An aircraft commander with VMGR-252, a Marine Corps KC-130 air refueler/air assault squadron - part of the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit, Special Operations Capable and what became Task Force 58 in Operation ENDURING FREEDOM - Major Mitchell Hoines helped bring the first "boots on the ground," in the form of two MEUs, into Afghanistan in November 2001. "We shuttled the Marines in at night from Pasni, Pakistan, all the way to Camp Rhino," he said, "with an insertion to take the airfield and insert the Marines." A veteran of as many as 150 sorties during his October 2001 to January 2002 deployment, Hoines discusses this initial D-Day mission - an unprecedented 450-mile amphibious assault - in great detail. In addition, he talks at length about his experiences piloting the only platform in the Marine Corps that did not have night vision goggles, and doing so under the harshest and most dangerous conditions, environmental and otherwise. "We were doing all the night flying in the mountains with low-illumed, unimproved dirt strips with no lights on them,” Hoines recounted, “so it was very challenging, obviously. To do what we had to do, we flew overweight; we flew at emergency war weights. Not only were we flying airplanes heavier than we’ve ever flown them, we’re flying at night, in the dark, to a desert landing strip in a war zone.”

Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited