TruckAll Rhymes With FuckAll

I’ve been here a little more than two weeks, and I’m already forgetting what day it is. Weekends come and go. Hours run together, and the breaks for meals are the only things I really use to disseminate time of day.

If it’s breakfast time we walk or ride in our funny little TruckAll, a 4 door bus like vehicle with a truck bed in the back. Its tiny little 200cc engine struggles to carry 4 or 5 or even 6 passengers stuffed like a Mexican family inside as it bounces uncomfortably down the dusty dirt roads around post. When driving in the gravel parking lots and materials yards it spins out and get stuck. When carrying a load in the back the body bottoms out on the frame.

At any of the numerous Dining Facilities (DFAC) around post a pretty standard assortment of breakfast dishes are served: pancakes, sausage, American and European bacon, biscuits, gravy, fruits and cereals, omelets and coffee. A strange amalgamation of people are coming and going while stacking blue trays and paper plates high with food. Numerous camouflage patterns indicating military personnel from all over the world mix with the civilian bearded men in baseball caps and women with long hair falling over their shoulders all dressed in earth tone t-shirts and khakis.

I’m not used to eating such big breakfast’s and in within the first week I realized that I would fatten up like Christmas goose if I didn’t’ mellow the hell out on my food consumption. During my introductory period on post I stuffed my belly every morning enjoying each meal as if it might be my last. I feared that at any moment I could be called up to move over night to another Forward Operating Base (FOB) clear out in the middle of some Afghan mountain range. Once there I’d have far fewer options for hot chow. So I savored every meal.

I had to quit eating like that. I could hear myself getting fatter, as new layers of pudge formed around my belly. It’s generally pretty hard for me to eat decently as I’m picky as hell. Since I was a child I’ve worked hard to avoid eating anything that swims or flies. That’s weird. I know, but I don’t really give a shit. We’ve all got our hang ups. In situations like this I have far fewer choices, and I know I’ll have make concessions eventually. While in Iraq I had to start eating chicken or else the chance of malnutrition was a very real threat. We were eating on the cheap over there, and tank tread and Javelin missiles are expensive. Days on days of Chicken Nuggets, Chicken Tetrazinni, Chicken Fajita, Chicken with Noodles, Chicken Dumplings, or Chicken with Salsa. Each meal was like a roulette wheel of mouth drying culinary hatred. I was miserable.

While most DFACs are pretty standard buildings with identical menus the one located in the military tent camp compound known as “South Park” caters to only American soldiers and civilians. It spins out a fairly nicer assortment of food and snacks. Multiple lines of dinner entrées and short line orders, a sandwich meat bar, dessert trays, ice cream freezers,, and racks stuffed with potatoes chip bags and cliff bars. This chow tent is generally preferred by most Americans, even if you have to sit at picnic benches inside tents.

I haven’t eaten 3 squares a day in years, and I’m not sure what I think of it. A lot of times I find myself going to eat even though I’m not really hungry because there are set times in which you can eat so if I don’t get it now I may not get it all. I think that sucks.

Old Things Now New

After my Gryphon Air Lines flight out of Kuwait received clearance to land, once communications were restored with the tower, we touched down at the Kandahar Air Field (KAF). We taxied down a runway that was once upon a time to short for larger aircraft like this passenger plane to use and so pot marked with bomb craters and 20 plus years of neglect that the Air Force had to spend months repairing it under the hostile conditions of a combat zone.

The last time I landed at this airport, back in January of '02 when this runway was still next to worthless, we did it under cover of darkness inside the belly of a U.S. Air Force C-17. I sat along the hull in a jump seat with a nylon net back. I wore newly issued desert tan and brown BDU’s, my own flak jacket, and Kevlar helmet. My rifle between my legs with the barrel pointed down towards the rapidly approaching earth. My unit’s vehicles ratchet strapped to the deck, slowly swayed back and forth with the movements of the plane. The constant drone from the plane’s engines was so loud that we would have to yell instructions and acknowledgements to the other soldiers seated next to us in a dim red light.

About 15 minutes before the plane landed the aircraft’s exterior and interior lights went black with only the red emergency lights of the interior to illuminate the inside. At each corner of the plane a window was soon manned by the Air Force flight crew as they donned helmets, flak jackets, and night vision goggles to peer out into the darkness of the Afghanistan country side. They were looking for incoming small arms fire, rockets, and surface-to-air missiles which never came. The plane landed as smoothly as a plane can land in conditions like this, and then it taxied to disembark its cargo of soldiers and tactical satellite vehicles. A whoosh of noise and cold wind hit me as the back of the plane opened up like a giant mouth to spit us out into a brand new war only a few weeks old. Outside there was no moon this night, and I could see millions of stars from horizon to horizon, more stars then I’d ever been able to see in my life.

As we off loaded the trucks and gear an explosion lit up the night with a boom so loud that I jumped back, bringing my rifle to my shoulder, expecting the enemy to over run our perimeter at that very moment. I soon learned that the explosion was a controlled detonation by the Explosive Ordnance Disposal team (EOD). They had found an improvised explosive device (IED). Explosions along with small arms fire and an ever present heightened state of awareness were to become a part of my new life.
Throughout the night and the next 2 days I worked without sleep setting up the communications backbone for the Marines already at the base and the soon to arrive 101st Infantry units scheduled to arrive within the days and weeks ahead.

Disembarking the Gryphon Air Lines passenger plane in broad daylight was a completely different experience. After a pretty typical flight from a pretty typical air port we off loaded on a flight line not so typical. Civilian escorts arrived, surrounded us, and kept us in a single file line. We removed any head gear or hats we may have been wearing as those aren’t allowed on the flight line. They get sucked into aircraft engines and cause problems. We shuffled down the tarmac past shipping containers and vehicles both arriving and departing this air field. To my right I spot the black mangled wreckage of Chinook helicopter. Its abused hull and bent rotor blades pointed in wrong directions. The glass of the cock pit busted and missing. The landing gear damaged and bent. It had obviously crashed hard and was now not much more than scrap. I wonder how many troops and contractors were on board or worse; hurt. I stared at it wondering how many times I’ll have to catch a ride on helicopter exactly like it in the years to come.

Minutes after we’ve landed the cold reality of where I’m at has already shown itself.

I never thought I would be back here.

Umbrellas and Baguettes

I started smoking pretty late in life. Certainly, I dabbled in the fine art of fucking my lungs up throughout my young 20’s bouncing from rave tent to bar room and back again. The cool menthol smoke coursing through my sweaty chest as I danced around tents and clubs in Germany while stationed there during my enlistment in the U.S. Army. Oversized baggy Jenco jeans pockets stuffed with Newports or Marlboro Menthols, with their green packaging, rested comfortably within an easy arms reach while laser light shows and pulsing rhythms forced my feet to dance. It was the thing to do during nights of altered states and techno music.

I never put much cred in my habit. It was under control then. A pack could reasonably last me an entire weekend. I smoked more for the need to fiddle with something in my hands or chit-chat with other like minded sweaty wide eyed German girls. A Newport had a magical power to break the ice and start conversations because they were so American that they weren’t even sold in that part of the world.

During my previous war tour to Afghanistan with the military I smoked a bit more frequently but nothing close to resembling a habit. This is actually my second trip to Kandahar. In early 2002 I invaded this country and air field with 101st Rakkasans, an elite Air Assault infantry division from Ft. Campbell Kentucky whose name was given to them by Japanese civilians as they watched the unit parachute into Japan during a training mission. Roughly translated it means ‘falling umbrellas from the sky.’ The name stuck.

At home a pretty girlfriend soon to be wife waited patiently for me sending gifts and letters doused in perfume, pillow cases which she would sleep on before sending them to me so that I could enjoy one night of home before the dust sucked her sweet smell from the linen. She sent me love.

At 27 I started taking this smoking thing more seriously. I had been out of the military for 2 or 3 years living the white picketed fence life with my new wife and a career. I spent money as though it would be gone tomorrow and I worried about issues that really weren’t there to begin with. Making mountains out of mole hills and bringing the stress of military life with me to the civilian world. I was high strung, and I expected a lot of things from my wife. Through fogged glasses I thought myself compassionate to her problems, but in the end I was demanding things of the person I lived with and loved but should have been more than a roommate. I was the clean freak due to years of getting paid to be neat and orderly. She was the cluttered soul who worried about more important things then clearing off the table or closing a cabinet.

In the end she left me, and I deserved it. At the rough age of 27 I found myself amidst the biggest failure of my life. I was busy pounding through a college program knee deep in math courses of which I felt I had no business even trying to comprehend as my wife packed her belongings and left me sitting there in my neat and orderly house lonelier then I’d ever been. Smoking seemed like something to do. It felt like a good idea.

Fast forward 5 years and I’m standing in line at the French PX at the Kandahar Air Field, a military shop stocked with toiletries, clothing, knives, food stuffs, and those blessed cigarettes. Amongst the overpriced foot powder and Justin Bieber CD’s the cheapest cigarettes on post can be purchased for $1.90 American. Any smoker with discerning eye for a great deal on cancer sticks will jump at this price. I can smell fresh baguettes and coffee emanating from the “café” at the end of the shop. A sweet aroma that’s strange in this place amid the dust and rocky gravel paths.


Everything about this military installation is out of place. Out the front door of the French café I step foot onto a wooden boardwalk circling a large dirt field. Along the boardwalk local Afghani vendors sell rugs and hookahs, gyros and scarves, mobile phones and off brand electronics. A bright TGIFridays sign marks the entrance to an establishment so out of place that everyone new to this post takes notice. Inside this completely American establishment transplanted as though through magic the walls are decorated with Michael Jackson album covers, electric guitars, and old road signs. Limited portions of American favorites are served at hefty surcharges. Shipping in onion rings and Cajun shrimp costs money. A wooden laminate floor collects dust as wait staff wearing suspenders decorated with buttons and flair deliver food and drinks to booths and tables filled with soldiers and civilians from all over the world. The food is subpar, and the service comes in a heavy Pilipino accent.

I tried the food while the taste of real world food was still savored in my palette. I haven’t been here long enough to enjoy this pour excuse for food. Give me another year and I’ll probably be eating it up as if it was mana passed down from the gods.

Outside, on a park bench I wait for co-workers to finish their meal. I smoke and I think. A beautiful Belgium soldier sits down on the bench across from me. Her bangs frame her face and I try not to look as I steal glances out of the corner of my eye while she chats in her Dutch vernacular with a bearded soldier friend. I’m realizing that this is the first time I’ve been sent to the Middle East on a war deployment with no one at home to miss and love me in a way that I can be familiar with. Right now I miss my ex-wife and the other few loves of my life from times past. The times when I had someone to miss while covered in the fine dust of this Afghanistan air field.

Little Red Lighter

I have this lighter. It’s a little red one I bought at a 7 Eleven in Washington D.C. I don’t remember when. On the front a logo is a red and orange “7” with the green “Eleven” lettering behind it. On the back a standard white sticker warns against the use of the lighter by the young inquisitive fire bug hands of unattended children. For all intents and purposes it’s as common as they come.

I usually lose lighters like I forget people’s names moments after an introduction. These are pretty normal things as far as smoking goes both the lighting of cigarettes and the asking of names. However, for some reason I’ve managed to keep this lighter even though I couldn’t tell you who I last smoked with. It has stayed with me during the previous months of travel as I’ve puffed on a myriad of foreign and domestic cigarettes before boarding one plane after another, stopping all over the world on my way to war torn fields of Afghanistan. It’s passed through countless hands as it was borrowed and returned from smokers congregated in designated smoking rooms, lounges, and clearly marked outside areas to share in the smoking ritual while engaging in the mundane repetitive small talk shared by black lunged smokers the world over.

I use this lighter 15 or 20 times a day. I know I smoke too much, but these are stressful times. When I go through the smoker’s ritual I’ll pull this lighter out of my pocket and light my cigarette covering the flame with my hand to shield it from the dry dust filled wind coming down out of the jagged Afghan mountains on the horizon. I spin the lighter around in my hand as I inhale the first taste of smoke and relief. The ritual now complete I look down at this red lighter, with the familiar logo but something seems off. Something seems wrong about this familiarity here in this place. A memento from not so long ago. A token of another life.

I arrived in Kandahar via an antiquated passenger plane based out of Kuwait and manned by a South African flight crew. This crew, more relaxed and jovial then crews of flights past, openly mocked each other light heartedly while the Capitan made risqué jokes over the planes intercom in his husky Afrikaner accent regarding his newly engaged co-Capitan and his possible lack of experience in the cockpit. No attempt was made to mask the painfully obvious double entendre.

As the plane began to fly closer to the Kandahar Air Field the Capitan, now more serious in his tone, tells us through the intercom that he has lost all communications with the tower at the military air field shared by slow flying hulking cargo planes, fast moving fighter jets, and troop laden helicopters. He warns that the plane is becoming short on fuel, and a decision will have to be made shortly on possible alternate landings should communications not be restored within the next few minutes. I can hear the other professional government and military contract passengers around me discussing possible reasons for all of the numerous methods and forms of radio communications with the tower to be down at once. Each of these reasons involve any number of explosions, rockets, mortars, or dirty deeds possibly performed by a bearded enemy wearing towels on their heads with hatred in their hearts. For the time being we will circle the air field and mountain ranges around Kandahar as the fuel gauge inches closer to empty. Below us war awaits, and all I can think about is using that damned little red lighter.