Baghdad, Iraq.

I hate the Air Force. We flew into Baghdad at 2AM. Our flight to the camp was at 10PM. They Air Force has four tents set up to handle all the transient passengers, and there are a LOT of transient passengers. The tents have airport terminal style seats in them. It angered me to see the Marines trying to lay down on those seats for any kind of sleep. When we finally got ready to leave, we loaded up our gear and walked out to the ramp area. Every movie I have ever seen that has some military related scene always shows a couple of helicopters taking off in the background. As we set up on the ramp and loaded our weapons, two Blackhawks took off. It struck me as hilariously cliche, but also made it pretty real. Hell, this is a war zone. Our two helos landed, and we carried all our gear and weapons out. As we flew out, I could see explosions and rockets going off. At one point, the helo launched a couple of flares, but I think that was the pilots just screwing with us.