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.