Tribute to the Troops, Day 1
Lilian visits the pilots on the C-17.
Well, it's that time of year again! Time for the most wonderful event of the year: The WWE “Tribute to The Troops” Christmas show, which once again is being held from Iraq!!
This is truly the most rewarding time of the year for me, when WWE gets to go over to the Middle East and personally shake thousands of soldiers' hands and say thank you!
What especially makes this trip so important to me is that I was lucky enough to be born and raised an "Army Brat," where my father served in the military for more than 20 years, and is now a retired lieutenant colonel. I am very proud of him, and all our armed forces for everything they do for us so we can enjoy our freedom!! So because I grew up living on numerous military bases, I always feel a very special connection coming to Iraq and living among all our soldiers. Even though I don't know them personally, they feel like family members to me.
This is my fourth time heading to the Middle East (three times in Iraq and one time in Afghanistan), and I wanted to share with you some of the experiences of our trip.
Day 1
We left from Charleston, S.C., right after Raw with 30 production crewmembers and 24 Superstars. This is truly a life-changing experience in many ways and after every trip, I always seem to take away something new that affects my life.
The plane we traveled in was a huge C-17 military cargo plane. It carried all of us, along with the production equipment we needed to put on the show in Iraq. There were no windows in the plane, so as we were traveling through time zones we never knew if it was day or night. That definitely took some getting use to. However, as soon as we all got on the plane, we all started having a great time hanging out with each other and sharing a beer or two (or three or four). LOL! It was really a great bonding time between us.
The original plan for this trip was to fly from South Carolina to Germany, and then after refueling, head to Iraq. Unfortunately, due to a maintenance issue with the air refueling aircraft, we weren't able to get refueled in the air so we had to stop in New Finland, Canada before reaching Germany. This added extra hours to our trip, which barring any problems was already going to be 16 hours. Well, once we reached Germany we had a maintenance issue with our aircraft, which added even more time. The trip ended up taking 22 hours and we were never allowed to get off the aircraft!! Well, even with all these issues everyone made the best of it; we knew that what was important was not to complain, but to get to Iraq safely and start meeting the soldiers!!
During these flights, I always love to go up to the cockpit and hang out with the pilot and co-pilot because it's really neat to see all that goes on in flying an aircraft this massive. This particular time I was up there for the take-off from Germany heading to Iraq. Chris and Frank where the pilots and they allowed me to listen in on the headphones so I could hear the procedure they were taking to get the aircraft off the ground!
During the flight, all the lights are on bright, but as soon as we hit the border of Iraq, the only lights that go on are red lights. This is a security measure so that the enemy can't see us in the air and try to shoot us down. I think this is when it really hit all of us that we were truly heading into the war zone.
For me, the experience of this trip always starts as soon as we leave the arena and head to the plane. It is a start of a very exciting and memorable journey, which I am very honored to be a part of!!