DIVERSIONS, AND JALALABAD BRIEFLY

(WEEK OF 22-28 MARCH 2009)

¾

I have hit the 75% mark of the time between my deployment last August and my R&R this coming June.


I am not burnt out, but I’m getting to the point where I could use a frikkin’ day off.

Just two more months until my R&R.

***

SUMMER, AND THE BOYS OF IT

It’s gotten warmer in a hurry.

The winter was fairly mild, especially in comparison to the horror stories I heard of years past with snow piled as high as you knees, but it’s still pleasant to feel the temperature rising, to walk outside without having to put on a jacket.

Perhaps in celebration of this turn, but more likely coincidental to it, the MWR hosted a number of former Major League Baseball players for a meet & greet. I see the flier in the gym and, recognizing every name scheduled, think it would be neat. Izzy declines the invitation, so I head up by myself.

These sessions are always a little weird. When the performer can’t actually perform (like the rodeo riders, actors, actresses, these baseball players, etc), the most they can do is talk to you, answer questions, and sign some autographs. The MLB players take the time to quiz the audience with baseball trivia and the MWR is going all out by passing out new gloves, baseballs. The correct answers to the trivia receive bats.

I run into some of my colleagues from the BDE and chat with them a bit, and enjoy listening to the players talk about their experiences in the major leagues, and their views on the state of the game – steroids is a hot topic, unsurprisingly, and while they all openly oppose the use of performance enhancing drugs, it’s interesting that they have varying opinions on players who have been caught using them – whether they belong in the hall-of-fame or not, etc.


When we’ve exhausted our question and answers, the room forms a line and we pass by the tables they’re sitting at, collecting autographs, shaking hands, and passing along last minute thoughts.

I meet Dan Wilson, Jimmy Anderson (member of the 2004 World Series Champion Boston Red Sox), Chris Hammond, Turk Wendell, and Steve Karsay. I have an autographed flier to prove it, though it went into a stack of paper immediately upon my return to my room and I haven’t seen it since.

As a baseball fan, it was a neat, if not overwhelming distraction and, as always, we much appreciate the effort those guys go through to be here for the troops.

Top-notch of them.

MWR = Morale Welfare and Recreation
BDE = Brigade

***

THE BOOB TUBE

The cable keeps going out in my room. War is hell.

It’s hard for me to complain about this, considering the conditions many of my guys are living in (we rotate people into the rooms in the condo based on time-in-country and I’ve been here longer than any of them). I call and complain to the people I’m paying for the cable, though, and they send a technician out.

It keeps happening, and the technician tells me after his third trip that someone in the B-Hut next door keeps unplugging my cable from the junction box and plugging his own in. Someone’s stealing my cable.

He’s telling me this like it’s my problem now, there’s nothing he can do about it..

Me: Why don’t you just lock the junction box?

In fact, there is a lock on it. It’s plastic and easily twisted off. I prod him to improve on this security measure. He sighs, hems and haws, and returns hours later with a proper lock. Merchants in theater try to get away with as little as possible, and one has to be firm and pushy in order to get even a minimum of service sometimes. Izzy’s better at kicking their butts than I am, but I’m sick of my television going out.

The room I moved into in the condo had a TV pre-positioned for me, and I pay for the cable in the same bill I pay for the internet - $115 a month. Izzy expenses his and gets reimbursed because he’s using the internet for work, but it’s a pain in the ass for me to compensated so I just eat the expense.

The channel selection is eclectic.

We get AFN, of course, 7 channels worth, and those are the most important channels – they’re in English, and they broadcast American shows. I often leave the television on AFN News or AFN Sports while I’m working, just to keep connected to the real world. They show live news and games, but of course we’re 9.5 hours ahead of the US East Coast. I woke up at 0300 a few times to catch parts of football games, and I’m sure I’ll do the same when the baseball season starts up.

There’s also AFN Movie, which shows primarily family movies - nothing R-Rated. This is the same feed that all the military families in Europe are getting, after all. My schedule rarely matches up to actually sit down and watch a movie in this way. Easier to buy the bootleg DVD and watch it at my leisure.

AFN then has a few other channels - AFN Prime, AFN Xtra, AFN Spectrum, AFN Freedom - that generally just show half or hour long series. They have a lot of syndicated comedies, and sometimes it seems like all they show is ultimate fighting. I’ve seen way too many people punching each other in the face for lack of television options.

AFN shows only a small sample of current series, usually between a day and a week behind the first showing in the States, though sometimes they can lag by as much as a few months.

Being out here has largely weaned me from habitual television watching, though. I like keeping up-to-date with CNN and Sports Center, but circumstances don’t allow for sitting down at the same time every week to watch anything with regularity. This can only be a good thing.

AFN doesn’t have commercials, and it always something I notice when I return to the States and watch television there. Because networks are providing their feeds to the military for free (or at least drastically reduced prices), AFN isn’t allowed to generate revenue from them. So instead of commercials, we get what amount to public service announcements, all geared toward military personnel and their families.

I am constantly told not to drink and drive (check), not to beat my wife (check), not to commit sexual assault (check), not to tape grenades (check... wait, what?), and given a myriad of other good ideas. There are a limited number of these spots (within an hour you’ve seen them all), and their production value is usually very poor. They are a constant target of our jokes.

The lack of commercials was especially frustrating during the Super Bowl, though I slept through most of that anyhow (it started at 0400).

We also get a smattering of non-AFN channels, piped in from Pakistan, India, Germany, South Africa, and other less obvious origins. Those channels are hilarious.

I saw a commercial for a bucket on one of the Indian channels. A bucket! There were children playing, Indian Mom mopping the floor, and there was a close-up of the bucket she was using. Then the kids were playing outside with a couple of buckets, throwing water on each other. The commercial ended with a display of brightly colored buckets stacked in a pyramid and a slogan I couldn’t understand (but wanted to!). I was flabbergasted.

Izzy says he likes to watch the Pakistani soap operas and action movies, but I’m not sure I believe him. I find them fairly unwatchable. I walked into one of the little stores next to the PX to buy a phone card and the workers had their TV tuned to one of these channels. There was a fight scene in a chicken coop (at one point the combatants were actually throwing chickens at each other) and for the entire time I was in the store (maybe 10 minutes) there was nothing but clucking and squawking.

There are foreign versions of MTV with the most ridiculous videos. My favorite was of a man - he looked like Borat - singing in a more or less monotone voice and walking around the city. He buys a bottle of water at one point, which was exciting. He gives a soccer ball to a child, and then takes another kid by the hand before getting in a paddle-boat with him. It was vaguely creepy.

Another more high-tempo song included a video of the singers being chased around a nightclub by someone wearing an enormous George Bush mask with one oversized hand. Just one. I would have LOVED to know what they were singing about.

Until recently, many of the channels on my television came in poorly - I watched most of the current season of 24 in black & white. Two of the AFN channels came in with no audio, and another had its audio displaced from the video by a good 5 seconds, rendering the channel unwatchable. I don’t recall how it came up, but when I mentioned it to Izzy he asked if I’d reprogrammed my television.

Of course I had not, and when I did it fixed all of the problems except for the fact that I’m an idiot.

There are still the problems of the time difference. Aside from live events being aired in the middle of the night, even shows that AFN controls aren’t exactly tuned for us - it seems AFN is geared toward Europe, and we’re 2.5 hours ahead of Germany, so that doesn’t always work out well. Add to that the constant interruptions for jets taking off, the volume of which cannot be overcome by any television yet produced. You just have to hope that doesn’t happen during a crucial scene or moment in whatever you’re watching. It, of course, always does.

None of this is meant to say that there’s a lot of time for watching television, there’s not. But over the 7+ months I’ve been here, the television has served as background noise, and occasional distraction. I certainly welcome the opportunity to escape into a good show, or even a ridiculous one.

Usually I pop in a bootleg DVD, but that’s another post, I think.

AFN = Armed Forces Network

***

WOMEN OF WRESTLING

I’ve never been into professional wrestling.

I think I watched a couple of times when I was a kid, and I fondly remember Roddy Piper in “They Live” and Jesse Ventura in “Predator”, but that’s about the extent of my fandom. I don’t know anyone now working in the industry, and that includes these “women of wrestling” who are visiting us.

I saw the flier and noted the times they’d be in the MWR clamshell signing autographs. As it turned out, I was waiting for a flight at that time, just a couple of blocks from the MWR, so I popped in.

I have never seen lines that long.

Apparently pro wrestling is very popular with the soldiers. I wind my way through the crowd and snap a couple of pictures of women I don’t recognize, and then I flee, returning to the APOD and the slim hope of getting on a bird to JBAD.

The next day, Izzy and I are both in the APOD waiting for one of our colleagues to return from a trip, and we see the women of wrestling walk in and be ushered into the VIP lounge, the door of which is right next to the wall we’re leaning on.

These women have enough make-up (or shellac, as Izzy calls it) for every woman on post. They’re small, and their clothes are even smaller. I’m not sure if “trashy” is the right word, but it may be. One of them pops out of the room long enough to stand in front of the crowded room and exclaim “I’m so tired! I can’t wait to get home!” while stretching and touching her toes - I thought her whole outfit would pop off and fly across the room like a rubber band. She didn’t say it like she was complaining, it came off more as a joke. A few people laughed, most were just baffled.

She chatted with a few people before escaping into the VIP lounge again, as Izzy and I just smirked and shook our heads. I’m grateful to anyone who comes out here to visit the troops, and I’ll just leave it at that.

MWR = Morale Welfare and Recreation
JBAD = Jalalabad
APOD = Arial Port of Debarkation

***

“BBQ AT MY PLACE”

Overhead at lunch today, two soldiers talking about life back home. From their conversation, it didn’t seem as if they knew each other well - that one of them just arrived and would be working with the other. You become fast friends that way.

They swap the usual stories about family and where they live back home, and one of them gets off on a tangent about barbecuing and tells his new friend how he’ll have him over for BBQ and all the things they’ll cook.

We’re in the chow hall, plates full, but it’s the easiest thing in the world to imagine yourself thousands of miles away with real food, and to imagine your new friend will by then be an old friend - a war buddy even.

I keep in fleeting contact with two friends I made in Iraq, and I even saw one back in the States after we’d both finished our tours - we shared some beers and told stories. Iraq stories. Even he’s drifted away, though, and for the most part I don’t expect to keep in touch with the people I work with here. As close as we are now - out of necessity, I suppose - we will each leave theater at different times, and the moment you’re on that fast plane toward a decent steak you’re starting to be forgotten. The day after you leave is filled with work, with stress, with all the things that fill time in war, and your absence is noted only briefly.

You will think of the war far more over the following months than it will think of you.

***

MY POSSIBLE REPLACEMENT

I received an email from a colleague in the States this week. He asked me questions about what it’s like out here, how the living conditions are, what the work is like. He asked me when I plan on leaving.

I’ve developed a sense of responsibility for my position here, both in my role as the government representative for the team of KTRs, and as an analyst to the BDE. I want to feel comfortable turning over the reins to someone I know will do a good job - ideally, even better than I did.

When I left Iraq, I was replaced by a good friend who I knew would outshine me in many respects, and he did. Our skill sets didn’t match up exactly, so there were some things I did that he didn’t continue, but he was productive and well-respected, successful. I knew he would be, and when I left Iraq I largely forgot about it. It was in good hands.

This colleague who emailed me, however, does not imbue me with a great deal of confidence.

I’ve now been in Afghanistan for about as long as I was in Iraq, and I’m not ready to leave yet, and neither is my command ready for me to return, I think. I don’t have the ultimate say over who replaces me, and I would not (did not) lie to my colleague about what it’s like out here. But I told him I wasn’t returning any time soon, which I believe I have some control over.

Were he someone else, or one of several someone elses, I may have felt differently.

KTR - Contractor
BDE = Brigade

***

FALLEN SAILORS

I walk up to a Fallen Comrade ceremony for the first time in weeks.

Though there have been a few lately, I have missed them due to travel or perhaps by my not understanding the message being broadcast by The Big Voice. At least once a day there’s a garbled message, the projection from multiple speakers overlapping and making the whole thing sound like Charlie Brown’s teacher.

Today, though, I’m walking back from the port-a-john when I hear the announcement loud and clear:

There will be a Fallen Comrade Ceremony. All available personnel are to report to Disney Drive no later than one-zero-three-five hours. Picture taking, PT uniforms, and sunglasses are not allowed.

I walk up at 1030 and take a place in the line of personnel. Though primarily a US base, there are military from many other nations living and working on BAF, and I always like when I see the soldiers from other countries join us for the Fallen Comrade ceremonies. Some of my Kiwi neighbors file past me, and 3 French soldiers take their place across the street.

We stand at parade rest. Feet splayed slightly, hands clasped behind the back. We stand like that for well over half an hour, which is common for these ceremonies. Many people don’t even arrive until 30 minutes after the announced time, knowing that it won’t have started yet.

I’m standing on the side of a small road that runs from Disney to the flight line, and I see the first vehicle, an MP with its lights flashing, rolling slowly down the street and bringing everyone to attention. Feet together, hands at sides.

The next two vehicles are HMMWVs, modified with a flat bed that has benches on the sides. The coffins sit in the middle of the beds, one in each vehicle, and the colleagues of the fallen sit on the benches, guarding and honoring.

The colleagues are all sailors, and this is the first time I’ve seen a Fallen Comrade ceremony for Navy personnel. They wear brown combat uniforms, and the HMMWVs are brown. The whole base is in a constant state of dustiness, dirt and gravel and dirty concrete dull one’s view.

The flags on the coffins, though, are bright and crisp, striking in their contrast.

We salute, and hold that as a trailing vehicle passes – the last truck holds a camera crew that records the ceremony to present to the family of the fallen. I always imagine how moving that must be, to see so many people lining a road to pay tribute, to know that your loved one was treated with such respect.

We drop the salute after the cameras pass, and on our little road most of us stand at attention until the convoy has entered on to the flight line.

The whole thing lasts about an hour, and is probably the most important hour I’ll spend today.

PT = Physical Training
HMMWV = High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle

***

17 HOURS IN JALALABAD

I get a lot of mileage out of the joke that a Christmas carol about Jalalabad would pretty much write itself.

I finally get a flight down there after nearly a week of trying.

As soon as I arrived I added my name to the OML (wait list) for a flight back to Bagram. I wanted to spend as little time in JBAD as possible, and to a large extent I succeeded.

As it was only about 0300 when I got there, I found a cot in a tent with 50 other smelly, snoring, farting guys, and promptly went to sleep. I got up and out around 0800, brushed my tooth, and called my KTRs, who were surprised I was there. Good.

The walk over to their office reminded me how alike all of the military installations are in the Middle East. The gravel crunched under my boots as I passed tents and makeshift wooden buildings I could push over if so inclined. Leased SUVs mix in with the usual collection of armored vehicles passing me on the street, soldiers with M4s slung across their backs nod howdy, and helicopters scoot across the rooftops toward the airfield.


I’ve been on (I just counted) 11 bases in Kuwait, Iraq, and Afghanistan and I can imagine a million views on each that could easily be on any other. It takes some time to learn the peculiarities and unique aspects of a base, and many traits only reveal themselves slowly the longer you call a base “home”.

When I get to the office, I meet briefly with the MSG my guys fall under there; I’d spoken to him on the phone and exchanged emails with him, and it’s good to finally meet him. Some of these smaller FOBs are so isolated, and my KTRs have such a small presence, that it’s easy to forget they’re part of a larger mission in country, and I don’t blame them for feeling like their own bosses.

While the site visit is important, to make sure the guys are taken care of and have a good relationship with their units, other business brought me to JBAD at this time. I’m looking for a particular vehicle. Back in November we installed a data collection device on an MRAP and were tracking it in Bagram before the unit transferred some of its vehicles to JBAD - then we heard the vehicle was deadlined - broken - and so I came up to investigate, and to download the data from our device, if possible.

We find the vehicle under a tarp, the batteries lifeless from sitting cold for so long. As I need vehicle power to access our device, I’m dead in the water. At least I put eyes on the vehicle, though, and can hopefully keep better tabs on its repair and subsequent movement. So, not a total failure.

After lunch (which was like lunch in any DFAC), I’m given a driving tour around post and JBAD’s character starts to show. It’s a smaller post than Bagram, but oddly shaped and with much more Afghan National Army personnel. My guide points out the local-owned electronics/bootleg store – the largest I’ve seen on any base, and a luxury.

There are places we stop and we can peek over the wall. The land outside is lush with greenery, trees and farmland. I see locals tending their fields, and people milling peacefully about. I love the view, such as there is one at all. They don’t have our mountains, but the green is enough of a novelty to more than capture my interest.

My work in JBAD done, mid-afternoon finds me back at the APOD checking on flights back to Bagram. Because BAF acts as the hub for this region of the country, almost every flight out is headed there, and it appears it will be much easier to get out of than it was to get into Jalalabad. I sign up and spend some more time chatting with my guys before releasing them to their lives and waiting with a book.

I tell them I’ll call if I don’t get on the next flight, but as it turns out there is not reason. 17 hours after my arrival, I’m headed back to Bagram on a C-130. It is a rare day-trip in theater, and I look forward to my own bed the entire time I’m crammed into the plane on the way “home”.

OML = Order of Merit List
JBAD = Jalalabad
KTR = Contractor
M4 = Standard issue machine gun
MSG = Master Sergeant
FOB = Forward Operating Base
MRAP = Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (vehicle)
DFAC = Dining Facility
APOD = Arial Port of Debarkation
BAF = Bagram Air Field