Groundhog Day

Three days after arriving at the American airbase, we were still there, waiting for parole. It seemed tantalizingly close, yet as the seconds turned into minutes and the minutes turned into hours, we still were not alerted to fly. There we sat on Bravo alert, in our cramped tent, waiting for the pager to tell us to go to work. And the damned thing never went off.

Before we had been set up on Bravo, we had relatively more freedom. We had one day to enjoy our allotment of three beers, make a morale call home, watch the Sunday football games on a wooden screen at The Bra, and basically have the run of the base. It was initially pleasant to be set up for our Bravo with an expected alert time, which meant that we would eventually be allowed to leave. But as the time passed after our expected alert time, we learned that they were trying to fix our jet; the yaw damper was out and they gave us an estimate time to repair it.

That time came and went as well, as did all of the subsequent times they gave us. A Bravo alert can run up to 48 hours before we must be released or alerted, so our waiting turned into a kind of Groundhog Day. I’d sleep whenever I was tired, I’d sneak out for a bite to eat when hungry, even ventured out for a quick run in my civilian athletic clothes. I lost myself in reading, watched a movie or two on my laptop, and sneaked out to call home and grab a coffee. We were supposed to remain by the pager so that if we were alerted, we would be immediately ready to go to work. Yet at any given time, the five of us on the crew were scattered to all four corners of the base; it would have taken some time just to get the whole crew back together.

Most of the time, I was good and stayed in our tent. Depending on the sleep schedule of one or the other of us, the lights would either be full on or all off. The only constant was the monotonous hum of our air conditioner; during the nights it was quite chilly, but it barely kept pace with the searing daytime heat of autumn in the Persian Gulf. Afternoon windstorms were also quite common, rattling the sides of the tent like a tarp over a pickup’s bed on the freeway, and occasionally yanking the door of the tent wide open. In order for the door to stay closed, we would have to slam it a few times until it latched. It was like trying to sleep in a frat house without the partying.

As the maintenance crews tried to fix our jet, we learned more about its woes. A flight control module for the aircraft’s elevator was bad, but even after it was replaced, the whole jet shuddered when the flight controls were moved. Boeing was looking into the matter, which meant that nobody had any idea what was wrong with the jet. It all boiled down to the fact that we were leaving nowhere quickly. With three days left before our scheduled return date to our home station, the forecast for an on-time arrival looked grim at best.

So our Groundhog Day continued. Eventually, after more than 45 hours into our 48 window of availability, the pager finally went off. Another jet had come in, so we no longer had to wait for them to fix the other jet. We hurriedly packed the last of our bags and donned our uniforms.

Freedom was waiting.