Arrival In Theater

Arrival in Kuwait and Ali al Salem airfield starts the mobilization clock ticking. The plane lands at Kuwait International Airport, where you move directly to buses for the 1.5 hour ride to Ali al Salem. Off the bus and into a large sort of tent but not a tent. Hard to describe, but it is referred to as Tent 3. You swipe your military Common Access Card into their computer and you are officially deployed.

From that point things can get quite interesting or, if you're lucky, go fairly smoothly. Ali Al Salem is a huge, sprawling tent city that serves as the entry and departure point for many folks flying in and out of Iraq and Afghanistan. It appears large enough to hold thousands of people at any given time. The transient population seems excessive until you experience the joys of getting manifested for onward travel. You start to wonder how it was ever possible to get and sustain more than 100,000 military in Iraq.

You also start to wonder if maybe there are folks there that never do move onward -- that they found it wasn't that hard to just hole up in one of the tents and dare anyone to figure out what happened to them. The place has a good mess hall, a small PX, numerous fast-food joints, and a ton of recreational tents. There might be people who have been ghosting around the place drawing combat pay for years.

Eventually, most move on. You have to go to Tent 1 and get manifested on the next flight to your destination, wait some number of hours for the roll call for that flight and hope you made the cut. Then it is a couple more hours before they call you for the final roll and load on the buses. Or tell you your flight was cancelled, go back to step one and start again.

My experience this time was oneof the better ones. Swiped in, walked quickly to tent one and was manifested for the next flight out, first roll call two hours later. That is just enough time to go to the area they unload the bags from the overseas flight, sort through the hundreds lined up to find your own, and lug the overstuffed, overweight duffle bags (three of them for me) 100 yards or so for palletizing for the next flight.

I made the roll call, made the final list, and an hour later we boarded the buses and headed to the military airfield. We got lucky and had a C-17 for the flight. Could easily have had a C-130, which can get very cramped when fully loaded. Wheels up and only about a one hour flight to Baghdad, arriving around 0230. My gaining command arranged a helicopter flight to get me from there to the International Zone where I work, only about five miles away but most of it "red zone," not protected by US or Iraqi security.

Interesting encounter at the helo pad. I find the Army an increasingly small place at my age and time of service, frequently encountering people I knew from years ago. While waiting for my bird to arrive, I notice a familiar name on the name tape velcro'd to the back of the hat of a young lady in front of me. When she turns I see she is a 1LT, just about right for...the daughter of a friend from my Armor Advance course 20 years ago! So now I'm not just running into friends, but their kids as well.

To wrap up the travel portion, the flight was uneventful, I was met at the helo pad and driven onto the New Embassy Compound to begin my year-long adventure.