Good Day in Iraq

After six years in the Air Force I had spent over a year in the desert. Just so you know after a service member has been deployed to the Middle East, whenever you say the desert that is what you think of. Only 1% of the United States population serves in the military. The other 99% will never know what it means to be a veteran and the sacrifices they’ve had to make. That is where I come in. I will tell you about my experiences in the U.S. Air Force, starting with a good day in Iraq.

My job in the Air Force was F-16 Avionics System Craftsman (quite a mouthful huh). To keep it simple, lets just say I worked on planes. I had been in the military for two years when I was deployed to Balad Air Base, Iraq, at the ripe age of 21. We were the first Air Force Squadron of F-16’s deployed to Iraq. You may think I was young at 21 to be sent to Iraq but I had already been around the block. Only one year earlier I had been deployed to Qatar, which is right across the Persian Gulf from Iraq.

So lets get to a good day in Iraq. Everyday I would wake up for work at 2200, which is 10 P.M to you civilians. First thing that would happen when my alarm went off was someone yelling, “Shut the hell up!” And that is toning the language down quite a bit. The tent was normally made to house twelve but the capacity was currently at thirty. Upon waking I would pick up my flashlight, since the tent is pitch black, and find my bottle of water very carefully to ensure it was water. Next I would make sure that there weren’t any spiders or scorpions in my boots or around my cot. After this as soon as I was dressed, to include my sixty-pound flak vest and helmet, I would brush my teeth with a bottle of water if I had time. Then I would grab the bottles next to my bed to throw away, since that had been my toilet the night before and I was off to work.

To get to work I had to walk about a mile then take a thirty-minute bus ride. After I got to work, hopefully there would be enough time to have an MRE (Meal Ready to Eat). MRE’s are one of those things you hope you don’t have to eat but they are better than nothing. They have about 3000-4000 calories each and I was eating three a day. Work lasted 14-16 monotonous hours each day. In between fixing jets, talking about how much it sucks here, and filling sandbags (among many others), the monotony was broken up by the attacks. It wasn’t unusual to have 5-8 mortar and rocket attacks. You could hear the explosions continuously throughout the day.