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UNDISCLOSED LOCATION, Southwest AsiaIt's an often unheralded and sometimes painful task, but the resupply missions conducted by the 386th Air Expeditionary Wing are critical to the fight against the Islamic State.

Some flights are quick, lasting just under four hours round-trip with just one stop on the way. But others have multiple stops and can take about 12 hours.

"We call it the Iraq pain train," saidTech. Sgt. Nathan Schultz, a loadmaster. "Those can be long and tedious. You're constantly loading, unloading, reconfiguring. A lot of times you'll get to the destination, you'll unload all your pallets, and then you'll have to bring on 50 people, [and] you'll have to put all the seats down. It can be a painful transition back and forth."

And when emergency strikessuch as the Islamic State's October destruction of a sulfur plant near Mosul, which spewed toxic clouds for days as it burned and sickened hundredslogistics officers and transport aircraft work together to get life-saving supplies into the field as quickly as possible. In the case of the sulfur plant attack, this included scrambling to gather hundreds of gas mask filters for coalition forces at the nearby Qayyarah West Airfield, saidCapt. Jeff Benson, a logistics officer assigned to Combined Joint Task Force-Operation Inherent Resolve.

Multiple times each day, huge C-130s and C-17s from the 386th are packed with cargo and personnel for flights into Iraq and other locations. The 386th flies about 475 cargo sorties per month, moving roughly 6,200 tons of cargo and 6,700 passengers monthly.

This day, though, none of those emergency supplies would be neededit would be a textbook supply run, encountering nothing more dangerous in the air than an Iraqi passenger Airbus.

"That's more of a danger than anything we've noticed in the air," Schultz said.

"It's kind of boring, those days that we have off," Schultz said. "We'd rather be flying, but we need to have a day so that we can recuperate."

On the Jan. 10 flight, the trip to Iraq included a FASTor Fly-Away Security Teamto guard the plane while it unloaded on the Taji runway. One of those FAST airmen, Tech. Sgt. Joseph Cull, wore a pink-and-black patch on his body armor, above pouches packed with spare ammunition, that combined the logos of the comic book vigilante the Punisher and Hello Kitty.

Shortly before takeoff, 11 soldiers from the Armys 86th Expeditionary Signal Battalion boarded and strapped themselves into their seats near the front of the cargo hold. Some soldiers folded their arms, lowered their heads and napped. Others pulled out their smartphones and put in their earbuds, or chewed tobacco, or shot the breeze with one another.

Army Sgt. Timothy Kovacs, 27, a team leader, said they had arrived in the region eight days earlier and were headed to Taji for about eight months to lay fiber optic cable there and at other forward operating bases throughout Iraq.

Im ready to get there, he said.

Someone on the flight mentioned going home in a few days. Spc. Laryssa Allen, 21, also on her first deployment, said, Im jelly. I wish I were home.

The others ribbed Allen for her homesicknessand for saying jelly. She took the joking in stride, firing back: It is a word! Look it up.

You just got here, Spc. Alfredo Garza, 26, said with a laugh.

The soldiers let the kidding drop as the plane taxied to the runway and took off. Allen said something to Cpl. Gabriela Danielson, 24 years old and on her second deployment, who nodded. They leaned in close together, Allen held out her smartphone, and she took a selfie of their smiling faces as they flew off to their war.

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The 'pain train': C-130s ferry troops to Iraq, keep bases supplied - AirForceTimes.com