Any good freelancer knows the best remedy for a late night is an early crew call, and with the Tribute to the Troops scheduled for noon, we had to be in very early on Friday to make sure everything was ready. So, still sore from the night before on the roof, I dragged my hurting carcass out of bed, enjoyed cold yet invigorating shower, then some more delicious DFAC chow before reporting to the Production Tent.

Standing outside and waiting for the rest of the crew to freshen up, a soldier walked up to me. As we talked about the improvements to Humvee armor and flak jackets, I heard a loud but distant boom. I got ready to run into the nearest hardened structure, but when the solder didn’t react, I relaxed. Then – boom- I heard – boom – three loud – BOOMS – in rapid succession. I looked at the soldier who helpfully offered, “Don’t worry, those are probably controlled explosions.” He paused for a second then added, “But they usually announce those over the radio, and I didn’t hear anything, did you?”

Uhh, come to think of it, NO!

The booms ended, at least for then.

Even though we were close to ready, there are always a million or so more things to do. I was knee deep in oh-by-the-ways when SFC Marx walked in.

“Dude, remember where you guys dropped me off last night? They found a bomb twenty feet from there this morning!”

A what? He had to be kidding.

“The Explosive Ordinance Disposal guys are there now with a robot to disarm it.”

He wasn’t kidding. Wow. This place is still as crazy as ever.

After last year’s close call, I’ve learned this simple trick: don’t think about it. If you do, you’ll end up a whimpering mess huddled in a quivering heap on the floor. So rather than think of what could happen, I concentrated on what needed to happen to pull off the show.

The soldiers that helped us set up were back. They unloaded plastic barricades from a pickup truck. Each barricade that hit the ground outside the tent sounded like thunder. Needless to say, we were all a bit jumpy that morning. Marty even remarked, “Lots of booms today, dontcha think?” Maybe we were overly sensitive to it, maybe there really were a lot of explosions (and barricades hitting the ground!) Who can say for sure? Everyone was a bit on edge. What a terrible way to live.

With a few hours still to go before the show started, Abi and I took our long-standing animosity to the ring. The match, a no disqualification anything-goes all-out battle was for the International Heavy Lightweight Title, and it was a close contest.

Fearsome Frenchy demonstrates the Second Rope Death Drop on poor Muhammed Abi.

Due to sticky confidentiality and tricky liability legalities, I’m not at liberty to say who won the match, but suffice to say it was the first and possibly only French victory in Iraq, or in any battle for that matter.

Cameraman Sean Makes a Grand Entrance.

I told some of the late-arriving crew about SFC Marx’s early morning bomb story. They’d already heard about it. It turned out that the ‘bomb’ was, in fact, a discarded plastic PVC pipe. When I told SFC Marx about that morning’s bomb being a hoax, he immediately replied, “Which bomb?”

How sad is that?

Before we knew it, it was noon, and, just like that, the show started. If time takes on the quality of molasses in a cargo plane, it takes on the exact opposite quality during any live show. For the next two hours, as exhausted as everyone was, we entertained the troops the best way we knew how. I probably have said this every year, but I sincerely think this show was our best effort yet. And hopefully, we managed to distract the soldiers, at least for a few hours, from the place they currently have to call home.

As soon as it started, it seemed, it was over. The final fade to black was called, a round of thanks and congratulations went around, and then it was time to disassemble everything. In two hours we disconnected, unplugged, wrapped, packed up and palletized what took us two full days to build.

Before I knew it, we were back on the bus headed for the flight line. Of course, in accordance with our time zone, Military Daylight Wasting Time, we sat on that bus for two hours while they loaded our gear on the plane, but still, compared to years past – when we waited a full day to leave, we were ahead of schedule. Two hours behind? Right on time!

Our previously unbroken broken plane in Germany streak was finally broken. Maybe the pilots really wanted to get home too, maybe we were just lucky, but whatever the reason, for a nice change, we did zero damage to our aircraft. And possibly most important of all, I got to enjoy a nice, cold half gallon of beautiful German Bitburger beer, the next best thing to Guinness.

Nothing out of the routine happened for the rest of the trip. Time stood still as we were encapsulated in our flying steel tomb. Mercifully, I was unconscious for nearly the entire seventeen and a half hour flight home.

A tanker, freshly de-iced from whatever snowy base it came from met us, which meant no more stopping, no more wasting time. Unbelievably, we actually managed to land at Andrews Air Force Base two hours ahead of schedule. Buses were waiting for most of us to take us to commercial airports to get home – while a private jet awaited a lucky few – and as quickly as it started, the Tribute to the Troops show came to a safe and successful end.

As a personal post script, Frenchy’s First Law of Travel bit me once again, as somehow, amazingly, United Airlines managed to misplace the co-pilot for my flight home. Though the Air Force stepped up and got us back to the USA ahead of schedule, I still wasted seven hours waiting in Dulles for my flight home. Such is the price to pay for transitioning from Daylight Wasting Time to United’s Daylight Screw-You Time.

All of this aside, if there is a Tribute to the Troops VI next year, I will be there, unless of course I get fired for writing this blog. And just for the record, Patrick never did pay me that dollar!

The Tribute to the Troops show airs on the USA network Christmas Eve at 9 PM.

All photos in this report courtesy Jason Robinson, Patrick McManus, Cary Stedman, Scott Superka, Muhammed Abi and John Cone. Thanks!