The long flight to the desert

Our combat training completed, we had a date with an airplane on Thanksgiving night. As is common for these chartered flights to Kuwait, we headed to the Columbia, SC airport late in the evening, with an expected take-off around midnight. We had a nice surprise when we got to the airfield. Despite the wonderful Thanksgiving meal they had already put together for us, the outstanding civic groups of Columbia all showed up to send us off. They set up food, drinks, goody bags & other giveaways, and generally made us feel at home while we waited to fly out. As we all lined up to head out to the plane, they stood in a long line with American flags to shake every one of our hands and thank us for our service. It was awesome, but at the same time we were all humbled by their profound support. Americans can be wonderful people when they put their mind to it.

Despite the long hours in the airplane, I won't complain about the flight at all. As one of the senior officers, I actually got to sit in business class, which was very nice, especially for sleeping. Back in Coach, Sailors O-4 and below were crammed together 6 across because a couple hundred of our seabags had overflowed the cargo compartments and were filling the last 15 rows or so. It was not a very pleasant flight for them at all.

Halfway through the flight, we made a fueling stop (about 2 hours) in Shannon, Ireland. Looking out the window as we made the approach to land, I finally got first hand knowledge of why I've always heard about the "green hills of Ireland". It was beautiful country and is now high on the list of places to someday visit. Once on the ground, we were able to roam the terminal, shop, make phone calls, etc. While there, we actually ran into the Secretary of the Navy who was heading back to the U.S. Some of us got to talk to him for a while after he figured out we weren't Army guys and that the tags on our "Army" uniforms said U.S. Navy. Then it was back on the plane for the final leg to Kuwait.

The time difference to Kuwait from the East Coast is +8 hours. So add about 16 hours of flying and layover and you get there a "full day" after you left. We landed just before midnight on the Friday after Thanksgiving. Our body clocks were pretty messed up! We had arrived.