One Year in the Stan
[Here is another fantastic post from guest blogger Capt Doug Traversa].
I’m not the same man I was a year ago. Not even close. I have been through the wringer of life, survived, and come out very different. Afghanistan does that to you.
One year ago I was sitting at my desk at Arnold AFB, and going to Afghanistan was the farthest thing from my mind. Iraq was very possible, but I never really gave Afghanistan a thought. Yet I was suddenly tasked for a year-long tour in Kabul, and not only that, I’d be embedded with the Afghanistan National Army (ANA) as a mentor and trainer. So I wouldn’t only be out at an American base in a foreign country at war, I’d be traveling around daily, working closely with the Afghans.
I certainly had mixed feelings about this. First of all, it would clearly be dangerous, as I would be filling an Army position, not exactly what I signed up for when I joined the Air Force. I’d get to go to Army combat skills training, I’d be wearing body armor and carrying a weapon every day. I was 44 years old, and the thought of going through combat training was scary enough, never mind then going into a war zone. I was also not happy about leaving my family for a year, but I knew that was part of being in the military.
On the plus side, I would be doing something very few Air Force personnel had ever done. The sheer uniqueness of this was fascinating, and I was eager to see Afghanistan. If I survived, I’d certainly have some good stories to tell.
Step one was getting through a month of training at Fort Sill, Oklahoma. The training was nothing like boot camp, so my worst fears were not realized. However, the heat was staggering, with many days well over 100 degrees. We often joked about how we couldn’t wait to get to Afghanistan or Iraq. It had to be better than this. One month later I was deemed fit to go into combat, though I would beg to differ. However, it was over, and we went our separate ways.
Once I got to Afghanistan, my world was turned upside down. As we drove through villages and towns crumbling from 25 years of war, my jaw hung open. Intellectually I knew such places existed, but seeing them with my own eyes was still pretty amazing.
The fact that I was viewing them through the bullet-proof window of a Humvee while wearing body armor and holding my loaded weapon just made the experience that much more intense.
My home for the next year would be Camp Phoenix, a series of plywood huts on a former Russian transport base. My “room”
would be an 8′ by 12′ corner of the hut, and ultimately seven officers would share this modest abode. Showers and latrines were 30 yards away in a trailer, and the chow hall was a couple of hundred away, at least. And that was about it. Things would be pretty spartan over the next year.
I work at Central Movements Agency (CMA), an ANA transportation base in Kabul. I am part of an Embedded Training Team, assigned to help CMA evolve into the main transportation unit for the ANA. Our job would include training, mentoring, and advising CMA personnel on a day-to-day basis, working closely with them without actually running things. For an Air Force officer like me, it was a unique and amazing experience.
In order to explain how I’ve changed, I needed to provide the history first. Now let me tell you why this experience, while certainly trying and exhausting at times, has had a significant impact on who I am.
First of all, I have lived for a year in the poorest country outside of sub-Saharan Africa. I have befriended many people who live a life of such poverty it boggles the mind. Each day I hear about their lives, and the struggles they go through. My main interpreter lives in a two-room house with five other people. They have no plumbing other than a single water faucet. If they are lucky, they have three hours of electricity a night. He eats the same meal almost every day. He has no car of his own, no refrigerator, no bed (just a mat), no computer, no luxuries of any sort, and little hope of a better life. He assures me that they are middle class citizens. At least they have a water faucet.
Medical care is poor, if you get it at all. You visit the dentist when you can’t stand the pain anymore. My interpreter had to have two crowns put on his teeth. His teeth were ground down with no Novocain or other painkillers. Then I watched him suffer for a week waiting for the crowns to be made and put on what remained of his teeth.
When you spend a year of your life listening to the stories of the local people, problems back in the states start to seem very small indeed. My perspective on what constitutes a major problem has changed dramatically, and I think when I get back home I will be able to face life’s little challenges with much greater equanimity.
The other thing I’ve been forced to do is think about dying, each and every day. When I first got here, the threat seemed low. But last fall suicide bombings started occurring with great frequency. A massive car bomb exploded near our base, and I felt the ground shake and saw the huge cloud of smoke climbing into the sky. I assure you, that is a significant emotional event. We all started thinking more and more about how much risk we faced each day as we went outside the wire. Some even wrote death letters, to be delivered to their families if they died. I remember one night vividly. It was the night before the anniversary of 9/11. We assumed that there would be an attack the next day (we were wrong), and that night I was sure I would die the next day. It was a night unlike any other I’ve ever had.
However, as time went on, I made my peace with the universe. I had lived a happy life, and if I were to die here, there wasn’t much I could do about it. Slowly I was able to overcome my fears, so much so that even when a suicide bomber rammed a car full of explosives into our front gate at Camp Phoenix, it didn’t really faze me. Don’t get me wrong; I don’t want to die here.
I want very much to go home to my family and life for many more years. But I’ve faced the possibility of imminent death so often, and thought about it so much, that the terror is gone.
My year here is almost up. Soon I will head home, a very different person, and in my opinion, a better one. The cost was high. I spent a year away from my family. I missed the college graduation of two of my children. I missed my son’s first season of high school football. I lived in a plywood box for a year. Yet, if I manage to get through it alive, I’ll have had a part in rebuilding Afghanistan, made many friends with people I would never have had a chance to meet, and most importantly, literally have become a changed man.
