It’s hard to believe that it’s been almost six months since I returned from my last deployment. The first few months of my return was mostly a whirlwind of reintroducing myself to my family, moving, training for a new job, and knocking out about 10,000 to-dos.

As most of you know, I like to take pictures. With that fact in mind, I’m sure you can imagine that I literally had thousands of photos from my last trip around the world. Throw in a few hundred extra photos that I collected from other Marines on the deployment and you have one gigantic heap of pictures. It’s taken me some time to go through everything, but I finally organized everything and managed to upload them to our photo gallery. This includes everything from Harriers landing on the carrier, to earthquake damage in Haiti, to debauchery in liberty ports.

I won’t lie, there are a lot  of photos up there but I really worked hard to whittle them down to a manageable number and tried to pick the most visually interesting ones. If you care to see, check out the main album here.

In addition to organizing my unit’s photos, I also had the privilege of putting together the Det video. The vast majority of our flying was at night, which isn’t conducive to cool video footage, but we did scrounge up enough footage of day flying and lots of bombs exploding to make something worth viewing. It’s a cool look at what we did on a daily basis out there on our big, old, rusty, miserable boat. The password to view the video is “jetnoise”.

As much as I had hoped to write about my deployment while it was happening, things didn’t turn out that way. Some of that was due to my limited resources out there and some of it was because I wasn’t allowed to talk about it. The “not talking about it” part hasn’t changed, but I can sum up my experiences like this (with links to the respective photo albums):

• A day before setting sail, we learned we would make a detour to Haiti to help out with the quake relief. While there wasn’t much for a Harrier pilot to do there, I was proud to have been a part of the relief efforts. I was blown away by the level of destruction on the ground there.
• As great as it was to help out with Haiti, our extended stay there led to the cancellation of all of our scheduled port calls in the Mediterranean, including an incredible opportunity to train and fly in Israel!!! I’m just a little bitter about that.
• Our trip across the Atlantic was rather exciting, from crazy waves crashing over the bow to the ship almost running out of fuel and breaking apart. It was mostly like you see in the movies, where everything is sliding all over the place, people are getting sick left and right, and stuff is falling down from every shelf and storage bin. There is a reason most people avoid Atlantic crossings in the winter on a flat bottom boat.
• Our ship was the oldest amphibious carrier in the fleet, and it showed. Once we were through the Suez Canal, the average temperature of our rooms was in the mid to upper 90′s. The USS NASSAU was about a decade past its service life and in an extreme act of mercy, the Navy decommissioned her upon our return.
• The trip through the Suez was pretty cool. I was already a night owl on the way out, so I only got a few peeks at it, in a sleep-deprived daze.
• Our missions were pretty cool – truly the stuff out of Tom Clancy novels. I will have some great stories to share with my grandkids some day.
• Life on the ship was mostly miserable, but misery loves company and there were plenty of folks to commiserate with. We tied the all time Navy record for longest consecutive days at sea (169 days if you were curious). My only reprieve was the one night I had an emergency in my jet and had to land in Djibouti. With my one night stay there I can vouch that those Army guys are living in the lap of luxury in their camp there.
• Our first real relief was when we were granted a short trip across the equator (shellback, anyone? [pics]) to visit the Seychelles, a small resort island off the eastern coast of Africa. It was everything we had dreamed of – in that I could walk in a straight line for over 100 feet, there was functioning air conditioning, and food that one would actually choose to eat. Surprisingly the Marines were on our best behavior and the small island nation was not compelled to declare war on the United States after our visit.
• We steamed back to our little hot, sweaty, armpit of the Middle East and finished out our time with little incident. Before heading back through the Ditch, we gave all of the planes a solid scrub down (mostly to wash that armpit smell off of them).
• The trip back through the Suez was a lot better than the trip out; mostly because (1) we were heading home, (2) I was awake and coherent, and (3) because we were heading home. The air on the other side (in the Med) was literally clearer, crisper, and more fragrant than the hazy, humid, stinky mess that we left behind.
• We steamed through the Med pretty quickly for our final (and only second) port call of the deployment: Rome, Italy. This stop almost made the seven months of misery worth it. I had never been to Italy and it was everything I had ever hoped for and more. The sights, the food, the espresso, the wine, the people, were all just fantastic. If we weren’t assured that we would be heading back to our families, it would have been difficult to get back on the boat.
• The trip back across the Atlantic was a lot less eventful than the trip out. The seas and weather cooperated much better and (go figure) with 10 days left, the air conditioning started working again.
• Being a Harrier guy, I got to fly off a day before everyone else. My last flight in a Harrier was shooting off the front of a boat to fly back to cheering fans and my wonderful family. I can’t think of a better way to go out than that.

So there you have it. My 7 months of deployment in a few short bullets. The expanded version is available for the low, low cost of a cold beer.* The pictures go a long way to fill in the gaps, so take a good look if you are so inclined. It’s fun to look back on it all, but damn it is so good to be back home.

*Airfare to Florida not included.