Where Have I Been?

Salerno! But not the nice one in Italy. The one in sort of Eastern Afghanistan. (Southern? The whole darned place is on a slant, so it is hard to tell) as opposed to... kind of middle Afghanistan like Bagram (which is near Kabul, which is the capital. Remember this for future Scavenger Hunts!)


It was about a half hour flight from Bagram on a C130, the plane of choice for people that jump out of planes. You may notice that there are no windows on the sides of this plane. What that means is that you sit in this steel box and stare at the walls while you bounce all over the sky. So, when we landed and I hopped out of the plane, it was a surprise that we landed on a GRAVEL RUNWAY. I later found out that it is just the taxiway that is gravel, but it was a shock at the time. What else did I have waiting for me? Trees! Woo hoo! This is actually an olive grove in the middle of the base. But my God, the humidity! This is not a desert like Bagram. In fact, it rained most days I was there, at least a little. Hey! I can see Pakistan from here! But do not worry, the bases there are quite safe. This is why they call them bases in Freeze Tag. Salerno is a Forward Operating Base (FOB) but it is really like Bagram lite. They have most of the same stuff, but smaller. Like this Subway shop... truck... thing. That is actually the whole place.

The 82nd Airborne Division Band was playing at the chow hall. No, our meals do not normally have musical accompaniment. This same band was playing at the 10K run I did and at the 500,000th Soldier to go on leave from Kuwait Ceremony. Apparently our fates are linked. But this time? This time they were playing TV show theme songs! On woodwinds! Including the A-Team song! Awesome. Da-dah dah dah... dun dun dun...
(To be continued...)