Bashur or bust: airmen overcome hardships to open airfield in northern Iraq

Airman, July, 2003 by Louis A. Arana-Barradas

The C-130 Hercules cruised along the parking ramp as its four huge turboprops kicked up a windstorm behind it. As it taxied on the ramp at Bashur Airfield, Iraq, the loadmaster lowered the cargo plane's rear ramp.

Less than 300 feet away, under the shade of camouflage netting, Master Sgt. David "Baldy" Baldridge chugged the last of the Pepsi he'd been sipping. He tossed the can into a garbage bag and slid a pair of sunglasses off his shaved head Onto his sunburned nose. Then he donned his protective headset.

"It's time to get to work," he said, as he put on work gloves. "That's why we're here."

The plane came to a sudden, jerky stop. The pilot didn't shut down because engine-running offloads were the norm at Bashur -- in case a plane had to make a fast getaway.

Baldridge and some aerial port troops ran to the plane, followed by a big forklift and 25,000-poundloader. They quickly offloaded the much-needed cargo. It went without a hitch, and the plane was winging its way back to Romania in less than 10 minutes.

Quick turns were the name of the game at Bashur during the height of Operation Iraqi Freedom. The faster airmen got the planes in and out, the better. And the airmen had plenty of work, sweating around the clock. It was tough work -- especially at night, when they used night vision goggles to work in fast-paced, blacked-out conditions.

Still, they managed to offload a million pounds of cargo a day during that time.

"We spend 12 hours working hard, going full speed," said Baldridge, an aerospace ground equipment mechanic with the 86th Expeditionary Air Mobility Squadron. "Then we try to get some rest so we can go out and do it all again."

Baldridge fixed generators and other equipment needed to offload aircraft. But the equipment held up well, so he found other things to do. He liked helping the aerial porters the most.

"To be in this outfit, you need to know how to do three or four jobs," he said.

The outfit

The outfit is the 86th Contingency Response Group of Ramstein Air Base, Germany. Formed in February 1999, it's a rarity in the Air Force -- a group of about 160 airmen who work in more than 40 specialties. Security forces make up the largest part of the group.

The response group has a simple, but tough, mission: parachute a small group of airmen into an airfield to set up all facets of air operations -- fast. When the rest of the group arrives, it runs the airfield until follow-on forces take over. Then the group is ready to move again.

Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. John Jumper proposed the concept for the rapid response group when he was commander of U.S. Air Forces in Europe. It has to be ready to move at a moment's notice. So the measure of the group's mission response is hours -- not days or weeks.

The group had to prove its worth in Iraq -- when put in a kind of "Bashur or bust" situation.

It was a tough test because Bashur is the epitome of a bare base. It was nothing more than a 7,000-foot runway in the middle of a green valley. It had no infrastructure -- no water or sewage system and no electricity, buildings or paved roads.

"We faced a tough test of the most challenging aspects of what we're designed to do," group commander Col. Steve Weart said. But he knew his people could do the job. The group's leaders were all seasoned professionals, And they'd all trained often enough to do the job in their sleep.

"After all, we're the ones who're supposed to get the ball rolling," he said.

So there was no room for error. The group had to produce from the time it hit the ground.

Members went to war on the dark and rainy early morning of March 26. Weart and 19 of his airmen parachuted into Iraq from a C-17 Globemaster III [See "A Jump Into the Night," Page 32]. With them were 1,000 Army paratroopers of the 173rd Airborne Brigade, from Vicenza, Italy.

It was a historic jump. The airmen were the first from a conventional Air Force Unit to parachute into a combat zone, said Maj. Erik Rundquist, the group's security forces commander.

"There was no other way to get Air Force boots and eyes on the ground to assess the situation and prepare to receive aircraft," said Rundquist, who made the jump.

The operation went as planned, he said. But troops jumped into a muddy quagmire. It had rained for clays before the jump, and it was raining on jump day. The clay-like mud was knee-deep in places. But not one airman was hurt in the landing, apart from a few scrapes and sprains. They were also the first to assemble -- though it took more than an hour.

On the ground, the soldiers became the coalition's largest fighting force in northern Iraq, and the airmen reported to an Army boss. To sustain the paratroops and other troops in the area would take a big airlift. They'd need millions of tons of food, water, supplies and equipment.

It's what the airmen were there to do. They instilled an immediate "air-mindedness" to the operation to ensure safety in and around the runway.

They set up shop on a corner of the aircraft ramp so the mud wouldn't swallow them up. The group's 14 security forces troops controlled the runway and ramp, and soldiers and Iraqi Kurd Peshmurga fighters protected the airfield's perimeter.