As a general rule, I try not to complain about my living situation on deployment. I actually have it pretty good compared to 95% of the other troops here. With one exception, and that was the flight to Kandahar. I feel so strongly about it that I had to post a couple of pictures despite it happening almost a month ago now. A recap of that day includes a middle of the afternoon bag load, a 4 mile drive that took about an hour and a half, a six hour wait at the airport, then a last minute change of aircraft from a C-17 to a C-130. Below is the best representative picture as we are crammed 'nut to butt' in the plane. The fact that the right side looks a little empty is because about 7 people are actually in the very back of the plane laying on the 12 foot high pile of luggage. When we got aboard - in full battle gear - it was only about 140 degrees and I lost about 9 pounds. Fortunately (I say this sarcastically), once we got up to altitude it was only 32 degrees. It wasn't that long of a flight (again sarcastically) - only 5 and a half hours. I'm at the lower left hand side directly across from the Chaplain.
Never in my life did I ever think the words 'Thank God, I'm finally in Afghanistan' would ever come out of my mouth. Yet it happened. This is first thing everyone sees when they land at the passenger terminal in Kandahar.
The terminal was actually the national headquarters of the Taliban and has a very erie feel to it - almost as if it was straight out of a movie with thousands of bullet holes in every wall. They haven't been back since.
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