Traveling in a Iraq is not an easy mission – cannot simply get a commercial flight in to Baghdad International Airport (BIAP) (I did check Kayak…), nor can you hop in a car and drive across town to pick your friend up from the airport – is just a bit more complicated than that. Well, they are starting commercial air service between Bahrain and Baghdad, but sort of hard to travel with body armor and a 9mm on a commercial flight…
I generally travel with a ‘DV’ – aka a distinguished visitor – so I see the higher end side of things. DVs generally don’t have to wait for hours for a flight, or hope space is available – they show up and the airplane or helo is waiting. VERY nice. People cater to you. I saw a bit of what life was like without the DV edge when I went out to the OPLATs in May – still very nice, but the schedule is not tailored to minimize your waiting time, nor is customer service a goal.
For example, getting to Baghdad – we took a low-end biz jet – a little six seater – from here to BIAP (Baghdad Int’l Airport) – a nice direct flight. We also took Army Blackhawk helos to get around the country. Though weather was a problem on one day, generally the DV shows up and the helo is there waiting.
On Blackhawks, there are good seats and bad seats – and it pays to know the difference. On a couple of the flights, I was in the worst seat – rear right side. If they have the ‘passenger’ windows off, your are essentially directly in the wind blast and it can be pretty heinous. Sort of like sticking your head out of a car window at 120 mph. Simple rule – don’t turn your head – as long as you are looking straight ahead you are ok, but turn your head and wind blows your mouth open and spit flies and your nose runs and it blows all over… just face forward. You figure that out quickly.
Mind you, there is a hierarchy of DVs. Baghdad is a popular place – lots of higher ranking DVs to bump you. For example, retired 3 and 4 stars, current 3 and 4 stars, CODELS – aka Congressional Delegations – even celebrities – one plan to go to Baghdad was thwarted because Colbert was there to tape his show and it tied up a lot of assets. Stuff happens.
However, not every trip is great. We had to take a regular C-130 shuttle down to an airbase in south Iraq, and then I was able to appreciate the crappy side of travel. First, you had to be there three hours before flight time, so I was dropped off at the terminal to camp out while the rest of our group did meetings. NOT like an normal terminal – no food service or entertainment, just a room of plastic chairs and a crappy TV. Only upside was free bottled water. Lots of dudes sleeping on the concrete floor, waiting to get on other ‘space A’ flights (hoping to get on a plane…) Of course, the plane was late, so after I had made a bunch of frantic phone calls to get the boss there for the flight, we sat… and sat. There was a dining facility a couple hundred yards away, but they did not want us leaving the terminal because the flight was due ‘any time now’. I ended up running (literally…) over to grab some snack food and Gatorade, just in case.
That is one thing we are crappy at as a military – treating people like human beings when traveling. It is amazing what we expect people to put up with.
SO, after a lot of waiting and a lot of misinformation, plane arrives and we file out in a line to board – in full body armor w/ helmet – and carrying your own baggage. Seats in back of a C-130 are NOT like a commercial airliner – essentially long benches so you sit sideways facing the other bench. Benches (really, web strap bench – sort of like 1970s lawn chairs) were so close together that you had to negotiate with the person sitting across from you where to put legs – not enough leg space to sit directly across …. And you load up, sit down, strap in, and wait for almost an hour in the steaming hot back end of the C-130, no wind / no A/C, sweating your ass off in full body armor and helmet on a hot summer Baghdad day. We finally took off, and it got a bit cooler – but still very sauna like. Managed to doze / listen to Ipod, though was still sweating. We were smart enough to grab water, so we were OK. But about 45 minutes into the flight, this big Army dude stands up and then his eyes roll back into his head and he collapses due to heat and dehydration. A corpsman comes jumping through to take care of him – the only good side being we had to stand to get out of the way – which was good because my ass was killing me due the the web seat. I donated my remaining water bottle to him, and he woke up and felt better. We then touched down (more on that later) in Basra to drop some folks off and pick others up – same sauna like effect sitting in the 120 heat. Then on the second hop, an Army dude sitting right across from me – who was complaining of a headache due to not eating all day (it was 1pm) – was looking really bad. We gave him the rest of our trail mix and Gatorade. Thought he was ok – until he threw up into the trail mix bag. Luckily, it was contained. Just then, we started out decent into Tallil airbase – and I mean DESCENT. They don’t fly nice gradual flight paths – it felt like a roller coaster – must have dropped like a rock because the pullout felt like to bottom of a roller coaster for about 30 seconds – that heavy feeling in your stomach... That, the stifling hot air, and the guy yakking right next to me did not help my stomach… but no sympathy yakking. And, there was an Army LtCol – a Medical dude – sitting two seats away – and he didn’t do jack… The more I deal with the Army, the more I have negative to say…
Last interesting ride was in an MRAP – and I talked about that a few posts ago. A big armored truck. A bit more real, as convoys still get hit, but this was a short, uneventful trip.
Finally, sometimes you get awed by the scale of the whole thing. Were driving about one of the bases and there were fields full of Hummers, tanks, and assorted armored vehicles – hundreds of them. Then, there were even bigger fields of the scrapped remains of the old Iraqi army - acres and acres of scrap trucks, tanks, cars, artillery – even jet planes – just bulldozed into piles . It was amazing how much junk there was.
Even the Army can have a sense of humor - once in a while (read the Camp Slayer sign…)
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