Nature (Human and Otherwise) in Afghanistan Vol III

By Captain Graham Kallos
29 June 2009

23 Jun 09 marked exactly three months of C Sqn being in theatre. Over the last three months I have been employed as the Squadron Duty Officer at Fob Ma’Sum Ghar, and as such I have seen and done things that I would never have thought possible; indeed I find that the experience of working upwards of fourteen hours a day in a windowless bunker has led me down some strange, albeit comical avenues of thought and action. Below you will find a list of some of my more ‘memorable’ moments from the first month of my tour.

 

Month 01:
-26 Mar: DO arrives at FMG and gets introduced to his new chair and the 0700-1900 schedule that comes with it.
27 Mar: DO discovers a very pregnant cat which the outgoing A Sqn has made hopelessly addicted to bacon.
-29 Mar: DO has his schedule changed from a twelve-hour day to a fourteen-hour day by the BC, before the OC arrives at FMG.
-30 Mar: DO finds himself surreptitiously rubbing bacon on the BC’s chair before he shows up to work.
-02 Apr: After hiking to the top of the mountain in the FOB, the DO is simultaneously amazed by both the view beyond the walls of the FOB and by the song “It’s a Whole New World” from the cartoon Aladdin spontaneously bursting from his mouth. The tears were because it was dusty out.
-14 Apr: DO starts to realize that sleep deprivation while the rest of the Sqn is out on an Operation makes him angry at random things - Like question marks.
-19 Apr: DO starts a Task Matrix for ‘Op GENESIS’, within which he outlines the methodology for training the pregnant cat to give birth on the BC’s chair.
-21 Apr: One of the young Radio-Operators screams when he walks into the dimly lit CP at 2300 and sees the DO with the pregnant cat on its back between his legs, helping it with its LA-MAS breathing exercises.
-24 Apr: DO is bitterly disappointed when he learns that the pregnant cat has not given birth on the BC’s chair, but has his spirits lifted when told that the cat tried on three separate occasion to sneak into the BC’s bed-space and give birth on his sleeping bag.
-26 Apr: DO discovers that the formerly pregnant cat had one ginger-kitten in a litter of four. Which was almost eaten by its mother. DO then proceeds to remind Lt Gray (the Sqn Ginger) that nature, itself, abhors gingers.
-03 May: DO is allowed out of the bunker and realizes that he is the only person in the FOB without a tan. Sunlight burns both his eyes and skin-alike as he flies to KAF for the first leg of his journey home for HLTA.

 

As you can see, life in the FOB bunker is not without its own special form of excitement. In two months I will send another update on the adventures of the FMG DO, as well as an update on the Shenadigans involving the BC’s chair.