all expenses paid afghan vacation

I finally have my feet firmly planted on U.S. soil for the first time in over a year, and it feels comfortably familiar yet foreign all at the same time. My unit came in to FT Bragg for a week (plus or minus a few days) filled with lots of fun out-processing and demobilization. Most of this simply involves a lot of waiting, paperwork, and a lot of boring briefings.

A few more days to go and I’ll be back at home in Arizona trying to make the big transition back to my old life.

Thanks to everyone who has been following my blog over what has been quite a memorable year in the ‘Stan. I won’t be posting nearly as frequently now that I’m close to home, but stay tuned for a few follow up posts on what it’s like to come home after all this and some things that I wanted to put up on the site but never got around to it for various reasons.

Shawn

My war is over, pretty much. I still have a little while longer in country before I head to the states, but I am now in the land of the Fobbits wearing my arm out with all the saluting we have to do every 5 steps we take. My last week on the FOB were pretty uneventful, my squad picked up QRF duties for that last week and we didn’t have to roll out the whole at all. I was kind of hoping for one last hurrah of a mission but it never came.  It’s hard to believe it’s coming to end.  We knew weeks ahead of time an estimated date we would leave, but the days leading up to it just didn’t feel like we were leaving.  Even the morning we left it still felt like a surprise, somewhate surreal.

We performed an intense cleaning of the barracks and our rooms getting ready for the new guys, packed up all our bags, headed to the LZ, boarded the chopper, and said goodbye to my FOB and home in Afghanistan. The day before we left we had a small part of our replacements come in, and I have to say I’ve never been so glad to see a group of strangers as I was at that moment. When the choppers that would take us away came into view I immediately thought back to being on the same bird my first day coming into the FOB with so much being unknown.

I had originally volunteered to stay back with the group of our PRT that would be doing left seat right seat missions training the new guys once they arrived. There was only a limited number of spots they could keep back so unfortunately I had to leave with the first group out. I still don’t like being here while there’s still some of our guys back at the FOB running missions. There was actually another chance to sign on with the last group because one of our gunners had to head home for personal reasons, but my buddy shot his hand up when asked in nanoseconds (because he’ll take as much time away as possible away from his team leader he hates) before I even had a chance to weigh staying in my head. I’m at BAF (Bagram AirField) now being extremely bored out of my mind. Though there is a Subway, Dairqueen, Burger King, Pizza Hut, a coffee house, and a much better run chow hall here…so that’s one plus.

Other than the food, I’d rather be back at my FOB. At least there I would have kept busy with missions and passing on words of wisdom to the new guys. Instead, here I keep busy by going on long walks down Disney Drive (not named after Walt but named after a fallen soldier)…movie night at the USO, half hour spurts of time at the MWR using the only decent internet connection on this whole base for transient non residents like myself…blowing cash on fast food which my stomach is having to readjust to…browsing in the PX…and getting lost in the KBR run chow hall with the overwhelming amount of choices for food. Those are the highlights. Yeah the food is much better here, but I’d rather be eating crappy food back on my FOB, as long as I had my own bed to go back to and the convenience of a decent internet connection coming into my room. Sleeping in a massive airplane hangar tent with over a hundred other guys is getting old…I’d even rather be staying at our COP instead of here if I had a choice.

This being one of the largest, possibly the largest, bases in Afghanistan there are all kinds of high ranking Fobbits. Being here is pretty much being like on a garrison back on US soil. Attacks on the base are rare, and when they do happen, things are so spread out here nothing ever gets hit. How much threat could there really be if they took away all of my ammo already and handed it over to our replacements?

One of the nice things about being on a smaller FOB like my home for the past year is that things are much more relaxed in terms of the political BS and bureacracy that abound on a huge base like this. On my FOB we didn’t salute officers…here we have to which gets old every few steps we take…on the FOB you can walk around and get away with small stuff, like breaking uniform regulations like unbloused boots or an untucked shirt in the gym…here that’s a no go and we even have to wear a stupid bright yellow reflector belt with our PT uniform 24 hours a day and any uniform at night which uniform nazis who have nothing better to do will give you a hard time if you don’t have it.

Even one of my buddies who was hear getting medical treatment after being hit by an IED was hounded for walking around with no name tag and rank on and wearing tennis shoes with his uniform…maybe he didn’t have boots or a uniform because they were cut off him and he was stripped down as he was being medevac’d from our FOB! That is among one of the many reasons why Fobbits are so depised. The word Fobbit comes from mixing hobbit and FOB together. Fobbits are desk jockeys for the most part and never leave the wire, complain about their mocha frappuccino not tasting right or not having their favorite type of bread at Subway, and never have any clue of what its like to look for IED’s in the road or even chamber a round in their old school M-16’s they have.

We all know the admin people, the finance people, the postal clerks, the cooks, and gate guards are important and life would be a lot worse off here if it wasn’t for them. We’d be eating MRE’s every day, not getting paid, and never get mail from home. So we know they’re important and value their service…it’s just the Fobbits that complain about how tough their job and life is while deployed that we want to slap around and tell them to shut the hell up.

So now we wait for the rest of our guys to finish training up our replacements and join up with us here so we can all ship out together and call it a day. However, with each fallen comrade ceremony that proceeds down the main avenue here with flag draped caskets, it’s a vivid reminder that though my part in this war is ending for now, it is just beginning for others and will still be dragging on long after my unit and I leave.

We’re getting into the stages of last time doing this, last time doing that and so on now. I can’t believe it’s almost all over. Some of the days seem painfully slow but looking at large blocks of time, it has gone by quickly. It seems like just at the end is when things start getting good around here. The gym has been completely renovated, a new aviation unit is in country now with a lot more assets than the last one meaning…we have air support and escorts flying overhead on a lot of missions now, the weather has warmed up to being perfect recently, and just the other week one of our trucks was able to return fire on a baddie position (very small small incident with just a few shots). There was even a brief upturn in the chow hall, I saw chicken nuggets for the first time in a year and they actually tasted pretty decent too.

It’s definitely a big boost on the awesome scale and confidence level to have a couple helicopters flying overhead while out on mission in case anything kicks off. They can see a lot that we can’t and are able to be a forward recon relaying what’s ahead and provide a lot of firepower if we need it. I only wish we would have seen them around earlier in our deployment. Nothing happened with any type of enemy contact for those missions, but I kind of wish it had, so we could rock their world. Yes I’m crazy in case you were wondering.

I can’t believe how quickly it has warmed up here. Just a few weeks ago it snowed for a couple hours in the morning, and now it feels like were back into the 70’s during the day now. The last couple missions I went on I broke a sweat for the first time in a long while. Part of this was due to the warmer weather and partly because they were dismount missions. Actually I don’t think it would classify as a real dismount mission, considering we were only walking to a few buildings which were right outside our base. But since they were still technically “outside the wire”, we still had to suit up in full battle rattle to escort our big wigs and CA reps to go carry out their meetings. It was nice to go out for once and not be stuck in the turret standing in a little 3 foot diameter circle for a whole mission. I miss my days as a GIB when I’d dismount on missions.

One of the missions was to provide security while one of our PRT officers answered questions during an on air interview in which locals could call in. The local kids from the villages nearby came out as usual looking for any handouts. But as my fellow PRT member Desert Dude said, you get hounded so much by the kids that you learn to save your generosity for the ones that look like they really need it, or the ones that are the least annoying sometimes. I gave out a couple water bottles to a little boy and girl, who I found out were cousins, that were herding a big group of sheep around…they must not have been more than 10 years old. Well guessing age here is hard with many people, as they seem to age much quicker here. Even the kids faces show the hard life they live with the wrinkles and wear and tear of a person twice their age.

While waiting for the interview and meeting to finish I chatted up one of the workers of the radio station. He actually spoke English really well, almost as good as some of out terps. I had a good time talking a bit of politics with him, he surprisingly listens to some of the election news going on back home. He runs his own show on the radio playing music and also teaching a bit of English on the air to listeners…you learn something new everyday. When he told me he was only 18 years old I was surprised again after thinking how looks 25 or 26.

You may wonder how I could want or hope for a TIC (troops in contact) or a firefight and think I’m nuts. Well I probably am. After all…I guess anybody would have to be somewhat nuts to join the Army while there are two largescale wars going on…and choose to be in the infantry. But even through all the shit this year, I can’t help feeling like I’ll be leaving with some unfinished business. I never got to shoot off a slew of rounds returning fire on an enemy position. Maybe I’m immature or naive to think this way and maybe I’m better off not having that memory from this deployment, who knows. But I think if you have never been in this type of environment before, you would never understand. Imagine going out on countless missions, sitting behind your crew serve weapon of the day…MK19 or 50 Cal with an M4 on the side and a pistol on your hip…a massive amount of firepower at your fingertips….with this view.

Now imagine seeing a couple of IED ambushes go off in your convoy, one of which killed Browning, then the bad guys start shooting some small arms fire, or on other occasions being mortared and rocketed at your outpost, or woken up in the middle of the night to the FOB being shot at and manning a fighting position on the wall for 2 hours looking for another hit….but with each of those incidents you never once get a positive ID on the bad guys, of where the triggerman is, or where the small amount of AK or PKM fire is coming from…just enough to piss you off but not enough to let you pinpoint where they are. Just one of those times I wish I could have seen a muzzle flash or somebody with a weapon so it would not have been only a one way live firing range but a two way. I didn’t come here feeling that strongly about this, but when you take enough sucker punches from cowards who hit you and run you too would wish the bad guys would stick around just long enough for you to get eyes on them and return fire. But…that’s the way these wars are with it feeling like we’re fighting ghosts at times.

The majority of the time we’ve gone out nothing much has happened, most of the time life has been pretty boring here. Missions were mostly just a whole lot of sitting in my turret providing security for an area while our CA or engineer reps do their thing in meetings or project assessments. And the few times something has happened when I’ve been out, I never even got to fire a single shot. Some guys on our FOB have had the luxury of doing that, wish I could say the same. On my last day in Afghanistan I’m hoping my platoon will start a big round of celebratory fire for leaving like they do in the scene from Jarhead at the end, spewing bursts of bullets into the air letting out all the bent up aggression and burning up all the ammo we never got to shoot…but I’m not holding my breath.

I’m ready to head home, but I can’t help but feel like I’m leaving with some unfinished business.

Last week we had a dedication ceremony for the newly remodeled gym here on our FOB. It was dedicated to SSG Charles Browning of our platoon who was killed in action June 1st of last year by an IED. After he died there were plans of renaming the gym in his honor, but we were waiting until we got some new equipment in and the gym could be remodeled so it could officially reopen under his name. The chaplain open and closed the ceremony as usual, and Browning’s squad leader, who was in the same convoy with us when Browning died, came up to speak. It was good to have this man speak, as he wasn’t able to give any words during the original memorial ceremony we had in June because he escorted Browning’s body back to the U.S and was there for the funeral.

I have a lot of respect for his squad leader, SSG P, for being able to go up and talk in front of everybody about Browning and how great a friend, a soldier, and a leader he was. I don’t think I could have held it together for a speech like that. It’s bad enough to lose a fellow soldier while out on a mission, but SSG P was not only Browning’s squad leader, he was his best friend of 20 years.

They joined the Army together, were stationed together, went to Iraq on their last deployment together, joined the Guard, and then for this deployment Browning volunteered when he heard his best friend would be going to Afghanistan. When asked before why he volunteered, Browning said because SSG P was going and he had to be there to watch his back.  How many people can say they have had a friend like that? SSG P said there’s not a day that goes by he doesn’t think about June 1st in one way or another (me too). But despite all of the horrors of that day, he never wants to forget it, because to forget it would mean to forget the sacrifice Browning made that day. Well said. It was a heartfelt ceremony, tough but good. Browning had spent a lot of time in the gym while here, he was training for a marathon for when we got home this summer…that being one of the reasons renaming the gym after him. Our platoon is actually planning to carry on part of his goal of the marathon, by running in the Pat Tillman run when we get back in Browning’s honor. The gym looks great and an awesome dedication plaque hand-made by one of our soldiers now hangs inside.

We miss you man, you deserve this…and much more.

Hearing stories like this makes me question whether or not everything we are doing here is worth it. Is this part of the freedom and democracy mission for the Afghan people we’re supposed to be risking our lives for?

A journalism student in Afghanistan has been sentenced to death for insulting Islam by distributing a report from the internet at his university which questioned the oppression of women in some Muslim societies by extremists who manipulate the Koran, part of which debated why it was permitted for Muslim men to have multiple wives yet women cannot have multiple husbands. The courts here are still meeting on the issue, although Karzai holds power to veto any decision from the courts. When looking up this article I found it wasn’t the first time a sentence like this has happened. In 2006 an Afghan man, whose family turned him for converting to Christianity, was facing the death penalty also, but he was granted asylum in Italy and avoided sentencing.

We’ve had snow on the mountains around us since early December now, yet it either there hasn’t been enough cold or precipitation to see snow at our level. That all changed a couple days ago on a cold and rainy morning, with freezing rain slowly turning to huge snowflakes the size of silver dollar. While it was short lived, the snow only stuck on the ground for a few hours till the afternoon, it was still quite a sight for all of us…considering we’re from Arizona and how hot it felt here in the summer. Baghdad had some light snow too for the first time in like 75 years or something, what happened to global warming?

The snow was fun and all, I just didn’t enjoy being up in the turret as we were driving out on our missions that morning. With the wind chill of standing through the roof of a moving vehicle my face was numb at times. The freezing rain actually stung worse, but you could still feel every snowflake that would collide with your face while on the move. I was expecting to be pegged in the face with a snowball from some of the little kids who like to throw rocks, but luckily they didn’t, or else I may have flipped out. Although I guess I shouldn’t complain too much, after all, I was able to come back to my comfortably heated room. We still saw a few kids running around barefoot despite it being cold enough to snow out , wow. Meanwhile there are people who literally freeze to death in some parts of the country in snowstorms. Some PRT’s help out in these cases providing HA or other assistance to locals not equipped to handle the weather…bet you don’t read about that in the news. Read about that here and here.

We actually went out twice that day, once for a meeting but got cut short after an “escalation of force incident.” Americans have been in this country how long now…over 6 YEARS…and some locals still can’t figure out to do when we signal and tell them to stop?

Our dismount team was out walking along a street and was stopping all traffic at one point. All the local drivers knew what to do when a group of American soldiers with guns waved at them to stop, all except one car who didn’t decide to stop, and for some moronic reason went around all the stopped traffic, and came up on our guys rather quick. They went through the proper steps of trying to get the guy to stop but even after multiple people pointing their weapons at him he still wouldn’t stop, so one of my buddies shot a single round through the hood of his car. The driver stopped after that, thankfully, because if not they would have been forced to shoot to kill rather than just use a warning shot. What happened in that split second after the warning shot was the difference between that man living and dying. We came back to base after that and with every time you pull the trigger nowadays you have to be accountable for it, so lots of paperwork and sworn statements as to what happened ensued.

We we’re back for not even maybe an hour, when we got called back out for another mission, this time to go locate and demo’ an IED. While we waited for what seemed like an eternity for our EOD bomb squad team to do their thing, the usual crowd of curious locals formed outside with lots of kids being attracted to our trucks. Of course, the demands for pens, chocolate, and water started right away from the kids. Sometimes you give things out, other times you just don’t feel like it, but most of the time you wait till you leave to hand out the stuff. There are certain missions you hand out things and other ones you don’t, this was one those where you don’t. You could give these kids bars of gold and they would still be bugging you for hours on end.

So for the time you’re sitting there not giving out anything, dozens of kids are non-stop with , “mishta mishta” and demanding all sorts of items. You try to ignore them because even if you say explain back in their own language you don’t have anything, they only hound you more because you talked to them and gave them some attention. Luckily one of the kids was a young teenager who we see often working at our bazaar and brings us local food sometimes while out on a mission. I say luckily because this kid can actually speak surprisingly decent English. So I used him as a translator to tell the kids I’m all out out of things to hand out, and occasionally keep them from going too close to the blast site by saying it was dangerous.

We finally blew the IED, and almost immediately after, the dozens of kids who were begging for handouts before started yelling “thank you! thank you!” and “very good.” Felt kind of good for a bit. Though the adults around didn’t vocalize it like the kids, I hope they felt the same way. I guess they were probably not too happy with bombs being planted in their neighborhood and glad to see us get rid of it, even if it was meant for us. We’re happy too as long as we are finding these IED’s or the locals keep reporting them to us before they go off underneath one of our trucks.

Last week we had our monthly “town hall” meeting for our PRT, where our commander ususally puts out new information, addresses any problems going on, rumors are put to rest (I swear the rumors that fly around here are worse than a group of kids in junior high), and awards are often given out. There were quite a few awards this time, mainly from the events that happened back in November which I wrote about, where we caught and detained a few high value Taliban, and then later about how on another day some faceless cowards tried to blow up one of the trucks in our convoy during a rotation at our outpost.

For the missions that resulted in capturing a group of bad guys some of the leadership were given ARCOM’s (army commendation medals). For the IED ambush later, all those who were there were given CIB’s (combat infantryman badge). For the infantry getting your CIB is one of the most sought after badges, it shows you have been in the thick of things being “under hostile fire” and deserve a certain level of respect. The requirements were changed to now include the use of IED’s in today’s wars. Although occasionally certain high ranking fobbits un-deservingly write themselves in for CAB’s (combat action badge) for being a mile away from a mortar hitting on the complete opposite side of some bases.

Every time we wear the CIB it represents that first time we saw contact. Fortunately for the group of guys who earned their CIB that day it will never be associated with any casualties or harm to our guys. Mine will always be tied to the day the war became real and we lost one of our strongest soldiers. I’d give it back in a heartbeat to erase what happened on that day.

Here’s a topic I came across that was too far out to believe and was talking over with a fellow blogger.

Virtual Iraq

Take a glance at the ridiculous method some military shrinks are using to try and treat PTSD. They think that by overly saturating soldiers repeatedly with more combat-like experiences through a simulator (Virtual Iraq) we will become “desensitized” to our memories and it will help us deal with them. Is this not some of the biggest bullshit you’ve ever heard? Maybe some of the computer nerds and psychologists who developed this thing should go spend some time on the ground themselves and see if they want to relive those experiences over and over.

The end, the final stretch. The other day we packed up everything we wouldn’t be able to travel in a connex shipping container due to our limits on what we can carry back on the flight. I have to say it felt…awesome…to be packing up and know we were starting the final chapter of our time here. Footlockers, dufflebags, and other loads of stuff were sealed up and the next time we see them will be back home in Arizona.

Next on the list will be some more inventorying, a mass cleaning of gear and all equipment, and prepping for the change over. We still have a over a month before we leave here but this had to be done ahead of time because of the long transit time shipping a connex takes. It’s not even expected to make it to home possibly up till two months after we arrive back. Our connex has to make a long journey, by land and then by sea, which is what takes so long. And as with anything you do these days in the military, there is paperwork involved and lots of it. We had to have anything we would ship back be inspected to make sure we’re not taking back any contraband, everything was opened up, even books and CD cases were flipped through.

Every item had to be written down on an inventory list, and then multiple copies had to be made to be given to a million different people, a personal copy, customs, battalion HQ, platoon sgt, and maybe even the president. This inventory list insures everything we have in there in case of any unfortunate accidents. It should make it back fine, just as long as the Taliban don’t hijack it or blow it up on its way out of here, or the same thing doesn’t happen in some other country in transit, and hopefully the cargo ship it travels on doesn’t sink either…because that would suck.

It’s February now and this will be my last full month I spend in Afghanistan, thank God. Like I said packing all our stuff felt good as it was a sign we were putting the ball in motion for us to head out of here. As I was loading things up I couldn’t help but think, “is this for real?” This deployment has gone by somewhat fast as a whole, but with lots of long stretches of boredom mixed in. It seems like just not too long I was taking off from the airport in Phoenix for the start of 15 months away from my familiar life, with guys from my company singing “leavin’…on a jet plane…don’t know when I’ll be back again…” and having no clue what was in store for us. I think we’re all ready to come home. Fifteen months is long enough for these types of combat zones where there’s no front lines and no “going back to the rear” for some relaxation and a beer.

We, my platoon, have grown pretty close after being here this long and have to come to know each other probably a little too well. Everytime we go outside the wire we’re ready to kill for each other, yet sometimes back on base inside the wire we feel like (minus the for) killing each other, haha. Some of us have grown together like brothers, and brothers butt heads and get into scuffles time to time. I guess it’s expected with a bunch of grunt infantry guys, you just better have thick skin, because there’s no room for being soft or taking things personal. Part of it comes from being around each other day in day out for this long, you get to know people beyond well enough to know how to push their buttons. But in the end it’s all in fun and part of the camraderie we’ve formed. That being said, I’ll be glad to not have to see some of these faces 24 hours a day.  I’m ready to get back to my life.

Now for a a joke that gave me a good laugh:

President Bush was in a cabinet meeting when the news announcer on the TV on the wall said that 4 Brazilian soldiers had been killed in Iraq that morning.

The President went pale, and was visibly shaken. The stunned cabinet secretaries tried to console him, but it appeared hopeless.

After the meeting Mr. Bush was heard asking the Vice President, “Dick, how many is a brazillion?”

FYI I’m pretty positive there are no Brazilian troops in Iraq so don’t get upset.