(19JAN2009)
My loathing of gravel goes back almost 8 years.
If gravel and I met prior to the summer of 2001, they were brief interactions – a driveway here, or a garden path there. I didn’t take much notice of it, and it didn’t seem to mind.
In June of 2001, however, gravel made it known that we were not friends. That summer, I traveled to Croatia to take part in an archaeological excavation of a cave. The cave was nestled in the side of a very large hill or a very small mountain, and every morning we had to make the trek up to it for a day’s work.
We parked at the side of a road that snaked around one slope of a valley, and would hike down into the valley and make our way along the bottom for about a mile. We were told to watch for snakes, though I never saw any. When we were below the cave, on the other side of the valley from where we parked, we climbed straight up the incline toward it.
The slope was covered with loose rock – gravel – and it gave way under every step so that the purchase made was hard fought. I hated those morning climbs, and I think we all did. When we finally made it to the cave, still early in the morning, the whole crew was already exhausted, and we lay around drinking water and panting. On more than one occasion someone suggested we just camp in the cave every night. I thought it a great idea, but we were never allowed to.
Fast forward 6 years to the summer of 2007 and I find myself in Iraq.
Army bases in the Middle East use gravel liberally, to provide stable ground where we would otherwise have just dirt, and mud that would quickly become rutted and chewed up by sizeable military vehicles. The gravel is everywhere, and it’s not fun to walk on.
I remember arriving in Kuwait just prior to my entry into Iraq and putting on my uniform for the first time - civilians are not allowed to wear uniforms in the States, but are required to in theater. Perhaps
not having the right size, my Army-issue boots quickly tore up my heels, and I limped around for the first couple of weeks hating the gravel much more than I might have otherwise. It was uneven and unstable, and though my feet eventually healed and I became used to the gravel, I never learned to like it.
I am unsurprised by the preponderance of gravel on the military bases in Afghanistan, being now well-accustomed to how we cover the ground throughout theater – and I still hate it.
I share a vehicle here whereas in Iraq I had my own, so I think I do more walking. There may also be more gravel, or perhaps its looser, but the net result is that I have been more cognizant of it during this deployment. I am always looking down, watching out for particularly large or loose cobbles, but nonetheless I can’t travel more than 100 yards without tripping up just a little, one ankle or the other slipping and causing me to stumble.
When I walk behind others, I see the same Afghanistan shuffle and know that it’s not just me which is mildly reassuring.
The gravel is worse when wet, after a rain, and snow-covered gravel doesn’t offer a safe walking surface at all. Worse still is night gravel, when many of the differences in level and stability can’t be spotted at all until you’re trying to walk on them.
Every once in a while you get a well-packed and leveled area of gravel, and in those times it can be akin to walking on a sidewalk. It’s usually like this just long enough for you to start walking comfortably before you catch a boulder on the side of your foot and the guy walking with you gets to make fun of you for almost taking a dive.
The gravel also comes in different sizes. Generally they are the standard egg-sized gravelites, sharp and pointy on the edge directly under the part of your foot with a blister on it. If I have any type of bruise or injury on my foot, the gravel hones in on it like a heat-seeking missile.
We call the bigger cobbles “ankle breakers” for obvious reasons. Gravel is most dangerous when it turns suddenly from gravelites to ankle breakers, because they look the same at first, but obviously the larger stones are not as easy to walk on. I remember giving my ankle a good twist in Tikrit, Iraq, at a stretch like that.
I had not seen this in Iraq, but here in Afghanistan we also have the occasional, seemingly random, large rounded stone just lying about. I’ve taken to calling them dinosaur eggs, and if you’re not careful they will take you down mercilessly.
This morning, gravel upped the ante in our hate-hate relationship. Sleeping late into the morning, as I’m apt to do, I was wakened by a horrendous noise the likes of which I’ve never heard. The walls of my little hooch don’t keep out the winter, and they don’t begin to keep out the sounds of Hell. Not feeling 100%, with a slight headache and sore throat, I put a pillow over my head and try to ignore it, but it’s too much, too loud.
I stick my head out and see a guy on a plow spreading gravel that had been dumped in large piles dotting the housing area. He gives me a smile and a wave and if I had a gun I’d have shot him.
I try to get back to sleep and am mostly asleep when someone knocks on my door a little later. I
wake up not entirely sure if I heard right, but at any rate I ignore it. They knock again and I ignore it again. My phone rings and I ignore it. I finally answer the third knocking, disheveled and coughing from a dry throat, and it’s my colleague Izzy with some questions and concerns about a project we’re working on.
I don’t see the urgency in what he’s telling me, not with my head aching and the gravel-based sounds of death finally subsided making me want to crawl back into bed. I always tell everyone that we work 24 hours here, though, because we’re always on call, and I regret not answering the first knocking.
I ask him to give me 5 minutes and pull on my uniform. I brush my teeth as I do every morning: standing in my doorway with a bottle of water to rinse with. I give my mouth a good cleaning and then spit onto the gravel outside my room.
