I Finally Made It

Waiting for our flight. The usual, hurry up and wait. We reported at 0530 for 0600 sign up. Our helicopter flight didn’t leave until 0900. You had to be there early to sign up or else you lose your seat.

Well, I finally made it to FOB Shank. It is not so bad. Could be worse. The chain of command held Dr. Sucher, a general surgeon, and myself back for a few days. They were debating about sending us to Helman Providence where most of the surge is taking place. Because of the weather and other difficulties, they thought they would need us there. Apparently, they have decided otherwise because now we are in Shank. I don’t know if they thought we weren’t good enough or maybe just didn’t want to put up with us. Either way, we are here.

It wasn’t too bad flying here. We flew by helicopter, a Chinook. A little crowded and little cold, but not too bad. They always fly in pairs in case one goes down. It took about an hour of flying time.


Loading up on the back of a Chinook helicopter.

FOB Shank isn’t so bad. It kind of grows on you. There is only one paved road in our area that goes from Pakistan to Kabul. To the locals, it is a super highway. To us, it is equal to a 2 lane country road. So this is a main route for the bad guys to go from Pakistan to try and blow up the capital. This road initially split Shank right in half. They tell me that in order to go to the other side; you had to have a humvee take you, wearing full body armor because the bad guys were still driving up and down the road. Since the fall, they closed off the road and built a bypass around the FOB. Now we can just walk across it.
Shank has about 3500 troops, so a lot bigger than I was initially told. No paved roads, all the roads are just stones, about 3-4 inches big. The stones are just big enough to make it rough to walk on. You can’t get a grip on them with your shoes, so you just tend to slide off them. There are no fixed, permanent buildings. There are just tents and wood shacks. I sleep in a tent with 8 beds. At least I have a bed now instead of a cot. There are wooden shelves separating each bed. The heater is somewhat working. I picked up an electric blanket from a guy who left today. Last night was damn cold, so I hope this helps.

Loading up on the back of a Chinook helicopter.
They keep the back of the Chinook open for the entire flight. It gets cold and drafty in there. The soldier is manning the 50 cal machine gun in case of attack.




The good news is that they haven’t had a rocket attack in over a month now. The FOB is in the center of a big area. The land is all barren outside the main FOB until you get to the fence line. The fence line about 3 or 4 miles from the FOB. So it is too far to be reached by mortars, so the terrorists need rockets. Hopefully, they ran out of rockets.

Tom