Give 'er

This is an old one that was deleted : I deleted it after Cbftw was thought to be in trouble...but decided to go ahead anyway............ sharing the stories from the people I have known along the way...

Give 'er

A good buddy of mine suggested I try this blog stuff. He's a bit of a blog spokes person ;) .....but I thought I'd give 'er anyway.


So they tasked us to operate "Herkie Airlines"... as it appears they needed a few good men /women /and some who look like kids, and a few good airplanes to move troops around.

So here I am. It is a slow morning. It usually is....at least until the planes start launching, and things start breaking, and then things get pretty crazy. Becuz we are usually in the middle of juggling the planes coming back for quick turns and those coming back and that wont be flying till the next day.

Basically, in the morning all the planes are pretty much ready to go...they go out flying, the pilots break them, we inspect them, fix them, clean them and refuel & service what needs to be serviced and then do it again the next day.

Same every day, but every day varies dependng on what breaks, what country it breaks in, the amount of planes flying, the times they are flying and how long things take to fix. Everyday varies with the units we are transporting, the faces I see and people I meet.

Here's a copy of a letter i sent to my freind. Gotta get creative to find things to do around here. So i wandered over to the combat support hospital the other day to visit the wounded soldiers who are on there way out of the country:......

One of your bothers showed up here the other day. A young kid, "Adam",
from Schofield barracks. Darkly tanned from the six months spent doing supply convoys in the hot desert sun. Dark hair, and deep soulful dark eyes,accented his boyish features. The stories he told seemed so out of place coming from someone so young. He was in mosul doing supply convoys when his truck was hit by an ied. He said he was the gunner on a 5 ton supply truck when it got hit and he dove for cover. The truck was shredded pretty good with shrapnel and he is lucky to not have been injured worse, even though he was the only injureded of all the soldiers in the convoy...........I
listened to his story, in amazement. He had wide eyes and listened intently with interest as he asked questions about the planes i worked on....."do you have to put air in the tires alot?......'cuz it seems like it would all squish out when the plane lands?"........ His smile lit up his whole face, ever present regardless of what we talked about, an indicator of his endearing innocence. The sorta kid you talk to and it just tugs at your heart that anything bad could ever have happened to him. When you talk to him he makes you laugh but when you leave the hospital and you are alone and reflect ....it gets you choked up. And with all his young innocence, and naivity, and inexperience......in the few hours i was lucky to talk to him i have learned more about life than i have in the 14 years i have served in the military.

He sat watching t.v. in the combat support hospital detatchment that we
have here.......for the soldiers enroute to Landstuhl hosp.in Germany...... wheni walked in. I like to visit the patients, becuz they just moved the hospital here after another post closed ...and it is off by itself and nobody knows it is here........and these guys are here without their buddies .......on this airforce installation which must make it seem
lonlier.......and it just seemed like these guys might need someone to
talk to. So i go talk to them. This time i talked to "Adam". He said ......."Wanna know why i'm here? i have big holes in my ear
drums, IEDs are loud!!!!!!" Almost in the same tone a child would
say....." wanna see my new toy?...".....and then he started to tell the story. He said that after the truck was hit, the convoy vehicles
surrounded the truck that got hit and then they waited for around two
hours before anyone got to the scene,( which had occurred only a few
miles from the base.) He said he was afraid of another attack.....
occurring as they waited "those two hours seemed like two weeks...."
"They put me in a for a purple heart, but i didn't want them to. There
are guys out here that get shot at and stuff"....He said he couldn't
here for eight hours after the explosion and then slowly his hearing
returned. "it didn't hurt too bad till it got infected, from all the
blood and stuff, .... but then i was in the hospital for a few days and
was on a morphine drip and it didn't hurt anymore." Then his eyes lit up as he proudly announced his new discovery, "but.......if i hold my nose and blow out.......you can feel the air come out of my ear if you put your hand up to it !.."

I gave him a U.S. flag that i had flown over Mosul in the plane that i am a crewchief of. And a certificate verifying that it was flown over mosul, and all the details and stuff. It is sorta an airforce tradition, that pobably doesn't mean much to him now. But i thought it would be a neat rememberance of his time overhere.....at least maybe it would be later for him.