My last few days and the trip home.
The communications squadron did their turnover to the next AEF* cycle about two weeks before most everyone else started theirs. I was feeling a bit picked on when I realized, back in August, that I was rotating in at least two weeks before most everybody else. Turns out, I was rotating out in plenty of time to be home for the holidays, so I was one of the lucky ones.
* Air Expeditionary Force--or I might have it backwards and it's EAF for Expeditionary Air Force. The AF uses them both to denote nuances of meaning. I think the actual group that will deploy is called the "AEF," but the concept of the overarching plan is the "EAF." It isn't worthwhile to me to keep them straight. The "AEF" I refer to here is the AF plan to deploy its members on predictable cycles. If you're in AEF 1 and 2, like me, you know precisely which months you're slated to leave well in advance so you can make plans accordingly. It's a wonderful idea that only works in theory. As with everything else, the AF deploys you when and where they need to, without regard for your personal plans.
Anyway...I quickly learnt that I was slated to leave before the huge surge hit and chaos reigned supreme, so...w00t!
Remember the "turnover" I got from the Captain I replaced? It consisted of a hug, pretty much. When I'd asked, "So what's my job?" she'd said vaguely, "Oh, you do plans and process 3215s. All the projects are in those folders there. Lieutenant Baker has been here a couple of months and has everything under control. He'll tell you what you need to know." And she was gone.
Oh yeah...and I had spent the two (plus) months prior to my departure for the sandbox emailing her and asking for details about what I'd be doing so I could "spin up" on my new job. I'd gotten "You'll be in the plans section" for my troubles. (This would have been the perfect opportunity for her to start CCing me on circulating email conversations in regards to the projects I'd be working, or to tell me to brush up on my understanding of standard wiring configurations and such. Sez me. But what do I know? I'm just a lieutenant.)
If you don't know what "doing plans" is or what a "3215" is or how to process one, you have an inkling how I felt at that moment. That was so vague that I didn't even know where to begin asking questions about what "doing plans" meant, etc, let alone how to process anything or where I fit in the bigger picture. Sometimes, you're so far behind the curve that you don't even know what questions to ask. That was me. It was awful.
I opened the folders when she left to outprocess, and found scraps of paper with scribbled, disembodied notes. There were some diagrams, and a couple of forms here and there. None of it was self-explanatory or coherent.
Not only was this awful, but it wasn't fair to me and it definitely wasn't professional. Even if Jeff (Baker) had all the information under control, it wasn't his job to spin me up; he had other fish to fry. He had to doubletime for a while to get me where I should have been before Capt Thomson left.
About a week after my arrival, I'd learned I was the "Plans Engineer" which implied that I was the Electronics Engineer specialist (which I most definitely ain't), which slowed my learning curve to almost horizontal. I was at least a month getting my head above water (or so it felt), and at least two months passed before I felt as though I was contributing to the mission.
There was no extant continuity binder. Continuity binders are a standard requirement (I thought) in all shops everywhere in the military. Due to the nature of the military, people are constantly shifting jobs. Each shop should have their specific mission, all their standard tasks and standard knowledge in a binder (and/or in a folder on their shared drive) to make these transitions smoother. Plus, if everybody in one shop gets hit by a bus, the whole shebang will need to be replaced and be up to speed in no time. The express purpose of a continuity binder is to diminish the learning curve as much as possible.
My first priority was to make sure I didn't leave my replacement lost and foundering like I'd been left. I began compiling my own continuity binder almost immediately. I tried to get one from another shop as a sample from which to tailor one to our needs, but I didn't find any. I tried to get one procured from another location. Nothing doing. So I cobbled one together from the stuff I was learning.
Halfway through my deployment, I learned that we were required to give our replacements a 72-hour overlap. OK. The continuity binder would help, certainly. If it was pretty good, I might be able to cut that overlap time short and leave earlier (so I thought, but it was incentive. :) ) Later, my squadron commander shortened the required overlap to 48 hours, unless we felt we needed more time. I figured 48 hours would be sufficient.
Two months in, I was already corresponding with the lieutenant who was to replace me. I quickly learned that, while she was bright enough to have qualified for AFIT* immediately after commissioning, she'd never worked plans, was not an engineer, and did not have a networking background.
* Air Force Institute of Technology. This is where the AF sends you if you're qualified and interested to further your technical knowledge. It's a legitimate master's program that is your full-time job until you graduate. It's almost two years long. This means my replacement had spent almost her entire butterbar (2d Lt--the lowest form of officer) learning period going to school instead of working in the AF--which is its own school of sorts and teaches things you can only learn through doing and experiencing. In short, this meant I was probably being replaced by an effective butterbar, although she is a 1st Lt.
About a month before she showed up, I began CCing her on everything she'd need to be up-to-speed on (as I remembered to CC her, that is). I didn't finish my continuity binder, but I did have the most important stuff I knew she'd need in it.
She was scheduled to arrive Saturday evening with another 50 or so replacements for our squadron. We'd scheduled our own flight from Al Udeid for them, since we had so many coming in. As often happens in such situations, some ranking folk from other squadrons found out about it and bumped almost half of them from the flight in order to appropriate their seats for themselves. Thus, we ended up with about 19 of the originally-scheduled replacements arriving that first night. Also as usual, the flight that was to arrive at ~8:30pm landed at ~3:30am. By the time those replacements (dead on their feet, like us) were inprocessed (which includes incoming briefings about what sirens mean and what to do, dropping off weapons and picking up armor plates at supply, then checking into lodging), we'd been up 24 hours and heaven knows how long they'd been up. I made sure Lt Bartley (my replacement) was bedded down, made rough plans for the next morning (knowing she needed sleep but sure she wouldn't be able to sleep long), then I crashed for four hours.
I got up and went to the office, did some work and more preparation, then went and banged on her door. We got rolling by noon. I explained that she had 48 hours to suck my brain for all it was worth. I'd talk 'til I was blue in the face. She was to listen and take notes and ask every question that sprang to mind. There was no shame.
We ate and spent all afternoon going down the list of ~30 projects that we were working at that moment, or were about to start. I gave her status and location and POCs (when I had them) on everything. I was dry and my throat was raspy by 6pm, and we were both bushed. But she had several pages of notes.
I slept well that night, and was up and at it at 6:20am the next morning. I felt more rushed than ever, because there was so much more to tell her and so little time. We took the truck and did a slow tour of the base, me driving and talking and her with a map and a pencil making notes. We got out and looked at some of the comm setups, talked about who you talk with to arrange tasks (all projects are different), and met the flight commanders of different shops. I gave her brief tours of the things I could think of to tour her through, but realize in hindsight how much I overlooked, even. At 8:30pm Monday, I was tired and still thinking of things to tell her. She'd already transposed half of her notes to an Excel spreadsheet and had me go back over them to make sure she'd gotten the facts.
Steve...you were asking, so here's my verdict: I think she'll work out great. She doesn't have a technical background, but for what she's doing, she'll figure out what she needs to know quickly. She's smart and she's anxious to do the best job she can, and she's friendly. Help her out, like you did me. I hope you like the new set of SCX officers as much as I do.
I said goodbye to everybody who was present to say goodbye to, then manifested on a flight to Ramstein at 11pm that night. I couldn't leave until after midnight, on my "designated date of departure or after," but the manifest comes roughly three hours before boarding, so I was good to go. There were three other comm people trying to fly to Ramstein, as well.
Just before we went into customs, we found out that the Ramstein flight had slipped until 2pm, so we manifested on a flight to "Frankfurt" (Rein Main AB, actually) that had been scheduled at the same time as our original Ramstein flight. We went through customs around 1am.
Going through customs when leaving Balad is an interesting exercise. First, you go one at a time carrying your bags through the "last chance amnesty box" booth. You're briefed that if you're caught trying to carry illegal articles out of the country past that point, charges could be pressed. Illegal articles include pornography (they're absolutely obsessed with pornography, one of the big victimless crimes), switchblade knives other than the government issued Benchmade brand, ordnance of any sort, anything that's been made by child labor (a good rule, but how the devil would they know?), or anything organic. You go through one at a time in order to ensure non-reprisal (izzat a word?). I made three trips dragging my bags (I have five, and they're heavy, baby--because of all the contraband, of course).
Then, you arrive in a tent and are assigned a table. You dump out your bags on the table and a customs official comes over and sorts through everything. Well, almost everything. They squeeze all your clothing to ensure you have nothing hard and unidentified therein. (At this point, you're very happy you didn't bring any adult novelty items.) They glance at your books and magazines for possible porn content (but not in those books--I could put anything inside an apparently legitimate copy of Pilgrim's Progress with impunity).
They also flip through your CDs and DVDs to see if any of it is pornographic. This last thing is just something they do for show, it appears. All my CDs were homemade, and had the "contents" written on them in Sharpie in my own writing. I could have boatloads of porn on each CD, but as long as I wrote that it was a burned copy of a Tim McGraw album, say, I was above suspicion. How would they know unless they look? Which they don't. They flipped through all my CDs, anyway. Perhaps they were looking to see if I'd burned one and labeled it "PORN," so they could tell me that I was too stupid to send home at this time and I must remain at Balad for another four months to meditate upon my crime.
Another weird thing was that they were looking for alcohol of any kind--even a dribble in a bottle. Let's think about this, shall we? First, there's no alcohol allowed on Balad, period. This makes me wonder where you'd get it in the first place. Then, if you managed to procure some...why oh why would it be a crime to take any out? (En route to Germany, no less, where the drinking age is regulated by the child's ability to maneuver the glass without spillage.) This little rule is made even sillier by the fact that there is absolutely no customs check on anyone's baggage when inprocessing Balad.
To The Powers That Be, here's a tip: if you are keen on keeping an area alcohol free, check the bags coming in. I'm surprised I have to tell you people this. (Must be more of that Army logic.) Also, there was no search conducted of my person. I could have taken any small item (or items) past Balad customs in one or more of the many pockets my uniform provides.* Even those with pockets that were sagging were not even blinked at.
* It's a good thing I'm not a criminal. I might should get a job finding weaknesses in people's security, though. I seem to have a knack for it.
So after I'd scattered my possessions far and wide and had them sifted through semi-thoroughly, I crammed everything back into the bags in a far less organized manner, and dragged them to where they were palletizing them. For you civilians, this is how the military loads bags to travel on a cargo jet (the "C" in C-17). Everything's stacked very carefully onto a pallet, strapped down good and tight, forklifted up the butt end of the plane, then strapped to the floor.
We retired to the "holding area" to await our flight. We were warned that it might not leave until 5am. It was scheduled to land (coming in from Germany) around 3am. So we expected to be there a while.
It was the most intelligent waiting area setup I've yet seen (I grant you, I've only seen Al Udeid's, but they could take a lesson). Balad had long wooden benches with a central television, and several cots set up around the edges. Some had mattresses, even. More irony: when you're trying to leave Balad, the waiting times are generally quite short, by military standards. We knew we'd only be there a couple of hours...four, tops. In Al Udeid, you can manifest for a flight and wait DAYS. No cots, no benches--just connected chairs that were carefully designed to make any horizontal position uncomfortable.
The only catch was that the heat in the holding area didn't work so well. I was wearing my thermal shirt under my blouse, which is usually more than enough, but I woke an hour after I dozed off realizing that my body heat had escaped. My Gortex was palletized, but even those with Gortex were shivering. We stood around, stomping our feet and chattering our teeth at each other for a while (everybody was waking up due to the cold), but we didn't have to wait long. Our flight may have come in at 3am, but we were ushered onto a bus, taken to the flightline, put on the plane and were taxiing by 3:30am. (One of the perks of flight crews who fear mortar and rocket attacks more than we do is that they make haste on the flightline where anywhere else, they'd lollygag around. This rather disgusts me in that I know how quickly and efficiently flight crews can safely unload, reload and be off the ground again if they're a mind to, because usually they don't. Particularly at Al Udeid.)
C-17s are spacious, to say the least. (The Ramstein flight would have been on a C-5, which is HUGE. I think you could park two eighteen-wheelers side by side in one, easily. C-17s are about half their size...maybe smaller.) We had 15 passengers and no cargo. After takeoff--we climbed perceptibly for about 20 minutes--we were given the okay to unbuckle and sleep on the floor, if we wished. Most of us did. The plane itself was warm, but the floor was cold. We had to turn over occasionally to defrost. After a while, I got up and walked around, peering out of portholes and studying the various functional features built into the walls.
We landed, lightly rested and cold, at Rein Main AB at 7:30am local (9:30am Baghdad time). It was still dark. We got our bags and called our rides, then went through customs again. They asked if I had any pornography in my luggage. Specifically, they wanted to know if I had any CDs or DVDs, and what I had on them. I told them I had CDs with music. They said OK and checked me off and let me out the gate.
Now. I know y'all hate it when I interrupt an otherwise dreary monologue about military life to think, but here I go again. I just outprocessed Balad, where my stuff was fished through manually in search of "illegal material." After that, my stuff had been controlled and out of my reach, and I had been kept in a sanitized area. We already did the "porn" dance. Now, inprocessing Germany, they ask me if I'm bringing any porn in. Have any of you people seen German porn? It makes the vast majority of American "porn" look Puritan. But here they were asking me if I was bringing any porn INTO Germany. That makes as much sense as...just about everything else I've seen lately, come to think of it.*
* Maybe this is a psychological technique used by the military to achieve our sheeplike compliance (outside of the tried and true threat of court martial and dishonorable discharge, that is). They bombard us with counterintuitive rules and procedures to the point that our brains just give up, stop trying to understand and simply comply. It's almost a religious experience.
So I replied simply that I had no porn, biting back the urge to make sarcastic comments that may have netted me a cavity search. We were ushered out of the "arrivals" area after clearing customs and dumped on the curb in the cold to await our rides. I tried going over to the "outgoing" terminal to get out of the cold, but they wouldn't let me in because (1) I wasn't catching a plane that day and (2) I had a weapon in my luggage.
Excuse me, but...what? It's so cold out that the frost looks like a light dusting of snow, and I've just come in from the AOR (evident from my outfit). Of course I have a weapon, you idiots. Further, you idiots, I'm not only forbidden to travel with any ammunition whatsoever, but already underwent a search for same. Without ammo, the weapon in my luggage is about as dangerous to people in the terminal as is a large book. Nonetheless, I ended up standing in the entryway (slightly warmer than outside) where I got chilled every time the automatic door opened, talking with another luckless incoming soldier, a Chief (warrant officer) Pick, who was on emergency leave.*
* He is Intel, and he'd been at Tallil for the last 10 months. He said he's seen his wife and kids about 60 days in the last two years. When people calculate the toll war takes on the people involved, they usually stop at "dead and wounded" counts. I personally feel this a huge mistake. The effects of war are incalculable upon emotional well-being and the personal lives of those involved.
We talked about how it isn't really an all-volunteer force and a couple of other things. He's at 18.5 years, and plans to separate at 20. He won't be promoted again (he'd have to accept a two-year extension, or something like that), so he isn't bound by protocol to toe the party line. I find it refreshing to listen to the views of such people, because I know their opinions are their own--not handed to them by the brass.
While we chatted, a man came by to ask our business. I explained that we'd been kicked out in the cold to wait for our rides. He said, "Who told you that?"
I said, "The lady at the door. She won't let us in because we have weapons and we aren't catching a plane today."
He said, "I run this place and I make the rules. Grab your bags and follow me." Bless 'im. Much warmer inside.
The soldiers and airmen at Rein Main were wearing BDUs. I haven't seen BDUs in so long that I found myself staring. After months of nothing but DCUs, the green, brown and black design seemed wincingly bright.
Chris arrived around 9am. She'd taken the day off to pick me up, carry me around and generally entertain me. By noon, I was showered, dressed in baggy and soft sweats, happily munching a fresh, homemade salad (mmmmmmmmm) and sipping a glass of wine. From sleeping in cold environs and occasionally struggling with heavy, unwieldy bags, my lower back was (and is) in knots. But it's all good. When you've been isolated and in uniform eating Army chow for so long, it takes precious little to catapult you into ecstacy.
So here I sit. My showtime for the flight to Baltimore is 4am Friday. I'll cross several time zones and get there at ~9am. I'll lay over for several hours (I purposefully built in a buffer, to allow for delays and customs) then hop through Atlanta to Montgomery. I'll be on Alabama soil by 8pm.
Life is good. :)
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