SATURDAY 7 APRIL 2018

This is where stuff gets real interesting. So, get this... no rain or anything while we were at Bliss but once we get to the big desert in the ME there is a huge thunder storm. The plane was not happy flying through it either. I mean it felt like our plane was falling a hundred feet at times. There was this one soldier that had to puke, but luckily made it to the lavatory. So during this crazy storm and plane shaking we are coming in for landing. I shit you not, the altimeter on the video screen said 150 feet from ground and all of a sudden the jets turn to full power. Are we taking off again???? We were practically on the ground! Well turns out you can watch this camera on the front of the plane. If you were watching that then you would see the wind from this Thunderstorm was so bad it kept pushing this massive heavy plane off the runway. The pilot called the landing on account of safety. Probably a good idea because crashing a plane filled with soldiers wouldn't look too good. So we start to head south east. Our secondary landing location was planned for Muscat. But apparently the person planning this didn't think about fuel... So the pilot comes over the PA and says that Muscat is just a little too far and he is looking for another place to put the plane down. After a short time the pilot comes back on and says we are landing in Bahrain. So 30ish minutes later we land in Bahrain at 0300ish.
The plane taxis into the gate and we sit. And then we sit some more. Another hour later and the pilot comes back on the PA. He says that we were pushing out. We push off the gate and not more than 3 minutes later the pilot says there are too many paperwork issues and it has to be called a day. It's like somewhere around 4am and we are 45 minutes away from Kuwait, our final destination. So we pull back into the gate, but remain on the hot plane, so the people (idk who) can figure out what to do. After 2 hours of almost anarchy on the plane we taxi, very slowly, over to a Navy flight gate.
The civilian crew debark the plane and head off to their nice hotels. We were told hotels would be reserved for us too. So we get off the plane and head to some breakfast right outside of the Navy flight gate. It didn't take long to figure out that we weren't getting hotel rooms... We were stuck in this tiny Navy complex for 15 hours while we waited for the civilians to rest and sort out paperwork.
These 15 hours were extremely boring. This is what the National Guard and Army really train you to do; sit around for long periods while tired. Luckily, this time we were allowed to sleep but it was advised to hold off and get adjusted to the new time zone. The two companies that were on the plane were spread out through the small terminal. We hadn’t showered, shaved, or changed in 3 days. Soldiers were spread out on the floors, tables, and chairs trying to find some sort of comfort. It looked like a refugee camp at times.
I spent the 15 hours doing a mix of reading, gaming, and watching of movies. The Navy terminal had a copy of 12 Strong so everyone watched that. It was another great motivating military movie. There was one real sobering moment while stuck at Bahrain and that was the Funeral Detail that passed through the terminal. A young sailor was struck by a vehicle while crossing a street. While it was not a combat death it was still sobering for all of us and brought us back to reality for a moment. We aren’t just flying to some training exercise, we are flying into war.