FOB Hopping

As has been previously noted, the company is reluctant to let me travel while I’m here. They are unaccustomed to sending employees to warzones without the benefit of some prior service. I suppose they think that years of training could somehow prevent me from getting blown up by an IED.

Meanwhile, my two colleagues are traveling all over the country performing vehicle installs and training soldiers. As we speak they are at a nearby FOB (Forward Operating Base) which is just a short convoy away. For the last week or so, I’ve been conspiring with them to get a lift out there and see what battalion life is all about. Say what you want about KAF (and I have), but it’s a little surreal, and isn’t quite part of the war. Friday, they finally obliged me as we had a convoy going out to do some radio testing and I was able to convince folks that I could actually help them do this.

It had been drilled into me by much more experienced people to never leave the base without the following:
a) Change of clothes
b) Fart sack (sleeping bag)
c) Toothbrush

However, for a day trip 30 minutes down the road, there’s no way I’m going to need to lug all of that crap around. It’s enough that I need body armor and a helmet to ride in the convoy, so I packed light with just a change of clothes stuffed in the bottom of my bag.

Friday morning I showed up bright and early with my body armor, my helmet and my backpack, ready to hit the bricks. Of course 0800 never means 0800. It took a couple of hours for the convoy to pick up their mail, and extra equipment, collect stray personnel, etc. By the time we rolled out, it was getting ominously close to the scheduled time to return again.

There are weapons all over the base, with the exception of most of the civilians, everybody is carrying one. However, they’re never loaded; they’re just inert devices that people begrudgingly haul around, lean against tables, balancing by the barrel on their feet and otherwise treat with a certain disregard. I was finally reminded that these are deadly instruments and tools of war as we headed out of the gates. Before we left the safety of the base, the gunners “went hot,” locking and loading their .50 caliber machine guns and their MK-19 grenade launchers. That’s a sound I haven’t heard before and it’s a little chilling.

The ride itself was—thankfully—uneventful. I spent most of it listening to the radio chatter between vehicles with a pair of headphones in the back seat. Drivers would talk each other around turns and across bridges while the gunners worked out who was covering which direction.

When we arrived, there was not a lot of time to chat and hang out. The turnaround time was under and hour and we had to do our testing. I was about to grab my stuff and jump in the truck for the ride back when the Battalion Signal Officer grabbed me and said, “you’re not going out until tomorrow, I’ve got some network problems you need to work out.” So with that, I found myself staying overnight on this FOB without my toothbrush, or a sleeping bag. Lesson learned.

The FOB is a lot cleaner than KAF. The buildings are laid out nicely, there’s not so much dust in the air, and of course the ever-present poo smell of KAF was noticeably absent. Even the food was better. It had a canned quality to it, but canned food is apparently better than the “fresh” stuff we get at most of the DFACs.

I spent the night on a cot in the COMMO hut. A bed would’ve been nice, but it would have been much colder in the barracks, so I sacrificed a little comfort for a little heat. And I might have slept through the night had not the night shift plus 5 or 6 guys come in around 0300 to troubleshoot a problem. They left around 0430, which was about the time I woke up for good. I spent the rest of the morning watching The Last Castle with Robert Redford.

After breakfast, we packed up, said our goodbyes and convoyed back home to KAF. The mood is definitely tense in these convoys, and who can blame them? There’s death around every corner over here. Just last week the battalion we visited lost two guys to roadside bombs. They had a midnight ramp ceremony for those two just the next night. The ramp ceremonies are where the dead are put on a flight back home, and units from all over the base come out to honor them on their way out. I haven’t attended one yet, and I’m conflicted about whether or not I want to see that.