Trip Report

I have been out of town for a few days so I haven't had the opportunity to write in my blog. I miss that. It gives me a chance to relax and put things down on paper that might or might not be interesting. But I found out I like to write, and that's ok. I have been writing Medals for guys here and it's a privilege for me to be a part of that process. I know that people are not in a safe, stateside place, doing a job that is dangerous to begin with, but now in a combat environment, doing more than they would normally do because of the mission. I want to recognize those people and I think they should get everything they can get. But as we wind down this tour of duty for everyone, we are all getting our travel arrangements that may or may not happen. We are all getting excited to leave. BUT, my replacement yesterday emailed the powers that be and said that he was medically disqualified to come here. He had knee surgery in early July and he was not recovering fast enough. Ugh! So they are scrambling now to find someone on short notice to fill his spot. That's bad for me, bad for the guy that is shortnoticed to come here and I guess good for Mr. Badknee. Oh well, I will keep going and going and going until they say go home. Then I'm taking some time off to relax.

My trip to Tallil again went well, even got to see the Ziggurat again. I think I would never get tired of going to that place. It affects me like no other place on earth. To walk on the same grounds as all of those people 4000 years ago is truly amazing. I look around to try and get a sense of that place and to see what was there. It is strange to see broken pottery everywhere. It looks like rocks but it's pottery. There are literally millions of pieces all over the ground. And the stories of the Kings and Queens and their servants, it really is something. I guess on that spot nearly 500,000 people lived there. Now 6 people, one family lives there. But at the base 4 miles away there are plenty of people. I had to spend the night and that was different. It was in a tent that was cool enough, but I felt like I was camping. The wind blew about 20 knots all night and I could hear every sound outside the tent. So I slept about 3 hours....maybe. And the flight to and from this place. Well let's just say that I am recommending that no Air Force people fly on this plane. I am writing the Army Flight Safety folks about the way these pilots fly their airplane. 12 of us went down to Tallil. We flew on a C-23 Sherpa. It's a twin engine prop transport. Not very big, but very ugly. We took off and flew below treetop level for the first 40 minutes, then we climbed to 10,000 feet, then we did a combat descent to 20 feet again for the last 30 minutes. They did this going to Tallil and coming back to Balad. The would climb up and over powerlines then push back over to nearly zero g to go back down to 20 feet again. Crazy! It's not a fighter with one person on board, it a transport. These aircraft aren't designed to do all of that hard yanking and banking. So, I'm glad to be back at Balad. The photo was taken out of the window of the C-23. You can see the shadow of the aircraft. You look at the wing and the ground shadow and there is not much distance from the shadow to the wing. That's way too low. That is that.