Being abroad as a part of a group of young, capable comrades induces a carefree and deliciously arrogant sensation. Though our personal and professional burdens are heavy and the hours we work long, we are conscious of our collective freedom from the social restraints of home and proudly aware that should war erupt in the Western Pacific we will be the first to enter the fray. Robbed of the traditional cues of passing time (such as holidays and seasons) both by the tropical weather of our deployment locations and by our constant movement from one place to another, we happily find ourselves living mostly in the present--and when we do look to the future, we tend to care more about tomorrow or next weekend than next month or next year.
I could truthfully describe the time we spend here as frustrating, boring, hectic, exciting, and fun. There is an increased workload for us all that stems equally from the constant packing and unpacking of the squadron itself as we move around and from the extra time spent learning how to fly in new, strange locations. Yet for the young guys like me, many additional hours are spent after the normal working day studying for the Section Lead qualification. This is really the first career step for pilots after they arrive in the fleet, and it means (when they achieve it) that they are capable of leading another aircrew in combat, to include any of the many air-to-air and air-to-ground missions of which the F/A-18D is capable. It requires both extensive knowledge and a lot of flight preparation to complete the course of 11 "work-up" flights in which we demonstrate to instructors that we are qualified as a Section Lead, and the techniques they require us use for briefing, conducting, and debriefing such flights are specific and often "written in blood," a half-euphemism we use often to identify those procedures that were developed as a result of some forgotten mishap years ago. Moreover, the criticism of our conduct in these "work-up flights" is accordingly strict, and can last several hours or more while the entirety of our preparation, in-flight decisions, and post-flight debriefing are examined, discussed, and if necessary corrected. Though it makes for long days, we are all grateful for it--this winnowing process makes us harder, leaner aircrew, forces us to develop the necessary habits of safe flying, and trains us to focus our flights on actual combat rather than mere administrative procedures.
Of course, the best part of deployment has more to do with squadron-mates than actual flying. Living together, far from our homes, with no one else to occupy our time, we "relax" by finding things to do together. Often that is having several drinks at any number of O'Clubs and bars in the places we visit. But tourism is also fun, especially when there is the chance of finding something authentically foreign and yet undiscovered (by tourists) in the unfamiliar places we visit. Prompted thus, I have so far enjoyed a unscheduled and unguided bike tour through the compact and industrial city of Iwakuni to see the medieval Kintai Bridge and Iwakuni castle, stopping along they way back to enjoy being the only American in an (apparently) popular sushi restaurant. One weekend morning on Okinawa some comrades spent the morning driving to the island's rural and beautiful northern portion to find a beach with adequate surf, and another evening there we headed into the colorful and cheerfully dilapidated city of Naha to enjoy sushi at the touristy and famous Yoshi's restaurant. More recently I headed into the Outback to climb some waterfalls and dive into the fresh-water pools below at an Australian national park. Some places have yielded better times than others, such as the concrete pavilion behind our barracks at Kadena Airbase, Okinawa. The cookouts and drinking bouts, the songs sung drunkenly--particularly, nostalgically, "Country Roads" by John Denver--together under the stars in the heavy jungle air, the stumbling trips across the street aboard Kadena to pick up more beer all contributed to the most comradely nights of the deployment so far. Likewise the Officer's mess in Australia, scene of mustache competitions and three-man lifts, of cowboy- and 70s-themed parties (which we attended with the most flamboyant and outrageous costumes we could think up), of the creation of drinking songs, and of friendly carousing with RAAF pilots is now also a place invested with good memories.
There is something about the places themselves that is exhilarating--it has roots in their unfamiliarity and exoticism, but is also comes from our collective attitude of wonder and excitment at simply being on WestPac. I've already written of the indefinable pleasure of being catered to in Osan, Korea, and other places have their own intriguing characteristics. Okinawa is distinguished by the bright, Caribbean, almost third-world appearance of Naha city (with laundry hanging from lines strung between concrete apartments), the pockets of dark, noisy jungle squatting undiminished amid the sloppy civilization scattered across the island, and the sunsets riotous with color spreading each evening over a golden ocean horizon. Australia is a place where only Orion and Scorpio familiarly stride the night sky amongst the strange southern stars, where the reddish outback is rendered curiously bright by the slender, undersized trees that provide the vast majority of the scrub, where the large bats (alone of their species) sense the world through their vision and darken the evening sky with their great numbers, and where the thunderstorms are huge, swift, and violent. Many flights my pilot has spent circumnavigating the towering and dark cumulus clouds (whose tops reach higher than our high-performance aircraft can fly), and I have watched from above the dense rainshowers moving across the floor of the Outback and the terrible lightning striking all around my little vessel from cloud to cloud and down to the earth. In the evenings, when storms reach their climax after building all afternoon, I have stood in the entrance to the tunnel leading to our bunker with other squadron members working late, quietly smoking cigarettes and watching the thunderstorms flicker brightly, every couple of seconds, in the darkling sky. One night, watching the storm rage, lightning struck the airfield control tower merely several hundred yards away, causing us all to involutarily jump back and cry out.There is more to see over the next months of deployment. There will be more nights of drinking and visits to new places in Okinawa, Japan, and Korea. And after that we will be moving ourselves one last time, from Iwakuni back to San Diego. No doubt when the time comes to go home it will be welcome indeed. But for now I am glad that date remains comfortably in the vague future, because despite the increased stress and strain of constant deployment (not least of which is the irritation attendant upon living in close quarters with the same people for an extended period of time) I am enjoying myself much more than I did in San Diego. This is perhaps the best-kept secret of the naval service--this is WestPac.
