One, two, three times in the desert...

My update is long overdue.

As some, probably most, of you know, I was stationed at Yokota Air Base with the Red Cross from February 2009 (at the end of my last deployment) through March of 2010, but was notified that I would be deploying to Balad, Iraq back in January. Here, once again, are my views, thoughts, opinions, struggles, and just plain boring updates from the desert. Let's start at the beginning. It is, after all, a very good place to start.

I had to travel from Tokyo to Ashburn, VA for deployment briefings at our National Headquarters prior to flying into theatre. While there for a few days, some family of mine was able to visit, which was much appreciated after not seeing most of my family in over a year. I also met the rest of the Red Cross people that are currently deployed alongside me, yet in different locations: Baghdad, Bagram, and Arifjan. Some people I already knew from past assignments, and it resembled coming home to family once again, as a new deployment with the Red Cross always does.

From Ashburn, the entire team of 14 people was supposed to fly to Atlanta to process through CRC at Fort Benning. Here is what I quickly typed that day:

Comedy of errors. I'm currently traveling to Fort Benning from Ashburn. Our flight out of Dulles was delayed because of storms in Atlanta. On the plane. Wait. Off the plane. Hurry back. Wait. On the plane. Wait. Take off. Fly. Announcement: can't land in Atlanta. Not enough gas and too many delayed planes trying to land. Redirecting to Chattanooga, TN. Turbulence. Nausea. Woman behind me is crying. Man to my right is fiddling with his barf bag. Woman to my right is breathing heavily into hers, about to vomit. Almost everyone is either nervous or wants to throw up, maybe both. Suddenly, a loud pop and a bright traveling line of electricity above the aisle. Hit by lightning? No announcement. The engines are still running. The nausea has at least subsided and been replaced by uneasiness or downright fear. Still turbulent. Finally we land. Wait some more. Confirmation from the captain. Lightning struck the nose. Smoke in the cockpit-normal? If you say so. Waiting again. Fire trucks with bright flashing lights come to check our plane. We can see our pilots outside talking to men in shiny silver suits with large rubber boots. Can we get off? The flight attendant said we could in ten minutes... twenty minutes ago.

We made the Chattanooga news:
http://www.newschannel9.com/articles/landing-989528-plane-emergency.html

Once we finally arrived safely in Fort Benning around 0230 hours, Benning remained pretty standard. If you're reading for the first time, go back to my first posts to see what it was like. It is definitely improving, however. The hurry up and wait was not nearly as bad as it has been on past deployments of mine, and now we receive CAC cards which makes our ID process slightly easier. Not much, but slightly. It will, at least, make life easier in country. Also, more of my family was able to visit, so I got to see them and celebrate a quarter of a century of my life!

Written 3.22.2010
Ah, Kuwait at last. I had almost forgotten the stench of diesel fuel from our white Mercedes-Benz chariots as we take a short break before making our bumpy and dusty way to base. Half of the sky is filled with dust or some other kind of pollution, but soon the sun sets so we have only darkness offset by some large, generator-driven football stadium-like "street"lights. NOW I am back. Back to the flat, dusty, and hot land. Surprisingly, when we arrived the temperature was pleasant, almost cool. We were delayed in leaving Fort Benning because the deployment group was too large, so we took a much less crowded and therefore more comfortable military chartered flight. This seems to be the way to travel as this is the first time I've tried to get out of Benning without something going wrong with our plane at a stop along the way. Either this is a better way to travel or we got all of our bad "Atlanta flying" out of the way earlier in our trip. Hopefully we got ALL of our bad flying time out of the way since my least favorite flying part of deployment is yet to come: Kuwait to Iraq. We shall see... on the road again.

My team arrived with no further flying incidents. I actually got to sit in a seat on my way into country. We didn't get stuck in Kuwait and there were no sandstorms to delay us. I'm back on night shift, so I was able to jump in pretty quickly. Our office is by far the nicest one in Iraq that I've seen (and since I've been to every Red Cross station in Iraq, I think I have a leg on which to stand). We occupy an entire hard stand (i.e. not a trailer, therefore safer, dad) building. When you first walk in, there's a desk at which our wonderful volunteers sit to watch who comes in and to make sure everyone logs in if they want to use our internet and phone café or our TV room. Our internet/phone café has 5 non-military computers so people can keep up with their friends and family on instant messengers, skype, email, facebook, or whatever other means they might have of contacting their families. There are also 3 phones for that same "keeping in touch" purpose. Our office is around the corner, which is organized, well set up with everything that we need, and equipped with a DVD sign out/library. The TV room is behind our office, which has a TV, a VHS collection of movies, and both DVD and VHS players. This is also our canteen, where there is a refrigerator with cold water, a coffee pot, bread maker, snacks, a hot water dispenser, and a couch on which to enjoy it all. Lastly, we have the Legacy Room, which is by far my favorite. It's a small room with a computer with webcam, DSN phone, desk/chair, and a couple of recliners. The point is to allow people private time with their friends/families in 1 hour increments. Those people with appointments may be bumped for people with a "life event", i.e. the birth of a child or some other big event like that.

Kirsten actually received a phone call the other night from a serviceman who has redeployed back to the states from Balad. He had apparently used the Legacy Room while here to watch the birth of his first child back in Arizona. He called to thank the Red Cross for what we do and to see if there's any way that he can give back to our station. Naturally, being able to witness the birth of his child, albeit from a distance, really spoke volumes to him about our organization and the lengths that we try to go to serve our service members. As I am the blubbering type when it comes to children or the military, his story via speakerphone and Kirsten's relay definitely brought tears to my eyes.

I'm on nights again, so my sleep schedule is, of course, less than stable. Sometimes I fall asleep shortly after I get off shift, sometimes (like when there was a spider above my bed), I can't sleep for awhile. I just hung up a semi-blackout curtain over my window, so hopefully that helps. Less than a week in theatre, and already my ankle is twisted. Contrary to popular belief, I am not graceful enough to twist my ankle and remain standing. Oh, no, I think the terminology 'thrown to the ground' fits the situation well. Thankfully, I had my boots on which provided enough stabilization for it to not be too bad. Good thing, because I was at the beginning of my walk to work over a who'lotta gravel. It's pretty different to be in civilian clothes. I'm so used to being in uniform in the desert that some habits have been hard to break, such as the tight and unmoving bun and the blousing of the pants. I guess I'll adjust. It has been nice to be able to wear some color instead of being in all khaki. I'm sure by the end of this, though, that I'll swear off blue for awhile just like I swore off brown for awhile on previous deployments.

While I am not old by any stretch of the imagination, and have yet to be anything other than the youngest on a Red Cross team in theatre, I am suddenly feeling old. This isn't a new feeling, even when I was first deployed at 22. Messages that come through are almost exclusively for people younger than I, and often by many years. It's hard to remind myself when I see a birth year of 1990 on an emergency message that those people are already 20 -- or nearly there. My own youngest siblings, born in 1993, will be old enough to enlist in a little over a year. What a concept. Where is the time going?

The little things on deployment are almost always the most exciting for me. The fact that I won an argument with a command post about how our messages are delivered, that I can do my own laundry on this deployment, going to see some fixed wing aircraft at an airfield, and the sweet things that the people with whom I work (both within the Red Cross and the S-3/S-1/etc) say are the things that make me pump my fist and do a little happy dance. Well, maybe not doing laundry...

Acronyms for the non-military:
CAC: common access card - a form of ID that military and civilians receive to obtain entrance into various military facilities
S-3 and S-1: the military shops (usually personnel, I think) that often take our messages