A week of patrols

A windy day but still warm under layers of body armor; I find myself walking weapon in hand and sunglasses on face in a patrol formation with 7 other soldiers along the sides of a narrow road on the edge of a town built into a mountain. As the sun goes down, I hear the call to prayer on the town’s loud speakers (save a boy’s small radio this is the only electronic equipment for miles). I look behind me and see an abundance of farmland that is set in between two gargantuan mountains. To my left a stream of water rushes by, this man made aqueduct is the town’s only source of water and is used for drinking, cooking, bathing, and religious ritual. To my right the mountain drops off into a green valley, and after a short stretch of cultivated land rises up another mountain to impossible heights all brown and peppered with trees. Despite all my travels this view is one of the more beautiful landscapes I have ever seen. As a local man exits his house and walks to the stream to wash his hands, feet, and face before evening prayer it hits me that I am again in a situation far from anything I have ever experienced, one I never dreamed of getting myself into. This exhilarates me.
Our patrol continues on with children following behind us and an occasional man or woman passing by to whom I exchange a cordial “As-salaam-alaykum” (with the men only of course, we have been instructed to look the other direction if we encounter any women in this town). The road we are on is narrow, just wide enough for cars to pass without knocking us off the cliff. As we walk trough this beyond beautiful country I hear our platoon leader’s radio crackle with a slew of military jargon ripe with acronyms and curse words. The traffic coming across the radio informs us to be on the look out for two white Toyota Corolla’s that have been identified as Vehicle Born Improvised Explosive Devices (VBIED’s)…car bombs. Unfortunately and perhaps predictably, the next 5 cars that drive through our formation are all white Corolla’s, it takes a while to settle my pulse rate once they’ve passed.
According to the army we then conduct a Key Leader Engagement (KLE), according to me we simply let our “important people” talk to the “important people” in the village. And to the army what they exchange in conversation does not concern me, unfortunately and perhaps predictably, I disagree. After the meeting is over we mount back into our tucks and move onto the next town.
Remember in Kindergarten when they taped out a big circle on the floor that everyone sat around? And inside this circle we all enjoyed whatever activities they had kindergarteners do back in the early 90’s? Well the military uses the same concept to set up security with big trucks. We align our enormous vehicles in what’s called 360-degree security, all trucks facing outward with weapons scanning their sector. And we imagine, as fantastically as a kindergartener would, that within this boundary we are untouchable, no bullet, no threat, no fear can enter, that way we can conduct whatever activities they have soldiers do in the new millennium.
With our trucks parked in 360-degree false security I, as always, hop out just after the platoon sergeant and stay right in his pocket, as he likes to say. This town is far creepier than the last; there is no one around except for us. A few day earlier a man in this village covertly informed a U.S. soldier of where a weapons cache was, it was found and taken away, who knows what repercussions were had on the man or this village’s relationship with both the U.S. Army and the Taliban. Needless to say we are not very liked in this place anymore. As the platoon sergeant and I stroll around our “safe-zone” with the ever-amusing interpreter Sher, two school-aged boys approach us; they are the only people in sight not wearing a uniform.
The taller of the two wears a long tattered white shirt that hangs to his knees, loose pants and a pair of plastic worn down sandals. He offers his left hand to shake while concealing his right within his shirt. We ask him why he does this through our interpreter and he promptly removes a disfigured hand, telling us shrapnel had permanently damaged it. His little brother standing next to him looks at us wearily. He either begs for attention or shies out of fear.
We speak for some time about playing cricket and the lack of a school nearby when they are suddenly called to a hut/home about 100 meters away. As they walk away hand in hand I notice the younger of the two walking awkwardly and with a limp, so I have Sher investigate in Pashto. The little boy with brown hair and blackened teeth bends to take off his shoe and tells us he broke his big toe three days ago. Just running around he says.
When he tells me this I think about the ibuprofen in my bag and the physiological effects it has, which cause a reduction in swelling that will ease the pain I’m sure he must be in. I think about the splinting techniques used on the digits of the lower extremities, which promote faster healing and a better recovery in the long term. Immediately I kneel down to examine this poor kid’s big toe. My platoon sergeant barks at me saying “Don’t give him that shit. Lets go.” Reluctantly I get up and walk away. Three days! A kid no older than 7 with no access to a medical facility broke his toe just running around, he’d hurt himself like any other kid would, like I might have at his age. But me at his age would have run crying to my parents over a scraped knee or a bee sting.


In another village far off from the last, the platoon sergeant and I are struggling to communicate with a group of locals. As we all stand around grasping for any means of communication, a man walks up carrying his daughter who cant be older that four years old. She is wearing a big winter jacket and is completely adorable. He puts her down so he can speak with us, or try to anyway, and she clings to his leg like a squirrel to a tree. Every once in a while she timidly offers a hand to wave hello, always retreating her face back behind her dads pant leg. We hit all the big topics with the villagers, Taliban, school, cricket games, abruptly we run out of things to talk about. We all stand in silence for a while when my platoon sergeant turns to me and says “Grab those water bottles out of the truck, go be an ambassador Doc.”
Acting as the obedient little soldier that I am not, I do as I am told. Walking back with the water I have one outstretched hand extended toward the crowd of people, and the little girl with her big jacket and dirty face starts to run at me, realizes she has strayed too far from her father’s leg she quickly turns back. The men in the group give it a slight chuckle, but as soon as I reach the crown of people I kneel down trying desperately to conceal my rifle behind my back and hand her the water. With no words all you have to share are facial expressions, so I took my sunglasses off and tried to look as happy and giving as possible. Miraculously, through the dirt and the grime, the poverty and the struggle, the uniform and gun, the language barrier, the skin tones, the age difference and the cooling afternoon air, a positive message was exchanged between this little girl and me.
Later on, during the long ride back to base I couldn’t help but wonder: how thirsty must you be at 4 years old to run from the security of your father toward a giant soldier carrying more than one weapon just at the sight of water? Moreover, how much can a smile and handshake offset a uniform and weapon? How many pens and candy must we give away to prove we want to help? Can a few words in broken Pashto tell a child not to be scared of the militant stature or make a man believe that foreigners will solve his domestic problems? Ultimately will our presence now or during the past ten years make a country safer and a non-corrupt future more secure?
This first week on patrol, of “breaking wire” as we say here and seeing face-to-face the places and events that are reported about on CNN and forgotten about once dinner is set on the table back home, has been extremely eye opening. I am perplexed by what is going on here, I haven’t the first clue what to make about the situation or where I stand on any of several social issues happening here. But I am thankful and fulfilled to be experiencing them first hand.

Blue Collar Ballad

In one day I have managed to make it to every major city in Afghanistan. What was supposed to be a short, hour-long flight to FOB Salerno ended up taking over 12 hours. Here’s the story:

We are awoken just after midnight and are abruptly told that we have an hour to pack our things and get all our bags on to the plane. Once we got this done, we sat in a holding area for about five hours waiting for our flight, luckily watching the Packers-Eagles play-off game. At 6am we get on the plane, it was one of those big C-130 aircrafts with no interior just a bunch of wires and tubes running all over the place, and the mesh seats that feel like sitting on a hammock made of internet cable (think Operation Dumbo Drop…just without Danny glover). As we sit down there are four of five people sitting around a Lt. Colonel who apparently NEEDS to use our flight to Salerno to get to Kabul. Kabul is in the opposite direction of Salerno by two hours, but the Air Force pilot justifies the trip with the cliché “Orders are Orders”. After an hour of waiting in Kabul and just missing the opening of the airport’s coffee shop (the only source of food we’ve seen in 8 hours) we are rushed back onto our plane, only to wait for 35 minutes because this time a General and his posse who need a ride to Kandahar. This HAS to happen before we can be dropped off.

[Up to this point the delays due to military shenanigans have been bearable. Bad scheduling? got it. Hurry up and wait? No problem. No food, poor communication, and tons of heavy lifting? Too easy! And definitely all too common to get upset about. Moreover, I am in no hurry to get closer and closer to the far corner of the world we are going to spend the next year in, we could have flown to Euro Disney and back for all I care. But the last leg of this flight became infuriating.]

The General and the 15 people that build his entourage step on the plane and all of a sudden the bureaucracy in the air is suffocating. These old white men, who are obviously of the same stock as those who got our country into this mess in the first place, mock us simply with their presence. The overstated juxtaposition is almost too much to handle. My dirty hands, cut and scraped lay hanging and tired over my weapon while theirs, lotioned and pampered with nails trimmed and clean, sit folded in lap or fiddling with expensive electronics. My short hair, unwillingly shaved to skull glares at the shampooed and gelled locks of these men and women in button down shirts and warm jackets.

One man who sits down across from me looks to be about 50. He avoids eye contact as he brushes past my legs in the cramped space we now share; I’m basically hugging my rifle at this point for him to move past. As he settles into his uncomfortable seat, confusedly fumbling around with seat belt he makes what I can only assume is a bad joke to his look-a-like friend next to him. Un-ironically "Blue Collar Balad" by The Sweatshop Union comes on my ipod. Somehow, he finds the audacity to ask me to take a picture of him and a few of his cronies. Now, he’s probably a very nice guy, yet I can’t stand him at all, almost everything he does offends me. It isn’t just the clothes he sits in, the khaki pants and black polo I’m not allowed to wear, or his clean and brushed teeth that he shows with a wide eyed coffee grin tells me he had a great nights sleep in some hotel last night complete with a complimentary continental breakfast. But more than these jealousies it is the insensitivity to what he has and I do not that cause me to resent this man and the picture he wants me to snap. Because once I focus, flash, and hand the camera back he can’t look me in the eye for the rest of the flight (Hell, he didn’t even say thank you).

The whole flight was a perfect depiction, a snapped picture, reminding me of how the higher ups, the civilian contractors and the “diplomatic officials” get paid five times more than I do every month, but it’s my vest that holds the kevlar plates, not theirs. It’s my life that is "expendable", while theirs can hold up and reroute airplanes and will do it without apologizing. It is belittling, dehumanizing, angering and disrespectful.

And I understand harboring these resentments and offended judgments won’t do me or anyone else any good. And honestly, I understand how the rank structure works, I even appreciate the necessity of hierarchy and that these people probably carry incredible responsibilities on their shoulders. But the blatant disregard for a struggle they do not share is upsetting and insulting. And fundamentally, this is the biggest issue I have with Army life. Because it isn’t just Generals and contractors that enrage me but anyone who looks out from behind their rank and sees those beneath them as less than, insignificant, or unworthy. This attitude is embedded into just about every facet of the military and it makes my blood boil and words my mother did not teach me fly out of my mouth.

In any case we eventually landed at our destination, the Air Force guys were pretty good humored about the whole thing, and we got a chance to eat ourselves into a coma.

"Please wait to deplane"

As our flight descends to 20,000 ft above a region of the world I have never been to, the thoughts that consume my mind seem askew. It’s not the fear of being in a new place, that subsided years ago. It isn’t the fear of death, uncertainty, insanity, exhaustion or killing that are so commonly associated with this year long trip that plague my mind, you’d be surprised how infrequently those thoughts even arise. And it isn’t the longing for loved ones, incredible friends, home, the cityscape views that cover my computer backdrop, or the thought of old cars, boro bridges or authentic Italian food I think of now with the landing gear lowered and the ice on the landing strip in view. Instead daunted, I think that just because this is my first time in this region for the past ten years this exact same flight has been made almost constantly. The exact same route algorithms have been in use for the exact same planes to carry the same amount of soldiers into this country. Our wheels touch down in a city called Frunze, when I ask the people sitting around me what country we’re in no one has a clue, the only thing close to an answer I get is “One of the ‘Stans that likes us”. I wonder how many times that answer has been given in the past decade. It is 0630 in the morning and dark here in cold frigid Kyrgyzstan but the mood is much warmer. The strain and anticipation of leaving has lifted from everyone and the attitude of the crazy leadership and the many affected by those nut cases is downright jovial. We’re well rested and well fed; there are no tedious duties to fulfill, no paperwork to chase down, and no time constraints to submit to. Even as our tent becomes over crowded by the many others following us, and the internet gets slower and slower no one is tense, despite even the inevitability of the next 12 months staring us in the face. In my three years in the Army this is the most relaxed I have ever seen people. Though, it still weighs heavily on me even now, as we over sleep and over eat in the comfort of this Air Force base outside of the combat zone (think the first episode of Band of Brothers) waiting to leave for our outpost in Afghanistan, that for the majority of us every experience we have here will be brand new. Yet for the past ten years innumerable others have gone through it exactly as we are. And just because this will be my first combat experience the country we are headed to has known little outside of constant war.