Halfway there!

Remember when the catch phrase was “boots on the ground”? That still applies.  But most deployments at this stage of the war are for nine months – not a year like they used to be. However, my tour IS for a year. To put it in the proper terminology, my tour is for 365 boots on ground. Well, with little fanfare involved, I have crossed the halfway point. Today dawned as day 182 of my stay in Afghanistan. High noon represented the moment I crossed the meridian, the midway point, the hump, or whatever else I choose to call it. At precisely that hour I reached 4,380 hours and am now counting back down. As I write, I have 4,372 hours to go. That’s a little less than 182 and a half days remaining. If, in fact, 365 is a precise number with no hiccups then I can expect to be on a big airplane out of here come September 8^th.

Appropriately so, today was very uneventful. Being a Sunday, I was able to sleep in a couple of extra hours and then lounge with some fresh coffee in my room. Sundays, barring any emergencies, are my “reset” days. After some splendid coffee (Café Du Monde courtesy of my Mom), I put in a couple of hours at the gym. The weather has taken on a spring feel with a hint of humidity. With my workout complete I showered up and headed to the office to ensure there were no pressing issues. There weren’t. None came up either so I had no significant stress events that can come out of nowhere on this base.

But the day did not go off without any incidents. Just as I was about to get up and walk to supper the dreaded IDF alarm sounded. “Incoming! Incoming! Incoming!” Damn! My supper would have to wait. Perhaps this was a Taliban sponsored celebration of my deployment milestone? No it was just the Taliban being their normal, awful selves. I hate those guys. Stupid Taliban. Fortunately, their aim was bad as usual and the “All Clear” sounded soon afterward.  I celebrated my special day with a fine selection of Dragon DFAC delectable delights. Tomorrow it will be 181 days and counting down.

sC-RAMbled eggs

And so another month comes to a close. Another month begins. The arrival of March signifies the halfway point for this tour. I’m not quite exactly at the six month milestone but it is only days away. Time is certainly flying by in chunks. It seems odd because some days drag on like an eternity. Sometimes my calendar seems to be on the same month for inordinate stretches. But, inexorably, time does march on. The drumbeat continues in Afghanistan.

I was thinking today about how significantly different my eating habits are here. Last Friday I had a chance to ride out to the giant food distribution warehouse that supplies multiple bases in central and northern Afghanistan. It is a colossal facility that makes a regional Walmart distribution center look puny. While walking through the mammoth cold storage area I saw countless pallets of fresh eggs waiting to be loaded for shipment. That triggered my thoughts that continued into today. I love eggs. But I never eat them here. As a matter of fact, as big of a fan of breakfast as I am I never go to that meal at the DFAC. I know they serve eggs to order, omelets, boiled eggs, and just about all the accompanying breakfast treats. But when I’m deployed I always choose to make coffee in my room and eat cereal. I like to snack between meals. But I don’t snack when I’m deployed. I just eat a big lunch and supper in the DFAC. Strangely enough, I eat way more fresh fruits and vegetables every time I’m deployed and this go-round is no exception. Many people say that deployments are a great place to get in shape. That is a true statement. Even though I’m already a fitness nut, I always walk away from deployments in the best shape I’ve been in since the last deployment. Again, this one is no exception either. Right now I am tipping the scales at about 157 pounds, which is the lightest I’ve been in a decade. Not drinking any beer, of course, is a big part of that. But the combination of my deployment eating habits and workouts have definitely combined to put me in the best shape since – you guessed it – my last deployment. Actually I’m in even better shape.

There’s a new edition to Bagram these days. I’ve described them before on previous deployment blogs. C-RAM (Counter-Rocket Artillery Mortar) batteries are finally on the base. They are only 12 years overdue. The past few days they’ve been announcing their presence by conducting random test fires. The C-RAM is like a big electric Gatlin Gun. When it fires it emits a stream of bullets at a rate of over 1,000 a minute. They sound like the biggest, baddest, and loudest chainsaw you’ve ever heard. I find their music comforting. I’m glad they are finally here.

Groundhog Day

Back in the early ‘90’s a great movie was released – Groundhog Day. Bill Murray portrays a news station weatherman who is tasked to cover the annual ceremony of “Punxsutawney Phil” the groundhog and his winter prediction. But Bill Murray’s character gets caught into a cycle of repeating Groundhog Day continually until he gets it right. In doing so, he finds love and happiness with a few crazy moments along the way. For those of us who’ve deployed, the movie’s reference to Groundhog Day has now become synonymous with the experience of every day seeming exactly the same. In other words, it doesn’t take long into a deployment for every day to be Groundhog Day. I reached that point on this deployment long ago. Every day in Bagram is Groundhog Day. But, unlike Bill Murray’s character in the movie, we don’t all finally get it right and move on to the next day. It’s just doldrums in which every day is a repeat. The routines are the same, the meetings are the same, the people are the same, the scenery never changes, and the clock seems to move in reverse. Since there is little to do during off-duty hours, most of us simply live a pattern of work, eat, sleep, workout, and then work some more. Yes, I do have my cigar night at the old Russian Control Tower. And I do get an extra hour of sleep on Sunday mornings. But those special events only serve as weekly markers for the steady barrage of days in which the day of the week is irrelevant. Sometimes I’m not even sure what day of the week it is unless I refer to the calendar. Have I really been here six months now?

The Winter Olympics in Sochi came and went without little interest around here. I began to suspect I was jinxing the US Hockey Teams. I watched the women’s team lose a heartbreaker in overtime to the Canadians. Then I watched the men also lose to Canada. Thinking they would take the bronze, I tuned into AFN the next night only to see the men get blown out by Finland. That’s when I stopped watching the Olympics altogether. Nobody at work was talking about the games so I assumed everyone here was indifferent. Either that or we are all walking zombies numbed by the continual Bagram Beatdown. In the meantime, the drumbeat continues. Every day seems like the one that preceded it and serves as a harbinger of the day to come. Yes, this is Groundhog Day done Bagram style. In the words of LTC Bob Kilgore from Apocalypse Now, “Someday this war’s gonna end.” That day isn’t today.

In honor of the late, great Mr. Harold Ramis. Thank you for making us laugh for all these years. May you rest in peace.

Warm Spell

We’ve all been so used to the cold that warm weather took us by surprise. It was a pleasant surprise for certain. The warm up was accompanied by spectacularly clear days that allowed remarkable panoramic views of the mountains that surround the base. Practically every detail of these snow-covered formations stood out in vivid clarity. I was kicking myself at continually forgetting to grab my camera. The mountains are very beautiful right now and would be a skier’s dream if we didn’t have to worry about landmines and Taliban. I’ve compared them to the mountains I saw in New Zealand last summer and for good reason.  The mountains around Bagram are part of the Hindu Kush that stretches across Afghanistan and Pakistan. Their formations are very similar to the Southern Alps of New Zealand and remain snow-capped year round. But as beautiful as the Hindu Kush mountains appear, they are also foreboding and with the melting of the snow-bound passes they will allow a return of the fighting season in Afghanistan. It’s around the corner.

For now it’s been very quiet. My OPTEMPO has been steady but not the fever pitch it’s been running at in the past. The past couple of days have been marked by a contractor symposium held here at Bagram. I attended parts of both days in order to hear the major contracting companies lay down their respective plans for either getting out of Afghanistan or shrink their footprints. It would be impossible for us to be successful here without them so it’s critical that we balance the services they provide with our retrograde. I saw it in Iraq too. Now the time has come in Afghanistan. We’ll all be “expeditionary” in no time.

Unfortunately, the warm spell only lasted a couple of days. Just when I thought to remember my camera it cooled back off and clouded over. Now it looks like some cold rain or snow is on the horizon. Oh well, that will hold off the fighting season for a few more days. Quiet is a good thing here.

Windshield Tours

Bagram is a dirty place. There is no green. Even the trees that line Disney Avenue are covered with dust, mud, and the droppings of the hundreds of birds that congregate on them in the late afternoons. The mountains in the distance are a contrast of gray, black, and the white caps of snow. The roads are a craggy mess of potholes, broken pavement, massive puddles of questionable depth, and barely visible lines. Various construction projects are in every direction with no apparent coordination or planning. Giant piles of dirt from multiple excavations can be found at the most inopportune of locations. There is no sense of order to anything about the base except that at the heart of the place is a giant runway. From there the city planning ran amuck over the past decade. It’s a reflection of changing priorities and leadership turnover that happens every year or so. As a result, the base is a convoluted collection of sub-camps that have no obvious connection to one another. Basically, the entire base just sprouted up around the airfield in mini growth spurts of necessity. Now, with the end in sight this year, it is left to me and my Garrison staff to try and tie some working infrastructure together in a manner that supports the entire base. It is a myriad of complex problems that I refer to as the “cans that have been kicked down the road” from one year to the next. They all landed in my lap and since it appears I’m the last in line I am the one left holding all of them. I will not punt these cans any further. We’ll get all these projects – the sewer system, the water service, the solid waste facility, etc. – completed for whatever is to become of this place. Yes, I know, they should have been completed a long, long time ago. I can’t do much about how ugly this place is, but I can make it a more functional base and we’re making that a reality.

Multiple times a week I will hop in my car and conduct a “windshield tour” of the base. I’m just out looking at things and checking on the progress of everything. It can be depressing because at the superficial level it never appears like anything has been done. With the snows and rains of late it makes everything even more disgusting to look at or traverse. But progress is being made. The only way I can know that is to be out there inspecting first-hand. Just this past week, I made a stop at the massive Ammunition Supply Point (ASP). The Bagram ASP is the largest in the country. It handles everything from 5.56mm rifle ammunition to giant 2,000 pound aerial bombs. We’ve had a lot of work ongoing there to finish up the earthen berms that house the ammo safely. It’s been no easy task given the weather. In spite of the mud, the berms are going up at a rapid clip. But you’d never know it just to look at the place from a distance. I had to get a lot of mud on my boots to truly appreciate what is going on.

Bagram takes on the appearance of a place that has vexed many before me. I’m the latest to enter a stare-down contest with the place. I haven’t blinked yet but neither has Bagram. I’m going to take down this beast known as Bagram if it harelips the governor of Parwan Province. There are a lot of windshield tours to go yet.

Climb to Glory

For once in a rare occasion the team I was rooting for won the Super Bowl. The game kicked off at 0330 Monday morning. I did not get up for the start. As a matter of fact, I didn't even turn the game on until the end of the third quarter. The score validated my decision not to waste precious sleep by getting up three hours earlier than normal. It's been a long time since a Super Bowl was so one-sided. That being said, I am glad Seattle won. But it is rather melancholy to note that football season is over. At least it does represent the end of another phase of this deployment and the beginning of the next. In two short months baseball season will return. Then I can browse my eight channels of AFN in search of the Red Sox.

Another aspect of this deployment came to an end this week as well. On a cold, snowy morning a ceremony was held in one of the giant C130 aircraft hangers. The event was a Transfer-of-Authority (TOA) between my outgoing and incoming 2-Star level command. Bagram is located in an area of operations known as Regional Command East. Ever since I arrived the 101st Airborne (Air Assault) Division out of Fort Campbell, Kentucky has been in charge. Their "Screaming Eagle" patch could be seen everywhere. Passing Soldiers would salute and say "Air Assault!" This always created a dilemma for me, as I'm not Air Assault qualified and not organic to the 101st. I'd usually respond with a return of the salute paired with a friendly morning, afternoon, or evening greeting. But now there's a new sheriff in town. The new 2-Star General is the commander of 10th Mountain Division out of Fort Drum, New York. Overnight the Screaming Eagle signs disappeared to be replaced by the insignia of the "Climb to Glory" Division. I think the Mountain Soldiers even brought the snow with them just to feel more at home. My dilemma remains though. Now, instead of "Air Assault!" I get greeted with "Climb to Glory!" But I welcome the new leadership. The Screaming Eagles had completed their latest "Rendezvous with Destiny" and were ready to go home. The new leadership brings with them fresh ideas and renewed energy as we continue to close out operations in Afghanistan. I'm embracing the change. The snow can go away though. This place gets messy when it snows.

Super Bowl Eve

Another Super Bowl is upon us. This will be the fifth time I'll have to watch at an ungodly hour due to deployment. The game coverage starts at 0330 Monday morning for us. I'm not even certain I'll get up to watch. I don't really care for either team. With that in mind, I guess I'll root for the Seahawks since they've never won a Super Bowl. In the event I do get up to watch, I hope that it is at least an entertaining game and not a blowout. There are some activities planned around Bagram for the game. None of them involve beer though. I only say that because in years past there have been exceptions to  policy that allowed strictly monitored beer consumption for the game. That's not the case this year. The best event going is a pizza party at one of the dining facilities. I doubt I'll go. In the event I do get up to watch the game I'll most likely do so in the privacy of my room. That way the bed is nearby if the game is a bore.

Lots of change is in the air here lately. Many units are transitioning. It all keeps Garrison busy. But, then again, we're always busy. The weather has been pleasantly mild of late and that is much welcomed. Another month is complete too. Now there are seven more to go. It's been 150 days since my last beer. There are many more beer-less days ahead. The Super Bowl offers no exception. Oh well, I can't complain. Bagram is quiet these days and time is flying by. And from this rambling blog entry you should be able to tell that I've got nothing significant to report. Stay tuned - that is certain to change.