Part of being in any branch of the military is the ability to be flexible. There is a saying that goes like this; no mission ever goes as planned. Something happens, things break, people screw up, people get hurt and the plan inevitably gets screwed up and the mission must be altered. You have to be flexible, and anybody who’s served in the military knows that everything is subject to change. You get your orders; you hurry up and wait while those in charge try their best to screw up the plan with over-analyzing the situation and making unnecessary changes. It’s just part military life, and you’re better off learning that and accepting it than trying to buck the system.

When I enlisted in the Army I was told by my recruiter that I would get the opportunity to attend all of these really cool military schools. Airborne school, Air Assault School, Pathfinder School, Ranger School and so on. It didn’t take me long to realize that I didn’t actually want to do any of that stuff. There was a reason I had never jumped out of an airplane in the preceding 20 years of my life, and it’s because I’m very terrified of heights. When I saw what Airborne School consisted of while training at Fort Benning, Georgia, I decided that I’d be much better suited for an Army career spent on the ground walking. You could strap 100 pounds to my back and I had no trouble putting one foot in front of the other and walking for 20 miles. It would take me a bit longer today than it would have then, but I’d still rather walk 20 miles than jump out of an airplane.

But it would turn out that even my choice to be a grunt on the ground was subject to change as well. During my time in Baqubah, Iraq we encountered a problem. The enemies changing tactics resulted in my battalion losing a large number of vehicles to IED’s, and losing soldiers along with it. We simply couldn’t sustain the amount of losses we were taking for an extended period of time. So the solution was to start walking and taking helicopters to engage pockets of resistance and areas that were inaccessible due to IED littered roads. The original plan was to get a unit of Blackhawk helicopters to supplement our ground vehicles. As a machine gunner I was responsible for putting out massive amounts of machine gun fire, so my natural place in the helicopter was the door seat. Since very few of us had experience in helicopters we needed to do some training in them. It didn’t go well. The first time I sat next to an open door on a moving helicopter is one of the few times I was tried to sit on someone else’s lap. I couldn’t get far enough away from the open door. While I was getting to know the guy in the next seat, his weapon sling wrapped around my foot. So on our first tactical exit from a helicopter I went to step out and my foot didn’t move because it was tied in the next guys weapon sling, so I fell out and planted my face into the dirt. Since the guy next to me also had his weapon sling around his body, he got pulled and fell on the ground next to me. The next guy stepped on us and he wiped out as well. This repeated itself until all 7 of us were in a pile on the ground. This was our first and last attempt at a tactical air assault mission.

Shortly after this disaster it was decided that we were better suited to a not-so-tactical approach. We flew into these pockets of resistance on Chinook helicopters which is often referred to as a “Sh*#-hook,” because it’s pretty much a flying school bus. It’s noisy, and it draws a lot of attention, thus drawing a lot of bullets from the ground. But, walking steadily off the back ramp of a Chinook turned out to be more effective than falling out of a Blackhawk. On a side-note, I have concluded that if I ever win the lottery, a helicopter will not be on my list of purchases. I have been on 5 helicopters, and 3 of them were shot at while aboard.

drfarwell@hotmail.com