My New Home

After a few more days of travel mixed with a few days of waiting, I have made it to Gardez. I was glad to get here and settle in, even if the accommodations are far less lavish than what I had been getting accustom to. However, guys we are replacing are far happier to see us than we could ever be to see Gardez. I had one of the Army Staff Sergeants tell me that we were “the best looking people they had seen in a year.” I'm sure I will feel the same way when the time comes to leave.

The trip down here was far more interesting than our trip to Bagram Airfield (or BAF as it is known in the acronym crazy military), mainly because we were in smaller military aircraft going to more remote parts of the country.

We left BAF for a FOB (forward operating base) in the Afghan country side. Knowing we were going an Army FOB, I had prepared myself for a considerable lower standard of living than we had at BAF. However, to my shock I personally found the FOB to be nicer than what we had left in Bagram. There we fewer people, better dinning facilities, nice gym/athletic facilities, much better showers and more MWR (morale, welfare and recreation) computer access. I found myself getting pretty comfortable even if I was sleeping in a circus tent, on a cot, with 30 other guys.

After a few days there we loaded in to helicopters and headed to our final destination, Gardez. It is here that I found out that all FOBs are not created equal. I wouldn’t say that Gardez is bad, especially knowing that a lot of the Army lives worse than this in Afghanistan, but you would never find more than the few Air Force guys that are on my team in a place like this. However, my room is large and I plan on making this place as much like home as I can for the next few months.

I’m looking forward to getting out on some missions and helping with the reconstruction of this beautiful country. Feel free to email and will respond to those as I can, in the meantime I will continue to post.

Thank you and God bless.