thedrifter
09-29-04, 06:18 AM
09-23-2004
From the Editor:
Under the Weather
By Ed Offley
Long before the winds howled and the surf pounded against the dunes, it was the sudden silence that heralded the coming of the storm.
The birds had flown.
On any given day, the deep blue sky over the Gulf of Mexico where I live is alive with what base-gate billboards used to describe as “the sound of freedom.” F-15s and F/A-22s from Tyndall bank and roll high overhead, their turbines warbling in the Doppler effect of simulated air combat maneuvering. Occasionally an unmanned QF-4 drone will fly by enroute the Eglin instrument test ranges. Lower down, the giant MH-53 Pave Lows and MH-60 Pavehawks from Hurlburt Field parade up and down the shoreline on official business (but us locals know the young aircrew are scanning the tourist-crammed, sun-bleached sand for a different – heh, heh – target of opportunity). Even the Coast Guard joins the fray on a daily basis with a patrol flight from Panama City up the coast to Santa Rosa Beach and beyond.
But not last week.
Last week, the U.S. military joined its civilian counterparts in fleeing from Hurricane Ivan, with the Eagles flying off to Tinker and Raptors to Nellis while Tyndall family members joined their off-base neighbors hitting the road for Jacksonville and points east. In civilian neighborhoods and military flight lines alike, the plywood went up and the storm shutters came down. Then Ivan slammed ashore and the lights went out.
It would provide an unanticipated but invaluable lesson.
For the next 72 hours (we were relatively lucky compared with other sections of the Gulf Coast), my family and I dined on canned tuna and read by flashlight, and I had an opportunity to reflect on the difference between normal life and survival-plus, as we titled our post-Ivan experience. Without power and lighting, daily life retreats to a rhythm defined by the presence or absence of sunlight. Absent the distractions of cable TV and the internet, one keeps busy with smaller, concrete tasks such as clearing yard debris, counting missing roof shingles and taking cold showers. It also enables you to revisit that earlier family debate as to whether a gasoline-powered electrical generator is really a luxury one does not require.
But after a time, a different set of thoughts came to the fore. I was tossing and turning in my dank, overheated bedroom late one night when I suddenly realized: This is what each night must be like for the guys and gals in Iraq. Yes, I know, a galaxy of semi-permanent camps with wooden walls, notional AC and occasional email service has sprouted up all over that war-torn land, but the bottom line is that from morning patrols to evening time off, the GIs are living closer to the 18th century than to the world of creature comforts we here at home so easily take for granted.
I recalled a reporting trip to Somalia in late 1992 where I saw that the advance guard of Marines, Air Force flight-line managers and Army soldiers of Operation Provide Comfort had celebrated the conversion of an airless airplane hangar into a makeshift dormitory, where cardboard packing crates provided ad hoc cubicle walls for a modicum of privacy.
After 24 hours of rubbing elbows, I found myself enjoying the same delight in much smaller comforts, such as when a sergeant showed me how to carve a makeshift coffee cup out of the bottom of a plastic water bottle. And I took note of how one Airman ignored the stifling heat and hours of boredom on duty in the shattered airport control tower by quietly filling the pages of a notebook with letters to his wife written by the light of a battery-powered lantern. I had conveniently forgotten that experience until it came back to me 11 years later as I read a two-day-old newspaper by flashlight in a Florida night as black as the Empty Quarter of Saudi Arabia.
From the “Great Storm” after Trafalgar in October 1805, to the dust clouds that wrecked the Iran Rescue mission in 1980, to the howling sandstorm of the Euphrates Valley in Operation Iraqi Freedom, military operations have frequently turned on the unexpected variables of the planet’s weather. Thanks to Hurricane Ivan, I have a renewed appreciation of how the troops who are not in a position to evacuate the storm, cope through the hours of heat and darkness and sand.
Ed Offley is Editor of DefenseWatch. He can be reached at dweditor@yahoo.com. Please send Feedback responses to dwfeedback@yahoo.com. © 2004 Ed Offley.
http://www.sftt.org/cgi-bin/csNews/csNews.cgi?database=FTE.db&command=viewone&op=t&id=52&rnd=833.4417132306669
Ellie
From the Editor:
Under the Weather
By Ed Offley
Long before the winds howled and the surf pounded against the dunes, it was the sudden silence that heralded the coming of the storm.
The birds had flown.
On any given day, the deep blue sky over the Gulf of Mexico where I live is alive with what base-gate billboards used to describe as “the sound of freedom.” F-15s and F/A-22s from Tyndall bank and roll high overhead, their turbines warbling in the Doppler effect of simulated air combat maneuvering. Occasionally an unmanned QF-4 drone will fly by enroute the Eglin instrument test ranges. Lower down, the giant MH-53 Pave Lows and MH-60 Pavehawks from Hurlburt Field parade up and down the shoreline on official business (but us locals know the young aircrew are scanning the tourist-crammed, sun-bleached sand for a different – heh, heh – target of opportunity). Even the Coast Guard joins the fray on a daily basis with a patrol flight from Panama City up the coast to Santa Rosa Beach and beyond.
But not last week.
Last week, the U.S. military joined its civilian counterparts in fleeing from Hurricane Ivan, with the Eagles flying off to Tinker and Raptors to Nellis while Tyndall family members joined their off-base neighbors hitting the road for Jacksonville and points east. In civilian neighborhoods and military flight lines alike, the plywood went up and the storm shutters came down. Then Ivan slammed ashore and the lights went out.
It would provide an unanticipated but invaluable lesson.
For the next 72 hours (we were relatively lucky compared with other sections of the Gulf Coast), my family and I dined on canned tuna and read by flashlight, and I had an opportunity to reflect on the difference between normal life and survival-plus, as we titled our post-Ivan experience. Without power and lighting, daily life retreats to a rhythm defined by the presence or absence of sunlight. Absent the distractions of cable TV and the internet, one keeps busy with smaller, concrete tasks such as clearing yard debris, counting missing roof shingles and taking cold showers. It also enables you to revisit that earlier family debate as to whether a gasoline-powered electrical generator is really a luxury one does not require.
But after a time, a different set of thoughts came to the fore. I was tossing and turning in my dank, overheated bedroom late one night when I suddenly realized: This is what each night must be like for the guys and gals in Iraq. Yes, I know, a galaxy of semi-permanent camps with wooden walls, notional AC and occasional email service has sprouted up all over that war-torn land, but the bottom line is that from morning patrols to evening time off, the GIs are living closer to the 18th century than to the world of creature comforts we here at home so easily take for granted.
I recalled a reporting trip to Somalia in late 1992 where I saw that the advance guard of Marines, Air Force flight-line managers and Army soldiers of Operation Provide Comfort had celebrated the conversion of an airless airplane hangar into a makeshift dormitory, where cardboard packing crates provided ad hoc cubicle walls for a modicum of privacy.
After 24 hours of rubbing elbows, I found myself enjoying the same delight in much smaller comforts, such as when a sergeant showed me how to carve a makeshift coffee cup out of the bottom of a plastic water bottle. And I took note of how one Airman ignored the stifling heat and hours of boredom on duty in the shattered airport control tower by quietly filling the pages of a notebook with letters to his wife written by the light of a battery-powered lantern. I had conveniently forgotten that experience until it came back to me 11 years later as I read a two-day-old newspaper by flashlight in a Florida night as black as the Empty Quarter of Saudi Arabia.
From the “Great Storm” after Trafalgar in October 1805, to the dust clouds that wrecked the Iran Rescue mission in 1980, to the howling sandstorm of the Euphrates Valley in Operation Iraqi Freedom, military operations have frequently turned on the unexpected variables of the planet’s weather. Thanks to Hurricane Ivan, I have a renewed appreciation of how the troops who are not in a position to evacuate the storm, cope through the hours of heat and darkness and sand.
Ed Offley is Editor of DefenseWatch. He can be reached at dweditor@yahoo.com. Please send Feedback responses to dwfeedback@yahoo.com. © 2004 Ed Offley.
http://www.sftt.org/cgi-bin/csNews/csNews.cgi?database=FTE.db&command=viewone&op=t&id=52&rnd=833.4417132306669
Ellie