9 February 200 hours. OK, you are going to have to follow me on this, it is dizzying logic. If a helicopter flies at 120 nautical miles an hour, not taking into account acceleration or deceleration, stops or anything else, just flying straight and level with no stopping for refuel, 200 hours X 120 Nmph = 24,000 miles. That equates out to a trip around the earth! I have literally traveled around the earth since I have been here. I got up and went into work around 1100, today after getting to bed after 0230. When I got to the office, I went over to eat, but then realized that I had forgotten my ID, so the security dudes wouldn’t let me in to eat. I decided to go over to plan tomorrow’s mission. When the planning was completed, I decided to come back to the can early and work on my sand bagging. One of the guys got a wheelbarrow and a shovel, so I went out and moved about 15 wheelbarrows of dirt to my Hesco bastions. By then, it was dark and my back was really hurting, so I opened a couple of boxes that come in the mail today. There were some cheese bricks, so tonight, dinner consisted of cheese and near beer! The roommate came home early tonight, so we spent some time talking about tactics and how we are flying here. Afterwards, I came to my side of the can, worked down some emails and watched Master and Commander on AFN. Fairly boring day.

10 February We didn’t have a show until 1100, so I slept in as tonight was going to be another late one. I finally made it in around 1000, checked my email and picked up my mail. When I went over to the planning area and pulled up the info for the flight, bad news. Overnight, a ROZ had been established that prevented us from taking the planned route with no way around it. So, with just an hour to fix it, I had to re-plan the entire route. The only option was to go through the area that I didn’t want to go through in the first place, not much option now. We finally got the route fixed, paperwork done, briefed, and headed out to the aircraft. This is a picture of the cockpit on my side with all that I carry. Someone asked what all we carried, so here it is. These aircraft are like Gypsy wagons with all the junk we carry. In the door is my survival radio, gloves for pre-flight and post flight, bottle of Gatorade, and my map of the Baghdad sectors. My flight gloves on the dash with my helmet in the seat on top of the extra cushion. With all the armor, we can’t sit in the seat with the back pad, so we take it off, fold it over and sit on it. The tan bag is my extra ammo, and my weapon is barrel down next to the seat with the barrel through the snap link holding the ammo bag to the seat. The two green bags are my NVG’s and HUD. The plate above them is my sliding armor that I pull forward. We launched on time and headed down through the Taji gap, and made it to BIAP. We got clearance for the transition to the FARP, but there was a C-17 and an IL-76 taxiing out to take off. I knew if we didn’t get down to the south end quick, we were going to get stuck having to wait for some time. I told the other crew that we were going to kick it up and get ahead of the two aircraft as we were cleared into the FARP. Now for a helicopter lesson for those of you that don’t fly. If you have a point to land to and you are going very quick, to stop, your decel has to be rapid at the end, otherwise, you have to begin your decel much sooner and take longer getting to that landing point. If you are the trail aircraft, and you are told that “I am going to kick it up and get ahead of the two aircraft” expect a rapid decel at the end. Being the lead, I came in quick, made the decel, quick touch down and rolled into the FARP. The trail aircraft come back with “Hey, thanks for the heads up”. It was from the most inexperienced pilot in the Battalion, I looked back and he was stacked above us about 50’. We got fuel and headed back over to Liberty to pick up a pink pax, a priority that we can’t leave. We sat on the ground for about 30 minutes before someone decided to tell us that the pink pax cancelled. Then they came back and notified us that the pink pax decided to go ahead and show, but that they would be 30 minutes late, so we sat there on the ramp with the rotor turning for almost 45 minutes. When he finally showed up and got loaded, he had been sitting there an hour. We flew him exactly six minutes to Washington, all that for a six minute flight! Our next leg took us over to a Iraqi camp to pick up a Soldier. The Iraqi Army guys came out of the woodwork to watch us; the problem was that they stood right where my take off route was. Because of our weight, I couldn’t take off over the building in front of us and to the right was Indian territory, so they were going to get a surprise. As I took off, I watched one guy with a big smile. I think he finally realized what was getting ready to happen as I saw his face change just as I passed over him about 40 feet. Shortly after that, the aircraft transmitted and it was the other pilot laughing. When he quit laughing, he said we dusted the crap out of them. We worked our way back to BIAP to refuel, the Iraqi’s now run the tower, so it is hard to understand them sometimes, but I don’t think they know how to deal with helicopters as we are much less predictable than fixed wings. We were cleared to the FARP, so that gives us priority, then another set of aircraft come in and they were cleared, then another cleared. That meant six aircraft from different directions all cleared at the same time to the same point in space! We worked it out, but the tower guy had no clue. After refueling, we went up to the ramp and shut down to go eat. We headed to the new DFAC and ate. While we were eating a six piece band was playing military tunes for us, one guy had a silver Tuba with a 1st Cav sticker on it, got to love the military. Afterwards we went back out to the aircraft and stood around to burn time until we could goggle up. After goggling up, we headed out on the route and slowly made our way home. When we got to our last stop, I had my pilot aim a little left of course so that we could make a base leg approach to the LZ, when we got close, the junior pilot that complained about the approach earlier got on the radio and told me we were passing the LZ, I told him, “Ya, it’s called a right base to final approach”, we turned final and made a perfect approach to the LZ. When we got our pax and headed back to Balad to terminate, I cut the route short and turned early, notified the guys behind us that we were going to turn early and I wouldn’t be following my GPS needle, I’m going to set up another right base approach. We got in, shut down, and post flighted the aircraft. The PC of the other aircraft come over and apologized for his pilot, guess his pilot was feeling his oats, getting experienced and thinks he knows how to do everything. I told him I didn’t care, I can handle it. I know I was the same way when I was at that level. We got packed up and headed back to the company area; I went to log my flight time on the computer. I found this program on the computer and stole a copy of it. If you can’t tell read it, we are %59.7 done, with %40.3 to go now. This started from when we first deployed to Ft. Hood, I need to see what it says starting from when we first got here.

11 February Today was a reset day, so once again, sitting around the can watching TV and cleaning. I got up and responded to the night’s emails and surfed the usual internet haunts. About 1000, I got up and took a shower, come back, got the PTs on and headed in to the office to print a couple flag certificates. I stopped by the DFAC and had then went to the office to print the certificates and promptly headed back to the can, lest someone see me and want something on my day off. When I got back to the can, I got two flags ready to mail out and headed off to the post office and mailed them off, then walked back to the can and got a big box of stuff to send home ready. It was big enough that I wasn’t able to carry them all three together, so two trips were necessary. This box had a little bit of everything in it, so when I got back to the P.O., I pulled everything out and let the postal goon go through it. Of the stuff that he could have turned back, the only thing he did turn back was a rock from the Tigris river. When I asked what the problem was with it, the only thing the guy said was that it could contain bacteria harmful to the U.S. ecosystem, sounds like Al Gore has been at work again. I then headed back to the can and decided to haul some more dirt, but when I got the first load done, that was all she wrote, the back was still sore from the last time. Since I got my shoes dirty, I went over to the spigot at the latrine and washed my feet. Went back to the can and the rug just inside the door was filthy, so I got it and took it back over to the spigot along with some hair shampoo and cleaned it. I then decided to go back by the PX, get some stick-up’s to get rid of the smell of two men in a small room and get some rank sewed on my new desert hat that I picked up at BIAP Saturday. I then stopped by Burger King and got a Whopper meal and headed back to the can. I remember now why this was only the second time I ate there, I just forgot how bad the food was the first time, wish I would have gotten the over fried Popeye’s chicken instead! I spent the rest of the night cleaning the can and getting uniforms ready for this week. I thought I would watch a movie on AFN, but nothing but Anna Nichole Smith memorials on, no thanks. Oh, by the way, for those of you that use Google Earth, if you scale into Iraq, there is a preset pin on the Republican Palace. That is the place I talk about when I go to the Green Zone. The chow hall is just south of it and if you pan to the west/northwest of it about two blocks, you will see the Washington pad and there are four helicopters sitting on it. Wonder if the insurgents use Google Earth for their planning?

12 February After getting ready I went in to work today around 0900. I was going to spend the whole day doing paperwork to get caught up and plan the flight for tomorrow. I got the email taken care of and went over to the company planning area to see when we were going to plan our flight. I am flying with a company that I haven’t flown much with because they are the VIP company and they are pretty much to themselves, but they have asked if I would fill in while other pilots are on leave. The mission we got was to fly General Petraeus, the new General in charge of Iraq. When I asked what I could do, they said nothing, they would take care of it all. As I was heading back to my office, the SMG caught me and wanted me to go with him to check out some stuff that needed to be taken care of. He took me back behind our compound and there were some HAZMAT issues that we needed to take care of. While we were walking the area, I found this little patch of grass that I didn’t know about, didn’t even know grass grew in this base. I made him stop for a minute while I took the picture and then laid down in the grass and enjoyed a minute of the sun and the cool grass. After we got done with the walk around, I went back to my office and there were three accident reports sitting there for me to work on, one was a guy working with a crowbar and smacked himself in the head, needing stitches. I went to lunch and then spent the entire afternoon working paperwork. About 1630, I headed back to the can for the day, thought about moving more dirt for the Hesco’s but decided not. My roommate suggested that we go to the other side of the base to a new Turkish restaurant called Sami’s. We got our stuff together and got another guy rounded up and headed over to the bus stop to ride over. We had no clue where we were going, we were just going to find people and figure it out. We were told it was behind the theatre, so we headed that direction and found it rather quickly. The restaurant turned out to be in a outdoor theatre that is reminiscent of an old drive in theatre, except you didn’t drive a car in. We think there were tables and chairs out there and you sat outside watching the movie, kind of like “Movies in the park” when we were kids. The food was excellent, I had Beef Tava, although I have no clue what that is. My roommate said it means casserole in a brown bowl, best description yet. When we got done, we walked outside and my roommate asked us to wait and he went back inside, so we waited for him. He came back out and asked if I had a dollar and went back inside. He came back out with a wheel of fresh bread, said the owner has never had anyone ask to buy bread before, we now have a outlet for fresh bread! We found the bus and come back to the can and had an after dinner snack of bread jelly that we had gotten in the mail; it was a good end to the evening.

13 February I didn’t have to go in until 1200 today, so I meandered and did a lot of emailing. I’m finding that the more I email, the more responses I get back, so it is a big snowball effect. I finished and started heading in around 1115, took my stuff by the company area and was getting ready to go eat when one of the crew caught me and said the take-off time had been bumped up an half hour. I scooted over to the chow hall, ate real quick and then got back to the company area. That is when it dawned on me the amount of work that has been done on the walkways of late. The construction is coming alone really quick now, I will take a picture tomorrow. I got the last of my gear and threw it in the trailer and went inside for the mission brief. We were to go to Kirkuk, then back to Balad, then down to Baghdad to drop the General off, simple short mission, only three hours or so. Everyone was in good spirits, joking and have a really good time. We got to the aircraft, got t ready, and briefed. I was in the lead aircraft as I am doing my right seat ride for the VIP Company to show I know how to do the mission. We took off up north, not much going on, beautiful country, the other pilot said that without the politics and war, this would be a great place. Don’t know about that, maybe from the air. We went by the test fire area and the gunners got to shoot at some old armor that was lying out in a dry lake bed. We got to Kirkuk, got gas, then went over to the ramp to shut down and wait for the CG, there were already two Blackhawk’s and Apache’s sitting there, must have been some kind of General’s suaray. We had about 45 minutes to kill, so I headed over towards the restrooms, when I got over there, one of the crewchiefs had his camera and took a picture of a sign post that had the cities and different distances all nailed to it. I took my camera out to take a picture of it and found that I didn’t have a memory stick in it, so no pictures. That is when I started looking around and saw that they actually had grass up there. One big patch that was about 12’ X 12’, which I went over and promptly laid down in it and once again, shut my eyes and basked in the sun for awhile. When I went to get up, I noticed that it had clovers in it as well, no four leafs though. After we all romped in the grass, we headed back out to the aircraft to wait for the General to arrived, he was almost 20 minutes late. We brought him back to Balad and dropped him off to another meeting, while we went and ate. We got back to the aircraft and had almost an hour to kill, so we decided to launch, go up to the pad where we dropped him off and shut down to wait. He was supposed to be ready at 1930, so we cranked the aircraft at 1920 to be ready. Notice how I said “supposed to be ready”, well, he didn’t show up until 1950, we were running full speed for almost 30 minutes burning fuel we didn’t have to waste. If he would have been any longer, we would have probably had to refuel somewhere. He finally come out and got loaded up and we took off. I had this really annoying glare on my windscreen and turned around to see what it was, I was thinking someone had a flashlight on in the cabin, no, the General had his laptop on and running. One of the crewmembers said that the Sergeant Major tried hinting that he should shut it down, but he didn’t, so we flew all the way to Baghdad with this bright blue glow emanating from the back of our aircraft! Glad the insurgents didn’t have their NVG’s on tonight! On the way down to Baghdad, we were about 20 miles out and saw some kind of huge explosion in the city, these people never stop! We flew back to Balad, and when we got in the pattern, the controller allowed us to turn final, released another batch of aircraft in our direction, AND released a fixed wing to take off at the same time. My pilot wasn’t real happy and let displeasure be known over the radio, I think the controller figured out real quick that he wasn’t happy. The rest of the night was uneventful, I come back to the can and it’s almost midnight, so time to get to bed, got to get ready for the big day tomorrow, Valentines Day!

14 February Happy Valentines day everyone. I went into work today and worked some accident reports. About 1000, I went over to the company planning area to see what I needed to do to plan and a new Lieutenant was working on the mission with another pilot, so I didn’t have to do anything. I went back to my office and spent the morning catching up on paperwork. I forgot my memory chip for my camera again, so I couldn’t get any pictures of the decking in the Battalion area. I will do that tomorrow sometime. I went to lunch, much to talk about there, the food is starting to get boring, don’t feel like eating much. After lunch, I took a HMMWV and got rid of a battery that everyone had been complaining about. I then drove the flight line and just tooled around to burn time until the BUB. I finally got back to the Bn area for the BUB at 1500, but then got the word that it had been pushed back half an hour, so I went over to check the mission for tomorrow, things were done, not much to do but sign the paperwork. I then went over to the BUB and suffered through an hour of mind numbing meeting. Afterwards, I went back to the office to call home and send a Happy Valentines Day to my wife. Found out my daughter just went through her 15 month doctor visit, she is doing very well, great health. It is great to know she is growing up so well. After the phone call, I got confirmation that I am on the list to go to Ur next week! I then walked back to the can, bypassing the DFAC, had a cup of noodles and caught up on a lot of emails. Got an early up, time to get to bed.

15 February Once again, I didn’t sleep well last night, so only got about four hours of sleep before getting up at 0330. I got dressed and headed in to go get ready to fly. We had a 0400 show, but when I got there, no one was there. I was beginning to wonder if the mission was cancelled and I wasn’t notified. Finally at 0420, everyone started to show up and we got to work. We had to finish printing the maps and getting the EDM’s programmed. We got our brief this morning, the move into Baghdad started today, so the brief was long with a lot of stuff about Baghdad. We went back to get ready to head out to the aircraft and a maintenance guy was standing there to tell us that our aircraft had some issues and we needed to think about moving things around.. I seems that the lead aircraft didn’t have a good GPS, so we swapped aircraft. We headed out to preflight and get set up, when I noticed something that I hadn’t seen before, It was a round circle of metal riveted into the skin right next to my door handle, so I called the crewchief over to tell me what it was. He said that it was a bullet patch. I didn’t realize it, but I was going to be flying the aircraft that got shot up a couple months ago, this is the one that the bullet ended up in the seat that I was sitting in, nice way to start the day off! We finally got everything together and headed out. We went around the Merchants Triangle and came into Baghdad from the west, something a little different. We ended up flying past the site where the CH-46 got shot down a couple weeks ago. This picture was taken right before we made the turn around the triangle, it is of a huge canal that the Iraqi’s built, quite interesting how much dirt they can move. We were about half way from the triangle to Baghdad when I heard a loud thump and looked up, the other pilot just got done hitting a bird and the blood was running up the windscreen. We got into BIAP to start our little two step dance. While sitting on the ramp, I looked up and saw a B-1 Bomber doing a high speed circle around Baghdad. I gave my camera to my crewchief to get a picture of it. It was painfully obvious that the roundup in Baghdad had started! We joked that it would have been awesome if someone would have put out on the Baghdad evening news that they would know when the mission to root out the insurgents would begin, by a loud shout from God, then have the B-1 do a low level pass over the city and go vertical with full afterburners on! If any of you have ever experienced that before, you know what I mean. My crewchief couldn’t get a picture of the B-1, it was way too small, so he took this picture instead. Notice the small streak in the center windshield? That is all that is left of my other pilot’s bird strike, fortunately I haven’t had a bird strike yet! We then took off and did several turns around Baghdad, it was painfully obvious that something was going on as there was armor vehicles everywhere and the Iraqi’s weren’t driving as much as they normally do. We went to Washington, but we never got a good look into Sadr City, one of the pilots with us said yesterday, they saw numerous Stryker vehicles around the city, but not much luck catching Sadr himself as he is a coward and rumor has it that he split and went to Iran! We shuffled around for awhile longer and then headed to BIAP to get some fuel before heading on down to Al Hillah and Ad Diwaniyah so we could shut down for lunch. My pilot and I changed flying duties and I took the controls to fly a little. We took off from BIAP after fuel and headed south. We got about half way to Al Hillah and headed out into the open desert a ways. There we came across what had to been a military facility as the entire place was completely destroyed by bombing, there were craters everywhere. As we kept flying, it became evident how large this facility was, it stretched for several miles before emptying out into a city. It was evident that the city was some kind of manufacturing facility; we speculate it was where they made their munitions. There were several large bomb shells lying around. We got to Al Hillah, for those of you that don’t remember, Al Hillah is where Saddam rebuilt the ancient city of Babylon. We took off from Al Hillah and headed down to Ad Diwaniyah, also know as Camp Echo, the Polish camp. About half way down, we were maneuvering through the countryside to keep the enemy from trying to engage us, this means flying at 150’ and maneuvering in a weaving scissor fashion. Because of the wires, towers, and houses, you have to keep really intent on where you are flying. I was on the controls doing my thing when I saw it, a pigeon the size of a baby grand piano, followed buy a really loud thuuuddd. When I saw the pigeon, I had my visor down and ducked to the left to keep from taking it in the face if it comes through the windshield, when I looked up, it looked like someone threw a bowl of cherry Jell-O on the windscreen with a handful of feathers as well. Guess I just lost my “no bird strike” status. We continued onward and made it into Echo without hitting anymore birds. It was nasty flying in with that mess all over the windscreen, it was like a bad car wreck, you just couldn’t look away. We got down and had to get busy washing that mess off. If you look close enough, you can see on the left where my pilots bird strike occurred, then you can see where my roasting turkey hit! We decided to take a hoo rah picture first before we got dirty, I was flying a flag for a friend, we took this picture before getting down to business of cleaning the mess. I didn’t realize until I added this picture, this is the aircraft that someone painted bird eyes on the IBF doors, right above the middle guys head. Probably scaring birds, thinking a big hawk is after them, well I guess one is! After we got done with the clean up, we went to eat, I had my usual Polish Sausage in the Polish DFAC. We got done eating and headed back to the aircraft to finish the mission. We took off from Echo and headed back up to Baghdad and on the way, I had a candy bomb to get rid of, I had given it to my crewchief to throw out. We decided to find a Bedouin camp, but we came across a school, so we threw it out making sure we were far enough away that they wouldn’t get hit with it. We took a bunch of that old candy we have laying around from Christmas and put it in a Gatorade bottle, tied a three foot chunk of Engineer tape around the neck and wrapped it around the bottle. When he threw the bottle out, the tape unfurled and the kids took off in a sprint after the candy. Being only 120’, it didn’t take long for them to get to it. Well, we got a surprise, an all out fist fight broke out with little grade schooler's pummeling the tar out of each other to get the bottle. Think we will re-think the candy bomb practice a little more!!! We finally got to Baghdad and started the two step again. On one of the legs from Washington to Liberty, my right side crew chief yelled out, “IED just went off outside my window” I asked where, he said, “200 meters” I looked over just in time to see a huge cloud of smoke, dust, and debris everywhere and a HMMWV coming through the cloud, obviously rung their clocks! I’ve seen IEDs go off, but that was the first one I’ve seen up close and personal like that! We did a couple more turns and then headed home. We flew out the east side of Baghdad and out through the desert to come back in. As we were coming close to Balad, one of my crewchiefs said that one of the passengers was starting to get sick, I think he actually said he was turning green, getting ready to puke. All of us started yelling things at him to do so he didn’t spew all over the back as we would have to clean it up. Finally we made him take his helmet off and put it up to his face, if he was going to make a mess, the helmet wouldn’t stop it, but he was going to have to as well. He made it back in, but as soon as the door was open, he bolted out the side and was scurrying away with his hand over his mouth. I think the air sick trend is coming with the warm weather, think it will get even worse when it gets really hot. We got the aircraft put away and debriefed. I beat feet home so I could get this finished and out tonight. Didn’t realize how much we use acronyms.

AFN – Armed Forces Network (military TV station) AMC – Air Mission Commander ASO – Aviation Safety Officer BIAP – Baghdad International Air Port BUB – Battle Update Brief CG – Commanding General DFAC – Dining Facility EDM – Electronic Data Manager (moving map display) FARP – Forward Arming Refueling Point GPS – Global Positioning System HAS – Hardened Aircraft Shelter HAZMAT – Hazardous Material HIT – Health Indicator Test (checking engine performance) HMMWV – High Mobility Multi-purpose Wheeled Vehicle HUD – Heads Up Display IBF – Inlet Barrier Filter JAG – Judge Advocate General (lawyer) NVG – Night Vision Goggle MWR – Moral Welfare Recreation OPSEC – Operational Security PIC – Pilot in Command, also known as PC PT – Physical Training PX – Post Exchange ROZ – Restricted Operations Zone TOC – Tactical Operations Center VIP – Very Important Person XO – Executive Officer