9 Aug

I am out of Afghanistan – probably not for the last time but who knows.  The dust finally cleared enough on Monday to fly so they did the entire progression in one flight.  I’m sure their heads were about to explode but they will be flying with IPs for the next few flights so they can continue to get comfortable with the mission.  The important thing was to get the initial training complete so they could start pulling missions.  I did one last flight on my original morning shift and it messed my sleep scheduled all up.  It was either that or my anticipation of leaving.  The day before I left I got a call from Brigade saying they needed to inspect our maintenance program.  I told them it was going to be a short inspection since all the records are kept in the states.  It was more of a check the block kind of thing since a lot of what they inspect doesn’t apply to us, but it did cut a bunch of my time out of my final day.  It was a scramble to send off all my last minute emails, finish up my handover book and pack up my room.  We headed for the aircraft around 2PM.  It was a typical military move – lots of bag dragging, waiting, and sweating.  I think I sweated more yesterday than I have this entire deployment.  We landed in Kuwait around 8:30PM and walking off the aircraft I thought I was feeling the engine exhaust, but no it was just Kuwait.  I don’t know how hot it was but I do know it was 110 at 8 this morning.  It looks like we will be here for a couple of days but we are one step closer.

All in all it has been a good deployment.  We had a really good group of people and I think we did everything possible to support the mission.  Looking back on it I don’t think I would have done anything different (except be nicer to people but that is standard for me).  I am a little worried about this next group.  People have an amazing ability and inclination to make things more complicated than they need to be.  I guess reinventing the wheel gives you something to do and point to as an accomplishment.  Too often the Army rewards change for the sake of change.  There’s not as much glory in taking over a smoothly running operation and keeping it going, but it sure is more efficient.

H 120  L 93