Combat Arrival

It's 8:00 am on Friday, and here I am in the hot belly of a C-130 with at least 50 sweaty soldiers and two pallets of luggage. Seats line the outer walls of the aircraft - facing the middle, with two rows back to back running down the middle as well. So we sit, each in our twenty-two inches of posterior room, knees tangled together, carryon luggage in our laps, and we wait. The engine turns, and I assume we must be moving, but there are no windows, making it difficult to tell for sure. I begin to feel claustrophobic as the desert heat forms beads of sweat that soak my clothes. The belly of this plane is not air conditioned, and the loading dock has been sealed, creating air so thick it's hard to breathe. I feel us move, but it seems like we're in reverse. I can't really tell which way we're going, and have to remind myself that the loading dock is at my right, so we must be moving towards my left. I feel the shudder of takeoff...I think...I am so disoriented it's hard to tell. Only when we hit turbulence from moving through the heat am I certain that we are off the ground.

The flight is an hour and a half long, and I am in misery most of the time. My back aches, my hips hurt, and the heavy bag I'm holding on my lap is pressing my thighs into the bar below, cutting off circulation and putting my legs to sleep. There's not enough room to shift in my seat, but there's no way I can sit still.

Meanwhile, the cute little girl soldier across from me sticks a Cheerio in the mouth of a friend who is sleeping so soundly his mouth has fallen open. The guy next to me says he has two kids. He looks at his watch and says they're on the way to go bowling - they go every Thursday night with a program back home for children of deployed members of the Armed Forces. He is on his way to war for a year or more. I don't ask his age, but he he no more than 25. Soon the proud father is asleep, along with just about all the other soldiers, sprawled over each other like family. There are a few other civilians on this flight, and they are the only ones who seem to share my misery. I am humbled by these soldiers, most of whom are 10 years younger than I am.

An hour or so into the flight, I feel the plane lurch and drop. And then again. And again. We are making a combat descent - it makes us a more difficult target for surface-to-air fire and it reminds me of the gravitron at the state fair. We are pulling a few Gs in a C-130, and it's making my stomach turn, my head spin. I'm not sure I can make it without tossing my cookies. Even the soldiers are awake now, with eyes becoming saucers everytime the plane makes a sharp turn while losing quick altitude. All of the planes that land in Baghdad these days use this combat descent. I am thankful I didn't fly commercial. I'm glad to be in the hands of the U.S. Air Force instead of a foreign airline pilot. I feel our wheels graze the ground, and then glide along the tarmac, and I wonder just how long I've been holding my breath.