Dear friends:

Good evening from FOB Sharana, where day 315 of this deployment is a few hours from ending. As I begin to type this letter I’m listening to the choir from the contemporary Protestant service sing during that service. For whatever reason, this base has a lot of good singers. My base Masses here average about 40 and they are strong and sure chanters and hymn singers, quick to learn. The Saturday night Karaoke sessions held in the chapel feature some remarkable singers as well as a few howlers. Lots of fun for all! The regular singers have nicknames: mine is “The Man in Black.” This refers both to my civilian dress as a priest as well as my ability to sing the low notes of Johnny Cash songs.

The day counter is finally turning in my favor. As I said, this is day 315 of a nominal 420 day deployment, although I won’t be deployed that long. More important is that this is day 290 boots-on-ground, which means I have 60 more before that 350 day counter ends. The boots-on-ground counter stops once I leave Kuwait for the States. My return to San Jose should be within a couple weeks of leaving Kuwait. I’m thinking that I will leave Sharana after the first weekend of June to begin the long journey home and expect to be in sunny San Jose by the last weekend of June. I have my own way of physically and liturgically marking the passage of time: I placed a post-it note in my priest prayer book, the breviary, on the Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, when, God willing, I expect to be home. That’s page 617 of the book. That seemed a long ways to go back on the First Sunday of Advent in December, which was page 41. Now I’m up to page 479 and the thick stack of pages between the ribbon marking the current day’s prayers and the post-it note is now considerably thinner.

Another marker of the passage of time is the departure of my Navy chaplain assistant. He had been with me faithfully since September but left Sharana three weeks ago and is already back home in San Diego. I will finish out my tour with a young Army chaplain assistant who has been stationed in the mega-base of Bagram since May. He is now getting a taste of what the remote fighting bases of Eastern Afghanistan are all about.

The surge of troops continues apace. In Sharana, the most welcome addition is a company of the Navy’s SeaBees, the Construction Battalions. Every time I come back from a trip I find new buildings have sprung up from the earth, built either by the Army engineers or the SeaBees. Last weekend I was running the base perimeter (several miles long) and encountered a large tent village, capable of quartering several hundred soldiers, which had not been there the week before. The Paktika Provincial Reconstruction Team is also run by the Navy, so I’m around lots of sailors for the first time since arriving in Afghanistan back in July.

This area feels different than Jalalabad for a host of reasons. Most of our casualties are not through firefights as in Mountain Warrior but through IEDs (Improvised Explosive Devices), which are low-tech land mines. Fortunately, the casualty rate here is lower than my previous brigade, although the melting snow presages lots of fighting in the summer. Besides the Rakkasan brigade, there is also a National Guard battalion nominally belonging to the Vermont National Guard but, in fact, drawing troops from all over New England. Some of the regular Army soldiers call them the “Angry Reindeer” because their unit patch features a stern-looking reindeer against the backdrop of a black V. I’m told that come Christmas some smart-alecs will take red pens and convert said reindeers into Rudolph look-alikes. I feel like I’m listening to my Massachusetts cousins when I’m on one of their bases. One base consists of a company almost completely comprised of men from New Hampshire. On that base, flying along with the American flag is the flag of the Boston Red Sox. Dummy me forgot to bring my camera along on that trip to photograph the noble sight. Another difference is that Sharana, the largest base in the area, is not run by the Rakkasans but an Army Reserve engineering brigade, Task Force Timberwolf, from Minnesota. There is plenty of rivalry between the two brigades, not all of which is healthy.

Yet another difference is my own perspective as a junior chaplain. FOB Fenty in Jalalabad was not only the largest base in Mountain Warrior but also the brigade headquarters. I had access to the brigade operations center and could get a real-time account of fighting and other operations. Rakkasan’s HQ is located on another base and I have never entered the operations center. My view of how things are going tactically in this brigade is extremely poor and based on anecdote from the troops themselves. While that is not the worst means of figuring out this area of operations, it is admittedly limited and usually days or weeks out-of-date. The parable of the four blind men trying to describe an elephant comes to mind. I’m the one holding on to the tail.

Since most of my trips in this area are overnighters, I have a lot of “white space,” hours with nothing to do. I bring a lot of magazines, a good book, and the trusty iPod on each trip. Because these bases are darkened during the night and most villages lack electricity, the night sky is spectacular. I wish I knew my stars and constellations better. Some of the valleys I visit are pleasant to behold and would make good tourist destinations save for the high risk of death for the unwary. Some soldiers in one COP in particular, Zerok, give their base the name of “Aspen.” The views of the snow-covered mountains are a million bucks but the living accommodations for the Joes are akin to a Haitian slum. Fortunately their Captain is aggressively fixing things up while things are quiet. Come fighting season, the base and its environs are going to be a shooting gallery and the budding urban renewal project will come to an end. Another base, FOB Tillman, named after San Jose’s famous native son killed nearby, gave me a wonderful sight to behold. I watched a flock of sheep, maybe 99 strong like Our Lord’s biblical image, move down a neighboring dirt road led by a shepherd. One goat accompanied them but stayed to the side of the flock. Whether it was being a loner or serving as a “border collie” I know not. Then I noticed a young shepherd maybe 30 yards behind the flock, probably the son of the leader, carrying a young sheep. The youth unloaded his cargo at the rear of the flock and then proceeded to keep grazing strays from being separated from the others by yells, whistles, and the occasional foot in the rear end. I was transfixed by the entire scene and spent nearly an hour watching them move about a mile down the road to the neighboring village. Just outside the village a donkey stood in the road watching the oncoming sheep. I was expecting him to move out of the way but he stood his ground as the sheep swarmed around him. After they passed I noticed that he was tied to a stake in the ground, so his admirable stubbornness didn’t seem so impressive.

I did manage to have the full slew of Holy Week services on Sharana: Palm Sunday procession, Holy Thursday’s Mass of the Lord’s Supper (no foot washing: water is too valuable), Good Friday service and Stations, and Easter Vigil. Attendance at the Vigil was high as the only Easter Mass on Sharana was the Vigil, with Easter Sunday being spent traveling to other bases. You Catholics who have experienced 2-1/2 hour to four hour Vigils would have been impressed with our one hour, 35 minute version. We did all the chants and most of the readings, but with no baptisms and only one reception into the Church sped things up quite a bit. The 30 knot winds blowing outside convinced me that setting a bonfire next to our wooden chapel wasn’t a good idea, so a fifty cent Afghan cigarette lighter stood in for the Service of Fire.

I’m blessed that the senior chaplain on Sharana is a Missouri Synod Lutheran, so he has a liturgical sensibility and is agreeable to the Catholic smells, bells, palms, Holy Water, etc. And since he’s a reservist as well and pastor of a civilian congregation he knows full well what Sunday services entail, rather than the slimmed-down versions often encountered in the service. The chapel is his and he has been the best landlord a priest could have.

This phase of deployment reminds me of my past ministry in Okinawa in 2004-05. Most of those reading these updates online might remember the situation: seven bases full of Catholic Marines and their families and one permanent priest—me. That gave me a lot of freedom and responsibility not usually accorded to junior chaplains. While the living conditions and beauty of Afghanistan pale in comparison to Okinawa, the same dynamic is in place, albeit with fewer Catholics, more bases, and the occasional shooting to enliven the days. Few Americans of any rank have had the opportunity to extensively travel in seven Afghan provinces, but thanks be to God that has been my experience.

In summary, these last two months are going by slowly but they have their own charm. May God bless you all! Fr. Michael