Summer in Kuwait
I was supposed to have been in Kuwait for 90 days this summer, roughly from the middle of June until the middle of September. Unfortunately, in early July we moved a court-martial from Kuwait to Atlanta to accommodate a number of witnesses who had already redeployed, so I was brought back from Kuwait just after Independence Day. The plan was to try the case the following week, with an immediate return to Kuwait thereafter.
That was the plan. Instead what happened was the trial kept being delayed two weeks at a time, finally going through during the last week of August. By then, the unit had a major training exercise going on in Kuwait, so my return was further delayed until that exercise ended in mid-September. I was only able to go back for three weeks, as my family and my wife's family had already made travel arrangements to come visit us in October and November, which was when I was scheduled to have rotated back.
The absurdity of the situation is hard to overstate. All told, I spent 43 days in theater this summer. Of those 43 days, 10 were spent in travel. So really I spent 33 working days in Kuwait. In that time, I tried zero cases. I took 11 flights, totaling nearly 30,000 miles. Since the 43 days spanned four calendar months (through no planning of my own), I received $900 of combat fire pay and four months of tax-free salary.
It is hard to describe just how ridiculous a process it was to leave Kuwait. The travel situation at Ali As Salem, described as the "theater gateway" because all troops coming or going from Iraq and Afghanistan, is particularly appalling when one considers we are now in the seventh year of this War on Terror. Soldiers arrive at Ali having survived the ordeal of leaving Iraq or Afghanistan, which often takes days because of sandstorms and/or equipment failures. Then they have to hope they are amongst the first 350 people to sign up for the single flight out of Kuwait. Occasionally they schedule a second daily flight, but just as often one of the flights (often the only flight) is canceled. Soldiers traveling home for R&R have priority on the flight, which is fair, but it means that Soldiers trying to redeploy are sometimes stuck for days and days because they go to the back of the line each day, no matter how long they have been waiting.
The only reason I got stuck for just one night is that I went on a Friday, knowing that if I didn't get on the R&R bird I was already manifested on the Saturday "Freedom Flight" which goes directly to Fort Benning. Of course, this wouldn't work well for anyone whose final destination was not Georgia. The flight is intended for reservists and civilians who deploy through the CRC at Fort Benning, but it is manifested first come, first serve. So I signed up last Tuesday and was able to get on the flight on Saturday. My warrant officer, who didn't sign up until the day before, got bumped from the flight. Three stops and three continents later, I was at Fort Benning, and a former colleague from my time there picked me up and generously shuttled me to Atlanta, a mere 60 hours after I had first arrived at Ali As Salem to go home.
