A happy crew

January 16, 2005

He stood on the ladder leading into the cockpit and balanced my notepad on his knee and carefully wrote.

“To Rosie,

TSgt. Patrick Carter”

Carter, of Amarillo, Texas, is a C-130 loadmaster stationed at Little Rock Air Force Base. He was part of the six-man crew flying the C-130 that carried me from Kuwait to Baghdad today.

I happened upon them.

If it weren’t for Master Sgt. Mark Skalka, the flight engineer, I may have not realized they were from our hometown base. See, they were flying in a South Carolina National Guard plane, not one of their own.

I now know crews fly in various planes, not just their own.

As I walked from the bus to the plane, smiling at the thought of finally being free of the bus packed with contractors that had been my prison for the last hour, Skalka pointed to the cockpit.

“Up there,” he shouted over the noise.

It was a packed plane. Three pallets of cargo, 10 dogs in crates and more than 45 contractors.

To fit everyone in, they put me and an airman who was catching the hop north on the padded bench in the back of the cockpit.

It was a treat.

I told Skalka that I was from Little Rock and covered the air base there.

That’s when he told me they were from Little Rock, airmen with the 463rd Airlift Group.

I couldn’t believe it.

“Well, I picked the wrong one,” Skalka joked to his buddies. “We’ve got a reporter from Little Rock up here with us.”

We all laughed at the odds of us running into each other.

Little Rock Air Force Base has had C-130s, crews and support operations in this region of the world for more than two years now. These guys have been here before.

They’ll probably be here again.

But right now, they’re preparing to rotate home in the next month or so.

We all put on headphones and they got to work. I listened and laughed with them as they talked and laughed, showing the camaraderie of war is not limited to the Army.

This crew is tight.

And they’re funny.

And some of them are quiet.

The pilot, Capt. Todd McNair of Seattle, who has short cropped blonde hair that stands straight up in front, likes to chat as he flies. He does his calculations for descent out loud so his buddies can double check him.

Capt. Callum McGough of West Virginia, a redhead, is the quietest, sitting back and smiling at the conversation buzzing through his headset.

Airman 1st Class Josh Thompson of Rapid City, S.D., one of two loadmasters, is the youngest. He’s almost as quiet at McGough. The guys like to joke with him because he’s a member of the 463rd’s 61st Squadron. The rest are members of the 50th Squadron.

Capt. Blair Watkinson of Knoxville, Tenn., the copilot, Skalka and Carter all drive the comedy in the sky, keeping a running commentary when work permits.

It’s not hard to tell these guys love what they do.

“Hey, can I send a message to my wife?” the voice rang through the headset covering my ears.

It was Carter.

It’s not an uncommon request. And it’s one I usually can’t grant because of space and time. I wish I could send a message home for everyone.

But this was such a rare circumstance, I agreed.

So he moved up the steps and quickly wrote, telling Skalka, “Women love this stuff.”

Someone, I think it was Skalka, asked Carter if he read that in the Cosmopolitan -- a women’s magazine -- they found somewhere earlier in the week.

Yep, everyone laughed.

Then, before long, we zigged and zagged down from the sky toward Baghdad’s airport. McNair tipped the nose down and brought us softly down.

It was a steep decent, and the headphones were quiet as we dipped down swiftly from 500 feet to the ground.

When we were on the ground, McNair said it was a steeper landing than he planned.

But it worked out just fine, I thought.

Skalka told McNair he could tell it made him a little nervous.

“Usually you’re chatty during landing. Not today,” he said.

Shortly after me, the contractors and the dogs were unloaded and the Little Rock guys were gone again.

They were headed to Jordan, back to Baghdad and then to Kuwait.

Tomorrow, they’d be gone again, hauling anything and everything anywhere from Germany to Afghanistan to Baghdad.

That’s what they do, these workhorses of the sky, until it’s time to go home to Little Rock.

Posted by Amy at January 16, 2005 06:51 AM