While in Afghanistan on my first tour there, I was deployed with another major who was on his first deployment. As this was my fourth deployment, I was somewhat of an old hand at the ins and outs of what to expect, the other major on the, on the other hand, was understandably anxious. We were on a remote Forward Operating Base (FOB) in one of the south east provinces which had a habit of receiving indirect fire from time to time.
The thing about the bad guys shooting indirect fires at us is, they weren’t all that accurate. Being an artilleryman, I have a fundamental understanding of the elements of accurate fires and truthfully, the bad guys had all the odds stacked against them. Even so, every once in a while miraculously a round would find its way onto the FOB.
This other major had heard all of the horror stories about working with the Afghans. How there were a number of them that would turn on us from time to time at the drop of a hat. His job was to account for all the equipment we had given over to the Afghans and in order to do so he would have to venture down to the Afghan HQ and start counting.
The Afghans we worked with were rather tempered and the Afghan battalion commander had given me his personal guarantee that we would be safe while under his charge. Having a bit of experience I knew to take this for what is was worth, however, one couldn’t overtly contradict this promise for fear of insulting the battalion commander. Wearing our armor while walking on the FOB was taboo as we didn’t want to appear weak to the eyes of the Afghans. So, there was a little bit of danger involved in what he had to do, but, the job had to be done.
As the major was a guest of my team, I was obligated to provide a security team for him. I offered up two soldiers to escort and act as his security while he did what he had to do. For some reason he insisted on wearing his armor everywhere he went. The other soldiers began to talk about this major behind his back and I do remember at least one conversation about his behavior with the Afghan commander. I began to get the hint he was causing an embarrassment for us so I decided to confront him and ask him to muscle up and start acting like a leader.
It was during our Thanksgiving feast that I was able to get the chance to confront him and I sat down with him and we both enjoyed the wonderful meal the FOB cook staff had prepared for us. Truthfully, those cooks were able to conjure up a miracle from time to time and this meal was one of them. As we finished our meal, I decided it was time to talk to him.
I am not all that political in my demeanor and this was one time I wish I was. I told him about the Afghan commander’s promise and how if we appeared not to trust him it could turn him against us; I continued by telling him the security team was more or less embarrassed to escort him and he needed to muscle up a little bit. Right after I finished my well-rehearsed speech, four rockets impacted on the FOB as if on queue. The chow hall was full of soldiers and as the SOP (Standard Operating Procedure) for rounds impacting on the FOB was to find overhead cover, wait for the all clear, then account for everybody, understandably there was a mad rush for the doors of the chow hall.
Me, knowing more folks were probably injured rushing to the bunkers than by the actual impacts, I sat back calmly and waited for the doorways to clear before I moved to the bunkers. Truthfully, as a leader, I am under the school of thought that the leader has to remain calm for fear of insighting fear amongst the troops. The other major, he subscribed to a whole different school of thought. I think he ran over no less than twelve soldiers barreling through the doors.
After the all clear was given, I was in the process of accounting for all my troops. This generally takes a couple of minutes and I did have some great NCOs on my team, which made this process a lot simpler. None of us could find this other major. We spent about 30 minutes looking for him and he was nowhere to be found. I was receiving pressure from the FOB headquarters for my report and I told them I couldn’t find this one Soldier we began a search party looking for him. Four hours later, he was still nowhere to be found. I began to fear a DUSTWUN (Duty Status Whereabouts Unknown) or more commonly known as MIA (Missing in Action).
I began to pull the report together and I began to think, where could he be? We hadn’t had anyone rush the FOB during the indirect attack. He was there with me in the chow hall after the last round had impacted so I was relatively certain he wasn’t injured by them. Where was he…
I decided to look in his room one last time. I walked into his room and looked around a bit. As I began to walk towards the door I heard a faint call, “Ray…”
I looked around and didn’t see anyone and I began to think I was hearing things. I walked toward the door again and a little louder I heard a distinct, “Ray….”
“Hello?” I answered.
“I need help.” I heard.
“Where the hell are you”, I asked. “Over here”, I heard from under the bed. He had worked himself so far underneath his bunk he couldn’t work himself out again.
I was thankful for several things that day. One, all my soldiers were unharmed by the indirect fires; two, the food was wonderful; and finally, I had found my knucklehead major hiding under his bunk.