A year in Afghanistan: Tarin Kowt and back in 24 hours...

Our task force that is located up at TK had some new pilots that needed to receive their Rules of Engagement briefing, so I had to travel up there to give it to them on Saturday. I had to be on the other side of KAF at 0400 to manifest for the flight, which meant that I had to be up at 0230. Needless to say, my day started quite early.

Once I made it out to Mustang Ramp (the place where we keep all our helicopters) and got manifested, it was just time to wait around for the flight. In the Army, we do this a lot. The Public Affairs Officer was traveling on the helicopter too, with a camera man from animal planet. I'm still not really sure what that guy was shooting. We hung around by the helicopter while the crew was getting the aircraft ready and had their pre-mission brief. The camera man was mounting his cameras so he could get certain footage. Still don't know what that had to do with animals, but oh well.

This crew was newer, so we didn't end up taking off on time, as the crew chief decided he didn't want to rush the new crew in their first mission. The crew all recognized me, as I had given them their ROE brief when they had arrived at KAF a few days earlier. One of the Soldiers made it a point to come up to me and tell me that my brief was the best brief he had all day. That was nice of him. One of the pilots came up to me and asked me if I wanted to sit in the jump seat. I have been asked this before, and for some reason I always turned them down. Well not this time, I took them up on their offer. I don't particularly like riding in helicopters, so I thought maybe getting to sit in the cockpit would help as I could look out the front window like I can in the car. Let me tell you, it is so much better in the jump seat than it is in the back of the aircraft where you have to sit sideways and don't really have any window to look out of. I didn't feel airsick once. I may have to look into always riding in the jump seat...

Once I got to TK, my paralegal picked me up at the PAX terminal and we went to breakfast after we dropped off my stuff. After breakfast, I got an hour nap in. Then the marathon briefing day started. I first thought that I would only be giving one brief, but I soon found out that I would need to give 2 briefs. Then the first brief started and that turned into 3 briefs. The brief is about 2 hours long, so that was a lot of briefing. After the 1st brief, I was able to grab some lunch. Then shortly thereafter, I started the 2nd brief. At the end of the 2nd brief, the TF CDR came and pulled me out there to go to dinner with him and all the Company CDRs. He wanted me to brief them on any trends in the BDE right now, and then any issues that they need to start thinking of now before redeployment.

After dinner, I had another brief. At the end of this brief, the Master Gunner wanted to sit down with me and go over one of the guntapes from a recent engagement. When that was finally done, it was around 2130. My paralegal took me by the PAX terminal so I could see when the flights to KAF were scheduled for the next day. When I got to the PAX terminal, the Soldier working the desk informed me that there were no flights out the next day. However, he told me that there was a flight scheduled to go out any minute. I really didn't want to get stuck at TK for a long period of time, so I rushed back to the room where my stuff was and then rushed back to the PAX terminal.

I finally ended up back at KAF around midnight, which means I didn't get bed until an hour or so later. It was a very very long day. Thankfully, this morning was Sunday, so I didn't have to be at work before 0700 like I do on other days.