Frenchy's Rant

A slippery walk to the DFAC for breakfast, then it was time to go to work. All of our equipment had been delivered during the night. Soldiers had volunteered to help us setup. Every time we have done a Tribute to the Troops we have been assigned soldiers, and every time they have proved to be the hardest working people we could ask for. To their credit, not one is lazy or slow, they do everything we ask willingly, and they get it right every time.

Two tents were put in place to serve as our makeshift production ‘truck’, and we started assembling our equipment. Racks were opened and placed (and moved several times) and cables were run to interconnect everything. The ‘normal’ (if that word even applies) WWE show has twelve cameras, each with a dedicated tape machine to record it, plus several show record machines. The audio console in our regular production truck, safely parked somewhere in the US, has 120 inputs, each with an input source. There are eighty monitors in the production area alone to keep track of all of the cameras, tape machines and other elements that make up a WWE show. The entire mobile unit contains over two hundred fifty monitors, and uses eighty-nine separate hard drives to produce our show.

We came to Baghdad with significantly less equipment.

I was talking to one of the crew about the repeated delays and he said, “Yeah, well these C-17’s are pretty much a FRED.” The military has acronyms for almost everything; Dining Facility is a DFAC, Baghdad International Airport is BIAP, but I had never heard of a FRED before. I asked him to explain. “A FRED is a Fucking Ridiculous Economic Disaster.”

Nice.

This time our flying FRED actually managed to take off, and we settled in for a long eight hour flight to Ramstein Air Force base. About two hours into the flight, we heard the following announcement, ” In about twenty minutes we will begin in-air refueling. It might get bumpy for about the next hour or so, so if you’re sleeping on top of a pallet, you’ll need to get down now.”

The top of the cargo pallets is probably the most comfortable place to sleep, though there is a lot less oxygen back there. The first year I stretched out on top of a pallet and slept. When I woke up, I was so disoriented, and had such a huge headache that I felt like I was going to die. An airman explained that there is much less oxygen circulated to the back of the plane, because the cargo doesn’t need it. I never went back there again.

An hour later – this cryptic announcement crackled over the loudspeakers; “Well that refueling thing was pretty much a joke. The tanker never showed up.”

I was starting to sense the pattern. But this was a little scarier, since we were already three hours away from Charleston. Uhh… the WHAT?? No tanker? Do we have enough fuel to make it to Germany?

The pranks continued, including locking people in the bathroom and hiding sleeping victim’s sneakers. It does get pretty boring on these long flights, but sometimes it felt like traveling with a high school football team.

Fortunately, we did in fact have enough fuel to make it, and landed in Germany eight hours later. They told us we would be be on the ground for three hours. Our German hosts laid out a feast for us, and we hungrily accepted it. Four and a half hours later, we were back aboard the C-17 for the final leg of this journey. It’s funny to think that only an hour and a half delay is actually doing well.

The pilots allowed two people inside the cockpit during takeoff from Ramstein. I guess it is OK with them because they are armed.

We strapped in, heard the now familiar evacuation speech, which includes instructions for proper ‘smoke hood’ operation – something missing on commercial flights. With smoke hoods safely stowed and seat belts fastened, all systems were go and our giant cargo plane started to roll for the runway.

Suddenly, the plane stopped. Of course. Things were going too smoothly. Something just HAD to go wrong. Mechanics started running up and down, but the engines were still running. Hmm… maybe something minor had gone wrong, as long as the engines were running, I was sure it wouldn’t take long to fix.

And I believed that all the way until I saw a guy grab a ladder, climb up one of the walls and start peering at and probing the many wires going every which way.

Then I knew we were in for a long wait. Still, we were technically ahead of schedule, because usually we wait until Germany to break our airplane. Last year we had tires blow out on landing (talk about fun!) and had to change planes. Evidently it’s faster to change planes than it is to change tires.

But this didn’t look like a simple tire change problem. This looked serious. Some kind of navigation equipment failure. It’s definitely a good idea to have properly operating navigational gear when flying into a war zone… we all understood that.

So we sat. Someone quickly found the beer storage, and within an hour, all the beer, wine, water and food meant to last the entire trip was gone. Entertainment was provided by some of the wrestlers having impromptu matches, which was funny and interesting for a while.

Things were looking good around 4 AM when they announced they were going to power the plane down and then back to see if the problem was solved. Kind of like rebooting, we sat there in the darkness for five minutes.

The next announcement seemed like more good news. Even though we hadn’t flown anywhere, the engines had been working most of the time, so we needed to refuel.

But then the bad news hit. The reboot hadn’t helped. And now the flight crew was getting into the period where they can no longer fly… so… our 1 AM flight was finally scrubbed – at 6 AM.

Our luggage was offloaded, we dropped our company provided sleeping bags in a pile, loaded ourselves on a bus and headed for the Hawthorne Suites. How the WWE travel department managed to find fifty vacant rooms at 6 AM is beyond me, but somehow they did. We were told that we would try for a 9:45 PM flight the next day. Unbelievable. We haven’t even left and already we are a day behind. As I’ve said in the past, it’s no wonder the military uses a 24 hour clock, because it takes them twice as long as it should to do anything.

But, no matter. There was nothing I could do about it. Falling asleep after this ordeal wasn’t a problem at all. A bed never felt so comfortable. One advantage to this delay, we were already acclimating to Iraq time, eight hours behind Eastern Standard… gotta look on the bright side!

Our marching orders for the next day were slipped under our door during the night (or should I say during the day, since we didn’t get into bed until 7AM.)

Aww. That Hawthorne Inn Manager. How thoughtful to provide more beer and wine to the WWE members! But I just had to laugh at one thing on the notice though:

Please Be Not Be Late? OK! I Be Not Be Will Be Not Be Late!! That Be No Problem!

We’re going to try again tonight. Hopefully the Spirit of Southwest Airlines has been fixed, or another of the fifty or so empty planes has been pressed into service.

More to follow.