Oasis & Bacon
Oasis & Bacon
Last week I had to say cheerio to my fellow colleague David Bailey aka @DFBmbe who has departed for Kabul, Afghanistan for a 12 month contract with NATO. It has been interesting following his journey to Kabul and listening to his Audioboos and looking at his uploaded pics, from the start of his journey in West Dulwich on Tuesday morning to Kabul on Thursday morning.
On his arrival at the ISAF base he was shown to his home for the next twelve months in a container, a space 20 x 8 and sharing with a fellow Brit. This morning at 7.45 am it was already +23 degrees, you can add ten degrees to that for the troops in Helmand Province. To say that he is feeling the extreme of climatisation is an understatement.
I asked him what the first impression of his new home was,
“first impressions are grey, dusty, fucking hot, dusty, hot, dusty, grey containers prison… its weird but i will get used to it”.
Being ex-military and has had his exprience of conflict zones I have no doubt that he will. On his travels today he found a little oasis of a few square metres of garden, an opportunity to at least get out of the sun and try and switch off and relax a little.
It is already becoming an insightful and eye opening account for those of us who have never experienced living in a war zone, which will be many. David’s year in Afghanistan is being documented by him, DFBmbe Does The ‘Stan. His blog is worth the follow, trust me. A little edgier than A Year In Provence, you didn’t get,
‘BTW 2 rockets hit the airport at 0200ish this morning apparently #isleptthroughit!!’
in the lavender fields!
So that’s on the base, what about the troops on the ground? I am privileged enough to be in communication with friends who are out there, whom I hope benefit from a voice outside of the dust, heat and demands they have on them 24hrs a day. How do you mentally cope coming back from a night operation after a ‘daisy chain’ has failed to go off, what goes through your mind, or sleeping and hear a mortar blow a whole in the wall and having to patch the up and resecure the wall within minutes? The everyday moment of the possibility of ‘not’ finding that IED? That’s aside the mental strength that you need when you lose or have one of your own injured. However, these guys never fail to astound me with their camaraderie, resilience and professionalism. As a reward for finding an IED, the other night, this morning my friend and his mates enjoyed bacon sarnies…and I mean ENJOYED, it’s a very rare treat,
“second time we have had bacon for three months…I don’t want to eat anything for a while as I don’t want to lose the taste in my mouth”.
There are many ways in which we can support our armed forces and maybe the start is just a little effort of our part to educate ourselves about the jobs they do. The military is endeavouring to be as transparent as it possibly can without compromising security with it’s many blogs and websites such as Helmand Blog .
So to those of you who enjoyed watching the England v USA game last night with a few beers and a BBQ and tucked into your hangover cure fry up this morning, try and remember the whole machine from civilians to soldiers that are working in areas of conflict that allow us to be able to indulge in such pleasurable day to day activites and maybe even take some time out to reflect on what they all do day in day out.
