My physical trip to Afghanistan began at 0240 local time on the early morning hours of 8 March, 2011. Actually, it started earlier than that with packing the jet, getting ready, etc, but the tires of my A-10 aircraft left the surface of Moody AFB's runway at the above early hour. A little background on my last days prior to leaving.
The weekend prior to Tuesday morning was spent with Rachel and Peanut. What did we do you might ask? Well, we did a variety of things. We ate, slept, watched a couple movies (all 3 of us), did some house work, packed, sold a wagon on Craigslist, talked to the neighbors, and washed the cars. It was a great weekend spent with 2 of the things in the world I love most; Rachel and Peanut. As you may imagine, there were some moments of sadness with the inevitable departure, but we made the most of the time we had and simply enjoyed being around eachother.
Sunday, we went to our Church in Valdosta, Park Avenue Methodist Church. It's a charming church that makes Rachel and I always feel welcome. After Church, we had lunch at Red Lobster with our close friends, Don and Jean Wosky. They are two wonderful American's who care for Rachel, Peanut, and I deeply. We are blessed to have them in our life. After some time with them, it was Pizza time Sunday night! Even though Rachel and I have a fundamental difference of opinion on who has the best pizza in Valdosta, she recanted and let me order from Sister's Pizza that night. It was glorious....except I over ate.
On Monday, I had to be at work for our "Official" departure briefing. An AOS guy (don't know what AOS stands for) came and gave us our flight plan, diplomatic clearances, weather, and airborne tanking plan to get us over to Lajes Air Base, Azore Islands, Portugal. It was a pretty quick brief, but very informative. After that, Lt Col Clark, 74 FS Commander, gave his mission commander brief as he was leading the 18 jets out of Moody. After covering the expected tasks, flight duties, etc, we had a final briefing from our Wing and Group leadership. Our Operations Group Commander, Col Ellwod Hinman IV, gave a very motivational quote to us. Picture is posted below of plaque with the quote on it. After all this formal stuff, it was time to "pack the jets" for the trip. We all grabbed our stuff (quite a bit for over 6 months of being gone) and used ATV's and van's to take it out to the jets. When traveling in a single-seat airplane, we still have to have a place to put our stuff. We carry these cannister's called travel pods. These travel pods have a door that allows us to "stuff" things in them. Pretty genious if you ask me. So I stuffed my pod and headed home!
At home on Monday, I let the bug guy in our home to give his quarterly spray for bugs. This was vital since I will not be around to kill all the pests that Rachel will be encountering during my absence. Sorry babe. After that, I washed my truck, did a few other small tasks, then played with Peanut a final time. At this point, it was 3PM in the afternoon, and I had a showtime of Midnight back at work for my scheduled 0230 departure.
At this point, I had been up for over 40 hours and was beat, but to just make sure I could get some sleep in the middle of the afternoon, I took an Ambien to ensure I was out cold so I could be coherent for our early show and takeoff. Well, it worked! Next thing I know, Rachel was waking me up saying it's 1030 at night! I took a final shower in our wonderful bathroom, played with Peanut a bit more, then ate my final meal before the deployment.......Rachel's Tater-Tot Casserole! I basked in the gloriousness of this casserole and didn't want the moment to end. It was with about 5 minutes to go that I finally lost it all; Rachel was there to hold me and we had a very private and precious moment.
I drove us together out to the Base. We had small-talk and discussed a few items, but most of the car ride to me was simply a husband and wife, facing a tough obstacle, with pride and honor of it's cause, but with heartfelt longing for the time when we'd be together again. Arriving at the Squadron, we had our final embrace, a quick joke, and then I walked off; she drove off. It was a lonely walk for the 100 yards from the parking lot into the Fighter Squadron. However, I now knew that every second that was passing was a second closer to when we'd be together again. As I entered the Squadron, my personal desires had to be compartmentalized; something that we fighter pilots have grown so accustomed to doing. As I looked into the eye of the 5 men I would be leading off to a small island in the middle of the Atlantic, I had a moment of Pride of what we were doing, where we were going, and why we were doing it. So as I led 6 A-10's to the runway on that moonless and dark night, I was proud to be doing it. As we took off at 0240 local, it was black and there was poor weather off Norfolk, Virginia's coast. We pressed on into the black abyss, hoping our jets would perform as expected. They did. We found our refueling tanker at the expected point, were able to get gas, and everyting was going smoothly. 6 Air to Air refuelings later, 3 "piddle-packs".....the bag that holds our Pee, and 9 hours and 47 minutes later, I touched down on a runway that had half of it closed with over 30 knots of direct crosswind pushing me into the closed half. After such a long and demanding flight, it was not what we wanted, but what we got. You know what, you just deal with it and press on and we did it. So that's where I'll stop for now. I should be sleeping right now, but can't. I've taken 2 Ambien, but they are not working. I have to get up in 5 hours to do it all over again only this time from Sigonella Naval Air Station in Sicily to our next stop. I'll write about the Lajes to Sigonella leg at a later time. One last thing, since I'm logging into this from Italy, my spell check is done in Italian so every word is spelled wrong according to the spell check. Don't make fun of me too bad please!
Rick
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