Uncertainty is a striking and rather crippling emotion. No longer does your natural personality show through. All actions are calculated and guarded. Always scanning, always assessing.
Ali Al Salem was a safe haven, charted ground. I had been there before, five years prior, and not much had changed. It's somewhat of a free zone. No one is keeping track of you while you wait for transportation to another, final, destination. Ali is never (rarely) THE stop, just a stop.
Bagram Airfield (BAF) was a step further than I had been in to the region. Unknown. Past experience would allow me to rationalize. Volumes of civilian contractors and Third Country Nationals must be living and working in Bagram. The place is one of the biggest bases in Afghanistan, if an airplane can land here, and we're not in head-to-toe tactical gear, it should be safe. Sounds reasonable. I was so overly cautious it seems humorous now.
The plane lands in BAF, after our four hour flight. I half read half slept the entire thing. 100% uncomfortable. I'm rubbing my ears and eyes and giving my best attempt to stretch and shift around and I hear barking. A little surprising, but not all too startling. Probably a Military Working Dog brought in to sniff the cargo? Nope, Man's Best Friend in a crate in the back, just woken up by the landing. Dogs barking, ramp lowering, and forklift lifting all makes for overwhelming sound…or solid silence, if you still have your hearing protection in.
Finally we deplane. We walk the tarmac in a semi-cluster, but all is dark around us and I can't make out any sort of terrain beyond the airfield light towers. We stage outside of the building, where we are greeted by two young Airmen in Halloween masks. One unmasked Airmen is shouting out inaudible instructions, and then one of the masked Airmen attempts to repeat it to the other side of the group. We couldn't hear him. I'm glad one of the Sergeants with me yelled at him for being a dummy.
We're lead inside to a room full of seats and prepped to be sorted by follow on destination. Without fail, the Army has appointed the finest collection of thickly accented, speed-speaking, marble-mouth Soldiers to be the vocal coordinators of this group. There was a lot of our people looking at me from all corners of the room with the "Um, did he just call for us? Wait, what was that?" In swoops the liaison to lead us along.
This Sergeant is stationed here at BAF to connect with folks like us and get us where we need to go. As we shuffle out to retrieve our bags MJ's Thriller is playing through the intercom speakers of the entire facility. It was Halloween, honestly. We load up all of our stuff onto a charter bus and he leads us to our temporary billeting. It's just after Midnight at this point and all is showed in darkness. Along the route are trees, which is promising, and the only event as we navigate around is an asphalt truck caught on fire. We're spun around, out of our element, and hungry, but this is still funny. The local workers are running around trying to throw dirt over this flaming tar spot. It took them a good five minutes of running around to decide to just drive the truck forward a few feet.
Surrounded by 20 foot high concrete barriers, we pull into our new temp home. After a quick orientation, we send most of our group to catch midnight chow. Ferry our bags into the tents and crash out. BAF day one complete.
To be continued…
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