Mid-tour vacation to the mountains

Who says you can’t get a little mid-tour rest and relaxation trip when you’re on a 120-day (132 in my case) rotation? This week, I went on a sight-seeing tour of beautiful Afghanistan. Kabul, Bagram and Kandahar. I’ve read plenty on how Kabul used to be this glorious capital city 30 years ago… man, what a couple decades of war can do… it was a cesspool. 

My alarm rang off at 0300. I didn’t have to be anyplace until 0400, but because I was traveling with the General, I wanted to make sure I was ready. Plus, it might have been my last 3-minute shower for a while as the escaped Taliban dudes at Bagram had the base on lockdown. Max nix on the showers. Thankfully the lockdown was over by the time I arrived.

A quick trip to the armory put a 9mm gun in my holster. I was issued a plastic baggy of bullets which I loaded into a couple clips while waiting for the General. I understand that at this base, we don’t walk around with guns on our belts… but if you are going forward, it is a bit ridiculous to not be allowed to get our gun until the last minute, especially if you’re going to give me a ziplock bag-o-bullets. What if I didn’t have time to load my clips? Am I supposed to throw these bullets at the enemy? Maybe just scatter them on the ground and let them trip on them like marbles in a cartoon. Every place I went, people were walking around with guns on like it was their wrist watch… just something there in case you needed it. Why they are such pricks about it at my base is beyond me. I guess they want to make sure you don’t drop it in the pool.

The General’s team (7 of us) had an entire back end of a C-130J to ourselves. For those who don’t know the difference between an H and a J model C-130… the only thing that matters to me among all the fancy bells and whistles is the increased capacity of the air conditioner for the comfort and convenience of its passengers. The J was configured to hold a full load of passengers, so we all spread out and napped laying down. The only time I’d ever gotten air sick was my last ride on a C-130… which flew over Chapel Hill North Carolina as an incentive ride during ROTC. I have a picture of me holding my aching belly… that trip was also coincidentally the first time I wore my BDUs. Anyway, I stopped by the clinic the day before my flight to get some good airsick drugs… I am my mother’s son. These knocked me out pretty well. It was a fantastic ride.

We landed at Kabul International Airport, landing with our full battle rattle on – helmet, flak vest, loaded guns… Kabul, Bagram and Kandahar having been mostly quiet for a while (like a year) – all three had had rocket attacks in the past week. Being all dressed up seemed ridiculous given the number of civilians just bantering about. This is a commercial airport – although I wouldn’t get on Ariana Afghan for any amount of money… Those airplanes looked like they were built by the Wright Bros.

We were whisked away in a convoy of heavily armored cars driven by people with much bigger guns than mine. When we got to the terminal, we were whisked upstairs to the restaurant for the ceremony which was the reason for the entire trip… There was lots of whisking. We could have been making eggs.  The Vice President of Afghanistan -- Karim Khalili – was there along with a lot of other Afghan senior cabinet members to christen (I imagine there is a better word than that I could use) the Kabul Air Control Center which effectively meant that Afghanistan’s airspace was being turned back over to Afghanistan. This was a huge deal. A bunch of people spoke in Pashto or Dari – the languages of Afghanistan – I can’t tell the difference. The VP’s speech was translated to English thankfully, but recited by what looked like a Japanese guy – however with the Hazara culture (mongoloid influence) he could very well have been an Afghan. Some religious guy coughed/belted/sung a prayer and about 10 little kids in white dresses and tiaras sang a couple songs. The General and the VP cut a ribbon and a horde of media shot pictures… the only English speaking media there was an Air Force Times reporter who had met me upon arrival in Kabul… There was supposed to be another PA there to help him out, but they weren’t there. That part was all one giant cluster because I’m trying to do my job for the General, take pictures, take notes on the story AND host media with giant luggage for a 2 week trip. Not cool, but it worked out mainly because its difficult to take notes in another language I don’t speak.

After the ceremony, we went across the runway to the ISAF headquarters… International Security Assistance Force (I think… kind of the NATO for Afghanistan)… There, I got to intermix with some Belgians and Turkish military folks… Not sure which was which, but one of those ISAF country uniforms wears these really short booty shorts. They looked stupid, but comfortable.

My PA friends at the Combined Forces Coalition – Afghanistan public affairs office picked me up while the folks I was with were in a meeting for a couple hours. This allowed me to go outside the compound through downtown Kabul to their compound, which used to be a grouping of safe houses for Taliban and Al Qaeda… the new US Embassy is there now too. Driving through Kabul to get there was an experience… no traffic rules at all. We were at a couple points on the wrong side of the road driving around bikes and donkeys. No kidding donkeys. Littered along the road were huts with goods for sale. My camera was snapping away at everything to record for posterity… It was a hell hole. I couldn’t believe people lived like this. Very Mexico third world. Everywhere I looked, I imagined improvised explosive devices… there was just crap everywhere. When we finally got there, it was surreal to be in a former Taliban compound… These were actual houses. The Coalition Press Information Center had a rose garden outside of it… my favorite part was the indoor plumbing though.

We didn’t have much time to hang around there… We got the Air Force Times reporter situated and me back to the ISAF headquarters for the next leg of the trip with the General… a helicopter ride to Bagram.

At this point, I finally got a breather… there was a small porch outside on the flightline while we waited for our helicopter. We watched the Belgian F-16s fly in and I got to take in the mountains… it also struck me that I was outside and comfortable… Probably in the low 90s…

Now, when the trip was being planned, I was told we were flying to Bagram in 2 Blackhawk helicopters… but as we waited… one giant CH-46 (Chinook) came to a rumbling stop at the DV ramp of the ISAF compound. Chinook… like as in the one that got shot down a couple weeks ago killing everybody on board. I promised my mom I wouldn’t take any convoy trips or ride in any army helicopters… I broke both those promises in one day.

We loaded into the Chinook, everybody with battle rattle on, and flew through the Afghan country side. It was beautiful. Little villages and huts… farms mostly. I wondered to myself if they were growing poppies for Opium since that seems to be the staple crop in Afghanistan. The country side was just breathtaking – I couldn’t believe this was a war torn nation from this perspective, but it wasn’t hard to forget with the rear gunner hanging off the edge of he back of the chopper keeping a keen eye out for trouble.

The Chinook landed at Bagram, where my good friend Mark is stationed as the PA. He picked up me and the reporter who was still following us and off we went to settle in. I should mention at this point that we got to the ceremony late so the strap hangars didn’t eat lunch… I ate breakfast at 0300 and it was going on 2000. I was starved. After dumping our stuff, a brief courtesy call for the reporter with the base’s vice commander… we headed for dinner. I was told to walk on the sidewalk because of the landmines left over by the Russians… Landmines! I was also told where and what to do in case of an attack… hmmm, not the kind of information needed at Camp Cupcake… and now I see why they call it Camp Cupcake.

The accommodations were plywood hooches that slept 8 people… we each had a curtained off area to ourselves, a bed with a mattress so soft I almost fell through, a comforter and 2 bottom sheets, which gave Mark and I a good laugh… He said I could go try and get a top sheet, but they’d just say “welcome to the war” and shuffle me out the door.

Bagram at night is perfect… They kept talking of the daily wind storm… which to me was a cool breeze. I didn’t have the amenities I’m used to from my base, but I’d give most of that up for that cool breeze in a second… not so sure about the whole landmine thing, shooting mortars at you and escaped Taliban dudes part… but that breeze sure as hell felt good.

The next morning, we got up early and boarded another C-130. This one wasn’t a J model and we had more people with us… a lot more. Gen Pace, the 4-star Vice Joint Chief of Staff and his entourage were getting on the plane too. I wanted to ask him if he remembered me and how his kid stole my homecoming date or how I crashed my mom’s car in his yard when he was a mere Colonel and I was 16… but there were too many people with guns around him, so I opted to stay away.

After all the Generals’ entourages boarded, they threw on a few more people to pack us in. There was some Navy Lieutenant Commander chick pinging her brains out about how late we were… You know, if you can’t make the plane go faster or arrive on time, then you shouldn’t ping. I guess when you are the 4-star’s handler, there would be a lot to ping about… but what really is the point other than to annoy others? It’s okay to ping if you can have some remote affect on a situation, but to ping for pinging’s sake is asinine.

So our plane took off. When I describe the people being packed in like sardines… I actually think sardines have more wiggle room in their can than we did. It was miserable… at least the flight to Kandahar was only a purported hour and a half. I had my neighbor on my left and right squishing me… and what is it about men needing to sit with their legs open wide? I was forced to sit with mine scrunched… but managed to extend one leg between the legs of the guy in front of me who I was knee-to-knee to. Spin… right hand on the green dot, left foot on the yellow dot. It felt like twister with 100 people – and everybody had a gun.

When we got off in Kandahar, the climate was a bit different… Kandahar is much further south. The Airport was a throw back to the 60s, which is when Pan Am built the place… Apparently both Russia and the U.S. were vying for power in Afghanistan so Pan Am built the Airport. It was very “Catch me if you can.” At this point, I was just a strap hangar… I had no role in this trip after the press conference the day before. So I sat in the back of the van snapping pictures on our little driving tour of the base while the General conducted meetings.

The base at Kandahar used to be a Russian base, taken over by the Taliban… so here I was again sitting in the middle of history. I saw the “Taliban’s last stand” building where they had retreated to prior to giving up completely… The building called that has an atrium in the middle, care of U.S. Air Force bombers… but the building is still used for office space by the Coalition. I also got to see where the Russian dorms were that got bombed. People occupy them too. The coolest thing at this base was seeing the Romanian compound because they actually built a plywood Eastern Orthodox church, decked out with all their icons… it actually looked like a church you’d run across in a little village. Beautiful craftsmanship for a “deployed chapel” and I would venture to bet the only deployed Eastern Orthodox Church in the AOR.

When everybody was done, we went to board a C-130 again… no other big wigs, just us. But they had pre-loaded the plane with a bunch of army troops going home. Again… sardines… but this time for almost 5 hours. I could bitch, but I managed an end seat in the back so I could get up… And it’s hard to bitch when the other people squished in the plane have been patrolling around doing really crappy jobs. Unfortunately on an end seat… all the other 96 people before you have crept down inch by inch, so I only got a half cheek of a seat… at least I could twist around and sit sideways… and if necessary get up and use the john… which was a flying port-o-potty with a curtain around it and 200 of your best friends trying not to look at you pee. The other really great thing they did for us was turn on the heat! Yes… another H versus J model C-130… which meant the A/C was so bad, it was actually HOT air blowing. I’m not kidding when I say it was over 100 degrees in that fuselage. I took a picture because only a photo can truly describe how on top of each other we all were… maybe it would help by saying there are not actual seats, rather we were sitting on canvass tarps stretched out to look like benches with a back for the “chair” made out of wide nets. The people in the middle had maybe a foot of space between the edge of their seat and the edge of the seat across from them… intertwined knees were not just knee-to-knee… they were knee-in-crotch… so I was extremely thankful for my half-cheek seat on the end where I could stand up.

The plane went rumbling down the runway, only to come to a complete stop at the end… unload the entire group back to the passenger terminal and wait for the plane to get fixed… something with an engine… Repeat entire process… I got my half cheek seat again and off we went.

It was a long 5 hour flight “home”… Upon landing, we were greeted with a wall of humidity that I had to literally swim through to get to the car. I’ve never seen humidity like this… Which is saying a lot having lived in the marshes of North Carolina and Florida. But I’m back “home,” safe and not where somebody can easily lob an explosive at me…

No more traveling in the AOR for me… thanks kindly.

Cheers

D