C-130 Rollin' Down the Strip

Camp LeJeune’s air station is actually an hour north in a town called Cherry Point, so after people had said all their goodbyes to weepy wives and families, we boarded a bus that brought us all up there. We arrived six hours early, just to be on the safe side. In the waiting area at the hanger in Cherry Point, there were about three bookcases worth of books that had been donated by area libraries. Every single one of them was a paperback romance. I never really decided whether anything of interest had already been sifted through or if some library ladies somewhere were enjoying a cruel joke.

We eventually boarded the plane – a commercial flight that was all military – and were told to secure our rifles under our seats.  We were carrying rifles and pistols every one of us but, I kid you not, we were told at the last minute that knifes over six inches had to be checked. Oddly, no one had anything to declare. We flew six hours to some obscure Irish town where we had an hour layover. So we all got out and stormed the few shops that were open in the middle of the night. I spent four dollars on a bottle of liquid that was labeled “Diet Cherry Coke” but was otherwise unrecognizable to me.

As we left Ireland the day dawn was breaking and six hours later we arrived in Kuwait as the sun was setting. Right by plane on the tarmac there were busses waiting for us that whisked us away to Camp Virginia, a US base in northern Kuwait.  Camp Virginia’s a bizarre place; feels kind of like a large-scale movie set. There are no trees anywhere, just tan tents and buildings up against a blue sky in every direction. We spent the night there and in the morning took another bus ride to another airline waiting station where we were again six hours early.

Flying into Iraq was, to say the least, anti-climactic. In training at The Basic School, we flew on helicopters multiple times, each simulating an extraction or insertion into a hot landing zone. We would board running and it would take off before we could even get our seat belts on. As soon as the roller coaster-like flight had landed, we were dashing off and diving into the tree line to set up a defensive perimeter.

So when we boarded the C-130 plane in Kuwait, whose interior is actually quite similar to the helicopters I was familiar with, my first instinct was to belt in as fast as possible. Then a 20 minute flight delay. After a smooth two hour flight we landed quietly and waited some more. Then we got off, slowly, and boarded busses that took us to our tents.

The most startling thing about Al Asad was how big and developed it was. Camp Virginia actually felt like a forward operating base in the Arabian Desert. Al Asad feels like a whole town from the nether parts of Arizona or Nevada had been lifted up out of the ground and retransplanted.  The below picture isn’t much to see, but it’s as a good an overhead shot as I’ve been able to get. What you see there is just a section of town – the industrial neighborhood, if you will.

I'll provide my entries for Things to See and Places to Eat for Fodor's throughout the year.