BUSY

BUSY, that’s about all I can say about that! The weather is getting hot the sky’s are clear and the bad guys are coming out of the wood work. I will be going back to days tomorrow and I am going to be even busier than I have in the past. We have a new pilot that just showed up to Salerno and I will be doing her refresher training after I am done with my mission flights. She has not flown for two and a half years so it may take a while, time will tell. We have many pilots on leave and it is getting to be tough to keep up with all of our mission sets with the amount of pilots that are gone right now. I fly, sleep, eat and try to keep from losing my mind, not that there is much gray matter left after all of these years, but I try. The night missions were a lot different from the missions that I will be flying on day shift but I am looking forward to the change, Again. On days I will spend more time going to put out fires where as on nights we did most of our deliberate operations. We would do in-fills almost every night and in doing so we had to really be on our A game. It was up to us to keep all the crunchies “ground troops” safe and out of harm’s way. It’s a difficult task to perform sometimes because the objective areas can be so busy with the chrunchies going all over the place and at times they are all asking us for directions over the radio to target houses and objective areas. Like I said we do missions every night and we try to do the best we can but sometimes things don’t go as planned. Some time ago we were doing an exfill and while we were getting our HVT out of the target house one of our heavy lift aircraft took fire and we lost a soldier and had a few more wounded. All said and done we looked over this target area for over six hours while our crunchies went house to house looking for our HVT and no one saw the bad guy hiding in the tree line waiting for exfill. I was part of the in-fill and did not do the exfill but I shared their pain not being able to keep our guys out of harm’s way. It’s probably one of the hardest things to do over here is deal with the loss of any life let alone a US Soldier. We lose people every day but the only ones that make the news are the coalition forces “CF” we have so many Afghani Soldiers over here putting their lives on the line every day but they just don’t seem to make the news. We have a few forces over here that we work with, we have the ANA “Afghanistan National Army” and for the most part they are Soldiers that want a better life for them, their families and their Country. Then we have the ANP “Afghanistan National Police” these guys are 50/50 some are good and some are corrupt you just don’t know who is who. The problem with the ANP is that they are all locals and there for a little easier corrupted unlike ANA where the Soldiers are trained and then sent all over the Country to serve in the Afghanistan Army so they are less likely to become corrupt. The ANA are trying to make a difference and they will charge the bunker throwing caution to the wind in the most courageous way and they typically suffer a lot of casualties. They are extremely respected for their selfless courageous service and they are doing great things for this Country.

Last week we had a formation to promote a few of our LT’s to Captain which seems to happen way to quickly these days but it is what it is. We also took the time to award some folks their CAB’s “combat action badges” and Air Medals. I was on nights and fast asleep so that will have to come later, we only have two pilots left in our Task force that fly 64’s that have not been awarded their CAB’s. I truly wish that we could have all gotten out of here without one. I do understand however that its why we are here and that we are making a difference and it comes down to its you or them and you have to do what you have to do.

My friend Joe is still back in the states tending to his self induced eye wound but I have been told that he will have a full recovery and his eye will be 100%. Judging by his face book page it looks like he is having an OK time back in the states going to the beach and eating real food out. But hey I am not jealous I will be home soon enough. I have never looked forward to a vacation this much in my entire life, I truly miss Marie and the Kids so much and I can’t wait to see all of them. Living here has been unlike anything that I have ever gone through in my time in the Army; the simple things seem so special like when you can score a couple of your favorite cookies from the chow hall to have as a snack later. It’s crazy over here and I will never forget this trip for as long as I live. I have never flown this many hours in such a short time in my life. Like I said earlier I eat fly and sleep and that’s my life right now, crazy. Well as much as I would like to continue rambling on I need to go get some chow and turn in for the night so till next time, night all

Rocket attack

I flew five hours last night and I was looking forward to some time off and as I was walking to turn in my gear I hear this funny whinny whirly sound going over my head. I look up and see nothing but within a second or two I hear this great big explosion followed by Big voice going off saying “incoming, incoming, incoming”. So off I run to one of our hardened buildings and there I sit till Big Voice announces “all clear”. I have been spoiled lately we have not had an attack for a few weeks and most of the time they happen when I am in bed. You see they usually happen during the day because the enemy can’t video the attacks in the hours of darkness and it all about them advancing their anti coalition campaign through video. The ironic thing about this morning’s attack is that the only building that was hit was the mosque on our FOB. It is holy ground and could not be moved, some of the locals that work on the FOB use it each and every day but no Americans are allowed to step foot in it. Needless to say I am sure that this attack will not make it to the local news here in Khost province, no one wants to hear that the Taliban have destroyed a mosque. Fortunately no one was hurt; although I am sure it will disrupt the normal day to day lives of many Muslims friends that work here on our FOB. I am on for the next few days and I am really counting down the days till I get to go home the first week in July will not get here soon enough. I posted a video of me out flying around Afghanistan in the front seat for a change that I took early this morning as we were coming home. I will write more soon I just wanted to get on and talk about my rocket attack and how much I am thinking about my mid-tour till next time, night all

As you can tell business in Afghanistan has picked up considerably, we are seeing a lot more bad guys out in our area of operation. Not to mention that we have people going home on leave and that leaves us a little short handed to cover down on all the shifts. Then there is the occasional accident like my buddy Joe had when he accidently poked himself in the eye and was rushed to BAF then Germany and finally the states for at least one month for eye surgery. Joe is doing well and his eye will be 100% so no worries there it just doesn’t help us with our man power shortage.

As for me I am doing well flying a lot and keeping up with all the gunnery is keeping me pretty busy. I am not watching as much TV and trying to stay focused on some other things and the time is passing pretty quickly. Night flying is a little bit easier than the missions that we have during the day. Mostly we are a dedicated asset for deliberate operations and we do not respond to 911 calls nearly as often as I did during the day. Don’t get me wrong the 911 calls are pretty exciting sometimes but you just never know what to expect. The deliberate operations are well planed and thought out and we go after defined targets and it’s always nice when we get our target. The Intel that we receive from some of these targets helps us to disrupt so many more operations and makes it worth the risk.

Less than six weeks and I will be home for some needed rest and relaxation and I can’t wait. Marie and the kids will pick me up in Atlanta and we will be off to Cincy. Not sure how much time we will spend up there but it will be nice to see everyone and then it’s off to who knows where. We do not have definite plans yet but we are looking forward to the time together and I am sure whatever we do it will be great.

The weather over here is starting to get pretty hot I am glad that I am on nights it’s a lot cooler and almost tolerable. I fly all night and into the sun rise almost every time I go out I just started to take my camera with me again and I will try to capture so sunrises. I hope to get on here more often even if it’s just for short up dates but time and internet connection just don’t allow sometimes. Till next time, night all

Mothers Day

Long night, and what a bad night it was. We did an infill a couple of days back and the troops that we put in this certain area lost a soldier yesterday from enemy fire and few more were injured. So last night right after we did our mission brief we went to the aircraft and launched. Twelve hours later we landed after engaging six enemy soldiers and flying security for four CH-47 aircraft that exfilled all the remaining troops that we had in this certain area. After our flight we had a mountain of paperwork to complete for everything that happened last night. All I knew is that all I wanted to do last night was call home and wish my wife a happy Mother’s Day. I sit here at my computer in my room ready to collapse and its 04:00 AM in Savannah and I want to call home to talk to Marie but it will have to wait till tomorrow night when I am at the office. All I can do is hope that she had a nice day with the kids and hope to make it up to her next year. For now I need to get to bed it’s been a long day, night all

Shout Out

Wing Man

New Pics

Well let’s just say that it is getting pretty busy over here. Last night I flew 8 hours supporting 4 different missions. I have not been on here for over a week and I will try to get back to posting every couple of days or so. I took some video the other night after our missions were complete and I will try to put it up tonight. I shot it on the lowest resolution to try to keep the video size small so I hope it will upload for me without too much grief.

As for me I am doing well, finally adjusted totally to my shift and back to flying 5 days or so a week. Not much has changed over here pretty much you get up go to work fly come back to your room and go to sleep and sometime during the day you are lucky to be able to grab a few meals and take a shower and get some laundry done. Then the next day arrives and you do it all over again.

Well I am going to close this one for now, I want to try to put some pictures and video up that I took the other day. I will try to get back on later though and talk about what has been going on with our missions a little bit or as much as I can talk about, till then night all