What a way to start the New Year off. I found out December 24th that I would be flying out on January 1st to Afghanistan. That was the early Christmas present I received from my team sergeant. Thank you Army for having the great idea to deploy me on the 1st day of the New Year. But it could be worse. When I took my little brother to the airport on the 24th of December, there was a soldier who was deploying to Afghanistan. So at least I was able to spend Christmas and New Years with my wife.
Our plane was scheduled to leave at 2200. All day I spent finishing up last minute things around the house and tried to spend as much time as possible with my dogs and wife. It was sad knowing that in just a few hours, I would be on my way to Afghanistan for 7 months.
Beings how the plane was leaving at 2200, my Team Sergeant wanted us there at 1700 to get the last minute equipment we didn’t pack and to make sure that we all showed up. He is what you would call a micro manager. I hate that. Then we went from our team room to Pope to get weighed as a group. We were finally weighed around 1830. From there, our team sergeant wanted us all to go to a special check point and sit around, even though we had 3 hours to go till the plane took off. This meant saying goodbye to our wives 3 hours earlier than need be. A couple of us had our wives there and so the team sergeant agreed to let us go to “Green Ramp” and spend some more time with our wives.
Green Ramp is the place where all the soldiers deploy out of and arrive home to. It is the happiest place and saddest place on Pope, depending on the occasion. Unfortunately, this was the saddest place on the 1st of January.
My wife and I spend the next 5 hours hanging out and talking and enjoying each other’s company till it was time to load the plane. Why so long? The first plane we were supposed to fly over with was broke and the second plane was also, except they had the part on hand to fix it. The plane finally showed up and it was time to get on it. Funny thing happened at that time. They called the manifest, the goodbyes were said, and all the wives watched their husbands walk out to the plane. Once we got to the plane, we couldn’t get on because it was still being filled up with gas. So we turned around and went back inside Green Ramp for another half hour. But this time, there were no wives because they had all left thinking we were getting ready to take off. After that, the trip was uneventful.
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