Hot, dirty and looking for a fight

Local legend has it that Alexander the Great built this mound of dirt in the remote western region of Afghanistan’s Zhari District as his command post in his failed effort to conquer this land.

Whether true or not, Ghundy Ghar, a winding, dusty hill — easily the highest point for miles in either direction — is now a combat outpost for another army — U.S. soldiers waiting for what could be a final showdown with Taliban insurgents on their own turf.

But without their Afghan National Army partners in place yet, U.S. commanders in Kandahar Province are being deliberately cautious, unwilling to risk too much with their own troops by sending them on regular patrols before a large scale, joint operation in the fall.

“We need to have our Afghan army out here with us,” said Col. Arthur Kandarian, commander of the 2nd Brigade Combat Team of the 101st Airborne. “And once that’s out here, I think it’s irreversible, because it’s all about the Afghan perception of them seeing their Afghan Army out there. We’re going to turn the corner in the next 7-10 days, it’s moving along, but not as fast as we westerner’s are accustomed to.”

So for now, there is little for them to do but wait.

Platoons trade places here each week baking in the summer sun where temperatures routinely push past 100 Fahrenheit. And while there are breezes, they’re not so much cooling winds as hot gusts that add insult to injury, blowing a fine dust that coats sweaty skin like chicken batter. The conditions on Ghundy Ghar — are just north of miserable.

Its just makes sense that the more remote a military outpost, the more primitive the quality of life. At Kandahar Airfield, a large and easily supplied base — multinational troops can stroll along a “town square” known as the boardwalk and eat at American fast food franchise, KFC, or a popular Canadian donut and coffee chain, Tim Horton’s. The base American PX could rival a small-scale Walmart — offering everything from stereos and DVD players to cleaning supplies. There is an internet café with fast connections and videos of American pop stars, like Lady GaGa playing on a large flat screen monitor. At night there are pickup basketball games and “beach volleyball.”

Many of these rear-echelon soldiers will never feel the supersonic brace of a shot fired in anger — and because of their relative comforts — frontline soldiers derisively call them, POGs, an acronym for People Other than Grunts.

But as U.S. troops push further out — the comfort hierarchy drops dramatically. FOBs, or Forward Operating Bases, are usually the next step down — but, while not home, conditions are still tolerable. FOBs will likely have hot, fresh food, showers and internet so soldiers can stay in touch with family.

Further down still, are COPs, Combat Outposts — also known as Strong Points. Here is where boots finally meet the ground — where, troops that will likely do the actually fighting — have to make do without showers, connectivity or even hot food. This is the life on Ghundy Ghar.

This week it’s Third Platoon’s turn on the hill and their boredom is relieved by the busy work of filling sandbags, registering weapons systems, playing spades, smoking, dipping and endless trash talk.

Here, the air is so hot — it sometimes feels hard to breathe. Soldiers shuffle from one end to the other trying to avoid soaking through their uniforms with sweat. The base is ringed by concertina wire strung between seven guard towers giving the place the air of a prison — and to the men inside, frustrated by not being able to go outside the wire, it can feel just as confining.

The mostly young soldiers — many on their first deployment — lay in their bunks arranged in rows under camouflage netting, but otherwise exposed to the elements. Here is the only place they don’t have to be in full uniform or have their weapons slung around their necks. Some try to sleep, having pulled all night guard shifts, other listen to their iPods.

There are a few who are curious about my presence and ask who I work for and where I’ve been before, but most prefer to ignore me altogether — the heat has made them both surly and lethargic — annoyed I’m in their space, but too listless to move away.

When I ask a few about items they carry outside the wire for luck — a few show me medallions, rosaries or pictures of wives and girlfriends, but as one begins to relay his story — another yells, “don’t be a sell out.” For him and more than a handful of others — the site of a journalist here is about as appealing as a camel spider and as welcome as sand fleas.

They also disparage and prank each other in both cruel and darkly, humorous ways — nicknaming a soldier with a healthy appetite, “Lunchbox,” while others crouch by a solider still asleep on a cot, ready to yell, “incoming,” as the Platoon’s mortar team prepares to test fire their guns. The soldier, fortunately, wakes before the prank can play itself out.

Some of the more motivated men use a makeshift outdoor gym where sandbags double as a bench press and metal pickets, used to stake barbed wire, are duct taped together to serve as weights.

The men have adopted an Afghan Mastiff dog which just walked onto the compound one day, seemingly immune to the people and high tech weaponry guarding it. They named the interloper Carlos, after the baby in the movie “Hangover” and they lavish him with affection — feeding him their leftover food and making him a water bowl out of a plastic MRE packet, cut in half.

Though still young, Carlos has the markings of a dog once used for sport fighting, which is common here. His ears and tails have been clipped and his snout has darkened hash marks where it was likely in the maw of another dog.

Despite the violence of his past, Carlos is ceaselessly friendly, wagging his body in place of the tail, seeking out caressing hands. At the end of one day some of the soldiers use their tools to pluck swollen ticks from where they’ve burrowed in his fur.

There’s no fresh food for American soldiers on Ghundy Ghar so they eat packaged MREsm or Meals Ready to Eat. Designed to last years without refrigeration, these high-caloric chemistry sets are so packed with preservatives — some soldiers joke they won’t need to be embalmed if they get killed in combat.

They’re carbohydrate/sugar rich and fiber poor—devised to provide soldiers with energy while helping them avoid the kind of inconvenient pit stops—like bowel movements–that could take them out of the fight. They also have a mix of different prized items like M&Ms or packets of instant coffee that will drive soldiers to slit open the plastic packaging just to get them. In the casual lexicon of the American military — this is called, “rat fucking” the MREs.

If anyone does have to go the bathroom on Ghundy Ghar — they sit upon a plywood “time machine” that transports them back to the Vietnam War era. Burn Shitters, as the soldiers call them, use sawed off 50 gallon drums to catch waste, which some unhappy Joe has to remove from the outhouse, douse with fuel and set afire, stirring with a long metal pipe when necessary. It’s such unsavory duty that the men here use it as the stakes in their card games.

Because of its conspicuous absence, they talk about food as much as they talk about women, giving words to elaborate scenarios for needs that aren’t and won’t be met for likely a year. Desires are defined and measured by yardsticks of what one might do to make them come true.

“I hate to say it,” said Kevin Brown, a specialist from Detroit, “but I’d shoot Carlos in the face for some White Castle and an icy cold Sprite.” Everyone laughs, as they continue filling sandbags with a mixture of course and fine powdery sand they call moon dust.

Brown goes on, “In fact, the Army might as well just pay me in White Castles, and I’d be fine with that.”

The men on Ghundy Ghar can daily see violence in nearly any direction they look; Taliban attacks on commercial convoys on Highway 1, the explosions of roadside bombs, Kiowa helicopters and A10 Warthogs unleashing on insurgent positions. But where they are perched, all they can do is watch and wish somehow they were part of it. But while they’re angry that for them the war isn’t quite here yet — they talk about it’s potential consequences with a certainty that it will.

Two squad leaders helping the mortar team to register the 60mm gun talk about the possibility of the rounds they’re “hanging,” exploding in the tube.

“If I lose my arms,” just shoot me one says. “I can handle losing a leg — but not being able to hold my kid ever again…” he shakes his head.

“Yeah don’t worry,” the other says, joking. “when that happens we’ll definitely “moon-roof” you” — slang for a bullet to the head.

Inside the outpost’s Tactical Operation’s Center — a small tent, arrayed with radios, dry-erase boards and maps — Sgt. Victor LaPierre — a former Marine who now pilots the Company’s four-foot, radio-controlled Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, known as the Raven, examines the footage gathered during his latest flight. The Raven is the only part of this particular unit that makes it outside the wire daily.

LaPierre is also the unit’s McGyver, the patron saint of lost mechanical causes — fixing aged and battered electric fans and using a small rock to repair the outpost’s only air-conditioner.

The most experienced man on the hill with multiple deployments, a Ranger tab and nearly 20 years in the Army is First Sgt. Billy Wilson. Like most platoon sergeants, Wilson is the hub of the wheel. Every order, every movement, every action goes in, around or through him. He’s a bear of a man, with a shaved-head and heavily-inked arms, but while he can look Hell’s Angel’s-like intimidating — he’s even-tempered and fair. In between plotting grid coordinates of a Taliban RPG attack, he’ll flip through car magazines and talk about his customized Harley. He’ll also assign his men to fill sandbags, then join them himself.

At the top of the hill, the platoon leader, Lt. Steve Morse, an earnest 24-year-old, is talking with his Afghan National Army counterpart — and helping to train members of an ANA unit that live just above them on the hill. Morse says he joined the army because he likes its values; discipline and teamwork. This is not just lip service as he applies those skills in attempting to learn both Dari and Pashto, Afghanistan’s main languages — he says, so he can do his job more effectively, but he seems to enjoy speaking with the Afghan soldiers.

Today, one of his team leaders, Sgt. Chad Enslin is teaching some of the ANA how to do a “dead check,” making sure an enemy is dead and not just pretending to be.

“There are two ways we do this,” says Enslin,” but before he can complete his sentence one of the eager ANA soldiers stands up and pretends to stomp on the groin of another U.S. soldier playing the dead enemy. Everyone laughs and Enslin nods.

“That’s right, you kick them in the groin—or, number two,” he moves toward the supine soldier’s head and feigns jabbing his fingers downward, “you poke him in the eyes. If he’s alive, one of those will make him flinch.”

On their second to last day on the hill, Third Platoon is scheduled to go on a dismounted patrol outside the wire along with the ANA soldiers. They are eager to leave the gates, as they see the ANA unit do nearly every day. But the movement is canceled when a piece of equipment called a Thor, a roadside bomb frequency jamming device, is on the fritz.

The men of 3rd Platoon are hot, dirty and frustrated, but resigned that the only real enemy they may face this summer is their own boredom while they sit on top of Ghundy Ghar, waiting to get into the fight.

An Afghan National Army soldier in Kandahar. (Photo by Kevin Sites for GlobalPost)