A Day at FOB Shank

This is a view of the tents. If you look close, past the tents, is the open field that we run the perimeter by the hesco wall. You can barely see one of the guard towers at the edge of the field. This is where they are building the landing strip out of clay and dirt. If it rains, it turns to mud and the planes can't land.

The weather is definitely getting warmer. I don’t know if we are going to get any more snow or not. Yesterday, I bet it was at least mid 70’s. It was actually hot outside. I went running with a group of 20 something year olds. We covered about 4 ½ miles. They were kind to me. They would lead the way and when they were far enough ahead of me, they would come back for me. The path is all dry dirt, sand and stone. When a truck or MRAP would drive by, it would kick up a wonderful cloud of thick dust. Sure made my breathing a lot more challenging. I am still coughing up crap. I was in bed by 8:45 PM last night. Thank goodness we run every other day and not every day.


This is a close up of a small village just outside our FOB. In front is the hesco wall, which is basically a 8 or 10ft tall burlap bag with wire mesh, filled with dirt and rock. It is pretty effective for stopping things, especially things that go boom.




During the day, it is much nicer, but at night still need a coat ,or a fleece is what we wear a lot. It is typical desert, warm during the day and cold at night. With the warm weather we are seeing more activities and unfortunately injuries. The other day one of our convoys was dismounted in a village right outside our gate. One of the unfriendlies threw a grenade over a wall into a crowd so no one saw him. One of our soldiers had some small injuries, but 2 kids, a 7 and an 8 year old were injured. One had some serious abdominal injuries. Our general surgeons did great and he needed a few operations, but we anticipate he will be ok in the long run. I took care of the little girl. She lost half of her ankle bone, the talus. I am reoperating on her today again. I suspect she will have a limp the rest of her life. When we prepped her for surgery, it took me a few minutes just to scrub the thick dirt and mud off her foot. I doubt if she wears any shoe, maybe sandals at best. A podiatrist could busy 24 hours a day out here. Plus the kids are all small and look malnourished. I thought she was about 4 or 5 years old. I was really surprised to learn she was 8.


Dr Sucher and I were out the other night watching the laser show put on by our airforce gun plane, the Spectre.



The skies have been clear at night. We were outside looking at all the stars. There must have been several thousands of them in sky. I bet I saw the entire Milky Way. There is very little reflective light from any bases or cities around here, so we can see quite a bit more sky than what we can see in Chicago. Interesting, some of our planes were putting on a light show for us. They were blowing up something in the mountains just outside the FOB. You couldn’t hear it, but their rockets or whatever left a green tracer laser like path to the mountains. Then you see a small flash in the mountain side. Fun to watch but I wouldn’t want to be on the receiving side of it.




We rotate putting on lectures for the medics and nurses. I was demonstrating where we insert the pins on an arm for an external fixator










One of the local national military sustained a femoral shaft(thigh bone) fracture. I am inserting one of the pins to connect to an external fixator

Tom