Hey Poppa-smoke brothers,

Just got this link from my fellow Wild Goose Bernie Goetz. Thanks a million for your support. Really makes our job a lot more gratifying knowing that we are out here with patriots like you behind us.

Here's a little update on life as a Goose in the 51st state:

I've been working the night schedule and that takes a lot out of a fella. Although fewer creeps come shuffling by to buy two packs of Dorals, a bottle of Wild Irish Rose, and a dirty magazine, the tasks associated with being a night warrior out here are vaguely reminiscent of my days clerking at the AM/PM mini market from 10pm-6am Friday and Saturday nights during my sophomore year of college. Both shifts last until sunrise and the duties are repetitious and mind numbing. A 'normal' 24 hours out here in our desert nirvana consists of waking up about 4pm, grabbing dinner, and heading up the hill to our bunker for our nightly briefing. We fly from about 5 hours or so a night, droning around the countryside carrying people and their stuff from point A to point Z and back again. Postflight paperwork and a little yukking it up takes us to a quick breakfast before we head back to our remodeled opium den (similar to a crackhouse, but with a few velvet pillows and an FMH calendar on the wall) for another day's slumber. It is positively vampiric (sadly without the bitchin' cape and the ability to woo comely wenches and such).

Prior to leaving the day shift and crossing over to the darkside I played a critical albeit Catch 22esque part in the recent vote on the Iraqi constitution. At around 0500 on the morning of the vote we were rousted from our night's slumber by a none to gentle rapping on the flimsy wooden door to our luxury accommodations in the tumbledown building we have dubbed Rancho Relaxo. My grumpy grizzly bear of a roommate, Cleveland's own 'East Side' Jimmy Pokorny opened the door to find a semi-frantic Eddie 'Eazy E' Keefe on the other side. The scene I heard from the comfort of the little fort I made out of the bunkbeds I call home played out as follows:

(Scene opens inside Willy and East Side's pitch-black shotgun shack of a room. East Side Jimmy curses and kicks a folding camping chair he had gotten tangled up in feeling his way towards the door which is rattling loudly under the pummeling being dished out by a semi-frantic person on the other side. Door is unceremoniously ripped open to reveal a semi-frantic 'Eazy E')

Eazy E (semi-frantically whispering, oblivious to the fact that his semi-frantic banging on the door had already awakened most of the denizens of Rancho Relaxo.):

Hey…just wanted to give you guys a heads up…our section that was supposed to be on a two hour standby is going to launch this morning. We have a 0700 brief.

East Side: (groggily) Uhh…okay….what time is it now?

EE: 0500

East Side: And what time were we briefing when we were just on two hour standby?

EE: Uh……0700…..same time….I just wanted to let you know that we were still briefing at the same time but now are going to brief an actual mission instead of…you know…just the standby mission.

East Side: (grumpily AND groggily) Okay….what are we doing?

EE: Uhhh…we won't know yet. We'll get all the info at the 0700 brief.

(Sound of door unceremoniously being slammed and dead bolt being thrown home)

We arrived at 0700 to get the whole story only to find out that all we knew was we had to get to the terminal for a time critical lift. The person meeting us there would fill us in on our load and its destination. We guzzled cups of coffee and enjoyed some pretty tasty breakfast burritos before dashing out to our airplanes and launching on what grand adventure only Providence knew.

As we landed three Grand Cherokees came screeching into our pickup zone. A completely frantic Major dashed onto our bird and into the tiny passageway that leads to our cockpit. His bloodshot eyes belied a man whose night's rest had been substituted with what his breath indicated must have been three packs of Marlboros, a quart of coffee, and what I gotta believe was an onion sandwich.

"Hey guys…here's the drop spots for this stuff. You gonna be able to get them there on time?"

I took the yellow sticky with the six grids and locations on it with my left hand as I slid open my wing window and tried to wave some morning air into the now even more than normally fetid cockpit with my right. At this point I didn't care if we were carrying a time critical resupply of some general's blue M&M stash, I just wanted Stinky out of our cockpit; but Sully couldn't leave well enough alone and asked the guy what it was we were doing to save the world on this lovely morning. Mind you, this guy was screaming at us as he did not have a helmet on and couldn't speak to us on our intercom, so his comments came with extra strong lung blasts. I started getting woozy from what was now an all but visible cloud of foulness emanating from this guys rotting gob, but did manage to catch the following fulmination:

"Didn't THEY tell you?" He asked incredulously.

Nothing strikes discord in my mind faster than being queried about what 'they' were supposed to tell me or do for me or give me. THEY are an entity running rampant in this man's military and THEY dick up a lot of stuff, let me tell you. I've never been able to find out who THEY are, but one day I will and then THEY are going to pay. Sully always says, "We are THEY, and I hate those guys" and then chuckles maniacally. I don't know what that means exactly, but I saw the corners of his mouth quiver and his right eyebrow raise quizzically at the mention of THEM. Then old sewer mouth filled us in and gave us cause for a head shaking chuckle.

"It's the ballots for the western part of the country. We just got them 20 minutes ago and they gotta be delivered before the polls open."

Now mind you, during the five days prior to this 0500 wake up call we had been flying day and night to position all of the poll workers and security forces required to carry out the referendum (and all of the blowhard dignitaries and pesky news people who believe themselves necessary for any such undertaking). Now, with mere hours to go before one of the defining event in this infant democracy's…..uhm…infancy……some bureaucrat somewhere had run through his list of requirements:

"Poll workers from other towns so the insurgents won't recognize them and kill their families….check;

Security forces to make sure local insurgents don't blow up the people they don't know working the polling place….check;

Blowhard dignitaries to stand around and spout platitudes while hinting that they deserve the credit for all of this and swarms of media members to record said platitudes…double check;

Ballots for the people to fill out on this historic day in the infancy of this infant democracy……WHERE THE %$#$ ARE THE *&*(^^%ing BALLOTS!!!"

And so we were launched into the breach, the frail hopes of the Iraqi nation placed squarely on the sloping shoulders of four forty something year old men flying two forty something year old helicopters (with a few twenty something crewmen thrown in for good measure and to do all of the heavy lifting).

We swooped into our first destination expecting a screeching trio of Jeep Cherokees to gather up our precious cargo and spirit it off to the polling place. Instead we were greeted by….no one. As a matter of fact, our arrival caught everyone at each of the six spots we landed in by complete surprise. It seemed THEY didn't tell any of the guys in the western part of the nation that we were dropping by and, oh by the way, the referendum scheduled for today couldn't start until the bags of ballots we had with us got to the polling places.

Smelling an "it's all you old guys' fault the referendum didn't go off as planned" being lobbed our way from the THEY headquarters, we had the twenty somethings hand deliver and make some unwitting sap sign for the delivered bag of ballots at each stop. At our first stop on top of one of the biggest dam's in the country they pidgeon-holed some poor benighted son of Adam who was looking over the side of the dam while carefully brushing his teeth. He signed the piece of paper proffered, offered a casual kick at his new charge, and went back to performing his morning ablutions.

"What'd you tell that guy?" Sully asked when our crewman got back on board.

"I told him he had to sign for this bag….then I made him sign the piece of paper like you said to." Our intrepid warrior responded.

We had him dismount and offer some greater detail as to the contents of the bags in question, saw the signees eyes bulge while he screamed in our crewman's ear (in much mintier tones than we had been addressed in in our cockpit) his new understanding of the importance of the bags, and watched with relief as he stored his Colgate, shouldered his load, and went off to find the next guy up the chain to dump the ballots on.

As it turned out, the denizens of western Iraq roundly rejected the referendum, so it might have been for the better had we failed in our morning mission. Sully, conspiracy theory enthusiast that he is, postulated that the ballots for the people had already been delivered to the polling places and the ballots we dropped off were the ones the Halliburton executives were supposed to fill out to fix the results, "you know…..like they did for JFK in Chicago." The failure of the referendum to pass out west is proof positive to him that our ballots never found the cloak and dagger boys who were supposed to fill them out and turn them in to make the vote a unanimous success.

What really happened? We don't know….and THEY certainly aren't going to tell us.

Until next time, I remain yours in referendum skullduggery,

G. Gordon Willy