Free Unspoken Abandonment by Bryan Wood Page B

to be ready to roll out of the compound in ten minutes. He said, “Let’s move guys. Full battle gear and all the ammo you can carry.” Someone asked about our shift, and he said that the other squads would cover for us.
    We all got our gear, and we were upstairs , within a few minutes, waiting to find out where we were going. The Serge ant announced that an American h elicopter crashed about thirty miles outside of Kabul, and it was being treated as though it was shot down. The reaction teams at Bagram were already involved in a fire fight to the north, and the weather and high winds at Bagram w ere also hindering efforts to get helicopters off the ground. An Italian ISAF team was in the area and responded to the crash, and they immediately found themselves taking enemy fire.
    I guess there was some confusion about whether or not choppers from Bagram were moving, so we were going to back up the Italians. We loaded up the trucks and prepared to roll out. Just as we were ready to leave, we got the stand down order from Bagram, and we were advised that choppers had been dispatched. Americans were on the ground now, and they felt they had the situation handled. Close calls seem to be the story of my life here!
    We all went to our assigned OPs and did the shift without a single incident. By daybreak, the normal traffic was out , and by eight o’clock, the streets were teaming with people. Nothing else happened today that is really worth writing about, so I guess I wi ll call it a day and get another decent sleep. Today was j ust another day in paradise.
    March 24, 2003 :
    What a shitty, shitty day. I would write about it, but why? Who wants to remember any of this shit anyway? I a m going to bed.
    March 25, 2003 :
    The midnight shift was uneventful, as us ual. It was a quiet night again , thanks to the rain. After shift, my squad went down to Chicken Street to pick up some things. Chicken Street is a very weird place. It i s definitely a shithole, but there are shops where you can actually get some very cool deals. Almost every shop sells bootleg DVDs; some are even movies that are still in theaters in the United States . The asking price is usually two dollars, but you can talk them down to a buck. Sometimes you will get burned, and the movie is nothing more than some guy in the theater with a camcorder, but most are actually pretty good quality. Either way, it i s n ot bad for a dollar.
    The dangerous part about Chicken Street is that it is frequented by American tr oops, and that means two things: f rom the second you step out of the vehicle , you are swarmed by women and children begging for money , or they are trying to sell you pieces of junk that you do n o t want. Secondly , it is a very easy and obvious target to attack if you want to hurt Americans. The beggars are very forward and pushy, grabbing at you, crying, and doing anything they can to get your attention. I feel terrible for every one of them, but it creates a very dangerous situation. Don’t get me wrong, I feel bad that they live this way, but I a m not going to die because of it. One Taliban wit h a handgun in that crowd, and I woul d probably never even see it coming. If you shove them aside, and yell at them long enough, th ey usually realize you a re not going to give anything.
    Whenever we park the trucks, at least two guys have to stay and watch them to make sure nobody steals from them or straps a bomb underneath. The last thing you want is to drive off and get blown to hell twenty feet down the road. Our simple rule is that we wi ll deal with you bother ing us, but nobody touches the vehicles. If someone touches the vehicle they get an M16 in the face fast , and at least one person always tries to open a do or even with us standing right there . When that happens, they have two options : they can walk away or be carried away. They know we a re not playing around, and they always walk.
    There have been a series of “syringe attacks ” in Kabul