First off, I had proposed this story to RADM Hart, the incoming commander of CJTF-HOA, back in early January when I briefed the outbound command element during their Mission Rehearsal Ex down in JFCOM in Norfolk. I went out to dinner with the most senior officers that night, talked through a bunch of stuff, and then ended the evening by asking if the CJTF had had any real serious looks from the press.
They told me about a CNN bit from Barbara Starr that struck me as awfully narrow (OMYGOD! We’ve got troops right next to Somalia!) and an Esquire bit about khat that seemed pretty minor. So I asked if they’d welcome a feature by me in Esquire, and Hart seemed open to the idea.
So I followed up a couple of weeks later with the J-9 (Capt. Bob Wright) who had brought me to the MRX, figuring he’d be my best in. He was.
Then it was several conversations with Mark Warren while we worked over the May “state of the world” piece.
Then it was weeks of back and forth with Hart’s staff, with Wright as go-between, trying to get my trip to Djibouti set up for sometime in March. Because I was already set to go to Naples and Crete to spend some time with the commander of our Med fleet, an old friend named Harry Ulrich (Vice Admiral) in mid-April, the first push was to piggyback on the end of that trip.
But in interacting with Wright, the window seemed too small, because I needed to stay in Crete, through Friday the 16th, and needed to get back to U Tennessee and Oak Ridge National Lab by Wednesday, the 21st. So basically, I was leaving too little time to really get the reporting done, given the immense amount of travel involved.
Anyway, Mark was pushing for early March, so I did too. Problem was, Hart was scheduled for the Abizaid/Fallon change of command in early March, so that seemed out of the question.
But then the news came down: the command change was moved up, so now early March was possible. Wright told me to propose dates. Jenn and I answered: leave no earlier than 1 March from Indy and get back to Indy no later than 10 March for a family event.
Wright came back with this: spend the first part of the trip in Djibouti, then travel to Nairobi Kenya to meet with a big USAID mission and maybe give a talk at the National Defense College, then to meet up with RADM Tim Moon, deputy commander, for a tour of facilities in the Kenya area.
That sounded great, so I accepted. That was Thursday, the 22nd of February.
First thing I did was get Jenn working the travel, which was fairly quickly turned over to Tim Heffernan at Esquire to set up (though Jenn later intervened to bump me up on one of the long flights to biz class--the Chicago to London leg on the way out).
Next, I scheduled a trip to the local travel clinic for Monday morning, the 26th.
That was quick visit: lotsa scary things described, plus shots to finish my Hep A series, typhoid, boost my tetanus, and protect against yellow fever. The last one was a real burner in the arm, creating a soreness that lasted for days. Because it was a live vaccine, the flu symptoms started 48 hours later, hitting mostly in the morning (making my last days before travel a bit rough).
Rest of the week involved a lot of gearing up: the bug spray for all the clothes (done in my garage the night before setting out), the special high-end skin bug cream, a new digital recorder, notebooks and pens, all the prescriptions and suggested OTCs, a bunch of snacks, all sorts of stuff. Tried to follow the travel doc’s advice to the “t.”
Monday I also did my first phone interview with the just-back J-5 (plans and policy), a submariner navy captain named Ron Melampy. I got a second one done the morning I left on the first with the just-back CJTF commander, RADM Hunt. Both were great interviews that convinced me I had a good story to tell. What they told me totally backed up what I’d heard in Norfolk with the in-bound command element: in effect, “we are your SysAdmin in its purest and most advanced form.”
So I was jacked to go, and yet, I was a bit intimidated by the 10-day trip. I travel a ton, but I keep it very in-and-out while trying to avoid the many-nights-away-from-family thing. So the house was tense as I left, as was I.
The trip over was a complete mess: of my four scheduled flights, the first was canceled and I miss the next three, being forced to make one very long mad dash at 3:30 am down Dubai’s lengthy terminal to beg my way on to the last flight to Djibouti for 48 hours.
Here’s how it went down:
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