Iraq Update ? Getting Home
Outdoor Dawgs ? in the August update, I mentioned I would send a note from Kuwait?I didn?t get to that, so let me tell the story of coming home.
Our replacements arrived in mid-September, and after a short transition we transitioned authority as the Forward Engineer Support Team in Iraq.
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My Team did an amazing job, completing about 210 projects in 270 days there. We worked all over the country, and in some bad spots. I can confidently say that the Coalition troops have better protection and quality of life than when we arrived, thanks in large part to much of the work the folks on my Team accomplished.
We left Baghdad on a C130 after the ceremony, but were on the first leg of the entire country ring-route. The crewmembers called it the ?pain train?. It took us 24 hours from lift off in Baghdad until we landed in Kuwait. To set expectations, normally that is a 1.5 hour flight. We made five stops on the way the Kuwiat?.it was bad, and about 130 degrees in the back of the plane.
We arrived in Kuwait on a Sunday, and would not leave until the following Saturday. What do you do in Kuwait for a week? I spent it in our local office there finalizing all the things that needed to get done prior to redeployment. Our barracks had about 120 people each, and were packed the entire time with folks coming and going.
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Next up, is the awards ceremony. This can be classified as mandatory fun, but it is something you have to do.
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Then we head out on Saturday night for Fort Bliss, Texas; our demobilization station. The flight was a contract civilian aircraft, and it took us 48 hours with two stops to get to Texas due to a couple delays.
Once we arrived at Bliss, I found out it would take us about a week to be complete there, and I was pissed, as they had three days on our schedule with nothing to do. I fought that one hard, and managed to get one day cut. We did manage to sneak off and have a final Team dinner at a great local Mexican joint:
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Then the day finally arrived, and it was time to head home. This train was headed straight to Huntsville.
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Nothing can come close to seeing your family after being gone for so long. The girls grew tremendously while I was away.
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First meal at home?.24 oz ribeye cooked rare and eaten with my hands at the grill.
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So the next day after arriving home, it was off to Disney for a week with the family. The next weekend we were in DC visiting the in-laws, so this is only my second weekend home since leaving last December.
I really missed being in a grocery store, so I go every day right now. Really glad Whole Foods has a bar, pizza shop, sushi bar, and taco bar all under one roof. They may as well take my wallet when I walk in.
I have two weeks before I head back to office life, a couple more projects around the house, and at least one deer to kill. Looking forward to making the most of it.
