166 Days: My Journey Through The Darkness (4 page)

“Gerg, you need to think outside the box. You can’t put all of your eggs in your “military basket.” What if something happens to you and prevents you from doing what you are now? Then what? All I’m saying is, think beyond your active duty time. Be smart about this!” He was as stubborn as stubborn could be at that time, but he did hear what I was saying. Due to many circumstances with his current squadron and an assignment tasking to Japan he didn’t want to take, he made the very difficult decision to walk away from what was once all he ever saw himself doing. How scary it must have been for him.

Two months before my class start date for PA school, he was accepted for a position as a civilian contractor working for KBR as a Security Coordinator in Iraq and Kuwait. I was fearful that once he left, our lives and different paths would pull us apart; but at the same time I trusted that if we were meant to be together then we would be.

To my delight, despite the incredibly demanding time in my life while I was in my first year of school in San Antonio, Greg and I grew even closer, and it became evident he was the one. I had always hoped he would be, but I didn’t
know
it until then. He was able to come back to the states from Iraq and Kuwait every three to four months, and chose to spend his time with me in my luxurious 700 sq. ft. apartment with no cable, no food except my staple of chips and salsa, and only my car for transportation. I would leave him early in the morning, get home in the late afternoon and tell him, after not seeing him for months, “Sweetie, you only have two hours of my time, and then I have to study.”

Amazingly, he never complained. In fact, he set his watch to ensure I stayed focused on school. He supported me in a way I could never have asked for. I realized that year how truly blessed I was to have such an amazing man.

That December, over my Christmas break, we returned to Las Vegas to visit Griffen. After asking my parents’ permission, he proposed in the most romantic way imaginable; in front of the waters at the Bellagio as my favorite song played, Sarah Brightman’s “Time to Say Goodbye”.

It was a very cold night, and as we stood there waiting for the fountain show to start, I reached into my pocket of my coat and put my gloves on… right before he pulled out the ring. The music started, and I was so happy that it just so happened to be my favorite song. I turned to Greg, smiling with excitement, and he had the ring. He said, “Nej, we started our relationship here, and I felt it only fitting we start the rest of our lives here. Please do me the honor and say you will marry me.”

I was filled with joy. I couldn’t get those damn gloves off fast enough to put on the ring that meant I would be able to spend the rest of my life with my best friend.

“GERG! Yes!!!!” I screamed. I was so happy in that moment.

When I graduated, we were given a list of assignment options to choose from, and I felt strongly it was Greg’s decision to make, so I turned the list over to him. After weighing the options he chose Tyndall AFB to be the place for us to start our next chapter. We arrived in June, and the panhandle of Florida was an unbelievable culture shock from the metropolis of Las Vegas! I felt completely out of place when we first arrived. I cried all the way from the airport to the base. I was used to the big city life, and now I was in the southeastern United States where there were alligators and people shot squirrels and ate them for dinner. It was humid, and gigantic mosquitoes and cockroaches seemed to be everywhere. One day, shortly after we arrived, we took a walk on the base and ended up at the beach which was covered in pure white sand that felt like flour between our toes as we walked. The waters were the most brilliant emerald green I had ever seen, and as we watched our very first sunset we decided we could “deal” with the absolutely breathtaking beauty that surrounded us. We were where we were meant to be. We purchased our very first house as a married couple, and very soon it became our
home
.

Home. I had barely left it and sitting there, going through all of these memories, made me miss it and my life with my Gerg terribly already. I didn’t realize how much I had taken for granted, the time I had to spend with loved ones, until that moment.

29 April 2008

We finally got scheduled for a flight out of Manas the morning of 30 April at 0600 with a bag drag at 2200 hours which meant we would be checking in our bags. I began to feel nervous about actually getting to Bagram, but excited too; I was ready to get established in what I would be doing. I was able to talk to Greg again. I initially went back to the coffee café but there were so many people I ended up going to the morale phones. I had to wait there too, but it was much more organized and the calls were limited to fifteen minutes. It was so hard to limit the time spent talking to loved ones to just minutes. As I sat there waiting for my turn and thinking about how much the waiting sucked, I looked to my left and my right and I saw a room full of Army soldiers who were on their way home after being deployed for ten to fifteen months waiting to call home too. The difference between them and me was that they weren’t complaining one bit. To them, six months was a walk in the park. In that moment I no longer felt sorry for myself; I felt guilty for my selfishness.

At lunch time I caught my first glimpse of the news and saw that two days before, actually the day we arrived in the AOR, there was an assassination attempt on the Afghanistan President, Hamid Karzai, in Kabul, the capital city of the country, about twenty five miles northwest of Bagram. This news was a bit unnerving to me because I knew I would likely be traveling to remote locations throughout the country that could potentially be in the “hot” zone. I had to prepare myself to be exposed to some dangerous situations.

As the day came to an end, we began to get our bags ready to check in at the terminal. After the bag drag was complete, we all agreed to have one last drink at Pete’s before we left in the morning. I laid down to rest at about 0130, but didn’t sleep at all. I had too many thoughts running through my head about what was to come:
What was in store for me? Would I be strong enough? Would I make the right decisions? How much would I see? Was I prepared to handle the exposure to war and all of its brutal truths?

30 April 2008

We left Manas in the morning at about 0630 on a C-17. It was my first ride in a military aircraft. As soon as we boarded, we walked into this huge “bay” where there were several palates full of our cargo that we had checked-in at the bag drag the night before. In the center was an area with seats that looked like hand-me-downs from an old civilian aircraft with torn upholstery and heavily-stained fabric. Additional seating was along both sides of the aircraft, facing the center. The ceiling was high and gutted, meaning all of the inner workings of the aircraft were visible. It was exceptionally loud; earplugs were a must-have item. From what I had been told, a C-130 was much louder, so I supposed it could have been worse.

The flight was unique in the fact we had no windows to look out of to get a perspective of where we were in relation to take off or landing. This isolation made touching ground interesting. All I had to rely on was the sounds of the landing gear being released, and sudden change in pressure as we descended. I felt I was at the complete mercy of the beast I was sitting in. How funny, I had experienced the same scenario so many times before, yet it never phased me because I could watch the ground come closer and closer. However, in this situation, not having that visual perception made a tremendous impact to the whole experience. In addition to my newly found perspective on flying, I was filled with various emotions, mainly the feeling of knowing and
not
knowing what was in store for me now that I was there. These feelings sent chills down my spine and my heart into flutters.

As soon as the plane came to a stop and they opened the doors, we all piled out onto the tarmac in two separate lines; Air Force in one line, Army in the other. The flight line was busy with aircraft from all different military forces and countries. It was quite a sight. Some of the aircraft were unlike anything I had ever seen before. The base was surrounded by snowcapped mountains which were quite beautiful. There were buildings all around the flight line that looked very similar to what I experienced on a normal military base in the states. It actually looked like a pretty nice setup and I thought to myself,
This won’t be too bad, at least while I am here on Bagram.
We were directed to a very hot, very small tent and began our in-processing with PERSCO. Once we handed over our orders and other required documents, we were released to reacquire our bags and then to report to our duty sections.

While we waited on transportation, we ran into Mike, another friend from our ACST training in the States, who arrived several weeks ahead of us. He was a pilot and knew we would be arriving that day and was happy to greet us. We made small talk and got through the formalities. “We lost a guy yesterday,” he told us. “He was a Senior Airman in a convoy just over there,” as he pointed to the south mountain range. “He got hit by an IED [Improvised Explosive Device].”

My heart sank. I naively thought,
An Air Force member in a convoy? This just didn’t happen, or at least it didn’t used to happen. This was what the Army and Marines did - not us.
Even more bizarre, this poor kid was an Aircraft Maintenance troop, so it was unclear to me as to why he was even on a convoy in the first place. I had not felt I was entering into a war zone, until that moment. The land looked normal; the amenities of Manas were tolerable, nothing like the
MASH
episodes I watched on TV as a kid. The food was good, the people were normal….but it became a reality. There were people out there dying. My stomach turned; all of a sudden I wasn’t feeling so happy to be there.

Eventually we had someone from Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force Afghanistan (CJSOTF-A) come and take us to where we would be staying. Bagram Airfield (
BAF
I soon learned to call it) was divided up into various camps. Most of the Air Force personnel stayed on Camp Cunningham, but I was attached to Special Forces, so I would be staying in their separate camp. Once we got to our camp I was greeted by a Captain, Bob, a fellow Physician Assistant who had been expecting me.

“Great to meet you Jenn. There is a lot to go over, but for now, I think it’s best if you take the rest of today and the next couple of days to get acclimated to the time change and get settled in to your room,” he said.

His recommendation was very nice to hear, especially since I had been up for almost twenty-four hours, but I planned on going in the next day to start learning about what I would be doing at the FOBs.

After parting ways with Bob I met up with Becky and Martha. They were two medics I met at my ACST training as well and was told they would likely be working with me once I arrived. I didn’t know too much about Martha, but Becky and I hit it off in training and I hoped we would end up working together.

“Lt. Clark!” Becky said. “So glad you made it, I can’t wait to fill you in on everything and show you around later, but right now you look exhausted,” she said. “I know it’s rough getting here.”

“Sure is, I’m ready for a nice long shower and sleep,” I said.

“Ha! Long shower? We’re limited to five minutes tops!” she said, bringing me back to the reality I was deployed.

The rooms were in structures called B-Huts, which were buildings made out of plywood and tin roofs with six to eight separate 9x9 rooms for individuals. I had a twin-size mattress on a wooden bed and a wall locker to store my belongings. The huts did have an AC duct, which worked in the daytime, but due to the lack of insulation and the heat of the climate, the room was still very hot. At night the AC unit didn’t shut off, despite the outside temperatures dropping into the 40s. It was not too bad, and certainly could have been worse, but the living conditions still fell under the “rugged living” category compared to what we were used to in the United States. Because I was an officer, I was supposed to get slightly better living conditions in something called a C-Hut, but there were no open rooms. I most likely would not be there long, so I felt there was no need to push the issue, plus I felt sure my B-Hut was luxurious compared to where I would be going.

The dining facility (DFAC) was not bad; actually the food was surprisingly tasty. The food servers were all local Afghan men. As I was walking over to the DFAC, I saw a truck full of them dressed in their tunics and turbans, but for the most part they wore jeans and t-shirts just like us. They were friendly, and some of them were quite handsome. These workers had clean shaven faces and nice neat hair. I thought for sure they would not even acknowledge me; being that I was a woman, but I was wrong. Every time I passed by them, they would say, “Hello, madam,” or “How it going, madam?”

The DFAC itself was quite an interesting experience. Keep in mind that on a Special Forces camp there were typically little-to-no females. Becky and I walked into the room and I instantly felt all eyes on us and could see the whispering and the winks and I felt completely singled out and an instant “object”. I knew it would be like this when I left, but couldn’t really prepare for it until I actually got there. The majority of the men in the Special Forces camp were in the same unit back at Fort Bragg, which meant they worked together in the States and deployed together every six to eight months as a big team. The current group would be starting to filter out the next day and the new group would begin to come in.

“The Group here keeps saying the new guys are arrogant and cocky,” Becky said.

“Great! Just what we need,” I replied. “For an SF guy to say that, they must be pretty bad.”