“What is that in your eyes? It seems to me more than all the print I have read in my life.” - Walt Whitman
It was 2011, hot, dry and I'm short of breath as I grab my bags and unload onto Bagram Airfield's high elevation runway. I had gone 40 hours without sleep and the heat from the C-17 engines exhaust stirred up dust blurred my vision as the June sun burned my exposed skin; just follow the person in front of you to exit the runway. Though anticipation kept me going I was desperate to get horizontal and close my eyes for some rest, but I knew had few more pointless yet required stops before I could sleep. The smell of diesel and sounds of various aircraft landing and taking off overloaded my senses. A couple briefings later we're corralled to our unit. We're all gathered in a makeshift briefing tent getting tossed in the summer winds, we stand as the commander enters the space.
"Gents, welcome." The commander says. The canvas tent whips back and forth, an F-15E's afterburners roar and drowns out all sounds, and shakes you to your core. We take our seats and go around the table to introduce ourselves, the exhaustion shows. The next few minutes are a blur, like the last couple hours since unloading single file onto the expansive ramp. A single statement burned into my mind from the Colonel, "You're about to be challenged unlike you have in the past, and you're going to see some terrible stuff, but when you do, just envision the towers falling and thousands of U.S. citizens falling to their death."
A couple weeks prior I was in a gym at Key Field Meridian, MS. We were on lock-down, something had happened and we were told a press conference from the President was going to explain why. I was conducting Mission Qualification Training for Project Liberty, a manned Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance aircraft. President Obama walks up to the podium, "... the United States has conducted an operation that killed Osama Bin Laden, the leader of Al Qaeda."
A flight of Apaches rumbles overhead, no doubt on their way to provide over watch for a ground team. We're finally released and our long days of travel we're over and my 4th deployment was officially underway.
That deployment and the following 2 deployments altered the course of my life forever.