Leaving

So it’s been busy the past few weeks since our brigade has redeployed from Iraq back to home.  However, the bigger news is that my sister now has a new name.  My sister was married on the Ides of March (the 15th)!  I would have most liked to see my sister being given away by my father.  All the accumulated family would have been nice to see and hear how they are doing.  Plus it wouldn’t have hurt to have had a chance to show off some spiffy new Dress Blues.  It’s the modern version of a knight in shining armor.

But it has been busy.  Our unit is redeploying back home and I’ve got a few more stories to share now.  I actually left Taji back around 04 March.  I was going down to Kuwait Naval Base to be the Officer In Charge at the Wash rack.  All of our equipment has to be thoroughly washed to ensure no foreign particulates or animals are introduced back home.  The trip down got delayed a couple times though.  First we couldn’t leave Taji because of low visibility and spent the night in the bay they had arranged for such an event.  So we lived out of our bags for a day, which isn’t bad.

We got out the next day, but one Soldier was just placed in the worst way.  The rotary wing’s prop wash took out his bags and blew them into the ditch surrounding the helicopter pad.  So all his gear got wet… I didn’t envy him.  I actually was lucky the same didn’t happen to me since I’d packed my duffle bag light.  It just got braced by the right gear at the right angle.  So we arrived at BIAP and had to bunk down at nearby Stryker.  It just took a little while for the bus to get there to transport us.

We spent the night and day there, and then moved out the next night around midnight.  We spent the rest of the night trying to find some comfortable way to sleep in chairs with armrests solidly in the way or on the floor with dirt and rocks coming up through the gaps in the pre-fab pieces.  There were only a few blankets to keep us warm or clean.

After a restless sleep, we left that late morning in a fixed wing and flew on down to Ali Al Salim.  There we quickly boarded buses and moved down to Arifjan.  We got to catch up on our sleep then.  We drew small buses and Non-Tactical Vehicles (NTVs, civilian) to move our people down to Kuwait Naval Base.  We arrived at KNB to sterilize all of our equipment on 08 March.

However, our stock had not arrived yet…

To be continued until next post!

If you can’t guess, I’m trying to keep this a little more digestable than just a single wall of text.

2LT Adam Ochylski