Trails of War: First Mission (With pics)

I got the word that I will be going out the wire a few days in advance. This was not this first time I was told I was going. But this is the first time I got orders in my hand. I spent the night before preparing myself and my equipment. I was taking time to put everything together.
I got the hook-up with the supply Sergeant from my company; benefits of being a Halo (3) buddy. I was given the new body armor. Its more has more padding on the shoulders, but it, being mostly velcro, is more prone to come undone. I didn’t have this problem. I put in the front & back ballistic plates, rib protecting ballistic plates, first aid kit, 2 dual magazine pouches and a frag grenade pouch. I also tried on the shoulder and rib shrapnel guards, but I took them off for this mission. Those are more suited for convoy and I was taking a Chinook. I loaded up 4 magazines with 30 rounds each. I had a special attachment for my magazine that mounted two together into my M4. So in total I had 180 rounds of 5.56mm. My M4 is equipped with an M68 CCO red sight optic. I love that thing. I am a lot more accurate with the red sight up to 300m. However, I still shot 29/30 with my iron sight on a practice shoot.
The next morning I woke up early to make sure everything was in order and I had extra time to shower. I met with my point of contact and we gathered our equipment of the objective. Mission: transfer of sensitive items. We arrive at the terminal and signed up for the flight. The flight was 6 hours with many stops in various Forwards Operating Bases (FOBs). We finally were called for our flight after several hours of waiting in the terminal. We were taxied by bus to our chopper. As we drove down the flight line, we saw helicopters of all sorts; some partially disassembled for maintenance. We got to a Chinook and we were directed to leave, as this particular one was our escort. We moved 3 choppers over and threw our stuff on the ground. We waited as some cargo was loaded. I stepped away for a quick smoke as their will be no smoking during the 6 hours of flight. I saw a UAV take off as well as two Blackhawks.

We were briefed on the trip. The only thing that really caught my ear was the new SOP for flying. From this day forward, the pilots were no longer allowed to fly straight. The new rule is lots of turns, lots of altitude changes to make for a harder target for incoming RPGs. I thought “This is going to be fun.”
After some quick pictures of various exciting items, we were finally allowed to load to aircraft.

I took quick observations of the chopper. The chopper has two rotors and was equipped with 3 modified M240B. The weapons did not look like regular M240s, but I could tell what it was by the larger 7.62mm rounds that were loaded into it (vs. my 5.56mm rounds). The inside was bare with cargo in the middle. The hoses and various lines were visible on the inner hull walls. The side mounted seats were nothing more then red netting/webbing strapped to in an “L” shape to make somewhere to sit.
We sat another 45 minutes in the Chinook before they kicked it on. I heard the turbines start to whir first. I threw in my ear plugs, but it didn’t help. It was still very loud. Shortly after the turbines warmed up, the rotors started to turn. It took some time for them to get going. The aircraft shook pretty violently for the first few minutes. As it sped up, the violent jolting turned into a what I would describe as a LS2 with one hell of a cam, at full speed the jolting was kind of in sync with each other and it was a subtle rumble. The rear gunner strapped in and raised the ramp. I clipped a few more pictures.
The chopper took off and hovered for a second turned 180. As we spun, I could see our escort behinds us.

Soon after, we took off. I could see Bagram AF get smaller as we rose. Our escort followed close behind us.

We took off and the base became a spec in the distance. We flew pretty low to the ground and fast. As we left I could see the villages outside our base. Everything was made of mud. About an hour into the flight and after several ranges of mountains we flew over a city of mud. It looked like something from the crusades. A giant city of mud huts with tall mud walls. There was virtually no cars and a lot of people in long gowns walked the city streets.

I did an equipment check to make sure everything was ready for the transfer. Everything checked out fine. We made a few stops. We were to be the 4th stop, however, due to no missions requirements at the 3rd, we skipped it. We were not informed. The crew remembered that we needed to be at the 4th stop and informed us. Since it is too loud the crewman pointed at us and pointed to the back of the ramp. My POC shook her head and pointed to the name of the city we were destined for, on a notebook. This time he nodded, pointed at the name on the book, and again pointed at us and off the aircraft. My POC panicked and ran off. She left her weapon, her day bag, her body armor and her helmet on the craft as she ran off. Since I was always wearing my body armor I just grabbed my weapon, but left my day bag and my helmet. We stood off the end of the ramp and our contact met us. We powered up our equipment and prepared for the transfer of the electronic sensitive items. However, this time the equipment failed. We trained 3 times to get it working to no avail. The crew was loading some cargo and we were told to move away from the ramp. We stepped about 3 meters to left which put is in the jet stream of the turbines. The jet stream was extremely hot. The air burned my hands and face as we stood there fighting with the equipment. It was like putting your hand inches from a fire except sideways. Finally, I said “F*ck this.” And moved back on to the aircraft. I watched them struggle with the equipment for some time. Finally the rear gunner, pointed at his mock watch on this wrist and lassoed his hand above indicating it was time to go. I ran off grabbed my POC by the sleeve and pulled her back on the aircraft.
The rest of the flight was pretty much like the beginning; Lots of sand, rocks and mountains. Lots of banks, drops and climbs. We did another 3-5 stops. At one point we stopped to refuel. I smoked, took a much need piss and we were back on the chopper within 15 minutes. When we boarded I ended up in the forward seat. This gave me a different vantage point versus the rear with the ramp open. I took a few more exciting pictures. We did another refuel stop at some point and I ended up in the rear again. At some point, I feel asleep. When I woke up, I thought I knew where we were but I was wrong. Seconds later we hit a hard pocket. I watched the rear gunner go flying off the back of the ramp. He pretty much just sits there with his feet hanging out.

Were it not for his safety strap he would’ve had a bad day. He sat there struggling kicking his feet around trying to get back on the ramp. It didn’t take him much time, but I’m sure it scared the sh*t out of him.
Within the next 20 minutes I saw familiar ground. Finally we were home, or at least back at my base. I rode around in an up-armored truck reporting back to my uppers the status of the mission and myself once we landed back on base. No one was happy to say the least, but what can you do. Sometimes missions fail. My only regret was that I forgot to charge my video camera. I guess I’ll do it next mission.