As always, the travel down to Salerno is exhausting. Though the flight is just around an hour long, we’ve been up and down for days checking flight schedules at 2300 and again at 0345, waiting for flights that never materialize, or which at the last minute decide not to take pax. Smaller, outlying FOBs like Salerno rely almost exclusively on air transport of cargo, and we’re bumped from a couple of flights in deference to mail, which is understandable.
My first impression of Salerno is that it’s small, which it is. Named by the Italian military which first built it up, FOB Salerno is now primarily a US base, though every base I’ve been on has at least a smattering of international military forces. The east side of the base is fairly flat outside the wire until the mountains rise up at the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. The west side has a series of fairly large hills sporting satellite dishes and small outposts. On the other side of those hills are a couple of Afghani towns.FOB Salerno is the site of a two-day, sustained attack by the Taliban in mid-August of this year. They came at the base in large numbers, with several suicide bombers among them. Though the enemy was repelled and lost dozens of their fighters, we did lose some personnel in the attack –
a sobering reminder of the enemy’s capabilities. Before and since, Salerno has received a fair amount of incoming fire, primarily from nearby Pakistan – thus the FOB’s nickname “Rocket City.” There were no attacks during my visit to FOB Salerno.We drive to check in with our command and are given billeting – cubby-holes in a brick-n-mortar with plywood divisions separating each person’s area. There are beds, with characteristically dreadful mattresses, and I’ve brought a sheet, a sleeping bag, and a small pillow to complete the picture. We share an area with two permanent residents.
We spend most of the morning and afternoon in meetings, and I retire to my bed as the sun starts to set, falling asleep and missing dinner entirely. I’m beat from the many failed attempts to get here in the first place.
Sunday I’m up extra early and walk around post – literally. It’s small enough to get from one side to the other fairly easily, and I enjoy getting the lay of the land. These smaller FOBs are always more relaxed than a place like Bagram. Being further away from the flagpole (HQ), you’re left to your own devices a little more. At Bagram, your bosses always seem to be breathing down your neck.
I meet with some units during the morning and we check on flights back to Bagram, our short mission completed. There are no flights today. None. Not one going anywhere. We’re stuck in Salerno for another night. I walk into the PX and see row and row of empty shelf – our colleagues complain of no shampoo, soap, or deodorant, and I make a note to bring supplies for the guys next time.
We decide to hit the bazaar and it’s just as I see everywhere, LNs with shops selling more or less the same junk, and the occasional useful item. We’re walking around the bazaar when we see people eating lunch and we decide we’re hungry as well. We find one of the small shops is serving rice, a flat bread, and grapes as a complete meal.
The food they serve us is delicious – a very long grain rice with raisins, a dish simplistic but very scrumptious. The bread is equally good, freshly baked and warm, and the small grapes are a nice chaser. We use the shop’s tables to eat on, and in the picture my plate is resting on piles of bootleg DVDs. If the covers are to be trusted, each DVD contains 49 movies. The one directly above my plate is titled Arnold Schwarzenegger vs. Bruce Willis.
We find some other work-related activities to kill the rest of the day, and set up a meeting at the DFAC for dinner. One of our colleagues recounts how he was outside his room having a cigarette a few weeks earlier when a rocket flew just over his building and exploded nearby, scattering the ever-present gravel over him and the building. I say, matter-of-factly, “Smoking kills.”
Talking and laughing throughout dinner, time gets away from us, and it’s pitch black when we leave the DFAC. I mean pitch black. I mean there are no lights anywhere, for safety reasons, and I can’t see two feet in front of me. I keep a little red LED light on my keychain for just such occasions, but it turns out that a patch of red dirt several feet in front of you when everything is still completely black doesn’t really help much.
I walk slowly and deliberately back to my room, walking into only one concrete barrier on the way. I lie down to read a book and am in the middle of a sentence when one of the permanent residents turns the lights out. I have no choice but to go to sleep.
Monday morning. We head up to the APOD and check on flights. We missed one early in the morning, but another one for the afternoon has a few seats available. Though we’re still pretty high on the stand-by list, the flight has 8 seats and there are only 4 people waiting in the APOD including us.
We kill time playing a little horseshoes, and I catch up on my interrupted reading. I carry a book with me whenever I travel, as there are always long hours sitting and waiting to fly in theater.
While I'm sitting, minding my own business and reading, I spot a fairly large animal poking its head out of a culvert near the runway. I ask one of the local airmen and he tells me it's their "half-naked coyote", presumably named due to its spotty covering. I watch as soldiers walk or drive within feet of the coyote and it never flinches, accustomed as it is to living on an Army base. 
Our plan finally arrives, a STOL packed with mail when it arrives. All of the crew and us passengers help to unload it, forming two chains into the hold of the aircraft and out to the forklift on the tarmac. It’s nice to see all of the packages coming to these soldiers. The outlying FOBs like Salerno experience more separation than we do in Bagram, in the terms of delayed mail, poor phone, and inconsistent internet access. I know how much it must mean to them to receive packages from home, or luxuries they've ordered online.
The flight back to Bagram is uneventful, if a bit bumpy. I like having a proper airplane seat on the STOL flights, and the view of Afghanistan from the air is getting more and more familiar to me: the ever-present soft hills and mountains sometimes rising up to the craggly peaks of proper mountains, the crumbling-walled compounds of the Afghani people, the dry river beds (called 'wadi') snaking down through valleys in the slopes - houses and small towns scattered along their banks.
We arrive back in Bagram (“home”) before lunch, though the last week has beaten me to a pulp and it feels like midnight. My own bed is no more comfortable than any other in country – worse than many, even – but it’s mine.
pax = passengers
FOB = Forward Operating Base
HQ = Headquarters
LN = Local National (also HCN = Host Country National)
DFAC = Dining FACility
Short Take-Off and Landing
