Blather

I had a four-point seat belt whose buckle rotated to release. The buckle was on my right and three belts clipped into it. Finding the shoulder belts was a chore because they were behind me and because my IBA is so bulky. The gunner grabbed two shoulder belts and showed me how to click them into the buckle. I sat behind the gunner on the left side. The left belt went over the top of my 9mm pouches and the right belt fit next to my med pack. My backpack was where my feet should be, so I sat splayed in the web chair. My rifle stayed between my right knee and my backpack. As soon as I sat down, the dust from the field went everywhere, so I put my goggles down from my helmet. It took a bit of finesse to get my glasses inside. (I’d done that before, but without the helmet)

Then, with no warning, we took off.

There were two pilots up front, and right behind them, two gunners. I could see some pilot controls and a little glass bubble with flying-saucer green lights that moved around. It was very noisy- my earplugs helped a lot, but the motor was so loud, no one could talk. The air was hot, like an oven, as it came through the gunners’ windows.

I might be delusional, but there’s a scent in the air that smells of where civilization began.

Most of the time we flew straight and level, but when the pilot felt like it, he banked us hard so the craft was 90 degrees to the horizontal. Woo hoo!! Talk about an E-ticket ride!

The gunners had night vision goggles and they kept scanning everything everywhere. The guns were small- maybe 7.62mm or even .223. I noticed that both gunners weren’t big guys- they had to fit through the window and then put their feet underneath their web chairs because only a couple of inches separated their web chairs from the bulkhead.

My body was three temperature zones- cold where the air was drying my perspiration, hot where I wasn't perspiring and really hot where my IBA just soaked my clothes. During the flight, I noticed something wet on my bottom lip- that was perspiration from my head, being shunted past my goggles, around my nose and through my moustache.

I had the best seat in the house! I got to see Baghdad by night. When I wasn't thinking about someone shooting at me, I liked the lights and the layout. It’s a huge place. Nothing but streets and lights from horizon to horizon. I saw mini-dramas from the sky. Down below, a single vehicle drove along a wide road that should have been straight, but which took a lot of bends and dog-legs. There were red and blue lights on a vehicle whose headlights lit up a walled house’s gates. The lights went off. Then they came back on. For no apparent reason, we did one of those E-ticket banks to the left and parked in a big, empty field near what looked like a swell in the road, something like an overpass, but there wasn’t any traffic underneath. We waited there for a few minutes, then took off again. It seemed as though the pilot was choosing to veer this way and that way, so as not to establish a “regular route” for anyone down below to see. Close to where we landed were several large water ponds. Water purification plant sprung to mind. Part of Baghdad’s infrastructure? Sure, could be. And though this is a war zone, the plants seemed to be functioning.

We landed for fuel and had to stand away from the fuel mechanisms. After ten minutes, we got back in and flew another mile to our destination. We rolled up to the terminal and everyone got out. The few hundred yards from the Blackhawk to the terminal seemed to take forever because my backpack, IBA and rifle hadn’t gotten lighter during the ride. Inside the terminal, we gave our CAC cards to the clerk who scanned them and were officially “arrived.” We tried several times to raise our transport guy, finally succeeded and headed back to Klecker, where we made our beds by flashlight in the dark tent. After couple of quick emails to my sons, sleep came swiftly. A shower, food and even laundry could wait.

# posted by rich @ 3:48 AM