A Battlefield Tourist

Time to Go

Mar 12 at 4:04pm by David Tate

A British chopper takes of from Musa Qala District Center, Helmand Province

February 22, 2009 – Musa Qala, Helmand Province

The Marines like to move early and my embed extraction would be no different.  In pre-dawn darkness, you could hear the huge CH-53 “Super Stallions”, but couldn’t see them.  They were supposed to be bringing in some vehicles that would be dropped onto the landing zone (LZ).

Once the vehicles were dropped, the huge heavy lift choppers would be offloaded, and then loaded, for a trip to Bastion.  This would be the first of several support trips for these chopper crews in what sounded like a busy day.

The choppers made several passes before finally dropping their loads; each time we would hunker behind a HESCO or vehicle as ill fated protection against the wind and sand blasting us as a result of the heavy blades coming in.

Once the choppers were unloaded, and reloaded, we filed into the end of the chopper with no room to spare.  It was the exact opposite of the trip in.

Also different this time around was the temperature was no where near as cold.  Of course this time I’m ready for it.

Back at Bastion

The trip to Bastion from Musa Qala isn’t very long at all.  The plan was for my PAO to meet me at the helo pad and then get me into position to catch a flight to Kandahar.

Once at Bastion, I watched as everyone but myself and an interpreter got picked up… and we waited.

Not being one to wait too long, after I inquired, the PFC at the pad offered up a ride to the flight line; an offer I took after just a few seconds of thinking.  I knew there were three flights on this day, the first coming in just an hour or two, so I decided to make my way over in hopes of manifesting myself on the flight.

Once there, it was just a matter of handing over my passport for identification and manifesting on the flight.  After a short wait punctuated by hockey puck coffee, I was in a line of about 15 troops and contractors making our way across the tarmac to the rumbling C-130 that would take me to KAF (Kandahar Air Field).

KAF

I landed at KAF around 1100 and was making incredible time.  I had built an extra week onto the schedule to get out of country and I was well ahead of schedule.  It is at this juncture that I start worrying about time.  While there may be a lot of flights scheduled for Bagram and Kabul, many are cancelled due to the weather.  In this particular week, weather in Kabul was wintry, so I anticipated a few days in Kandahar.

I was expecting someone to meet me at Whiskey Ramp, where the plane taxis to, but again, there is no one waiting.  It really didn’t bother me because I had already gotten this far on my own and the communications are being crossed, so there was a good chance the Marines didn’t even know I was at KAF yet.

I quickly found a couple of SPMAGTF Marines at Whiskey Ramp and got them to give me a lift to the other side of the airfield.  The trip takes a slow, windy path all the way to the tip of the runway , where vehicles cross, before backtracking down the main street toward the headquarters section.  By speed limit the trip is 20 minutes; impossible to have humped.

Once at HQ, my public affairs Marine brought me to my quarters.  This time around, the smaller 30 man tents were all taken so I was taken to a large berthing warehouse, for lack of better word, that could hold at least 300 troops.  While there weren’t that many troops here at this time, I’d never been in a barracks like it.

Inside I found contractors and various soldiers on various missions.  One particular officer was extremely frustrated with his situation.  Part of Task Force Phoenix, he was a National Guard soldier called up for just a few months.  He claims he had a heck of a time getting to his unit because of various issues, both natural and bureaucratic and was finally on his way to his unit with less than a month to go in his orders.  ”Biggest waste of tax payer money I’ve ever seen,” he said.  Quickly followed by, “I won’t volunteer for this again.”

Another interesting conversation I had was with an active duty Army officer working as an embedded trainer with the Afghan National Army.  He tells of how life in Zabol Province is getting worse. 

He claims that last year, an IED killed two Americans in Zabol, which included a senior officer. After that attack, US Special Forces supposedly caused quite the stir by killing some innocent folks in a nighttime raid, which has since left public relations in southern Zabol in a state of FUBAR (I have no idea if the incident is the same where Afghan Police were accidentally killed in the same region).

This, he says, has made his job much more difficult.  ”We never know when they (SF) come or where they’re going.  We’re just given a date and a box of roughly XX square kilometers… (as to where they’ll be).”

The officer also talks about a place in northern Zabol, near Ghazni Province, where anti government forces supposedly have an Rn’R location centered around an abandoned Afghan Army base that couldn’t hold the ground.

“SF doesn’t even go up there, and when they do, they take fire from the time they go in until the time they come out.”

Sounds like at least one province is about to step it up a notch on the violence scale.  Actually… I think this is going to be a long year of fighting in Afghanistan, period.  

Within the next month or two, be sure the news coming from this country is going to be quite sobering.