Part 4

Surviving the Cataclysm

Part 4

River: When I pulled up to the base in our truck, I found one of the reasons why my husband wanted to secure the base sitting right out in the open. Two AH-1Z Twin Cobras as well as an SH-60B Seahawk and a MV-22 Osprey, all parked as though they were ready to be manned at a moment's notice. Neither my husband nor I knew how to fly and we weren't about to try to learn how to fly by ourselves. I want to live a long life and so did hubby. If we could find someone who was able to fly these things and was rated on them, perhaps he could instruct us, but as of right now, they were all grounded.

The main operations building was a small building, but when we entered we realized that there were floors beneath us. And my husband was talking about expanding the underground portion of the base after reinforcing ground above the flightline so that it wouldn't cave in when an Osprey or any other helo came in to land. After all there were plenty of things that needed to be done and well...much of what needed to be done was to make sure that we could secure the building and the rest of the floors. This meant that we were going to have to call in a friend or two...to help us out.

One of the things that we did was strip the M1A1s - there were several on the base; of all the desert camouflage that they were painted in. In this section of island, desert camo would stick out like a sore thumb. We opted to go with the standard digital camo which disrupted the pattern of the tank enough so that it would blend in with the surroundings.

Evidently there were a few criminal elements that tried to match our firepower toe to toe but you don't bring a machine gun to a cannon-fight. Let's just say that they didn't last very long.

I never knew that hubby was that good with 120mm cannons.

Samson was now joined by a stray cat. I had to keep my husband from naming the poor thing Gollum. He said that the cat looked like the creature from the Lord of the Rings. Poor thing. I told him that he was NOT to name the cat; that I would...she ended up being named Sassy, since she had an attitude.

Let's just say she fit right into the family.