In the dirt
Well, I’m still at Bagram, much to my dismay. The rain poured down yesterday like a biblical flood, and by last night we were walking in deep puddles to get to the DFAC to eat. I spent the day hanging out with the Soldier of Fortune (SOF) guy, and with a New York photographer, Chad Hunt. He was over here recently and produced some beautiful work (www.chadhuntphotography.com) which has made me all the more frustrated to be still sitting here. And all the more determined to get out to the troops in the dirt.
In the dirt. This is a phrase that describes the frontline conditions the soldiers are operating and living in. It is where lots of journalists I meet want to get to, but where lots of the soldiers I meet say they never see journalists. A lot of the troops here have a pretty low opinion of the media, and are angry that so many stories are negative. They say they are doing a hell of a lot of good in this country, but no one ever reports it. And they get annoyed when people talk about re-construction, as they say there is no re, just construction. They talk about the new roads they are carving out, the wells and irrigation they provide, the schools they are building and supplying, and the hospitals and medical care they offer to Afghans.
My SOF friend (from now on to be known as SOF) has seen first hand the efforts that American doctors will go to help Afghans. He was at a Combat Surgical Hospital (CSH) when a little girl was brought in on a Medivac. She had stepped on a mine in the mountains and the villagers carried her to the nearest American outpost, who called in a helicopter to rush her to the CSH for treatment. Amazingly the doctors, who SOF had spent several days with already, allowed him to photograph the whole event. He has the most amazing, and shocking, picture of the little girl lying on the operating table being prepped for surgery, with one leg blown off at the knee but with a length of shinbone still protruding, and her other leg also damaged but still there. A nurse is standing over the girl, looking almost like an angel, and although distressing it is in a strange way a beautiful photograph. Then they operated, and at one stage they ran out of blood to give the girl. Without getting fazed, one of the nurses walked out and told the new military padre that had arrived recently, and who had his blood type emblazoned on the front of his body armour like all of the soldiers do, that they needed his blood to save a little girl. SOF says that the soldier never hesitated, and in fact everyday afterwards would come in and sit beside the little girl’s bed to watch over her. Now I know that most people would think this was a propaganda story if they heard it from a military source, but SOF saw it with his own eyes, and I’ve seen the photographs. These are the stories that the soldiers say they want people to know about.
Today was more hanging around, hoping that it would be the day I got out to find these stories for myself, but no, it wasn’t to be. Although at least it didn’t rain today. In fact the morning was a cold crisp winter’s morning, and beyond the confines of the base you could see the towering snow-covered mountains of the Hindu Kush. They looked magnificent, but I’m not looking forward to flying through their passes in a helicopter with open doors. I will be an ice block before we land.
Then I planned to go to the big bazaar that happens every Friday, but what do you know, that was cancelled too. I did manage to get permission to photograph around the PX, but most soldiers didn’t want to be photographed so I struggled to get anything that really captures the buzz that surrounds this focal point of the camp. So now I am still hanging around, waiting to hear about the next possible flight. The next time I write, hopefully, I will be in the dirt.
John D