Well, last night was my first medevac since I got here. It was ten o'clock at night and I was just about to ponder the depths of reality and the insides of my eyelids when my crewchief walked into the room and said that we were getting ready to launch. There was a soldier at one of the bases in Iraq who was having some eye problems and needed to be moved to a larger hospital to get treated.
So I jumped out of bed and threw on my long-johns (it was about 2 degrees C) and my flight suit. I then grabbed my helmet, body armor, M-16, 9mm, and night-vision goggles and stumbled out to my awaiting chariot. By this point in time I looked like a cross between G.I. Joe and that poor little bugger from "A Christmas Story" who can't put his arms down for all the layers he's wearing. Once at the bird, I started up our auxilary generator and started to get myself settled for a long night. I was flying with our Executive Officer (2nd down on my chain of command below only the CO) so I was being very careful not to mess anything up.
About 10 minutes later we launched into a starry desert sky for the first leg of our journey. The skills that I had developed on my last trip out here (flying in formation, etc.) proved to be very perishable and the late hour was not helping much. I felt like I was about 30 seconds behind the aircraft and trying to catch up. Thankfully, the XO was anticipating this and was carefully watching to make sure that I didn't do anything too crazy. I felt like I had gone from the IR list straight to the varsity team.
The flight was pretty uneventful and the soldier got to where he needed to be safely. We had a pretty kicking tailwind on the way back home so I was able to get back to my bunk and continue my comunion with my eyelids before too long. And commune I did.
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