troop letter: John

April 17, 2009

3rd letter from Afghanistan
John.
12 April 2009 Well after further review I stand corrected and this is letter three, the one before this was letter 2. 

I apologize for any inconvenience this might have caused.  As you can see, today is Easter Sunday, it is a little after 1 PM here and I have had the privilege of delivering two messages. The first started at 0515 AM and the second was at 1030 AM. Believe it or not we had 30 people at the sunrise service and we watched the sun rise, really. We will have one more Protestant service this evening at 0730 PM and it should follow the Catholic Mass. Well let me tell you about my travels since my last writing. SPC Jones and I traveled first to Salerno where we met with a small element from our unit. While waiting at Dennis Army Airfield on FOB Orgun-E a helicopter arrived with the mail. Keep in mind that they wait until they have several boxes. They are 5’L x 5’Wx 4’H and they can get 4 of these on the helicopters that fly them in. Well, I began to recognize some of the boxes as being addressed to me. That day, before flying out we received 18 boxes into the chapel. The Sergeant who delivers the mail has asked for access to the Chapel since we receive a good number of boxes and distribute the items to soldiers throughout our battle space. One side note to clarify, the helicopters are set up like bus routes in the city, so when we travel to another FOB it might take all day because we make several landings and take offs, yes, flying buses. OK onto Salerno. Most of these folks I went to see on Salerno are from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and are fondly known as “yoopers” or maybe upers. Anyhow, they are a great group of soldiers and we enjoy being able to minister to them. During our stay there the FOB was rocketed at night and as usual the rockets were inaccurate and just woke us up. You may wonder why we put up with this stuff and just fire back to where the rockets came from. Well, great idea except the insurgents often fire from heavily populated areas, you know, women and children, so if we do fire we inadvertently hit innocent bystanders and of course get bad publicity. What matters here is that if women and children are hit it is because the insurgents use them as shields. FOB Salerno has an elevation of about 3,800 feet and as we flew through some of the passes to get there and began to enter into the valley it was apparent that the weather and such was extremely different from FOB Orgun-E. I actually have pictures of SPC Jones and myself standing in an orange orchard. And we could see many other orchards as we flew in, oh, and they had trees that were green! Eucalyptus, cedars, and mulberry were some of the trees we recognized. And of course we were surrounded by snow covered mountains. While we were there I met a Command Sergeant Major Jacobs and he was from western Pennsylvania, his picture and features make me think we are from the same gene pool. Now most of our travel is by helicopter (rotary wing) and small type commuter/cargo aircraft (fixed wing), with some of the mountain peaks exceeding the highest point on the North American continent, Mt McKinley in Alaska, here and weather is crazy we often find ourselves waiting to catch a flight. The place is called the PAX terminal and since others are coming or going it is a great place to meet people and as a chaplain it is easy for me to strike up a conversation about where people are from, if they are married, children etc. Some will ask how I became a chaplain and what are the unique aspects of being in this type of service.
From Salerno we flew to Bagram Air Field, not out of need to see soldiers, but out of necessity to get out of Salerno and hopefully get a rotary wing ride to FOB Shank. Well, you should always have a back-up plan and the other options were to ride along with the CLP (clip) Combat Logistics Patrol. It is nothing more than a bunch of trucks loaded with supplies that travel between FOBs and, yes, since we are in a combat zone all of the folks, except me, have weapons. We left late at night and arrived early the next morning without incident. Our soldiers have rules on what is permitted and such here; contrary to popular belief these guys just can’t shoot anyone or anything. Rules of Engagement (ROE) must be followed and there are investigations every time weapons are discharged. If the appropriate Escalation of Force (EOF) wasn’t followed we will face disciplinary actions. At FOB Shank we lived in tents, ate in tents, showered in tents, worked out in tents and well it is tent city! So when we left the Orange Orchards of Salerno and very moderate temperatures and went to BAF (Bagram Air Field) onto FOB Shank we climbed again in elevation and left the geographical bowl the mountains had us in. So we went from lows in the 50’s at Salerno to lows in the 30’s at Shank. The one evening we had a thunderstorm, with hail and at the end of the storm the sun poked through the clouds and there before us was a fully formed, rainbow, how cool is that! There was also a large contingent of Czechoslovakian soldiers there, now remember about 15 years ago these guys were part of the Warsaw Pact and I began to recognize several pieces of tracked vehicles they had there. Very nice people who we work hand-in-hand with to raise the standard of living here in Afghanistan. Just in case you are wondering I have also seen Polish soldiers and British soldiers here. To emphasize the smallness of our world I ran into a surgeon who was at Ft Sam Houston, TX in September when I was there for training and we recognized each other. At times it is nice to see a familiar face even though we really didn’t know each other that well, just have a connection to a previous time was nice. Then while I was waiting on a ride I was talking with this young Sergeant, she told me how this was her second deployment to Afghanistan and that the first time she was at FOB Orgun-E and gave me the dates, I told her how my nephew was there with the 27th Engineers. I could see a puzzled look on her face as she looked at my name tape and she smiled and told me how she truly enjoyed working with Jacobs. Thomas Jacobs, she worked with him during her last deployment here and told me about his going to Korea. Well we finally made it back to FOB Orgun-E Good Friday at noon and we quickly placed signs out to advertise for a Good Friday service, I believe we had about 21 folks attend. Friday afternoon the mail clerk brought another 41 boxes to the chapel and Monday April 13 SPC Jones and I will process the items, some items get sent out to the outlying FOBs and COPs where the soldiers have zero access to stores and such. So if you have been one of the many folks who have sent items over here I say thank you from the bottom of my heart, you are helping to make a difference in the morale of our soldiers across Afghanistan. To date I have received over 160 boxes from the employees at Dominion Virginian Power, we have been here since February 13th, hey say wow with me: WOW! The items get passed along to needy soldiers; soap, tooth brushes, and other basic necessities run out or wear out. So again, we are thankful for your generosity.
It will only be a matter of a few days before we head back out to a new location and begin to see and experience something different here. May God’s grace and peace rest upon each of you and may you find it in your heart to be kind to your neighbor. Love John (I serve a risen Savior)
CH (CPT) John