God Speed Renegades

When you live at one end or the other of Bagram Airfield, you are awakened at some very odd hours by the noise of various and sundry aircraft conducting maintenance runs on their engines, pre-flight checks, or most notably, C-17s performing a short field take-off (consisting of running all the engines to full power while standing on the brakes) or reversing their engines in order to stop before over running the end of the runway and drifting into a minefield.  Regardless of the aircraft or the procedure, it takes a little while to get used to all the noise and develop the ability to sleep through it.  We used to find it very irritating and were thoroughly convinced that both the Air Force and the Marines intentionally scheduled their flight times more around the sleeping times of soldiers rather than those requisite to mission support.

 

This morning though, at roughly 0045 Dublin Pub Time, as we were vainly trying to squeeze out those last few Zs, I heard the rumble of a C-17 running up it's engines then felt the slight tremble of Stalag 17 as the behemoth aircraft lumbered off Afghan soil and pointed itself in the direction of the Hindu Kush.  Even though I was now fully awake and had abandoned all thoughts of the snooze button, I find myself smiling rather than cursing the Evil Flight Planing Voo-Doo Witchdoctor because I knew that the 1st contingent of our battalion was on it's way back home.  It will still take a few days and there will be multiple legs to their trip, but the Renegades of the  26th Quartermaster Company have completed their roatation and have headed home albeit with a couple of hitchhikers most notably, SPOXO Minor, Jeff Knight.

 

I apologize again for the posts becoming fewer and further between, but aside from handing off our mission to our successors, cleaning up quarters, mailing excess baggage, and trying to retain some semblance of mission focus there has been very little to write about.

 

This is an exciting time though.  We have weathered the difficult separation from family and friends through the Christmas holidays and now there is an air of anticipation.  We are beginning to feel like school kids cleaning out their lockers and waiting for the final bell before summer vacation.

 

I'm not sure how many more posts I am going to find the time to write before I leave Afghnistan in the rear-view mirror so I would like to take this opportunity to thank all the readers who have stuck with us through this past year.  Thank you for all the thoughts and prayers, for the care packages and cards, and for all the kind comments.  All these things have meant the world to us over the past year and I can't thank you enough.

 

I hope to have a few more posts up over the next few weeks, but in the event that I don't, I hope everyone will be understanding if the next post you read here is written under the influence of German beer.