Outward Bound Part II

Well, it’s Saturday afternoon 19 December 2009 – housekeeping day – and I’m sitting in the laundry room waiting for the washing machines to finish washing my clothes so I can move them to the dryer. So, I thought I’d use the time to prepare the next installment of Tales from the Sandbox.

Last time, I only write about half the trip out here, stopping when we left Leipzig Halle, Germany. The second leg of the flight was only about four and a half hours long. It was about 8:30 pm and fully dark when we landed in Kuwait. Even if it weren’t dark I would have been unable to send any pictures of our arrival, because photography on military airfields is not permitted without prior permission from command authorities. It’s too easy for the enemies of the United States to use information from those photos for targeting.

As we taxied to where we would disembark, in the runway lights we could see that it had been raining. Later I discovered that the brief, rainy season in Kuwait started about three days before our arrival. We filed off the airplane and onto tour busses where we sat for a long time, waiting for the baggage detail to take our bags off the airplane and put them onto a cargo truck.

Once they had completed their task and joined the rest of the passengers on the busses, we convoyed to a place about twenty minutes away, where we killed time for an hour, waiting for a Kuwaiti police escort to bring us from our holding area to the place where we would do our administrative inprocessing.

The location was pretty austere – just a bare patch of hard-packed silt and blowing sand, surrounded by concrete blast-restraining walls. For our personal comfort, there were a row of plastic porta-potties, several coolers with iced-down water bottles, and a pallet-load of water bottles waiting to go into the coolers. Under a sand-colored sun-shade (which was more of a screen than a tent) were picnic tables where we might sit and enjoy our water and any snacks we might have with us. Of course, it was dark, so the sun shade didn’t do anything for us, but I suppose it was nice to know that if we HAD been stuck there in daylight, we would have had shade.

When our escort finally arrived, we loaded the busses again and headed out. All the windows on the bus were curtained, and we were strictly instructed to keep the curtains drawn. Nobody told us the reason, but I suppose it was probably so that any hypothetical terrorists out there could not aim at the people on the bus. They could take out the WHOLE bus with a bomb or shoot randomly through the windows, but could not target individuals. (When you’re a Soldier you think of such possibilities as an ordinary part of planning a trip.) However, there have been no attacks on US forces in Kuwait since the beginning of the war in 2003, and the trip proceeded without incident.

The trip was about an hour and a half. The seats on the busses had worn upholstery – dingy with wear, but not dirty. They were narrower than the seats in American tour busses would be and had substantially less leg-room. We could not recline the seats at all without pressing on the knees of those behind us. I’m just observing, not complaining. I’ve ridden in much worse conditions.

Anybody remember the cattle cars from Basic Training? With duffel bags on our backs and rucksacks on our laps? That was worse, and certainly rides in the back of a deuce-and-a-half (2.5 ton Army cargo truck) were worse, too. Even so, I think I will never learn to love a Kuwaiti tour bus.

We arrived at the Theater Gateway, in the Logistical Support Area (LSA) at Ali Al-Saleem Air Force Base somewhere around 10:30 pm. On arrival, a junior enlisted Soldier got on the bus. “The R&R flight from Dallas just arrived before you, and so you’ll have to wait on your busses until the Dallas people are briefed and inprocessed,” she said.

“What about using the latrines?” said one of my fellow-travelers. It was a reasonably predictable question, since most of us had been aggressively hydrating during the flight and at the holding area. A wise person doesn’t want to start a sojourn in the desert already partially dehydrated.

“Oh,” she said, like this was a new idea to her, “Well, there are porta-potties right across the street, but get right back on the bus.” Then as she turned to get off the bus, she delivered this parting gem, “And go one at a time.”

A beat later, the spontaneous exclamation arose from the passengers, almost in unison, “One at a time?!? Yeah, right!!” followed by a mad dash to the porta-potties.

Apparently this young Soldier thought that there was some tragedy that would be averted by sending us one at a time. However, no drastic effects arose and about twenty minutes later as the last of the relieved passengers returned to the busses, we were told we could file off the busses.

We walked to a covered area where there were signs to various destinations. There was a sign for those staying in Kuwait, one for those traveling through Baghdad International Airport (Iraq), one for those traveling through Balad Airport (Iraq), one for Baghram (Afghanistan), and several others. Each of us stood behind the appropriate sign for our respective, final destinations.

A female sergeant with a bullhorn was walking about giving guidance about who was to go to what signs, in case we didn’t know. Her voice was high and thin and didn’t carry well – a problem many women Soldiers face when addressing large formations. The bullhorn helped a little, but not a whole lot, because the sound it produced included static and crackles that blurred the edges of her words. Since she spoke very quickly, her words mushed together and it was very difficult to understand her.

People who stood at the back of the crowds behind the signs looked at each other and said, “Hunh? What did she say?” People who stood closer and could hear her passed her instructions toward the back. Unfortunately she was still talking as they did so, so they (and the people to whom they were speaking) were apt to miss the next thing she said, so THEY said, “Hunh? What?” And so it continued. By the end of her speech, most of us had grasped about ¾ of what she said, and we hoped that nothing we missed was critically important.

After she had us properly sorted and organized, she gave us a 10-minute potty-and-smoke break. Since I had already taken advantage of the porta-potties and had no need to smoke, I took advantage of that time to search for Chaplain Huey – the person I was to replace – and Staff Sergeant Stevenson – my chaplain assistant. They had come from Camp Arifjan to pick me up and spare me from having to wait hours for a shuttle bus.

We found each other pretty easily and I went right away to load my carry-on luggage (backpack and laptop case) into the Unit Ministry Team’s SUV. I didn’t want to mess with them while sitting through briefings and looking for my checked bags.

SSG Stevenson arranged for me to be able to “swipe in” without waiting for the administrative inbriefing. I’ve been through it several times, I know the rules and since I already had a ride to Camp Arifjan the part of the briefing that tells people how and when to catch their transportation for the next leg of the journey was irrelevant to me.

The movement of personnel into the theater of operations and between camps is recorded by scanning bar codes on our identification cards. That’s what “swiping in” means – getting the card scanned. In addition to keeping accountability of personnel, swiping in also starts our various pay entitlements that go with being in a combat theater.

However, we found that I still could not depart until after the briefing because our baggage remained on the cargo truck until we unloaded it ourselves, with a “bucket brigade” style human conveyor belt. So I sat through the briefing for the fifth or sixth time.

After the briefing I went with my fellow-passengers to the cargo truck, but I found there was no need for me to be in the bucket brigade line. The Sergeant from the Theater Gateway staff was experienced at this, and knew about how long a line he needed to get the luggage unloaded and stacked for us to claim. He cut the line off short of where I was standing. So, I (and the others who had fallen in beyond the cut-off) just stepped back and watched for our bags.

I intercepted the bags as quickly as I could. I have a 65-pound rucksack (the bulk of that weight is my body armor), two duffel bags and a plastic footlocker. Chaplain Huey, SSSG Stevenson and I loaded them into the SUV, and off we went. By this time it was about midnight.

Well, this post is getting long enough. I think I’ll wrap it up for now and save the rest of the story of my arrival for later. Besides, my sheets are dry and it’s time to make my bed. Stay tuned for our next exciting episode, “Home Away from Home.”