6 Years Ago Today

I married the love of my life, my amazing wife Ashley:

It has been a wonderful ten years since we met at Cannon Air Force Base in 2001.  We've lived in the same town but dated different people, lived 10 hours away from each other and only dated each other, been separated for months when I was deployed to Kuwait and Iraq, and when she was travelling for work, lived in England and Korea, and visited places like Russia:

 China:

 and New Zealand together:

We've seen at least 125 cities in more than 25 countries across six continents.  It's amazing how lucky we've been to have such wonderful experiences, but what's even more amazing is how lucky I am to have had her by my side throughout.  She's the most amazing woman I've ever met.  There literally is NOTHING wrong with her.  She's gorgeous, brilliant (the only engineer I know who's passed the bar, has her private pilot's license (even if it's expired), and has a degree in international relations), shares the same taste as me in movies, music, books, and vacation destinations, has an amazing sense of humor that keeps us laughing together all the same (Ask me if I'm a tree...), and is the most giving, caring, thoughtful person I know.

When we travel, the first thing she thinks of is souvenirs to buy for others...I'm usually looking for the local brand of alcohol.  When I want to plan another trip or put money in savings, she suggests giving to charity.  She makes me stay home to watch football and basketball games, and has more passion for sports that most guys I know.

I love her more than anything in the world, and I'm the luckiest person I know to be able to claim her as my wife, and I want everyone to know it.  So baby, here's to you, the best thing to ever happen to me.  I love you dearly, miss you terribly, and cannot wait to hold you in my arms again...

Handover

Ok, so I know I promised two blog entries last week, but life intervened, and I only got around to doing one.  Today I wanted to do two, in honor of everyone still being here and the world not ending on 21 May 2011, but I had the pleasure of talking to my wife for almost 45 minutes, so only one post.  

If you're lucky, when you deploy somewhere, you'll have a few days of overlap with your predecessor so that he or she can bring you up to speed on the priorities of your job, what the hot issues are, and what your job entails.  As luck would have it, I knew Brandon Sokora from our time in England, and had already been in touch with him during the months leading up to the deployment.  Since I arrived a few days earlier than expected, it gave us a full ten days to transfer responsibilities and allow me to feel comfortable in the job.  Brandon did an awesome job of explaining the organizational structure here, how things are accomplished, the current priorities, and his best guess on the future priorities.

 

In the 8 years the United States has been in Iraq, there have been several names for the organization that ran things in the country.  The first was Combined Joint Task Force 7, which changed to Multi-national Force Iraq (MNF-I), and now United States Forces-Iraq (USF-I).  USF-I is led by a 4-star Army General who works here on VBC with a significant staff.  The staff is called a Joint Staff because it has Air Force, Navy, Marine, and Coast Guard members serving along with the Army.  The staff is organized in standard fashion, several directorates numbered from 1 to 9.  The J1 handles Personnel issues, J2 Intelligence, J3 Operations, J4 Logistics, J5 Plans, J6 Communications, J7 Engineering, J8 Finance, and J9 Public Affairs.  In additional to the staff there several Major Subordinate Commands, which all provide support in different areas.  I'm part of the Air Component Coordination Element - Iraq or ACCE-I.  There is a similar organization in Afghanistan.  My boss is a 1-star general who was just selected to receive a second star, which kind of says that the Air Force is sending its A Team to Iraq for crunch time.  As the A7 (just like in the Army and Joint world, 7 means Engineering), I'm responsible for reviewing and validating the drawdown planning for the Air Force bases in Iraq.  I obviously coordinate with the other members of the ACCE-I staff, as they handle their functional areas (similar to the structure shown above), and I specificly work closely with the Air Force Civil Engineers in Iraq. 

 

It is amazing how much has to leave this country after being here for 8 years.  I remember being in Kuwait in 2003 as we shipped pretty much everything that would fit on a flatbed north to aid in setting up bases in the southern part of Iraq.  We did that on the fly, never thinking more than a few months ahead.  Well, as time has passed, we have instituitionalized many things here, such as dining facilities, morale, welfare, and recreation (MWR) areas, Base and Post Exchanges (little shopping malls).  Most of those things have to leave, and there needs to be an organized plan to do it.  On the engineer side, we have a multitude of people, equipment, and materiel that needs to be packed up and shipped either home or to other places in the world that need it.  It should be an interesting ride.

 

So, in addition to explaining a lot of that to me, Brandon had the pleasure of me following him around everywhere he went for about 8 days.  I called him my security blanket.  He walked me around the Al Faw Palace (pic below):

 

Al Faw Palace

He showed me the main Dining Facility (DFAC), as well as a few others around base that I'd never been to.  I deployed to the Air Base on Victory Base Complex (Sather AB) back in 2007, so I had been here before, but it's amazing how much things change in such a short time, and it was great having my own tour guide.  During his 6 months here (lucky dog, I'm here for 8) he was able to meet just about everyone who worked in an area of interest to engineers.  So he spent a lot of time shaking hands and introducing "his new best friend" around the base.  This has been of great benefit to me in the last couple weeks, and I'm sure the relationships he helped me start will pay dividends down the road.  

It's hard to believe that he's been gone two weeks today.  He and his wife are getting ready to welcome a baby girl into the world, and I'm sure he's settling back into life in Texas.  Thanks for the great handoff Brandon, and I'll see if I can take it from here... 

Doing the Deid

Ok, I know lots of you were wondering when I was going to continue this blog.  It's been a very busy 17 days so far, and I just haven't had the time to do an update.  I'm in the swing of things now though, and although I'll still be very busy, I should be able to write once a week or so.  This weekend I'm giving you a special treat of a double update, to attempt to close the gap since my last entry.  Also, you'll notice in the future that I write about things that happened in the past.  I'll rarely talk about what's coming up just to stay safe.  You never know when Johnny Jihad is surfing the web.

So, when an Air Force member deploys to Iraq or Afghanistan, they usually go through one of two central locations:  Al Udeid Air Base, Qatar, for Iraq, and Manas Air Base, Krygyzstan for Afghanistan.  These are rearward bases that are easily accessible by the contracted rotator flights from the US, Europe, and Pacific.  The nice thing about the contracted flights is that they load them by rank, so I was able to snag a seat in the first class section, which had all the space of a normal first class seat, with none of the perks.  For those reading this that think the enlisted folks get a raw deal by not being able to board first, there's a saying that I didn't coin and rarely use, but seemed to apply in this situation:  "RHIP - Rank Has Its Privileges".  Once a person arrives at one of these bases they go on standby to await onward transportation.  They can be stuck there anywhere from a day or two to a week or more.  Here's what the billeting arrangements are for "transient" personnel:

Bed Number 10, Tent Number 49

And here's what the rest of my "bedroom" looked like:

At least they aren't cots!

Thankfully it was pretty empty.  I've been there when it was full and it's pretty tough to get a good night's sleep.  Plus, someone always seems to take the mint off your pillow.

I was lucky in that I only had to spend one night in that bed, since I arrived at dawn on Monday and departed past midnight on Tuesday.  The two days there are a bit of a blur, because I was tired, jet lagged, and trying to adjust to the 95 degree heat with 80% humidity.  I was able to stop by the AFCENT (Air Forces Central) Headquarters to meet with some of the Civil Engineers who provide "reachback" support to Airmen in both Iraq and Afghanistan.  It would be interesting to see how their perspectives differed from the guy I was going to replace...

Next time:  Victory Base Complex