I move into the APOD at Kandahar Thursday night.
I have all of my belongings with me; my rucksack, my body armor and helmet, and a large pelican case I’d brought with me in which I’d planned to carry the equipment we were unable to locate. I pile everything into a corner, next to a bookcase filled with romance novels and foreign fashion magazines.
We often talk about the travails of traveling in Afghanistan, and a common conclusion is that if you really want to get somewhere, you have to move into the APOD and not leave until you’re on a plane.
I really want to get back to Bagram.
The APOD consists of banks of metal airport chairs, a small kiosk that sells snacks (which is open for about 2 hours each day), and the flight desk. There is a large, flat-screen television on each side of the APOD; one showing foreign music videos, the other a British news channel (not the BBC). A screen above the flight desk shows the flights scheduled for the next 12 hours or so.
There is one flight Thursday night that quickly falls off the board: CANCELLED.
With no more flights listed, I settle into a chair, my feet up on my bags, and dig into a book. A number of people hunker down around me and it doesn’t take long to learn who’s also trying to get to Bagram.
Waiting for a flight is something of an equalizer in theater. I become friends with a SFC, a LTC, a
USN CPT and her MCPO, all of whom are in the same boat as me. Throughout the night one or another of us will check the board, speak to the AF personnel running the show or otherwise gather intel and rumor, and report back to the rest of us.The hours roll by.
We have the familiar conversations about where we’re from in the States, our family, our jobs. I learn the names of my companions’ children and when they ask me if I have kids I say “I might by the time we catch a flight out of here.”
I catch a few hours of sleep in my sleeping bag on the cold, concrete floor of the APOD. Some of my new friends curl up on the chairs. None of us sleep well.
Two posted flights for Friday morning are cancelled and we learn there’s “weather” in Bagram. A few of my fellow travelers disappear, to get sleep in a real bed, but most of us don’t want to risk missing a flight. We sit tight.
The APOD has a box of what passes for meals – plastic bags with a piece of fruit, a largely inedible egg salad or turkey sandwich, and a candy bar. The bags are all ripped open and the candy bars removed by the time I discover they’re there. I can’t stomach the sandwich.
More flights for Bagram are cancelled throughout the day.
We while the day away reading, chatting, and watching the televisions like zombies. I see countless music videos for bands I’ve never heard of, and hear the same news reports over and over and over: the plane crash in upstate NY leads most broadcasts, but the 12-year old boy who fathered a child in Britain gets much more time.
Around 2100 Friday night we make roll call for a flight to Bagram. We’re equal parts ecstatic and exhausted. I gather my belongings and join the rest of the passengers near the rear of the APOD, waiting to put my body armor on until right before we’re led out to the airplane.
We board around 2330, and take every available seat on the C-130. These flights are uncomfortable in the best of conditions, but being sardined in makes it much worse. Pallets of luggage, gear, equipment, and supplies bound for Bagram are loaded in after us; they’re rolled right up next to the seating area.
I try to ignore the mounting discomfort of not being able to move my legs as the plane takes off. We sit shoulder to shoulder, and the facing seats are so close, we have to interlock our legs and knees. The worst of it, for me, is not being able to move my feet – I hate that. The roar of the engines is thunderous even through the ear plugs we all wear. Lights are turned off on board flights in theater – for safety – and I try to sleep.The flight is longer than usual, and we set down around 0100.
As the engines die down, a few murmured questions flitter around the cabin, I see a member of the crew make a circle in the air with one finger, and I hear the word “Kandahar” repeated in disgust and disbelief.
We turned around. We’re back in Kandahar.
Bagram was snowed in so we flew there, circled for a time in the hopes it would clear, and then returned to Kandahar. We stumble into the APOD, dejected.Having had little more than scraps in the last 24 hours, I walk up to the Pizza Hut with a new buddy of mine, a LTC who works with my BDE CDR in Bagram. We bring our food back to the APOD and each eat a small pizza watching the news and lamenting our misfortune.
I sleep on the cold concrete again.
Battered and crestfallen, I emerge from my sleeping bag when my pizza buddy wakes me. He says we have just enough time to make it up to the Tim Horton's and back before the next showtime for a flight to Bagram. I'm not a coffee-drinker as a rule, but I gulp it down this morning and appreciate its efforts to make me feel human again.
The donut is dry. The flight is canceleld.
I stumble and mumble through the morning in a bit of a fog, but decide to escape for lunch with my USN friends traveling together, a CPT and her MCPO. It turns out the CPT is in charge of all sailors in theater – at least administratively, if not operationally (we call that ADCON and OPCON, respectively).
I don’t care for the DFACs in Kandahar. The food is just a little off, owing to the international bent of the populace at this NATO base. I get a burger, figuring they can’t do too much wrong with that (though the buns are odd), some onion rings, and a Coke.As we’re eating and chatting, I notice the onion rings don’t taste quite right. The CPT gives me a look as she takes a bite out of one. We put them down and look at them, and I see the realization on her face just as I figure it out. They’re not onion rings. It’s calamari.
Weird.
We’re back in the APOD for about an hour after lunch when the flight desk announces a flight to Bagram. This despite no such flight being listed on the board. There’s a mad rush to get a seat but as it turns out, so many people had trusted the board and left that there are more seats than passengers.
We board within an hour and the flight is uneventful. I even have an empty seat next to me, a rare treat. I offer to take a guy’s bag from down the way, and I put it in the seat next to me, leaning on it as I doze.
When we land, I’m extra wary of getting my hopes up, and don’t trust that I’ve arrived “home” until we exit the bird and I see the familiar buildings around the airfield and the mountains in the distance. The snow piled around the runway is the reason for my delayed return.
I check in and walk down to my room, trying to decide on the way if I should shower or sleep first. I enter my room and fall asleep before making up my mind.
APOD = Arial Port of Debarkation
SFC = Sergeant First Class
LTC = Lieutenant Colonel
USN CPT = United States Navy Captain
MCPO = Master Chief Petty Officer
AF = Air Force
BDE CDR = Brigade Commander
ADCON = Administrative Control
OPCON = Operational Control
DFAC = Dining Facility
NATO = North Atlantic Treaty Organization
