Man Is A Social Creature

The great majority of troops coming into a post must first live in a transitory housing area, as there's some overlap between the soldiers who are leaving and their arriving replacements. Transitory housing is rarely comfortable at the best of times, as it's intended to be brief. Unfortunately, "brief" is a relative term. In the tent we share with elements of another unit, who happen to be on their third transitory housing location, I've calculated that every two men (we have bunkbeds) share a total footage of 35 square feet. Five feet of width, and seven feet of length. In this space are two people, their beds, body armor, rucksacks, two duffle bags, and miscellaneous small bags or personal items (such as the large flat-screen TV the videogame-game addicted Specialist next to me has hauled with him from post to post). I never thought I'd find quarters that would make me miss living in looted Iraqi buildings.

Ugly Gun Sunday

In Country

After 40 hours travel, I've finally made it to the base I'll be working at. Open source information about the post is here, although as rotations come and go, the infromation is a bit behind in some aspects. As you can see above, the local urban structure is pretty basic. More on some of the effects of that later. But for now, an Army informational guide posted on the inside of our armored bus. Remember, the last sentence is probably there because someone couldn't figure it out on their own sometime in the past.

Sounds About Right

"Never, under any circumstances, ever become a refuge... Die if you must, but die on your home turf with your face to the wind, not in some stinking hellhole 2,000 kilometers away, among people you neither know nor care about." - Ragnar Benson

Once your away from your family, home, and community, you're at best a statistic, if not someone else's prey.

Courtesy of SurvivalBlog.

Ugly Gun Sunday

New Uniforms

A little article, straight from the Army, on the new uniforms we've been issued for our time in Afghanistan. Most Soldiers I've spoken with think their a considerable improvement over the grayish ACU pattern, which seemed to be geared towards blending with broken cinder blocks or gravel pits. The new OCP (Operation enduring freedom Camouflage Patter) actually makes one harder to see in most environments, as well as bringing back buttons rather then "hook and pile" for the leg cargo pockets- a change long wished for by those of us who actually use them.

I'm Off

By the time this post comes out, my flight to Afghanistan should be days past, thereby complying with Army security standards. As I write this, I’m waiting to get on the aircraft I can see a few hundred yards away. To get to this point, it’s taken stuffing 200 lbs of gear into 150 lbs worth of space; a bus ride from hell in tiny seats, where both myself and the guy next to me exceed the provided shoulder width of the seats by a three inches apiece on both sides; and sitting in a concrete bay floor at the airport for several hours so far, with the possibility of sleeping on it for the night if the lightning doesn’t desist soon. And we’ve still the roughly twenty hours of flight to look forward to. Based on personal experience, I would rather sit through an hour of incoming mortar rounds. But it sounds like we’ll get to experience that too, so I’ll get to see if my memories of which are less irritating are accurate. Makes me wonder if the old troop ship concept was a better way to go; at least you could walk around if the weather wasn’t too bad.