Over the Wire

Since I landed in country, there’ve been a mess of helicopter flights to various bases in the eastern quarter of Afghanistan, but I never got out of the FOBs themselves. Peering through the chainlink, or even standing atop the Hesco barriers that line the perimeter occasionally, I could clearly see Afghanistan. It’s awfully mountainous there, outside the wire, and there are few places on any of the bases where you can’t see some very rugged terrain in the distance, well beyond the boundaries of any camp.

But I had yet to set foot outside the wire and into Afghanland proper, until this morning. My work in Iraq was reconstruction, not military, and required over seventy missions outside the comforts and security of the Green Zone. Here, by and large, the work I’m planning is already within the safety and confines of existing base real estate, except for a few runways.


The proposed runway at one of the Polish bases was just outside the wire, and we could see the total flatness of the site from high atop a couple of guard towers. Flat ground, by the way, is a pretty good condition for new runways. From my perch behind the sandbags next to the machine gun, I could make an educated guess as to the rough order of magnitude of work required to construct the thing. Not the best of field investigations, but better than others.

At the second Polish base, project timing and security issues kept us from getting close to the FOB, so we needed to rely on firsthand accounts of site conditions from a Master Sergeant who had been there on another mission last week, and tried his best to recall the local environment. Even this was better than much of what we had in Kandahar – or didn’t have in Kandahar, as most of the time we couldn’t speak with anyone who had anything close to a detailed understanding of local site conditions.

Today, though, my Electrical and I donned our helmets and vests and mounted a few MRAPs to get boots on the ground at our new runway site at Sharana. For this mission, we were accompanied by a dozen heavily armed soldiers and their three armored vehicles providing security. It was a simple reconnoiter, really. Exit the FOB, and then encircle the base a mile or two off of the fence until we could identify the upwind end of what had previously been identified as the correct alignment. Take a few snaps, then work the two miles up the ridge to the other end of where the runway could end up.

Simple, though, lasted half a day. There were a few equipment and communications problems that required resolution before we could take off, as well as the requisite pre-mission briefing. Also with our contingent was another consultant, who was interested in seeing a different piece of land that his group is eyeing for something or other. Since this other property was closer to the gate, we went there first and, since we’d already dismounted to look it over, the LTC figured we could just walk the rest of the way. So we did, spread out over a hundred meters or so, our shooters nearby, and the three MRAPs running mostly parallel to us on the bad guy side.

I’m pretty sure now that “Afghanistan” is local for “Land of Rocks and Thistles”. At least, this part of the country is. Lots of black, heavily fractured, fist sized metamorphic rocks, bedded in sand. The scrubby little plants were all thorny or thistly, and seemed to be doing their best to keep from being eaten. I spied a couple of small, very quick footed lizards, and quite a few locusts, but that was it for indigenous life.

Onward we trudged through this landscape, trying to identify from the satellite image we had which rolling ridge was the one we were supposed to be observing. About two miles later, we think we had the downwind terminus identified. The intervening distance was more rocks and thistles, rolling over minor ridges and through dry wadis and drainageways, with 15 to 20 meters differences between the tops and bottoms.

As the sun rose higher towards midday, the forty pounds of Kevlar and ceramic plates I was wearing were starting to remind me of their mass, and the thin air at this elevation was jabbing me in the chest. I looked around at my shooters, wearing not only gear similar to mine, but a weapon or two, 180 additional rounds for their M-4s, at least two spare magazines for their M-9s, plus radios, knives, first aid, and whatever other kit gets strapped to their vests or crammed into cargo pockets, plus the additional burden of making sure I didn’t get whacked. I felt lighter already.

Across one broad valley were a half dozen Bedouin tents – large, white, multi-poled structures right out of history. From the scat and evidence of very selective browsing, I wasn’t surprised when we encountered one of the Bedouin goatherds, pushing a few score of mostly black, long haired animals through his historic grazing lands – lands that will be fully within the FOB perimeter within a couple of years. The LT gave the goatherd a bottle of water and the two groups passed without a word.

Eventually, we identified our ridge, using physical features compared to an older satellite image we carried with us. Unfortunately, the site’s not flat (as it looks from space and later on a piece of paper), but continues the rolling terrain predominant through our hike so far. This condition will undoubtedly increase project costs, but probably not beyond a point where we wouldn’t build the facility.
Whenever we’d stop to confer on the map or conditions, the group would naturally clump much closer together. Standing still in a large group on top of a ridge made us an obvious target for anyone who might have less than honorable intentions, so we tried to minimize our time in this configuration and weren’t particularly surprised when we heard the rocket attack.

However, if they were aiming at us, fully exposed on open ground, their aim still sucks, as the plume came from well inside the base, and we were – safely – outside. Regardless, we hustled back to the relative shelter of the MRAPs as the second and third rockets hit, then waited for the all clear from base operations, not occurring until after the local battery let loose a small flurry of artillery to squelch the local impertinence.

Back in the MRAPs, the air conditioning was cranked and, since the past three or four miles looked the same, our assumption was that the remaining mile would look the same, and our boots were no longer required on the ground. We drove back via the last mile of potential runway, then back to the base for more hydration.