Krazy in Kandahar

Its amazing how much can happen in a few short days. This darn blog thing is hard - because at the end of the day when you are tired, the last thing you want to do is stare at the computer some more and catch this up. But I will do so tonight, and hopefully I won't forget too many of the main highlights...

So I spent my 44th birthday on October 9th in Kuwait City. Worked most of the day - and my sweet wife kept sending me emails, and pinging me on Skype to tell me happy birthday. I'm not one to advertise my birthday because I really don't like that kind of attention, but with my computer constantly pinging while working with Gen. Close, he couldn't help but notice it was my birthday. He was very cool and took me out to dinner and we had some awesome middle easter food, and then stopped by a Marble Slab Creamery for ice cream after. All in all not bad. Then when I got back to my hotel room, the hotel had left a birthday cake in the room for me.

Saturday October 10th was our deployment date from Kuwait into Kandahar. There were 82 of us adventurous souls (crazy idiots) on our charter flight from Kuwait to Kandahar. Problem with that is that 72 of those folks were of Indian, Pakistani, Nepalese, or whatever nationality, and things didn't go as smoothly as you'd like. One issue had nothing to do with nationalities - more it had to do with equipment - specifically military helmets. Our flight out of Kuwait was delayed for a few hours while DynCorp tried to locate some helmets to go with us. Seems the ones we were to take were stuck in customs, and being the weekend - couldn't be gotten out. So it took a while to track down replacements.

The problem with being late is that flying into Kandahar is a military airfield - and if you miss your landing slot - you don't land. We flew south over the Persian Gulf and landed in Muscat, Oman for refueling. It is here where the pilot told us we were not getting in to Kandahar, and we had to sit on the tarmac, on the plane for 3 hours until our landing slot opened up again. This is where the whole nationalities thing gets wacky....

Seems being stuck in a seat on an airplane not moving is not something a guy with a real bad jones for a cigarette can tolerate sometimes...and we had constant problems sitting on the tarmac with these third country nationals (TCNs) going into the bathroom and lighting up...so much so we had to post a sentry of sorts next to the lavatories to stop that $%^&. Finally after three hours we were able to get moving again toward Afghanistan, to make a night time landing at Kandahar Air Field. About 20 miles out, the Pilot turned off all the lights in and on the airplane - pitch black approach into this airfield - obviously to not become a target for any insurgent fire. It was kinda creepy - althought not much different than riding a C-130 into Baghdad - same exercize. But the charter flight is a bit more comfortible than that old C-130 for sure.

We got into Kandahar at 2200 hrs and it probably took a couple hours just to get through security and get transported to our temporary billeting area. A giant tent - probably 50 yards long and 20 yards wide - loaded wall to wall with bunk beds. Luckily - at the time we got there - nobody was in this tent. We had it all to ourselves. Note to the untraveled - It's October all over the world - and in a climate like Afghanistan - desert nights get cold. I wasn' t prepared to be cold when I got here, so I had to go searching for a long sleeve shirt.

So - here we are - middle of the night - we drop off our gear on bunk beds - then reload transports to be taken to the lay down yard to get our Personal Protective Equipment (PPE). The lay down yard just happens to be situated immedately adjacent to the base wastewater lagoons. Notice I didn't say "treatment" lagoons - just lagoons. The smell of the lagoons - hydrogen sulfide gas (H2S) was so bad - frankly it reminded me of being a utility director in Fort Mojave, Arizona. Desert, dust, Wastewater smell everywhere - Fort Mojave - Kandahar - no big difference - it all smells the same.

We get back to our billets - and it occurs to me - there's no bedding here....what am I sleeping in? Just about then somebody walks in with a box of sleeping bags. Whew.. Big Tent, cold weather, sleeping bags.....usually this means it's Elk hunting season. Not so much..

It's official - I'm Krazy in Kandahar.