Document Page: First | Prev | Next | All | Image | This Release | Search

 Q: But this particular place wasn't in any of those plans that
 you saw? 
 
 F: This location was never in any of those plans. That was our
 first big obstacle.
 
 We had a small contingent on the first airplane but then
 enough guys between the first and second airplanes that
 arrived here. We had about 50 engineering guys to go with
 us, and then the rest of them showed up the next day or so.
 It took us 37 hours to get here. That was a big detractor.
 Typically, you can get to this theater in about 20 to 24
 hours. The aircraft broke down at one of the stops.
 Thirty-seven hours of travel time made it a little rough to
 show up at 9:30 at night after 2 days of travel and be stuck
 in the "yellow sardine can," as you referred to the hangar,
 for the first night. (laughter)
 
 There were no facilities available, but we did touch base
 with the host nation engineers that very first night. We
 came out to the caravan area and told them we needed to
 start getting that area prepared to billet people,
 especially the air conditioning, so that we could get people
 into a cool place and get some good, quality rest so they
 would be fresh to do the work that was going to be coming up
 that we knew would be quite a heavy load the first week or
 two.
 
 Q: There wasn't even air conditioning in the hootches then?
 
 F: They Had pulled everything out of those hootches that we
 moved into. As a matter of fact, if we had gotten here a
 week later, those hootches would have been gone. They were
 planning on picking them all up and moving them to another
 site, so they had to reconnect all the electrical and air

			3
 

Document Page: First | Prev | Next | All | Image | This Release | Search