A Tale of Two Deployments (Pakistan)

This time of year is always a special one for me. I love the holidays. Not the craziness of it, but the simplicity of just being around family and friends. But during this season I get an overwhelming nostalgia for my deployments. I began training for Camp Bucca in December and my deployment to Shabaz Air Base where I spent both Thanksgiving and Christmas really helped me develop my love for the simplicity of the holidays. So without further ado, I give you stories from the sandbox! Tonight I'll write mostly about Pakistan and (hopefully) tomorrow, I'll write about Bucca. I thought about doing one post about them but I figured I should do one each to make sure the posts aren't too long.


We weren't originally supposed to go to Pakistan, our first set of orders was for Tikrit, Iraq. I was finally going to be able to go to Iraq- watch out, terrorists, Heather has arrived! A week or so before we left, our orders changed and simply said Operation Enduring Freedom. It wasn't until we were almost leaving that we found out it was Pakistan. What the hell were we going to be doing there?! Of course we found out later Osama Bin Laden was there, well at least when he was caught. I find that hilarious because we used to joke that he was hiding in some of the mountains around our base! Now I wonder if maybe he was! So we finished up the last of our jungle (yes that's right, jungle!) deployment training and headed to a weird definitely non-jungle desert. Our base (which is gone now) had maybe 300+ people on it at any given time. Some SOF (Special Operations guys) would fly in and out randomly nobody asked them where they went to, the base was commanded by a Colonel in the National Guard. Our base was less than two miles long and wide, it was tiny! 


I was still a teenager, 19, I actually turned 20 on the deployment. My tent mates were cool and bought my a near-beer (a nonalcoholic beer) because technically in Okinawa where we were from I could legally drink at 20. It wasn't refrigerated and tasted like hot carbonated cat piss but it was the thought that counted. I remember we would take turns sneaking into the chapel and stealing (I know stealing from a church!) this chocolate and peanut butter ice cream from the chaplain. We would sneak it back to our tent and take turns eating it! That's right I said tent, we lived in tents the whole time we were there. Nothing was built living wise because the base was only supposed to be a temporary one. At night we would have to walk carefully because we had jackals, wild and mostly rabid dogs, all over the base. I remember laying in bed and hearing a few of them sniff and scratch at the side of the tent. Later on a few good old boys took care of the issue, with some shotguns and a couple rounds of  night hunting. Speaking of which, once our Pakistani counterparts took to hunting the suckers with a .50 cal (big gun!) mounted on the back of a rusty Nissan truck. They literally drove around base blasting away at the damn creatures, and it scared the snot out of us! They just Bam! Bam! Bam! around whatever, tents, the chow hall, airplanes, whatever and wherever! We had no advance notice of this and almost shot them!


Pakistan is where I learned to love the night and country music! I had the good fortune to work from 1800-0600 shifts, with some days off occasionally. Don't be surprised, 12 hour shifts were normal rotations deployed and at home base for years. Prior to this deployment, I couldn't stand country music, it was just warbly crooning, too redneck for me! But there is something magical about sitting huddled in a cold, wet shack on post in the middle of a violent storm and listening to The Thunder Rolls, or hearing Traveling Soldier while watching a night sky alive with a full moon, and the absolute best, hearing those damn jackals yelping to The Devil Went Down To Georgia!


The guys I worked with were awesome. We would have these fun and sometimes serious conversations while working for so long each shift. We had this particular post that inside the shack had a portable gas heater, well me and my buddy had no idea how to use it! But it would get down to freezing at night and so we just decided to "figure" out how to work it. Turns out that letting the gas stay on high for two minutes and then lighting a matchstick will light it; however it will also shoot flames up to the roof of the shack, catch it on fire, almost set your hair ablaze and singe your eyebrows! Oh plus the smoke with burn the shit out of your throat and for days you will sound like you ate lit Lucky Strikes. Plus your whole shift will laugh at you and tell you to do it again cause your eyebrows are still too thick!


It was deployment of many firsts. It was the first time I was ever mortared. The first time, I was "accidentally" shot at. The big city near us had many tribes who would attack each other at night, some nights our observation posts would fall in between the two warring factions, so technically they weren't attacking us and as such we weren't allowed to shoot back. Usually we could hear it getting closer so we just would hunker down in an area until it was done. We used to name one side Red team and the other Blue team and guess who was going to win. We thought it was funny until one night we heard what sounded like a man scream and die. After that Red/Blue team was done for a bit. It was also the first and last time I took malaria medication. That crap was so bad, I think I would almost rather risk malaria. We were not allowed to take it before work, it had to be taken right before bed every Monday. Side effects included hallucinations, intense dreams, and suicidal/homicidal ideation; of course, this must be ideal to give to young adults with weapons and ammunition! I had a friend who thought he saw a black panther near our Humvee. I once talked to a Staff Sergeant who was coming up to our post, until my partner told me that nobody was there. But the absolute worst one, I had a dream that I watched my brothers get burned alive in lava, it was so real I could smell the burning flesh. One of my bunk-mates woke me up as I was sobbing in my sleep, I didn't even try to sleep for two days.


One last nice story before I end it for the night. On my way back home for leave after our deployment ended, I saw this guy waiting for his flight and he looked really familiar. I couldn't seem to place him but I didn't want to be weird so I tried not to stare at him. I noticed he kept looking at my backpack though, which was a simple thing just black with our base name and a scorpion. Finally after about 20 minutes of awkward looks on both sides, he walks over and asks me where I had been deployed to. I told him, and as I did I realized how I knew him, he was one of my Vice Commanders in Pakistan! Right around that same second, he recognized me too. So we started talking a bit about different changes at the base (he had a 4 month rotation, ours was about double that), and where we were both traveling to. Turns out he was going to St. Louis that day as well. We shook hands and went on our way, after we landed in St. Louis, he made it a point to find me at the luggage  claim, tell me good luck, and even meet my parents briefly. I can't remember his name now, but that incident has always impressed me. Hope wherever he is, he and his family are doing well.


Well! This was a little longer than I intended but it felt good to get the memories out and on paper. I will always think of my Pakistan deployment as fun with a little bit of growing up added in there. I couldn't have asked for a better team, supervisor, and flight chief to deploy with. As the lowest ranking member on the squad, they allowed me to make some mistakes, fall a little, and get up on my own two feet. I was allowed to mess up and shown how to fix it when I did. Alright you guys, I could go on but I won't! Til tomorrow!