Movin' About The Battlefield

Last weekend I had to travel from Kabul to Bagram and around the AO.  Normally, I'm stuck on C-130s or C-17s where I'm not able to move around and look out windows.  This trip, I rode a CH-47 Chinook helicopter.  I haven't rode one of these since I was in the Army in Grafenowehr, and we crashed into a stand of trees while attempting to lift an old amphibious Duck vehicle into the artillery impact area.  Needless to say, I wasn't too excited about this trip.  If nothing else, I really didn't want to leave "home" in Kabul to sleep on a cot in a B-Hut with fifteen of my closest friends (half of whom snored).

I boarded the CH-47 at Camp Phoenix and we flew around in the typical milk run the Army flies every day.  Our crew chief, pictured below, manned the .50 cal during the flight, but we generally don't get fired upon during these trips because the routes are changed every so often.

Afghanistan's terrain changes significantly by region.  Kabul is up in the northwest area of the country where we are surrounded by mountains, still mostly snow-capped from Winter's snowfall.  Down in Kandahar, it's a dusty and hot plain with lots of poppy fields.  And lots of action.  It's best for me to stay up north where troubles are mostly relegated to the occasional bomb or IED.

An Example of IT Infrastructure in Afghanistan

This tree, apparently dead for some time, stands outside of our pick-up point at Camp Eggers.  I've been looking at it for months now, admiring it for maintaining a purpose while deceased.  There is a shortage of timber here, so this tree still serves a viable purpose.  It now serves as a support pole for fiber and copper running along one of the streets.

My OSP team didn't run this...some other contractor, or the military, made these runs.  It doesn't look anywhere near as bad as the photos of this ilk that have their way onto the Internet of intersection power poles in some city in India or Hong Kong.  This is repairable, and if the situation stabilizes around here, I suspect we'll be directed to establish a standards-based run for these circuits.

The Man Who Would Be King

I just finished the book, The Man Who Would Be King; The First American in Afghanistan by Ben Macintyre.  I first saw the book for sale over at the ISAF compound, which is the NATO camp where all the political strap-hangers spend their time here in Kabul.  Most everything for sale requires Euros.  So, I always have 40 or 60 Euro on me whenever I traipse over there.  Anyway, they wanted something like 30 Euros for the book.  No way.  I ordered it on Amazon, bought it used, and spent a total of about $12 for it.

In order to gain a real appreciation for the book, one should have seen the classic movie titled the same as the book (without the subtitle).  It stars Sean Connery and Michael Cain (when they were young men) and they portray characters from the  short story by Rudyard Kipling about two British Army deserters in India who pass through the Khyber Pass and on to Kafiristan  to claim riches and thrones.  They both are rogues and Freemasons.  I liked their characters immediately.  As I find out now, Kafiristan is a real place.  It is a region of Afghanistan where wild tribesmen reside, far from the reaches of the Kabul government.  Kafir means "infidel," and this is the region where Islam couldn't successfully convert the populace.

Kipling based his short story on a real character, a Josiah Harlan, an American free spirit who spent 10 years in Afghanistan in the early 1800s.  Like the characters depicted in the movie, Harlan was a Freemason (like Kipling) and spent earlier years in India and served as a surgeon in the East India Company's Army.  Harlan changed alliances with the various nabobs and maharajahs during his time over here.  But in the years he spent here, he acted as a doctor, political appointee, governor of various regions in what is now Afghanistan and Pakistan, military leader and adviser,  and explored the remote regions beyond the well traveled Silk Road where the British thought there was no passageway.

The book is very well researched and written.  Besides providing an interesting tale of an early American adventurer, it portrays a period of Afghan history that is fascinating and that still has import during these days of Taliban insurgencies and American occupation.

Breakfast with the SECDEF

Yeah, I know, I haven't been posting recently.  There's a lot of reasons why.  First, my company imposed a sudden change of leadership a few weeks ago.  I now find myself in charge here in the Kabul area, holding down three jobs, and working 12 hours a day, 7 days a week.  My energy for any extra curricular activities is running low.  Second, the US Embassy shut down its free Wi-Fi that I've been stealing these last five months and now I have to scramble to locate any kind of free Internet access.  The only one I've found so far has crappy data throughput.  And third, I've been too cheap to pony up money to pay for crappy Internet service, but now it looks like I'll be forced to.  One of my guys who is leaving has turned over $7k worth of satellite downlink gear for the Internet service he ran out of his safe house.  I, along with a couple of other techs, will be standing this system back up in the near future.  But, we'll have to pay the provider for the bandwidth.  I suspect I'll be forking out a couple of hundred bucks a month just to ensure that I have sufficient bandwidth to stock trade and do the geek things that I like to do when I return back to the house.

So, this morning I headed to camp and entered the DFAC for a quick breakfast.  I saw that the area I normally sit in was more crowded than usual, but I found a seat, plopped down, and began chowing down.  A couple of folks next to me finished their breakfast and left.  I looked around and noticed a gentleman sitting a few chairs from me on my left.  He looked familiar.  Then I put it all together.  Secretary Gates was here visiting the chain-of-command and assessing the strategies that Gen McChrystal has implemented here. 

For someone who is in a terribly stressful job, Gates looks pretty good, especially for as old as he is.  I figure if he can survive all the stress and strain of his job, I certainly can get through another seven more months of my three jobs.  Not that I'm counting the days, or anything...

Boohlsheet

In order to travel to my Safe House from Camp Eggers, I have to walk through the camp’s multiple checkpoints manned by security forces from various countries.  There’s a hierarchy of trust involved with the security forces.  Think of it as concentric rings with the most trusted forces in the inner ring protecting key assets.  Those forces in the inner circle include US and NATO MPs and FPs (Force Protection -- essentially augmentation to the Military Police).  The next ring out includes forces from the Coalition here supporting the International Security Augmentation Force (ISAF).  These troops include the Mongolians I wrote about previously.  The next ring out is manned by Filipinos and Gurkhas.  These guys provide entry point security.  They frisk all the local nationals entering and leaving the camp and check everyone’s entry badges.  The outer ring is manned by trusted Afghan security personnel contracted out by the Ministry of the Interior.

Our vehicle pick-up/drop-off point is located at the North Gate of Eggers where there is a checkpoint manned by Afghan security forces.  At the end of the day, there are always a few Americans hanging around this checkpoint waiting for their drivers to pull up and drive them home.  Most of the Afghan guards have no English speaking ability and generally there is no interaction with them.  There are a couple of exceptions, however. 

One guard that I’ve become friendly with originally approached me with a language book asking me to help him understand some words and phrases.  I helped him then and still do on occasion.  We converse in basic conversational English and he always seems to improve in his comprehension and use of words.  A couple of these guards aspire to become translators, a much better paying job, and I don’t mind helping these guys along in their quest.  Guards make no more than $200 a month.  Translators probably make $350 or more.  It’s a quantum jump in pay and a much better lifestyle.

Any Afghan carrying a book, unless he picked it up off of the street and is carrying it for fire starter,  automatically is placed in the 95th percentile of the “educated elite” in this country.  Any Afghan capable of speaking English, broken as it may be, is in the 96th percentile.  Any Afghan who can open a book written in English and read a paragraph or two is in the 99th percentile.  Illiteracy is a plague in Afghanistan.  It’s the one factor that could cause our efforts here to fail.

Yesterday I received a book in the mail.  I was carrying it with me to take it home.  [I guess that puts me in the 5th percentile in America]  Because it was starting to snow, I put my book on a ledge under the roof of the guard shack.  One of the Afghan guards picked up the book, opened it, and read the first paragraph of the introduction.  Not bad!  He thumbed through the photographs in the center of the book, stopped, and pointed to it and told me it was a picture of a minefield.  I had to see what he was looking at.  He was right.  My Boy Jack?  is about the story about the hunt for the body of Lt. John Kipling, Rudyard’s son, who died at age eighteen at the Battle of Loos in 1915.  The guard noticed the field where the trenches were and immediately recognized it as a minefield.  Afghanistan has millions of mines in its fields from previous wars.  Most of these guards were involved in the battle against the Russians during their occupation and/or were involved in the anti-Taliban fight in 2001.  They all know minefields.  There’s a number of Afghans on post missing limbs who most likely learned some hard lessons.

After discussing minefields with this guard, he turns to me and tells me that he listens to the Americans speaking to each other while they are waiting outside the checkpoint.  He then asks me, “What is thiiis word, boohlsheet?”  “What does it mean?”  “All Americans use this word.”  I had to laugh.  I was actually surprised that he didn’t ask me what the “F” word meant.  He’s right.  All Americans use this word, and others like it.  Between the military folks and the contractors here, there is no shortage of colorful language.  The vast majority of the contractors here are retired military or have military experience and we all talk just like we did when we were in uniform. 

So, I tried to explain.  I tried “nonsense,” but I saw the confusion on this guard’s face.  I tried “bad,” but that really didn’t define it.  I tried “not good,” and decided to stick with that definition.  Since it was snowing, I used this as an example.  “This snow is bullshit” I exclaimed.  The guard emulated my pronouncement to a tee (including the arm swinging).  I remembered the Dari word for snow -- barrf (my transliteration; roll the Rs like in Spanish).  “This barrf is bullshit,” I continued to exclaim, arm swinging included.  The guard picked up on that immediately.  “Thiiis barrf iis boohlsheet!” I heard him yell to some stunned Americans walking his way, as I climbed into my SUV for the short trip back to the Safe House. 

I felt somewhat satisfied knowing that I’ve helped spread some American enlightenment to another benighted corner of the world.   One of my many contributions to our Global War on Terrorism.

Care Packages And Those Who Send Them

There are two kinds of Care Packages that deployed personnel receive:  those sent by friends and family and those sent by caring groups, organizations, and individuals to “any deployed soldier.”  I’ve been the recipient of both.

Mail Call has always been important to deployed soldiers.  It used to be the sole lifeline back to home.  Now, everyone has a cell phone, a laptop with an Internet connection, and access to Skype and other video chat tools that shrink the distance between war zones and “The World” back home.  Still, receiving Care Packages from friends and family is always welcomed.  Back in the day when we didn’t have cell phones and Internet connections, soldiers receiving letters in the field would quickly abandon their loud bravado and retreat into their inner worlds when reading letters from home.  What was moments before a loud “circus-like atmosphere” where soldiers grabbed for their mail while ribbing others who didn’t receive any, quickly became a quiet and introspective period while these young men reconnected to a childhood home and a world that was too far away.

I have received two packages since I’ve been here.  The first one was sent by my former Admin Assistant from one of my Antarctic seasons.  Melissa sent me all kinds of goodies to include a loose tea infuser and homemade chocolate chip cookies.  Her box also contained pictures of Thanksgiving turkeys drawn by her two young daughters.  Thank you again, Melissa, for your kind gift.  The other box was sent to me by my sister-in-law, Tina.  Tina always spends time finding just the right item for the right occasion.  Her box arrived just before Christmas and contained more goodies and items that I’ve savored.  My wife, Suzanne, called Tina just before the box was mailed and told her that I was missing my peanut M&Ms that cannot be obtained over here.  So, two bags of those were thrown into the box before mailing.  I’m still working off the weight gained by consuming all of this great stuff.  Tina also took the time to include a two-page letter.  Thank you, Tina.

A lot of thought goes into these Care Packages.  One of the NCOs I work with at New Kabul Compound got married just before he deployed.  His young bride sent him a box just before Thanksgiving containing everything he needed to have a Thanksgiving dinner without going to the DFAC.  The box contained canned turkey and canned cranberry sauce.  It also contained prepared sweet potatoes and dinner rolls, complete with a desert.

The Care Packages that arrive for “any deployed soldier” are processed at the Theater mail facility in Kuwait and distributed throughout the Area of Operations.  Every camp and FOB (Forward Operating Base) receive these boxes and they generally are available in the MWR (Morale, Welfare, and Recreation) or USO tents.  Many of these boxes arrived in time for the holidays.  These boxes contain all kinds of useful items.  Toothbrushes, toothpaste, decks of cards, candy, hot sauce, wet wipes, lotions, shampoos, feminine hygiene products, and Christmas decorations arrive in these boxes.  They’re opened and placed where soldiers can dig through them and find items they need or desire.

All of the boxes I found myself digging through came with Christmas cards enclosed.  My eyes kept darting to the cards while my hands frantically searched for the real goodies that might have escaped the eighteen-year old soldiers who already had dug through the boxes.  No luck there.  I felt guilty about the cards, still in sealed envelopes, that hadn’t been read.  I grabbed a handful of cards from a couple of boxes and sat down to read them.

Some cards were just signed and enclosed.  Some had city and state on them.  The boxes I saw were sent by small towns in North Carolina and other small towns in mid-western states.  I thought back to my “Hero’s Welcome” in Maine when I was deploying.  I immediately envisioned small church groups, high school students, and other caring individuals taking the time to purchase, pack, and mail off these items to us over here.  I felt badly that these cards were generally being ignored by the young troops who looked past them in search of gifts and goodies.  But then I remembered the strings of Christmas cards that adorned the hallways in the offices near  where the Chaplains sit and I knew that they too were taking the time to put these cards to better use.

Of all the cards I grabbed and read, two stood out.  These cards were written by parents of of a dead soldier and a dead marine.  One mother grieved for her lost soldier son (killed in action in Iraq) but encouraged us, through her tears, to continue the mission.  The other card contained a long note from a father who lost his Marine Lieutenant son just eight months before in Kandahar, Afghanistan.

Afghanistan.  Eight months ago.  Twenty-two years old.  I glanced up to look at the young people in the USO tent with me, calling home, talking with their loved ones, huddled over the phone or a laptop like the soldiers I knew in the field years ago.  Same posture, just a different communications medium.  All of them had combat patches from a variety of Army combat units.  Any of them could have been there, near the field where this young marine died eight months ago.  Their life goes on while this father continues to grieve for one that won’t return from patrol.

And yet he took the time to pour his heart out, tell us his story, and wish us God Speed and a Merry Christmas.  Too bad I was the only one to read it.  Life is for the living, as the saying goes.  And so we continue to live and fight, vainly trying to distance ourselves from the fate of those who don’t survive. 
 
Despite the sadness connected with a couple of the Christmas cards, I was encouraged and heartened by the knowledge that there were good Americans who cared about the military personnel deployed in harm’s way and were kind enough to take time to send them gifts from home.  I, for one, am deeply grateful.

The Long, Painful Trip Back To Kabul

The hardest things about traveling military air are the layovers and the incessant waiting.  The best thing is that it is free.  Normally free outweighs the inconvenience of the “hurry up and waits.”  As I get older, though, my preference is to pay for the convenience of direct flights, especially on commercial airlines.

Since I was headed south to Kuwait to attend meetings for work and I didn’t have any assurances that I’d be able to get an R&R in conjunction with my business trip, I opted not to spend $800 for a roundtrip commercial ticket from Kabul International Airport to Kuwait City.

My Kuwait business trip was worthwhile and I finagled an R&R to the UAE.  I got really used to staying in nice apartments and hotels for the week I was down from Afghanistan.  Then, it was over way too soon and I had to make my way back to the ‘stan.

Returning to Kabul was a grind.  First, I had to process through Ali again, turn-in my passport to receive the exit visa from Kuwait (resulting in another night in the tent), and once that was done I was allowed to manifest for flights north to Afghanistan.  There are no direct flights to Kabul.  One must either fly to Kandahar or to Bagram.  Kandahar is a mess and no one without any business there would want to fly there.  There were lines of folks in the pax terminal trying to manifest to Kandahar.  I wasn’t one of them.

There were a couple of flights scheduled for Bagram.  The way it works is this:  based upon one’s priority (as a sillyvilian I have next to none) and when one signed up for the waiting list (done after obtaining the exit visa), a rank order of potential passengers to specific locations is created.  There are “show times” scheduled three hours before each flight where one has to attend to determine if he is going to get on the flight.  Flights are scheduled round the clock so Show Times occur at all hours of the day.  In addition, there are accountability roll calls at 1000 hours every morning that you have to attend or you fall off the rank order list.

I attended the accountability roll call the next day at 1000 hours and saw that there were a couple of more flights scheduled for Bagram.  Good news.  That meant that I was definitely going to get out within the next 24 hours.  So, I attended the first Show Time at 1500 hours only to find out that I wasn’t going to make that flight.  Next Show Time was at 2000 hours.  I didn’t make that one either.  The next Show Time was scheduled for 0130 hours.  Nope didn’t make that flight but there was another flight scheduled an hour later so I hung around the pax terminal to see if I got on it.  I did.

So, it now is 0245 hours, and I am scheduled to fly, and now I have to return to my tent, pack up my belongings in the dark, drag my duffle bags back to the luggage area to get palletized, and then return to the pax terminal to wait for the buses to haul us out to the airfield.  I took the opportunity to shave and wash my hair in the sink (at the latrine trailer) before I reported in.

The buses arrive on time at 0445, we arrive at the airfield at 0500, wait around for the pallets to get loaded, board the C -17 at 0530, and sit on the runway until 0615 when wheels come up.  An easy 4.5 hour flight to Bagram and we arrive around noon.  We file off the C-17 in two lines, marching off the tail ramp wearing our helmets, body armor, bug-out packs, and weapons.  15 years after I retired from the Army and here I am again, indistinguishable from a distance from the rest of the soldiers, airmen, and marines filing off the plane.  Form up, left face, forward march...

And then the whole goddamned process begins all over again.  We swipe our CAC (Common Access Card) cards, report to the Contractor Office where they make sure we’re going where we’re supposed to go, then go to the flight desk to sign up for flights to Kabul.  There is only one scheduled on the board and all kinds of troops are hanging around trying to get on it.  I figured that we were doomed.  I haven’t slept for over 24 hours and haven’t bathed in over 48.  Now I’m condemned to a bare, cement-walled compound where others like me are waiting for flights that may come, or not.

We’re only 55 miles from Kabul.  A few years ago we could have driven back without a problem.  Today, the road is a linear ambush site littered with IEDs and ragheads wanting to become martyrs.  So close, and yet so far.

One good thing about Bagram is that my company runs the data communications sites there.  I called my boss who arranged transport and I had to opportunity to conduct some business there and meet with some folks that I had spoken with only over the telephone.

We ate dinner at the DFAC (Dining Facility) and then headed back to the pax terminal to see if there were any additional flights.  There were.  Two more flights to Kabul were scheduled.  All three flights were C-130s.  The last flight of the night had no cargo to haul so it was able to transport all the remaining Kabul-bound passengers on the waiting list.  We loaded our luggage again onto the pallets, waited two hours in the pax terminal, put on our IBA and helmets, formed-up, right face, forward march…and filed-out to the C-130 at 2330 hours.  A quick 15-minute flight to Kabul and I was standing three miles from my safe house.

Three miles and six hours later I arrived.  Our drivers aren’t allowed on the roads after 2300 hours.  I was forced to spend six more hours sitting up in a tent with patio tables waiting for twilight.  My head nearly jerked off of my neck three or four times during the night.  I walked around getting fresh, cool air.  I tried to do Sudoku.  I tried creating this post but only wrote the first few lines before I lost interest. Tried to sleep but was awakened by two Dutch Military Policemen asking me why I was lying on the PX picnic tables at 0400 in the morning.

Next time I’m spending $800 for the privilege of not having to relive any of these moments again.  Reliving my Army career here has been difficult enough.