afghan blues 24 march 2009

Yesterday a rocket flew over the company office and missed by a few yards.

It landed next door and killed a Philippine worker and injured 5 others.

Sad day.

You get a poor guy with a family from a poor country, and all he wants to do is feed his family and give them a better life.

Whammo!

Terrorists end it all.

They really are bold in their attacks, and they are getting worse.

You have to wonder what makes a person able to indiscriminately kill people like that.

The wind is still blowing and I am starting to think that it will never let up.

Never.

It actually rained today, for about 5 minutes. Then it stopped and the wind kept blowing.

I had to make a pickup at our airport here at the FOB to get 2 FNG’s (Friggin New Guys) for our base.

Ha-ha.

One of them has never been to a war zone and his whole life was on the California coast.

This fact alone was enough to piss me off.

He did nothing while we rode to our tents but ask about rocket attacks.

He seemed very afraid and unsure if he made the right choice.

I told him how terrible it is and how lucky we have been so far.

I am soooo bad!

Actually, this camp is about the safest camp in the country.

I just wanted him to have a great night sleep for his first night. LOL

I’ll tell him the truth in the morning.

IF he gets any sleep.

Add his anxiety to the wind that blows all night long against the walls of the tents,
shaking them to their foundations; and you can imagine that he will be indoctrinated
Properly.

While I waited for the C-130 to arrive, I went into the British PX and bought myself a Sudoku game book and, get this…,

a REAL chocolate milk.

For those of you that do not get the importance of that, let me explain.

All of our milk is the artificial type that comes in boxes. Never needs refrigeration and lasts for years.

It is horrible when it is cold, and we usually get to drink it at room temperature when we have any at all.

So the taste is indescribable.

That is why whenever I come home, the first stop is a pizza and a glass of real milk.

So when I saw this sitting there in the cooler, I jumped on it and almost took down a female British soldier, thinking that it was the last one.

I was not about to wait around and find out that it was the last one and that she had absconded it from me.

HEY! She knew the risks when she became a soldier and came to this God forsaken place.

IF the rockets aren’t bad enough, one can get killed over a chocolate milk.

By me. lol

But this was special milk. The kind that has the syrup on the bottom, so the more you shake it, the richer and more chocolatey it gets.

I guess I will try to write some more later this week.

I have to get back to the grind.

Have a good one.

Jimmy B.