(28JAN2009)
I am reminded how easy I have it working on a FOB.
Some people call the workers who never leave base “Fobbits”, though it’s a relatively rare moniker. Some workers (to include soldiers, civilians like me, and KTRs) fly into a base from Kuwait and don’t leave that base, ever, until they fly home. My job is not so isolating as that, as I at least travel between different bases a fair amount. I’m grateful for that, as I think I would go a bit batty had I not left Bagram in the last 5 months.
Tonight at one of my usual meetings, there is a new face – a 1LT who comes with the LTC I do a lot of work with. This new face has been in country for a number of months, acting as the platoon leader for a unit that handles primarily route-clearance missions, which means they patrol common routes looking for IEDs.
Many of the meetings I attend concern new technology to detect and defeat IEDs, and the 1LT is there to provide us with first-hand knowledge of what soldiers are actually encountering out in the field. He’s not the first soldier in from the front, and much of what he tells me I’ve heard before, but his personal story is a bit new.
The first thing I notice is that this 1LT is a little rough around the edges. Swearing is part of the vernacular out here, and I find myself swearing more in theater than I ever do back home, but this guy is really letting loose with the profanity.
His attitude is more than a little bit I don’t give a shit.
Searching for IEDs is not an easy job, and as it turns out one of the ways we find many of them is by having them blow up – the trick is to have them blow up when you’re not in the way, or in something safe enough to survive the blast. The 1LT, like most soldiers in route clearance, has been blown up more than once.
Most recently, he was knocked unconscious and had to be evacuated from the scene. He tells the story, though he can’t remember it and is only going on what his troops told him later, than the unit’s CG came to visit him while he was on a gurney and that the 1LT threatened to kick his ass. To his credit, the CG laughed it off.
Others officers in the command weren’t as thrilled with what they saw as the 1LT getting more and more ornery, and so they sent him to Bagram, to act as an LNO but mostly just to get him off the front lines and hopefully to calm down.
I asked him if he felt he needed the break from the action, and he said “Hell no. They’re idiots. I’m fine.”
He’s telling that part of the story while we’re having dinner, four of us, and I watch as he nearly jumps out of his skin when someone slams a door across the room. It’s an exaggerated reaction to the noise, he whips his head around, assesses the situation, and then continues talking.
It’s like a cliché of how you’d imagine someone who’s shell-shocked would act, and it happens s
everal times throughout the meal, the 1LT clearly not being relaxed. One wonders how long it will take after the war for him to get back to normal, or if he ever will. It’s a cost of the war we often overlook: the psychological toll.
The 1LT goes on to talk about the locals he’s seen on his missions and, like many soldiers who are on the front lines, he expresses an almost unwavering distaste for the Afghani people. I suppose he ultimately doesn’t have to respect the local nationals, as his job does not involve interacting with them, but it’s difficult to hear his diatribe.
He says that the Afghanis often come out of the woodwork after the US troops pass through, and that they will pick up anything you drop. “They’re so poor,” he says, “They have literally nothing in this country.”
He recounts that some of his soldiers defecated into empty MRE bags and left them outside the vehicles, knowing that the locals would think they hit the jackpot when they saw the bags, and laughed at their imagined reaction to seeing what was in them.
It’s an altogether different perspective of the country than I’m used to, but not at all unique here. There are a great many young US soldiers, airman, sailors, and marines who come here to do a mission, get dirty, put their lives on the line, and draw success from little more than surviving. They’re not here to rebuild the country or to free the country from the terror of the Taliban, and in fact rarely if ever even think in those terms. They have a very specific mission, and they do it as best they can for 12 months or more, with little time to think of or care about the big picture.
Luckily, for everyone, there are plenty of other people doing the rest of the job – and of course they’re able to do the rest of the job because of the guys shooting the enemy and being shot at.
My favorite military saying: One team, one fight.
FOB = Forward Operating Base
KTR = Contractor
1LT = First Lieutenant
LTC = Lieutenant Colonel
IED = Improvised Explosive Device
CG = Commanding General
LNO = Liaison Officer
MRE = Meals Ready to Eat
