I am not quite sure where my own rabbit hole began. It might have been a crisp, December morning as I waited at the dentist’s office for my son to get his check up. I sat pondering the day’s upcoming events, eagerly anticipating my son’s baseball practice. As I stared upon the lightly snow-capped Rocky Mountains thinking about the odd Colorado weather that allowed for baseball practice in December, my phone rang.
On the other end was an offer I had never considered. “Would I like to volunteer to go to Afghanistan to work rule of law issues for a year?” Apparently, a nebulous “someone” felt I was the right guy for the job – did I want it? Now, being married for nearly 16 years at the time and of at least reasonable intelligence, I knew better than to go with my gut reaction and instead asked for time to consult with the only person whose opinion really matters in this sort of thing – my wife. Well accustomed to military life and the demands it sometimes imposes, she quickly agreed and then went shopping or what she calls retail-therapy (but that is another story).
I say this could constitute my entry down the rabbit hole because the chain of events set off by my acquiescence to the assignment boggles the mind. Were it not for the supreme effort of an outstanding paralegal acting as my deployment manager, I might still be at my home base. Upon receiving three deployment checklists and being informed that I would deal with two different bases, I wondered why the process hadn’t become more streamlined in the nearly TEN years we’d been going to Afghanistan. However, I’ll spare you of the tedious pain that is the pre-deployment process.
A second possible choice for my own rabbit hole could be the process of getting to Kabul. It begins with the completion of mandatory training at Ft. Dix, NJ (decent training by the way). Rather than simply board a series of planes to fly straight to Afghanistan, I was made to languish in Baltimore, MD for six days. Now, Baltimore is fine city and I highly recommend the Pratt Street Ale House, but I sat in the Charm City for six days without my family knowing that the deployment clock would not start ticking until I got downrange. Plus, it’s a bit weird going to pubs alone.
The flight out was quite normal, the odd part not beginning until I got to Manas AB, Krygyzstan. Apparently, there is no one to tell you the process for checking in if you volunteer to unload the baggage for the plane. After unloading the baggage from the plane to the trucks and then from the trucks to the staging area, one is quite tired especially after nearly 25 hours of travel time. Indeed, I just wanted to know where to stash my gear, where I could get a shower and something to eat, and when I would get a flight out. What I got was a briefing on regulations regarding the wear of PT gear at Manas (really? I’m gonna be here that long?), the chapel hours, a sexual harassment briefing, and a bunch of Manas specific acronyms with no explanation.
Now, those of you that know me well understand that I don’t really do well with unnecessary, bureaucratic nonsense. However, this was just the tip of the iceberg. Bagram took mind-numbing nonsense to a new level. Once there, we stood on the tarmac in our 32 pound flak vests for a good bit of time. Not a big deal, but you’d think they would have expected us. I’m not a loggie, so who knows? Anyway, we were told that the first thing we had to do was break down the pallets and move our gear about a block and a half down the road. However, the space provided could not really fit three pallets worth of gear so we ended up with a giant pile.
We were then herded into a tent and told to sit on the left if we were proceeding to another base (I was) and on the right if we were staying at Bagram. Despite this bifurcation process, all identification cards and deployment folders were collected together, in the same pile. WTF? Even after word came out that personnel with follow on flights were to report to the PAX terminal across the street in approximately one hour, the process continued by simply taking the top file rather than using the right-left system to separate out those leaving Bagram. After some vocal complaining (no, not from me), we finally got what we needed and got in line for a flight.
On receiving my flight I was told to stage my gear right outside in the empty space provided. “You mean the space just outside and not a block and a half down the road?” I thought. Yep, as luck would have it, I got to move my gear a total of three blocks for nothing. Now this might not sound like much, but I had three bags each weighing between 50-60 pounds, a lighter bag, weapons case, and body armor. At that point though, I was just happy to get a flight out. I think this is what they count on.
Next we’re told to palletize our gear around back. This is great, except for the fact that the guy tells us we cannot palletize our weapons. “I’m a bit confused about this, Sir.” I say. “We palletized these on the way here, what gives?” He looks at me condescendingly and says “Son, don’t you know you’re in a war zone? You need that weapon.” Yes, Sir,” I said, “I fully recognize the fact that I’m in a war zone, but do you realize that none of us have ammunition for these weapons? Are we supposed to throw them at the Taliban if we’re attacked? Or do we stick them out the window of the plane as a show of force against surface-to-air attacks?” Jackwagon, I thought.
Of course, we did what he said. Sometimes you just have to color. I finally got to Kabul, or down the rabbit hole, and entered a world I had only heard about: Combined, joint, inter-agency. This is going to be fun . . .
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