Hitchin’ A Ride
So finally I made it down to Mosul Palace. It was a fairly short flight, of about 10 minutes. I was in a great spot for viewing, but in a bad spot to sit. I’d never flown a passenger-setup Black Hawk before. The wind really beat the crap out of me. As we sped along, not really nap o’ the earth, but certainly not at altitude (prolly 50m altitude or so) I notice many farming type areas, and grazing flocks. Just about everyone I see waves to us. As to whether or not it was a friendly wave, or I simply couldn’t see the finger and hear “hey you’re scaring away the sheep!” I can not be sure. I think it was more the former than the latter, though. It was quite fun popping up over the power lines and quickly dropping back down. When I flew on the other Black Hawks it was always much more sedate, flying racetracks in the sky, except for the single occurrence when the pilots decided to practice missile drills — that was a ride! Other than that, all the low level dodging around stuff was in Hueys, which are slower and less maneuverable.
We passed over some buildings that had been right blowed up, though when exactly I could not say. There are several Palaces in this particular cluster, 5 or 6 I think. As the bird landed, I grabbed my stuff and hopped out. We didn’t shoot at anybody, nobody shot at us, we didn’t crash, and nothing went flying outside the bird in impromptu fashion. It was a good flight.
This FOB is in a much hillier area than the airbase, which is flat. I see a lot more combat troops and vehicles than on the airbase. I start out in a tent, because they are short on living containers. Could be worse, but we are sleeping in the MWR Palace for the next week or so because it is a hard building, and because the military is doing that for their guys as well. Yaay! Floor! 
Everyone expects an interesting time through several days / a week after the changeover, but you never know when you might experience a Y2K-like ho-hum instead.
I don’t expect to have much to do here, so maybe I’ll write more often. I still have some pics to bring up of the airbase, that I took yesterday evening. I have not taken anything here yet.
June 26th, 2004 at 8:18 am
It seems to vary a lot. It was quiet since the big stuff yesterday, but it seems like a lot of the labor force here at the Palace is going to be taking some time off amid security concerns. Who knows? At least they backed off on their plan to have us sleep in a hard structure (on the floor) at least for last night that is.
As for news, well I guess a lot of things don’t make it on to the news. I think people in general don’t want to know how things really are anywhere, they just want something to give them a warm fuzzy. I self-censor a bit here, since I think many people lack the perspective to judge what’s happening, and will panic unnecessarily. Works out that way sometimes I guess. I’m not really that worried.
June 26th, 2004 at 1:14 am
From Old Pro:
Thanks for taking the time to do your postings.
It’s interesting to hear what it’s really like (both at KBR and the exotic vacation spots you work and play in). The news media back here in the states is just trying for the most sensational headline they can get as usual. Google News helps a little, but your posts are still more interesting than most news we get.
The news from the Mosul area the last couple of days sounds like it’s gotten a little more “interesting” around where you are. Thus the “keep your head down” subject. We don’t want to lose our correspondent in Mosul .