25 Apr

Another ten days have gone by. Time is such a strange thing – our view of its passage is skewed by our faulty memory and has very little correlation to reality. It feels like just a couple of days ago I was writing my last entry and at the same time it is hard to believe that it was only 2 ½ months ago I stepped off the plane – seems ages ago. We adapt so quickly to new situations that even though I know this is temporary it seems completely normal to carry a pistol everywhere I go, live in a tin room, eat my meals in a large cafeteria, ride a beat up rental van to work while dodging mud holes and avoiding getting run over by giant armored vehicles with guns, drink coffee made by Indians, hear the mechanical female voice with a British accent announce rocket attack and feel the thud of the rockets as they land, waking up to the sound of artillery firing and strangest of all arming our anti-missile defenses after take-off then watching a civilian airliner coming into land. That and a thousand other little things make life over here so different that your mind is quick to make a clean break from your past reality and within days you feel like you have been here for a long time.

It’s not that life is hard here because it’s not (at least for our team) but that leads to its own problems.  I am a firm believer that people without big problems make little problems into big problems because people have to have big problems or they get bored. The crisis management style you see practiced in so many organizations is partly due to poor management but more often it is the preferred response (albeit subconscious) to encroaching boredom (as for myself I prefer to read).

Our little team is no exception. Our routines are pretty well established and we are good at what we do so now we must develop our small problems into bigger ones. We have managed about one a week.  We are currently in this week’s so I don’t know the outcome but here is last weeks – The brigade we are attached to does not control our missions but they have taken quite an interest in us as previously detailed. In order to bring more publicity our way they called and asked if we would be willing to have a Stars & Stripes (the newspaper that reports on the military but is quick to point out that they are in no way controlled by the military) reporter come down and do a story on us.  Our commander said sure – what harm could come from that? The reporter had a secret clearance so we told him what our mission was, he sat through our pre-mission briefing and then flew on a mission with us (he slept most of the time but I guess he took good notes). After we landed he got our names and home towns and the commander talked about the other pilots and how the mission came into being and how we ended up supporting it.  He asked to see a copy of the story before it was published to which the reporter said sure.  We left thinking it would be a human interest story – the reporter left with a much different idea.  The next thing we hear is when the story gets posted online.  It goes into detail about what our mission is, what our capabilities are and what information we can send to the ground guys – all stuff we thought was classified. Our commander calls brigade and their response was we know – the article went through us and it was approved by our intell officer and our public affairs officer.  According to them everything in the article is public knowledge – that was news to the guys back in the states who developed the equipment. We are cleared because the brigade approved it but the problem is they have no experience with our technology and therefore not in a good position to determine classification. At the end of the day there were some unhappy people to include readers who responded to the article.  Thankfully my name was not mentioned – just the anonymous second pilot who didn’t say anything J Not the first time I was happy I had kept my mouth shut. I just wish I would do it more often.

Cloudy/rain showers  H 80  L 52

PS Had Sunday morning off and found a church service over on this side – it was an hour well spent. Services in these situations really reinforce the fact that we are part of the worldwide church.