Finally out of Fort Hood

So I am finally done with Fort Hood, TX and prowling the deserts of Southern Iraq. Since I have been unable to update the blog in a while here is some catch-up info. First off....small pox vaccination is no joke. That sucker hurt and itched for a month and I still have a scar and will probably have it for a long time. Although small pox has been mostly erradicated world wide, it still exists in weaponized form so we soldier types have to get vaccinated against it. This is what it looked like during the second and third week.


The sore was white and nasty, then it turned black, scabbed over, and eventually fell off. I had to keep a band-aid on it at all times because if the puss got onto another part of my body or onto somebody else it could have spread. Nasty!


Well, we finally made it to the Ex-Eval. This was our flight line at Camp Bowie. Although I am in D company, I am assigned to support the maintenance needs of C company as they will be split from the rest of the Batallion in Iraq. I get to be the Officer in Charge of all the D company personnel at that split location.

Here are my maintenance tents set up at the end of the flight line. This whole week it was sunny and HOT! 105ish with Texas humidity. Yuck. Luckily we did not have any of the drama that we had during the Pre Ex-Eval, so I got to fly some missions instead of just doing maintenance stuff the whole time.

These next few pictures are just so you can see what the facilities at Fort Hood were like, and so I can remember looking back. This was our hangar where we worked on the aircraft.

This was the door to the maintenance shop in the hangar. Delta company is known as the Delta Dawgs, so the "Beware of Dog" sign is to warn other companies not to mess with us. It didn't always work, as Army guys love to mess with each other. One day I came to work and the lock to my flight locker was pro-sealed (super sticky stuff we use on the aircraft) to my locker. When I found out it was another Lieutenant messing with me, I plotted my revenge. I changed his rank on the sign to his office, so he thought we were even.....little did he know that I've never been one to get even, I get ahead. He was on nights and I was on days at the time, so one day I changed the clock in his room, his watch and his cell phone ahead 2 hours. He woke up at his usual 5:00pm, but he thought it was 7:00pm. He thought he had missed his ride to the flight line (which leaves at 6:30pm) so he called 3 different people as he was scrambling to get ready trying to arrange a ride. They were all confused at why he was so desperate for a ride so early, and he was confused at their confusion. He finally figured it out, and told me he wouldn't mess with me again. Good thing too, because the next step would have been the kool-aid on the towel prank, and that one is pretty bad.

Here is my office in the back of the shop. Hey, don't judge, I'm busy working, not much time to keep things tidy.

This is me on July 13th, 2009. I am on the bus leaving Fort Hood to go to Gray Army Airfield where I hopped on a Charter flight to Kuwait.

We had to wait a little while to board the plane. This old lady was from some church group. She gave all of us hugs and said she has hugged every soldier who has deployed out of Fort Hood in the last ten years. That is tens of thousands of soldiers.

Working Our Way Out

For those who don't understand helicopters as well as airplanes, the main rotor blades of helicopters are the airfoils on the aircraft that gives it the lift necessary to fly. When we use our engines to turn the blades we provide high speed wind over the airfoil, creating lift. When the helicopters are on the ground during a tornado, the tornado provides the high speed wind. Thus, during the storm the blades kept flapping up and down violently. This caused a lot of damage to the feather bearings where the blades attach to the main rotor hub. We had to replace 9 feather bearings, which meant removing the blades, then replacing the bearings, then reinstalling the blades. The problem was that the Battalion wanted all the aircraft ready for missions in about 3 days. It was crazy, but we worked our tails off to make it happen.

Here are some of my troops pulling off a blade to replace a feather bearing.

Here are the first three helicopters that were ready. Since our entire base at Brownwood was destroyed we moved to Camp Bowie. These were the first ones repositioning over to Camp Bowie up onto "Heartbreak Ridge." Heartbreak is where we continued our missions from.

This was my problem child. Tail number 96-05010. It was the 10th Longbow ever made. We managed to get all the other helicopters out of Brownwood and had this one left. We had replaced one of the hydraulic servo actuators (the thing that converts my control inputs on the controls to the main rotor to actually move the helicopter). We did a test flight and during the flight our primary hydraulic psi read 6000 psi. Normal is 3000 psi. That was not good, so we landed and replaced the primary hydraulic manifold. We did the test flight, and everything was normal. We told the crewchiefs that if it was good we would land, give them a thumbs up and then take off for Heartbreak Ridge. That would let them know they could pack up their tools and drive back to Camp Bowie. Well, we landed and taxied over near to them, I gave them a thumbs up and literally two seconds later we got an "engine chips" light and advisory in our #2 engine. For everyone but Darin (who already knows what that means), that meant that our engine was eating itself internally and chunks of metal were being collected at our chip detector. The crewchiefs were confused when we had to perform an emergency shutdown as we had just given them the thumbs up, and couldn't believe it when we told them they had to replace an engine now.

Here are the guys replacing the engine. It took a few days as most of our equipment was at Camp Bowie, and every night the guys had to go back to Bowie. I stayed with one other soldier every night at the hangar to keep an eye on our baby. I just slept on a cot beside the helicopter. One morning I was awoken by the local High School field trip to the airport. The teachers heard there was an Apache at the airport so they made a field trip to see it.

Finally after several days 010 (we call them by the last three digits of their tail number) was ready for another test flight. This time we told the crewchiefs that if everything was good on the test flight we would do a high speed, low pass over the airfield followed by cyclic climb push over break maneuver. That would be their sign to pack up and go. Well, the test flight went well, and when we came in for our low pass I looked over at the mechanics and noticed two hispanic and one very white moon next to the hangar (sorry, no pictures available.) We were later told that the moons were for the aircraft, not the pilots.

While we were fixing 010, the rest of the Battalion was continuing to fly missions against the "bad guys," also known as OPFOR (Opposition Force). They are other soldiers who are pretending to be the enemy. As soon as I finally got over to Camp Bowie I was sent out as the OIC (Officer In Charge) of the maintenance contact and downed aircraft recovery team to the FARP (Forward Armament and Refuel Point).

The Apache can stay airborne in a combat environment for about 3 hours max, so if our base is an hour away from the enemy we would only be able to be on station fighting the enemy for about 40 minutes (one hour out, one hour back and a 20 minute reserve = 40 minutes to fight.) To solve this problem the we set up FARPs which are a lot closer to the enemy where we have fuel and ammo for the aircraft so 10 minutes to the FARP + 10 minutes from the FARP to the enemy + 20 minutes reserve = more than two hours on target. Each FARP has a maintenance contact team to fix maint. problems that occur and a DART (Downed Aircraft Recovery Team). I am the DART commander so my place is at the FARP when we have one. If an aircraft is shot down or goes down in bad guy country we launch our DART to the crash site to assess if we can do a quick repair on the aircraft and fly it back to base for permanent repairs, or if we should call the Air Force to drop a 2000 bomb on it before the enemy capture it. The above picture are some aircraft coming in to the FARP for fuel and ammo. Below is my maint. team's sleeping area.

The picture below is one of the reasons I love the Army. We encounter strange situations where leaders need to be flexible to find solutions to keep the mission going. When we were setting up the FARP there we two port-a-potties in the middle of the field we wanted to use as the landing area for the aircraft. There was a big sign on them that said if anybody moved them they would be charged with larceny, etc.... I called the number on the sign and told the owner that a bunch of Apaches were coming into that field and we needed them moved. He told me he was 200 miles away, but I could move them to the side of the field if I wanted. There is no Army manual that tells you how to move port-a-potties across an uneven field 500 yards. As I was pondering the best way to move them one of my privates said, "Sir, we could just put them on the HMMWV's hood and driver them off the field." With no better idea I got four volunteers and myself, and we lifted the port-a-potties onto the hood and sure enough, it worked and not one of us got "dirty."

Into the Storm

So for those wondering if I fell off the face of the planet; from May 7th-May 22nd I was out on a field exercise known as a Pre-Ex Evaluation. Before we deploy to Iraq we have to be certified as a combat-ready Apache Longbow Battalion. From June 18th-28th we will have our Final External Evaluation so the Pre-Ex Evaluation is like a quiz before a big test. This is my awesome Army haircut prior to heading to the field. (Short hair = not worrying about bugs living in your unwashed hair).

Here I am getting ready for a mission in my full aviator battle rattle. If you think I look scary, just remember that a 30mm canon is just below me and it follows my head, so if you are a bad guy right now, you're pretty much toast, or as we say, "If you run, you'll only die tired."


The peaceful days of May 7th and 8th inside our air conditioned tents. The unit training us (21st Cavalry Brigade) set up a simulated FOB (Forward Operating Base) like the ones we will be operating out of in Iraq. This one is up by Brownwood, TX. Little did we realize at the time, that Brownwood is in Tornado Alley. (This is called foreshadowing). I took this picture sitting on my cot along the back side of the tent.

Being a Platoon Leader has its perks....my very own HMMWV (High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle). Please don't call it a Hummer, it just makes you sound like a civilian. This is my baby. As an aside, all our HMMWVs have a letter-number-letter identifier. As you see on my bumper, my identifier is Charlie One Alpha, or C1A. As I pulled into some civilian establishments I think the locals thought the CIA was in town.

At about 1830 local time (6:30 pm for you civilian types) on May 8th, very dark clouds appeared to the north of us and a ton of lighting. As I faced the north, I noticed the wind was blowing right in my face and that those clouds were coming our way. I was at the TOC (Tactical Operations Center), and headed immediately across the FOB to the sleeping tents, to help secure them and water proof them as much as possible. I grabbed a bunch of zip-ties and started zip-tying the various sections of the tent tighter to keep the heavy rain out. At this point the wind had really picked up and the rain was really coming down.

I was in the tent for about ten minutes when the whole back side blew out and it was at that point that everyone grabbed what they could and ran for the vehicles, as the tent came down behind us. As it was our second day at the FOB, I was one of the only people who knew how to get to the hangar, so I led a convoy down, so the soldiers could seek the realative safety of the hangar. This was one of the only pictures I got, as during the rest of the storm I was trying to round up as many soldiers as I could to get them into the hangar. Shortly after I took this picture dime sized hail started falling, and I saw about 4 different funnels forming in the clouds over our heads. The wind was screaming through the hangar as we couldn't get the door shut. I don't know what the stall speed of a cessna caravan is, but the one in the middle of the hangar was bouncing, trying to takeoff. It got very dark outside, and we eventually got the hangar doors closed and rode out the tornado. Having been in a few hurricanes while living in Alabama, I was used to the wind and rain, but the speed with which the storm overcame us was amazing.

Although the female's tent actually came down on several of the females as they were getting ready to evacuate (you know; make-up, hair, nails, etc...) miraculously nobody was seriously hurt. We did send a few soldiers to the hospital, but overall not too bad.

After the wind and rain subsided most of the Battalion was evacuated to Camp Bowie, which is a National Guard Post about 15 miles southwest from where we were. I volunteered to keep a few guys back with me to spend the night among the tents to secure all our gear until people could back the next day and collect it. These are a few of my super troopers from my platoon that stayed with me. As you can see we slept under the stars that night.

Now I may not have the sexy SAS background and TV survival show of Bear Grylls, but I have seen quite a bit in my day, and so far survived it all. If I did have a survival show this would be the advise I would give at this point in the show. Never go into the great outdoors with out at least a poncho and four zip-ties. This massive green blob in the picture above is my cot, with all my stuff thrown on top (2 sets of body armor, rucksack, sleeping bag, load bearing equipment, etc...). Right before I exited the tent during the storm I threw my poncho over all my stuff and zip-tied the four corners of the poncho to the corners of my cot. As the picture shows, out of 400 and something people I was the only one in the Battalion to not only not loose anything in the tornado, but my stuff was still dry. (All the other gear around my cot is other people's that blew over). The weight of all my stuff kept my cot from blowing over and the poncho kept it all dry. Now in the interest of full disclosure, my helmet did slip out and fall below my cot, but it dried quickly.

Had the tornado hit a few hours later, when people would have been sleeping this could have been tragic.

So yeah, it reminded me of Hurricane Katrina images. Maybe a little dramatic, but these were all big sturdy tents, and they got ripped to pieces.

For those still a little skeptical about my tornado, imagine how much force it takes to roll a 17,000 lb Apache onto its side. This was the most damaged aircraft of the night, but every single aircraft was damaged, and it took a mammoth effort to get these aircraft flying again. As the maintenace platoon Platoon Leader, that job fell on me and my soldiers. My next post will document that adventure.

Fort Hood, TX

Getting loaded out in North Carolina

Taking off out of Raleigh, NC bound for Fort Hood, TX on April 3 2009. CW3 Danny Piland and I were the two pilots to fly the 24th of 24 Apaches to Fort Hood, a full week after everyone else had left. This helicopter was down for maintenance and it took us longer than expected to get it fixed. On the bright side, Jane and the girls were in Raleigh with me so we had a bonus week long vacation together.

The extent of my personal space in the barracks. There are 4 of us to a room, and we only have hot water every other day. They say they are going to fix that soon. We'll see.

My over-stuffed wall locker. We got issued a ton of gear (which is all cool), but we don't have much room to store it.

Apache sunrise at Fort Hood out on our flight line.

Enter the Panther

Hello All. I am deploying to Iraq with the North Carolina Army National Guard. My unit is the 1-130 Attack-Recon Battalion (ARB). We are the Panthers, and will soon be prowling the deserts of Iraq. Our unit boasts 24 AH-64D Apache Longbow Attack helicopters, and I am one of the pilots. This blog will be an easy way for me to let everyone know what I am up to, and to share some of my experiences. Enjoy the flight.