http://dustintheeverything.
you’re interested in that sort of thing. They are from a really
interesting thing I did this week.
The fellow standing next to me in the photo is a Chief of mine. He is
a really, really good guy. He was in Bethesda on limited duty orders
when I was there and they gave him the job of being the boss of the
Fleet Liaison Office, which is where I worked. I met him for the first
time on the day that my son died. I came downstairs from the Labor and
Delivery floor and he was sitting in the office, trying to figure out
how it all worked in the midst of the crisis that was my life. The
first thing I ever said to him was, “You’re an Explosive Ordnance
Disposal guy? Do you guys hate it when people say you’re the bomb?”
Anyway, he is out here now. He lives way over on the other side of the
base that is next-door to us. He took The Boss and I out to the range
with him this past week. He works for the Counter-IED taskforce. They
are a group that trains ISAF (International Security Assistance Force:
Us, the British, Danish, etc. Basically, coalition forces and the
Afghans.) personnel to identify and destroy Improvised Explosive
Devices. It’s a strange task, in a strange place.
His day-to-day job is to train Afghan Security Forces to identify and
destroy IEDs. The issue here is that the Afghans don’t speak English.
Their counting system can be described as “One, two, many…” It is not
an exact science with them. In fact, if you look in an Afghan
dictionary for the term, ‘exact science’ you will find that you have
to first write an Afghan dictionary.
But explosive require a certain tact. They require at least a minimum
level of careful planning, mathematics and understanding to keep the
user from being transformed, from a latter-day Merchant of Death, into
a latter day cloud of moist, former-body parts. Now, given the
prevalence of explosive devices, some of a very high-caliber, that
litter the country-side here, we know that the people can be taught.
There is an audience for this kind of infotainment.
The actual audience that my Chief had for his student body was a bit
less impressive than the image you probably have when I say:
Afghanistan Explosive Team. What he actually trains is a rag-tag bunch
of 20-40 somethings with the attention spans of children. (Actually,
they were very like children in many ways. At one point they were
given a break, to smoke or use the bathroom. They spent it throwing
rocks at each other and running around a pile of plastic pipes. At one
point, due to a rock hitting harder than it was intended to, one of
them took off his Kevlar helmet and threw it at another’s head. It was
meant to decapitate. I think it only succeeded in bruising though.)
During the initial lecture, which is full of rules of thumb, since the
math is not going to be understood, most of the men were looking at a
dog that was walking around behind the translator.
The translator, that’s another great part of this, all of the
instruction is in English, which is then translated with a variety of
success, to the Afghan men. (Let’s make another note here, uniforms.
These guys are all wearing different military-style uniforms. They are
mostly green camouflage, though some of them are in digital patterns
and other in traditional. They are all wearing boots, whatever they
can find. One fellow who was about 4’ tall was wearing size 20 boots.
He looked like a clown and kept stumbling while holding his
explosives. It was unnerving. One fellow was wearing the nylon, rain
gear as his uniform. It can’t have been comfortable. Imagine wearing a
plastic suit on a 90 degree day, now imagine doing that while working
with explosives. He had little rivulets of sweat pouring out of his
plastic cuffs, into his boots. It was gross, but also kind of funny.)
The translators are not experts in explosives, they are just guys who
can understand basic, idiomatic English. The poor fellows who are
trying to learn are trying to learn second hand.
The training is very clever, though. Obviously this is a field where
rules of thumb are encouraged. Rather than learning specific and
technically correct lengths and times, they are taught to count tick
marks and yellow dots. When they plant their explosives they are
taught to yell “FIRE IN THE HOLE!” three times, at different angles
from the explosive. They can yell it in English or Pashtu. But at some
point, the whole exercise comes down to speed of movement. You must
pull the pin and get away in a speedy fashion. If you’re going to yell
your warning, it shouldn’t be done slowly, after the fellow right next
to you has already pulled his pin. Obviously the instructors are not
insane and they give enough time, but this is not a crack unit of
ordnance experts they are dealing with and there are a few moments
when, as the medical person on the scene, I had some rivulets of sweat
going myself.
But it was a good day, no one got hurt. I got to hang out in the sun
and see some explosions. I got to hang out with my pal, my Chief. It
was a good thing.
We’re days away from April now, which means that we’re days away from
the beginning of the end of our tour. I should be home by May and that
is really, really good news. It’s all downhill from here. I’ll be
seeing you all soon. In the meantime, as we say to the Afghans, keep
your powder dry.
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