Update 6.1

Time, time, time to see what's become of me.

Yes, it is Update 6, actually 6, not premature 6 as we had last week. I know that as a 33 year old man I should be able to count to 10 without messing up, but I was home-schooled, what do you want from me? So this is the official 6^th Update, as opposed to the poxy #5 that came before.

There was an e-mail that went out to all hands today that said that we are not supposed to be posting information on Facebook. It said that there have been an awful lot of angry comments and that those comments are security breaches. So I am being careful not to tell too much. And I never post these on Facebook, but just in case, I will try not to say anything that anyone can use against me. Sort of a written version of pleading the Vth Amendment.

On the ever-popular bathroom news front: There is officially no water all day here in Camp Bastion. This makes the evening ablutions, brushing teeth before bed and so on, more difficult. It is much worse for the fellows who are just waking up and need to shave and don't get to shower. Today was the first day of the enforced water-fast and it was a stinky day in the hospital. When I woke up this evening the water was only on in one of the shower tents. It is the one I usually don't use, but I sacrificed my pride on the altar of cleanliness. (This as you may have heard, is next to Godliness.)

Not a whole lot has happened this week. It's been one of those work/sleep type weeks. The Patient of the Week was a 9 month old little girl who somehow drank diesel fuel. She was pretty adorable, though she had a unibrow. (A unibrow at 9 months is impressive to see. She kind of reminded me of Maggie Simpson's nemesis baby.) She would cry all night with this little cracking voice, due to burns on her esophagus from the diesel. It was really sad, but at the same time, how does your 9 month old get near enough to diesel to drink it? That seems like poor parenting or something.

MAN, is everyone seeing this latest Wikileaks stuff? Unbelievable, I guess there is a reason that private stuff is kept private, eh? The things that are said in these latest leaks about almost every world leader? Ouch! That PFC Manning should be in a lot more trouble than he is. None of that can be good, for anyone.

Did everyone have a happy Thanksgiving? It was pretty quiet here. I slept through the day, since I sleep through all the days, and by night-time there wasn't any turkey or stuffing left. I ate a microwave pad thai bowl. (This is not even as good as it sounds. If you read, "microwave pad thai" and thought, "Mmmm, that sounds delicious!" Then you're deluded. If you thought, "Yuck" you're still only half-way there.) It was kind of a bummer. The last Thanksgiving I had in the Navy that was similar was when I was in Camp LeJeune for Field Medical Training School. I was there for 8 weeks, but it seemed like forever and Thanksgiving fell about half-way through. I had duty all day on the holiday and thereby missed the entire celebratory dinner and party. At about 2200 (10PM) I managed to pass the duty on to the slightly inebriated on-coming watch and go to get food. As anyone who has spent time in Camp LeJeune, NC knows, there is nothing that exists there except bars, tattoo parlors, Wal-Mart and strip clubs. I ended up taking a taxi, alone, to Hooters, the only restaurant that was open after 9 on Thanksgiving Day, and eating chicken strips, alone. It was roundly depressing, but pretty standard for a military holiday.

And Christmas will no doubt be worse. But it's ok. There are WAY worse ways to spend the holidays. AND I had the good fortune to manage to offend a large group of British citizens. I walked into the Emergency Department (ED) on Thanksgiving and heard them talking about how it is a holiday that celebrates cultural genocide. Now, some of you will have heard my rant about this point of view before, and I really tried to hold it in. I walked away, but then I turned around and walked back. (Bizarrely, in the 15 seconds that I was gone, the topic had switched to the Twilight movies. Talk about cultural genocide! Am I right?!) I went back in and said, "I'm sorry, I tried to let it go, but I just can't. It's not a holiday about cultural genocide, it's a holiday about Creative Problem-Solving. You can blame the European cultures for wiping out an entire people all you'd like,  but the fact of the matter is, they were just striking first. There is no way that a Native American Nation that had things like guns and ships and cultural advances to rival the European nations wouldn't have done that exact same thing in reverse and we'd all be speaking Cree today. The fact that there WAS no Native American Nation who had those thing is evidence that they were not Creative Problem solvers. That is just cultural evolution. And if I might just mention: the Wheel. It's the single simplest machine. They didn't have it. If a Native American brave, of whatever tribe, killed an elk, he had to drag that elk to the village, on the ground. Sure, there were ingenious dragging devices, but no wheeled carts. Europeans had no more time to figure out basic technology than our Native Americans, they just bothered to figure them out. That's the difference. That's why it isn't cultural genocide, it's creative problem solving."

They asked me to leave.

Update V

Another week's Update.

Some good stuff this week, not all of it for the faint of heart. I am going to get a little graphic this week, but I think that the tone will be pretty light, hopefully no one will fall out.

A quick bit of admin business first, I have put up the older Updates here: http://dustintheeverything.blogspot.com/?zx=ee6fac97810abcfc If you want to see something older, or someone wanted to see, that's where they're at.

It continues to get colder. I keep talking to people about how the rain will come soon. Everyone is getting ready, preparing plans to raise all of their equipment by 6-12 inches. No one has things moved yet, since it would really be kind of a pain right now, but getting ready all the same. All my books are on the bottom shelf, I am getting ready to change that up, let me tell you.  The worst thing that can happen to an already pretty guy-smelling room is to add a bunch of rotting books.

Well, nearly the worst thing. I told this story to Margaret and she said that she thought I shouldn't add it to the Update this week, but I told her that I kind of liked the story and it DOES show how things work here a bit. So here it is: I have to set it up with a couple of points. First, I've been reading a lot of Elmore Leonard, whom I recommend. He's good and smart and fun. One of the things that his characters do, they think everything through beforehand. I mean, there is a situation where a guy might get into a fight and he thinks about the fight, he thinks about how he might handle it and what things he would use or how he would talk beforehand. It's not really planning, it's just the usual thinking about things that people do. (Or at least, I do it and Elmore Leonard's characters do it, I assume we are not alone.) (Furthermore, while I am going on and on about Elmore Leonard, I really, really recommend the show Justified. It was on FX and I suspect is out on DVD now. Netflix it. It's based on an Elmore Leonard character that is in 2 books and a short story and it is really excellent. There is a song that they play over the last scene that isn't good. Other than that, perfect.) That's point one for setup. Point two is a little more extreme, I guess. On deployment you have a bunch of guys who are not spending any quality time with women and ARE spending a hell of a lot of time crammed together in close quarters. There is an awful lot of homo-erotic "humor." It isn't really humorous, I mean not really funny. It's more something that lets off a bit of steam. When I was first exposed to it, in Okinawa, I was really creeped out and felt that it was a bridge WAY too far. But over time I have pretty much gotten used to it. It's just the way guys in the military are.

At any rate, after all that preamble, the other morning I was in my rack. I was reading an Elmore Leonard book and I was in a sleeping bag, about half zipped. My buddy Cahill popped through the blankets that are hung up as my walls and  stood staring at me for a second. I raised an eyebrow and said, "Yes?" And he acted like he was crying, took his shirt off and said in a crying voice, "I'm sorry, just let it happen." (As if, you see, he was about to sexually molest me. Again, not funny ha ha, but amusing for that kind of thing.) Then he said, "What would you do, if that happened." Curious now, see? Like he'd just thought about the reality of it, after he had already made as if it was real. And, because I was specifically thinking about things like that, the process for things, I said, "I'd lean forward and grab the lamp (a clip lamp) and as I fell backwards, when you pulled my leg, I'd crack it across your face and break your nose." And he thought about that for a second and said, "You'd us the lamp?" And I looked around and said, "Yeah, I have a knife, but it's farther away, I don't want to break any of my computer stuff, this book is too light. I'd use the lamp." He said, "Would that be strong enough?" He was putting his shirt back on now, getting ready to sit on the foot of my cot. "And I pulled the lamp down and gave it a little swing. "Yeah, it'd break your nose." "Huh," he said, "yeah, I guess that'd work." And then we just talked about work and then he went to bed. Really, really foreign, right? But exactly what it is like to live in a tent with 10 guys.

The other big story from the week, and this one is really kind of upsetting, so I warn you again. I was on duty a couple of nights ago and we got a couple of guys in on an IED blast. One was a US guy and one was an ANA. (Afghan National Army) They were being helicoptered in, so they were in bad shape. (Category A, we say. That's really, really bad shape.) When someone comes in, I go out and stand with the team in the Emergency Department (ED) and take down tracking and personal information while they do the actual medical work. The ANA guy was torn up really badly. There was brain matter on the gurney and the bed. He had lots of torn-upedness. But that was ok. I stood there while they evaluated him. He was very unconscious and it was fine. Then I went over to the US guy. He was awake, sitting up and talking and he had no face. From under his chin to his hairline, from ear to ear, there was just a mask of blood. When he spoke he spit blood, his teeth occasionally shone through the mist of red. His eyes were the big concern and they were squeezed shut. The doctors were asking him questions about what had happened and things. Then someone said, "What his pain?" This is one of those standard medical questions, "On a scale of zero to ten, with zero being no pain at all and ten being the worst pain you have ever felt, how much pain do you have." Clinical personnel say it 20 times a day. So one of the nurses asked the guy, "How much pain do you have?" And he said, "Uh, a four." Well it couldn't have been a four, that's what I thought, that's what everyone thought, so they asked him the full question, "On a scale of zero to ten, with zero being no pain at all and ten being the worst pain you have ever felt, how much pain do you have." He said, "OH! In that case, four." I started to smile, but at the same time, I started, for the first time since I have been here, to get dizzy. Watching him talk and spit and just live in blood like that was getting to me. So they wrote his pain as a four and I went back over to see the ANA. (Note, for non-medical folks, the poor guy had probably been given morphine on the flight over. That would make his pain an awful lot less than it would be later. It LOOKED horrible, but he was speaking and sitting up on his own. I'm sure it was awful, but not the end of his world. He left for Germany the next day and is probably back in the States right now, with his family.)  And that's one of the things that really struck me. I was more comfortable looking at the ANA guy, the guy with brains literally coming out of his head, than I was looking at the guy with no face. I don't know what that's all about. Is it the race issue? Am I more comfortable seeing another guy in pain, but not an American? Was it just that the ANA guy was knocked out, just waiting to die? Was that what it was? I don't know.  The other thing that struck me was that Hollywood doesn't know what they are doing. They get really close to the effect, but they just don't get it. Tom Savini, the premiere effects guy in Hollywood, does good work. (He's not one of the CGI guys. He's a make-up effects guy. He does all the horror movies.) He gets it close, but anyone who has seen a movie with horror tones has seen someone with no face and what is missing is the blood. There is always some blood in the movies, but not to the degree that there is in real life. In real life, your body is still pushing blood to the skin that isn't there. It pumps it and pumps it and there is nothing to keep that blood from running through the meat of your face and into your mouth and onto your shirt. It's really, really disturbing. And, to jump backwards, makes people pretending that they are going to molest you seem less scary in comparison.

Finally, in the news that I know you have all been waiting for, it looks like Britain's X Factor show is even worse than American Idol.  I know that some people like American Idol, and I call these people my sister-in-law Suzie, but you should know that as much scorn as I have possibly shown towards it, there are far worse things in the world. (And by that I mean X Factor. You cannot believe that people watch this on purpose, but every weekend one of the Brits puts it on and watches to the end. Are they ok? Do they know what good singing sounds like?)

And pop-culture recommendations: I have beaten Elmore Leonard to death, but there are other things I have been enjoying lately. If you like 14 year old boy humor, The Inbetweeners is great. It's a British show about 16 year olds, but it perfectly captures that gross, embarrassing teen time. And I watched a movie called Daybreakers this morning, with Ethan Hawke as a vampire, but it was pretty great. Way smarter than a vampire movie should be. I recommend, if you like that sort of thing.

And that's another week come to a close. We will discuss again next week.

 

Update IV

Welcome my friends to the show that (seemingly) never ends.

It’s time for week 4 of The Update. In the background Three Amigos is playing on British television and we have just tracked down a missing patient. In other words, it is a normal Sunday night here at Camp Bastion Hospital.

Increasingly, the feeling here is that in spite of the pretty regular diet of trauma patients coming through, things are a bit same-y. I know that people who have been on deployment will recognize the feeling. As foreign as anything can be at the outset, things quickly become routine, and from routine they become boring. (Not that the trauma is boring, if anything it is TOO exciting.) But with nothing else to do, a day quickly turns into another, work/sleep/work. And it gets same-y. Groundhogs Day references become the, well not the funny thing, but the thing that people say and chuckle about even though it isn’t funny at all. (“I feel like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day.” “Ha ha.” That’s a normal hallway conversation right there. I know that it isn’t the Algonquin Round Table, but it is one you hear 3 or 4 times a day. This constant repetition, from the same people every day, only adds to the sense that nothing is unique. )

But what, I hear you all asking, do you actually DO all day? Well, I sleep all day. That’s what I do. I work at night, which means that my pallor is increasingly pale and my social contact is scarce. During the night, my shift goes from about 10:45 PM (2245) to about 7:00 AM (0700) I track patient movement into and through the hospital. Say, as is not uncommon, a fellow has an upset stomach or groin pain. They come in to the Emergency Department (ED) and get their initial evaluation, then from there they go, in the above mentioned simple cases, either to a Ward or back to their unit. If they come in via helicopter and are in bad shape, which happens, then it gets more complicated. They go from the ED to the Operating Theatre (OT), then to the Intensive Treatment Unit (ITU), then on to the Wards or off to another location. It all depends on how full the hospital is and whether or not we have the ability to treat long-term. Often we pass guys along within 24-48 hours. The ones that are worse off go the quickest. My job is to make sure that everyone involved knows where the patients are at any given time.

Tonight I was trying to find a guy who came in this afternoon. He was an Afghan National Army fellow who had come in as a Category A, (really messed up) and gone to the OT. He had left the OT late in the afternoon and as of 9PM (2100) was supposed to be… somewhere. I came on at 2200 and no one could find him. He hadn’t gone to the ITU, hadn’t gone to the Wards… there was no paperwork, no tracking. He was gone. I started to get worried. There is a saying here that is probably overly cynical, but it is: ANA today, Al Quaeda tomorrow. I got a nurse from the ED interested and we started tracking him down. After about an hour and a half it turned out that he’d left for Kandhar hours ago, but no one had documented it. No worries, everything fine, just poor procedures. But that’s what I do, and that’s a good example of why it’s necessary.

Some of my friends have pointed out that this deployment has no excitement to it. They don’t mean in the same-day sense. They mean that there is no shooting .They mean that I am not a tactical warrior. I have been thinking about it and they are right. I am not a war-fighter. I am willing to be, I think. (I haven’t done it, so how can I know?) But I think that the military makes its money off me in an office setting. I am good with computers; I am great with Microsoft Excel. I am, in a nutshell, the Ewan Macgregor character in Black Hawk Down, before he gets picked up to go with the Rangers. And that’s not something that I am super proud of. I know, people back home think of military ventures as being something honorable and to be proud of. I know that there are people who pray for my safety and worry about me all the time. But honestly, I AM safe. I am in one of the safest possible places that I could be. The closest to trouble I’ve been was at my own instigation, I drove a bus the wrong way and it might have gotten stuck. That’s as dangerous as this has been, and probably as dangerous as it will be. In a lot of ways, that’s good. (I mean, right? It seems self-explanatory. I know my wife is happy that I reside within that level of safety.)

It seems foolish to complain about, doesn’t it? Here I am, in the warm, without a care, and I feel like there is something wrong with me. On the other hand, the laundry facilities aren’t terrific. AND the bathrooms are rubbish. Have I talked about the bathrooms yet? The toilets are stainless-steel, prison jobs. I bought 5 plastic toilet seats that fit into the top of the bowl, for more comfort. Amazon sells them and ships them out here. They’re nice little devices, but you’d be amazed how many people don’t use them and seem to prefer squatting over cold steel. The there are the showers. They have a button that gives 8 seconds of water. Depending on the shower, and its proximity to the heater, the temperature will be scalding or cold. If you get a plastic spoon and place it just so, it will force the button to remain in, giving you as regular shower, until you lean backwards and get a spoon jammed into your back.

There, even though I am perfectly fine, there are still things to complain about. You can all feel safe, knowing that your boys in uniform are undergoing such hardships.

Prince William was here today. As it was Veteran’s Day in the States, so it was Remembrance Day in Britain. I didn’t know he was coming, and I didn’t see him, but I did get stopped by armed guards on my way home this morning and told that I couldn’t get home the normal way. It was a really big deal, though. I pointed out to a bunch of Brits that he is a lot less handsome now that he is really, sincerely balding. They didn’t agree or disagree, which I found oddly patriotic.

People have asked what to send, what things are needed here in the Ghan. Well, anything , really. Everyone shares everything, so anything you can think of sending, someone will want. Food is a big one. The British food is terrible. I know that that’s something everyone says, but you wouldn’t believe it if you didn’t see it. Their bacon is like rancid ham. I will say that again, their bacon is bad! Those of you who know me well will know that my feelings on bacon border on religious. That British bacon is inedible is like saying that they worship Satan. It is wrong, wrong, so wrong. Their eggs are not like normal eggs. They fry them in something like vulcanized rubber. I am trying to tell you that they manage to mess up breakfast. You can’t imagine what horrors await when you get to lunch and dinner. And the closest Chow Halls are British, so all the Americans are hungry, all the time. Other than that, any old thing, really. People will make a use out of anything that isn’t obviously rubbish. Not egg shells or empty cans, we’ll take it.

That’s all I can think of tonight. What’s happening with you?

Update III

Well, it is getting cold, here in Afghanistan. Or rather, about 3 days ago it was suddenly freezing. There are seasons here, but I suppose with so few trees the country just feels that an Autumn would be a waste of time. (And really, what is falling in Fall? If not leaves, then what is there? Our spirits?) A few days ago my relief, a nice girl named Diaz, came in wearing her coat and I knew that I was probably going to freeze on the way back to the tent. Sure enough, while there has not yet been a frost, there has definitely been… I wouldn’t try to grow tomatoes, I can say that.

Living in tents in the very, very cold is not the most ideal. The pod in which we live is fine. It is heated and mostly comfortable. (Too hot even, on occasion.) But the real problems come in at shower time. The showers themselves are warm and pleasant, but walking out, through the hallways that are open to the wind, can be a little bit of a downer. When you’re toddling out, holding onto the towel around your waist and shivering, sometime you might wish you were at home instead. At least it hasn’t started raining yet. I have heard that once it gets cold, the rains come. And the rains flood, which means that not only are you in a cold tent, but everything is wet in your cold tent. That day isn’t one I look forward to.

We have reached the one month point and the men are all getting “Deployment Goggles.” This means that the single men among us now look at any woman at all as beautiful. My friends are particularly susceptible. Today my friend Heckenlaible was talking about, “That really hot girl who works in the OR…” We were all looking at him, trying to figure out who he meant. He talked and talked about how he was so attracted to her and how hot she is and how, if there were only bars here… Finally we realized who he was talking about and, while she is a nice girl, she is not an attractive girl. She is possibly best described as Minotaur-ish. She has the body of a human, but her head is more esoteric. I have remained goggle-less, thus far. I think it has something to do with having a beautiful wife at home.

A British guy just told me that the worst mistake he ever made was when he brought his second wife flowers on his anniversary with his first wife. He said he walked in the door and said, “Happy Anniversa…” And he said he knew, as soon as he started to say it, that he’d got it wrong. He said that it was soon after that that he was divorced and onto wife #3. He seems like a really cool guy. Maybe I can learn from him.

As the newshounds among you have no doubt recognized, the casualty count is lowering. This is both good, fewer of our fellow Soldier, Sailors and Marines are being hurt and bad, the people coming in for treatment now are local children who have been blown up. There is a specific toll taken on a person’s psyche when they see a 10 year old boy come in with no legs. I don’t mean to be graphic or to be disturbing, but that little boy is not doing as well as he might and there is nothing that you can really do for him. I have no idea what little Afghan boys do for fun, though I would guess soccer is a part of it, but I DO know that he won’t be doing any of it any time soon. (Unless his friends are playing a team that’s really bad at soccer and they need a stationary goalie. But even that seems like insult added to injury.) (Another parenthetical, this one totally useless: Did you ever see Boxing Helena? Frank and I watched it years ago, mostly because it has boobs in it. But the point is, it is a wildly disturbing, and sometimes I think I just dreamed it, film about a doctor who is obsessed with a patient and when she is in a car accident in front of his house [?!] he takes her in and does specific surgeries to make her is limbless love-slave. To make matters worse, Art Garfunkel is in this film. I think it’s Art Garfunkel, Julian Sands and… I forget who the actress is. The point being, when it comes to disturbing, amputee humor, I am an old hand.)

There are a few different things that are striking about having fewer US casualties. First is that, and I know that this will come across as racist and demeaning, but Afghans smell really, really strange. Different and… spicy? Something. They smell like they come from another world. (And again, a pop culture parenthetical, how many films reference smell? I can’t think of many. I mean, some do it in subtle ways, people putting handkerchiefs to their nose, but how many discuss scent? Han Solo, “And I thought they smelled bad… on the outside.” What else?) And there will be the child and his or her parents, sitting in the Intensive Treatment Unit (ITU), don’t speak English. So there is a great deal of sitting and looking… smiling? Not necessarily. There is a lot of looking at each other. And it seems like one of those awkward looks. I mean, I assume they are grateful that we’re helping the kid out. I assume they are not blaming us for the kid being hurt… but how are we not supposed to feel a little bit like we ARE responsible? I mean, not that awful things wouldn’t be happening if we weren’t here. But surely that particular child wouldn’t have his particular legs missing.

There is another war going on here, as well. I am embroiled in an on-going altercation, not to say nightly battle, with flies. There are many, many flies here. With the usual, historical British brilliance when it comes to sanitation, the hospital is built on top of the base septic tank. For most things, this isn’t a huge problem. The bathrooms smell awful, all of the time. The water pongs a bit. But mostly the problem is the flies. There is negative pressure in the hospital’s main area, so the flies are most shooed out by that. But over in my area there are battalions of the damned things. I kill between 5 and 15 a night, and there are always more. Some are particularly wily and when I get a wily one I stalk it like I am the Last of the Mohicans. In a room full of British Soldiers, you might think the LotM would have better things to do than chase flies, but I suppose the characterization isn’t perfect.

My days, which are nights, are mostly full of school work. I am working hard towards my Bachelor’s Degree in Business Administration. If I can finish it in the next year and a bit, then I will be eligible for a spot in the 2012 Medical Service Corps-Inservice Procurement Program. That means that I will have the opportunity to be made an Officer and be sent to get my Master’s Degree in Healthcare Administration. That’s good because it means I will have more money, but also because it will mean that I can go do the job I really want to do. I want to go be in the Plans, Operations, Missions and Intelligence field. I want to go be what we call a POMI and work with the Marines. It’s the job I did in Okinawa, but it’s at a higher level, if you’re an officer. It is the first job I’ve ever done where I really felt at home. I am confident doing that, and the downside is that I have to take all these college classes. But I suppose that with anything good, you have to pay the price.

And a note for those of you who pray, the wild thing this week was a fellow who came in with a pain in his neck that turned out to be a brain tumor. He is on his way home, but that’s a hell of thing to find out.

To paraphrase Garrison Keillor, where all the men are lonely, all the women are (consequently) good looking, and all the children have been recently blown up by Improvised Explosive Devices.

Update 2

Part 2 of the wildly popular Updates From An Afghan Hospital begins now. I have had two cups of very strong coffee, chock full of a carcinogenic sweetener. I am raring to write.

Things have been slowly improving here. That's one of those statements that makes me want to knock on wood, but it has been. I think that part of the problem was that there was a Relief In Place (RIP) happening. RIPs are when a group of service members leave and their replacements come in behind them. They happen periodically, as one group's tour is up. The enemy, Al Quaeda, Taliban, whatever, know when this happens and know that the incoming personnel are less comprehensively competent, due to lack of experience, and the out-going personnel are eager to be gone and therefore more cavalier. And they ramp up their efforts in order to exploit this weakness. In the case of this last RIP, it worked a treat for them. It sucked for everyone here, though. It's hard to know how graphic to get in an e-mail like this. I want to tell the truth, but I don't want to break anyone's heart or gross anyone out. So, that's a full-on spoiler alert, the next sentence is for those of strong constitution. I will change the font color, and you will have to highlight it to see what I have to say next. Please don't, if you don't want to see something sad. My friend Cahill, who will get several mentions in this e-mail, came into the tent the other day and said. "I saw my first mutilated fetus today. The woman was blown apart and the fetus was just in pieces." I choked up and just... it's hard to know what to say, you know? But that's the sort of thing we see here. Obviously, that was a local Afghan woman. And she did not survive.

Wow, that's difficult to do. I have never experimented with that sort of trickery in HTML before and it is really kind of hard to not mess up.

Anyways, this e-mail is only a week after the last and there hasn't been that much that happened, so you'll probably get more musings and fewer stories, though I do have some pretty good stories, too.

The first one I would like to call, How Owen Got Lost in Something Like No-Man's Land, While Driving a Bus.

The vehicles here have the steering wheel on the British, right-hand-side, but you drive on the American, right-hand side. I remember Tom saying once, when I was younger, that this sounded like a sensible way to drive, since it would mean that you could better hug the berm. Well, Tom, you were talking out of your hat. I have now tried this eccentric method of driving and it is not at all what you made it out to be. As I described previously, the ditches here are basically sledding hills made from a crumbling flour. Hugging this berm is something like Russian Roulette. Camp Bastion is located to the East of Camp Leatherneck. Camp Leatherneck is the big base, the US Marine base, that is where the good food is, the Marine PX, where you can buy things that an American might want, and the Post Office. I was told that it is also where the fuel pumps are, but I am getting ahead of myself. When we arrived here I was put in charge of the 3 vehicles that belong to the Americans. We have 2 SUVs, Toyota HILUX. One is very nice and the other is pretty ratty. On the other hand, even the ratty one is the lap of luxury compared to the 24 passenger bus we have. This thing seems like it was built by a Soviet car company. I think that it is a refurbished AvtoVAZ. We're lucky it runs at all. It has not suspension, no steering, no brakes. It is basically a poorly built rocket. It is used whenever there is a training that takes place outside of the hospital, for food runs and general transport purposes. I think that the reasoning is, "We're in a war-zone, if this bus kills everyone, their families are already prepared." Seriously, it is an unsafe vehicle.

On Monday morning there was a note for me: "Pitrone, put gas in the bus. The pumps are on Leatherneck." So, after my shift I took the keys, started the bus, which I forgot to mention is a manual transmission, so you shift with your left hand, and went to go to Leatherneck. Well, there is construction happening. There is always construction happening. (It is like Cleveland road conditions, in this sense.) There is always something closed off. In this case it was the straight-forward route to Leatherneck. So, I started my drive, saw that the only way I knew was blocked, and then as I re-routed, I picked up a couple of British soldiers. Now, this might seem foolish. In fact, it was probably VERY foolish. They were obviously standing where the road was closed, trying to figure out how to get to Leatherneck, so I figured we'd pool our confusion and lack of information. We started driving around the base, in the direction opposite to that which would normally take us to Camp L.

I was pretty sure that I kind of knew the right way, but I was very much guessing. When I saw a couple trucks take a right, I followed them. The British guys said they thought that I wasn't going the right way. I told them that if we passed a machine gun nest to holler, as it would mean we were now outside "The Wire" and probably going to die. They agreed to mention it.

I followed the trucks up the road, took the next right, as it was a one-way, and then found myself in what looked an awful lot like open desert. There were tracks, but the trucks had easily out-distanced us. I started bouncing the bus over dunes. I was biting my lip pretty hard, not really sure where we were, if what we were doing was legal, or if we were in a mine-field. I probably can't describe this situation adequately, on the one hand, I was pretty sure were still on base. We hadn't crossed any Entry Control Points, that I noticed. But we were definitely on a built up part of the base. So who knows where we were? We were in between two huge concrete walls, but only in the sense that there were walls visible on the horizon. Seriously, it felt like driving across the DMZ, if the DMZ were somehow transported to Afghanistan. (And that would be a real shock for everyone.)

I kept thinking that the bus would break down and I would have to call for a tow in the middle of nowhere. I told the British guys, who were kind of freaking out, that if we got stopped by the MPs that they should say I had kidnapped them. No sense in all of us going to the brig, right? The British guys were really freaking out, and while I was trying to pretend I wasn't, I was freaking out too.

We finally saw a line of traffic, across what would have been a bridge if it had any kind of structure, really more of a couple of concrete pads over ditch. I bit my lip, tossed up a prayer and gunned it across the makeshift platform. We survived and I joined the line of traffic, safely on Leatherneck. It wasn't until 45 minutes of driving, dropping of Brits and swearing that I finally found out that the gas station was on Bastion. I went back and waited in line for another hour. I didn't get to bed till afternoon.

Anyone who has ever driven with me before will appreciate this story. It is all Owen-driving condensed into one anecdote. Dangerous, stupid, foolhardy and oddly lucky. Why they put me in charge of the vehicles is a mystery.

So that was pretty good. Other than that it has been a pretty quiet week. The number of casualties has dropped radically. The RIP is over, people are settling into routines and everyone is getting to know their jobs well enough that there are fewer explosions. Plus it is getting cold, and since the Afghans are seasonal fighters, we have a break. We had our first big rain storm the other day, which is not as nice as you'd think. That dust just turns to mud. It gets pretty rotten. And that's what we have to look forward for the whole winter.

Here's a story, my buddy Cahill told this one the other day, and it is a good scary story. He was in Iraq, a couple of years ago. He worked at a base, with the Marines, he was a line corpsman, Role 1. They had taken this school that was far enough from the base that it became an outpost. They would send teams there, one team every 12 hours, to keep watch. The school was small, one room with a foyer. The machine gun nest was on the roof and three of the guys would go up there, the stairs were off the front of the building, while two guys would stay in the foyer. Behind the foyer was a school room, full of those desk/chair combos. There was also a back door. In order to ensure that no one could get into the place from the rear, they randomly tossed/stacked the desk/chairs against the back door. That way anyone trying to come in would cause a massive chair-slide, they'd hear it and run in firing. So Cahill and one of his buddies is in the foyer, the other guys are on the roof, and all of a sudden there is a gust of wind from the back room. Cahill and his buddy start to freak out, because that means the back door must be open. So they run back, weapons at the ready, and the back door is closed, but the chairs are set up perfectly, for a class. Rows of chairs, no explanation. The chairs were stacked in such a way that moving one would cause a slide, but there was no sound. They called up to the roof and got the Staff Sergeant, who said, "Why did you take the chair stack apart?" They said, "We didn't." There was no explanation. Cahill said that he was really, really freaked out and that while they were only in that area for another couple weeks, he made sure he never went back to that school.

Anyways, lots of days running together here. Strangely, when I say days, I mean nights.

Update 1

I am here in the Helmand Province of Afghanistan at the British-run Camp Bastion Hospital. Getting here was a several step process. It started all the way back in August with a trip to South Carolina. I spent about 3 weeks in South Carolina, training with to be an Army asset. I am not sure what the real benefit of this training was. They taught us to "Move-Shoot-Communicate" which was a good thing, in a general way. Most of what they taught us falls under the idea of general information. Specific tactics, the way that a unit in the field will move, shoot or communicate, are based in on-site necessity. So general training isn't that useful. It offered familiarization in weapons firing for people who had never had it, but unless things go really, specifically badly here, we won't be using, or indeed in contact with, our weapons. The whole thing is a bit confusing that way. But I suppose it was an opportunity to spend some real, quality time in Fort Jackson, South Carolina. If I could make a suggestion to the travelers among you it would be this: Do not visit Fort Jackson, South Carolina. It is a miserable, hot, humid, ugly place. Also, people there go "Muddin'" a lot. They love them some Muddin'. Don't ask me why. It seems like one of those non-intuitive things. If someone were to suggest Muddin' to me, I wouldn't even have to ask what it is. No, I'd say, no Muddin' for me.

From South Carolina we got a respite. A quick stop-over in the DC area and time with my loving wife. This was a swell time, though it is always difficult when you have to say goodbye again. I don't like it. Others might enjoy such things, but it is not for Margaret and I. The time together, yes please, we like it. The time of parting, not wonderful. But it worked out well and was a nice time.

From there we spent 3 weeks in Strensall, England. This was a pretty nice time. I have to recommend York to everyone. It's a terrific place. It has the old city walls from it's Keep days, the Minster is terrific. The pubs have a wonderful bounty of local brewed ales and the clubs are not as odious as clubs in Cleveland, Ohio. (I know that clubs in Cleveland are not the gold standard for clubbing. They are however pretty much the gold standard as far as I am concerned. I am not a club-guy.) My friends tell me that the strip-clubs in York are rotten. So... you know, if that was your plan, don't bother. The training itself, again, was kind of a waste of time. The Brits have a complete mock-up of the entire hospital that we are in now, in Strensall. It's an impressive bit of simulation, but not really anything like what we have run into since we got here. (For one thing, there is a wildly different climate in Britain than in Afghanistan. I know that will come as a surprise to most of you, but it is really, really true.) Climate is one of the really big issues here, but I am getting ahead of the story. My training-pals and I also popped over and visited London, which I was so prepared to fall in love with. And it was a miserable time. I would love to be able to recommend London, but in fact I suggest you steer clear. Hang out in York, instead. London is so cold and wet, and expensive and touristy and crowded and miserable that I felt kind of like.... Have you ever had a bad girlfriend/boyfriend? One that you just keep trying to make everything good with? You spend more money, try harder, put more time and effort in, only to be continually abused? That is what London was like for us. Not a good scene.


We flew out of London and stopped for about an hour in Cyprus, which has a really lovely landing strip with a duty-free shop. I assume it has other things, but we didn't see them.

Then on to Afghanistan. My first impressions of this place were that it is just like post-apocalyptic, Arnold Schwarzenegger film. There are huge concrete walls that look pockmarked by dust and shrapnel, tons of razor-wire and flashing lights. It is just like something out of an early 90s action-fest. But then you start to realize how much dust is everywhere. No good director would allow it, it is uncinematic. You get off the plane and onto a bus that has not only seen better days, but it forgot about them and now only has that vague memory of better days, like a story it heard once when it was a kid. The roads are everything you've ever heard Third World roads would be. The potholes have pothole and the ditches alongside are more like gradually crumbling hills. The drivers are as cautious as you've heard. At 4 in the morning, with no one else on the road, we almost had a collision with the other bus that was carrying our luggage. You wouldn't have thought it possible, but it happened.

We were taken to our new homes in this dust-filled desert. We live now in tents, we are like the nomads that they have around here. The tents we have are huge, 80 man affairs. There is a huge main corridor, off of which there are 10, 10-man pods. 2 of these pods are not for berthing, they hold showers and latrines. The other 8 have room for 10 people to sleep uncomfortably. We sleep on old-style Army cots. Just canvas stretched over metal frames. Many of us have a sort of mattress, just a long pillow that lies on top of the canvas. It's actually WAY nicer than you'd think. I've slept on the canvas and poles by themselves before and aside from sleeping on a hard plastic floor, they are the worst. (And since a hard plastic floor is the option, even those without the mattresses sleep on the cots.) We string up cord at head height and hang blankets in between our cots, so that we have a modicum of privacy. It isn't perfect, but it's OK. It's home, at any rate, for the next 6 months, so we learn to love it.

The guys in my pod are mostly all guys I trained with. With one exception, I like them all a lot. (There is one kid that I just don't like. He is one of those people that you don't like from the first time you see them. When we were in Strensall, this same group of guys, we all shared a room together. Over the first couple of weeks everyone managed to get pretty annoyed with each other and eventually we all had an "Air Your Grievances" evening. When it came to me, I said, "I am sorry to anyone I offended, I didn't mean to. As far as I am concerned, you're all OK with me. I have no problem with any of you." Then the kid I don't like piped up with some comment and I said, "Except you. I don't like you. I'd like to punch you in the face. Sometimes I find myself just staring at you and thinking about how much I'd like to hit you. Sometimes when this happens, you're asleep. Why don't you shut up." He shut up. Over the next week all the other guys came to me privately and told me that they feel the same way, but that they'd have never said it like that.) They are all pretty good guys, fun to be around, too loud when I am sleeping, but you can't hold that against them.

We're all on different shifts here, which brings me to the role of this Hospital. We're a Role 3 medical facility. Role 1 is the guy in the battle. He's the guy that runs out, puts a tourniquet on and carries the wounded back. Role 2 is a Shock Trauma Platoon or Field Surgical Suite. It is who the Role 1 guy brings the wounded to. Their job is to make the wounded fit to travel to Role 3. We get the wounded, usually off a helicopter, and we make them stable enough, surgically complete the amputation, stabilize the major bleeds, whatever, for the guy to travel on to Germany and a major hospital, who make him ready to go to, usually, Bethesda Naval Medical Center. Now, I work at Bethesda in the role of Liaison for these guys. I see them after here, when I am at home. So this is just a step or two forward in the chain. But what I didn't know, and what you probably don't, is that this hospital is THE trauma hospital. We are the #1 place for victims of trauma in the whole world. There is a 60% better chance of the patient surviving here than anywhere else in the world. And that's just incredible. It is unprecedented. I work here in an Administrative role. That's really what I do for the Navy. I am trained to be that Role 1 guy, but really they always make me Admin. (That's what happens when you know Excel really well. For which, thank you Josh Gottlieb and Auntie Andy.) But many of the guys I live with work in other areas. Some of them work in the Operating Room. Their shifts are 6 hours on, 6 hours off, 7 days a week. If they are in a surgery that takes longer, their shift is longer. It is a punishing life. Some of them work in the Emergency Room, their shifts are 12 on, 12 on call, 12 off. It's better than the OR guys, but still pretty tough. And there hasn't been a day here that the on-call folks haven't been called in. The kid I don't like works on the Wards. They work... not enough, that kid should suffer. No, they work 12 on, 24 off. Not bad.

I work about 10 hours a day, every day. It's easy compared to others. I work at night, so nearly the same time the US is awake. That's a pretty sweet deal. I can call Margaret when I want and talk. I can work on the college classes I am taking. I have it pretty easy.

Now let's talk about the hard part. You know how they keep reporting that this is the worst month on record, X number dead, X number wounded? Well, about 70% of them come through here. It is pretty graphically horrible. Again, movies help out. The trauma we see is painful, but relate able to things we've seen in films. Not all of it. I don't want to get into it, but you see things here that you won't forget any time soon. These young guys are coming in here, double, triple, quadruple amputees. Every day. It wears on a body. I see a little less of it, night-shift doesn't get as many calls. But still, I see enough to keep me awake days. The guys in the Emergency Room and the OR, they have it rougher. (This is why I don't complain if they're noisy while I am trying to sleep.)

But all in all, we are safe. Camp Bastion is surrounded on all sides by miles of Coalition Forces. The last time anything happened here was ages ago and we're pretty lucky for that.

OK, that's tons. I know there are more stories to tell, and like l said, I'll try to get to them all over time.