From the Start

Well, where do I start? It was the 20th of January 2009 when we boarded the plane headed for Afghanistan. We stopped in Germany for a refuel and due to weather issues and communication issues at the our destination, we were unable to continue. We ended up in Frankfurt at the Maritim Hotel. One would say "wow, what luck." However, not in this case. We were not permitted to leave the hotel since we did not have Visa's to be in the country in the first place. The entire Battalion ended up staying in the hotel for more than 30 hours with nothing to do. I just slept and watched German TV and some BBC. I will say this, the food was 5 star plus, if there is such a thing.

Then we proceeded to our first staging point, Manas Air Base, in Kyrgystan. That was supposed to be a 1 day layover. As luck would have it, it turned into several days. Each day was going to be "the day we fly out." But, we were bumped because other units had higher priorities and then weather delays and so on. It turned into a 5 day layover. Some of us were finally on our way to Afghanistan. I was the only one from my Team that was on the first flight. It took the rest of my team 4 days to catch up. However, I was finally in Afghanistan, at Bagram Air Field. This too was supposed to be a one day stay. And yet once again, Murphy raised his ugly head and intervened.

At this point we are now supposed to be transported out by teams. My team was supposed to ship out as a cohesive element to Mehtar Lam. Yet again, things did not go as planned. I had three of my troops that had to stay behind because they did not have all the training done that was "required" in order to move on to the next step. At this point, Myself and one of my NCOs made it to Mehtar Lam to meet up with the guys that we are to replace.

Day one on ground went well, I linked up with the NCOIC of the group that was going home. We made plans for the Left seat Right seat/ Right seat Left seat so as to get up to speed and here came Murphy again. I had to Medivac my soldier out the next day to Bagram for surgery. He had a Gall stone that was causing problems He is now in Germany for recovery and might be back in 8 weeks.

My guys, that were left behind, finally showed up a few days later and we are now back on track. Hopefully, we have met with Murphy enough times to appease him. I am looking forward to a rather enjoyable deployment from here on out. We are going to be moving one more time in the near future, and linking up with our new bosses. The fun stuff will begin once that happens. As for now, my team and I are just doing training with the out going guys and getting used to the weight of the equipment on our back. Just so you know what that means. The ruck sacks each, weigh around 97 Lbs. and then of course the body armor and the ammo and the other stuff that is worn on the body. All in all, I stepped on the scale with all of my gear on and was just under 375 Lbs. That is what I weigh in at, when I am mission ready.

The infantry guys used to give us(us, as in LLVI) crap about being slow going up the mountains. Until one of the guys got tired of it and said "lets switch ruck sacks and see how well you keep up" There was a difference of over 50 Lbs between what we had to carry and what they had to carry. After that, there were no more complaints about how "slow" the LLVI team is. We are the Pack Mules in the army.

If I have internet where I am going to be, I will add to this blog again soon. If not, I hope to be able to update this once I get some time to "refit" at mid tour. bye for now.