I’ve been doing a little spring cleaning around here as of late and stumbled across a couple of my old Jaffy posts. As I was following along with Jaffy’s adventures, reminiscing about my days in the Stan, I thought I ought to compile the posts into sort of a Chronicles of JAF, so here they are, for your reading pleasure…
Jaffy
Joseph Andrew Foxx stands five feet nine inches tall and weighs 168 lbs. Joseph Andrew Foxx, “Joe” to his friends, “Jaf” or “Jaffy” to his fellow crewdogs, “Joey” to his mom, is a Staff Sergeant in the United States Army. He’s been a Soldier for just over eight years and has been a crewmember on the Army’s CH47D Chinook helicopters for six of those eight years. He’s logged a thousand and change hours of flight serving his country in eleven different countries across the globe. He’s now flying through the skies of his twelfth, Afghanistan.
Tight
The LZ was a small patch of rock surrounded by a thick clump of evergreen trees atop an 8,700-foot mountain. Just as the PIC was going to ask Jaf to get the Captain again to discuss an alternate landing zone, Jaf keyed his mike, “Sir, I think if we slide the ass end around and back her in we can do a “two-wheel” and I can get the ramp lowered enough to get these guys off. They don’t have a lot of heavy shit, should be quick.”
Thanks for the Help
Land Ho
As the aircraft’s powerful turbine engines wound down, Jaf started preparing for the next step. “Kevin, I need you and Joe to get on these guns and be ready to shoot any bad guys that even look like they might hurt us. Don’t be jumpy, just ready. Sir, I’m gonna find out what the fucking problem is, if we can keep the auxilary power unit running, let’s, just in case we have to get out of here in a hurry.”
Cargo
Camelot Control
Oh Sh%t!
“Oh shit sir! I got two guys running away from a pick-up truck full of bad guys, 4 O’colck, heading towards the base of that hill,” Jaf said with some alarm in his voice into the small plastic microphone attached to his flight helmet by an adjustable metal bracket. He had the microphone adjusted so that the flat part pressed firmly against his lips, he preferred it that way, always had for some 1500 plus hours of flying. Jaf initially saw a rising trail of dust chasing a white pick-up truck as it raced across a relatively flat section of earth sloping up towards a hill, then noticed that leading the truck by a click and a half or so were two men dressed in what looked like ghillie suits running at a full sprint towards the hill.
Long Day
Kevin felt a little guilty at having mail and hot showers everyday. The mail clerk drove off and Jaf yelled at his crewchief to stop lollygagging and help “put her to bed.” They had logged 8.9 flight hours, arriving four hours prior to take-off to get her ready and needing another three-hours now to put her to bed, it had been a long day.
I’ve been working on a few more episodes of the Jaffy Chronicles to be posted later so check back from time to time. Sgt Hook out.
Editor’s note: The Jaffy Chronicles are fictionalized so as to not violate any OPSEC considerations during my tour in Afghanistan. Jaf and all other characters in this series are not real, rather a combination of characters from those I’ve met throughout the years, as are the locations and the missions. If you should ever happen to meet a crewdog named Jaf, rest assured it is purely coincidental.
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