Haiku Saturday: Springtime

Canucks swarm boardwalk
Shorts squeeze their cookie-dough thighs
Spring in Kandahar

18 Days to Go!

That’s right folks, I’m still alive, and I’ve only got 18 days left in country. On March 16th I fly to Dubai where I get to have my first drink in 120-something days, and then on the 18th I fly into Atlanta and the warm embrace of hearth and home.

Obviously I haven’t been writing for a while, and yet plenty has been going on. So rather than write in detail about everything, here are some brief descriptions and pictures from the last month or so.

I don’t think I ever mentioned seeing Senators McCain and Lieberman out here. They were visiting one of the FOBs I was working on, the same trip where I got to climb the hill/mountain. Pictured with them is Lieutenant Colonel Frank Jenio, a true badass who was very nice to me while simultaneously, and involuntarily, intimidating the shit out of me.


Let’s see, what else. Ah, there is the terrific rainstorm that flooded KAF, leaving lots of big ass tactical vehicles stuck in the mud, for instance the MRAP and the Hemmet pictured below. I’m sure something heroic had to happen to get these guys back out of the mud.





Here’s a picture of the side mirror of our truck as we crossed a stream over a flooded bridge.


Of course there’s my current assignment, we’re at a base in Uruzgon province doing an install and I got to take my first helicopter ride to get out here. We took a Chinook, which is that gigantic chopper with the two blades on top. Below you can see another one that was flying with us, pictured out the open rear door of the bird, along with a door gunner, looking pretty similar to the B-17 door-gunners of yesteryear.





And as always, there was a good time by the fireside up here, though this time with the benefit of a little backyard barbeque. Sadly the only guitar in this camp belongs to the chaplain, and the neck is so irrevocably bent that you can’t fret the strings.




Also, for you music lovers, we did an install for a platoon that calls themselves The Misfits, complete with awesome stencils.




Later on I'll have to detail the story of the guitar and maybe the harrowing adventures I've had doing phone support until all hours of the night on the whim of our boss out here. Yes, I said it: phone support adventures.

Dirty Thirty

Well here it is, my 30th birthday. I never would have guessed I'd be spending it in Afghanistan, but here it is. I'm waiting for the arcane knowledge of middle age to fall to me, as if angels flap to earth on downy wings to whisper in my ears the secrets of escrow, lawn fertilizer and how to fix a dripping faucet. If it doesn't happen today, I'm going to assume it's 40.

As per usual, my family have gone out of their to make me feel like I'm not in the desert, impossibly far from my home and my comfort zone. Two days ago I received a gigantic box from them. I didn't read the packing list, as the post office makes you write the contents on the outside of the boxes you send out here. I was going to write about it without opening it yet, but that would be crazy. Let's see what we've got.

The box is about 24" x 12" x 8", and it could contain anything. Mama already warned me that they used old clothes as packing material, and not to open it in front of other people, lest I want them thinking my folks have sent me rainbow tanktops for my birthday... Which, apparently, they have. Along with an unworn (tag still on them) pair of hummingbird pajama bottoms, a couple of sweaters and an NRA hat. And mixed in with the clothes are homemade cupcakes packed in little Rubbermaid containers. Several of these have bit the dust, opening up in transit and mixing it up with the load of laundry that accompanied them in the box, but there are two survivors who made it through unscathed, and will pay for their luck by being eaten in the next 5 minutes.

At the very bottom of the box are homemade brownies, wrapped in aluminum foil and saran wrap with specific instructions: "Open on a flat surface. Look before you cut. Candles and lifesavers go on each piece."

Holy cow. What a surprising birthday.

Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's and my birthday, that's quite a holiday triptych to spend out of the country. I don't think I ever wrote anything about either Thanksgiving or Christmas. I know I sat down to write about it, but just got bogged down in the details and the minutia of the days. The short story of my holidays is: they were nice!

Thanksgiving we went to a turkey dinner at the American DFAC, where I had turkey, stuffing, rice, peas and a tiny pizza (I can't walk into that place without getting one of the tiny pizzas). I went with the Major and his network Chief and we talked about, well, whatever people talk about at dinner. Then we came back to the office and watched TV all night.

Christmas, I showed up at the office to find all of the enlisted guys packed into their connex/office building opening presents together. My family did a wonderful job of shipping Christmas to me all the way across the ocean, so I grabbed my boxes and joined them. The rest of the day I wore the scarf that my mom knitted me and the Christmas Vacation t-shirt that my sister sent me. We went a Christmas feast for lunch, and that night smoked cigars by our little hobo fire.

OK, I can't wait any longer, I need to get my brownies somewhere and cut them up. Thanks to everyone! I'll see you soon!

The Hill: Follow-Up

My last morning on that FOB, I packed up all my gear and met the mortar team out by their trucks. They were convoying back to KAF that morning in order to pick up supplies, shower and do laundry so I hitched a ride with them.

I was manifested in the back of an MRAP with an Air Force Staff Sergeant from Minnesota. When I've seen Air Force guys out here they're either communication folks or combat camera. I asked him which one he was, and he surprised me by saying he was an EOD tech--Explosive Ordinance Disposal.

These guys are the tip of the spear in this war as this war is all about mines, IEDs and booby traps. Of course I took the opportunity to ask him what he thought of The Hurt Locker, which is about an EOD team in Iraq. Apparently it's unrealistic on a lot of fronts, but he was still able to enjoy it. He felt that the cowboy team-leader would have gotten his ass kicked, or possibly fragged by his team because of the risks he took, but a lot of it was reasonable. Especially the number of calls they get in a deployment, literally hundreds of devices.

I also asked him about what we saw from the Observation Post, the guys working under the bridge. This happened a few days before a major operation in that village, so I figured he might have been involved. He knew what I was talking about, and he was dispatched to that bridge to see what those guys were almost killed over.

Nothing. There was nothing under the bridge. Maybe they put something there and took it away later; maybe they were storing something under there and removing it; but there definitely wasn't a bomb. And they almost got vaporized.

The Hill

I think I mentioned this base in a previous post, how it is situated at the foot of a mountain, and commands an impressive view of the valley below. When I was here last time, I took all of my smoke breaks on the roof of the administration building. During the day, you can see for miles into the valley, and at night you can watch the stars without being bothered by the flood lights or the generators on the ground. I’m not the only one that took a shine to the rooftop, the MK-19 and .50 cal gunners were also up there 24 hours a day with their sights on the road coming up from the valley, and on the saddles formed by the mountain and the small hills at its feet.

I have returned here with two Air Force guys, Jacobson and Triplett. Jacobson and I have come to train this unit and help them install a new radio system, while Triplett is here as mobile morale for the Air Force. His job is to travel around to Army FOBs and camps where airmen are stationed and just hang out. He talks with them, plays cards with them, smokes cigars with them and generally rolls all over theater being a nice guy. It’s a strange gig, but he loves it and he’s good at it.

We arrived here before lunch, in time to chat with a party that was forming to scale the mountain and resupply the Observation Post at the top. The mountain is like a long ridge, like an A-frame house, with the OP located at the end of the ridge line. From there, you can imagine that it can see all sides of the valley and into most of the battalion’s area of operation. The scouts are camped at the top, and they use scopes, binoculars and night vision to watch the villages and report suspicious activity. The OP is also a convenient place for a retrans station, giving radio coverage to the whole valley, and linking up elements on either side of the ridge. We were invited to join them on the climb.

Now, I have never attempted anything like this before in my life. Ask anyone, I’m a lazy hiker and as a youth I made a splash as a terrible Boy Scout. Truly, a terrible Boy Scout. I was in Troop 97—The Eagle’s Nest—for two years and didn’t advance once, I didn’t even make Tenderfoot (the lowest possible rank, for the uninitiated). I think there was some talk of making up an award for being such an accomplished slacker. Not even being a Tenderfoot, I think I was referred to as just a Scout. In the army they would have just called me a Shitbag.

On top of my lazy-outdoorsman nature, I’m also out of shape and afraid of heights. So when they generously offered me the opportunity to climb a mountain with them, I didn’t hesitate for a second. The essence of this trip has been getting out of my comfort zone, far from home and all things familiar, what better escape than to the top of a mountain? I had to take them up on it.

There were 6 of us going up—three Army, two Air Force and one hesitant civilian. We met in front of the COMMO shop for a short briefing in which we were assigned an order (I was safely wedged in the middle, between the Air Force guys, Army guys taking point and bringing up the rear) and they dispensed a few tips. I clung to the following ones:

a) Keep three points of contact at all times.
b) take small steps.

With that, we set off to the edge of the compound where there is a narrow break in the concertina wire. Everyone with a weapon loaded it and chambered a round before stepping over the line going officially, figuratively and literally outside of the wire.

The first part really was the hardest. It was a long slog up a rocky hillside which is covered in the barely-marked graves of the locals. I noticed it the last time I was on this FOB, little piles of rocks clustered together on the hill, all of them with makeshift headstones. I wondered if the families in the area know which graves belong to them and which are their neighbors’. Without markings, it has to be hard to tell.

My heart was beating out of my chest when we reached the top of the hill, my breathing heavy and loud. I was a little embarrassed about the heaving, labored breaths, so I called ahead to Jacobson “don’t mind the heavy breathing,” hoping to stave off embarrassment, to own my poor fitness. When I talked to him about that comment the next day, he thought I had heard him huffing and puffing and was trash-talking. Funny.

We took a moment for all of us to catch our breath before we walked up the little saddle to the actual mountain and started to work our way carefully up the steadily increasing grade. Every leg of our path was covered with loose rocks and gravel, which continued to shift and confound with each step up. Two of the Army guys were carrying ruck sacks filled with 60-80 pounds of gear for the team on the mountain, and they were starting to bend under the strain.

We took breaks every 20 or 30 minutes on the way up, all of them marked by our pictures. I would sit down on the rock, sling my camera out from under my arm and take a few shots of everyone else, the view, or the compound which shrank smaller and smaller with each step up. Jacobson and Triplett made repeated offers to take the rucks off the shoulders of the soldiers, and at last both soldiers relented and traded off, the two Airmen taking the load the other half of the way up. My own meager effort was to carry part of a whip antenna which had become too cumbersome to strap to anyone, so it just left me with only one free hand.

Continuing up the mountainside, we crept up narrow draws, pulled ourselves and each other over short, sheer cliff faces, always moving up along the side of the mountain until at long last we reached the top. We radioed ahead to the OP for them to come meet us and walk us around any booby traps on the approach to their camp. While they moved our way, we all took a seat and gazed out over the valley, spread as full and as far as I will ever see it.

The scouts escorted us the rest of the way, pointing out a near-invisible trip wire in the process. When we reached the OP, we happily dropped our loads and shed our IBA. It felt great to get out of that armor and let the sun dry some of the sweat off me. The actual camp consists of some small, two-man sandbag caves, with ponchos stretched across the top of them to block out the sun and the rain. And in between tiny hooches, stacks of supplies: water, diesel and MREs. The diesel seemed odd because I didn’t see or hear a generator, but we eventually walked over to the edge and carefully lowered ourselves to a narrow cliff where it was tucked away, humming along out of site. They told me they had paid two locals to bring it up for them, and these two had run it up like billy goats while the soldiers lagged behind, tired and out of breath.

The peak offers unobstructed views in every direction, not a horse cart or bicycle moves around in the little villages that dot the foot of the mountain without the scouts observing and reporting it. Their scopes are all set up at the point of the mountain, looking down into the farmland and the streets below. I was advising on the radio install when I noticed a crowd forming over by them. I walked over to find the scouts on the radio, reporting suspicious activity in one of the villages. They had spotted 4 or 5 “fighting age men” with a donkey cart, working underneath a footbridge. I looked through the scope myself and saw them, almost 1000 yards away. Several of them were taking sacks of material from under a bridge and putting them on a cart, while one of them appeared to be stringing wire around.

Because the men were partially obscured by a tree, the scouts called in some Kiowa observation/attack helicopters to get a closer look. The cameras in their ISR pods can capture clear images from much further away than the scouts’ binoculars and scopes, so they flew into the area, orbiting well away from the targets so as not to make their intent clear and to spook their quarry.

More information started to roll in with different angles meshing together to form an idea. It looked like they were planting an IED under the bridge. The guy in charge of the scouts called out, “get the 50,” and a scout jumped up and crawled into his little makeshift hooch, emerging moments later with a Barrett .50 caliber sniper rifle. I’ve seen these things on TV, but never in person, and never with malicious intent. It is a HUGE gun, the most accurate and deadly in the world. The rounds are 6 inches long and will destroy anything they hit. They can fire right through the armor of Russian T-72 tanks, through a quarter-inch steel plate at over 1000 yards, and one of them was about to be brought to bear on these 5 guys in the wadi far below us.



Between the possibility of these scouts exploding these men one at a time right in front of me, or the Kiowas returning to rain down hellfire from the sky, my heart was racing. Tensions were rising in everybody.

One of the books I’ve been reading lately is On Killing by Lt. Colonel Dave Grossman, a psychologist and retired Army Ranger. In it he presents a comprehensive study of the difficulty soldiers have historically demonstrated in killing their fellow men, and how modern training techniques have helped to desensitize soldiers to the shock of taking a human life. One of the factors that mitigate emotional and psychological damage of killing a person is distance, which he defines as either physical or mechanical distance. Physical distance is just that, distance from the target (victim), while mechanical distance means a separation between killer and victim by some mechanical means: artillery fired at an unseen enemy, the point-and-click of modern armed UAVs, or the cool soundless picture presented by a sniper’s scope. And here we are, sitting comfortably in a long-range kill situation. We’re looking at men through a scope who have no idea we are watching them, or that their lives are hanging on by the most tenuous of threads. The first guy would never hear the one that hit him, he would just cease to be.

I must confess: I wanted them to pull the trigger. I wanted to hear the crash echo off the rocks, and watch the chaos below as the remaining men scrambled for cover. I wanted the Kiowas to roar in and strafe them with rockets, to see shrapnel and smoke plumes. I think we all did. Waiting expectantly on the ridge, we were listening to the radio chatter all with our fingers crossed for the OK.

But it never came. The scouts called the Kiowas in close to harass and scare them out of whatever they were doing. The group broke up, a motorcycle going this way, a donkey cart going that way. The choppers stayed with the donkey cart as they rushed (as much as you can with a donkey) through the streets of the village and came to a stop at the end of an alley where he attempted to blend in and act normally. We watched as he struck up a conversation with someone on the street, trying to ignore the gunships swooping and diving above him

I can only assume they marked the footbridge for further inspection and continued to observe, because right about that time we had to begin our descent. The sun was going down and we only had an hour of daylight left us. On the way down we took fewer and less frequent breaks. We talked about the fate of the “fighting age men,” what their intent might have been, how cool it would have been to see an actual engagement. We ended up reaching the FOB just as the sun was setting, our legs shaking and our knees ready to collapse.

We took off our armor again and got some hot chow from the kitchen tent, finished up our day and went to sleep.

Even now, a day later, I’m still thinking of those guys and the foot bridge. Maybe they weren’t doing anything wrong. Maybe they were storing seed down there, or drugs, or fertilizer. Or maybe they were constructing a bomb, hoping to take out American and ANA forces. Whatever they were doing, they were an inch away from a gruesome death. And I would have been at least emotionally complicit in that act. The power of that moment was thrilling and frightening. I wanted the scouts to engage them, to punch gigantic .50 caliber holes into them from the mountaintop, or to see the Kiowas circle back around and blow them to Kingdom Come.

I’ve looked back at what I was thinking at the time, looking for signs of fear or hesitation, but there really was just a bloodlust not unlike what I feel watching violent movies or playing videogames. I wish there were fear, or compassion, but it’s not there. I wish for a lot of intangible things…

Surely I would feel differently if it were my finger on the trigger. Surely.

I hope I never have to find out.

Field Hygiene

I'm still trying to figure out where I'm more comfortable, this somewhat isolated FOB outside of Kandahar, or my home on KAF. Coming out here, I've traded three hot meals a day for two, but the food is better here. I've traded hot showers for no showers, but my tent is warmer here. At this post we're so close to the enemy that everyone walk around the FOB with their weapons loaded (but not locked, alert level = Amber), but KAF gets a couple of rockets or mortars lobbed at it a week, and they haven't gotten anything here. I work harder here because everything I do seems more critical, but I get more satisfaction from my work.

So the jury's out on that issue.

Yesterday I took my first whore's bath after being out here for four days. I was dancing from sandal to sandal in a cold tent trying to clean myself with baby wipes. You know how many baby wipes it takes to clean a baby? One. You know how many it takes to clean a grown-ass man? A few more than that. Face, hair, pits, xxx, xxxxx, xxxxx and feet makes for a good 6-8 at least, and that just hitting the high points!

Today I found a source of hot water, and a grimy looking bar of soap. I've washed my hands twice since then, getting off the gunk and residue that alcohol-based hand sanitizer can leave behind.

Oh, I just remembered what might put KAF over the top: flushing toilets. Port-a-potties are cold, and sometimes astoundingly disgusting. Learned an interesting fact about port-a-potties and some of the locals. Afghanistan, like a lot of the third world, is peopled with squat-poopers. Like our cavemen ancestors, and even up unto the Greeks, they squat down on their haunches to do their business. I think it was the Romans, or the Europeans who finally decided to forgo nature's design for our bodies and poop in a sitting position, forever weakening the hamstrings of the civilized ever since (maybe it was the Victorians?) Anyway, the Afghans are still happy to squat on the side of the road, and they see no difference when it comes to the port-a-johns, so they will step inside, put their feet up on either side of the seat and go to town.

This can be messy.

Another point KAF has on this place: at KAF I don't have to carry around my own toilet paper. I brought some with me, just in case, and boy am I happy I did.

Teaser...

What former presidential candidates did I see on a remote FOB this week? And how on earth did I end up on top of a mountain waiting with bated breath to see if Army scout snipers were going to engage and destroy targets in the valley below me?

All this and more when I get back to KAF, and my reliable Internet connection...