12 Nov

I have managed to weasel my way onto a couple of missions over the last few days. More guys are starting to give up their flights. It’s a lot more work flying but it sure makes the time go by faster. There are a couple of guys who promise their wives they won’t volunteer for flights – I know Wendi doesn’t like it when I do but she knows how much I enjoy it. My first flight was a pretty typical one out west but the one yesterday was a lot of fun. It was hauling sling loads out of Al Asad. The weather started out marginal but by the time we had landed and organized the loads the dust had blown through and it stayed clear the rest of the day. We ended up moving close to 70,000lbs of cargo both internally and by sling load. We actually hauled more than they expected and did it in less than 5 hours. It’s always a good feeling to be able to work at your full capability and know you are making a difference. The Marine Corp celebrated its birthday on the 10^th by giving everyone two beers. As you can imagine it was very tightly controlled and you had to drink them in the chow hall right after they gave them to you. I don’t even like beer but I decided to take one and it was actually pretty good. The first guys started going on leave over the past week. It’s good to see them go – one more milestone. No one really wanted to leave this early but they had to be spaced out because we can’t have more than a certain percentage gone at any given time. We now fall under the Germany unit out of Balad for administrative things like awards and other paperwork which includes assignments of leave dates. We figured they would take care of their own but they didn’t have to be so blatant about it. They gave our five guys the first five days of December and kept all the Christmas dates for themselves. They could at least pretend to be nice.

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