Checking Boxes

I’m slowly checking off my “awesome things the Herk does” boxes. The other day we went into Pakistan to pick up some Senators/Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. I mean, who wouldn’t want to cruise around in the AF’s oldest plane? Interesting to see so many other 130s with foreign flags on them, everyone loves the Mighty Herk. Pakistan had a giant billboard painting showing airdrops from their history. They wouldn’t let us off the plane or take pics (still snagged a few) and had armed guards come to our plane to make sure we didn’t go wandering toward their planes. Remember these are our “allies” that are in the war against Terror “with us”. I’ll prolly post my thoughts on that before too long. So the DV box is checked.

We have checked the “dirt strip short field” box several times over, pretty much every day. Its really exciting to see everybody completely focused on getting a 130,000# aircraft stopped on 3000’ of gravel. In doing that we also checked the “haul crazy random people” box. Some snipers walked on with Afghans carrying an arm full of RPGs, shortly followed by a goat with/out a leash. They said it had been following them for days and no one else would transport it. While in flight they kicked around a water bottle and the goat ran up and down the isle chasing it.

Yesterday was a little more sobering but definitely one of the coolest missions we do. They rigged up the litters and we ran medi-vac shuttles back and forth between smaller bases. As aircrew it’s easy to forget there is a real war going on. People are on the ground getting shot at everyday and there are very few actual hospitals in country. They ranged from people simply needing X-rays with broken bones, to a very skilled team of nurses working on cleaning/dressing IED wounds in flight. There were troops, contractors, and local Afghans. It made for a long 15 hour day, but it was very rewarding. Medi-vac box checked.