The Trip Home Part I

It has now been a week since I arrived back in the good ol' U.S. of A. At this time last week I was hurtling in my rental car from Atlanta airport to Fort Benning, where I would spend all of three hours (turning in my body armor and having lunch with my escort from that first week at Benning).

The journey began late Tuesday night, August 28. I was told to show up at the Rhino station an hour ahead of "manifest call," which was supposed to be at midnight. (Rhinos are those armor-plated RVs that lumber down the road in convoys with support from Humvees.) So, after having one final cigar with my boss, I took my duffels (with the aid of a naval petty officer and Aussie sergeant), and walked over. At midnight they took down our names, eventually filling seven Rhinos.

Then we waited. And waited. At one point I caught myself watching most of "Turner & Hooch," the Tom Hanks/canine comedy from the 80s on the TV conveniently set up there for all of us "loiterers" at the "bus station." Finally at about 2:30am we boarded the Rhinos and set off for Camp Victory, whence I would be whisked to BIAP (Baghdad International Airport, pronounced "bi-op").

The trio down Route Irish (named after Notre Dame) was uneventful except for two rounds of tracer fire that were shot been the lead Humvee and first Rhino. Well, not exactly between, more like over. It was odd, and a bit frightening, but in the end did not seem aimed. After picking up my bags at our destination -- all passengers formed bucket-brigades to get them off the tractor-trailer -- I was taken to BIAP for some more waiting.

It turns out the first formation was at 10:35am, so I had a long and fitful night of "sleep" on the airport gate-style chairs set up in a hangar-style tent (which was air conditioned, thank God). After showing up at formation, I managed to grab a standby seat on a flight that would be departing "sometime after 1." So I went over to the DFAC, had my last meal in Iraq, then came back and... waited.

At 3:15 they called our flight, so we put on our body armor and marched over and onto the C-130. This flight was manned by a Japanese crew for some reason, and said crew didn't like people have ammunition magazines on them. So everyone, including and especially soldiers, surrendered their ammo into a sort of lost and found box for safekeeping.

As expected, it was HOT in the plane, and it seemed that everything I was wearing was soon drenched in sweat. The flight down to Kuwait was uneventful -- though this was about 24 hours after the Congressional delegation, flying the same route, was fired upon.

Upon arrival at Ali al Salem Airbase in Kuwait, I couldn't believe that it was somehow hotter and brighter than Iraq. Nevertheless, I was able to quickly shed my body armor, pack it into my spare duffel, and leave all that by the bunk I was assigned in another large air conditioned tent (capacity: 16 bunks). I found out that the "Freedom Flight" to Benning on which I was booked wouldn't be leaving till Saturday Sept.1, but that if I showed up the next morning (Aug.30) at 9, I could maybe get a standby seat on the "R&R" (because soldiers were going home for 15 or 18 days of R&R) flight to Atlanta. This I planned to do. After a quick shower and some food (and a change into shorts from my ACUs!) I felt like a new man.