While at home one night with the family back on 12 Jan. I receive a text message from someone at work and it said: We might be on the hook for the Haiti relief effort, be at work at 0700 for a brief. So, i look at my phone and think to myself: O this is just what I need after being on shore duty for three years, and instant underway period after I transfer. Well, the next day we go into work and we all sit around a table in the office. There was about five of us at this meeting, and it was basically told to us that, we will be leaving tomorrow on the USS Bataan to support the Relief mission in Haiti. Start packing up all of our gear, you have until 11am to get it to the flight deck to be craned down to the pier on a flat bed. Once everything is on the truck, we will have someone move it over to the Bataan. Well, they were right about one thing, everything was on the pier by 1pm. By the time things were said and done, we had our equipment on the other ship,and our people moving the 70lbs boxes to the right place on the ship. By around 8pm that night I was still at work finishing moving peoples .PST files to an external. Amazing how fast we can just pack up and move. Note to self: Always keep a sea bag with the essentials packed: bathroom supplies, your own linen's, and eight days worth of cloths.
The morning of the 13th was an all night event for me thanks to what time I got home. I was hoping to come home, spend time with the family, help my beautiful wife with getting the kids to bed, and lay around on the couch with her for an hour or two. Instead, I ended up going to walmart at 2 or 3 in the morning to buy stuff like extra razors, and some other misc. items. I believe I got two hours of sleep and woke up around 5am to leave the house. We were slated to leave around 11am, which then turned into 6pm, which then turned out to be like 11pm. Still plenty cold outside, we made our way down to the Carolina's to pick up the 22nd MEU the next morning. Slowly but surely eleven hours later, we made haste at about 21 knots along the coast line all the way down to Haiti. Thanks to being a computer guy, I've seen alot of the briefs that have gone out as well as a few video telephone conferences. For a third world country, and although it killed thousands of people, the worst part is the loss of lives, and medical care. And i know that might sound a bit off with the way I'm saying it, but these people really didn't live on much to begin with. Even the humanitarian rations are being sold along the roadside. Not to mention the people that are using these bottles of water to wash their cars with. Atleast that's from our people (Sailor Ashore Mission -SAM) have been saying. So who really knows how long we could be out. Maybe we will be lucky and leave mid-month, maybe we will depart around the first week of April.
And now here I am, three weeks later, had a three day venture with no showers, still have little to no internet and everyone knows we are down here. I mean, what else could a person ask for? I vote Crown
The morning of the 13th was an all night event for me thanks to what time I got home. I was hoping to come home, spend time with the family, help my beautiful wife with getting the kids to bed, and lay around on the couch with her for an hour or two. Instead, I ended up going to walmart at 2 or 3 in the morning to buy stuff like extra razors, and some other misc. items. I believe I got two hours of sleep and woke up around 5am to leave the house. We were slated to leave around 11am, which then turned into 6pm, which then turned out to be like 11pm. Still plenty cold outside, we made our way down to the Carolina's to pick up the 22nd MEU the next morning. Slowly but surely eleven hours later, we made haste at about 21 knots along the coast line all the way down to Haiti. Thanks to being a computer guy, I've seen alot of the briefs that have gone out as well as a few video telephone conferences. For a third world country, and although it killed thousands of people, the worst part is the loss of lives, and medical care. And i know that might sound a bit off with the way I'm saying it, but these people really didn't live on much to begin with. Even the humanitarian rations are being sold along the roadside. Not to mention the people that are using these bottles of water to wash their cars with. Atleast that's from our people (Sailor Ashore Mission -SAM) have been saying. So who really knows how long we could be out. Maybe we will be lucky and leave mid-month, maybe we will depart around the first week of April.
And now here I am, three weeks later, had a three day venture with no showers, still have little to no internet and everyone knows we are down here. I mean, what else could a person ask for? I vote Crown
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