WEATHER REPORT FOR SHARANA: SAND AND ARTILLERY

(17SEPT2008)

My time in Sharana is short: fly in on Tuesday, fly out on Thursday. I get housing in a transient tent and it’s nothing pretty, but when you’re traveling you’re usually just happy to have somewhere to lay your head at night. I bring my Army-issue sleeping bag and a sheet for the mattress, using a rolled-up towel as a pillow. The mattress is designed to give me a work out, it wants to deposit me on the floor and I have to struggle to stay on it.


The transient tent is in a tent city they refer to as the RSOI. It’s fairly typical as transient tents go – a collection of bunk beds on a plywood floor, it's a sturdy tent with an A/C unit on full tilt to make it incredibly, uncomfortably cold (in the winter the heater will make it incredibly, uncomfortably hot).


The tent city also hosts a slew of Polish soldiers. Their flags fly over roughly a third of the tents, and they fill the DFAC. When I arrive at the RSOI, a group of them are sitting on a bench in their underwear (sorry, no pictures); I’m told it’s a common occurrence, that the Polish like to sunbathe. The only English I ever hear them speak is “one” or “two” as they point to the ice cream in the DFAC telling the server how many scoops they want.

I spend my one full day in Sharana, Wednesday, walking back and forth between motor pools and unit offices, the APOD, the MWR, my tent, and the DFAC. My dogs are barking loudly.

It’s a productive day. I’m happiest when I’m out in the motor pools talking to soldiers, climbing on and in vehicles, and I fill several pages of a notebook with their insight, complaints, and suggestions about their rides. It’s part my job to push those notes up the right channels and hopefully affect some improvements. It’s also good SA for me, as other aspects of my job touch on how the vehicles are performing, how they’re being used, and what the soldiers are experiencing on mission.

I’m done by the late afternoon and I take some time to grab chow and finish the book I’m reading. I learned long ago to always have a book handy to endure the long stretches of waiting while traveling in theater. Finishing the book is bittersweet, as I only brought the one.

I spend the next hour or so walking around post looking for another book to read. The MWR always has a bookshelf with free books, but I am dismayed to find a very poor selection. I don’t know who Mary Higgins Clark is sleeping with, but her books are everywhere in theater. I’ve never been compelled to pick one up, though. Even the PX has a poor book selection for sale.

I walk up to the APOD to schedule my flight for the next day and find a book there that I deem acceptable (crisis averted), and remind myself to get on Amazon and order some books when I get back to Bagram (luckily Amazon delivers to APO addresses). The crew at the APOD ask me to return after 1900 when they’ll know the flight times for Thursday. I’m not thrilled about this, as the walk between the APOD and my tent is lengthy and by this time my dogs are getting hoarse.

I trudge back to my tent just in time to see darkness rolling in from the West. The sun still has some altitude, and the puffy white clouds don’t indicate a coming storm, but then it hits me. That’s an awful lot of sand heading this way.

The tent shakes and rocks in the heavy wind and the sand sounds like rain on the canvas. When some soldiers open the flap to get inside, the tent is momentarily filled with sand – invisible, but scratching at our eyes and making us cough. The whole tent smells like sand, if that makes any sense. The storm lasts about an hour, during which I read my book and exchange nervous glances with my tent-mates as one side of the tent bows in significantly.


After another hike to the APOD and a flight scheduled for the next afternoon, I grab dinner and head back to the tent for some shut-eye. A little after 2100 most of the tent is still up and chatting with the lights on when a massive boom shakes the ground. The Polish are firing artillery from about 100 meters away, and it’s deafening. It’s also scary if you think it’s incoming, which many in the tent believe at first. We assure them it isn’t, and some of us head out to watch the fireworks, but the volley is short and ends before we get a chance to see it.

I get to sleep fighting gravity again and am once again amazed not to awake on the floor of the tent Thursday morning.

RSOI = Reception, Staging, Onward movement, and Integration
(I had to look that up – nobody I asked knew what it stood for!)

DFAC = Dining FACility

APOD = Aerial Port of Debarkation

MWR = Morale, Welfare, and Recreation

SA = Situational Awareness

PX = Post Exchange (the general store)

APO = Army Post Office