You and your fear are fenced in together. Nowhere to run to (Photo: Loesche)

A week after our return to Germany I’m still pretty knackered. Our embed with the Apaches in the dusty country called Afghanistan just lingers there, hasn’t completely sunk in yet. It was a physical and mental challenge, bigger than I had anticipated.

For now, I have found refuge in the microcosm of the work office, where things are orderly and clean and predictable. This is the settling back into “normal” life, the Western world wants the Afghans so desperately to share with us.

I like being back in Germany where people stand for five minutes at the red lights at the pedestrian crossing even though there are no cars to be seen for miles. On the other hand, I hear, the army sends their soldiers to some Mediterranean resorts to decompress for a week. I could have lived through that, no question!

Dust

Kicking up dust. A convoy of MRAPs on the main road from Sar Howza to Urgun in Paktika Province

I still have a cough that comes and goes, which I refer to as my Afghan dust lung. The fine dust is certainly a big challenge, especially for your respiratory system – and all technical equipment. The headquarters team looking after the computer work stations in Sar Howza had their little air spray cans they used to clean the keyboards and fans with.

I spent most of the three weeks with sinusitis and couldn’t sleep for a few nights because of a extremely bad cough. I knew I should have gone to the medic earlier, when one of the private contractors, an electrician living in the next compartment, came knocking with some cough tablets. He probably got woken up by me coughing my loungs out.

Conditioning

I think it’s also down to the challenge of the body having to constantly adapt to the air conditioning. All tents, barracks and vehicles are cooled down – which certainly makes it easier to bear the heat in general, but is very hard on the body as it has to switch from hot to cold all the time.

From what I was told, many soldiers get ill after they arrive in theatre because of those conditions. What certainly didn’t help things was the burning pit right by the perimeter that on a regular basis emitted toxic fumes that clouded the camp.

Altitude

One thing I hadn’t anticipated at all were the effects of altitude, which turn a stroll up the hill into a marathon up the K2 like experience. The area of Sar Howza doesn’t really look like a challenge because it’s more hills than high peaks but the whole plateau is very high up. The air is thin.

It’s utopian to think you could get used to the conditions in less than three weeks. It probably takes more than half a year until your blood produces the needed amount of white blood cells. Next time, if there is one, I would certainly make sure my level of physical fitness is much higher.

Danger

Kicking up dust big time. A Blackhawk helicopter has landed in the COP delivering the brigadecommander Colonel Edward T. Bohnemann

The second major challenge is keeping an even keel mentally. Although I felt pretty safe in the combat outpost behind hescos and riding in the MRAPs behind mine resitant steel, there still was a nagging feeling of danger that I couldn’t escape. There could be a mortar or rocket attack, you could run into an ambush or you could get blown up by an IED.

Thankfully, during the time we visited we had no major incidents. One of the MRAPs of first platoon in the other COP Mata Khan ran onto an IED but nobody was hurt. Only after we had left, two soldiers of the same platoon got hurt in such an incident and were flown back to Germany.

We were very happy we didn’t get into a fire fight – although that’s what many journalists actually want. But the subtle pressure of some uncalculated threat was constantly with us. Along these lines, I think the non imminent threat can be more nerve racking than a threat right before you. It wears you down.

Nowhere to run

And there was nowhere to run, you couldn’t just move around on your own outside the wire. Your and your fear were fenced in together. Somebody in the know explained to me the other day that a perceived threat causes high adrenalin levels, which could be brought down by movement and physical activity, but on an embed in a COP you can’t just go for a long walk to clear your system.

This is probably the reason why the gym in Sar Howza was in the evenings constantly packed with soldiers working out to the sound of Rammstein (all US soldiers no matter where they’re from or what they listen to otherwise seem to have a few Rammstein tunes on their iPod: Next time I will do a survey of the favourite Rammstein titles).

The three weeks as an embedded reporter with the US Army were an unforgettable adventure, even without a major incidents. But it was much more of an exhausting challenge than I though it would be.

We boarded the C-130 Hercules at around 4.30 a.m. Our first military flight in Afghanistan. The palette with our luggage had just been loaded into the plane (Photo: Heimken)

The flight yesterday to Bagram – well, we didn’t make it. It didn’t take passengers after all – cargo only. The flight after that one – well we weren’t that lucky, they couldn’t take the usual pay load – it was too hot (I don’t know how the correlation works out). So we dropped off the low priority list for the flight: It’s all persons military first, then contractors, then journalists.

At the end of the day we were able to sign up for a 9:40 p.m. flight. We checked our luggage in and were sitting in the terminal watching the Boston Red Sox play on a flat screen. The lady from behind the check-in desk came into the waiting area and announced that due to maintenance work on the runway the flight was going to be delayed six hours.

We grabbed our sleeping bags out of our luggage which already had been put on a pallet ready for transport. Although this is a military airfield the terminal works in principle like any other airport, everybody still has to put their luggage through scanning, which seems a bit strange, because most soldiers travel with their guns at their side.

Sleep

On the up side of things, we had the first three hours of sleep since the beginning of our journey 25 hours earlier. Then at 3:30 a.m. we were once again sitting in the terminal building, now watching the Animal Planet about mammals going out of control.

We, a bunch of journalists and a few soldiers, got on a bus at 4:30 a.m. rolled to the waiting C-130 Hercules Air Force transporter. It was still dark when we walked up the ramp and took up our seats. Then after us, the palette with our luggage got heaved into the plane by a fork lifter.

Full Throttle

The ramp closed. The hall like inside went dark. We taxied across the runway, taking sharp turns. Once the pilot pulled back the throttle the sound of the four propellers rose to a deafening level, we mimicked the soldiers across from us and held on to the netting behind us.

Military transporters from the inside look as if those assembling them weren’t quite finished attaching the interior panels – you can see all the wiring and cables. After 15 minutes we were at our next stop – Bagram Airfield (BAF), the central US transport hub for Afghanistan. It was light when we got of the plane. We had made our first mil flight.

Palette

Once again we though we had gotten lucky in Bagram. We were already checked in, our luggage on the pallet for a flight to Forward Operating Base (FOB) Sharana; all systems go, waiting in the holding area, when our names were called up over the loudspeakers.

We were taken off the flight to Sharana at the last minute. We went down to the loading area and collected our bags from the pallet. The provincial capital of Paktika province, where the brigade headquarters of the 172^nd Separate Infantry Brigade is located would have to wait.

Action

I called the brigades Public Affairs Officer, Major Joseph Buccino from an internet café of sorts. He said, him and the brigade commanders, Colonel Edward T. Bohnemann, were looking forward to seeing us. Buccino added that there was expected to be a lot of “action” in Paktika, especially after Ramadan had just ended on Friday. The fight was going to pick up.

We took the bus that drives around the Bagram Airfield and rode it for half an hour. We checked into Camp Warrior on the other side of the airfield with the huge runway behind us. We both had our first shower since arriving in Afghanistan.

After getting some good food at the so called DEFAC dining facility we spent the night in a huge tent holding approximately 80 bunk beds, most of them occupied by civilian employees, contractors. Every now and then, we awoke to the sound of a pair of fighter jets roaring down the runway and taking off.

At 09:00 p.m. we rode the bus back to the terminal and were told there were going to be three flights for Sharana tomorrow. One at 1.35 a.m. the next at 5.30 a.m. and the last one at 7:30 a.m. check-in time. We decided to try and get a night’s sleep and opted for the latest flight, taking the risk that if we didn’t get on the passenger list, we wouldn’t make it to Sharana.

Angst

Axel and I had a long talk about whether this trip actually made sense at all. Why take the risk and put up with the dangers of a war zone. No picture or story will ever be worth dying for. We left that question unanswered. We turned to fear itself.

Former US-President Franklin D. Roosevelt once said something along the lines that nothing had to be feared but fear itself. That’s not true. Fear shouldn’t be feared because it’s an important indicator that you might be in danger.

We both had our spouts of anxiety and subsequent doubts about our mission. I’m glad I didn’t venture out into this adventure on my own, like I had planned to do at the beginning. Now having somebody to confine tp is extremely important.

We’ve both agreed that we will venture out to the Combat Outpost (COP). We’ll go through to our actual area of operation and then decide what to do or not to do. We have agreed that if one of us doesn’t feel comfortable with either staying on or going on a specific patrol, we both abort mission.