Risk Management Magazine

I showed up at my first assignment as an aviator right as we were headed out the door for a deployment in Regional Command East. I was excited and nervous. My Readiness Level 3 to 2 progression took two flights and suddenly I was flying combat missions with my troop standardization pilot.

There I was — right in the middle of all the action as the 101st Airborne Division rolled through Iraq in its quest to remove Saddam Hussein from power. As dramatic as that may sound, we also did a lot of uninteresting tasks during my time in Iraq, such as setting up assembly areas in the middle of the desert.

It started out like most any other night in a Balad — same mission, same timeline, same hot preflight. My co-pilot/gunner and I were to be the trail aircraft in a flight of two Apaches for yet another ground support mission over Baghdad.