16 APRIL 2018

I woke up this morning to the sun shining into our room. I ordered some black out blinds so we could keep our room dark but who knows how long it will take for them to arrive? I did the bad thing of immediately checking my phone for messages, emails, and social media notifications. It’s always recommended not do this because it can put you into a frantic, defensive, and reactive mood to start the day. I am glad that I looked at it though because Motor Sergeant texted me saying I have a flight out today. I needed to have my room completely packed and ready to go in 2 hours. Not a problem for me because we couldn’t bring a ton of stuff anyways… So I get finished packing up in about an hour. It sucked how fast it all happened. Just yesterday my CO (commanding officer) mentioned that I would be heading up to Erbil but I didn’t realize it was going to happen this fast.
Just before lunch the twins (identical twins with very similar names) pick me and my stuff up in their pickup truck. They taxi us over to the PAX tent where we wait around for an hour. I am traveling with SGT. Jameson who is another late addition mechanic. SGT. Jameson came from another NC NG unit and was filling the role of another mechanic that was hurt during training. After waiting we head out to the flight line where we wait some more. There was some equipment that needed to be unloaded. While that was happening we chatted with a couple Airmen about their deployment and a little bit about their life. During the conversation an E9 from the Air Force came up and joined the conversation. We talked about how shitty Ali Al Salem Air Base is and especially the piss poor transient area. He agrees that it is crap but there is not much he can do about it. We also talk about the frustrations about just trying to get on a flight. Flights in the military are never a guaranteed thing. You will very rarely get your first flight out of a location. Luckily, this time was not a struggle for Sgt. Jameson and I to fly out of Al Asad.
We flew on a C17 fully loaded with an International MaxxPro Dash MRAP as well as some Polaris MRZRs. The way the C17 is loaded is that there are passenger seats up the side of the cabin. The middle of the plane has the vehicles strapped down. During take off and landing the suspensions of the vehicles flex and the vehicle shakes. It would suck if the chains broke that hold down the vehicles. Another interesting note is that there are no windows to look out of. This is not good for people who get motion sickness.
The flight was a short one that probably lasted 30 or 40 minutes. We landed in Erbil with no real idea of who we were supposed to meet. While we were trying to figure that out part of second platoon landed. I wasn’t expecting to see them for another couple of days. I guess they finally caught a flight out of the hell hole that is Ali Al Salem. Sadly, only half of the group actually made the flight. The remaining group was still stuck there!
The second platoon guys had a solid contact there so we didn’t end up waiting long once they arrived. The group we linked up was from the unit we were replacing. They took us over to the transient area which was a lot nicer than Ali’s area. This is probably because KBR was contracted to maintain the transient area versus Ali’s area which is barely controlled by the Air Force. We quickly head over to the DFAC which is a decent sized building. The food is pretty standard.
After the DFAC the guys drive us over to the Bare Buhar which is a little market place. We couldn't bring our rifles into the market so some people stay back to watch them. I purchase an internet puck and some refill cards. The internet here is so much cheaper than anywhere I’ve been so far. It was only $45 for the puck and $35 for unlimited data. This is compared to $100+ for slow internet elsewhere.
We get back to the tents around 2000 so we shower up and hit the sack. Tomorrow is a waiting day. We aren’t scheduled to fly out for another day.