Chapter 86 — Captain Ellis
FOBbits. The gym at FOB Waza Khwa. The sergeant I worked out with. Capt. Ellis’ meeting with the pharmacists. He is ordered not to help the Afghans. Some of the soldiers on the FOBs go out on patrols or for other purposes. A lot of them don’t. Like me and most other contractors some soldiers rarely leave. Danny called those of us who remain inside the wire, “FOBbits”. So for us the FOB is like a prison or a ship in that there aren’t many places to be. Most of the time you’re at work and in the few spaces that location includes. Off duty hours are spent in your quarters, if you have quarters that provide privacy, at the chow hall, in whatever MWR facilities there are or in the gym. Most of the FOBs had adequate exercise facilities especially for weight lifters, which is the kind of workout I prefer when I can’t swim. The other thing that the gyms at the smaller FOBs can provide is a place to socialize. At the large FOBs and bases like Camp Slayer and Bagram Air Force Base the gyms were more like the franchise fitness clubs back home where people don’t pay much attention to each other but at the COPs and smaller FOBs you see the men that you cross paths with during the day so when you see them in the gym there’s more recognition. The gym at Waza Khwa was pretty good. There was one Universal© machine and plenty of free weights which was all I needed. I maintained a pretty rigourous workout regimen the whole time I was in Iraq and Afghanistan so I stayed in good shape. It took a few weeks to adjust to the thin air at Waza Khwa but once I did it felt great. The soldiers, all young men, knew what I was going through and once they saw how I worked through it, some of them started to talk to me. Ed, a sergeant of Latin-American descent, used to tease me about “lookin’ pretty good” or “hittin’ it pretty hard for an old guy” and I would call him a punk or gangbanger. I learned from the others that he was an excellent soldier. One day after a good-natured ribbing from him I rushed him and we locked up and pushed each other around for a few seconds and I could feel he was hard as a rock. I was a collegiate wrestler which means I have those martial art skills and a playfulness that wrestlers tend to have. When I succumb to the urge and get physical I can readily sense if the man or women I’ve engaged is strong or agile and if they want to play. Ed had told me that he was into some kind of core training program developed by a Russian martial artist and like me, he hit it hard every day. He let me push him a few inches but as I continued to press him he became utterly immovable. Trying to get him off his stance was like trying to displace a tree. He had shown me some of the exercises in his program and they were very difficult so I knew how he was able to develop as he had. For guys like us, living the lifestyle we lived, working out daily was an obsession. Captain Ellis, who was the medical officer, was another one I’d talk to occasionally at the gym and elsewhere but he was more serious. He had a good attitude and did his job real well but he was older than the others and had seen the worst so he was more serious. One day while he and I happened to be at the sinks in the shower house at the same time. I was shaving my face and he was shaving his head. A Specialist came in and told him the people he was supposed to meet at 1400 were at the ECP. He looked at his watch and he said, “Let ‘em wait. They can ‘insha’Allah’.” He said the mandatory Islamic response for anything that one plans to do, which means “if God wills” as if to say, “They can kiss my ass.” While he continued to pull the razor over his scalp I asked him what was his meeting about. He explained how the pharmacists poison their customers in Afghanistan. They sell medication to the parents of sick children by the color of the pill. Red pills cost more than another color, say blue which are more than another, maybe yellow. No matter the illness or symptoms the patient gets what he pays for, by color. Ellis said, “I had a three year old brought to me, and a four year old, another kid was 11. A thirteen year old was brought in three times. Every time I had to give him CPR. The last time he died. He was on twenty different meds. His parents kept buying more expensive colors, ‘till he died. “I can’t stand this shit any more. I hate the fucking army. When I joined in 1981 the Vietnam guys were still in and if a private screwed up you could slap the guy, or worse. You can’t touch these guys now. “These guys that are waiting outside, the pharmacists, I asked them to come in here to talk about how they’re killing people and they blew me off. So I had ‘em arrested. They’re sittin’ out there now in zip cuffs. I’ll teach them to fuck with me. “There’s a doctor in one of the villages too. He’s not very good but he is trying.
These pharmacists are another thing. Nothing matters but the money. All these people are like that. In Iraq the people are loyal to their families and their tribe and to some degree their sect. Not here. Not these people.” He was letting off steam and it was not like him. It had probably been a long time since he’d expressed himself like that and maybe he could do it with me, a contractor, and he couldn’t with other soldiers. “I have four kids and I haven’t seen any of them do the big stuff. Not once did I see a first step or a graduation. I’m always away. I thought after all the deployments, including two in Iraq, I’d get a break. They sent me here, calling me back as a medical officer even though I was an intel officer at the time, in the Guard. And I don’t even know how long they’re gonna keep me here. But I’m getting’ out for good as soon as I can.” Ellis was on his sixth deployment there in Waza Khwa. He’s not supposed to do anything for the people outside. He got orders not to give any help to the locals. He said, “How am I supposed to do that? A man shows up at the ECP with a dying eleven-year-old and I’m supposed to let him die? Shit. How does that work?” He wasn’t concerned about disobeying the order from the colonel in Bagram. As distant and insignificant as our medical officer was, no one outside our district would ever know who Captain Ellis saved or didn’t. I finished before he did. Walking back to my quarters I thought about what he’d said and realized that I considered it a privilege to have known him.
Chapter 87 — Ninth Inflation
Preparations. Inflation procedure. Camel caravan. Karez / Qanat.
We worked for almost two weeks getting things prepared for the inflation. Pete’s pace was what he said it would be and he was right about the difference between Baghdad and Waza Khwa. We were in a real war in Iraq. General Patreus himself wanted the balloons up in Baghdad. At Waza Khwa we were hundreds of miles from anybody who gave a hoot and in comparison to the fighting in Baghdad the war outside the wall where we were in Paktika Province was nothing. Actually, from what I’d seen so far it was literaly nothing. Pete had led or participated in several inflations. Another crew member, Wade Ugland, had been in on several also and this would be the ninth one I was in charge of or helped with since I joined the program. The inflation procedure was my creation so we had plenty of experience this time. During our training in Florida our flight to Iraq was repeatedly delayed so I went back to Avon Park where Team 5 was inflating their balloon. Wayne Scardo had me work on the inflation procedure, which at that point was little more than a checklist. Every inflation I worked on after that was an opportunity to improve and add detail to the procedure so by the time we were preparing in Waza Khwa we had a document that I was proud of. The most significant change I’d recently incorporated in the procedure was to stage all the avionics on the ground before the balloon was unfolded connect it all and turn everything on. Steve Carter was with me when we went through the training in Florida, at every inflation at Site One, the one at Site Three after I got back from Greece and then the one at Site Four. After the problems with the first inflation at Site One Steve always set up all the airborne boxes and equipment on the ground next to the platform, attached the optical fibers and power through the tether to the airborne gear and to the GCS and tested everything prior to inflation. That way we knew everything was working and wouldn’t have to fix anything while the balloon and crew were on the platform and exposed to enemy fire. Although Steve did those preliminary steps I didn’t make them part of the written procedure until later. Minimizing the time on the tower was critical at Site Three in East Baghdad in 2007 and to a slightly lesser extent at Site Four in 2008. The “74K” (74,000 cubic foot) aerostat was one-hundred-seventeen feet long and thirty-nine feet at it’s maximum diameter so it was a big target and irresistible to the Iraqi jihadist. It was less of a problem elsewhere and even though it was no problem at all at Waza Khwa it still made sense to check everything according to the procedure. With all the systems and weather checked and frequencies assigned, the GPS components calibrated and aligned, pre-assembly complete, rigging attached and hardware staged, we started flowing gas. As the helium
bubble grew and the aerostat slowly took shape Wade and I moved continuously from one side to another and from front to back to be sure that cables, lines and fabric were unrestrained. When the balloon is fully inflated it’s aerodynamic and ready to withstand the elements. Before then it’s unborn. In that state it is easily damaged so everyone is attentive and engaged. It just takes a couple of hours to get all the helium in and then everything that couldn’t be attached before is laced, pinned and bolted on. The final item to be mounted is the camera. While we were on the platform in the early afternoon finishing with installation of the camera a herd of camels appeared just outside of the FOB between us and the village to the west, Wasel Kehl. It was a large herd of about a hundred animals driven by a handful of men, maybe Kuchi, the Afghan nomads. We all got our cameras, took pictures and video and watched them slowly go by.
The high plateau we were on is dry with very little growth. Beyond that was either low, bare hills or barren mountains. There was little for the camels to eat and the herdsmen probably ate the camels. There was no truck or chuck wagon with them. The animals are valuable so there may have been a worthwhile reward at the end of their journey but in the meantime the men that drove the herd led a very hard life. Afghans are nothing if not stoic. Capt. Ellis mentioned it. He said he treated mine victims whose limbs had been blown off who came in on their own and children with terrible wounds who didn’t cry. They are very tough people. There is a feature on the landscape I discovered the first time I operated the camera at Waza Khwa that speaks to this national character trait as much as the stories of pain tolerance. It’s the way they get water from where it is to where it wasn’t through a Qanat, which in Pashto is called a Karez. What I saw from above were crater like depressions in the ground placed about twenty meters apart that went from the south side of Waza Khwa to Wasel Kheyl across the ground the camel herd had traversed. On studying the 5 meter CIB (Controlled Image Base) aerial photos that were part of the background imagery in the CLAW display I found these strings of bomb crater like holes to exist in many places. The string outside the FOB was several hundred meters long but elsewhere they were several kilometers. No one at the site knew what they were so I looked them up on the internet. Since I didn’t know what I was looking for it was a more difficult search than most but eventually I found the answer and was amazed. The fact that none of us had ever heard of this ancient means of conveying water was pretty interesting too. The builders pick a spot where there is or likely to be underground water, often at the base of a mountain, and dig a well there. They then dig holes on a line from that well, the “Mother Well”, to where they want the water for use on the surface. Several factors affect how far apart the intermediate holes are spaced but they can be much further apart than the ones I could see around Waza Khwa. Then they dig tunnels from the bottom of one hole to the bottom of the next allowing the water to flow between them until it eventually reaches an outlet at a garden, field or reservoir. Excavating the tunnels between the holes is the most amazing part. It’s all hand work of course, in any kind of ground and at depths of tens and even hundreds of meters! In Iran, where the Qanat was invented, the deepest channels are over two hundred meters underground. It can take decades for a skilled team of four men to finish a Karez, which will be of benefit to the builder’s descendents and their communities for centuries. Ownership and use of the water is according to custom
and Shari’a law. The Kitab-i Qani, the Book Of Qanats, written in the ninth century, is one such code. It’s an amazing feat that requires specialized knowledge, skill and courage. Once I learned what they were, every time I saw one from the balloon camera or from the window of a helicopter I admired the Afghans who built them. The fact that I had no knowledge of their existence illustrated how little I understood about the people and their history. Qanats are an outstanding, perhaps the quintessential, example of what Middle Eastern man can produce. They require cooperation and long term commitment as conveyed in the instructions by the emissary prophets Moses, Jesus and Mohammed and they’re significant in an anthropological sense. Survival depended on controlling the environment by digging canals and Qanats in Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan. Despite all this I had no idea what they were. My Western education and none of my reading had informed me of them. I’m not a highly educated person and I haven’t read everything but I know more than most and I know the men with me in Iraq and Afghanistan had less knowledge than me of Qanats, prophetic teachings and anthropology. It’s little wonder we haven’t won the hearts or minds of the people in Waza Khwa or that they don’t make their hearts available to us.
Part Of The Karez Network Around Waza Khwa
Chapter 116 — Just Living
A man and his dog. A man and his pigeons. A man butchering a sheep. A family on a motorcycle. A woman and her granddaughter descending a stair. At every site there were times when I used the camera to simply watch people living their lives. Which they normally did as if there was nothing wrong. War wasn’t a constant state of being for the people in Baghdad or Afghanistan. While I was in Ghazni the only evidence I saw that there was fighting was Afghan Army patrols in pick-up trucks. People there were just doing what they do. I watched a man walking to some destination and playing with his dog as they made their way across a field. The man jumped over a ditch but the dog wouldn’t follow. The dog ran back and forth, spun and barked urging the man back while he laughed and urged his pet to make the jump. Finally the dog got his way and the man jumped back to him to pet him and laugh some more. The two found another point where the ditch was a little narrower where they both jumped across. A few minutes later I saw a man on his roof. The house was on the route I was scanning and since they were paying me to be suspicious I waited to see what he was doing but he wasn’t setting up an ambush. He was tending his pigeons, an obsession with many Afghans, kaftar bazi – play of pigeons, is a national passtime. He let them loose from the coup and watched as the flock circled the house several times and then flew in widening circles. He didn’t take his eyes off of them and I pictured how he must have appeared to his birds. Further down the road I saw a man butchering a freshly killed sheep on the ground in front of his house and then a motorcycle traveling west toward the city carrying an entire family, mom in her burka, dad and two children. A little girl dressed in a school uniform and carrying her bookbag was on the back porch on the second floor. The distance between steps to the ground was so great the child had to almost climb down them and the old woman with her, who may have been her grandmother, was taking a tremendous risk with each step. I thought how odd it was that they had to deal with such an inconvenience.