FOB Jackson is an effort to remember now.  Two weeks ago, I was sitting on a hescoe sipping a coke and watching the sun go down over one of the most war-torn places on earth.  Rumor is Genghis Kahn went around – instead of through.  I can see why.  It’s gotta be a pretty rough place for Ghengis to avoid it.  The short wall of Hescoe barriers make for an interesting sort of bus stop.  I took my cue to pull up a seat from one of the First Sergeants who was waiting for his trucks to run him back up the 611 to his company outpost.  When it comes to outdoor furniture, the Hescoe barriers are about the most ergonomically optimized places to sit that we have – a wire cube full of dirt.  With a lot of effort and a few good tools, the thick wire of the hescoes can be formed into nice garden chairs.  Few went to the trouble – war is always a compromise among priorities.  A few days later, I went around the camp saying my good-byes to people and the place.

At Leatherneck, we get music in the chowhall – an eclectic mix.  This morning at breakfast it was Abba’s Waterloo followed by the Bee Gee’s Staying Alive – no kiddin’.  Somebody’s gonna have to let the DJ know about the war.

I ran into some guys I knew from my flying days – one of the pilots I went to Iraq with and a crewchief that I flew with in the Reserve squadron out of Norfolk.  My friend, Chris, may come to visit from Kandahar.  Apparently one or both of us has connections.  I even ran into a British doctor that I had been on the HMS Ocean with for a couple weeks.  War is an interesting place to meet up with old friends.  At every one I come to, I run into buddies I haven’t seen in years.

Warrior Transition training should be complete tomorrow.  Hopefully everyone feels more informed about their stress response system and why it doesn’t automatically spring back to its pre-combat state when we get removed from the stress environment.  We have been practicing with our limbic systems for seven months – we can focus some intense energy on a moment’s notice.  Most of you have probably not been practicing your stress response as diligently – at least, I would hope you haven’t been.  Out here, our bodies have been pouring Omega-3 fatty acid on the neural wires of our survival system – thickening up the myelin sheath of the most-used circuits.  This tiny physiological difference will likely be a source of disruption as we try to re-connect with family, friends, and a place that doesn’t have IEDs.

Most everyone in my tent is coughing.  Those who aren’t coughing are snoring and will be coughing soon.  I made it six and a half months without getting sick.  The combination of finishing the cruise book and warrior transition training caught up with me.  Self care has been very good and intentional up to this point. Somehow I got the book project.  Good place for my creative energy, but hard for me to organize it all not knowing how the software works and having the battalion spread out over four locations.  I got behind and now have to play catch up.

When I was walking around FOB Jackson in Sangin, my knees and ankles attended to the large gravel that was everywhere.  We have gravel at Leatherneck, but more on the scale of miles rather than yards.  Here it is distance that my body attends to.  Force protection makes everything difficult.  The heads have to be outside the concrete blast barrier where the rows of billeting tents are.  Same with the garbage cans.  You can’t go to the bathroom or throw away a piece of gum without putting shoes on.  Everything is far away.  Apparently the place is much improved over a few years ago when the roads were un-paved.  It’s harder to put IEDs under a paved road.  Highway 611 through Sangin was recently paved.  Commerce is on the move – trucks and fleets of little white Toyota Celicas zip along anxiously waiting their turn-off onto the dirt roads.  The occupants of a few of those little white Toyotas know where many of the IEDs are.

One of the civilians in the tent just said these are the worse beds he’s ever seen in his life.  That guy can go sleep on a sharp rock.  They are packing up to go live in metal cans.  Weenies.  War is a big experience and there is a temptation to compare how bad it was or to scoff those who suffered less.  I am not immune from the impulse.  On the one hand, this is a rather silly temptation.  On the other, we’ve had an experience that is new, big, and hard to understand.  It is a challenge to put words to it, and we may be leery that the effort will be misunderstood by those closest to us.  When our limbic systems are dialed up to high, and our pre-frontal cortex is dialed down to low, we tend to think in terms of basic categories – something like, “it sucked” or “it was good.”  At warrior transition training, I try to explain to the Marines and Sailors that it is not enough to say that it sucked; we have to be able to name the details – the heat, hunger, exhaustion, pack-straps, and all the rest.  The skill is not to compare who had the most dramatic deployment experience or to compare our experience to that of our loved ones back home.  It was difficult for all of us.  The skill is to name the differences.

When you hang out with aviators you learn to see the world in a certain way – from way high up.  What Marines call micro-terrain matters a lot less from the aviation point of view.  When you hang out with the infantry, your feet become more observant – micro-terrain matters.  And of course, perspective changes from one military service to the next.  I’m now at Manas Air Base in Kirgizstan.  Turns out the Air Force has much nicer gravel than the Marine Corps.  The stones are much more uniform in size from one to the next, and they are smaller – less apt to turn one’s heel on Air Force gravel.  I like Manas.  It’s not dusty and stuff seems to work here.  It’s not fancy by North American standards, but the chow hall is open 24/7 and you can choose your own food.  Like a lot of military bases, things are set up communally and foster gatherings – the chow hall, the internet café, the gym.  Manas is nice, but I’ll be happy to go home.  The first few months went very quickly.  The last two sort of dragged.  For weeks I have been mostly successful at not thinking about going home, but I can feel it now.  I think some sailing will be in order, and I should be home in time to catch some fall colors with my camera.

Before I deployed, serendipity orchestrated an unexpected gathering.  My friend and fellow UU military chaplain, Chris, and I wound up scheduling ourselves at the same Buddhist retreat event.  I thought the retreat was just what I needed.  The icing on the cake was a warrior blessing that put me in touch with the spiritual legacies of Odysseus, Sitting Bull, the Samurai, King David, and fellow warriors of the US military.  To Chris and all of you, who were there, thank you for the sustaining energy of that blessing.

Before we left the retreat, Chris also bought me a gift – a Japanese tea set.  I read a little bit about the tradition on the internet and was vaguely aware that the tea ceremony was part of the Samurai tradition – fulfilling the warrior’s obligation to attend to beauty and creative forms as a counter balance to the destructive forces of war.  Chris, barely in country for a week, managed to pull off a trip from Kandahar to Leatherneck.  A friend here at Leatherneck picked him and his assistant up at the fixed-wing terminal and Chris invited us all to tea.  Just like there is a way to do everything in the Marine Corps, there is a way to do everything in the tea ceremony.  Like the Buddhist retreat eight months ago, the tea ceremony was powerful in its simplicity and form.  It challenges my western sensibilities to discover how much richness there is in drinking tea, but there it is.  For 20 minutes, my attention was on the movements and textures of the ceremony rather than war.  When the bowl was emptied the last time, I realized that my mind and heart had been skillfully cared for.  The ritual of tea happened my last full day in Afghanistan.  I feel ready to come home.

See you all soon,

Thanks for all the support you’ve sent my way,

Disclaimer: All entries to CLF/Quest Military Ministries page reflect the personal views of the contributor. The views expressed here are in no way to be construed as an individual or individuals speaking in their official capacities for the agencies, departments, or service branches they serve in. This is not an official publication of the Department of Defense, the U.S. Army, U.S. Navy, U.S. Coast Guard, U.S. Marine Corps, U.S. Air Force, any government agency, or any other organization.

The place is still dust brown, probably even more so than when we got here.  The harvest is over and most of the green that was here is gone until next year.  Things are still dust brown, but I don’t really notice it anymore.  I am dust brown.  The mongoose was at the mail container yesterday… looking for care packages?  He/she/it is interesting, but I’m no longer impressed.  The excitement of riding in the back of armored trucks across a strange, new land has faded.  I don’t bother to take many pictures from the back of the truck anymore.  Mostly it’s hot, bumpy, and uncomfortable.  Which all feels pretty normal.  I don’t like the explosions, but anymore it seems like most of us just frown, rather than jump, when the earth shakes.

Last week was Fourth of July.  The chow hall served steak, lobster, hamburgers, bratwurst, cold sodas.  We even had condiments!  The next day we had fireworks… real ones.  The EOD guys (Explosive Ordinance Disposal) brought in several IEDs that were discovered before they blew anyone up.  I didn’t have my radio turned on, so I didn’t hear the announcement for the detonation.  My teeth shook.  I don’t think I’ve ever been overly bothered by explosions.  In spite of the fact that my physical response is mostly reduced to a frown, I wonder if a person can ever get totally used to them.  If so, I know I’m not there yet – probably a good thing.  Even if you know it’s coming, it is disconcerting to have the Earth shake under your feet.  It makes me mad.

My friend David, also a minister, explains that when you experience an event of grief, every occasion of grief you have ever lived through is present in you again.  I can testify.  The other day the sadness of losing five Marines caught up with me.  I didn’t bother holding back the tears.  There have been times when I could name all the people that I have known who died – either in combat or training for combat.  As the list grows, I can no longer keep track.  In my mind there is a visual image of David’s explanation of grief.  It is a cloud shifting from its boundless potential to hold and store to its kinetic state of drops catalyzing every nearby drop and pouring profusely.  Then the cycle starts again, only now there is more raw material for the next experience.  People in combat report that it is the same with moral dilemmas.  The weight of every decision they’ve ever made is present in the decision they are making now.  When someone looks calm and cool on the outside, it’s hard for others to notice the existential mule of past experience kicking around inside them.

War changes your heart.  It’s not so much whether you choose left or right and things turn out right or wrong.  Your heart changed before the decision was made.  What changes your heart is that you were the one called to that decisive moment – you were the one that had to choose and act.  Circumstance is unforgiving out here.  It’s a place where people become overly familiar with being between a rock and hard place.  We learn about the severity of consequence and adjust our lives around considerations that feel rather ultimate, but eventually it just seems normal.  When we get home, the rules will be different.  There will be a few weeks, if we’re lucky, during which we won’t know what to do with ourselves.  And we won’t really be able to either tell anyone what we need or listen to what they think we need.  So, we’ll just go about our business of scanning the yard for signs of IEDs before we walk out to the car.  The vigilance switch will remain in the “on” position for a while.

The other day we heard some chatter on the radio about an engagement and people getting injured.  We waited for patients.  The Aid Station was prepped for mass casualty.  I’ve never seen a gunshot wound or an amputation up close.  It was exciting in the way that terribleness can be exciting.  We hold a fine emotional balance as we try to both urge providence away from any more casualties and accept the reality that we can’t influence what’s already happened.  Everyone was in their well-rehearsed places.  The mass casualty turned out to be one Afghan National Army soldier.  The GSW and AMP turned out to be a superficial wound to the side of the head.  He was taken to the ANA medical facility.  They didn’t ask for assistance.

We’ve been eating a lot of flapjacks.  I help cook them, and even though cooking a thousand flapjacks tempers one’s appetite for them, I still eat them… in a deliberate sort of way.  By now, RP and I, and the cooks that have helped us, have served over 2500.  Several organizations and individuals have made very generous contributions.  I had been thinking about and planning the first pancake breakfast for weeks.  The date was set.  Wednesday, 13 Jun.  Two other chaplains and two RPs (religious program specialists) were visiting my base.  Everyone wanted to chip in.  We were going to eat like kings.  We mixed the batter the night before.  By 0430 in the morning, both burners in the galley were running.  Flapjacks were getting poured, flipped, and flopped into insulated bins by the dozen.  At 0440, the executive officer walked in to the galley.  He isn’t usually in the galley at 0440 in the morning.  He looked at me.  “Chaps, come outside for a minute.”  I stepped outside.  “We had a KIA last night,” he said.  He told me the name of the Marine and what company he was in.  My heart sank.

For weeks I had been coming back to my mud hut after the evening meetings and I would just sit down and pray thanks.  People had stepped on IEDs that only partially detonated.  People had taken one step to the side and bullets crashed into the wall behind them.  We found many IEDs before anyone was injured by them.  And now the XO was telling me that one of our Marines was dead.  Within two weeks, four more would die.

War puts mundane things and ultimate things on the same shelf.  A day that began with a sense of celebration culminated ten minutes later in grief.  In my mind pancakes were at fault.  I wondered if I would ever eat flapjacks again.  By the hard bend of its lens, war distorts our sense of being oriented.  Things that were friendly are now the enemy of serenity.  My experience put breakfast and mortality next to each other.  Many of our Marines and Sailors will face similar spiritual juxtapositions.  The particular ingredients will be different.  Using your hands to hold someone else’s guts gently inside them is a kind of intimacy that will challenge the prospect of intimacy that people hope for from love relationships.  Putting a sheaf of artillery rounds on a building full of bad guys will blend exhilaration and nausea together in a way that Hollywood can only hope for.  I went back into the galley.  The more experienced chaplains probably already knew.  I asked the chaplains, RPs, and cooks if they would gather around me for a moment.  I tried to explain that in ministry sometimes we need to be present for both joy and lament in the same moment.  In war, it is the same.  I let them know that one of our Marines had been killed in an IED blast.  At 0630 we opened the plywood doors of the chow hall and began serving.  The Marines loved it – all but one.  No one else noticed; the connection between death and flapjacks would be my private affair.

The other day I sat down next to a few Marines for evening chow.  They asked if I was enjoying my time in Afghanistan.  I asked if it was a trick question.  We all laughed politely.  I knew it wasn’t a trick question.  I responded that it was exciting, rewarding, adventuresome… but that the reality of losing Marines tempered enjoyment.  If it wasn’t for the snipers and IEDs, this probably would be enjoyable in an odd sort of way.  It’s a place to face a challenge and be of service.  Even if there are ways in which the rite-of-passage, which challenge and service ought to be, feels hollow, there are also ways in which this aspect of war is still profoundly true and rather thick.  We lived in a world that was once familiar and seemingly within our scope of control.  Now the spiritual furniture has been rearranged and we are going to stumble around for a while.  Grief and moral dilemma will be our teacher – whether we want them to or not.  What is still ours to choose is what we decide to learn from those teachers.  Will we gradually add light to see the new furniture, or will we use the toe-stub method.

Apparently, I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know.  Colorado has suffered yet another tragedy.  Let’s help each other to all shine bright.  Next week, there will be flapjacks.

Disclaimer: All entries to CLF/Quest Military Ministries page reflect the personal views of the contributor. The views expressed here are in no way to be construed as an individual or individuals speaking in their official capacities for the agencies, departments, or service branches they serve in. This is not an official publication of the Department of Defense, the U.S. Army, U.S. Navy, U.S. Coast Guard, U.S. Marine Corps, U.S. Air Force, any government agency, or any other organization.

It is June.  The trend is that day-time high temp in June will be around 110F.  July and August will be about 10F additional for each month.  In Yuma, AZ, I remember being uncomfortable at 115F.  In Kuwait, I was fascinated with how hot it was at 120F.  (Ok, short story:  As a former helicopter guy, one of the things my body has learned, while walking around a spinning helicopter, is to step sideways if I happen to walk toward the hot part of the engine exhaust plume.  I’ve done it so often, I hardly notice I am doing it.  In 2004 when I was in Kuwait – on the way to Iraq – I came out of the air-conditioned chow hall and stepped into the heat of outside.  It felt so unusually hot that I instinctively stepped sideways, thinking I would avoid some engine exhaust.   Of course there were no engines nearby – it’s just that hot out there.)  We’ll see how Afghanistan shapes up.  It surprises me that the locals wear what looks like such heavy clothing .

This week I did a lot of good traveling and got out to some of the “two-tent” patrol bases.  One of the things about Marines is that the less they have, the less they tend to complain about.  They seem to just decide to make the best of it.  I usually try to take some care packages out to them when I go.  This time, we delivered better than any care package I could bring them.  Each little patrol base got a generator and an air-conditioner – a big one.  They’re going to think they are at the Ritz Carlton.  At the end of June, we will try for a morale boosting flap-jack breakfast including at the small bases – flapjacks by backpack (honestly we ride in trucks).  Thank you all for your generosity in making this possible.

RP and I put a lot of work into the USO tent last week before we started traveling.  This week we finished it off.  We built a home-made couch.  It is slightly reclined with an ergonomically contoured bench.  We found some shipping foam for the bench.  Old tent crates were attached together to make shelf towers and an entertainment center.  This Friday, movie night will be on our brand new 27 inch TV.  Thanks again to those who sent kettle corn for the pop corn cooker.  We have a small café set up to one side and a 300-book library and care package distribution to the other side.  There is also a United Through Reading recording studio where Marines and Sailor can record themselves reading a book to their children.  Air conditioning to follow.  We converted the front door-flap into a solid wooden door with hinges.

This brings me to what feels like a moment of heresy.  This war has been going on for a decade now.  People have been sending care packages out here for ten years – most of it gets eaten.  Some of the thicker novels however, are difficult to chew.  So after the books are read, they get put in a giant box called a tri-wall.  It’s a 50 cubic foot reinforced cardboard box.  We now have one and a half tri-walls of books.  We can’t leave them behind, so many will have to be destroyed.  They were sorted by virtue of being on a best-seller list or written by a prize-winning author.  Our 300-book library is all on the “top shelf.”

Air conditioners are slowly making their way from the big bases to the smaller ones and from the large tents/buildings to the smaller ones.  In the meantime, I have rummaged through our version of Home Depot, which we call the DRMO pit.  DRMO means something like defense reutilization management office.  Like many military acronyms, its technical meaning morphs to local circumstance.  Our DRMO pit is a semi-organized pile of class-4 (wood/construction) supplies, hescoes, and things that don’t work anymore.  I hope this isn’t insider-trading, but if you haven’t got Hescoe in your retirement fund, consider it.  When there is a war, hescoe sales must go through the roof.  Hescoes are a wire frame cube with felt-lined walls.  They unfold like some sort of erector set.  They get lined up neatly, then the bulldozer fills them with dirt and you have a wall.  They come in many sizes.  So, back to the make-shift air conditioner.  I found some old rain gutter, a bent hescoe (small size), some plastic tubing from the medical staff, and a plastic trash bag.  I put it all together with zip-ties and now I have swamp-cooler.  Water from the plastic tube flows along the rain gutter to soak the sheets of felt and a desk fan helps evaporate the water.  It looks like it works, but I can’t tell for sure because my thermometer says 86F no matter what the temp is.

Obviously there are things happening all the time out here that I probably shouldn’t write about.  Keep praying thanks for body armor.  I can write pages to you about what camp life is like.  I could even tell you about the events of war.  What is harder to explain is what happens inside a person – in the deepest part of their being.  My sermons strive to touch on being prepared for our inner-being to change.  It’s likely that for most of us, we will simply go home with a significant experience behind us.  For some, the experiences jar the soul a bit more.  Because of our training, people can do things (and have to in order to survive) quickly enough that their conscience doesn’t get to weigh in fully before the action is complete.  I am grateful to Ed Tick for his book, War and the Soul, which gives words to the experiences of so many.

Some of you have heard me say before that seminary and basic training have many similarities.  Drill Instructors and CPE supervisors have a certain access to the core of who a person is.  It is interesting that in this counterinsurgency fight, the thing that we have to pay attention to most is relationships.  Maybe I am just seeing it this way because of my own formative experiences as a minister.  At this moment, and from this vantage, it seems to me that history has driven the style and conduct of war into such a small corner that the list of things we call “civilized” and the list of things we call “uncivilized” are hard to distinguish.  For example, can building a school be an act of war?  Maybe war has always been that way for humanity – a search for our best in the midst of our worst.

Church last week was nice.  We had three protestant services reaching 20 people and one Unitarian Universalist service reaching 10 people.  The movie last week was The Count of Monte Cristo – a journey through pride, vanity, despair and revenge.  This week it was Five Love Languages – relationship skill building.  Next week it will be Hollywood’s original action thriller, The Long Kiss Goodnight – a desperate, do-anything search for one woman’s missing identity.

As far as I can tell, the swamp cooler is working.  Someone buy carbon credits for me; the fan runs off a diesel generator.

Seanan

Disclaimer: All entries to CLF/Quest Military Ministries page reflect the personal views of the contributor. The views expressed here are in no way to be construed as an individual or individuals speaking in their official capacities for the agencies, departments, or service branches they serve in. This is not an official publication of the Department of Defense, the U.S. Army, U.S. Navy, U.S. Coast Guard, U.S. Marine Corps, U.S. Air Force, any government agency, or any other organization.

Hello All,

It seems like it’s been a busy couple of weeks, although there has been some down time.  Traveling out here is a challenge.  It’s not like the bus runs on a regular schedule.  Although busses getting cut from the schedule is beginning to be as familiar in the States as out here.  Anyway, traveling with the uncertainty of when my next transportation will arrive (or when the person I am waiting for will arrive) makes it seem busy even if it isn’t.

Chow continues to be good and the plumbing continues to work.  Cross your fingers (or I’ll have to cross my legs).  And the mongoose apparently figured out not to drink the anti-freeze in the motor pool where he likes to hang out – I still see him/her/it occasionally (your concerns appreciated).  They keep telling us it will get hot out here, but thankfully it has barely broke 90F so far.  I’m sure it’s just around the corner.

The other night when I was at a different base, our mortar teams fired some rounds sometime after midnight.  The blast is fantastic, especially if you aren’t expecting it.  It shook the earth and my teeth.  There is an interesting moment of consideration when the first boom sounds – is it something that I need to worry about enough to wake up and don my flak jacket.  I waited for a few seconds and was encouraged by the light “whump” that follows the big “boom.”  The “whump” indicates a flare rather than an explosive round.  It turned out to be an illumination mission – the mortars were just firing flares so our guys could see across the valley.

We got a new chapel tent and it was moved to another part of the camp.  The old one had been there for years – since the UK occupied this position several years ago.  We had movie night last night – the audience chose Rudy over Rocky.  Popcorn and care packages were handed out.  Tomorrow the Catholic Priest will be here to lead services.  The location of the old chapel became the new spot for the gym.

Ok, gotta catch the bus.

More soon, Seanan

Disclaimer: All entries to CLF/Quest Military Ministries page reflect the personal views of the contributor. The views expressed here are in no way to be construed as an individual or individuals speaking in their official capacities for the agencies, departments, or service branches they serve in. This is not an official publication of the Department of Defense, the U.S. Army, U.S. Navy, U.S. Coast Guard, U.S. Marine Corps, U.S. Air Force, any government agency, or any other organization.