The Road to Salerno

I am settling in my first week here in Afghanistan. My journey began January 2nd at 4:00 am. I had to take a taxi to the base to pick up my 9mm handgun and then take me down to London to get on a commercial flight. At Heathrow I reported my weapon and they checked it like a piece of luggage. I then met up with 4 or 5 other people headed the same direction with a variety of weapons, and we all filled out our paperwork in a group and stuck together. I took off on British Airways to Frankfurt International Airport, picked up my pistol, and took a taxi up to Ramstein Air Force Base to spend the night. German taxi drivers are interesting. We were driving almost 100 mph (while it was snowing) on the autobahn listening to "danger zone" on the stereo. It was pretty fun. That night I ate at Chili's on the base, and enjoyed the last good food for a long time to come.

The next morning I got up early, headed to the PAX terminal on the base, and checked in for the flight. Our itenerary was taking us to Incirlik Air Base Turkey, and then continuing to Manas Air Base in Kyrgyzstan. We boarded a commercial airplane (I was surprised it wasnt military) and headed towards Turkey. Most of the people on the plane looked like me, wearing a military uniform, but there were some civilians and also children on board. As it was getting dark in the skies on the was to Turkey, I looked down and saw some huge mountains with snow all over--very impressive. After it was completely dark, looking out the window I kinda had a feeling of anxiety by not knowing what was waiting for me at the end of my journey, only that the plane was taking me there and there was no turning back. The flight to Turkey lasted around 4 hours. We landed, deplaned, and walked into a terminal and all sat there for about 3 or 4 hours. The military is famous for "hurry up and wait," and this was no different. Fortunately there was a little grill making hamburgers. I had just eaten on the plane but decided to eat again out of sheer boredom. After the hours had gone by we all walked back to the same plane and sat in the seats we had before to continue our journey. This flight had no civilians and no children. We were in the air for another 4 hours heading out of Eastern Europe and into Asia. We made it to Kygyzstan around 6:00 am local time, landing on a snow covered runway.

We all headed into a room where we received a briefing. Some of us would spend a night or 2 here, and some of us would quickly be moving on. I was selected as one of the people who would be flying on to Afghanistan that day.

We spent the entire morning receiving more issued items such as cold weather gear, chemical warfare gear, and body armor. Afterwards we piled up all of our bags on pallets to be loaded onto the next airplane.

The airplane taking us to Afghanistan was a C-17 military aircraft. We were traveling with a large group of Army soldiers heading to various places in Afghanistan. We were packed onto that plane like sardines.

We didnt take off until the early evening, I was already really tired from traveling the entire night before. I was hoping I could find a bed sometime in the near future. What was supposed to be a 90 minute flight down to Bagram Air Field Afghanistan turned out to be much more. The pilot tried 2 or 3 times to land at Bagram, but dense fog kept him from seeing the runway even though he was 400 feet above the ground. So we diverted to Kandahar, Afghanistan. Once we arrived, we deplaned, checked in at the terminal and were taken to some tents at around 2:00 am to sleep.

The next morning, about 6:00 am, we walked back to the terminal to start waiting on a flight out to Bagram. With all the Army people stuck there though, it took all day to get a seat. Finally, around 5:00 pm, we received word there was a C-130 we could fit on to go to Bagram. We rode on the C-130 to Bagram and arrived around 9:00 pm. After we checked in and filled out a bunch of paperwork, we eventually made it to a tent, a pretty large tent with about 50 transient people in it, and slept on a cot.

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Surely this would be the first good night of sleep in a few days. No---it is very cold at Bagram and was below freezing. The large tents have heater ducts blowing warm air into the tents at night. Well ours malfunctioned somehow and was pumping in cold air, causing it to be around 45 degrees in the tent. It’s hard to sleep while shivering… The next day I completed a checklist of things to do, including picking up ammunition for my weapon. The funny thing about this was that since I am medical, I picked up my ammo in the hospital. As an anesthesiologist, not only can I check out a bag full of narcotics, I am now able to check out 45 rounds of ammo for my handgun!

We were informed that we had a C-130 going to Salerno leaving at guess what time…2:00 am. At 10:00 pm I showed up with the other people heading out to Salerno, carrying all 4 of my bags of issued gear plus backpack plus handgun, and began waiting. Finally we boarded the C-130 and took off for Salerno. These military airplanes have no windows, but you can kinda tell when you are about to land based on how things feel and sound. Going into Salerno was a different experience. In a forward location such as this, you don’t want a long smooth approach just over the enemy’s heads. So there was quite a bit of wild maneuvering getting down to the runway—which is all gravel by the way. You had no idea when the landing was coming, and suddenly SLAM there it was, not smooth, not graceful, just getting down to the ground quickly. In fact one of our guys happened to stand up to reach for a bag or something when we slammed the ground, and he got thrown about 5 feet over a few people—pretty funny. We did a hot offload of the plane, meaning they lowered the ramp in the back of the plane and you get off with the engines running. The C-130’s never stay at Salerno, they just unload, load, and take off. Walking out of the back of that plane we entered the darkness. Salerno is a very, very dark place at night. There is a strict blackout policy here, and the only lights that can be used are red, green, or blue flashlights. We were met by hospital people and taken to our rooms to sleep.

This is my new home, my little corner of the room. Beautiful isn't it! At least it's not a tent...