The Panther Prowls

Yes, I have been busy. Sorry it took so long to get another post on here, but if you check out what I grew on my upper lip I'm sure you'll agree it was well worth the wait. This is me right after a mission. For all the dudes reading, my gear includes aviator body armor with a front plate, and a flight vest with all my survival stuff (radio, first aid kit, pocket knife, ammo for my M-4 and M-9, signaling devices, and an extra strap with carabiners so I can ride on the side of my wingman's helicopter if we have to do a "self-extraction.") I carry my M-9 (Beretta 9 mm) in a shoulder holster, and my M-4 has its own mount in the cockpit. My breakout/survival knife is a Gerber LMF II that Jane got me for my birthday a few years back, and if anyone is looking for a good survival knife, it rocks.


I have a lot of pictures of my living area and office, etc....... but that will be for my next post. This post is about what I am really doing here. This is me flying a combat mission in Iraq (my wingman took the picture). So far I have flown over 20 combat missions and have over 100 hours of combat time. Our missions include convoy security/overwatch, area recons/patrols, route recons, deliberate attacks, base/perimeter security, TIC (troops in contact) response, and anything else that needs to be done. The other day I was pulled off a recon to go cover a US vehicle that was hit by an IED. We escorted them back to base, and relayed radio communications from the vehicle to their command and back. I have also covered a Special Forces team as they conducted a raid for bad guys and enemy weapon caches. That's the kind of stuff we are doing.

We carry and amazing amount of weaponry. Here is a picture of our right pylon. The more discerning of you may notice all three of those Hellfire missiles are different. We have several different types, and they all have their "specialties" so we are prepared for any situation.

Here is our other pylon with the 2.75 inch hydra rockets. Like the missiles, we also have several different types including illumination, point detonating, flechettes, multi-purpose sub munitions, and more. If you think about it when one of our AWTs (Area Weapons Team of 2 Apaches) goes out, we are the most well armed 4 man patrol in the Army. Not only are we fast, but we have a combined firepower of about 6-8 missiles, 28-38 rockets, 600 rounds of high explosive 30mm, 800 rounds of 5.56mm, and 180 rounds of 9mm. Needless to say, we can put fire down range in a hurry.

Usually we fly far enough apart from our wingman to where if he takes fire we can suppress to destroy the attacker, but sometimes we like to see how close we can get---------->

Here I am landing for fuel at one of the FOBs (Forward Operating Base) that we support. These guys got rocketed a few hours before this. While here for fuel I got out to go see the tent that was shredded by the rocket, and I spoke to one of the two wounded soldiers from the attack. The Army has a way of determining the POO (Point Of Origin) site from such rocket attacks, so we went to check it out, but alas no bad dudes were there. It is hard to fight cowards.

Here is a look at what I see in the cockpit while flying. From these MPDs (Multi-Purpose Displays) I can access hundreds of pages of information. This is my Tactical Situational Display. I am the helicopter icon in the middle with a compass rose around me. The red things are targets, and you can see I have my ground track turned on so I can see where I've flown. This is so I don't overfly the same place more than once. We keep our flight paths as random as possible.

This is my flight page. I have it overlayed on the video of my front seater's TADS (Target Acquisition, Designation Sight). This way I can fly from the back seat, while also looking to see what my front seater is looking at on the ground with his super powerful camera. Have I told you the AH-64D is the most advanced helicopter in the world? It is, and I love flying it.

This is our flight line where we stable these beauts between missions. With temps in the 120s the sunshades are a must, or when you climb in to fly the cockpit is in the 140s.

Camp Adder is where I am posted. It is near An Nasiriyah, where Jessica Lynch and others were captured when her Transportation Batallion was ambushed during the 2003 invasion. Just outside our gate is the Great Ziggurat of Ur. We fly by it everyday flying in and out of the base. For those who don't know, Ur is where Abraham was from, and I am right here. Reading The Pearl of Great Price here is pretty cool. I know that some of the Lord's commandments are hard to follow at times, but seeing this place, I doubt Abraham had a problem when the Lord commanded him to leave Ur.
WARNING: JANE AND MOM STOP READING NOW! Another story I have about the ziggurat is about two weeks ago I was doing a test flight on an aircraft up on the north side of the base (right by the ziggurat). The aircraft had an intermitent problem with one of the gearboxes overheating. Problem was we could not fix it when it would come back from missions because on the ground the problem wasn't there. My good friend CW4 Mike Ballagh, and I went out to test fly it. Our goal was to break it hard so the gearbox would still be hot/broken when we landed. On our way out to the aircraft our Technical Inspector SSG Scottie Shumate told us to, "go break that thing good." Well, we went up and flew pretty aggresively trying to get the gearbox to overheat. Right by the ziggurat our #1 engine's Np section oversped, which meant our rotor RPM was being driven up to unsafe speeds (if the rotor spins too fast stuff starts coming off). Mike was on the controls so he started increasing our rotor pitch to slow down the blades, while I simultaneously pulled the #1 power lever back to slow the engine.....................well, we were both too effective in our attempts to slow the rotor, and with our efforts combined the rotor started underspeeding, which is really bad (if the rotor goes too slow you lose all lift and fall out of the sky like a 18,000 lb rock). Luckily Mike is a 4000 hour experienced test pilot, and instinctively let out some of the blade pitch while I brought the power lever back up. We came back and did a roll on landing, and while playing with the power lever on the ground we ended up causing a hard electrical shutdown on the aircraft which messed up a generator and some other components. SSG Shumate scolded us and said he meant to just go break the gearbox. We told him to be more specific next time. All in all we broke close to a million dollars worth of stuff, and never did get the gearbox to overheat. We joke about it now as the day we just about low-rotored into a 3000 year old Iraqi National treasure. Even if we had survived the crash we probably would be in an Iraqi jail for the rest of our lives.

This is me passing my PC (Pilot in Command) checkride (yes the stache was still in effect). For those not familiar with aviation, every multi-pilot aircraft has a pilot in command and a co-pilot. It is a big deal when you become a pilot in command as you are now deemed a good enough pilot that you can fly with the rookies and less experienced pilots. I don't want to brag too much, but I am the first and only Lieutenant that I know, or have heard of to make PC. I flew with another Lieutenant the other day, and one of our senior pilots put a NOTAM (Notice to Airmen) in the base's NOTAM service to warn all other pilots that two Lieutenants would be flying together. It was pretty funny.

Al Asad, Iraq

Well, here I am finally on my way to Iraq. My team and I loaded up on an Air Force C-130 and left Kuwait for Al Asad, Iraq.

Here is a mosque that is on the base at Al Asad. I never saw anyone going in or out, but I heard some of the TCNs (third country nationals) that work on post who are muslim use it. TCNs are usually from the Phillipines, Bangladesh, or other Asian countries. They come here to do work that US soldiers don't do like give haircuts, work in the chow halls serving food, clean the latrines, trash service, etc...

Here is the ramp we used at Al Asad. My unit is based out of and flying in Southern Iraq. Al Asad is in Western Iraq. The reason my team and I came up here is because all of our helicopters were being flown in Air Force cargo jets (C-5s) to here. My job was to pull the helicopters off the C-5s, put them back together, then send them down to our bases in Basra and Tallil. It was a crazy 3 weeks worth of work. There were several days with no sleep, but my longest was 52 hours straight. We had no tools or parts. We had no place to sleep and no transportation. My job was figuring all this stuff out so my guys could fix the helicopters to get them out of Al Asad. I spent a lot of time just driving around the base finding the right person who could help us with the current problem. There was no help directory or 411, and most the base was Marines and Air Force, so they weren't too eager to help the Army guys.........................until they found out who I was. Everyone knew that some Apaches had been dropped off, and when they found out I was the Apache Guy, they bent over backwards to help. I traded tours for favors, and before we knew it we had ice chests with cold water, transportation, etc... I became known around Al Asad as the Apache Guy. Since I didn't have an office there, if anyone from our Battalion or elsewhere wanted to get a hold of me they had to call Base Operations and they would call me on a 2-way radio they gave me. My call sign was "Apache Guy 06." (06 is the number in the Army that signifies command) Besides the tours another reason they wanted to help out was a lot of them had been outside the wire and had been attacked. They knew that when they call for support and the Apaches show up the shooting stops. Most insurgents just stop fighting and run when Apaches show up, and those who choose to keep attacking, don't get the opportunity to do so for long. Several Marines even confided in me that they were way happier when Apaches show up than when their own Marine Super Cobra attack helicopters show up.

This is sort of what the helicopters looked like coming off the C-5s. The main blades were folded and the stablilator and wing store pylons were off. On this one we had already put on the stabilator and pylons. After we unfolded the blades we had to do track and balance test flights. While most of the aircraft "woke up" ok, some had other maintenance issues we had to deal with such as bad gearboxes, hydraulic problems, etc... Again we had no Apache parts or tools due to some logistical issues (our logistic guys are not very squared away), so fixing these problems required cross country coordination with a bunch of other apache units, etc... Like I said, I was pretty busy, but I learned a ton.

Once we got things figured out and started rolling we got hit by a Shamal. It is a sandstorm caused by strong winds. Another type of sandstorm is a Haboob, which is like the one from the movie "The Mummy." You see a huge wall of sand coming your way with heavy winds, but it only lasts a few hours. Shamals can last for days, and this one lasted about 3 days. This was the beginning of it.

When the Shamal gets real bad the whole world turns orange. This is not a special effect from my camera. Behind this helicopter is a hangar and other helicopters, but you can't see any of them. At this point sand gets into everything. You have a rag or balaclava over your face and keep you mouth shut and sand still gets into your teeth. It is miserable. Sand is literally everywhere! You can imagine how dirty the aircraft were after.

This is Spaceman Bob during the Shamal. Before we left Fort Hood a few of us were eating at TGIFs, and they had this little 3 foot astronaut in the restaraunt as decoration. We thought he was awesome so we told the waitress we wanted to take him to Iraq with us. She talked to her manager who called corporate and they called us a few days later and said it had been approved. We are just supposed to take a bunch of pictures so TGIF can document Spaceman Bob's deployment to Iraq. During the Shamal it looked like he was on Mars. We shipped him over sitting in the front seat of one of our Apaches.

Here are the last two Apaches finally leaving Al Asad. It was good to get them out of there. While in Al Asad our motto was "No tools, no parts, no problem." My guys worked very long hours with no break from the 115 degree heat except for a 30 minute lunch break at the chow hall. My best soldier got a rare and cool reward.

Here is the aerial view of Al Asad as I was leaving it in a Blackhawk helicopter. The hawk took me straight down to Tallil where I am currently, and I started flying real missions........finally.

Overseas Again

Here is an aerial shot of Southern Iraq, where I'm currently flying........................suckers, this is Ireland. We stopped there on our way to Kuwait. It was only supposed to be for a few hours, but our plane broke so we were there for two nights. Unfortunately, while the Government of Ireland supports the US in the war in Iraq, the people of Ireland are vehemetly against it, so we were not allowed to go anywhere but the hotel. It is illegal to be in a foreign military uniform in Ireland, and that's all we had, so yet another reason we could not leave the hotel.

Good old Shannon airport. The Shannon area was beautiful, but someone told me Ireland is one of the least affordable European destinations for tourists, so I may never make it back.

This was the hotel we stayed in for two nights. The Clare Inn, with the attached Poacher's Pub established in 1790. This Pub is about as old as the United States. Now I am not a drinking man, but it was really hard for the others to not drink real Irish Guinness. As soon as we left Fort Hood we fell under General Order #1, which includes no drinking alcohol. We had all of our meals here and they were very good. Predictably there were a lot of potato dishes, but that was fine with me.

I did feel bad for the people who were there on vacation. In US Dollars it was about $450 a night as it was also a golf resort. In one fell swoop 200 US soldiers decended upon them crowding the whole place, especially because we couldn't leave the hotel property, and the best internet signal was in the lobby. Most of the people tried to ignore us, but there were a few that got drunk and went off on a soldier about how wrong the war in Iraq was, etc.... There were also a few very nice people, including two young teenage girls who just wanted to get all of our autographs. I gave them my velcro American flag from my uniform as a souvenir.

My hotel room. This place had 4-6 beds per room, as is normal in Europe. I lucked out and only had one roomate, so we weren't that crowded. Again, this room would have been $450 a night for a tourist. It had a very small TV with 10 channels, and small bathroom.

The view from the hotel. This was a small putting green, with the Irish countryside in the background.

This was a castle that you could see from our hotel. It was burning me up that I couldn't go down there and check it out. I seriously debated breaking into one of the hotel's utility closets and throwing on some janitor's cover-alls, just to be able to go check stuff like this out. I made up my mind that if we were going to stay one more day, that is exactly what I was going to do.

On July 16th I arrived in Kuwait. We had to do some training here before we could go into Iraq. This is my Brigade's concrete baricade. These baricades are everywhere on US bases in Kuwait and Iraq. They ensure that no vehicles can approach buildings. It is tradition that each unit paints one. This one is not my Battalion's because we haven't done ours yet, but our Brigade has been here longer and as you can see we are comprised of 11 state's National Guard aviation units. My North Carolina unit is represented on the far right.

This is our shooting range in Kuwait, and some of the many "Scooby-Doo" buses that drive us around. We just showed up, shot some, and then left. All in a morning's work. Kuwait was nice and all, but I was here for 7 months in 2001-2002. Time to go see what Iraq is like.

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.