OIF

OK, so I typed half of this out on a crappy keyboard that took me 20 min to type out what should have taken 5 and then lost it all. So I'm not very happy right now. But I'll blog nonetheless to let you all know what's going on. Where to start? The last couple days have been hell and I'm glad it's over.

Thursday night we're set to fly out of Taji to Balad. We have a LOT of baggage because we're all leaving forever (hopefully) so that doesn't make it any easier. We get on the bird and take off and land in like 5 min. We all know it takes longer than that get to Balad so we're not really sure where we are. We pick up a few people and some boxes and take off again. We fly for another good 45 min and land in a half a mile long perimeter marked off with lights in the middle of nowhere. Now I have no idea where we are. They tell us a bunch of initials, which I have no idea what they mean, and later we found out we landed in an FOB (Forward Observation Base) in Fallujah. Good stuff. We dropped off blankets or something. Thankfully, we were out before I even knew where we were.

After that, we fly for a while and finally land in Balad. Our new batallion (which may I just say is ten times the batallion that we over us before) picks us up and takes us to a little tent city where we finally get in to bed...this is at 0300. We wake up at 0430 and get ready to go our briefings for flying. After our briefings we get our names on a list to get out as soon as possible and they gave us a tent to stay in until they call our names. We stay there all day and then get ready for our flight.

Mind you we've been moving a ton of bags this whole time and we're all pooped from getting an hour of sleep the night prior. They have us move our bags outside after moving them inside because our flight is supposed to be announced in a little while...yea, it never does. Turns out our flight gets pushed back a couple times then cancelled...AT 0300 AGAIN!! We get in the bed finally (after moving our bags again) and finally get some sleep. We get to sleep in the next day, so it wasn't that bad.

After we finally get on our flight the next night, we fly into Kuwait, land, clap, all happy to be out of Iraq. We get off and wait on our ride. And wait, and wait, and wait, and wait. She got lost. WOW. Anyway, after our ride comes, at 11:00 pm when we landed at 9:00 pm, we get on and make it back to Victory. Where we are now. We got in the bed last night at 0230 again, so it's been a nice little routine.

But we're here, we have all of our baggage, and I'm out of Iraq. So all the hussle was worth it I guess. This place wouldn't be so bad though except that it's pooring the rain. We're staying in a tent that leaks so all of our stuff is wet now. That's nice. We're working on a plan that will get us out of here by the end of this month or the beginning of the next, so cross your fingers. I'll will let you all know when I'm coming home, but it'll be last minute. For now, we have plenty of work to do.

If I had anything else to tell you, I can't think of it now and I'm tired of typing anyway, so maybe next blog. It's harder to get to the net here, but I will, as always, make an attempt to get to you all. OK, I'm gone for now. Thank you all so much for your support and prayers. IT'S ALMOST OVER!!! Oh, I almost forgot...my cousin has now been deployed with a tanker's unit (I think, I haven't gotten all the details) but I ask that you all keep him in your prayers now. He's going to be busy for the next year. God bless. Talk to you all soon, and hopefully see you soon too. Peace