Bye Bye Birdies, among other things..

So we went to work at 2am on Friday morning to see the aircraft off. Alpha, Bravo, and Charlie company each own eight aircraft. Our armament shop cares for all 24, so we need to be present when the aircraft depart in case they have problems on initial runup, etc. The companies' aircraft left about 2 hours apart, and I was there until about 10am. We split up the entire day into shifts because people needed to be at the shop while the aircraft were en route to port in Florida. One of my buddies was in a trailing blackhawk as part of a DART (downed aircraft recovery team) mission to make sure all the aircraft made it safely to port.

All the aircraft were gone before I finished my shift that morning. When the sun was just beginning to creep above the trees I went out to the flight line to have a look. The normally busy, bustling flight line lay completely empty; a huge vacant tarmac. Usually the Apaches sit in neat rows of eight with maintainers swarming around, tool boxes in hand. Now, there was just a soft, quiet breeze and the remnants of what looked like an abandoned airfield. It was really kind of sad and eerie at the same time.

With all of the aircraft gone there is little work for us to do until we leave at the end of the month. This is a commander's worst nightmare because the soldiers become restless and bored. A restless and bored soldier can become a liability as we all know, so the commanders release an atrocious list of rules and regulations to keep everyone in their place. While some seem rediculous, I can understand why the rules are set. It just adds to the whole "long december" theory.

A lot of people are starting to ask me questions. The one I get the most is, "are you scared?"
I'm not scared, because I don't know what it's going to be like. What makes me most nervous I guess is the whole traveling part once we get into country. We won't be flying straight in to where our operations are, so we'll have to get there somehow. Some say we'll fly on helicopters everywhere we go, but who knows for sure? We might end up on some damn convoy ground pounding all the way to the forward operating base. I will be slightly nervous if we end up on convoys. I'll just have to keep my eyes open much, much wider.

That's all I have to talk about right now. I love the holiday season but I feel as if I am too worried about getting everything ready for deployment to enjoy any of it. I hope everyone else is, though. It's a time to be with family and appreciate all the good things in life, especially christmas ham. I'll have my own little holiday somehow. Take care everyone.

-J