Shades of James Brown

If it weren’t for the numerous legal injunctions barring me from singing in public, you’d hear me belting out “I Feel Good!”

First off, I was able to get the door to my hooch working, so I didn’t have to do any more emergency egress evolutions.  That, of course, didn’t stop the jackals and hyenas from tearing into me this morning, rehashing the story for those who hadn’t heard about my exploits.  My saving grace was the “Woman with Crazy Eyes” who sat at our table during breakfast.  She seemed normal enough, but she was sitting to my side and I didn’t get a look at her eyes.  But the lads throttled back on giving me grief, so I was grateful for the respite.

Later on this morning, following a hearty breakfast and with a big-ass MOAC (Mother of all Coffees) sitting in front of me, there’s a knock at the office door.  In comes a stranger bearing gifts.  More precisely, a stranger who’s been reading this blog since Day One, and he wanted to present me with a handful of stogies he’d brought all the way from Old Virginia Tobacco Company.  What a wonderful way to start the day!  And he brought good stuff too!  I was most amused when he said he was glad he arrived in theater on a Saturday, as he was a little apprehensive about Thursday nights … as was his wife, who also read the blog.

Then, after logging into my e-mail, I got word that we have final SCIF accreditation for the data center. 

We had another IDF attack last night.  Two rockets.  Thank God that Hajji can’t hit the broad side of a barn.  And the attack took place shortly after 8PM.  The little turds better not do an encore tonight, I don’t want them messing with the Area 82 cigar night.

Back to the Old Me

The kinder, gentler John of the previous post is gone.  I left him in my hooch this afternoon.

Around lunch time, I went back to my room to retrieve something.  What is was, I can’t remember anymore.  When I got up to leave, the doorknob was jammed.  The door would not open.

I tried everything, including brute force, but to no avail.  So I raised the window as far as it would go (not very), popped out the screen, and wedged my big behind slowly, painfully out the window.  My 56-year-old body was not meant to bend in those directions.  After getting out and dusting myself off, I tried to unlock the door from the outside.  No joy.

When I got back to the office, I asked around for the phone number for the facilities service & maintenance office.  “Why?” they asked.  I told them, and in the process became the cause of the most amusement they’ve had in days.  “Good thing you lost those 30 pounds, huh, John?”  Or maybe, “I didn’t know people over 50 could bend like that.”  Buncha friggin’ jackals …

I had left the office for my room after my TS e-mail account crashed yet again, it’s been Tango Uniform for the better part of the past three days.  This has not been a very good day for me so far.

So welcome back, my friends, to the cranky old curmudgeon you’ve come to know and love these past few months.  Maybe I'll have another meal at the DFAC that tastes like buttered ass to make my experience complete.

Read Any Good Books Lately?

It’s been suggested that, if I want to grow my followers into double digits on this blog, I need to tone back the strings of snarky posts.  With that in mind, I hereby launch “Reading with the Wirehead,” wherein I’ll comment on the books I’ve read during this deployment.  I invite you to comment, make suggestions, or even tell me how morbid my reading list is.

Twenty-plus weeks into my deployment, I am starting to get into that introspective stage, looking back on the whole experience.  And when my gaze paused on the stack of books waiting to be shipped home, and the books waiting to be read, I realize I’ve gotten quite a bit of reading done here.  Late at night, waiting for the Lunesta to kick in, I generally manage to get in at least 30 minutes of reading, oftentimes more.

Reading at KAIA was problematic, what with the dark tents full of shift workers, balancing the Maglite flashlight to illuminate the page.  Here at BAF, I’ve got the luxury of a light at the head of the bed, and I don’t have to worry about disturbing someone else’s beauty sleep.

I’ve read a lot … a LOT … of F. Paul Wilson, but more on that later. 

To set the stage for coming over here, I read Afghanistan:  A Military History.  Subtitled A Military History from Alexander the Great to the War Against the Taliban, author Stephen Tanner takes the reader on a wonderfully informative journey through the centuries and provides a rich history of the people and culture in the process.  After reading about the way the Afghans manhandled the British in the 19^th century and the Red Army during the 80s, the issues we’re dealing with here become clearer.  And nation-building sounds more and more difficult to achieve.  This should be required reading for U.S. national security policy-makers.

Another one of my early reads was A Small Death in Lisbon by Robert C. Wilson.  It was a singularly grisly murder mystery set in Portugal, spanning the World War II years to the present day.  A critic described this book, which won the British Crime Writers’ Golden Dagger Award for Best Crime Novel for as a “gripping and beautifully written mystery.”  It’s full of hinky plot twists and turns which come together neatly and logically at the end, and peopled by complex, three-dimensional characters.

More recently, I finished up Olen Steinhauer’s The Bridge of Sighs, a murder mystery set in an unnamed, fictional Eastern European country in 1948-49.  Much like A Small Death in Lisbon, Steinhauer weaves a complicated tale with rich, believable characters.  This was the first in a series of five mystery novels, and I’ll be reading more of his work.

I discovered Philip Kerr a few years ago, and dipped my toes in the water with March Violets, the first novel in his Berlin Noir trilogy.  About a month ago, I finished up number 2, The Pale Criminal, where protagonist Bernie Gunther, private eye, has been drafted back into the Berlin police.  It’s 1938, and Nazi politics intermingle with police procedural as our man tries to solve a series of murders where the clues lead back to heavy hitters in the Partei.  I thoroughly enjoyed it, and book 3, A German Requiem, is on the shelf, waiting to be read.

Is anyone picking up on a pattern here?  Murder mysteries, police procedurals.  I’m like a junkie jonesing for my next fix, ever since Ian Rankin retired Inspector John Rebus after 21 installments of some of the finest police procedural writing out there.

My, but I do go on.  Time to wrap this up.  Next time, it’s all about FPW.

Late Fireworks

The little bastards did it, they made a liar out of me.

Last night, in my Fourth of July post, I noted that we hadn’t been treated to a fireworks display by the Taliban.  Wouldn’t you know it, around 2:30 AM, the fireworks started, accompanied by base-wide alarms and the Big Voice telling us to shelter in place.  I found out about it this morning.  Apparently, the NCOIC went everyone’s room to do his accountability check, but the Lunesta let me sleep through both the IDF attack and a sergeant banging on my door.  Later this morning, I sheepishly told him about my insomnia and the medication that puts me in a coma for six hours every night, so now he’ll understand why he can’t roust me.

Something I forgot to mention yesterday ... I finally shaved of the goatee.  Got tired of being the "graybeard" of DIA Systems.  And as I looked at the whiskers coming off my face, I realized yet again that I truly WAS the graybeard, figuratively and literally.  Here's a current pic of me, sans beard, with the  roast we cooked yesterday.

I’m still getting kudos for yesterday’s rib-eye roast.  And I’m still amazed at my dumb-ass luck in getting it properly done (and not overcooked) using a little bit of educated guesswork.  It’s got me all fired up to go home and do some real cooking, with real ingredients and real equipment and utensils.

Which reminds me … I’ll be catching a flight out of here in about 38 days.  Not that I’m counting or anything.

Independence Day

So here it is, the Fourth of July,  By and large, another work day for us in DIA Systems.  We did, however, manage to celebrate a little bit.

First off, we got our hands on a monster rib-eye roast.  I put it on the scales at the warehouse, it dressed out at just over 13 pounds.  We contrived to borrow a grill, and I made plans to cook it using the indirect heat method.  So we fired up the coals at 11AM, planning to sear the meat, then move it to the cool side, close the lid, and cook away.

Before we could do that, however, it had to thaw out.  It was frozen solid, like a very cold, very heavy brick.  I took it out two days in advance and did most of the thawing in the fridge in my room, although I had to leave it sitting out on occasion to speed the thaw.  This, of course, led to numerous double entendres about going back to my room to check on the meat.  Yeah, I know, we're a bunch of crude pigs.

Working without a net (or, more precisely, an instant-read thermometer), and juggling multiple dishes all being prepared on the grill (including Carmen's most excellent Mexican rice, green beans and pork 'n' beans), along with a pile of T-Bones, the roast came out great!  Medium to medium-rare, but not overdone by any stretch of the imagination.  Everyone became as carnivore as I carved thick slabs of surprisingly tender prime rib.  Carmen's side dishes also vanished.  All that was missing was the beer.

And the fireworks.  Then again, we were grateful that the Taliban decided not to chuck rockets in our general direction tonight.  Those kind of fireworks we can do without.

On the work side, I sent out a message to my overseers that the Portable Modular Data Center had achieved Initial Operating Capability.  I could have done it earlier, but I wanted to make a statement by doing it today.  I wanted to say to those in the rear, "Hey, while you're grilling burgers and drinking beer and watching fireworks, the team downrange is making progress and hoping the insurgents don't deliver their own little fireworks display."  I know, I can be a pompous jerk at times.  But that's what Bagram does to you.

Speaking of Bagram, I discovered this hilarious website, www.ilovebagram.com.  I've also posted it in the Links section at right.  Be forewarned, there are a lot of crude, sometimes downright disgusting things listed among the 700-plus reasons why the site owner and contributors love Bagram.  But, once you get past the sexual and bodily-function comments, you can get a sense of some of the tedium and ludicrousness that contributes to the daily routine here.  Read at your own risk.

Happy Independence Day, dear readers.  Be safe ... we're trying our darnedest to be safe as well.

Dippie

“Dippie” is an affectionate moniker applied to the classic boardgame Diplomacy by its fans.  It might also describe the current happenings in the diplomatic world.  A recent headline from Afghanistan’s Pajhwok News Service reads:  “US condemns attack on Intercontinental Hotel.”  It’s hard to resist the urge to shout, “No shit, Sherlock,” at high decibels.

Oh, wait, here’s a news flash.  Further into the article, we read that, according to the State Department spokesperson, the United States “strongly condemns” the attack.  I guess a strong condemnation would, as Emeril says, kick our reaction up another notch.  (No ewok comments, Stephanie, I know what you’re thinking.)

Pray tell, to whom will the State Department deliver their demarche?  Isn’t the function of our State Department, and its fellow Ministries of Foreign Affairs the world over, to interact with other nation-states?  What does the State Department hope to accomplish with this declaration to a non-state actor whose members have no regard for human life, their own or others’?

Okay, I’m off my rant.  Over the past eleven weeks here at BAF, I’ve spotted a lot of Army troops with unfamiliar unit patches.  Oh, sure, we’ve got the usual suspects here, 1^st Cavalry Division, 82^nd and 101^st Airborne, 10^th Mountain.  But a lot of these guys are Army National Guard infantry divisions mobilized for the war effort.  One of the mainstays here is the 34^th ID, the “Red Bulls,” who hail from Iowa and Minnesota.  I’m familiar with this formation because, in 1944, the 442^nd Regimental Combat Team fleshed them out during the invasion of Italy.  The 442^nd was the all-Nisei regiment that was recruited from Hawai’i and California.  A remarkable unit, these troops (U.S. citizens all) fought like men possessed, earning 21 Medals of Honor (recipients include current Hawai’i Senator Dan Inouye) and nearly 9,500 Purple Hearts.  And they did it while their families back home were forced into detention camps.

The Red Bulls are close to the end of their tour, and I’ve been seeing a lot of the 45th Infantry Brigade Combat Team (Thunderbirds) from the Oklahoma National Guard.

Cool patch.  Although the patches worn on the new camouflage uniforms are in shades of green only, so the vivid colors don’t come across.

I’ve also seen soldiers from the 26^th Infantry Division (Yankee Division), from the Massachusetts National Guard.  At first glance, the patch look like it featured a gallows.

Why am I on a tear about these Guard formations?  I just read that, as of 21 June, the combined Army Reserve and Army National Guard had mobilized a total of 73,231 personnel on active duty.  Seventy-three thousand!  The guard and reserves are now an integral part of the total force, and are carrying a huge load over here.  This is a far cry from my days in the reserves, when we were little more than a nuisance, waiting for the Red Army to flood over the German border.  Nice to see that times and attitudes can change.

Sunday Go to Meetin' Time

My Senior NCO, SFC Rueda, is a first-generation Mexican-American and devout Catholic.  So, doing his duty to look out for me, he hauled me off to Mass today.  It was held by the St. Michael the Archangel Roman Catholic Community in the Enduring Faith Chapel (a nod to Operation Enduring Freedom?).  A pretty good-sized crowd, over 100 people were in attendance ... mostly military.  Mass ran about an hour, including one of the better homilies I've heard in a while.

So here's the weird part ... all the guns.  Here we are singing and praying about love and justice and peace, and everyone in uniform is toting the obligatory rifle or sidearm.  Magazines loaded, no rounds chambered, but it was still a slightly surreal experience.

I don't get to church often, so I had to be reminded of one of the things I like least ... all this new hand-shaking thing.  Yeah, yeah, peace be with you and all that, but why do I have to touch these people?  Can't we just go back to the old, pre-Vatican I way of doing things?    I like the Mass in Latin, with the priest facing the altar,his back to the congregation, the whole old-school treatment.

But I digress.

Sunday is also the day before Monday.  Duh!  It also being the day before Independence Day, I have the privilege of caring for and carefully thawing a big-ass ribeye roast in my room.  We got a loaner grill for tomorrow, and I'll be cooking it via the indirect heat method.  I'm hoping to be able to borrow an instant-read thermometer, as I have no idea how much this beast weighs, and I certainly don't want to overcook it.  A couple other folks are working side dishes, but I'm the Man with the Meat, as it were, and male pride and deployment bragging rights demand I do this right.

Follow-up tomorrow, with pictures.