By: Vincent J. Curtis
Date: 2 Dec 10
Dateline: Forward Operating Base Sharana
Reaching the military base at Kabul Airport, most of the way around the world from Buffalo, took two days of hard traveling. Getting to FOB Sharana from Kabul took a whole other day.
You could call that day one of productive confusion. Productive, because I got to see things that excessive haste would have denied me, and I had the time to talk casually and at length with people who have a lot of experience in theatre. Confusion, because who was responsible for what in making travel arrangements was not clear to me, and I missed the flight I was scheduled to be on.
To get to FOB Sharana, where Task Force Currahee is based, one has to go through Bagram Air Base. A fifteen minute flight from Kabul Airport. One flies to Bagram from KAIA (Kabul Afghanistan International Airport) because the road between them is so poor. And frequently mined with IEDs (improvised explosive devices). Without delays due to mines, the road move from KIA to Bagram is said to take over an hour. To fly that fifteen minutes from KIA to Bagram takes up to three hours of waiting.
The KIA base is used both as a dispatch point for patrols and to house transients like myself, who come in and out of Kabul and need accommodations. The waiting area of the terminal is outside the departure check-in area because the terminal building is so small. Several patrols, including patrols with Special Operations guys, were organizing in the parking lot in front of the terminal building. The Special Operations guys were dressed in non-descript, subdued colored clothing, and tended to wear an Arabic style neck scarf. The leaders appeared to be in their fifties. They were all armed with short barreled, collapsing stock assault rifles. The tough look these guys had on their faces put the characters I saw in Dubai and Frankfort airports into the “wannabe” category.
Missing the first scheduled flight between KIA and Bagram meant that it would not be until 1:00 in the afternoon that I would reach Bagram. The flight, which happened in broad daylight, provided another glimpse of the city of Kabul and the countryside around it, and added to the brief glimpse of the city I had from the taxi ride from the civilian side to the military side of KIA.
The city of Kabul is extremely poor, and the worst slum in America is palatial by comparison. This is hard-core, third world poverty on display. There are some nice looking buildings well away from the airport, but Kabul on the whole is terrible. It lacks a sewer system and a water system. Poor people burn old tires for warmth, and the far end of the airport is invisible from the terminal due to the haze and dust.
The check-in at KIA shows how ridiculous strict adherence to procedure can be. Soldiers with weapons had to put their weapons, body armor, and any other metal objects, such as knives and coins, on a belt which carried them through a standard airport metal detector. They then walk through a metal detector themselves just like in any standard airport. If metal is found on them, they are made to go back and put it through the conveyor belt detector and walk through the detector for people again. Upon having passed through the screening successfully, they pick up their weapons, body armor, knives, etc. at the far end of the belt and proceed to the departure lounge to await boarding. The point of confirming by X-ray that an M4 assault rifle really is a rifle-shaped metal object, and then handing it back to its owner for him to board the plane with, is hard to fathom. I saw the same thing in Iraq.
The flight to Bagram carried us over the countryside north east of Kabul. Since the altitude of the flight was low the details of the country side were plain. Although seemingly barren from high altitude, the countryside is actually dotted with small villages and walled compounds, which ascend near to the top of the hills. The hills are craggy and really amount to small mountains. Walled enclosures are common and appear to protect cultivated areas. At this time of the year nothing grows, and the interiors of the compounds are as khaki- brown as everything else. The walls are quite high and thick; banditry is not new to Afghanistan.
The soil here is a mixture of khaki-colored pulverized dust and two-inch sized stones. The ground is as hard packed as cement, but there is enough free pulverized dust that it gets everywhere and coats everything. Bottled water is available everywhere on base, and you need lots of water to wash down all that dust. One seems always parched with thirst from the dust.
The layover in Bagram meant that the flight to Forward Operating Base Sharana would land in darkness. The flight was aboard an older C-130 Hercules transport aircraft. On the flight, the passengers, who were mostly 101st Airborne troops, were packed into the jumpseats of the Herc like sardines. We were given earplugs because the noise inside the aircraft would otherwise be unbearable. Taking off in total darkness, the soldiers and I were pitched from one side to the other as the aircraft took off down the runway, climbed to altitude, and leveled off. It was completely dark inside. With no light and no hearing, it was like sensory deprivation. Only the fumes of the fuel, the growing heat inside the plane, and the sense of compression from all the bodies gave any sensation at all.
Fortunately, the flight was only an hour in length, and almost all the passengers were members of the 101st Airborne Division, who are experienced in this kind of flying. I was thankful for having missed lunch.
Finally, we landed in complete blackness at Forward Operating Base Sharana, which is the location of the forward operating headquarters of Task Force Currahee. Now the real work of the embed can commence.
-30-
No comments:
Post a Comment