A dark and stormy night...

Well not really, just wet and nasty, Erica owes us pictures and stories from skiing in Hokaido but since she hasn't had the time to upload them yet here is another vignette from KAF.-

This happened sometime in January.--

It is really raining hard turning the fine ‘moon dust” to a thin soupy mud. For the remainder of the morning the rain continued no let up in sight. Mud covered everything outside. Thin soupy muck, the water runs off making puddles of the moon dust. It does not get absorbed into the ground. All this water and yet there will be a drought. The ground is too hard to absorb the rain. They need snowcap on the mountains and that isn’t happening, nor is it predicted to happen. It is expected that this summer will be the worst drought in a dozen years, worse than the terrible drought of 06. We anticipate a lot of the rural population will migrate to the water, meaning the Helmand River Valley. This is not good news for us. This will place extra burden on an already tasked infrastructure. We expect large losses in the herd animals and great increases in the drought resistant poppy. Wheat, unless we get them the drought resistant kind, will be kicked to the curb.

I spend most of my time thinking about things like this. It is what you do when you are deployed. You do a lot of thinking. Being on a staff you can easily work 12 to 16 hours a day without even thinking about it. I mean its not like you have anything else to do. The highlights of the week are the barbershop, laundry, gym, chow and for us Pizza night. Now Pizza night is a true tradition we inherited it from the 24th MEU. It is the one night in the week when the ‘Frat House’ crowd comes together and we each take turns buying the pizza. Oh and surprise it isn’t bad, there is a Pizza Hut Trailer that runs 24 hour a day service 7 days a week, can you believe that, they even deliver. They have three four wheel ATV’s with pizza racks built on the back for delivery vehicles. I have to be honest it has become the highlight of the week. If you miss it for whatever reason it can be very depressing. Amazing what routines you develop. When those routines are broken people can do dumb things probably due to too much thinking.
In wars past there was always an quantity of alcohol not here and while I do miss tipping back a brew I have to say it is probably better we do not have alcohol. You see now without that distraction most of our men they play X-box and wii, write on ‘facebook’ and mess with thousands of other electronic thing-a-ma-jigs to pass the idle times. But there are always some fellas that think they cannot go without.

The alarm sounded jarringly. I was just falling asleep. It was a new alarm that I did not recognize. Following the alarm the voice of the JADOC (Jay-Doc) sounded “Operation Round-Up” it said in strangely accented English. I scratched my head, what the hell was that. I rolled out of the rack fumbled for the light, dressed quickly. The doors in the Frat House sprang open, other bleary eyed officers looking at each other wondering the same thing. I looked at Dip shrugged “I have no idea, I’ll go up to the COC and find out, guess we should have listened better at the welcome aboard classes.” I donned my armor and walked to the COC, I figured it wasn’t incoming but it couldn’t be good so the armor and pistol were probably required.
When I got to the COC they told me what it was, an intruder. Someone had crashed the fence and was loose on the base. Now that got my attention. The watch ahd acted quickly setting guards out to protect the entrances to the compound. They called the Col an XO to let them know. Everyone had to sit tight until the base defense forces cleared the situation. It was a dark, cold night and we had not been in country very long, I was concerned for the Marines on guard. We did not need any mistakes, KAF was a big place. I went out to check on the guards. They were doing well, I honestly think they were enjoying themselves, to be honest it was the most exciting thing to happen in a quite some time.

From our vantage we could see helicopters with spot lights tracking something on the other side of base. That had to be our guy.

A corporal came out of the COC, “sir, the intruder rammed his vehicle into a fence and now is on foot.”

“well he won’t get far now.” But we all thought the same thing. At first we thought it had to be a suicide vehicle but now we all thought it would be a suicide bomb vest. Why else would anyone break into KAF in such a spectacular way.

I did say that some people who have a lot of time on their hands do dumb things. This has to be one of the dumbest.

There were at least three helicopters up. We could see the flashing lights of the reaction forces, heavy armored vehicles cruising up and down the roads. Basically, lots of people with a lot of guns just looking for a chance to cap a suicide bomber. You would have to be an idiot.
Or you could be a contractor stoned out of your mind on a mix of prescription drugs and opiates. Oops.

I believe they tackled him in the mud. Luckily for him he wasn’t killed, lucky for us no one had an itchy trigger finger.

He was sent home on the very next flight. No one got hurt, and we hope the young man recieves help when he returns to his letter agency, (Letter agency anyone of KBR, ECOLOG, RECON, XE, or any of a dozen other firms) but he did make it a little more exciting here in the Shire.