I have to be attuned to what I write as the military is extremely concerned about OPSEC and situational awareness. I'll err on the side of caution and hope leaving details out won't throw the gist of anything too far off.
I landed in Columbus, Georgia that evening and was met by the company LNO who immediately took me to a medical site. Keep in mind I’d spent the previous week getting immunizations at two locations, had 11 vials of blood drawn, an optometry appointment, a dental checkup with a new panorex, and completed mountains of paperwork. I thought I was golden.
At the med station (this was an off-post sub-contractor catering to deployees from what I could see), they scrubbed my physical and discovered my typhoid was outdated and my EKG from six months ago wasn’t recent enough. Rolled up my sleeve, got stuck, and then got an EKG. That cleared me – or so I thought.
From there, we went to Ft Benning and in-processed into CRC. CRC is the CONUS (Continental United States for all the acronym hindered) Replacement Center and they process individual military not going over as part of a unit, DoD civilians and contractors, and ensure they’re deployable.
Got my bed linen and building/bunk assignment and I was back under the umbrella of Uncle Sugar. Ft Benning is a huge, sprawling post that is testosterone-heavy. It’s a training ground for the Infantry. Enlisted Infantry soldiers go through basic and AIT there; officers have their basic and advanced courses there; Ranger, Airborne, Jumpmaster, Pathfinder, sniper schools are there – lots of very competent (and aggressive when it’s called for) Type-A people. CRC is a in a compound, surrounded by fencing and concertina wire on top, woods bordering it. Inside are maybe twenty cinderblock barracks buildings, a mess hall (it’s called DFAC now – dining facility), gym, and some assorted admin. Pretty stark but only for people who have never been around the military.
The rooms were Spartan – two sets of bunk beds, four lockers. Bathroom at the end of the hall with half dozen sinks, four toilets, three urinals and a communal shower with eight heads. Quickly reminded again about how much like pigs we men are. Judy tells me “men are pigs” all the time (other men, not me). But, the farting, snoring, coughing, cussing, burping, scratching balls and picking at underwear in cracks – it was a circus. I ended up with a top bunk. No one wants a top bunk but I was third man in the room so the young whippersnappers who got there first claimed rights of possession. They obviously were not moved by my experience and gray hair as neither offered to give up the bottom bunk to the old man. That first night, I jumped out of bed like a good paratrooper on his way to a middle of the night bladder run, planning on executing a good three point landing on the floor, and slammed my head into the ceiling as I jumped up and then hit the wall when I landed off balance. Nice one. After that, I was groggy, but still spry….
There were more than 400 people being processed so it was a week-long assembly line. Early mornings, paperwork (wills, powers of attorney, etc), classes, readiness training (first aid, IED stuff), more medical (up-to-date urinalysis for drug screen). Just seemed to go on and on. When we were in class being talked to about preparing our estates, the video mentioned that all soldiers think they’re ten feet tall and bullet proof. Nothing is ever going to happen to them. But, as we know, it’s happened to thousands of soldiers in the last decade-plus and those whose paperwork has been faulty would be rolling in their graves to see what happened upon their deaths. The Army has to pay beneficiaries by what folks list. It’s sad when a guy changes his life but not his paperwork, and his new desires can’t be followed.
We had formations mornings and evenings, and sometimes in between. The overwhelming majority of people knew what to expect but I couldn’t help but wonder about the few people who had zero military exposure. It had to have been shocking to see how things work. A new language, a new routine. The military formations were separate from the civilians. Military was put at attention and given commands. The NCO would then look at the civilians, point his arm, and say something like “Everybody face this way”; then wave his arm and shout “Let’s go.” One big gaggle.
Wide variety of people. The military stayed to themselves, it seemed. Friendly enough if you talked to them but there’s a chasm between contractors and military. The personalities about the civilians, though are just what you’d expect. It runs from normal (like me) to honest-to-god weird. Freak show weird. But, still, it’s interesting that there’s an entire segment of society – a sub-culture – who can talk about the food in Tikrit or the best place to buy a knife in Kabul. All these guys with repeated tours to lands most people will never see. Granted, the places are mostly shitholes, so why would you? But still. Places only the military/government will go to.
Old grey hairs in 5.11 pants who have been back and forth since the 90s when this all started were predominant. All of whom had war stories, and all, of course, start the same way they’ve started since George Washington’s time: “And there I was – and this is no shit - …” Whew. Exhausting being around so much bullshit. Smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee and relishing the audience – you can spot the stereotype a mile away.
There were a few stand-outs. Even among the hundreds. One guy I spotted in Atlanta while we were waiting for the flight down to Columbus. He had the 5.11s and combat boots (so do I so I’m not criticizing that) but he had the shirt, too. And a Ranger lanyard. And a Ranger ballcap. The ballcap had a medium size Ranger tab on the back and a large Ranger tab on the front. Those tabs were black and yellow. On the right side was a large grey and black Ranger tab and the Ranger tab was embroidered on the bill. “Say, man, you weren’t a Ranger on active duty, were you?” He also had an Army green canvas map case on his shoulder that spoke to being old school. I thought he was a doofus for certain. But, first impressions are often wrong… A few days later, we were bused over to the Central Issue Facility (CIF) for our issue (Kevlar helmet, flak vest, etc etc – about 75 pounds of stuff worth $3200 btw) and I ended up next to him on the bus. Surprisingly, he was a nice guy. No big war stories. He wouldn’t take that hat off, though. Several places in the past few days have been “no hat” zones and I’ve looked around. Sure enough, he’s one of two or three guys who look like they’ll fight before taking their hats off. “Screw that - I’m wearing my hat” kind of guy.
So anyway, in-processing. Something was wrong with my Letter of Authorization and out of our group, I was the only one exempted from the Anthrax and Smallpox shots. I minimized the noise on that. I refused the Anthrax shot when I was on active duty. That was back in the early days and I already had my retirement paperwork in. When told I was going to get it, I told the folks that “no, I wasn’t”. One of the few times it was nice to pull rank but it only worked because I was retiring.
Toward the end of the week, people started to disappear. Some with newly discovered medical problems and ailments and who knows what else. Some people became non-deployable for even the slightest thing and it was up to their contract company to determine if they’d keep their job and hang around a week to correct whatever the oversight was.
On Thursday, we had a SAAM formation – Special Assignment/Airlift Mission. The first information about the manifest. I’d heard about a deal where if you volunteered for the bag detail, you got to ride on the front of the plane. I should have known better. I’m 56 years old and I know better than to ever volunteer for anything in the Army. But, it’s been a lifetime pattern with me. I resist doing things that I know I shouldn't, and then I struggle with it, and ultimately, I succumb. Especially with ice cream and M&Ms. Peanut. And that’s exactly what happened. I knew I shouldn't volunteer, but there it was: I wasn’t going to let this good deal happen without me. So, I sought out the SGT and got my name on his list.
Early Friday morning, we dropped our bags at the pavilion – a huge open-air area with a cover. All we had to do was escort people in, two at a time, with their bags and tell them how to place them on the ground. It’s the military, remember, so there’s a procedure. Actually, it was orderly and it made sense. Shoot, it’s the military. As an aside, I remembered how the military subtly teaches people manners. When you go into the DFAC, there’s a big sign listing what is acceptable to wear. The kinds of clothes you see on the block aren’t what you’ll see in a dining facility. No torn clothes, no offensive messages, no open toed shoes, no ball caps, no sunglasses. “You wanna eat? Then you’ll dress how I tell you to dress.” OK by me.
Bags were dropped and counted, and then some civilian guys came in to load them on the truck. Hey. Now that’s what I’m talking about. That little bit for a first class seat? A nice big leather recliner, maybe with some champagne and a personal view screen? You go, Ralph. Good decision.
So we were bused to Lawson Army Airfield. LAA is on Ft Benning and it’s where the airborne school catches planes when paratroopers are going to jump on to Friar Drop Zone. When you’re in your third week of jump school, you catch a plane and jump in. It’s just one huge hangar building. Inside were some older gents and ladies with tables of free stuff. “Thank you for your service” stuff. Tables of paperbacks and buckets of Halloween candy. A little box to drop your mail and they’d pay for the postage. (Judy – look for that anniversary card. I didn’t forget. The old Grandma was happy to take the envelope when I told her it was my 30th anniversary and I didn’t have any stamps. “Drop it here rather than in Kuwait. I’ll get it to her faster than she’ll get it from over there.” Really nice people.)
We went through several checks and safety briefings. The flight commander was introduced. The dogs made repeated sweeps of everything. Very thorough. They fed us on long fold-out tables with disposable trays and in short order, we had the final briefing. A few folks with “goodbye, stay safe” talks and the Chaplain said a prayer. One of the CSMs had a pretty inspirational talk when he said all of us on the bleachers were the “secret weapon of the Army”. The flight leaves every week and there aren’t any bands; no flag waving; no one thanking people for what they were doing. And America doesn’t know about this end of it. That was the gist of his quick talk but it was nice. Seemed like a squared away guy and very well spoken. I’m pretty jaded and I didn’t get maudlin, but I thought if anyone could move a crowd, he could. And that was it.
We were flying on a DC10 to Shannon, Ireland and then on from there. The plane wasn't full so it looked like an even better deal. They called the COLs first and then the bag detail. “Man, this is getting better and better,” I thought. Walked across the tarmac and discovered Omni Air isn’t really the same as, say, United. It’s more like a government low-bidder aircraft. I climbed up the stairs with the rest of the excited bag detail and turned left – to the front of the plane. Which, when you think about it, was what I’d signed up for. Sadly, and what shouldn't have been a surprise, was the front of the plane was no different in configuration than the middle or the back. Same kind of seats. Same leg room. If you squinted your eyes, you could see all these little wisps of smoke coming off the top of heads as expectations just evaporated…
Oh, well. I had an empty seat between me and a woman who I found was going to Iraq. She’d been in the Marines for four years, went to school, and was a specialist in eye scans and had done a few tours like this already. I don’t know how she didn’t know about the “front of the plane” sham but she fell for it, too.
Dog handlers came on last with their dogs and they sat in bulkhead seats. An announcement went out that all weapons were to be placed on the floor with the butt facing the aisle. That’s something you don’t hear much on an airplane…
720 miles per hour so it didn't take long. I guess there's normally a stop in Gander, Newfoundland. I was on a troop transport in the mid-80s, flying to Germany for REFORGER (REturn of FOrces to GERmany) for a six week exercise and we stopped there. It was January and unbelievably cold. Anyway, missed it this time. The plane may have looked old and worn-out but it was hauling ass through the sky. We landed in Shannon, Ireland a few hours later and everyone got on the airport's free wifi. In a very short time, people looked tired and bone-weary. Just seemed to hit everyone at once. They were slurring and sleeping on chairs. On the ground for about five hours and then on to Kuwait. I didn’t sleep for the first leg, but took an Ambien once the plane lifted off. I woke up about six hours later when we were making our approach.
Internal clocks for everyone were out of whack. As I write this, it’s 2227 here in Kuwait but 2357 in Afghanistan, and 1327 in Colorado. Jet lag coming over here is a bitch.
We landed in the dark and the bag detail was first off. They put us in the belly of the aircraft, in a line at the base of the conveyor, or on the semi and then it started. One of the guys I’d noticed in Ft Benning was a guy I referred to as Mr. Helper Springbutt. Mr. Helper Springbutt had on brand new white tennis shoes and he bounced when walked. He also had on an Australian bushman hat with the left brim pinned up. He was Johnny-on–the-Spot but a goof, nonetheless. Looked like the kind of guy who always got picked last for pick-up games. You know the guy. The first guy climbed the conveyor to get into the belly and he started putting duffle bags on the belt. Everyone fell into place to hand the bags, fireman style, to the guys in the truck. Except Mr. Helper Springbutt. He of course didn’t get it. So he was hustling around, trying to handle every bag, being who? Mr. Helper Springbutt, of course. I’d had enough of him after a few minutes while he dicked up the order of the line and the work, so I yelled at him and told him how to do this so you only lift every other bag. He still didn’t get it. My patience with the guy was non-existent to begin with (and c’mon – he had a bush hat on with the left side pinned up so that’s fair of me to be intolerant) so I spelled it out a little more forcefully using Army speak. Man, that felt good… He got in line and did what he was supposed to.
I ended up in the belly of the aircraft a few minutes after that and it was much more orderly up there. As bags came down the conveyor and more room was made in the hold, more of us went up there and made a line to the conveyor belt. The belly was only about 68” high, unfortunately, so I was bent over like Quasimodo and I kept forgetting. My head looked and felt like a cauliflower afterwards. I was sure I was going to bleed but it only swelled up. Good thing I wasn’t going to get my fortune told by an old snaggle-toothed gypsy woman who read skulls instead of palms. Like in the movies. "Hmmm. Lots of bumps here. I see you going on a trip, maybe."
We went to a staging area after the bags were put in the semi. Stayed there for a few hours – one tent, some tables, miles of sand, ten pallets of cases of water bottles, generators going full blast to keep the fifteen freezers of water cold and the halogen lights running. Here's a couple of labels from the bottles. I sent Judy a collection the last time I was in Afgh and I don't think I had any that looked like this:
It was barely 1800 (6 PM to the civilians) and already looked the bottom of an ink well. There was one long line of port-a potties that got a lot of use. I knew then that I was back to it. Whatever "it" is going to be. We got back on the buses and were told to pull the curtains. Took an hour in a convoy in the dark to get to Ali Al Salem where we piled out into a formation.
It took a few hours to get registered, off load bags (everyone helped this time), find bags in the resulting cluster-f*ck, get a tent assignment, sign up for a space-a flight. Everyone was running around, helter-skelter for a few hours. There are hundreds, maybe thousands of tents and of course, concrete. Barriers and bunkers.
Ours has eight bunks in it for 16 guys.
Cement floor which means it’s here to stay. Everything is semi-permanent tents or portable buildings. Showers are in trailers as are toilets and the laundry. (Shower trailer has 12 showers on one side and a row of sinks on the other with a wooden bench down the middle. Toilets have 9 urinals on one side and a dozen toilets on the other. One side of the wall are sinks. The laundry has washing machines on one side, dryers on the other. You get the idea.) The toilets are typical Army, though. Signs posted in every toilet trailer that say “Writing graffiti or otherwise defacing government facilities is punishable by UCMJ” and “Do not write hateful, disgusting, or otherwise potentially harmful things on these walls”. You know to a GI that’s both an invitation and a challenge. The GI philosophers make going to the bathroom a real pleasure.
Otherwise, the place is all sand and rocks – nothing is paved.
Last night, one of the four guys I’m traveling with (three of us are retired military and former contractors; the fourth guy is an ITT whiz with zero mil time) was able to snag a Gator for our bags. He found some Philippine guys and after a quick dance in Tagalog, we didn’t have to carry our bags to the tent. After we got settled, we headed for the DFAC for midnight chow. It’s a 24 hour operation here. They even have a small McDonalds and a Subway.
It’s great for guys coming back from Iraq and Afgh who are on their way home on leave. After six months without fast food (and some of these guys haven’t been eating like on a cruise ship in their DFACs – if they have DFACs at all), it’s nice to grab a taste of home. What I was puzzled by, though, is seeing a few people who came in on my flight, sitting there eating that stuff. The DFAC is open 24 hours. Good food and plentiful, and they were paying for McDonalds. One in particular – another one who stood out – really bothers me. She’s active duty but looks to weigh close to 300 pounds. Her thighs are as big as my waist and I didn’t think you could get a uniform that big. She has the “fat girl” walk – swinging her arms side to side with sufficient force to propel her down the road. It looks like she's doing exercise in the shallow end of the pool. Tight cornrows in a bunch down her back. How in the world someone hasn’t taken a piece of her with an ass-chewing like you read about, I don’t know. She’s a CPT, too. What an example. Anyway, I saw her devouring a 12” sub. Maybe she decided to be like Jared after she got over here…. And then, I saw her plowing through a mountain of syrup laden French toast and bacon. Mmmmm..... I didn't do the full accounting of her tray but it was probably a few thousand calories more than she needed.
Not much else. I’ve had access to the Stars and Stripes already. It’s free when you’re deployed. It struck me again how the news in the states only sporadically or superficially covers news of the war. But the Stars and Stripes? In depth. I think they do it to remind the guys that they’re not forgotten. There was a survey that said 90% of Americans believe the economy is the most important thing affecting the country while less than 50% said it was the conflict. There was also an article in yesterday’s paper that named five guys killed and their specific information. One young guy from 101st was killed in Paktika Province in Waziristan (or Wazi-something or other). Same unit that replaced Ruppert and in close to the same area, I think. Small arms and RPGs in a firefight. I can’t tell you how glad I am that his tour is finished.
Looks like I might get out tomorrow. Supposedly there’ll be a flight with seats. I’ll see how it goes.
At one of the places, I saw a sign that said “Be kinder than necessary for everyone you meet is fighting some kind of battle”. I liked that for its poignancy and will try to keep it in mind while I’m over here. I’m sure Ranger cap, Mr. Happy Springbutt, and Mystery Fatass How Are You Still On Active Duty have weird things going on in their orbits.
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