Trip to Zabul

Wow, I’m full of stories right now, so I’ll try to break them out as I’m able. Not necessarily in chronological order, but really, who cares so much about that anyway outside of some historians! I’ll get to Bamyan soon.

So, 5:00pm on 5/19, I found an email telling me my flight to Kandahar was cancelled. I wasn’t going to Kandahar Air Field, but was stopping there to join 2 colleagues to head out to Qalat in Zabul from there. Unfortunate hurdle. However, I was lucky enough to hear of a VIP flight headed down at 12:30am. Not the best of timing, but I knew that the General would make sure I got on the plane if I could. There was a lot of scurrying about to try to get my name on the manifest which didn’t end up being important in the end, but we headed to the airport that night and went into the terminal. They asked if we were the VIPs, and after confirmation, they let us know that the plane outside would be leaving soon, and that we were too late. Apparently, their schedule didn’t mesh with ours and we got stuck in the airport to catch the next flight at 3:00am-which by the way didn’t leave til 4:30am. We couldn’t take our bags on, so we sat there with nothing to do outside of flipping through some Belgian equivalents of Vogue and Cosmo. I opted to try to crash on the uncomfortable seats while the others talked and faded in and out of sleep til around 4:15am, getting at least 2 good hours of sleep in. Finally, we loaded our 3:00am flight at 4:15am and took off around 4:30am. YAWN!
The interesting part of the flight is that it was on a C-130. Big space for payloads but instead we had our group of 5 and one additional random soldier as well as a few boxes and one large propeller. I was glad to ride on it after helping unload, and set up the distribution of dozens and dozens of shipments they brought in loaded with humanitarian assistance supplies in Georgia.

So, we get to Kandahar at 5:45am, unload, jump in a truck as I’m trying to call my contacts who aren’t answering because the cell service is down. I go to the mess hall (the Luxembourg DFAC (Dining Facility)) eat a good breakfast and keep trying to get through to my two colleagues with no luck. The VIP crew let me tag along back to their hooch and crash on an extra bunk bed for a few hours. Woke up and was finally able to connect with my points of contact, they wanted to meet me in an hour back at the Luxembourg…but…I couldn’t find them! There were multiple entrances and the dining facility is huge. Finally after looking about 15 minutes we connected. From then on, we were preparing for Zabul and ready to hop the flight here-not just any flight, but on a Blackhawk, and with the Governor who was returning from a conference. The helicopters I am usually in, have a couple of shooters with AK-47s, but this was a gunship with multiple mounted machine guns and rockets. I couldn’t tell if it went much faster. Did seem a bit smoother, but the photos were a lot worse cause the sides were vibrating so much you couldn’t shoot through the clear panes. It almost shook me to sleep, which wouldn’t have been hard.

What a journey! Ummm, what year is it now?

Peace...