September 1, 2009

Dear friends:

Greetings from Forward Operating Base (FOB) Fenty in Jalalabad! Around here, we know it either as “Fenty” or “JAF,” the abbreviation for Jalalabad Air Field, around which is built the FOB. No matter how one names it, Fenty seems to have become my home for the indefinite future.

Settled life in Afghanistan for American service members is probably different than how many of you imagine it to be. It certainly is different than what I thought it would be. I had the mental image of rows and columns of two-man and dozen-man tents surrounded by walls and barbed wire, where we would be eating MREs (Meals, Ready-to-Eat), the military’s ubiquitous pre-packaged food rations, most of the time. I also pictured constant patrols by vehicle and on foot into the cities, towns, and villages among which we live. Needless to say, I was all wrong.

In the years that the Americans have been here, the military infrastructure has been built up considerably. The bases themselves come in different sizes. The major airfields like Bagram and Kandahar are the centers of the American presence, this being a land-locked nation. Under them are camps with various names: FOBs, COPs, and OPs, in their descending level of importance and size. These aren’t always so distinct: the smaller FOBs and larger COPs are difficult to distinguish in size. They all have a similar building history. First are the tents, then the B-huts, and then the brick-and-mortar and metal buildings. As an archeologist tries to interpret the history of a site by investigating the various strata of buildings and artifacts, so one can observe the proportion of these three types of dwellings to get a feel of the age and importance of a camp. A place like Bagram has mostly hard buildings; Fenty is a mix of all three but a predominance of B-huts; some of the small outposts apparently are tents. Fenty’s B-huts and tents are laid out in a checkerboard pattern by the hundreds, which makes it easy for the unwary and newly arrived to get lost, particularly at night.

Oh, the B-hut. The B-hut is to this war what the Jeep was to World War II: the omnipresent evidence of American forces at war. B-huts are elevated plywood huts, framed with 2 by 4s and 4 by 4s, with peaked roofs clad in corrugated tin to keep out the rain, whenever that may come. They are elevated a foot or two in the air, supported by 4 by 4 inch pylons, to reduce the rodent, insect, and reptile infestation. The standard B-hut on Fenty is 32 by 16 feet, a size that seems to be the standard on all the camps I’ve visited. They are flexible: some are outfitted as eight-man residences, some are offices, and some are half-residence, half-office. Others have unique missions such as serving as showers and latrines (rest rooms). There are larger B-huts and a few are even two stories tall, as well as half-size versions. They are all outfitted with small air conditioners or swamp coolers. One of the most impressive things about these camps is that most of them have their own internal electrical grid: there are small power plants or generators and an electrical transmission grid completely independent of the unreliable local civilian grid.

B-huts are cheap and easy to build with local materials and workforce, adaptable (Fenty’s previous chapel was a B-hut with a small steeple placed on top), and movable. More on that last feature later. Since the typical soldier has a year’s duty in Afghanistan, there is plenty of time to customize the interior to give it a homey feel. There are internal six-foot tall partitions between beds, so that there is visual privacy, if not aural, for the occupants. Soldiers typically gets about 50 square feet to himself, which isn’t a lot, but it is enough for the inventive American soldier to make a home away from home.

Being wood, B-huts are not secure from enemy fire, so each camp has its own internal fortification system as well as fortified perimeters. Some camps are hit so often that every building is surrounded by fortifications.

The camps usually are named initially for the local town. After a while, they get renamed with the name of a soldier who died heroically in the vicinity. Fenty is named after a well-regarded Lieutenant Colonel of Army Cavalry who was killed in action outside Jalalabad. Unfortunately, with the loss of American lives over the years few of the camps retain their local names.

Lest anyone think we suffer materially, most FOBs have general stores (both locally owned and the military’s Post Exchange), a post office, a medical clinic, and a MWR building. Morale, Welfare, and Recreation (MWR) is an Army-wide program (the Navy has it too) that does a series of things in order to enhance troop morale. In eastern Afghanistan, MWR buildings tend to be very limited: a few computers used for free Internet access and (sometimes) pay telephone lines for calling home. In the classic military fashion, there are competing phone systems that aren’t compatible and the service I signed up for works in Kuwait and Bagram but not in Jalalabad. Afghanistan also has developing cell phone networks, many of which can call the US. Coverage is spotty, especially at the remote camps I often visit, and the security implications are horrendous. I have listened to a few hair-raising stories at Fort Jackson about insurgents getting the cell phone numbers of targeted U.S. officers, so I do without. Fenty also has a small movie “theater,” a room with lounge chairs and a large-screen TV. Every camp, no matter how humble, has a gym: from ones that would give your local U.S. gym a run for its money to weights strapped to pulleys attached to tree limbs. The COPs have fewer services: some have small MWRs, but the post office is a box and there is no retail store of any kind.

When I arrived, Fenty’s chapel was a B-hut seating forty but now we’ve moved into a converted store space that seats nearly sixty. It has one aisle, colored-glass windows, and a little white steeple (without a cross to avoid offending local sensibilities). I love it! If the sound system goes down, no problem—the back row is only fifty feet away! It is carpeted in green Astroturf like a miniature golf course. There is a simple wooden cross in the sanctuary, as well as a drop-down projection screen for some of the Protestant congregations that like a little karaoke in their services. The little sacristy area has everything needed for a Catholic Mass. A Yamaha portable keyboard serves as either an organ or piano and the permanent drum set gets used for the Protestant services and a few unauthorized late-night jam sessions by bored soldiers. The three base chaplains work in the twin building next door and a couple of us live in that same building. I’ve newly moved into the “penthouse,” a converted storeroom all to myself: a glorious 160 square feet! Decoration is moving apace: I plan to post a small cocoon of Navy and Marine Corps paraphernalia to cover the walls.

Now that I’ve described what the place looks like, my next letter will describe some of what happens here. I would like to conclude this letter with a humorous tale. As mentioned earlier, B-huts are portable. One morning, I was returning to my B-hut after brushing my teeth and turning in laundry when I saw the old B-hut chapel in the air, slung under a large movable crane. I was hoping that the poor Marines temporarily staying in there had been forewarned. I walked about thirty more yards and realized that it wasn’t the old chapel but my B-hut in the air! For the next hour my chaplain assistant (who also lived in there) and I followed the B-hut through the narrow lanes of FOB Fenty until it found its new place of rest one-half mile away. Needless to say, everything within had fallen to the floor. As the sergeant in charge of the operation said, “It’s a heck of a way to get an eviction notice.”

God bless, Fr. Michael