The Flight

6/14/2007 10:06:00 PM UTC +0300

My trip down to Qatar was just so horrible, I have to share... Actually, considering the headaches I went through in deploying, it wasn't nearly as bad as it could have been, but it was still one the more unpleasant days of my life.

The military seems to enjoy moving people at night. This is understandable, to be sure, however it gets quite tedious when you're asked to show up for transportation in the middle of the night, and then have to sit in the terminal for hours until the planets align.

Due to limited transportation options out of the IZ, it's pretty typical to have a long wait at Baghdad Int'l Airport. I arrived at BIAP at 0400, and was faced with a thirteen hour layover. Fortunately, nearby Camp Sather has transient billeting, available for free to all military personnel. They call this billeting facility the "Sunny Palms Resort" or some other such nonsense. It's a big tent with forty or so bunk beds, grimy mattresses, and a pile of sheets and blankets to pick through. The tent is pitch black 24 hours a day, and is continuously overrun with snores and the humming of an industrial air conditioner. On awakening, I was greeted with the pleasant vista seen at right.

From here, I go to sit in the airport terminal. By airport terminal, I mean a concrete area with an aluminum roof. No walls, no air conditioning... You get the idea. A hundred or so of us sit here indeterminately until our flights are called up some hours later. We then squirm into our 80 pounds of gear and stand in line in an alley for another hour or so. The temperature has passed 40 degrees Celsius, and we're all exhausted. We then get the call to move out, and we have a walk of perhaps 500 meters across the asphalt flight line to our waiting C-130.

Like cattle, we file into the belly of this 1963 aircraft. There is seating for about 60, yet we somehow fit about 80. There are four lengthwise rows of seats, pairs facing each other, with so little leg room that our knees must interlock with our neighbor across the aisle. Our bags are on our lap or hanging overhead, but we remain in full uniform and body armor for the whole flight. I have never sweated so much in my life--not while running seven miles, nor during my near-death experience with Bikram Yoga.

Once we're airborne the plane cools off and the worst of it is over. Nonetheless, we still have two and a half hours flying time; three hours waiting at Al Udeid Air Base, going through customs, etc.; a one hour bus ride to Camp As Sayliyah; and two hours or so of in-processing at the R&R facility before we can get to a shower and a fresh bed. My shirt is still soaked as I gingerly drop it on the floor.

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