Greetings From Afghanistan "Kicked in the Penich"

 

Howdy friends and neighbors! I'm Shawn Kent, and I would like to share for you a series of letters, and emails I sent home from Afghanistan during my deployment there with the US Army. Years ago I spent a fun filled year in sunny southern Baghdad. I noticed that a lot of soldiers were writing home about their manly exploits, that seemed specifically designed to scare the pants off their loved ones. So I decided to throw gritty reality out the window and write a fun, semi-factual series of letters home to keep my family and friends smiling Well, here we go again. This time our destination is Afghanistan, and I'm showing up a few miles from the Pakistan border, a complete stranger to a unit already deployed. Hopefully there will be a lot of action to share with my readers, but not to worry, I can always make something up!

So without further ado, I give you..........

Just to let folks know, this particular episode of GFA contains an unusually large amount of...um, how do I say this.....baloney. I wrote this shortly after I arrived at COP Penich, a real place, and then I proceeded to attempt to make it sound funny and interesting, (it isn't) and the people I met, quirky and entertaining, (they weren't.) So I did my usual reality bender, to keep things in the “Greetings” series style and feel. I only mention it to avoid someone who was actually there sending my angry emails about whether or not a bulldozer assault would have been effective against HESCOS (you'll see.) So enjoy, and try not to take the whole thing too seriously.

Greetings from Afghanistan, where the dust of last night is being coughed up today. I realize that the last installment stopped in the middle of the thrilling story of my journey to Afghanistan, featuring blowing my nose, and finished with the exciting promise that it would be continued. However I have chosen to temporarily move on to other topics for the following brilliant literary reasons:

1. I feel like it
2. Some time has passed since the events in the first installment, necessitating that I draw on my amazing mental prowess to recreate, in great detail, the incredible events that occurred, assuming I can remember them, or at least make something up.
1. No one can stop me.

So we will continue on to the place I find myself today. I have arrived at a small mound of dirt with sandbags around it known as COP Penich. I hope no one issues the enemy a bulldozer because that is all you would need to dominate this place.

I humped my bags off the flight-line and thanked the nice civilian helicopter pilot with a thick Australian accent, who cheerfully said “Sepowa Gainey, Mate!” or at least that's what I heard. Apparently he was from a part of Australia where they speak Swahili. I got directions to the Cougar (Charlie Company) Tactical Operations Command, to meet my Command and get down to the important business of integrating myself into the fabric of the unit, to become a useful part of the combat team, to dazzle them with my warrior spirit and cool. I strode with the confidence of a man, who knows his job, knows that he can make a contribution, and knows that he is an unbelievable bad a*s that the Company will be thrilled to receive.

“What do you want?” The Company First SGT asked my studly awesomeness.

“Err,' I replied in a manly fashion, “what do you mean.”

“I mean who are you?”

Wondering if this was a trick question, and trying desperately not to look down at my name tape, I replied in a less manly voice:

“SGT Kent?”

After a few hours of confusion everything got cleared up. No one knew I was coming. They never asked for another guy, and what the hell were they going to do with me now.

“We'll get back to you.” First Sgt told me.

I stood around sheepishly for a few hours, while people I have never met yelled back and forth down a hallway about me, as if I was not there.

Most of it was pretty boring, but I really feel that I must relate one absolutely fantastic exchange between the first SGT and training room NCO concerning my status. All soldiers with my job are assigned to the HHC Company (Wolverines) but then are attached to other Companies like Charlie (Cougars) where I am now. My new command did not quite understand this distinction causing the following dialog.

First SGT: “He a Gator?”

Training room NCO: “He aint no Gator, that's Alpha.”

First SGT: “No gator?”

Training room NCO: “Naw, that Mofos a Wolverine!”

First SGT: “What we doing with a dang Wolverine?”

Training room NCO: “Don't know.”

First SGT: “Well he aint no Cougar that's for sure. (thouhgtfully) “ Hey, IS he a Cougar?”

Training room NCO: “@#$% no. Not no Cougar, their all Wolverines.”

First SGT:“@#$%in Wolverines.”

In a word, enlightening.

Next, I was given a tour of my new home for the next six months. The chow hall, is literally a hall with a warming plate, that you file past to collect either; A: "Hot chow" which is a lump of warmish brown material eaten with a fork, with eyes firmly shut. Or, at off peak hours, B: "Cold Chow" Which consists of a Cliff Bar, choices of flavor, peanut butter, or the ever popular, peanut butter. The Gym is a small building with a sign outside that states “Small Arms Repair”, and everywhere you look you see what can only be described as “gravel”.

The COP (Combat Out Post) is defended by big square sand bags. If you call them big square sand bags in front the Engineers they will get angry and say that they are HESCOs. See, they say HESCO right on the side of them. They are way too darn big to be sandbags, they are more versatile, they stop incoming and bullets better, they stop global warming, I named my child HESCO Maynard Johnson. These guys LOVE HESCOs! Now let me describe in detail the make up of a HESCO. It is a large square bag filled with, (drum roll please) SAND!!

After the completion of the tour, (about two minutes including the HESCO argument), I was told that I was being honored with the privilege of my own room, which was actually constructed in front of me with plywood inside a brick and mortar building, though they were missing several key engineering features such as nails. Luckily there were plenty of nails jutting crazily from the lumber where it had been ripped from a former structure that had not met the high community standards of COP Penich by which I mean, “Capable of withstanding a strong breeze.” So the two very young men assigned to help me with my quarters, took the boards, and fashioned my new home by basically designing it around where the nails were already stationed in the wood, due to the unfortunate fact that the only tools we had at hand were a rock and my knife. After agonizing over the details for 3 milliseconds, they proceeded to build, cooperating by a complex process of telling each other they were idiots, and fighting over the rock to bang the wood, each other, and my sanity into submission.

Having driven them away with my knife I proceeded to “get settled in” which I did by dragging all 400 pounds of my equipment carefully through the small door to keep from toppling the 12 pound structure. After searching the vast, quarter of a square mile expanse of the COP, I found the MWR (Morale Welfare and Rats. No wait I think it's Recreation) building, and settled in to type up this cheery installment of Greetings from Afghanistan. Now that I am finished I will stumble through the chilly middle eastern night, trying not to trip over the many slanted tubes jutting from the ground that soldiers pee in ( I swear I am not making this up, there are PVC pipes buried in the ground all over the place about waist high to keep the latrines less full.) and head off to sleep in my private room, ten feet away from a sign that is just sitting in the middle of nowhere stating cryptically “Do Not Disturb the Rats.”

I can tell you from the bottom of my heart, that I do not intend to.

So long for now...

Shawn