Cargo planes over the Afghan mountains
By Doug Grindle Community Reporter
Editor's note: Six weeks in Iraq and Afghanistan has turned into 10 for our Marlborough Community Reporter Doug Grindle. Embedded with U.S. troops, Doug sends us reports whenever he can so that we can provide our readers with a glimpse of what's going on in the region.

Air National Guard C-130 on the flight line at Bagram Airbase, Afghanistan PHOTO/DOUG GRINDLE

As always, we are grateful to Doug and other journalists like him who put themselves in harm's way so that those of us safe at home can be wellinformed.

The following is his latest contribution. Bagram Airbase, Afghanistan - Forty minutes after his plane takes off from Bagram Airbase and flies north, Cpt. Jason Lehman looks up from his table. It is a small desk about two-and-a-half feet long crammed in the back corner of the cockpit of the Lockheed C-130 Hercules, a workhorse of the U.S. Air Force.

Lehman is the navigator in this plane, and it's his job to figure out where the plane is and where it's going. He tells the pilots sitting a few feet in front of him they can start letting down once they are past the next ridge of jagged slopes passing a few thousand feet below.

A few minutes later, the pilots throttle back the engines and the sound drops off . The nose points down. Soon enough the airstrip they are aiming for slides into sight. It is a small remote field, next to a camp manned by American, Afghan, Croatian, German and other troops. The airstrip sits on the edge of a small plateau and is nothing more than a 3,500foot mark in the desert floor where the topsoil has been scraped away.

This Air National Guard crew has been here to Dudadi before and knows the routine. They fly low over the field, to drive any wandering sheep off the runway, and bank sharply a couple of hundred feet off the deck, swoop around and make a feather-light landing in the dirt, rolling to an easy stop. The pilots try to keep the nose-wheel off the ground as long as possible to avoid digging it in.

"It's a big challenge getting into some of these fields," says Lehman, a native of Smithfield, Mo. "You're coming over a mountain pass and dropping into a short field landing zone."

As the loadmasters shift a pallet of cargo out the back and wave about 40 Mongolian soldiers off the rear ramp, the crew members up front check their charts, ready for the flight back to Bagram. There is a mountain range to cross but the weather is good today. It's a fine day for flying, with good visibility and stable air.

The missions here have a workaday familiarity about them, but the flight is all part of an eff ort to keep thousands of coalition soldiers supplied. There are 27,000 Americans and almost as many coalition forces, not to mention the Afghan Army.

These Air National Guard crew members from Missouri figure they save American lives by flying. Supplies that go by road put soldiers in harm's way because the Taliban and other insurgents here use roadside bombs against the supply convoys. In some areas they will blow a roadside bomb and then attack with small arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades too.

Ltc. Ed Black, the commander of the plane, is from a town named Rushville, in the Kansas City area.

"If we can move supplies through the air, or if we can air drop those supplies into areas that are very difficult to get to, maybe inaccessible by road or inaccessible because it is just too dangerous to drive on the roads, then we're saving lives by keeping people off the roads," Black said.

But travel by air is not completely safe. The weather can close in, especially during the summer, and cut down visibility. Many of the mountains here reach up to 12,000 feet, and flying through them in low visibility at night while on night vision goggles cause headaches, literally and figuratively. And then there is the danger of ground fire. The C-130s are huge, with four engines and they weigh upwards of 120,000 pounds. They fly slowly and present good target, especially when taking off and landing.

"In the back of your mind you're always thinking someone might be shooting me," Lehman said.

Despite that, he is happy to fly here in Afghanistan.

"It's fun flying and we really enjoy it," he said.

Forty-five minutes after taking off from Dudadi heading for Bagram, the plane passes over the last final steeply sloped ridgeline and starts descending toward the field. The tower clears another C-130, outbound in the same area, and the crew scans, looking for it. The tower calls the other plane, asking for its position, but gets no answer. To the side and below the pilots see the other plane circling tightly near the field and letting off flares.

Black keys the microphone and informs the tower the other plane is busy avoiding a threat warning. Each plane is fitted with a receiver system that alerts the crew to a missile launch, but it sometimes goes off if it sees any flash of light on the ground. Our crew sees nothing suspicious, but watches the circling plane. Better safe than sorry is the general sentiment.

A few minutes later our plane drops its landing gear, banks sharply and comes in for a smooth landing on Bagram's enormous runway, which is able to handle some of the largest aircraft in the world. No difficulty here.

The pilots pull up to their landing slot and cut the engines. The plane has poor soundproofing and the silence is golden. The crew pulls off their insulated helmets.

The crew will probably have the next day off , then it's back into the skies again. They are here on a tour lasting slightly longer than a month. It's not as long as the Army, which has 12- or 15-month tours, depending on the unit. But it is long enough, with plenty of 12- and 14-hour days.

This crew all volunteered to be here, as did every member of this unit of 40 people.

"I felt like I should get my chance," Lehman explained.

The crew bundles into the van taking them back to their operations center. The day started well before dawn at 3 a.m., and 12 hours later it is time to go home.