The journey...

I'm finally in Afghanistan. Actually, I've been at my duty location for two and a half weeks now. And a lot has happened since then.

On February 22, my class "graduated" from training at Fort Riley. The ceremony was extremely cookie cutter and insincere, but I really didn't care. I was just happy to be getting outta there. While they say ECRC training at Ft. Riley is designed to prep you for war, I think it is ACTUALLY designed to emulate one of the planes of Dante's Inferno. Or Purgatory at the least.

My Dad drove down from Nebraska the morning of Saturday the 23rd. The day was full of down time, so we got to hang out for quite a while.

We went out into town to do some last minute shopping and to eat, and checked out the Manhattan, KS muni airport. In a maintenance hangar, we found a nice older guy wrenching on some planes and got to hear the story behind a bullet hole I found in the engine of a cropduster.

Sometime around midnight, we carried all of our seabags out to a staging area to be trucked to the airport. Around 1:15 in the morning, it was time to muster up to march over to the "deployment center"- a fenced in metal building where we would be accounted for, weighed with our luggage, and checked for contraband. As we left our barracks room to join up, my Dad suddenly told me he didn't want to get in the way, and that he ought to be heading back to Nebraska. I knew the real reason for the sudden break was more for emotional than practical reasons. I really did not want to say goodbye to him just yet, but Dad handled it the best way possible, and kept me from getting overly emotional with a drawn out goodbye.

From the barracks to the deployment center, where we were processed then sat on our butts waiting for a couple of hours. In the small hours of Sunday morning, we boarded tour buses and (FINALLY) left Fort Riley behind. Our buses drove us right up to a Boeing 767 that awaited us at the Topeka airport. It had been snowing off and on all night. We were whisked onto the plane, seated, and were ready to go by about 4:00 am. I fell asleep for a couple of hours and was surprised to wake up still on the ground with the sun up. The runway had to be plowed for us to take off.

We had a comfortable flight from Topeka, KS, USA all the way to Leipzig, Germany. We stopped for a couple of hours, got off the plane, and were cloistered in a small terminal/ gate building specially maintained by the DoD for US military personnel coming and going from Iraq, Kuwait, and Afghanistan. There were credit card operated phones for us to call home, which most of us did. Most of us were also shocked by the price when the bill came in- my 10 or 12 minute call came in at around $80.00. Ouch. On the plus side, we got one last chance at having some beer, and I was happy as a clam to see one of my old favorites- Paulaner. It's a yummy German beer I first had at the Paulaner satellite brewhaus in Beijing in '92.

From Liepzig, we flew the rest of the way to Manas Air Base in Kygyzstan, a former Soviet Republic. The very next day, we were hearded to an Air Force C-17 for a 2 or 3 hour flight to Bagram Air Field in Kabul. And we were finally in Afghanistan.

We waited around the airfield for a while in a semi-daze. There I came to a stark and terrible realization. The Turkish version of the armored Humvee is cooler than anything I'm likely to drive for Uncle Sam.

After a few hours, armored Humvees whisked us away to Camp Phoenix, the hub of all US and coalition activity in Afghanistan. It's a big, dirty, dusty base that is crawling with way too much brass. Thankfully, we were only there overnight. We had been scheduled to spend a week there to endure endless briefs on rules, regulations, safety issues, et cetera ("Death by Power Point"). But the folks we were replacing down in Khost were understandably anxious to see us arrive, and pulled some strings. After only half a day of briefings, we were put into a convoy of Humvees and departed to Gardez, Afghanistan by way of "The K-G Pass" The KG pass is a tortured section of what can only loosely be called a road. As the Soviets found out in a really hard way, it's a bad place to be when the folks there don't like you. Traffic is dominated by huge "jingle trucks"- great big primitive looking utility trucks that are intricately decorated by their drivers, usually with colorful painted designs, a skirt of chains with jingle bells, and all kinds of other stuff. These gentle giants lumber along the pass at the hands of daring drivers of questionalble driving skill. Here and there, a hopelessly overloaded (as most are) jingle truck lay on its side after gravity, massive overloading, gusting winds, slippery mud, and uneven ruts in the road combine in a way the driver couldn't handle.

Still overjoyed by our rapid escape from Phoenix, we were awestruck by the natural beauty of Gardez. It's an ancient city founded by Alexander the Great during his conquests. His castle still stands in the middle of this small city, 2,500 years later. There are numerous other strongholds, forts, and garrisons built by his army. They’re all in respectable condition considering the fact that they’re around 2,500 years old. In fact, they look a lot nicer than the bases we’re staying on, which is odd considering the fact that we’ve probably been here as long as he was… The base (more like a primitive camp), sits just above the main city at about 9,000 feet elevation. It's surrounded by gorgeous snow covered mountains. The air smells like campfires, as there is an Afghan National Police garrison about a mile upwind of it where wood is burned for cooking and heating. We stayed there for five days and we able to finally get a bit of rest and had a chance to realize that we were really here. On Saturday there was a bazaar next to the base where my team bought a few nice Afghan rugs, loose gemstones, and other goods from local vendors.

On Sunday March 2, we convoyed the rest of the way to our destination, Camp Clark. This took us over the more dangerous half of the K-G pass. For the first time, we were delayed by an IED (another team was just finishing up on the disposal of an unexploded IED that had been found). Along the way we stopped at a truly remote and primitive forward operating base (FOB). The handful of soldiers there have few if any amenities. In fact, they use wooden outhouses and burn the waste in half oil drums after mixing it with diesel. They were burning while we were there. There was a guy practicing with his sniper rifle. Sitting atop a 20 foot dirt berm, he was firing right over our heads at some target several hundred meters behind us. Another couple of hours down the road, and were arrived at our new home, Camp Clark.

Camp Clark sits at 4,500 feet elevation on a rocky, desert plain. We are surrounded on three sides by arid, Sierra Nevada like mountains. It looks a lot like the California desert just to the East of the Sierra Nevada, or between Bakersfield and Vegas. Shepherds occasionally wander by with flocks of really furry sheep. Nomadic tribesmen can be seen with huge wool tents and small herds of camels. We're in the middle of nowhere. We do have moderately reliable plumbing, but our water supply is touch-and-go. No store or exchange. Getting mail, buying toiletries, or getting cash requires a combat convoy of about 1-2 hours each way to the nearest operating base. Primitive Internet service is available.... for $130 a month. I am set up comfortably with my own quarter of a 20X30 foot plywood building. I've got electricity, a twin size been, a simple desk, and a plywood wardrobe. Nothing is painted on the inside- just bare plywood. It's light years better than a tent, and affords some degree of privacy, even if I can hear the other three occupants breathe.

Overall, it's a nice base, if cozy. We had about 5 days to do turnover with the team we were replacing, then POOF... we're on the job. Finally here, finally doing the job.

More about life at Camp Clark in my next post.