The following post is actually written by a colleague of mine who wishes to remain "anonymous", but what he wrote was so profound and moving to me, that I asked his permission to post it.
"The recent excitement over the rocket attack and the flooding in the admin building are reminders that what we are doing here is very serious. We are in perilous and austere conditions. We feel for the injured and wish him well. Some (including myself) complain about difficulties and inconveniences while others simply did their best to get a job done in bad conditions. I’ll admit that I only picked up pushing water by following the example of a certain someone of a much higher pay grade pushing water out of the building. But as bad as we may see things, we need to remember what the military puts up with.
I was returning to KAF on a plane full of passengers. Our luggage was on a pallet towards the rear, blocking our view to the cargo hatch. We were experiencing an unusually long delay. Many had fallen asleep already. Others were trying. Some were reading books. No one was really paying attention. As I was growing impatient, I had to wonder what was keeping us so long. I got my answer.
A truck backed up to our cargo entrance. Four marines gathered in a square formation behind it. They began performing a ceremony as they opened the back of the truck to reveal a casket with a flag draped over it. I believe I was the only one who saw this due to the sleeping, and the pallet blocking our view. Partially stunned and unfamiliar with military protocol as I was, I didn’t know whether it would be appropriate to stand up. Furthermore, this engineer was restrained by an odd seatbelt mechanism to which he hadn’t taken time to figure out the release. (bad idea). So I remained seated as the body was brought aboard the aircraft and placed behind the pallet.
I then had a flashback to earlier that day. A marine NCO was chewing out a private for misbehavior. I’ll have to edit his military speech for content (just insert the appropriate epithets at will). YELLING two inches away from the private’s face: “This is the real thing! My buddy just got killed yesterday! You’ve got to get it through your head how serious this is! This is your call to duty! No more time for screwing around!”
As far as I knew, there was only one recently reported death in the vicinity of this base. I couldn’t help but entertain the notion that this casket contained the body of this NCO’s friend. I say “friend” because I could tell from his words that it was not just a faceless “fallen comrade”. This was someone he knew. A buddy.
When we landed at Kandahar we experienced a similar delay. This time I knew what it was about, so I had a lot more patience despite my overflowing bladder. Finally the cargo door opened and a truck appeared a few minutes later. This time, we all rose as the troops came marching up the ramp. We awaited their departure with some reverence. I can’t describe the mix of emotions I had since I was so tired (it was almost midnight after I only had four hours of sleep the night before) and because I’m not sure if I have the words to describe it (uncharacteristic considering my traditional loquaciousness, loquacity, loquaciosityesness… I talk a lot). What I can say is: I will probably never forget it.
We often tend to think about the fallen soldier as just another number. This is what they signed up for. We forget they are real people who have just died. They matter to people who knew them. Maybe they should matter more to us. Maybe it took one of our own getting injured to remind us that the troops put themselves in harm’s way all the time. This is a real war regardless of what the politicians think. Just remember the saying attributed to Osterkamp.
"All gave some. Some gave all."
My thanks to my colleague for sharing his experience. I think he captures precisely what gets lost every day here and at home. I would submit that not only these brave young men - the pick and flower of America, NATO and other nations of the world who are here risk all - but also those who support them in their efforts.
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Filling in the Details
I find that at night before I go to bed, my posts ...if I make a post....are so brief as to leave the reader wondering about the details. Last week when we had the rocket attack, due to operational security and just relative closeness to the event, I didn't feel it appropriate to be very detailed at all.
The night of the rocket attack was a particularly long night - because we had 3 separate attacks - each of which require us to get to the bunkers. Additionally for me, being the Operations Manager, I'm responsible for 100% accountability of our staff on site after each attack. There are roughly 1200 of us on Kandahar Airfield - give or take a standard deviaiton. So my night was totally hosed simply with gaining accountability of people and making sure they were all accounted for. On top of that I was on a staffing call with the Recruiting team in the US, which had already gone on for 2 and a half hours because of the detail we were going through and the previous attacks.
Rocket Attack - Safety. The reality is that by the time the alarm sounds, there are probably 3-10 seconds (ere on the 3 side) before impact of the rockets. Most of the time, there are not "follow-on" rockets. Unlike Iraq when I was there in 2007, most of the buildings here are NOT hardened structures - mainly metal shipping containers, providing little or no protection from indirect fire. So the best thing to do when you hear the alarm is to hit the dirt, wait 2 minutes time, then get up and move to the bunkers. Not everybody follows that procedure, but that's is the"best" advice. Running outside immediately could be bad because you don't have the time to make it to the bunker before impact.
The 3rd attack of the night occurred at about 2145 hours, and like most other attacks you don't necessarily always hear any impact. This time I heard an impact, but being inside a building - I couldn't tell where it was. I remember shouting to the people in the room to stay put until after a few minutes - which they and I did. When we emerged from the building toward the bunkers I heard someone yell that someone was hit. So I sprinted toward where they were pointing to find a man covered in blood being attended to by our medics. It appeared his hand was wrapped up and he was clearly in shock. I could see also a hole in the side of the metal container which contained a shower unit. Clearly he had been in that unit when the rocket struck. There were also people saying that there was another impact out in the road adjacen to the camp.
I made my way up the stairs behind where the man was sitting, and began going from room to room banking on doors trying to determine if anyone else was injured. I opened the door of the shower unit to see if anyone else was and could see the damage inside, including the blood and mess from the man who was injured. Our project manager also went inside the shower unit, and reported that the rocket motor was visible inside. It didn't appear that the rocket detonated, but simply impacted striking the individual. What are the odds of that?
It wasn't long before the base ambulance arrived to take the gentleman to the Combat Surgical Hospital or CSH (prounounced CASH). In the meantime the Explosive Ordinance Disposal team or EOD showed up to survey the area, and look for any unexploded ordinance. It wasn't long before they determined that in fact the rocket did not detonate, and had in fact split into two pieces - the warhead and the motor. Apparently the rocket landing in the road outside our compound, split into two separate projectiles, punched through the fence - through a vehicle and the motor entered the shower unit, while the warhead continued on over the building landing a good quarter mile away, unexploded. Frankly, if it had detonated in the street - there probably would have been less human damage, as the line of vehicles along that fence would likely have absorbed the blast. But it didn't, and in a 1 in a million shot, the motor of the rocket bounced up through a fence, a vehicle and into the shower unit precisely where a man stood brushing his teeth. In another 1 in a million of chance the rocket motor entered the building at an angle moving left to right in front of the mans face striking his hand which was holding his toothbrush to his mouth, causing significant damage to his hand (amputating his thumb), but missing his head by mere inches. Unbelieveable - in so many ways. How lucky this man was that the rocket didn't have a warhead at the time, that it passed within inches of his head, and he is alive. Reality check! This is real - and that combat first aid training we all received before we arrived.....time to bone up on it.
The post script here is that this gentleman is now back in the United States receiving the care he needs from a Level 1 Trauma Hospital - and with the Lords blessing will have a wonderful life knowing how precious that life is. We all can sense how precious that is .... we saw it with our own eyes.
The night of the rocket attack was a particularly long night - because we had 3 separate attacks - each of which require us to get to the bunkers. Additionally for me, being the Operations Manager, I'm responsible for 100% accountability of our staff on site after each attack. There are roughly 1200 of us on Kandahar Airfield - give or take a standard deviaiton. So my night was totally hosed simply with gaining accountability of people and making sure they were all accounted for. On top of that I was on a staffing call with the Recruiting team in the US, which had already gone on for 2 and a half hours because of the detail we were going through and the previous attacks.
Rocket Attack - Safety. The reality is that by the time the alarm sounds, there are probably 3-10 seconds (ere on the 3 side) before impact of the rockets. Most of the time, there are not "follow-on" rockets. Unlike Iraq when I was there in 2007, most of the buildings here are NOT hardened structures - mainly metal shipping containers, providing little or no protection from indirect fire. So the best thing to do when you hear the alarm is to hit the dirt, wait 2 minutes time, then get up and move to the bunkers. Not everybody follows that procedure, but that's is the"best" advice. Running outside immediately could be bad because you don't have the time to make it to the bunker before impact.
The 3rd attack of the night occurred at about 2145 hours, and like most other attacks you don't necessarily always hear any impact. This time I heard an impact, but being inside a building - I couldn't tell where it was. I remember shouting to the people in the room to stay put until after a few minutes - which they and I did. When we emerged from the building toward the bunkers I heard someone yell that someone was hit. So I sprinted toward where they were pointing to find a man covered in blood being attended to by our medics. It appeared his hand was wrapped up and he was clearly in shock. I could see also a hole in the side of the metal container which contained a shower unit. Clearly he had been in that unit when the rocket struck. There were also people saying that there was another impact out in the road adjacen to the camp.
I made my way up the stairs behind where the man was sitting, and began going from room to room banking on doors trying to determine if anyone else was injured. I opened the door of the shower unit to see if anyone else was and could see the damage inside, including the blood and mess from the man who was injured. Our project manager also went inside the shower unit, and reported that the rocket motor was visible inside. It didn't appear that the rocket detonated, but simply impacted striking the individual. What are the odds of that?
It wasn't long before the base ambulance arrived to take the gentleman to the Combat Surgical Hospital or CSH (prounounced CASH). In the meantime the Explosive Ordinance Disposal team or EOD showed up to survey the area, and look for any unexploded ordinance. It wasn't long before they determined that in fact the rocket did not detonate, and had in fact split into two pieces - the warhead and the motor. Apparently the rocket landing in the road outside our compound, split into two separate projectiles, punched through the fence - through a vehicle and the motor entered the shower unit, while the warhead continued on over the building landing a good quarter mile away, unexploded. Frankly, if it had detonated in the street - there probably would have been less human damage, as the line of vehicles along that fence would likely have absorbed the blast. But it didn't, and in a 1 in a million shot, the motor of the rocket bounced up through a fence, a vehicle and into the shower unit precisely where a man stood brushing his teeth. In another 1 in a million of chance the rocket motor entered the building at an angle moving left to right in front of the mans face striking his hand which was holding his toothbrush to his mouth, causing significant damage to his hand (amputating his thumb), but missing his head by mere inches. Unbelieveable - in so many ways. How lucky this man was that the rocket didn't have a warhead at the time, that it passed within inches of his head, and he is alive. Reality check! This is real - and that combat first aid training we all received before we arrived.....time to bone up on it.
The post script here is that this gentleman is now back in the United States receiving the care he needs from a Level 1 Trauma Hospital - and with the Lords blessing will have a wonderful life knowing how precious that life is. We all can sense how precious that is .... we saw it with our own eyes.On the downside - once EOD cleared our compound - which was about 2230 hours, it was back into the office - back on the call with the US - back at work until it was done. Still not sure how I feel about that.
When it rains ...... it Pours
Southern Afghanistan is predominantly a series of rocky, jagged mountains plopped in the middle of barren desert floor. Range after range these mountains and desert floors on and on in succession. The soil is such that it barely absorbs water if at all. When it does rain, it has to run off - and these rocky mountain tops run water straight down the wadi's onto the open desert floor. Just so happens, that one of these drainages runs right through Kandahar Airport. Consequently - it runs right through the airbase that surrounds the airport.
Sunday evening in Kandahar it started raining, and throughout the evening it got progressively harder - to include lightning and thunder. It was a muddy mess when I went to bed that night around midnight. I was fast asleep when the phone rang at 1am. It was one of our staff calling to tell me that a flood had begun running through our camp and our administration building (2 months old) was inundated with water on the ground floor. I turned on the lights, got my clothes on and headed out into the rain to see for myself.
I was absolutely stunned to find a literal river running in between our billeting area and the administration building. It was obvious the water was up against the building - and looking into the night - I could see that the current actually hit straight into the back of the building and wrapped around both sides - clearly entering the outside doors on both the North and South sides of the building. So I stepped headlong into the torrent and waded across the newly formed river. At it's deepest part it it was about 2 and a half feet deep as I walked through it to the building. I went up the outside stairs so as to not open the outside door, to find several people inside saying the downstairs was flooding. 
Sure enough, as I descended the stairs, water was rushing under the doors, around the doors, under the aluminum siding of the building, and in some cases, bubbling up through the concrete floor. It continued to rain - the water continued to rise, and by 3am, containers in the yard adjacent to our camp were floating down the road. Two of the billeting blocks on the back side of our camp were also under water, so I spent a half hour knocking on doors, waking people up to ge them to unplug their electric cords, etc. until we could get the power turned off.
We resolved that there was no way to stop the water coming in the main building, but if we could keep it from getting deeper than the base boards or kicker boards in the building, we might save the dry wall. We discovered that the 3rd entrance on the ground floor - on the west side of the building was about 1/2 inch higher than the waterline on this back side of the building, so we opened that door, and began trying to create a current to move the water out of the building. All night long we did this. A security officer, myself, a Bosnian named Jisenko - who will do anything for you, and a few volunteers - who were flooded out of their rooms.
We were armed with 2 push brooms. Not much to battle mother nature with - until - Jisenko decided we could use the metal doors off of storage cabinets as giant squeegee's. With no sleep to speak of, and utterly exhausted - by 3am we were bending over and using these metal doors to push the water out of the building.
One of our happy group was getting regular Super Bowl updates as we worked through the night. By 6am the water had begun to recede, and we were finally able to open all the doors and begin pushing water out in all directions. By the time the rest of the camp was up and awake, we were well into "recovery" phase, having kep the water from rising above the baseboards. We were beat. I made it to my room at about 9:30 in the morning, and utterly crashed into my rack for a few hours of sleep - and by the time I got back to the building a little after noon, it didn't look half bad in there.
After the Rockets, and floods - I'm afraid to ask what next.......locusts maybe?
Thursday, February 4, 2010
Good Day / Bad Day
It's my oldest son - Jake's 16th birthday today. I'm 8,000 miles away. I'm melancholy and wishing I were there. But it's a great day for Jake - Happy Birthday - I'm so pround of you!
I haven't written much or anything since I've been back, mainly because I have been so busy, but also because things have been pretty crazy. In the past 3 years, there have been no insurgent rocket attacks against Kandahar Airfield in the month of January. The last week in January we were rocketed 6 out of 7 days. We did end up having to wear Body armor and helmets for several of those days after dark. The rockets always come after dark.
Our billeting area on Kandahar Air Base is known as Camp Hicks, named after a DynCorp employee who passed away early on in this program. Tonight - the Taliban found us at Camp Hicks. We had a rocket hit one of our billeting blocks, penetrating a bathroom wall and inuring a man (one of our staff) who was in the bathroom at the time. It was the 3rd Rocket attack of the night against KAF, and unfortunately it found its mark in our camp. I happened to be working in the main office building at the time, and was immediately thrown into the absolute confusion of trying to asses the damage, inuries and accountabilities of all of our staff.
Adrenaline is starting to wear off, and it's approaching 1am. I'm tired, somewhat disappointed in how post incident the work we were doing went right back on. I know things have to move forward, but it bothered me in this event. I'm not sure if I'll write more about this or not.
I haven't written much or anything since I've been back, mainly because I have been so busy, but also because things have been pretty crazy. In the past 3 years, there have been no insurgent rocket attacks against Kandahar Airfield in the month of January. The last week in January we were rocketed 6 out of 7 days. We did end up having to wear Body armor and helmets for several of those days after dark. The rockets always come after dark.
Our billeting area on Kandahar Air Base is known as Camp Hicks, named after a DynCorp employee who passed away early on in this program. Tonight - the Taliban found us at Camp Hicks. We had a rocket hit one of our billeting blocks, penetrating a bathroom wall and inuring a man (one of our staff) who was in the bathroom at the time. It was the 3rd Rocket attack of the night against KAF, and unfortunately it found its mark in our camp. I happened to be working in the main office building at the time, and was immediately thrown into the absolute confusion of trying to asses the damage, inuries and accountabilities of all of our staff.
Adrenaline is starting to wear off, and it's approaching 1am. I'm tired, somewhat disappointed in how post incident the work we were doing went right back on. I know things have to move forward, but it bothered me in this event. I'm not sure if I'll write more about this or not.
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