Notes From Afghanistan. Returning To A New Place
This time, when I walked down the helicopter ramp and felt the swirling grit of blowing sand, it was midday. The sunlight stung while I balanced my backpack on my body armor and walked to the waiting bus. Other things occurred to me, while I settled into my seat, that indicated this was not Iraq: the helicopter was German, I was inside an Afghan National Army(ANA) Post, and sharp mountain crags, covered with the first new growth of spring, stood sentinel as a backdrop to our arrival. The flight itself was brief, as we had only a short distance to travel. The German-run base we departed from was on the east side of Mazar-i-Sharif and my new home, Camp Spann, was on the west side. All in all, it wasn’t a bad way to make the final leg of my journey to Afghanistan.
It’s been sixteen months since I left Iraq and returned to upstate New York. Since that time I’ve taken a new job as the Brigade Operations Officer (S3), spent a month training in Louisiana, gone on trips to Iraq and Afghanistan (twice), and spent as much time with my family as possible. Now I’m in Afghanistan with the First Brigade, Tenth Mountain Division - the first combat formation from the Army to arrive as part of the Afghan “surge.” Our mission is to train the Afghan National Police (ANP) so they can assume responsibility for securing their own communities against insurgent and criminal predation. It’s quite different from our last one.
For most of the past year we were planning on deploying to Iraq in January 2010. The improving security situation, and the growing ability of the Iraqis to look after themselves made that deployment unnecessary and our orders were canceled. When the President announced a troop increase for Afghanistan, we were at the top of the list of eligible units. In December we began planning for the deployment to northern Afghanistan that began the first week of the year and will continue through mid-May. Though deploying three-thousand Soldiers and all their equipment from upstate New York in the midst of winter on short-notice is a daunting task, everyone pulled together and we made it over here.
Despite all the planning, all the preparation, the carefully constructed address lists, pre-labeled boxes, and last-minute outings, at the personal level, nothing can prepare you fully for the last few hours at home. The last goodbyes are always the same, no matter the unit or the destination. For us, we waited in an empty building for an hour while children, blissfully unaware of the true meaning of time, chased each other and played. The clock ticked mercilessly onward, oblivious to us. We said our goodbyes, embraced in what felt like a tearful, slow ballet, and I walked awkwardly through the throng of couples and families, dancing to their own sad melodies of parting.
We climbed on the plane, clutching bags of homemade cookies and already twice-read letters, school drawings and iPods, good-luck charms and photographs; squeezed into our seats, and watched our homes disappear into the snow-covered landscape below.
Northern Afghanistan has been a cultural mixing ground for thousands of years. We sit astride the fabled silk road, the network of ancient trading routes that linked the orient and the occident. The passage of cultures can be seen in the faces of the local residents, the architecture, and the garish sculptures in the midst of Mazar-I Sharif’s many traffic circles. The descendants of Tajiks, Uzbeks, Turks, Greeks, Indians, Russians, Ainaks, Arabs, and Pashtuns are represented in a swirl of color and humanity at each local market. The predominant language is Dari, a form of classical Persian, though depending on which unpaved track a traveler turns down, any of a dozen different languages can be heard.
The NATO command structure we are a part of, known as ISAF (the International Security Assistance Force), is no different. We work for a German Army headquarters and living with us are British, Norwegian, Swedish, Croatian, Hungarian, Mongolian, German, Finnish, Bosnian, and French soldiers. One of our officers referred to daily meals as, “A tour of western European camouflage patterns.” The universal language is English, but the idiosyncrasies of each country sometimes make for frustrating operations until we are able to understand what each unit can and cannot do, both in terms of regulations and capability.
The daily dramas and familiar rhythms of deployed life are present: staff updates twice a day, walk to the mess hall for meals, halt the spread (or propagate, for some) of the outlandish rumor of the moment, inspections and rehearsals before we drive outside the wire, dodging large armored vehicles everywhere, the crunch of boots on pea gravel, wearing headlamps at night. . . It feels comfortable in a way, like I’ve returned, but to a new place.
We tolerate the elements, while we build the brigade’s ability to conduct operations. The heat and cold that sometimes arrive on the same day, the wind that sweeps down from the central Asian steppe forcing us to wear sunglasses when moving from building to building, the rain-delivered mud that coats vehicles in a sticky mass, then dries into flaky cement – it’s part of life now, ignored, endured, enjoyed, or tolerated.
Spring is over and synchronized with lengthening days and the retreating snowpack, the enemy is reentering the field. It’s a footrace for us to get our Soldiers and their equipment in place before the insurgents realize the full import of what is coming. Measured with the cold math of military statistics, contact so far has been light, but it wasn’t more than a week after we arrived that our Soldiers were in the fight. It’s sure to be a hot summer in this very old and very new place.
Eric Smith grew up in Lakewood and graduated from LHS in 1990. He is currently serving as an infantry officer in the U.S. Army, stationed in Northern Afghanistan. His wife Dina and three children are living outside Fort Drum, New York, and they are kind enough to e-mail him kettle corn every few weeks. Eric's parents are Pam and Tom Smith, longtime Lakewood residents, who both agree he should call home more often.