(11-16NOV2008)
I’ve deployed twice for fairly long periods of time – last year in Iraq for 7 months, and this year (and next) in Afghanistan for an as yet unknown duration.
But I’ve also gone on 3 short missions – one to Kuwait in 2006, and one each in Iraq and Afghanistan earlier this year (2008). The branch I work in back home goes into theater a lot, and I always volunteer to help out when I can. I enjoy getting dirty in the Middle East as much as I dislike sitting behind a computer in a cube in the States.
The short missions are always less than 17 days. The military has set that cut-off for personnel traveling into theater - if we keep the trips under that threshold, we don’t have to attend the week-long training at CRC (what I went through at FT BENNING in August). Not wanting to send our guys through CRC and endure that cost of time and money, we generally plan multiple short missions, which also give a variety of our personnel an opportunity to deploy and thus increases our workforce’s experience and knowledge of OIF and OEF – where the rubber hits the road.
The 3 short missions I’ve gone on have all been in support of a specific initiative to install data collection devices on Army vehicles. Though I am no mechanic, I can drill holes, grind metal, and remove armor from a vehicle if you just tell me where (and sometimes how). I am also willing to work very long hours without food or sleep, a necessity on these missions. We work on vehicles when the units don’t need them, but since needs can arise at a moment’s notice, we work around the clock to ensure that we won’t interfere with the soldiers’ more important work.
This initiative has grown since I first helped out with it during the summer of 2006, to the point where a new team stood up to run it, and one of my friends and colleagues became the team leader. I have stayed with my old team, watching the new team grow quickly and I still help out, especially with deployments, as much as I can.
On Tuesday, two of my colleagues arrive just before midnight on another one of these missions to install instrumentation. I’m at the APOD to greet them and, though it’s late, their internal clocks are lagging somewhere above the Atlantic so we grab midnight chow at the DFAC and catch up – they tell me of changes back at the home office, and I relate to them my experiences here, so far.
They had each deployed to Iraq where I had – in fact, I replaced one of them and was replaced by the other – and so I find it easy to compare/contrast my role here with that in Iraq. We finally crash late that night, agreeing to meet early in the morning with the unit I’d coordinated with here on BAF.
By 1400 Wednesday, we’re in a maintenance bay, boxes of tools splayed around an RG-31 MRAP as we begin the installation.
We finish 29 hours later, at 1900 Thursday night. In that time we each drank a few Diet Cokes, several bottles of water, and had 2-3 oatmeal raisin cookies one of us had been smart enough to snag from the DFAC. We haven’t slept. The mission is a success.
My body aches. My feet, especially, are pounding. I’ve been on my feet on a concrete floor for more than a day. My hands ache from grabbing on to the metal handles to hoist myself into or on the side of the vehicle, from turning wrenches and screwdrivers. My back and my legs are sore. 
My eyes, of course, are heavy.
I’m sure my colleagues must feel the same, but none of us voice it – it’s hard to complain considering how poorly others are living around us: soldiers at outlying COPs and the Afghani people all live in generally austere conditions under constant threat.
When we finish, we have to pack up our things and get all of the tools and equipment back to my hooch somehow. I share a vehicle with my colleagues on BAF, but it’s needed this night to pick someone up at the APOD and so I don’t have access to it. We’ve tried to get permission for another vehicle, but the base is overcrowded as it is and so far they’ve turned us down. But we do have a borrowed MRAP, and it wouldn’t hurt to give it a test run with our equipment installed.
One of my colleagues was a commercial truck driver in another life, and has a military driver’s license to drive the MRAP, so we load our equipment and tools into the back of the vehicle and make our way slowly across post to my quarters.
We’re forced to detour near the MWR tent. The MPs are out with their blue lights flashing, blocking traffic on Disney Drive due to a show that night – I always hear about the shows
after they happen, and I’m not aware of this one until we’re being routed away from it, down smaller streets. I keep waiting for the crunch of metal, the MRAP seems far too large for where we’re driving, but most oncoming traffic makes way for us and we pass through unscathed.
The housing area is more of the same – tight dirt roads between buildings, buildings made shoddily enough that we probably wouldn’t even notice if we clipped one, though the inhabitants would. We make it to my hooch swearing and cringing the entire way.
After piling all of the boxes into my already too-small room, we take the MRAP back to the maintenance facility, choosing to go the long way around base to avoid the harrowing detour. It seems like a good idea, but the drive is a lot longer and we have trouble figuring out how to turn on the windshield wipers when it starts to rain. Visibility is already diminished in such a large, armored vehicle. We eventually pull over and search until we figure out the wipers.
Near the end of the trip around base I start to doze off, the lack of sleep weighing on me heavily. I wake up and look over at my friend driving and see he, too, is getting dangerously sleepy. I ask him about his family, to keep us both awake (mostly him!), and we chat amiably until we get safely back to the shop.
Without a vehicle now, we walk the couple of miles back to our rooms, stopping at the DFAC to get some food to go. We’d have preferred to have eaten in, but security won’t let us carry bags into the building so one of my colleagues waits outside while the other two of us indiscriminately pile food into the styrofoam containers, not really caring at this point what we’re going to be eating.
As we continue the walk back to housing, we pass by the MWR tent and learn that the ongoing concert is the Yin Yang Twins, a rap group none of us had ever heard of, but which has drawn a fairly large crowd.
I stumble into my room and collapse into bed. I am disgustingly dirty from working in, on, and under vehicles for the better part of two days – I’m covered with oil, grease, and stale sweat. I am thus torn between sleeping, eating, and showering – all of which I desperately need. I have the food in front of me, though, so I eat, and though I don’t remember making a decision on what to do next, I fall asleep, waking in my clothes some 6 hours later in the wee hours of the morning, when I finally go take a much-enjoyed shower.
We get up far too early on Friday, but time is limited and we’ve more coordination to achieve with the unit that owns the MRAPs we worked on. It’s a busy day and we’re still tired throughout, but we finally end up back at the APOD just 3 days after they arrived, hoping to get them on a flight homeward. Another colleague had come in from Kuwait in the meantime, for an even shorter visit, and he too is trying to get back to Kuwait this night.
As per usual, the flight they want is cancelled. A good rule of thumb in trying to get out of theater is to take whatever flight you can get on, even if it’s not going exactly where you want to go. My guys want to get to Kuwait, but they settle on a flight to Al Udeid, Qatar, knowing they could get from there to Kuwait more easily than they can from BAF. My two friends from home leave by midnight, their visit short and work-filled for all of us. I’m sorry to see them go, but also looking forward to getting some damn sleep.
Our newcomer decides against the flight to Qatar, opting instead to hold out hope for a direct flight to Kuwait scheduled for early the next morning. He is of course bumped from that flight, and from another one later in the day, and ends up taking a flight to Qatar late the next night at which point my bubbas are already on their way home to the States from Kuwait International Airport.
A flight in hand is worth two on the schedule.
CRC = CONUS Replacement Center
CONUS = CONtinental United States
OIF = Operation Iraqi Freedom
OEF = Operation Enduring Freedom
APOD = Arial Port of Debarkation
MRAP = Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle
COPs = Command OutPost
BAF = Bagram Air Field
MWR = Morale Welfare and Recreation
MP = Military Police
DFAC = Dining FACility
KTR = Contractor
My eyes, of course, are heavy.
after they happen, and I’m not aware of this one until we’re being routed away from it, down smaller streets. I keep waiting for the crunch of metal, the MRAP seems far too large for where we’re driving, but most oncoming traffic makes way for us and we pass through unscathed.
