This line is f***ing heinous. It was early February, and I had been standing in line at the Baltimore Airport for over three hours, with little to no movement. The vast sea of uniforms in front of me represented the wide gamut of patterns and styles across all branches of the US military. As the clock approached midnight, and my first day of travel came to a close, I started to regret the amount of luggage I had brought with me. Three overweight check bags, plus my ruck and a small carry on gym bag, meant that I had in excess of 200 pounds either strapped to me, or being towed behind me. I was just setting off for my first deployment as a USAF contracting officer, and I was eager to get out to the Area of Operations (AOR), if only to finally be able to put the bags down.
A little more than two weeks before standing in what was one of the most stagnant lines I have ever stood in, a few rumblings of a potential deployment reached me. The deployment was for a Contracting Lieutenant or Captain, coming up soon, and that maybe I would get to go. I got excited with just the possibility of it. Where would it be? Afghanistan? (no) Iraq? (no) Africa?! (again, no). A few days later, my squadron commander pulled me into my office. I had been selected for the deployment, it was in Qatar, and I was leaving in two weeks.
Those two weeks were spent scrambling around, getting all of the necessary training, paperwork, psychological evaluations, and lectures finished. My apartment was emptied and my possessions placed in storage. My dog was delivered to my parents so they could take care of him in Minnesota while I was gone. Before I knew it, I was being driven to the San Angelo, Texas municipal airport by members of my home squadron. They helped me with my bags, and through security I went.
The flights were long, but mostly uneventful. In the end, I traveled for 48 solid hours before finally landing at 0600 at Al Udeid Air Base, near Doha in Qatar. I stood in another ridiculous line (over three hours again) to process through immigration, and made my way out to be picked up by my new Flight I was to be taking command of. They found me pretty easily, and while my memory of the exact conversation is a bit fuzzy due to the jet lag, the first conversation went like this: “Welcome to Qatar, Ell-tee, we have a meeting with the Wing Commander in 45 minutes, so you better shave.”
In the 45 minutes before the meeting, I was able to not only shave, but learn a bit about the flight I was now in command of. At the moment, there were just a handful of us. That number would drop even more in just a few days time as one of the NCO’s rotated back home. They had all been there for at least a couple of weeks, one of the NCO’s who was staying for my rotation had been there for over a month. They had all gotten relatively settled in, and were ready to rock and roll by the time I got there. Personally, all I wanted to do was shower, shave, and sleep. I was practically a zombie when I stumbled into the Wing Commander’s briefing.
The brief was an update on all of the ongoing construction projects on the base. As the new Construction Flight Commander of the largest Expeditionary Contracting Squadron (ECONS) in the AOR, I fought to pay attention for the whole briefing. The briefer was another Lieutenant from the Civil Engineering Squadron (ECES). Despite my best efforts to hold onto all the information, all I managed to take away from that first briefing was that there were a lot of projects to keep track of, and please God, for the love of all that is holy, do not let me fall asleep in this briefing.
Within a week, my flight and I had fallen into a rhythm. Monday and Tuesday was our day to meet with contractors. My small flight and I would meet with the Project Managers from ECES and go over any problems that were either extant or incipient. We would then meet with each of our major contractors one at a time and discuss any of the problems and progress on each of their contracted projects.
The ECONS here is broken down into three separate flights, split by contract type. Each flight is commanded by a Lieutenant, with a handful of enlisted personnel per flight as well. The first flight is the Commodities flight. Mainly, they specialize in purchasing items. Things like paper, pencils, printer toner, etc. all run through this flight. Many of their purchases are made through Amazon, although many of their purchases are made downtown as well.
The second flight is the Services flight. As the name implies, this flight purchases services for the base. Vehicle leases, Custodial services, and trash collection, just to name a few. Services is the largest flight in the squadron.
Saving the best for last, my flight is the Construction flight. Also the smallest flight in the ECONS, we manage all of the minor construction on base. There are other agencies that handle the truly massive projects, but our portfolio is quite extensive with all of the small construction projects on base. Our flight has the most direct interaction with our customer (Civil Engineering) and our contractors. The work has, so far, been very rewarding, as we get to see construction occur right before our eyes. It has also been very stressful because the construction occurs right before other people’s eyes as well, and the subtle nuances of a Middle Eastern construction company and the nuances of Contracting tend to be lost on people who have gotten accustomed to hearing “How high?” after they so much as murmur “Jump.”
The pace of work here is fast enough that I never even really had time to ask myself what I had gotten into. One thing I did know was that if the pace kept up, my time spent at Al Udeid was going to absolutely fly by.
