Settling in at BAF

Waking up my first time in Afghanistan was, admittedly, a bit anti-climactic. I woke up and didn’t feel anything apart from fatigue! One night was clearly not enough time to get my sleep back to normal and thus far its been about 4 days and I’m still all over the place sleep wise. I’m now trying to adjust my sleep schedule to allow me to fly nights, which I will do starting Friday.

So far our days have been full of in-processing nonsense. We had to get flightline badges, set up our finance accounts, pick up our weapons and ammo, get briefed by the Squadron Commander and Superintendent, the Group Commander, the Wing Commander, the flight doc, and then a bunch of other units and people onbase. We spent most of that time in and around our squadron area of the flightline.

The 4^th Expeditionary Reconnaissance Squadron (4^th ERS) is the MC-12 squadron at Bagram and our nickname is the Crows. We have our own operations area on the flightline where we have our Ops desk, a medical tent, a facility where we store all our classified stuff, an Aircrew Flight Equipment (AFE) tent, a mail tent, and a morale tent. It seems like a pretty cool area where people just hang out when they’re not flying. There’s a burn pit, some cornhole games, bop it, and a balcony area overlooking the flight line with tables and chairs called the Crow’s Nest.

We did have one particularly exciting thing happen in our first few days, and that was our first IDF (indirect fire) attack. The enemy surrounding Bagram doesn’t have any particularly good artillery so what they do is just shoot off mortars in the general direction of base in the hopes that they will hit something. This is referred to as indirect fire (IDF) and with the size of the base and the inaccuracy of these weapons, they rarely hit anything at all. However, when the IDF sirens go off we are required to take cover and wait for the all clear. These attacks happen every so often (less frequently in the winter period) and while I was a bit nervous about them before I got here, I learned through the first one that its really not a big deal at all!

Here are some photos of the base and the area where we live and work.

My hallway- its dark because someone is on crew rest all hours of the day so we have 24/7 quite policy

My room before I made it mine. The front half is mine. Once my photos arrive you'll be an "after" shot with my Disney Planes sheets and photos put up and whatnot. I'm regreting not bring at least one football scarf! Its just not my room without them...

My dorm building

Mountains surround Bagram on all sides-- we are in a geographic bowl

Bagram USO, named in honor of Pat Tillman

4ERS Squadron Area

Ops and AFE tents

Some Hercs on the flightline. Visibility is often that bad because of lots of blowing dust.

122 hours enroute to Bagram

On Sunday morning, following a great night out on Saturday with my amazing new Sacramento friends, Jose and Jon were kind enough to take me to the airport. I arrived to an endless check-in line but eventually made it through and got through security quite quickly thanks to being in uniform and being allowed in the TSA pre-check line. The flight from Sac to BWI was uneventful and despite waiting ages for our bags, I was able to hook up with Shiri as she came and picked me up for food. We headed over to a nearby mall and hit up Nando’s. It was a bit different from the originals in the UK but still so good. It was great to get to see her again, even though I had just seen her and it was for such a short time. She dropped me off at the hotel, we talked to my parents and to Michal, and then she went home seeing as she had work the next morning.

On Monday we bummed around the hotel all morning and after lunch at Cracker Barrel headed over to the airport. The check-in period for our rotator (civilian airline flight contracted out to only military people) was from 5:30-9:30 but when we arrived at 5 the line was already stretching all the way across the terminal. After waiting for about 2 hours we made it through check-in and went to find somewhere to eat dinner and watch the National Championship game. We watched the first half and then went through security to our gate. However, when we arrived, we learned that our flight was delayed for 3 hours, meaning more time sitting on the floor of the airport, hoarding electrical outlets like our lives depended on it

Finally made it to the front of the check-in line for the Rotator

 

About 9 hours after we got the airport we were finally on the plane and taking off for Ramstein. When we arrived in Ramstein we were allowed about an hour and half to leave the terminal. Thankfully there was a large mall directly across from the terminal where we were able to get some food and German beer. The currywurst and spatzel that I had were amazing and we all polished off our liter of beer like it was our job. It was a nice “last beer” to have before our 6 months in Afghanistan where beer is prohibited. We then got back on the rotator for our flight to Turkey, this one was only delayed about an hour and, when we arrived in Incirlik, we anticipated a three hour layover before continuing on to Manas, Kyrgyzstan. However, we were greeted by the news that our layover would, in fact, be over 12 hours! Thankfully they had arranged for rooms at billeting for us so after about 2.5 hours of waiting in line for the hotel check-in, we finally got our room for the night.

Passenger terminal at Ramstein

Welcome to Ramstein-- gateway to Europe

Currywurst, spatzel, and beer! Don't worry, only one of the beers is mine

Incirlik terminal in Turkey

 

Being able to shower and lie down in a bed was amazing but my internal clock was so messed up from time zone changes and sleeping in bits and pieces on the various flights that I didn’t actually sleep that evening. At 0830 on Wednesday morning we were back on the buses taking us from the hotel to the flightline and several hours later we were boarding our flight to Kyrgyzstan. We arrived in Kyrgyzstan late in the evening and had a few in-processing briefs before being taken to the linens tent to collect our linens and be assigned a tent for the time we’d be in limbo here. The tents were pretty nice, with bunk beds and very effective heaters, which was really all I cared about after a long few days and a nippy 18 degrees Fahrenheit. We got some food and then went to Pete’s (the bar) to wait until our assigned time to pick up our chem gear and body armour. Manas has a 2 beers per 20 hours policy but I didn’t have anything to drink, realizing the Russian beer they had would never top the lovely German beer from earlier. While technically our assigned time for chem gear was 0400, we snuck in with the 0100 group and they thankfully didn’t turn us away to come back later. Finally, after about an hour and half in the chem distro warehouse we were released to go to sleep.

Tent in Manas

Pete's Bar in Manas

 

We weren’t supposed to report until 2200 the next day, at which point we would find out when we would be continuing on to Bagram. So I attempted to sleep in (lasting until about 0930) and then after getting some breakfast at the chow hall went to the MWR (Morale, Welfare, and Recreation) tent to read for a few hours. We got kicked out so they could clean and so I came back to my tent to read some more and write up this blog post.    

When we reported back they told us that our “bag drag” (where we take our bags and pack them onto a cargo pallet) was 1030 and our “lockdown” (essentially we check in and go through security for our flight so we’re not allowed to go anywhere or do anything outside the passenger terminal) was 1530 so we went back to sleep. After the bag drop we went back to Pete’s, had our last beers for 6 months, and played Cards Against Humanity. SUCH an inappropriate game! We then grabbed lunch and went over to the PAX terminal where we immediately found out our flight was... wait for... delayed!! So we sat in the terminal until around 8 pm when we finally got on the C-17 that took us into Afghanistan!!

Snowy Kyrygzstan

On board the C-17. I was in one of the jump seats along the side.

We landed a few hours later, started our in-processing process, met our First Sergeant, and got our rooms. Tomorrow we’ll continue the in-processing and we will probably start flying around Thursday of next week!

Next blog will have a bit about the base and my room and stuff like that! Sorry for the length of this blog—turns out I made it almost as long as the entire trip was!!

New Year's Resolution

So this is probably a few days late but since I’ve been super busy and I now have a bit of spare time with nothing else to do I figured I would write a little bit about my, so called “new year’s resolutions” so that way I can be held accountable for them!

Basically, I have one major thing that I’m hoping to focus on this year and that is positivity! Or, more basically, a lack of complaining. I’ve noticed that I’ve started complaining about little things lately and it frustrates me. Life is not that bad, and therefore I shouldn’t get so upset about little things (like being scheduled for night flying every single day including my last Friday night before deploying—things like that).

There are essentially two Bible verses that I’ve been thinking about a lot recently that reflect this goal of positivity. The first if Philippians 2:14-16 which states “Do all things without arguing or complaining, so that you may become blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation, in which you shine like stars in the universe, holding fast to the word of life, so that on the day of Christ you will have reason to glory that you did not run or labor in vain.” I like how this specifically instructs you not to argue and not to complain and how that can make you a light to others and will make all your endeavours worthwhile in the end. I think that will be especially crucial during the first 6 months of this year because in a deployed environment there is much that can be complained about! I hope that, despite whatever negativity I find myself surrounded by, I can rise above it and be a positive, encouraging light and voice to others.

The second verse is Psalm 118:24: “This is the day that the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it!” What a great reminder that every day is gift and a blessing, one that we should rejoice in! Another day to do something, another day to serve others, another day to be in this crazy world and this wild and wondrous life!

I hope that as my friends you will help me hold to these as the year progresses. I’m so excited for what this year holds in store and I anticipate so many new experiences that I want to really enjoy them and live them fully with a smile on my face and no grumbling or complaining in my heart!!

I will soon be posting a blog about my trip over to Afghanistan, but seeing as I’m not quite there yet, its still incomplete. Thanks for following along with my journey on this adventure we call life!