NO REGRETS ~ An American Adventure in Afghanistan Read Free Page B

flight. After an hour of waiting, they led us to our baggage in the cool Afghan air. It was a pitch black night. I pulled a flashlight out of my backpack and twisted it to on. Several clicks brought to life beams of light that sliced through the darkness. Shards of light flashed all around me. Once everyone had secured their baggage, someone yelled “Welcome to BAF!” as we were loaded onto a bus and driven off into the darkness. I sat on the bus and wondered what in God’s name had I gotten myself into, while the Army tunes buzzed around in my brain.
    We soon turned onto a main road where there were Afghans working an ancient asphalt machine. The first real road was being laid in Bagram. All other roads, if you can call them that, were sand pits on which vehicles would slide haphazardly with tires spinning nearly hopelessly, fishtailing down the road. The Afghans working the asphalt were the only light source that I could make out in the immediate vicinity. Bagram in 2003 had no lights and precious few hard surfaces. Most of the base was covered either in fine sand or ankle-twisting, fist-sized gravel. As we passed the Afghans, the old timers broke out into applause. Some of these guys had already been in Afghanistan for up to a year. All of us newbies joined the applause as we sensed the significance of asphalt being laid after sloshing around in that sand outside the airfield earlier.
    KBR deposited us in transient tents and told us to bed down for the night and report to the building next to the tent at 8 a.m. to finalize our in-processing. The tents were long and filled from front to rear with green Army cots. There were a few people in them already. Men and women coming and going to other places or departing contract. A few other newbies were in there as well. They’d been there a day or two and were awaiting their assignments in the outer base camps in places like Kabul, Qandahar, Jalalabad, or Gardez.
    I woke up at 0500hrs. All of the newbies reported to the KBR administrative building that morning. It was the only permanent structure in the immediate area. I was told that it was an old Soviet-era barracks. A leftover from the Soviet occupation. Bagram, which is about twenty-five miles northeast of Kabul, was a major point of entry during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan as well as the main Soviet airfield in this region of the country. From here, the Soviets protected Kabul and struck out to the north and east at the Northern Alliance of Ahmad Shah Massoud~the Lion of Panjsheer. Massoud was a complicated character. He was a major foe of the Soviets in the war of the ‘80s. He helped to defeat the Afghan communist government after the Soviets tucked tail and ran from American stinger missiles. He and other warlords bombed the hell out of Kabul after the Soviets left it unscathed. Massoud became the leader of the Northern Alliance-led United Front that held out against the rise of the Taliban. The Taliban sent assassins to murder him prior to the 9/11 attacks. Taliban and al Qaeda agents, disguised as journalists, successfully infiltrated Massoud’s camp and set off an explosive hidden in a camera as they were “interviewing” him on September 9, 2001. Massoud died shortly thereafter.
    When America invaded in October 2001, British SAS 4 and Army Pathfinders 5 were dropped into Bagram. Those guys prepared the way for the U.S. military to move into BAF, which is how everyone referred to Bagram and its airfield. Scattered across the area were buildings that hadn’t been destroyed during the Soviet occupation. KBR HQ was one of those buildings. It was a two-storey, white building about the size of a small gymnasium. KBR had come in and improved the building. The upper floor became offices for the project manager, his deputy, and staff. The first floor they’d made into administrative offices to run the LOGCAP contract. Within LOGCAP, KBR was tasked with every aspect of supporting the war effort in Afghanistan