TUESDAY 10 APRIL 2018

Woke up at 0330 to finish packing and to clean the Q huts.  We all dragged our luggage out to the road to pack.  Then we said our goodbyes to the part of unit staying back and headed out to Ali Al Salem.  It took about an hour of driving to get to the air base.  There really isn't much out in the desert except for some small random houses and a lot of trash and sand.  The ranges for Buehring reach far from the camp too.  Once we arrived we got off the buses and loaded our bags onto a pallet.  Naturally it began to rain, luckily it was only a light rain.  It seems that it rains only when we have to bring our bags outside.  It didn't rain at all during our time at McGregor except for when we cleared the barracks and our bags were outside.
We knew our flight wasn't going out until tomorrow so we headed up this hill to sign for some billeting.  This is where the fun began.  The billeting is this assembly of disheveled large tents with a ton of bunk beds shoved inside.  We walk into our tent and it is pitch black, blankets are draped over beds, and there are a few "hermits" living in there.  This small group of people were in civilians with grown out beards.  Apparently they have been stuck there for over a month and probably going to be there longer.  It gave all of us this uneasy feeling. One more thing to point out is that the mattresses on the beds didn't actually fit the frames.  The beds were all too long so the mattresses had these awkward folds in them.  I tell ya, it is one crazy situation.

​The rest of the day was pretty uneventful.  The majority of the unit stayed in the Drop Zone aka the MWR where there was internet, TVs, and Bingo.