I have been offline for quite some time now, as my last blog entry was the end of October of last year. So much has happened since then, I am not entirely sure where to start! So, as the famous nun sang, “Let’s start at the very beginning.” No, that would take too long. I will catch everybody up in a two-part post, starting off just after my last post…
After returning to FOB Wolverine from Kandahar at the conclusion of my last blog entry, I found that I had been transplanted into a small room, but I now had the advantage of a room to myself, with no hallway for other soldiers to pass to and fro through my living area. After arriving on Saturday evening back at Wolverine, I was informed on Sunday afternoon that I was leaving for another FOB called Tarin Kowt (hereafter referred to as TK), where our detachment there was short a maintenance test pilot due to the accident in the last post. So, two hours after I was informed of this, I was on a Blackhawk out of Wolverine, never to return (although I didn’t know this part yet…).
Tarin Kowt was quite nice, good living arrangements, decent food, and a command team that actually utilized me as both a maintenance test pilot and a mission pilot. I would have been satisfied staying there, but I was only there for about three weeks. After Jason (the MTP assigned to TK) came back “up” from the accident investigation, I was moved back to Kandahar. I was all ready to leave for Wolverine immediately, but the company commander asked me to stay for a week or two and help Phil (another MTP) take care of the tremendous maintenance workload.
Two days after arriving back at Kandahar, I got an urgent email from Christi, stating that she had an accident while scrimmaging the Fairbanks Roller Girls, and had ripped up her knee. The Emergency Room doctors that saw her referred her to her Primary Care Physician. Due to the impeccable timing of the scrimmage, and the fact that few Army medical personnel work over the Thanksgiving holiday, Christi had to wait until the Monday after Thanksgiving (six days after the accident) to get a MRI scheduled. No doctors would authorize a Red Cross message to get me home to help her out until it was determined that surgery was required for this injury, and so I got to wait, stressed out, over the holiday. Finally, Christi was scheduled for an MRI on the 16th of December. She had to go back to her Primary Care Physician and get a referral for an urgent MRI ‘on the economy’ (non-Army medical care) to get an MRI any sooner. To make a long story short, I left Kandahar the second week of December, and arrived in Fairbanks on December 9th.
I was originally authorized ten days of ‘emergency leave,’ and was counseled by a senior warrant officer in my unit to talk to Lt. Colonel Knightstep , the commander of the my home Battalion back at Ft. Wainwright. I went in to see him on the 13th of December, and asked to get extended until the middle of January, after Christi’s knee surgery was tentatively scheduled. He told me that he didn’t have the authority to do so, but would work my request as necessary. The next day, he called my wife and told her that I would not be returning to Afghanistan this tour. We were both pretty thrilled!
Christmas preparations were in full swing, including a surprise visit by my parents, so the time really flew by. Christmas arrived, and everybody really enjoyed themselves. The next day, however, the jovial mood was brought to a screeching halt. I received an email that morning telling me that my release from theatre paperwork had been denied, and that I was to get on a flight the very next morning. I immediately called LTC Knightstep, and forwarded the message, he said he would work on getting me to stay longer. It turns out that my company commander overseas had given me permission to stay at home without clearing it through the proper channels, and so the guys overseas were actually expecting me back the entire time.
I ended up packing all of my stuff and heading to the airport the next morning to fly back to Afghanistan, via Seattle and Germany.
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