As Sayliyah Again

So I’m back at Camp As Sayliyah. It’s much cooler (only between 100F-110F) and less humid than the last time I was here in August. Everything here -- the surroundings, the enlisted kids on four day passes, the Toyota mini-buses driven by Third Country Nationals -- is same as before. The familiarity is strangely comforting. I’m here with three other people from MNF-I, two of whom I met along the trip down here.

This time the trip wasn’t bad; it just happened to run overnight which made it extremely inconvenient. We left Baghdad at at 0030 on 22 September on a C-130 with not too many passengers and flew to the western airfield of Al Asad where we dropped off some passengers and then proceeded southeast to Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar. Because there were so few passengers, I was able to lay down on the canvass like “seats” on the plane and actually fell asleep. I woke up some time later freezing my ass off as the cumulative effect of the plane’s air conditioning and altitude combined to make the cabin quite chilly. Lacking a blanket, I grabbed my body armor and laid it over me in a sort of ersatz, thirty pound blanket. I was able to get back to sleep. As I dozed off, I remembered my friend Lance’s Five Rules of Airlift:

1. Eat when you can
2. Sleep when you can
3. Piss when you can
4. Crap when you can
5. And always, always, always, bring a jacket

I had heeded the first four rules but failed utterly on the last one since I had wanted to travel light. Lesson learned.

We arrived at Al Udeid Air Base around 0430 on 22 Sep. By the time we met our ride and got to Camp As Sayliyah it was 0530. I grabbed an hour’s worth of sleep in my assigned shipping container, went to breakfast, and then rolled into the conference where I had to give one of the opening briefs. Fortunately, I remained coherent and the brief was well received.