From Victory to Taji

After several uneventful days at Camp Victory, I was told I could finally pack my bags and get ready to head to my new home. I couldn’t wait to finally “drop my pack.” Any more than two weeks living out of a seabag gets to be too much. After only a few days at Camp Victory, I was completely sick of it. For one thing, there are hardly any Marines there. Those that are there do get together one evening a week to tell war stories and smoke cigars. That would have been my sole source of sanity there, as I’m sure it must be for those that attend. I don’t hate the people from the other services. In fact, some of the best folks I’ve met in the military have been Army NCOs or officers. It’s just that for a Marine it is a complete culture shock. There are many reasons. First, being at Camp Victory completely turns around everything you’ve ever thought going to war is like, and it’s too much to handle. As good as living in a trailer is, it builds nothing of the camaraderie that exists between Marines living in the field, in a hole or in a tent, eating MRE’s, living the dangerous strenuous shitty life we’re used to out there. Second, there are way too many people at Victory and waaaaaayyy too many “chiefs.” Take Sergeants Major, for example. They get together once a week. What do you think they talk about? Uniform regulations, for one. I’ve never seen so many damn regulations. There are arguments about what Navy people are allowed to wear when they put on the Army uniform. Arguments about what parts of the uniform civilian contractors are allowed to wear and how they wear it. What you’re allowed to PT in. What shoes you can wear. What you can wear to/from the shower. When you should/shouldn’t salute. Speaking of saluting, I absolutely can’t believe that there is saluting going on in Iraq. In the Marine Corps we don’t salute in the field. This prevents officers from being targeted by snipers. This is a perfect example that illustrates the “non-field” mentality that exists at the major bases in Iraq. (Plenty of Army officers have voiced their disapproval to me about this policy, too.) At the entrance to the chow hall at Camp Victory, there is actually a sign that reads: “Random force protection measures in effect. Sorry for the inconvenience.” Hello? Inconvenience? I was speechless the first time I saw that. We are doing nothing more than building castles in Iraq. The longer we're there, the more attention goes in to "improving the base." That means better food, paved roads, more buildings. The vast majority of the soldiers never ever go outside the wire. If they do, there is plenty of incentive to get back to Pizza Hut before dark. In my opinion, if we can’t stomach being out among the populace and living light, we ought to leave. Many parents don’t want to hear this, and I’m reluctant to say it. But the simple fact is, many of the occupants of our bases in Iraq are not living much differently than back in the States. Pick up a newspaper and you’ll see Marines and soldiers in the streets patrolling. But those guys are a tiny part of our presence here. I know this is just the Marine in me talking, but here is what I think of Camp Victory: soldiers complaining and trying to get laid. Soldiers walking around with sandy dusty weapons that they lay on the ground while they eat. Weapons not on “safe.” And more complaining. Really, why even give them weapons? Plenty of them have been shot on accident. Plenty. What a really shitty way to go. You go all the way to Iraq just to get shot by another soldier that was a dumbass. If the base was ever attacked, the soldiers would kill more friendlies than bad guys. I’d be willing to bet on that. Once, a soldier went crazy and started firing his weapons at things. This was in the middle of the night, when Camp Victory was still blacked out after dark. Well there were a whole shitload of people that emerged from there trailers and fired blindly in the general direction of the gunfire. Very scary. We could do a lot more with a whole lot less people in this country, if we would re-think the way we're working here. Many people know this, and you don't have to look hard to find them.

A Sergeant picked me up and took me to the air terminal. It was a small room, like a bus station waiting room. Bags were stacked against one wall. I arrived an hour early and drank a cup of coffee and watched TV. When the helicopters were about to land, I grabbed my bags and got in line. A KBR contractor and I struck up a conversation. He was a soldier in the first Gulf War and had been working for KBR for a couple of years. He now spent time at various bases in Iraq. Thankfully, he helped carry one of my bags. It was pitch black outside, and I nearly fell down an embankment because I couldn’t see my feet and I was off balance with all the gear I was carrying. The Blackhawks landed, and our stick [our group] replaced they guys getting off. They passed us by with their gear, faces dim in the green light of the helicopters. We
walked down the embankment and through the wind and the din of the rotors. Only by yelling at the top of your lungs can you talk to anyone near you, and even then, they are mostly reading your lips. I swung my gear into the chopper, and struggled to buckle myself in. With the gear and the people inside, you could barely move. A few minutes later, the doors slid closed, and we were pretty comfortable. It was warm in the cabin and the bags pushed against us as the rotors changed their pitch. The crewmen manned the door guns up front. The only lights were the green cabin lights up front, and they were only bright enough to see the gunners’ faces. Thirty seconds later we were airborne. We crawled slowly into the air and banked over the fences and bunkers and buildings that lined the base's airfield. I checked the digital compass on my watch, and saw that we were headed northwest right away. Taji is only 28 kilometers away from Baghdad, and the flight would be short. We flew fast and low. The lights below were bluish green and amber, and they lit up simple houses, narrow alleys, and trash-filled parking lots. Blazing fires burned on either side of our helicopter. Both looked like oil fires. I was captivated by my first real view of the “real Iraq.” It looked much like flying over the bowels of China. Just a few differences; for example the lack of vehicles below. It was 11 PM. The only cars I could make out were the few that careened through alleyways and small streets below at speeds that would have made cops spill their coffee in the States. In China, cars had seemed to be everywhere. Also, never while I flew in China did I have the knowledge in the back of my mind that people below me might shoot at me if they could see me. Within a few minutes, we descended onto an airfield similar to the one we had just left. The skids of the helicopter scraped down in the darkness onto flat dirt and gravel, and I piled out with my stuff. It was 11:20 PM on Saturday, April 1, 2006. I was finally in Taji.

A Couple of Days at Camp Victory

Camp Victory, Baghdad, Iraq – The staff offices of my new unit, the Iraq Assistance Group, are on the third floor of the palace. They occupy space that used to be a wide balcony overlooking the water and the rest of the palace grounds. Some drywall and cubicles fixed that. Saddam would probably have a shit fit if he saw what the place looks like now. Heads would definitely roll. About 20 people work in the offices, mostly officers, Captain and above. The walls are filled with calendars, pictures of loved ones, and secret maps. It was a lovely place, but I wouldn’t want to work there. After hearing about the thirtieth joke about making Powerpoint slides, I grabbed my tenth cup of coffee and took off. There wasn’t really anything for me to do there anyway. It was going to take a few days to arrange my helicopter ride up north to my new home, Camp Taji. All I could do was try to get used to the new time zone, walk around, and drink more coffee.
Later on, I grabbed my gear, and checked into yet another tent city. The setup was similar to what I saw in Kuwait. A bunch of lined up tents. Each large brown 40-man tent was surrounded on all sides by 5-foot high rows of sandbags, and had a wooden air conditioning-preserving alcove built on both ends of the tent. Each was actually two tents—a durable brown outer tent and a cool white inner tent. A large air conditioner was on each side of the tent. Additionally, they were fairly well lit by overhead fluorescent lighting. Electrical outlets were accessible. Twenty military cots lined each side of the room. The floors were wooden. Aside from being dusty and having gone through a constant stream of “transients” that had left paper scraps and water bottles here and there, I’d have to say KBR came through again. Most of the people in the tent city seem to be poor souls that are waiting to move into one of the trailers. (Yes, moving into a small crappy trailer is what people on Camp Victory aspire to.) It can take a couple of months before your name is finally called, and you get to leave the tent city and “move on up.” Your position on the waiting list doesn’t seem to be affected too much by your rank, either. Colonels live in the tents just like the privates. The rest of the tent-dwellers were people like me. “Transients.” It means basically what it says. People that are just passing through. They might be in Baghdad for a meeting, or they might be waiting for their plane flight home. During our stay in the tents, Army guys came and went in ones and twos. One night, a whole platoon from a unit of the Georgia National Guard came through. They heaved their packs and sleeping bags through the doors at three in the morning, filling up the cots. They were snoring away within 20 minutes. I didn’t know they were from Georgia until the next day when I talked to a few of their soldiers. In the military, I believe I’ve met Americans from every state in the union. Our military is truly a melting pot of states, colors, and creeds. But meeting these soldiers reminded me of the origins of our military; of militias from the Thirteen Colonies, fighting off the British. The military was like that for so long, until just beyond the Civil War. You’d go to war with the boys from your hometown, county, or state. Going off to war like that must make for a pretty tight unit. These guys were finishing up a deployment south of Baghdad, and were on their way to Fallujah to drop off some gear. Then they were heading home. They’d all be back fishing for bass or chasing Savannah skirts by the end of April. From the way they joked around but kept their gear squared away, and from their respectful way of talking (though not to each other), I’d have to guess it was a pretty good unit.

I’d heard about the chow halls in Iraq; my old company gunnery sergeant is in Al Taqqadum, and emailed us a few weeks ago: "The chow is the best I’ve seen in my career.” But nothing prepared me for what I saw. You grab a set of plastic utensils, a plastic plate, and a tray, and then the world is yours. For example, here were some of today’s choices, served up by the finest chow hall workers Pakistan, Bangladesh, and the Philippines could send to Iraq: a guy making Philly Cheesesteaks (including chicken ones, too), a full array of “short order” food—hamburgers, hot dogs, egg rolls, french fries, chicken nuggets. Then came several varieties of hot chow—baked chicken, carved turkey, several kinds of rice and pasta, a whole Iraqi selection of curries, lamb, rice, flatbread, swiss steaks, fresh cooked broccoli and other vegetables, and all sorts of other stuff I didn’t even go look at. That is only one section of the massive chow hall. There are deli sections, dessert sections (including fresh pies, ice cream, and a frozen yogurt bar). Rows and rows of coolers full of sodas, several kinds of milk, 10 types of juices, different kinds of coffee, a pastry bar, a full salad bar (including gigantic tubs of fresh shredded tuna, ham, and chicken). Potato salad, pasta salad, chicken salad, crab salad. I can’t even begin to recount the other stuff, because I haven’t even walked over there yet. On the way out, you can grab trail mix, Harvest Power Bars, Gatorade, Power Gel, and anything else you can carry out. Dinner is about the same thing. Breakfast, too (steaks, burritos, biscuit sandwiches, quiche, omelet makers, a waffle bar, etc.). I am making myself very sick just thinking about it. Needless to say, fat people abound. It’s a wonder the vast majority of soldiers aren’t fat, too. Being here for only six months probably helps with that, as does walking everywhere and the fact that most of them seem to be about twenty years old. A lot of them surely work pretty hard, and burning those calories is easy. Luckily, eating healthy is easy. Plenty of lean meat and vegetables. It doesn’t take long to find some huge dude stuffing his face, though. Who’d have thought you could go to war and come back fatter than when you left?

Unfortunately, the Marine side of me is hard to keep in its cage. As I left the chow hall, I walked behind a huge senior Army sergeant. She was much older than me, and must have been a recently activated reservist or something. She was obviously way over Army weight standards. She waddled out of the chow hall, finishing her cookie, yapping away to a friend as her pistol in its holster flapped against her side. I just thought to myself, “My God, does she even know how to fire that thing?” As a Marine, you have a certain idea about what sort of person wins wars. The brave men in cold muddy water late at night certainly have the most dangerous role. But in the end, I guess it takes all sorts of people to win a war. My Grandmother riveting planes during WWII did her share. I suppose I just need to remind myself that the less physically intimidating folks like the cookie monster in front of me help win the war too. She was likely a patriotic Mom, called away from her regular job and husband and kids for 6 months. She wouldn’t need to fire that rusty pistol that wasn’t on “safe” anyway. But at least she was doing her duty. And that’s a helluva lot more than a helluva lot of other people.

Arrival in Baghdad - Camp Victory

The next morning, we loaded up our gear, as before, on an Air Force pallet at 4 in the morning. We boarded a bus with a bunch of civilian contractors, went to eat chow, returned to the staging area for a coffee/piss break, and then headed off to the airfield. The man in charge of palletizing gear, drawing up the manifests, and getting passengers on the plane, had the air of a former career enlisted military guy. I have met so many men like him in my military career that I’ve lost count. Somewhat gruff, detail oriented, not afraid to tell anyone off, yet sort of well-meaning. His basic spiel was, “Be on the bus when you’re supposed to, I ain’t your babysitter, Mosul people sit in the front, Baghdad people in the back. If you screw it up, you get left behind.” So when some guy, five minutes before we head to the airfield, said, “Baghdad? I’m going to Balad. I figured you guys saw it on my orders…” I thought he would get yelled at. But for some reason he didn’t. The coordinator dude helped him figure out how to change planes in Baghdad.

There was little waiting once we got to the airfield. We got directly onto the C-130, and strapped in. The cargo was shoved in right behind us. A half hour later, we were airborne. C-130s are loud, slow, and have no view. Unless you get up to take a leak and peer out of the porthole, you won’t see a thing. Just a wall in front of you with switches, gauges, and pipes, and a whole lot of cargo straps. We all just shoved our earplugs in, and most of us slept for 80% of the 90 minute flight to Baghdad. I could tell we were getting close to Baghdad, because the plane started changing course often. I’m not sure what the reason was, but it likely had to do with alternating the flight plan from previous flights, to make it difficult to plan to shoot down the aircraft. The main difference between a commercial approach to an airport and the approach of a C-130 to Baghdad is the rapidity of descent. Most commercial planes gradually descend from 35,000 feet to whatever airport they’re going to land at. But in Baghdad, to avoid being shot at, the planes wait until just before they get to the airfield, and then they start a massive downward corkscrew above the airfield, before finally landing on the runway. It makes it hard to sit up straight in your seat, and is sort of like riding an amusement park ride.

Soon after we landed, we filed off of the aircraft, into the warm 10 AM Baghdad sun. We walked single file, past a group of civilians waiting to board the aircraft for the continuing flight to Mosul. We stopped at a staging area, where we collected our bags, and were met by the Marine liaison that would take us to Al Faw Palace for processing. We dragged our bags to a waiting SUV, and were soon bumping down the dusty roads from the airport to the Camp Victory complex. Camp Victory is unreal. The main building, the Al Faw Palace, was dedicated to the troops that defeated the Iranians during a battle of the Iran-Iraq war. The palace sits in the middle of a main lake. There are many other lakes and ponds, all surrounded by buildings of various shapes and sizes and levels of luxuriousness. All of the buildings have now been spray painted with building numbers. For example, Saddam’s former private zoo would now be something like, Bldg. 47A, Camp Victory Post Office. Guard towers and palm trees are sprinkled all over the grounds. Parking lots of SUVs, military trucks, and full bicycle racks are crammed into spaces between buildings. No matter where you are, you’re not far from a port-a-potty. Kellog, Brown, and Root (KBR), a subsidiary of the infamous Halliburton, had dragged in trailers of all shapes and sizes. Huge trailer parks full of two-person trailers are on one part of the camp. Not far away are a set of trailers that form the camp’s food court. One trailer is a Subway, one a Pizza Hut. One a barbershop, one a gift shop. As I said, unreal. We received temporary badges and made our way to the palace. I had always thought that Saddam’s palaces were likely very gaudy and tasteless buildings. But I must admit, this palace was pretty impressive. The main hall is an immense, eight sided, three story room, completely made of marble, with immense pillars on all sides and with a huge sparkling chandelier hanging from the top. It is like cathedral meets Vegas hotel lobby. The ceilings are in plaster relief geometric designs (albeit not hand-carved) of white, blue, pink, and green. The walls of the surrounding rooms are marble, and a wide, completely marble staircase winds from the bottom to top.

There have been a few changes since the US moved in. In the palace foyer, were Saddam would have met with foreign dignitaries, there is now an ID issuance desk, and a couple of Army privates checking badges. The palace rooms—kitchens, bedrooms (love nests), etc, here are now cubicles full of Colonels and computers. Where a palace guard might have leaned against a wall, there is now a fire extinguisher. Saddam’s ornate guest bathrooms are now cleaned by Pakistani men contracted by the US government. His toilet seats are pissed on by Navy chiefs. His bidets no longer splash the butts of Baghdad’s Baathists; now they're just full of extra toilet paper.

The Plane Flight to Kuwait and Standing Around

(Almost nobody flies directly to Baghdad. It's a gradual process. Like in Vietnam, where you'd first go to Okinawa or Bangkok or somewhere, to get to Iraq you have to make several stops and get really tired first. I went from Okinawa to Osaka to Chicago to Tampa to Amsterdam to Kuwait, and then to Baghdad... and then finally to my new base. Kuwait is where most people fly in to Baghdad from. The following is similar to most people's story.)


The plane to Kuwait was a mix of contractors, wealthy Kuwaitis, oil workers’ kids, and military members on their way in or back from leave. For me it was like a gradual entrance into Arab culture, and seemed a little surreal. The “surreal” might have been from my final beer at the airport, though. I've been mixed in with people from all over the earth, but this was my first trip to the Middle East. Like many new experiences, nothing is really like you thought it was going to be. I've found that most people on our planet mix in with each other quite well. Two old Arab dudes in front of me were hysterical with laughter as they watched a British practical joke show on the overhead televisions. We laugh at the same things, we want the same things for our families, we all bleed red blood. We touched down in Kuwait City. The last thing I heard as I got off the plane was “importing alcohol here is illegal.” The airport was fairly clean, but partly under construction. We were instantly surrounded by the differences of our new world. Men in flowing robes. Women with heads in scarves. Young and westernized beautiful women with heads not in scarves. Haughty wealthy young Kuwaitis. Pakistani immigrant workers being ordered around like prisoners. Non-deodorant using bag handlers asking for money for their unsolicited baggage cart collecting. The airport had a Starbucks and some western restaurants, and though it was well past midnight, it was full of people waiting for friends and relatives while they sipped tea or ate . I didn’t feel uncomfortable at all, but we certainly drew a lot of attention with our oversized bags, military haircuts, and comparatively huge and muscular frames. I suppose we would have drew attention at any airport; but in Kuwait, with its history related to the U.S. military, and with the war still going on in the north, it almost felt like being some sort of celebrity--not anyone really famous, just maybe William Hung or something.

The Marine liaisons, a couple of sergeants, collected our ID cards and led us to some vans in the parking garage of the airport. It was dark and musty inside. The smell reminded me of walking out of airports in so much of the Third World, from Caracas to Beijing to Manila. The first thing that hits you is the smell of diesel exhaust. But here, the manner of dress was so different than the rest of the world. Even in China people mainly wear western-style clothing. But here I was surrounded by white robes and white headwear. Superficial, of course, but these are the things you notice first. We got onto the freeway for the 45-minute drive to Ali Al Salem, the air base that we were to leave from for Iraq. It was nearly 2 AM. We were all pretty surprised to hear that we were to report for check-in at 0430 for our military flight to Baghdad. I was pretty suspicious… it sounded way too efficient. Nothing in the military happens that smoothly. In the darkness, I couldn’t see much of the scenery from the freeway. We sped by the ordinary Kuwaitis’ apartment buildings, sand-colored cement buildings painted in amber by the freeway lights. The dimly lit minarets of mosques, marking centers of neighborhoods, lined the freeways like mile markers. The rest was all desert.

At the entrance to the base, our driver greeted the Kuwaiti guards, and we snaked our way through concrete barriers lined up to form roads in the wide dusty dirt. Far off blue runway lights blinked near the parked C-130's. We passed through a couple of checkpoints manned by young Army corporals, and finally parked at a row of metal buildings. It was 2:30 in the morning. We walked into one of the buildings (a small warehouse), and stopped at a desk in a section of cubicles. We were issued brand-new 9mm M9 pistols and 2 magazines of 15 rounds each. After signing for our weapons, we loaded our bags onto a few trailers pulled by golf cart-like transport vehicles called “gators.” We pulled into a section of the base’s “tent city,” and stopped at a tent that was used for transient billeting. The 16-man tents were brown on the outside, white on the inside, air conditioned, cement-floored, and hard wired for electricity. Not a bad setup, really. Metal bunk beds lined the tents. We shaved, and changed out of our civilian clothes. Later, wearing a uniform seven days a week in Iraq would become old hat; you wouldn't even think about it. But when you're passing from the warmth and security of the civilian world into a world of danger, picking up a weapon and changing into a uniform feels like you are superman changing into his super suit. It was nice to change out of our travel clothes and into cool and fresh cammies. At 0330, we departed for the waiting area for the plane flight. We staged our gear on a pallet next to a container box. And we began to wait. Twenty minutes later a busload of contractors—American defense contractors, Filipino workers, and other representatives from any of a thousand places. We realized they were our competition for the flight to Baghdad. This was the first hint that our flying north that day was far from a certainty. One of the flight organizers opened up the container box, brewed coffee, and began to collect passenger manifest information for the lined up contractors. We Marines stood at some nearby cement picnic tables, and talked easily, sipping coffee and telling stories about past deployments. No one could have known that a day or so before, none of us knew each other. But our Marine culture permeated us to the bone. We had the sort of sameness that made it extremely easy to talk and get along. I can only compare it to the way people like Filipinos easily congregate together in any foreign land. The culture we shared made bonding instant. It wasn’t long before we found that we all had mutual friends and acquaintances, or had served in some of the same units. The contractors stole glances at us and our weapons. Though some of them were returning to Iraq from vacation, and several were undoubtedly former military, many of them were probably in the Middle East for the first time. Our slung rifles, the pistols strapped to our legs, and our easy manner of conversation must have reminded them that they were really in a war zone now, and the things they had seen on television were now close at hand. Most of them talked quietly, almost nervously, among themselves. The sergeant came back and told us that we would be taken to the chow hall for breakfast, and when we returned we would “find out if we were flying.” By this time, I was certain we would not be headed to Baghdad that day.
After a welcome breakfast in a chow hall full of Air Force personnel that looked at us the way the contractors had, we arrived back at the container box just as the sun was coming up. After being told that we “might be going”, then “we probably are not going,” then “we are definitely going,” we were finally told, “you aren’t going.” It was nice to finally be certain about something, and being jerked around like that was the standard for most of us. We were much too tired, anyway, to be anxious about going north that day. We threw our gear into a van and returned to the transient tent we had changed in a few hours earlier. I laid my gear near a rack, and slept deeply for a couple of hours. At noon, I went to grab lunch with another officer, and then I sent some emails. I rearranged my gear in my bags for the tenth time, and relaxed for the rest of the day while I prepared to repeat the same drill the next morning.














Standing around in Kuwait waiting for a flight.

The Trip to Kuwait - Amsterdam

I left Okinawa on the 19th of March. Nearly a day later, I landed in Tampa, FL. My three days in Tampa were a waste. I filled out a few forms and got a new set of orders to Iraq and some plane tickets. I met another USNA Marine, Lt Doug Orr, there, and we hung out for a few days, waiting for the flight. We left Tampa on Wednesday, March 22 and flew to Newark. We switched planes and then flew to Amsterdam. Normally, you can’t count switching planes at an airport has having “been to the city,” but luckily, we had an 8-hour layover there, and four other Marines and I hopped into a taxi. We headed for the city center, not consciously intending to find the red light district. We found it. It looked like it might have been a pretty happening place at night. At any rate, it was interesting during the day. Sex shops full of enormous dildos and leather contraptions. Bars advertising shows involving animals. Cannibis seeds sold here. Babes and beer. Almost everything was closed; but Amsterdam never sleeps. We saw a place that still had a few women sitting in the windows waiting for customers. We could see that the “day shift” lacked what the night shift must have been like. These were not beautiful and skinny Eastern European dames; the only one I could see clearly was an enormous 30-something North African. Iraq is a bit hotter than northern Europe in March. So we weren't quite dressed for the 10 AM Amsterdam windchill. I was wearing a light snap-up shirt that was cool for Kuwait... but in the Netherlands I was freezing my ever living ass off. Most of the other guys felt the same way. A couple of ladies passed us by. They were warmly dressed American tourists, and they were aghast at our level of clothing. One of them said she was going to tell our mothers. We finally found a small pub and had a few beers. The bartender, a red-headed lady with a South African accent, told us where we could find some food. We found a place to eat. I had a baguette with smoked ham and an unexpectedly huge plate of fried mushrooms. I also had two jugs of Heineken… my freedom to drink beer was quickly approaching its end. We left the bar and found another place called Eurobar. It was mostly empty, but we bellied up and ordered.
I had a couple of Guinnesses while we talked to the two bartenders. One was Spanish, one Chinese. Both had been born in Amsterdam. The Chinese guy understood Chinese, but couldn’t speak it… I think he said something like “my parents speak it but not me… fuck that.” The Spanish girl was young and pretty, with plans to move to Los Angeles soon. She spoke several languages, probably all very well. I told her L.A. was a shithole; go to San Diego. She said she was planning on "going into marketing there." She was twenty and totally clueless, but I think she'll figure out the deal when she gets to L.A., and hopefully she won't try to become a porn star. Everyone I’ve ever met from The Netherlands has been pretty interesting, all the way back to the backpackers I met in Yunnan Province in China. We made it back to the airport in time to have our last beer—mine was a Corona I think. I bought some wooden shoes and boarded the plane for the six hour flight to Kuwait.