Sense

Back in Bagram and well on our way to wasting the $400 Million they gave us to blow. Sorry, taxpayers, but we can’t all be Contractors. However, I can, so there’s the benefit (follow the money), and there’s the rub. Does the world really need another strategic airlift apron?

Of course, and a few more helicopter and mixed use aprons, and more dining facilities and headquarters, and hospitals for both humes and canines. And guard towers. Lots and lots of guard towers. And another 15 miles of concertina topped security fencing with intercepting vehicle ditches. I’m just not feeling the love here. Not even in the grilled cheeses which, in Baghdad, were chock full of the stuff.
One project we’re planning that’s not too secret is a $30 Million AAFES complex, building 20,000 square feet of sales floor to replace the overcrowded 5,000 square feet they use today. The most cost effective solution would be to declare victory, drag everyone home, and have them go to WalMart. Barring that, we (“you, me, us, them”) will build a big box store in the ‘Stans, where our fighting men and women (and complaining consultants) can stock up on shoelaces, commemorative T-shirts, junk food, towels, 550 cord, cameras, and digital camouflage notebook covers. At least, that’s what I bought. They’ve got all sorts of stuff that folks need, but didn’t bring or got used up while in theatre.

Mostly, the shopping serves a social need, just through the experience of browsing through aisles and racks of commercial goods. It’s a momentary disconnect from this place, and a rare state of mind.

I often have another one when I leave our B-hut midday. There’s a brief period when I’m approaching the door from the inside of the hooch where I can’t see the other bunks and piles of luggage, gear, and other kit, when it’s cool and the lights are dim. For just an instant, it’s just me and a door and a knob. Me, door, and knob could be anyplace, anyplace large enough for a knob, a door, and me. It’s still and calm, and I hesitate reaching for the knob.

And then I’m outside, and there are streaming, steaming masses moving down the sidewalk, ten feet off of the hooch stoop. Five feet beyond that, Disney Road is full of vehicles small and large, from Gators to MRAP’s, HMMWV’s to Jingle Trucks, cargo vans to busses. The landscape is full of expeditionary buildings and CONEX boxes. What isn’t paved is rock and dirt. It’s bright, and dusty as hell, and you can’t hear a thing when the pairs of fighters run down the airstrip.

Then I remember pretty quick where I’m at.
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Flight

Ask anyone who knows me. They’ll tell you. They know me.

I hate to fly.


I know. This is sort of a pain in the ass for assignments like this, where the entire thing starts with thirty hours of air travel, and is ultimately peppered with short hops in country every couple of days. The big birds aren’t too bad, provided there’s not too much turbulence. I actually enjoy helicopter travel (for the most part), as you can usually open a window if things get too stuffy.

It’s the smaller, fixed wing aircraft that really heap on the anxiety. It’s not the size so much, or the fact that you’re crammed shoulder to shoulder and knees to knees with the rest of the cargo, or even the tactical takeoffs and landings (those are sort of a thrill). Mostly, I think, it’s the claustrophobia brought on by almost total lack of windows. This would also explain my avoidance of cube farms and interior conference rooms, but that could just be a work thing.

Regardless the cause, I would like to do without all of the small military cargo aircraft, but this plan doesn’t always shake out, so I’m now sitting in a corridor in the local Role II (plus) CSH looking for a few doses of Dramamine for the flight out of here tomorrow. The medic at the front had nothing of the sort, so he led me to a chair in the sick call line where I started as number three, but am currently number two, with Germans before and after, and with little to do but sit and wait, which is fine. It beats a seat on a C-130.

For all appearances, this is a nice hospital, and the result of some well directed German overspending. Not that I ever want to be admitted here, but Role II generally means they can perform life saving and stabilizing surgeries, and then ship most of their patients to regional Role III facilities within 24 hours for further work before the wounded get airlifted to military hospitals in Europe for treatment and recovery. It’s a first class operation, and probably much better equipped than your local county facility except for, perhaps, their pediatrics unit.

Better yet, they’ve got doses of Dimemhydrinat in the easy to use Reisetabletten formula by Ratiopharm. I’m good to go.
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Hesco Bar. Wunderbar.

We’ve been at a lower altitude for the past few days, generally less than 450 meters, so the headaches have subsided. The food, while awful, gets better with every lowered expectation, so I’m not dreading it so much anymore. As of this morning, I’m caught up with the project effort to where I want to be.

So far, so good.


I still can’t get on the wonder web effectively, which is why these don’t appear in real time sometimes, but I’ll try a new plan this morning. My camera self destructed as well today, while I was taking an early stroll about the perimeter, peeking over the battlements on occasion to see what lays outside Coalition control. We’ve no more meetings here, and our flight south isn’t until tomorrow morning, so it’s a good day to stop and smell the roses.

And I did so right after breakfast, and may do again at lunch, as the largest rose gardens on the camp are next to the DFAC. They’re scores of plants, and beautiful, but sometimes overwhelmed by the adjacent lilacs, which you can smell many meters away. There’s also a local hardwood which flowers this time of year, and makes the shade ever more appealing.

None of this is natural, but the Germans have a vegetation and landscaping plan for this camp, and irrigate these plantings on most of the major thoroughfares. In another eight years, there may be enough established shade to almost make the summers tolerable. Of course, there’s the war and all outside, but that doesn’t particularly mean you can’t have a garden spot and a couple of beers when you get home at night.

Or does it? The Germans appear resigned to be here for the long haul. They’re spending a lot more per square foot on the buildings they construct, and seem to be prepared to make a career out of this place. The Americans are more frantic in their development, and are continuously subject to the needs of the moment. This forced expediency causes untold inefficiencies, as this year’s work may have to be relocated to accommodate next year’s crisis.

Perhaps the Germans are just more realistic about their involvement here. We aren’t leaving any time soon, that’s for sure, so you might as well be comfortable while you wait.
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Hinterlands

Up at 0400 in Mazar E Sharif to a surprisingly quiet 200 man tent (actually, there were a few women, but they were camouflaged just as effectively as the men). I could have slept a bit more. Instead, I used the early morning to take advantage of an empty shower trailer and then went back to bed. For a brief moment, I considered wandering over to the perimeter fence to watch the sunrise, but looked at my feet and, seeing a pair of flops, decided against the hike.

After an unsatisfying breakfast, I headed to the office. At Camp Marmal (which is only slightly easier to say than Mazar E Sharif), the Sergeant Major secured for us a couple of table in a big open MWR space, only two extension cords away from a power source. We had barely started the day’s work when word came that our outgoing flight, scheduled for tomorrow, was moved up by about 26 hours, leaving us with about 90 minutes to reschedule and have a meeting, blow off two more, pack up and get to the airfield. Like someone said early in this process, “the scheme of maneuver is fluid.”

Despite the accommodations, I sort of liked Marmal. The Germans had a certain respect for a base master plan that the Americans cannot seem to fathom. Whereas as Bagram, any empty space was filled with vehicles, a maze of CONEXs, or pallets of materiel, the Germans maintained their open spaces, resulting in a less cramped feeling when moving about, more in tune with the open expanses of Afghanland right over the wire.

What the Germans have wrong, completely wrong, is food, and what we had at Marmel, while unappetizing, was haute cuisine compared to our current billet at PRT Kunduz. Breakfasts here consist of a variety of sour beverages, the worst coffee in theatre (so I drink the tea), various rye breads and hard rolls, fatty cold cuts, some processed cheeses, and cold cereal with plain yogurt. Lunch and dinner look like breakfast, except that the cold cereal will be swapped for mysterious soup, there’ll be some stewed entrée, and a couple of cold salads will appear that would elevate Orval Kent to the rank of culinary genius. They do serve a lot of fruit at every meal, but it’s a tossup as to whether it’s ripe or not.

If you can ignore the looming dread prior to every meal here, it’s actually one of the nicest places I’ve been to in country. Again, the Germans have designed the camp with plenty of space to enjoy the view of the mountains in each direction. Our billet (six of us in a ten man CHU), is comfortable enough. The bathrooms sparkle. We even have a nice conference room reserved for our use.

And there’s beer.

Unlike the Americans, the Germans aren’t saddled with General Order Number One, which bans (amongst many things), the possession and use of alcohol by US troops and in US facilities in theatre. It’s not like I’ve been Jonesin’ for booze, but it’s banned, so I want.

Every night, then, we’ll head to a local bar, each developed and run by separate units, and have a couple of German pils, lagers, or haffe weizens. Typically, these are sized somewhere between Meisters and the Corner Connection. They always have a television or three, tuned to yet another football match. Oftentimes, there’re pool or foosball tables and lots of local furniture.

The bar itself is constructed expediently which, here, means they’re some of the most temporary structures on the camp, pieced together with scraps and excess. There might be 2,000 troops here, and probably a dozen bars. Some of them are very nice, and you’ve got to wonder if there wasn’t at least a little theft or reappropriation of materials. I don’t think about it too much, as there’s still a mess of work to accomplish, and I’m more than pleased just to have the facilities available.
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Exhalation

Seven days on the ground. Still breathing heavily, but starting to catch my breath.

Some of it’s the fact that the higher altitudes here leave me somewhat breathless, both figuratively and physically. Right now, I’m at a German camp, FOB Marmal, just southeast of Mazar E Sharif, with an elevation of, who knows, much higher than the 950 feet I’m accustomed to. Add to it the helo flight over the mountains from Bagram to get here, which took us to just about the vertical limits of both machine and unpressurized flight. High altitudes give me world class headaches, and a little nausea, and some shortness of breath, which should pass about the time I head for home.

Another some of it is the view. Stunning. Simply stunning. Great rugged escarpments crashing into snow capped peaks. Barren mountain plains at odds with verdant, irrigated valleys. It’s a beautiful place and, as the saying goes, “it’s a nice place to visit.” Sadly, there’s a 3,000 person military encampment in the middle of it, and the mad collection of b-huts and hangers unnaturally contrasts with the simple tailoring of an Afghan craftsman, or the mud plastered walls of his simple house.

Last part of the some is that we’ve been running full bore since we arrived, with far less decompression time than I’d like for both myself and my team. This started even before we mobilized, as the client cut weeks off of our preparation time, squeezing more than three weeks of effort into about eight days. He also cut a week off of the back end of the schedule, further concentrating our efforts on the ground.

Right now, though, I’ve got a free hour, sitting on my crappy mattress on my borrowed rack in a 200 man RSOI tent on some little base in northern Afghanland. It’s a dark base, so outside, you can see all of the stars, and when the Tornados aren’t buzzing the airfield, you’d think you were somewhere near the end of the world.

Breathless.
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Last Supper

It's almost habitual that we eat our last supper outside of the shit at the Irish Village in Dubai. It's surprisingly Irish for the Middle East, with pretty good mutton and some insanely dense soda bread - if you like that sort of thing. By and large, it's an opportunity for a few pints of Guinness before heading to someplace that, alcoholwise, is drier. As an added bonus, they've got a few caustic Irish lasses doing the serving, so if you get too drunk, they'll tear you to shreds.

Not so this trip. The eruption at Eyjafjallajokull forced us into a more southern crossing of the pond, entering Eurozone airspace around southern Spain, and delayed our arrival here by more than an hour. Then, when one of our equipment crates failed to find the luggage belt, I was pretty certain that alternative dinner plans were in order.

Is one missing bag out of 18 good or bad?

Let's say bad.

Worse was that it contained my Mechanical's personal protective equipment,... which he'll be needing real soon,... in freaking Afghanland. One thought was that we take the detachable ballistic codpieces off of the vests of the five sets that did arrive and fashion something Gilligan Islandesque to at least protect his, er, cod, but none of us are that good of a seamster. Besides, a good vest are only a fourth of the system. He'd also need the helmet, ceramic plates, and respirator to make up the full set. The trip's young, though. We'll figure something out.

Now, when my Mechanical (a different Mechanical) lost his bag flying in for Afghanland II, we went through the same motions that we're doing this time - report it to the authorities and follow up, follow up, follow up - but his bag never arrived. Never. As in never ever. It's probably still out at JFK, crammed behind a pile of trash in the boiler room.

My hope is that this time will be different. Besides, the lost bag is really a hard sided plastic crate crammed with seventy pounds of mission stuff. And, we didn't fly through JFK, so it's likely holding up the lunch fridge in the boiler room at Dulles.

And the lunch fridge mentioned in the last paragraph leads us back to the supper conversation. That, in the bidnezz, is called a segue, provided I stay on topic and don't drift further and further away, a likely result and effect of a nine hour lag. Anyway. Supper. Right.

Due to lack of time, we decided to eat at the restaurant at the Traders Hotel, in which we are esconsed for the night. It's a nice hotel. Quiet, clean, free q-tips. The wait staff had a little difficulty in my request for a table for nine (my crew, the client, and two more Companymen who are headed in on a different assignment tomorrow), but once they compared the number of people standing at the table to the number of chairs present at the table, they got the idea.

The menu was prix fixe, with choice of entree, sides and starches, and one of a selection of four gravies.

Four of them. Four distinct and individual gravies. Mein gott! I was stunned.

And if that wasn't enough, on the desert buffet, next to the torts and cheesecakes and cookies and those little shredded wheat, fig paste and honey things they make over here that I could eat forever, was a bowl of gummy worms.

I wonder if they'll survive the trip in my pocket?


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