to check out with before we leave. The first station is for those of us getting the smallpox vaccine.

Of course, there’s paperwork that needs to be filled out. For whatever reason, I am the only one who has the paperwork already filled out, so I get to bypass all those who are furiously scribbling down the needed information and I proceed directly to the smallpox vaccination station.

After fifteen small pokes in the upper arm, I am sent on to the next station, where I swipe my ID card to “officially” leave Baumholder, Germany.

The next station is the chaplain’s station, where both the Catholic and Protestant chaplains wish God’s blessing on me and my safety. Perhaps needless to say, this gesture is greatly appreciated. It is now 2:35am, and I get myself a cup of what slightly resembles coffee, and I sit down to wait.

Two hours pass, and I, along with about 30 others, are called up to get our smallpox vaccine—again. Turns out, it was just a mistake. Being stabbed with a needle fifteen times in relatively the same spot was plenty for me. After that bit of “excitement”, I sit down again, making a note to avoid the “coffee” this time, and the wait continues.

5:05am – Everyone is herded over to the Wagon Wheel Theater (the on-post multi-purpose movie theater/stage), where we are told we will be, you guessed it, waiting some more.
Someone evidently thought that playing a movie would be a good idea, as opposed to just letting everyone rest, so as the movie played, I did my best to catch a few Z’s.

6:45am – It’s again time to get on the busses, and travel to the local Air Force base. This is normally a 25-30 minute trip in a car.

8:45am – Due to inclement weather, what should have been a much shorter trip turned into a two-hour bus ride.

9:00am – The busses stop for a smoke/bathroom break. (Just in case you’re wondering, it’s the soldiers who have to use the bathroom and smoke—not the busses.)

9:35am – We have finally arrived at our staging area for the flight. Of course, the busses have to be unloaded and with as much luggage as the group has, this takes nearly an hour.

The luggage is thrown haphazardly onto waiting trucks, and with this task now complete, we all file into a large airplane hangar of sorts, where we can get MREs (Meals Ready-to-Eat), water, and a USO (United Servicemen’s’ Organization) volunteer is handing out coffee, hot chocolate, chips, and cookies. In spite of all this, someone thought it would be a good idea for everyone to stand in formation instead of letting everyone try to rest. (I think this “someone” should stop making the decisions.) Luckily, someone else thought differently and we were finally allowed to just hang out for awhile. Some of us ate, some slept, and some played computer games or watched movies.

11:15am – We all get in line to make sure our carry-ons will fit on the airplane and to get ourselves weighed with our carry-on. Again, our ID cards are scanned.

11:45am – We settle in to wait again.

1:15pm – We are instructed to fall into formation, and after doing so, we exit the building and again board the busses. This time, the busses take us to what is called the flightline. (Flightline is just a fancy word for the tarmac, where the airplanes park for fueling.)

1:40pm – The “bottoming out” feeling in the pit of my stomach is expected and doesn’t surprise me as the airplane takes off.

1:45pm – I fall asleep.

2:35pm – I awake to a flight attendant asking me if I would like pasta or turkey for my mid-flight meal. I choose pasta, but they’re out, so I go with my other option. Surprisingly, it’s not bad at all.

After finishing my meal, I pull out my laptop and put in the movie, Enemy at the Gates. Just over thirty minutes into the movie, I can’t take it any longer, and I close my laptop and go to sleep.

7:35pm – We are informed by the Captain that we are preparing to land, so I open my window shade to see Kuwait City coming up to meet us—and it’s absolutely beautiful! Kuwait City, as one of the foremost port cities in the Middle East/Southwest Asia, has every amenity one can think of—4-star hotels, 5-star restaurants, tourist attractions (including a palace), and men named Habeeb.

The Captain also tells us the local weather is partly cloudy and 86 degrees.

7:45pm – The ground is coming up pretty fa—WHAM!

7:50pm – After the less-than-pleasant landing, the head flight attendant references the “wonderful” landing and thanks us for flying with their company (as if we had some choice in the matter), and as we exit the airplane, full-size candy bars are being handed out. Maybe they planned to hand them out anyway; maybe they were attempting to get our minds off our sore backs after such a “wonderful” landing. At any rate, the candy bars appeased the majority of those on the flight.

8:15pm – I am “lucky enough” to get put on baggage detail, and this task takes somewhere over an hour. We have to unload all the baggage from the airplane and again throw it onto trucks.

9:15pm – The baggage detail, sweaty, boards another bus, and we are taken to a secure part of the airfield, where we are released to smoke, use the latrines (outhouses/port-a-potties), and stretch out a little bit before our 2-hour bus ride to Camp Buehring.

10:00pm – We again board the busses, and it’s rather difficult to sleep, but since there’s not much to see anyway, I finally drift off…

11:45pm – I wake up to find the bus bumping slowly along at the entrance to Camp Buehring, Kuwait. We weave in and out of large, cement barriers and finally make our way onto the post.

I am suddenly very interested in seeing all this first hand, and I strain to see out the window (I’m in an aisle seat)…and the most beautiful sight finds my eyes.

There before me is a green sign, and the sign spells out the now-famous word--STARBUCKS®.

But we don’t get to stop at this literal “desert oasis”.

The busses pass the oasis, and they all perform large U-turns and park perfectly alongside one another. Our instructions are to get off the bus and go into the theatre tent for some briefings.

So let me get this straight, I think to myself, we’ve been up for, let’s see—twenty-four, thirty-six, forty..WAY too many hours and now you want us to sit through some briefing in the middle of the night. Again, this is the Army making sense.
Turns out, the briefings weren’t unbearable and the information presented was the kinds of things we needed to know: chow hall hours, gym hours, MWR and USO facilities, financial concerns, etc.

1:30am –The briefings are complete, but sleep is still hours away. We still have bags to unload once we get to the place we’ll be staying.

So, we load up, albeit begrudgingly, onto the busses, and we are taken to our final stop.
We proceed to unload both ourselves and our luggage; the busses all grind to a halt, and we all stumble off the busses—only to be greeted by those luggage trucks again. Yep, that’s right. Another hour (at least) is ahead of us, so we psych ourselves up for one last bit of work before we are finally able to lie down…

Nerves are frazzled after traveling for so many hours and tempers flare as everyone is convinced that their method for efficiently unloading the trucks is better than anyone else’s. A SGT (Sergeant) tells a private, “Go help get all the duffle bags for our group.” The private does so…well, he tries. As he is carrying out his orders, a SSG (Staff Sergeant, one rank above SGT) who has no idea about the SGT’s command, yells at the private, “Don’t touch another bag!”

And so it continued—but finally, we were done.

At 3:19am, I stumble into my tent. It’s time for a shower and then off to bed. Well, an army cot would never be mistaken as a “bed” per se, but when you’re this tired, even a cot looks inviting.

3:45am – My travel is over with…for now. It’s now…time…to…slee…………p.