War Stories: My Time in Kyrgyzstan

With Kyrgyzstan in the news as of late, Brant asked me to share a war story that I alluded to on Facebook. As you read this, remember the difference between fairy tales and war stories: a fairy tale begins "Once upon a time ..." and a war story begins with "This is no shit ..."

This is no shit... there I was, stepping off a C-130 at Ganci Air Base, Kyrgyzstan in April of 2003. I had just finished about 90 very intense days in Afghanistan doing some IT work for Coalition Task Force-82 (CTF-82). My Army project officer had stayed behind in Afghanistan for a few extra weeks to "let the paint dry" on the system we had just deployed, so I was traveling solo.

Me and the assortment of troops, civilian government employees, and contractors that were on the flight with me were bussed to the collection of GP-Medium tents that would be our home until we could get on a flight back to CONUS.

For those of you unfamiliar with navigating the military transportation system as an "individual augmentee" (as I was called), it is nothing like either commercial air travel or a unit movement. There's no itinerary. There's no pre-planned connecting flights. You put your name on a list and you wait until you get a seat from where you are to someplace one step closer to where you're going. If you get lucky, you can be on a plane within a few hours. If you get really lucky, you get to hang out at the now-closed Rhein-Mein Air Force Base near Frankfurt, Germany and discover a great little restaurant not too far outside the gates, like I did on several trips in and out of the CENTCOM AOR. If you're really unlucky, you get stuck at a place like Camp Arifjan, Kuwait for what seems like an eternity in a hell-on-Earth that combines the heat of the desert with the humidity of the jungle. On this trip, my luck wasn't too bad. I would end up spending about 36 hours at Ganci Air Base which, at this point, was relatively new and austere at the time.

After an overnight wait for a flight out of Afghanistan that eventually departed in the wee hours of the morning, I was exhausted, so I stowed my gear and crashed out on the cot for a few hours of sleep. When I awoke, my next priority was to get my name on the list for a flight back to CONUS. The Army had schooled me on the buddy system, so I checked around the tent to see if any of my fellow passengers wanted to walk with me to the passenger terminal, which was maybe two miles away from our tent. Everyone was asleep or blocking out the world with headphones while they sent E-mail and surfed the Web on their laptops, so I set out on my own. After all, this was Kyrgyzstan, not down-town Kandahar. What could really go wrong, eh?

What could go wrong was rain. It was a cold, gray afternoon and I had left my snivel gear in my backpack in the tent. Soon after I left the passenger terminal, the skies opened up with a brutally cold rain that truly chilled me to the bone. It was perhaps 40 degrees out, but I had never been so cold in my life. To this day, whenever I hear someone complain about cold, I think about that relatively short walk in Kyrgyzstan.

About half-way back to my tent, a few Americans in a 4x4 pick-up truck stopped to offer me a ride. Two of them were in the cab, while two more were in the open bed of the truck. I hopped into the bed. I knew better than to ask who these guys were, but they certainly didn't look like regular Army. They were obviously fit, had beards and long hair, and wore an eclectic mix of sterile uniforms and civilian clothing. Maybe they were Special Operators. Maybe they were KBR toilet-and-shower contractors who just wanted to look cool. Maybe they were IT nerds like me, but really into working out. Whoever they were, I sure wasn't going to act like a wuss in front of them, so I sucked it up and refused to shiver as the wind from the truck's motion drove the freezing rain even deeper toward my bones.

We soon arrived at the tent complex and I quickly took the best luke-warm shower I've ever had and put on some dry clothes. I was told to check back at the passenger terminal every morning, so I had the evening to myself and eventually headed over to the bar.

I ordered one of the two beers rationed to each of us per night, spotted two of the bearded guys from the truck, and sat down at their table, mostly because we were the only people in whole place who looked over 30. We didn't really talk much, just sat back, and drank our beers as we watched the young kids drink, dance to the music playing over the crude sound system, and, on at least one occasion, vomit outside the bar tent after a little too much success buying or trading extra beer ration tickets. The highlight of the evening was a curvaceous red-headed female airman who entertained the entire establishment by dancing to Missy Elliot's "Work It" on the bar, including splits and other moves that would have made the best exotic dancer proud. I was definitely not in Afghanistan any more!

It must have been a long night at the bar that night, because a lot of people woke up feeling under the weather the following morning. I found a few folks who weren't hung over and we headed over to the airport to check on our flights. Along the way, we took a little detour outside the gates to check out the area. We didn't go too far but what we did see was honestly depressing. The town outside the gates fit the image of post-Soviet decay in ex-USSR perfectly, with dull gray and beige apartment buildings crumbling from neglect and the shelves of the few stores that we saw on our brief excursion were quite bare.

Coming back through the gate, I had my first encounter with the Kyrgyz armed forces. The climate and lifestyle of Central Asia is really hard on people, but the Kyrgyz soldier guarding the gate honestly looked like he was about 40, maybe even 50, years old. I couldn't read his rank insignia. By American military standards, if you're 40 or 50 years old and you're pulling guard duty on a gate, you either: a) really screwed up your military career or b) are an activated reservist or National Guardsman. By Kyrgyz standards, maybe this was better than the few, if any, alternatives this guy had.

The guard's uniform also struck me as odd. It was reminiscent of a Soviet Army dress uniform, but with a hat that was about 3 sizes too big. Maybe I'm just a culturally insensitive SOB, but after beng around the squared-away paratroopers of the 82d Airborne Division for several months, this guy's uniform struck me as almost comical. Nonetheless, I bit my tongue and remembered that, even as a contractor, I represented the United States to our new Kyrgyz allies, so I treated the guard with the same respect that I would an NCO in the US Army.

During our visit to the passenger terminal, we had been informed that our flight would be leaving that afternoon, so we headed back to our tents and got our packs and duffle bags ready to go. A bus picked us up and took us back to the passenger terminal.

During this final ride, the sweep of history struck me. I had learned from one of my fellow passengers that this airport used to be an old Soviet bomber base. Hangars and shelters had only a few years housed Tu-95 Bear and Tu-22M Backfire bombers armed with nuclear weapons targeted on the United States and our allies now housed US and NATO aircraft fighting the War on Terror against al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan.

We soon boarded one of the regularly-scheduled chartered airliners that flew out of Ganci Air Base to take troops back and forth en-route to the US. The flight crew was absolutely wonderful and did their best to make us feel comfortable and express their appreciation for the heroism of the troops I was traveling with.

I've always had an impatient nature, but my time as a contractor for the US military rapidly tempered this trait. "Hurry up and wait" is the SOP. Nonetheless, the wait to take-off seemed inordinately long, even by military standards.

Eventually, the airliner's captain came on the PA system and announced that a Kyrgyz airport official was trying to increase our flight's departure fee at the last minute. He also wanted the payment to made in US currency. I had already spent enough time in the Third World to smell corruption when it reeked this badly and we all knew that this loyal civil servant did not have the Kyrgyz treasury in mind when he made this demand. What did strike me as odd was that US Government basically left this to the chartered airline operator to deal with but the crew said that this was a routine occurrence and they would deal with it.

At least an hour passed while the airliner's captain negotiated with the Kyrgyz bureaucrat. At one point, some of my fellow passengers saw an airport vehicle move to block our aircraft from taking off. At some point, trying to shake-down an airliner full of paratroopers, Rangers, and Special Operators eager to get home to see their families crosses the line from typical, almost quaint, Third World corruption to a Bad Idea.

The mood among my fellow passengers started to darken. I started to hear rumblings. One person mused that everyone's individual weapons were in the cargo hold, along with at least a little ammunition and there must be a way to get to them from inside the passenger compartment. Another passenger pointed out, half-jokingly, that he was pretty sure we could take "the guy with the big hat and his buddies." Several of the officers and senior NCO's among us asked the flight attendants if the crew needed any help dealing with the situation.

Soon thereafter, the captain concluded his negotiations with Kyrgyz bureaucrat and the airport vehicles moved away from our aircraft. I'm not sure how much, if any, the corrupt apparatchik was paid beyond the published departure fee for the airport. I also don't know whether he got cold hard cash or a check payable to the Kyrgyz government.

What I do know is that the engines powered up, the aircraft began to roll down the runway, and we were soon wheels-up, another step closer to home, with a near-international incident behind us.

With the recent coup of Kyrgyzstan, there is again talk of Ganci Air Base being shut-down. I hope it isn't, because it is important to the on-going war in Afghanistan, but if it does, it will live on in the memories of those of us who passed through there.

By: Guardian