Today, I'm in the military terminal of the Kuwait City International Airport. I've been here for almost 24 hours. No shower. Not happy. But let's not get ahead of ourselves - how the hell did I get here?
Well, it all started when I volunteered at work to go to Afghanistan several months ago. We finally flew out of Dulles International (DC) to Milan, Italy on December 3. It was a horrible 8 hour flight on Alitalia Airlines with rude stewards/stewardesses, constant beeping of numerous broken call buttons, 5-7 babies crying (rotating, but at least twice in unison) and crappy food.
Milan was great, with beautiful women EVERYWHERE - however the layover was only 4 hours. From here I traveled on Qatar Airlines to Doha, Qatar - where I was charged $16 for a visa to enter their country. Within an hour we were driven to Al Udeid, Qatar. On base we were assigned a rack in a tent. By then it was 0030 and we had to muster by 0410 to be available for the flight to Bagram, Afghanistan. Yep, four hours of sleep. I chose to sleep for two, take a shower and get some coffee.
We were assured that the flight though connecting through Kuwait would definitely be taking us on to Bagram so we got on around 1100 (yep we were sitting in the terminal for 7 hours). We flew via an Air Force C17 to Kuwait... but were bumped just as we landed in Kuwait.
This put us ultimately at Ali al Salem. I'm going to call it tent city. We had a BX, a dining facility, McDonalds, Pizza Hut, KFC, a coffee joint - and internet access (@ $5/hr). We were here for TWO days until we got a letter from a THREE STAR general that said we were almost as important as soldiers returning from R&R.
Having stood the night watch (looking for Popup flights to Bagram) on our last night in Ali al Salem I was awake to see them totally close down operations when a FOG rolled in. This was extremely odd since I didn't even think it rained in the desert. I finally turned over the watch, got some chow and hit my rack around 0800. Around 1152 I was awoken and told I had FIVE MINUTES to pack up and report with orders in hand to be elligible for a Popup flight to Bagram.
About an hour later I was on a bus in a convoy with two humvees with soldiers manning vehicle-mounted machine guns. We drove for about 1.5 hours and finally passed through a few security checkpoints. All had bullet proof glass... two of which had numerous impacts from weapons fire. Which puts in me in the Kuwait City International Airport. Our scheduled flight was canceled due to engine failure we were told. So the flight crew FLEW the plane to Rammstein. Huh? Anyway, here I sit... hoping that the next flight will finally get me to Afghanistan.
As the locals say, enshalah (“God willing“) we will make it to our destination. I've been on the road for 5 days... with seemingly no end in sight.