First Impressions of Bastion (11 Oct)

It’s dark.  There is pretty good light discipline.  The base is huge.  We must have driven for 15 minutes on the buses, making several different turns until we got from the flight line to our temporary housing.  There is a constant noise everywhere.  The flight line must be busy all of the time.  There are always planes and helicopters buzzing around, so there is a constant dull roar.  I think we should be used to that quickly.  The temperature is perfect, must be 75 degrees tonight and just a touch humid.  There is a constant feeling of dust in the air, almost like a grit in your teeth.  It doesn’t look dusty, but it feels dusty.  I haven’t seen the hospital or any of the other facilities yet, though I’m starving right now even though it is 1245am.  It took us just over 28 hours to get here.  Breakfast tomorrow is from 5:30 to 8:00 and our first formation is at 10:00.  Hopefully I will be able to sleep with my head cold.

Current living conditions...

Yes, I think those cots are surplus from WWII

Movement (9-11 October)

We started out Sunday morning by turning in our two bags that we wanted to go with us.  We had to weigh each one individually.  Then an hour later we had to turn in the two bags that may not show up for quite a while.  We also had to weigh each of those individually.  We then cleared out our barracks and went to lunch.  After lunch we went to the York Minster for a pre-deployment religious ceremony.  It was nice.  The building is amazing.  We got back, had about an hour of free time, then onto buses for a four hour trip to somewhere in England.  Classic Army, we got there at 10:30 pm but the place didn’t open until 11.  The bus drivers wouldn’t wait, so we hung out in the parking lot for half an hour.  It was cold, but luckily not raining.  We unloaded all of our bags from the transport truck and then checked them in.  They took us to breakfast at about 1:30am.  We then got onto another bus for a half hour bus ride to Mildenhall air force base, where we boarded a flight to the middle east.  7 hours flying time, packed like lemmings.  I have a small head cold, so it was miserable.

The Army is big on “movement”.  You can be court martialed if you “miss movement”.  So there was a lot of yelling and screaming at everyone to make sure they knew where they were going and what time they had to be there.  It’s kind of frustrating as they treat us like four year olds.  It works, I guess.  We’re all here.  Our next flight will take us directly into Bastion which is nice.

Arrived in the Middle East.  We only waited about two hours which I guess is exceptionally fast.  Other people that have deployed, had to wait in various places for days sometimes.  They say that they are quick moving you in, but that it takes forever to move you out.  I guess we’ll see.  We were waiting in a welcome shed with air conditioning, pop, water and snacks.   Then suddenly they said to grab our stuff as we were loading in five minutes.  They asked for Majors and above and senior enlisted people to go to the front of the line.  I normally don’t take advantage of that, but I had been warned beforehand to get on the plane early.  It turns out I was able to sit on the side of the plane, with lots of leg room while the people in “coach” were packed together really tight.  We flew a couple of hours, then they told us to get our flack jackets on and helmets.  They turned off all of the lights and we did a rapid descent into camp Bastion.  Quick and easy.  We deplaned, waited for all of our bags which was also a cluster, then packed them onto trucks and buses.  We then were taken to our temporary housing.  10 man tents, but not too bad.  The showers have constantly running, hot water, no more pushing the button.  The toilets are metal without a toilet seat, much like the ones you see in prison.  It takes a little balancing, and you can’t be asleep.

Minster in Strensall England where we attended predeployment ceremony

Finding my bag in a sea of bags before heading out

It's finally time to start getting ready for why they sent me here...

Queen Elizabeth’s Barracks, Strensall England. 1 October 2011

Long flight to England, although straight from Atlanta to London.  We had to wait a while for all of our military bags to deplane and then we had to go through customs with our weapons.  Like most of us, I had three full duffel bags and my backpack.  They actually had everything pretty well organized and we got out of the airport after about 3 hours.  The bus ride from London to Strensall (near York) took about 4 and a half hours.  While on the bus ride our Navy liaison gave us some of the low down on the place we are going in Afghanistan.  It was a little eye opening.  After hearing everything he had to say I was a little overwhelmed.

We’ve been here about a week now just training with the 208^th Field Hospital.  Our training is designed to replicate almost exactly what we have down there so that when we get there we will already have a pretty good idea of where things are and how our patients are supposed to move through the facility.  Apparently we are going to a very busy trauma hospital.  It has all been very intimidating.  After this week’s training however, and getting the chance to speak with some radiologists who are there, I feel much better.  The anticipation is building along with the fear that I may not be up to the job…

The accommodations here are horrible.  Slightly worse than at Ft Benning.  Four man rooms with only two showers and three toilets for about 40 guys.  The showers operate with a single push button that gives you about 8 seconds of scalding hot water.  The beds are metal frames with springs and about a two inch mattress.  Very sway back.  I have not been able to sleep on my stomach for two weeks now.

One of four in the room at QEB

The food is a little different but not bad.  There are a few odd things such as baked beans for breakfast.  Their bacon is more ham slice than ours.  Their toast is liked deep fried bread.  We do have scrambled eggs and blood pudding.  We also have some Frosted Flakes if you get there early enough.  Fish and chips downtown has been very good.  Their salty food is not quite salty enough and their sweet food is also not quite sweet enough.  Everyone describes everything as a little bland.

The days have not been very strenuous as far as timeline goes.  First formation is at 0745 and we have been done about 1600 every day.  It’s a short walk to our training facility or they shuttle us over.  The weather has been absolutely beautiful since we’ve been here.

Saturday a couple of us went and saw Leeds United play against Portsmouth in a Champion’s League soccer game.  It was good but not great.  Leeds won 1-0 on a nice goal.  The field was immaculate.  I have been able to work out more this week, including some soccer.

I miss home.

CRC (17 Sep - 24 Sep)

CONUS Replacement Center, Ft Benning GA.  Arrived on Saturday afternoon.  Checked in and was given a number as well as a health care provider badge.   Got a room assignment.  Had to get linens – pillow case, two sheets, plastic pillow and scratchy, green, wool army blanket.  Went to my room – four man room, two bunk beds and four wall lockers.  Very small.  Beds were about 4 inches of foam on a spring frame.  They sagged pretty well in the middle.  Soon after I got there, I had two roommates show up.  One, an internal medicine doctor going with me to Afghanistan, the other a preventative medicine doc going to Djibuti on a Civil Affairs deployment.  Who knew we had people in Djibuti or on the horn of Africa?  Both very nice guys.  The internal medicine doc had a friend off post, so he spent each night there instead of in our little hostel and the other doc didn’t snore.  It turned out okay.  The bathrooms and showers were communal, which took a little getting used to.

The overall mission of the CRC is to make sure that each individual replacement has all of the boxes checked before they get deployed to wherever they are going.  For example, shots, medical review, dental review, hearing, issue of equipment, wills, lectures on IED’s etc.  Since I had done most of those things at Ft. Hood before I left, I didn’t have to do much.  I still had to go wait in all of the lines, but when I got to the front, I would just show them my paperwork or they would look me up on the computer and I would be done.  So basically it was a lot of waiting in lines and waiting around.  Typical Army.  I brought a book most places to help keep myself entertained.  The one thing I didn’t get issued at Ft Hood was my weapon, so I was issued a 9mm Beretta pistol which they kept locked in the armory along with everyone else’s weapon.  I also had to qualify on the weapon, which basically meant that I had to hit a certain number of pop up targets with a certain number of rounds.  It was actually pretty fun, until you think of why we were doing it.  However, if I’m ever pointing my weapon at someone with my feet shoulder width apart, slightly bent at the knees, arms extended, trying to aim… then we’re in a lot of trouble.

The food at the CRC was okay.  Cafeteria food, but lots of it.  They had some kind of meat for every meal, usually with potatoes or rice and some vegetable.  Basically right up my alley.  They also had a small salad bar, soda, juice, milk and dessert.  It wasn’t bad, but they only had about four different meals which they cycled through while we were there.

I didn’t get to work out that much.  A little running and a little basketball.

In the end, they were very efficient at their job and got a lot of us through the process and on our planes to England without much problem.

Good-bye (17 Sep)

Currently on a flight from Austin to Atlanta.  From there it’s on to the CRC.  I can’t believe I’m here.  It really doesn’t seem real.  7 months.  Saying goodbye at the airport was miserable.  The whole family was there and we were all blubbering in front of the security checkpoint.  Hayden wasn’t sure what was going on.  I already miss my family so much.  I don’t think there will be anytime that I will ever feel comfortable for the next several months.  This is miserable.

OPSEC

I've been keeping a sort of journal at the beginning of my trip.  I haven't had great internet access so haven't been able to keep up with the blog.  I'm posting several entries today that I actually wrote over the last two weeks.  I've also got kind of a quandry on what to write.  The old adage that "loose lips sinks ships" applies.  I have to leave out a lot of details that I would really like to give and may actually be giving too much information.  Anyway if there is something in particular you want to know e-mail me...