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...

More Travel!

In the next couple of days I'll be heading back down to the same FOB I spent a couple of days at last month. Back to the fireside, the music, the sunrises.

I mentioned to a troop how beautiful it was in that valley, and he replied, "beautiful? It's all death and destruction in that valley." And he's right. From up on the mountainside, you don't get a sense of what is happening down there, but they see action every day. While I was there last time, I watched Kiowa Warrior helicopters diving and strafing in the streets of a village that must have been miles away. I couldn't hear them, I just saw them swooping back and forth.

I once got an up close look at a Kiowa. They're tiny as helicopters go--I'm pretty sure I could fit one in my garage if I could fold the rotors up. When they were taxiing for takeoff, they just hovered three feet off the ground, and seemed like hovercars as they floated down the taxiway, took 90°, turns and floated on down the road. Three feet. It was impressive. Plus, they're armed to the teeth with rockets and various and sundry other nasty things.

So I'll be out of communications for a bit. Cell phones don't work down there, blogspot and facebook are both blocked, so I'll just be available via Gmail and my work Email. Don't worry, I'll be safe as houses where I am.

Other Uses for the Hockey Rink

The other night I found myself drawn to the Boardwalk to the strains of BTO's TCB. In USO tradition, washed-up-band equals obscure hot girl, so I convinced CPT Dorsch to accompany me over there for dinner and to take in the sights.

It turns out Bachman Turner Overdrive was not in town, or if they were they were playing somewhere else and the sound was carried to me by the complicated echo chamber made by all of these corrugated tin buildings, but we decided to stay for dinner and watch the Canadians duke out the Slovakians in hockey. These people are serious. They have flags, they have jerseys, they have fans--truly we're living in a winter wonderland.

But the real action came after the game when the bomb-sniffing dogs were brought onto the rink for a little training. The YouTube video below shows one of the dogs sent to chase down a fleeing suspect, who can't run nearly fast enough.



Here you see the dog, docilely sitting on the ground as the handler pats down a suspected insurgent, followed by a verbal command to f**k his day up.





One of the two dogs we saw that night, a Belgian shepherd of some kind, was very sweet and let us pet him despite the fact that he could easily rip our throats out and roll around in our blood.

Haiku

Laziness sets in
The haikus took vacation
What else can I say?

2 Big Cups of Coffee After Midnight = Bad Idea

Here I am at almost two in the morning an I'm not remotely tired. I watched a couple episodes of The Wire Season 1 tonight with a Captain from the logistics section. It's become an almost nightly ritual of popcorn, coffee and TV crime drama.

Tonight we tried to build a gasoline-burning pot-bellied stove in our tent for warmth. We were halfway through trying to form a port for the exhaust chimney in the canvas when someone pointed out that we were either A) going to burn this motha down or B) going to asphyxiate from carbon monoxide poisoning. So the brainstorming began. We considered putting it outside, opening a door and putting a fan in front of it. Though, as hot as it could possibly get I think we'd end up with more cold air than hot air pumping in here. I still thought about suspending the exhaust from the ceiling somehow and running it out a door, but that's just ridiculous for the ways it could kill us listed above.

Eventually, Sergeant Phillips came up with an idea to build a lean-to/outhouse outside one of the doors to house the potbellied stove. We'll give a nice little slanted room for the rain, cut a hole for the exhaust and line the inside with aluminum foil as if we were cultivating marijuana in a closet. Will we be able to pull this off? Quite possibly. Will we burn down the tent in the process? Quite possibly, but it should be fun.

Road Trip

Sunday afternoon I got a call from the Signal Officer (The Captain) of a battalion to the north of us. Our fielding team had already visited him, installed his radios and trained his operators, but they experienced some setbacks and asked me to come out for a visit. This would not normally have been possible, as the Brigade Signal Officer (The Major) is very covetous of his staff, and once he gets people he only lets them out of his sight when they have been drained either of their usefulness or their blood. Had he been consulted, my ass would've been stapled to a chair and stuck behind a desk... But he's home on R&R. And when the cat's away, the mice will play.

Staff Sergeant Jacobson, anAir Force network manager who has also been snatched up and held hostage by the The Major heard I was heading out and immediately got himself added to the convoy. He has been here for 3 months and hasn't once left KAF or even loaded his weapon, which has been draped flaccid and useless around his neck since he got here. We spoke with the local battalion logistics folks and let them know that there would be two of us moving out to their headquarters in the morning if they had room for us, and we packed for the trip.

I have learned from previous experience that there are certain essential items I should take with me anywhere I go, regardless of whether I plan to stay overnight or not--plans change. But this time it was clear I would be gone at least 2 or 3 days, so I packed accordingly. I made sure I got my microfiber travel towel and my shower shoes, as those are items I tend to forget. Also my wet weather gear and my so-called snivel gear, i.e. long underwear gloves, and cold weather boots.

Jacobson and I met in the morning and awaited the convoy, which finally arrived late in the afternoon. We climbed into an armored vehicle and set out for the FOB which lies about an hour north of KAF. The sun was setting as we drove through downtown Kandahar. While I could barely see anything out of my own window, I could see out the front and the other side a little bit and the impression I got is one of abject poverty. Business takes place right in the street, markets are formed by a loose collection of stalls and carts that are set up in the morning and taken down at night.

The street was at times crowded with young kids on bicycles. The gunner in our vehicle, on the never ending quest for hearts and minds, was shouting obscenities at them, encouraging them to get the $&*! out of way as we made our way through the throngs of people and vehicles. Most folks get over to the side of the road and stay there when the Americans roll through with their gigantic guns on top of their humongous vehicles, but 12 year-old boys know that they are invincible, so they play chicken with the MRAPs and Humvees secure in the knowledge that we are unlikely to crush or explode them.

We arrived to find a FOB under heavy construction. Too late for hot chow, we got some MREs and a bowl of cereal and met with the commo folks to discuss their network and what we could do for them.

When it came time to bed down, we were led to a small building in a walled-in compound. Every room was already jam-packed with cots, so it took some moving around and assembling to get our beds set up. There were two spots big enough to fit a cot and a backpack: a room crowded with American commos and a room crowded with French Canadians, including a female, which is a novelty out here in units below brigade. I elected to take this second room, as it was the closest I've been to a woman in almost two months.

I found out on a trip to France in 1996 that two years of French at Homewood High School only ever gave me enough understanding to ask directions, but not enough to understand them. A fact which was brought forcefully home when Chris Jones and I found ourselves lost in Nice with no idea how to get back to the hotel. Eventually we found a man who spoke French, Spanish, Italian and German, but no English. While his quadrilingual abilities proved ineffective for two-way communication, he was nice enough to walk us in uncomfortable silence to the Best Western Acropol.

Being able to ask "ou est l'hotel?" was a little less than useless with my new roommates, but we stumbled along as needed for the next two days.

After our beds were (literally) made and ready to accept us, we sat down around a firepit which was located conveniently outside our front door.

Sergeant Madden came late to the Army. At 35 he's got some graying hair and has to take orders from guys who are very much his junior. He got his guitar from a trooper at another FOB who had decided to learn how to play on deployment, but quickly and (it would seem) inexorably plateaued. So Madden brought it here and kept it in the back room of the hooch. He took it out for hours each night by the fire; two and a half years of playing has not been able to instill him with any rhythm. He strums the guitar, taps his foot and sings on three different beats, and no one can ever quite get the groove down. Jacobson and I were more than happy to relieve him of his instrument from time to time and trade songs.

My repertoire has dwindled in the last few years, as my guitar has spent most of its time hiding under blankets on the couch, or leaning up against a wall, but I was still able to crank out one or two tunes. And Jacobson taught me a few more which will get some polish when I get home.

Eventually we gave Madden his guitar back and retired to our rooms to sleep late into the morning. We awoke to hot chow and hot coffee and got to work.

The actual work there was mostly more of the same but with different people around. Jacobson got to solve some routing problems and help the battalion plan for some future expansion, and I helped them push position information through the network so that leaders can see where all of their guys are on the map in something resembling real time.

The Captain and I had what amounts to an hours-long Agree Fest. It turns out we're very nearly the same person in terms of our books, movies and music.

Authors in common: Steinbeck, Vonnegut, Tom Robbins.
Music in common: Primus (as youths), The Postal Service, Joni Mitchell.
Movies in common: Wes Anderson's films (we had the same impression of Rushmore: the first time wasn't so hot, fell in love with it the next time), The Coen Brothers, Paul Thomas Anderson.

It was eerie. He would say something he liked, and I would have to say "me too!" and I just couldn't stump him on any interest. He also played trumpet in the high school band, but he went on to play it for the Army when he enlisted out of high school. He even juggles and plays Go. He suggested that we hang out more stateside, but is a little afraid to introduce me to his wife since we're so similar and he's deployed so often.

The food at the FOB was better than what we get on KAF, strangely enough. It is made by Army cooks and not by the lowest-bid contractors on the huge bases. I watched a man labor over a huge roast with a butcher knife, slicing it into hunks which they served with spicy mashed potatoes and mixed veggies. This was the best meal I'd had since coming to Afghanistan, and it was cooked by professional soldiers in a tent on a mountainside. They ration out two hot meals a day on the here, giving you MREs to supplement during lunch.

We completed our work over 3 days, squaring everyone away as best we could. We were again passing the guitar around the fire when a guy from D Company let us know we could have a ride home the following morning, Christmas Eve. We repacked our bags and turned in for the night.

I woke up this morning, rolled up my bedding and got everything packed away in my ruck sack. I carried it, along with my body armor and helmet to the tent where we were to be picked up an hour later and walked over to the mess tent to claim my hot breakfast. As I was leaving, I heard the opening strains of The Postal Service's "Such Great Heights." I suddenly experienced one of those moments of nostalgia and regret that seem to come so often in the fall and early winter.

"Everything looks perfect from far away/come down now, they'll say."

Walking back to DCO's tent with that song in my head, I took a minute to mourn everything that is no longer a part of my life; every wasted opportunity, every relationship fizzled, the memories only made sweeter by time. Maybe it's because I'm spending Christmas alone in Afghanistan, or maybe it's my thirtieth birthday which is looming so large and just a month away, but every once in a while you have to take a look at your life and ask what you're doing with it?

After a few sips of my Army coffee, I shook off that moment of self reflection, donned my body armor, and boarded the troop carrier for home.

I Have Been Remiss

I wish I could say that it was work that has kept me from writing, but it's probably everything else. With the Internet right here at my fingertips I have access to things like Texts from Last Night and Lamebook which provide literally minutes of entertainment each day. That combined with the unparalleled ability for America's fighting men and women to bullshit for extended periods of time have left me with little time to write, and little to write about.

I suppose I could tell you about Tablemus Prime, the transforming furniture engineered by Specialist Mills while he was still in charge of the tent. He took scrap lumber, hinges and electrical tape and turned a stack of tool cabinets into... ... a stack of tool cabinets with a table on top. But, the work table could be folded up and tucked behind the cabinets in case you wanted more room, much like the NordicTrac machines of the 80s, which could fold and up fit under any large, cumbersome bed. However, with Mills now in far away Zabul province, the remaining commo folks took great pleasure in disassembling and destroying Tablemus Prime.

We took off our hats out of respect for the life and service of the table. The soldier in the back there actually stood on top of it at one point to reach a high shelf, while it was already loaded down with tools, radio amplifiers and 20 lbs of paperwork. And Tablemus strained and cried, but supported her throughout the entire operation.

Most days the skies are incredibly clear, and at night I can see all of the stars that I've been missing for the last four years in good ol' overcast Rochester. I actually found myself stepping out of a port-a-john a few nights ago and was so struck by the number and brightness of the stars in the sky that I had to stop and stare a moment. You live under it all your life, and only on rare occasions do you take the time to look up and really see it. I only know a few constellations, but I was able to pick out Orion (thanks to Orion Pictures), Cassiopeia (courtesy of the movie Serendipity, thanks John Cusack), and Mars--Mars is red, and easy to spot. I know this from the movie Red Planet.

It seems like once a month, though, the rainclouds form from whatever moisture there is in this dustbowl and drops dirty, smelly rain on us for a day. While the smell of rain is usually a comfort, out here it's a combination of wet dog, and something truly foul, which is somehow much worse than wet dog. This happened on Friday, while my poncho was safely ensconced in my sleeping tent (not to be confused with the work tent) half a mile away. And of course I had some work to do outside, so the hoodie that my sister sent to me now carries the burden of a month of wear and stinky Afghan rain.

The ground soaks up as much as it can, but it still leaves huge, fetid mud puddles everywhere and misery abounds.

Bust a Deal and Face the Wheel

The comparisons began as soon as we stepped off on the tarmac. The dust in the air, the throngs of people each with their own agendas, the pervasive presence of weaponry wherever you look, the stink of poop in the air: KAF is Barter town.


For those that aren't familiar with the story of Mad Max, and his adventures in the post-apocalyptic Wasteland of central Australia, I must refer you to the movies Mad Max, Mad Max II: The Road Warrior and Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome. It is in this last installment that Max (Mel Gibson), finds himself under the thumb of Auntie Entity (Tina "I'm Not Even Kidding" Turner), the founder and ruler of Bartertown. This oasis is a center for trade, and all life revolves around business, electricity, and the pig sh*t they use to generate the electricity.

Differences are settled in a pretty reasonable manner, in single combat inside the giant steel cage which is Thunderdome. "Two men enter, one man leaves."

Now, I could go on forever about what a terrific movie that is. It's proof that there is no hard and fast rule binding a movie's position in a trilogy to its quality. Take the Godfather series. I & II are phenomenal, but The Godfather: Part III is just a shadow of the previous two. Maybe it's Sofia Coppola's wooden acting, maybe it's that bizarre and anticlimactic death scene at the end, but it's definitely the weakest of the three. In the case of the Godfather, number II is where it's at. The pinnacle of the series.

The Star Wars trilogy also seems to take this tack. While I like Return of the Jedi, it had the best effects, the dark-clothed Luke, and the death of the Emperor, it also had those damn Ewoks. I mean, they're trying to convince us that an uneducated insurgency can beat down a technologically superior occupier with just sticks and rocks?

Bad example. But in that series as well The Empire Strikes Back is more vibrant and more interesting. You get to meet Yoda, you see Luke develop all of his Jedi skills and it has that great downer ending. While hardly a cliff-hanger, it certainly leaves you hungry for more.

My favorite counterexample to the second film being the best is definitely Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. First off, they get points for Nazis and Sean Connery. They completely left the Nazis out of Temple of Doom, and personally I think the movie suffered for it. Last Crusade combines all of those great elements of comedy, action and Christian mysticism which made the first movie so engaging, and then they throw in a guy getting chopped up by a propeller blade. Kudos to Lucas and Spielberg for that.

And like the Indiana Jones trilogy (and it is a trilogy, I consider the fourth movie so terrible, I'm blotting its existence from the very universe of my perceptions), Mad Max has a kick-ass third movie.

Why did I get off on the trilogy rant? One of the side effects of having a singularly disordered mind. The point was to make the comparison between Bartertown and KAF. How do I get back on the thread, here?

Oh yeah:

Who runs Bartertown? The Canadians. That's who.

Haiku Wednesday: Quality

The beef is stringy
Rough, aged tendons left behind
Someone send me floss.

I am not a Teacher

I've known this for years. Whenever someone has asked for help with trig or calculus or physics, be it back in high school or even now, I can give them the quick rundown, the salient points. When, after they've gotten the condensed version, they still don't understand? I'm stumped. "What's so hard to understand about this," I'd think. "I mean, consider the relationship between position, velocity and acceleration and that's derivatives and integrals right there! I don't get what you don't get..."

It is from this wholly un-empathetic position that I dispense my knowledge. If it's something you need to know, and it's stuck in my head? I'm not going to be able to get it out in the right words to make myself understood.

The ironic part of this is that I'm driven to teach people the things that fascinate me. Ask any girl I've ever dated and she can remember the time that I explained the Internet to her--the OSI reference layers, the interconnected web of redundant router links, the Transport Control Protocol which makes the web run, but performs shoddily on high latency or flaky links--they've all had to sit through the rundown. Probably multiple times. I have been accused in the past of "overinforming people against their will."

So I can lecture, but I don't think I teach. Ask any of the people who have had to sit through my diatribes about network architecture if they absorbed anything and I bet you'll get a lot of blank stares.

That's why I was so nervous to teach a radio class today. Actually, nervous is not the word, I've been dreading it. I put off my prep as long as possible, I even pushed the training back by four days when the convenient excuse of a commanders' conference came up. But as always, there comes a reckoning, and it caught up with me today.

Determined to at least get an outline together, some rudimentary lesson plan, I stayed late last night, sitting and staring at a blank Word document. As the temperature ticked down from 42 to 40, my fingers started to get a little stiff, a little numb. Already I had begun a PowerPoint Presentation with some radio features and configuration options, but it wasn't going anywhere. Plus, I had nowhere to project or show the slideshow to them, so it was a wasted exercise. No, what I needed to do here was organize my thoughts.

Finally around 11:0pm, when the temperature reached a balmy 38, I cranked out two pages worth of outline, with all the high points they would need to get two radios to talk to each other. With that much in the can, I called it a night and started the cold walk home. I drifted into the MWR tent which is right next to my place in an effort to warm up before I walked into the indeterminate climate of my tent. It turned out that Predator was playing in the little movie room there, and right at the beginning, too. So despite the late hour, and the impending training the following day, I settled in to watch Arnold earn the begrudging respect of an alien race... by killing one of them.

Arnold side note: In all those old action movies he plays characters with the most American-sounding names and yet he can't break out of his thick Austrian accent. I suppose Predator may be the exception to the rule as his name is "Dutch," which could be a hint at his region of origin, but just look at some of the others:

• The Running Man: Ben Richards
• Total Recall: Douglas Quaid -- I don't know if he can pronounce 'Douglas'
• Kindergarten Cop: John Kimble
• True Lies: Harry Tasker
• The Sixth Day: Adam Gibson

Every one of those names is as Anglo Saxon as John Smith, and he talks like he's just off the boat. I wonder if they give him backstories for his characters to explain this little inconsistency, or if they just brush it away with a wink and a nod.

I think the movie was a way to put off sleep, to push out my conscious mind and more opportunity to worry about the impending training. It's the same reason I listen to my iPod while I'm walking around and why I read before I go to sleep--closing your eyes at night, like walking alone, is an opportunity for honest self-reflection and must be avoided at all costs.

This morning I woke up and abandoned my cohorts in order to get to work a little early. I figured if I had just a little more time to go over the material, it would all gel and I would have nothing to worry about. All day long I watched the clock, waiting for 1400 when I knew they would arrive and expect me to know something about my own product.

When they finally did come, we had chairs and boxes set up as a rudimentary classroom, with a whiteboard at the front on which I could scrawl my unintelligible chicken scratch. And I proceeded, by fits and starts, to teach them the ins and outs of the radio system.

I definitely screwed up some stuff in the beginning. I made simple things too complicated, and complicated things too simple. I had to go back and explain myself on some points several times. And some of them continued to make mistakes after I showed them the problem multiple times. But eventually, they were getting it.

At the end, I gave them a simple, practical exercise: make one radio talk to another one. We put them on the clock, hoping to get it in under 15 minutes, but that first time they clocked in around 17 minutes. I sent them out for a smoke break while I reset the radios back to factory defaults and then challenged them again, but this time to complete in under 10 minutes. They scraped by at 9:37.

So mission accomplished, I guess. I could definitely do better if I have to do it again. Pick more clear scenarios, explain the concepts a little better from the start instead of having to clean up misunderstandings at the end. The sad thing is, this is really one of our simplest products--7th graders could do as well if they've ever peered into the Linksys router in their house. But I feel good that they can do it now, and that I didn't break into flop sweats and pass out.

Tomorrow is test #2, when they set them up in the field and put them on top of a 50 ft. mast. Will they be able to achieve comms? We'll find out...

The National Passtime

The Canucks

They just couldn’t help themselves. Something deep inside the Canadian psyche forced them to build it—they never had a choice. They’re nominally in charge of KAF and therefore have a lot of personnel here, and a vested interest in keeping them sane, and this was the best way to do it: they built a hockey rink in the desert.

In the corner of the boardwalk closest to Tim Horton’s (another hometown favorite in Canadia), they erected an outdoor hockey rink on a concrete slab and every day they spend hours running up and down, chasing an orange ball.

Kudos to them, I suppose. I mean, the Americans have been here for 8 years and I see no signs of a baseball diamond. Though, there are numerous basketball courts and a beach volleyball pit. All that’s left to complete a reenaction of the memorable scene from Top Gun is Kenny Loggins.

I’ve never actually watched a hockey game in my life, in spite of multiple offers from my friends in Rochester. I did watch Slap Shot with Paul Newman a few years ago, supposedly the definitive hockey movie, but I was not impressed. I kept waiting for the contrived depth of Field of Dreams, the hilarity of Bull Durham, or the drama of Remember the Titans—I was left wanting. All I saw were pretty broad attempts at humor and a lot of blood.

Perhaps I’m missing that essential ingredient which makes hockey interesting to me, some kind of ice chromosome. There’s no great tradition of winter sports in Alabama, unless deer hunting counts. I can’t ice skate backwards. I consider the Winter Olympics to be the Boring Olympics. I say that like marathon running is exciting in the summer Olympics, but at least they have the 100 yard dash. It’s thrilling to know how much can change in thousandths of a second; heroes made, dreams crushed, records broken. That’s drama!

Speaking of incomprehensible sports, I stumbled on a cricket match on the Boardwalk yesterday. I think we’ve all seen it on TV at some point, and I believe in the past that someone tried to explain the rules to me, but it’s just bewildering. Luckily there was an English bystander who informed me of the following:

There are 11 players on each side. The offense consists of two batsmen on opposite sides of the pitch, and the defense has a bowler who is hurling the ball at one of the batsmen. Should this batsmen get a hit that goes beyond the far marker, that’s four runs. If the catcher fails to catch the ball, that’s a run, and if the batsman hits a ball inside the field, he has to run between the wickets, and each time he does, he scores a run. Meanwhile the opposite batsman is also running, and they switch places occasionally.

An average games lasts 20 overs, but I’m not sure what makes a batsman out… Or ends an over…

My head is still spinning.

So why am I sitting here watching the Canadians pine for ice, and the English batsmen run between length of the pitch between the wickets? I suppose because there’s nothing else to do. I’m trapped on an airbase in Afghanistan with no TV and limited access to the Internet? It’s made even sports entertaining.

Wednesday Haiku: Medicated

I feel the tingle
A soft breeze caresses them
The Gold Bond embrace

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.

Wednesday Haiku: The Dust

It can never rest
The dust is always moving
Except on my clothes