Chapter One

I'll continue to share bits of my "memoirs" here.  I won't share everything before I'm done, but some entries will slip onto my blog.

I hope you enjoy it.

1.

Paradise Lost

Things were great.  Life was great.  Everything was great.  Heck, being in Tampa had made me so agreeable that I was close to thinking that babysitting this bunch of ex-Soviet prima donnas was great.  Almost.  A shattering glass snapped me out of my Zen-trance.  Rustam was throwing a drunken temper tantrum.  Apparently his waitress wasn’t being “friendly” enough.  He was certainly a pig when he was drunk.

I was stationed in Tampa for the whole month of August.  It was my National Guard annual training (AT) for 2007.  And I must admit it was about the best AT anybody could ask for.  My friends in the artillery or engineers often told me about the weeks they’d spend carting around some base just wasting time.  Well, I certainly had a story for them when I got back. 

Here I sat, at Hooters, with a bunch of diplomats from former soviet states like Kyrgizstan and Kazakhstan.  It might have been odd, but it was interesting, and I was enjoying myself, generally.  I’d take an AT of chauffeuring around a bunch of spoiled officers and politicians over sleeping in a tent with a bunch of guys who haven’t showered for two weeks any day, and I even like to camp.

After explaining to Rustam that Hooters was not a strip club and that the nice waitress didn’t understand Russian and would not take her clothes off for him, I convinced my inebriated group to allow me to escort them back to their hotel.  This was really a selfish effort on my part as my shift was about to end.  Once I got the guys back to the hotel, Sergeant Saunders would take over.

Over the last few weeks I had fallen into a daily routine.  I got up at 6 am, had breakfast by 7, attended briefings from 8 until 4 pm with a break for lunch, then took the group out to dinner somewhere at 5 pm.  Once dinner was over I’d rush the guys back to the hotel and swap keys with Saunders, who had elected to take the night shift.  I gave him the van key in exchange for the keys to our rented Chevrolet Cobalt.  Once I had the keys, I was free.  Like every other evening, I was off to the beach.  

The beach time helped me relax away the stress caused by pulling Rustam off of random women.  I’d swim for an hour or so then lie on the beach until the sun went down.  Nothing melts the stress away like watching a Gulf sunset.  Once I was chillaxed, I’d head back to the hotel.  Like I said, life was great.  The taxpayers treated me well.

I almost felt guilty about this cushy assignment.  Almost.  You see, I’d gone on two terrible ATs the previous year.  The first was to Korea where I nearly froze to death while playing war games and running fake sources as practice for gathering intel on the enemy.  My second AT the last year was in Tampa as well.  Only last year I worked my tail off.  I rigged A/V equipment, babysat diplomats 24/7 and transcribed the previous days briefing notes from Russian into English and English into Russian for half the night.  Each day I tried not to nod off while I ran the power point presentations and served as backup translator when the full time State Department translator decided he needed a break.  I didn’t get to see Tampa last year.  Instead I was in a daze for two weeks then flew home.

Apparently, the bigwigs at last year’s conference liked me.  The officer in charge was impressed enough that he awarded me the Joint Service Achievement Medal at the end of the conference.  This year, when my unit got the call to send a guy down again, I found out that he had personally requested that I return.  I was hesitant to agree to that kind of torture again, but was informed that the conference was much more organized this year.  I would not have to translate nor transcribe, nor would I work for 24 hours a day – just 12.  This assignment would last a month, I would have a rental car, and would be off on Sundays.  Once I realized that I might actually see Tampa this time, I agreed. 

Boy, was I glad I had.

Today was Friday, which meant that this week's delegates would fly home tomorrow after going to Busch Gardens.  Did I mention that I went to Busch Gardens every weekend?  Since the theme park didn’t open until 10, I could get up a bit later than usual tomorrow, which to me meant that I could stay up later tonight.  I decided to see a movie.

When I got to the movie theater, I discovered that the only movie playing in the next 20 minutes was Hot Rod.  I’d seen the previews and thought it would be a funny, albeit stupid film.  When I paid for the $14 ticket, I thought that perhaps this movie thing was a bad idea.  It was.  Hot Rod was terrible.  I’m no movie critic, but you don’t have to be one to hate that flick.  I knew I should have just stayed at the beach.  About a half hour in, right after Hot Rod had crashed his Moped for the umpteenth time and right before I was about to walk out on my $14 movie, my phone rang.  I’d forgotten to silence it.  I slipped out of the theater and answered.

“Hello?”

“Specialist Hansen?”  I hated being called Specialist.  I was only a few months away from being eligible for Sergeant.  Couldn’t they just call me that now?

“Yes, sir?”  I had a pretty good idea who was calling.

“This is Captain Hanes.”  I was beginning to really hate this movie.

I’ve just got word that the other MI battalion is deploying to Afghanistan next year.  They need three Human Intelligence Collectors from our unit to go with.” 

Yup, this movie officially sucked.

“There are only five of you HumInt guys in my unit and, frankly, I’m not confident in three of them.”  He never told me who the three were.  “Can you go?” 

I never thought that my commanding officer would ask me nicely to go to Afghanistan. 

He was really just pretending to ask nicely, though.  You see, he was told that he needed volunteers.  This was my chance to volunteer by saying yes to a kind request instead of being volun”told” to go. 

“Absolutely, sir, I’ll do it.  Do you know any specific dates for training and actual deployment yet?”  I realized that my voice was a bit shaky.

“No dates and no details yet, just that it’ll be next year.  I’ll keep you posted.  Out.”  Captain Hanes treated telephones like they were radios.

  

By now I had forgotten about the movie.  Instead my mind was flooded with questions as I wandered out of the theater.  Where, exactly, would I be going? What would I be doing? Who were the other two guys going with me?  Would Sergeant Herman go?  I couldn’t stand that creep.

CRAP!  What’s my wife going to think?  I just volunteered to go to Afghanistan for a year without asking her first.

In my defense, I’d been married for less than a year.  I really hadn’t completely settled into the “gotta ask my wife” routine, yet.  I decided that I’d better wait until I got back to the hotel and settled down before I called and told her.

When I got back, Saunders was in the lobby.  He looked preoccupied.  “You going, too?”  I asked.  He just nodded his reply.  At least Saunders was going.  He was a stud – nothing like Herman.  We sat and talked for the next couple hours.  Turns out that Saunders got the call first. 

I think Saunders had picked Captain Hanes’ brain until he decided to tell me and whoever the next guy was that he had no details.  Saunders got out of Hanes that we would be split up into teams and assigned to different forward operating bases (FOBs).  He said that we would actually be running sources and gathering intel.  We’d be doing our jobs.  It turns out that my time in Korea would turn out to be of some use, after all.

After googling Afghanistan a hundred times, pouring over maps of the region, and picking each other’s brains, we decided to call it a night.  I went up to my room and picked up the phone.  I had no idea what to say to Nikki.  In retrospect, I think I was actually having an anxiety attack.  I couldn’t see straight, I couldn’t think straight, I was shaking, I felt cold, and I kept standing up then sitting back down.  I put down the phone and decided to call her when I had calmed down.  Then I sat and let my mind race until I drifted off to sleep.

I wasn’t in as jovial a mood that Saturday at Busch Gardens.  One of the delegates actually asked me what was wrong.  I told him that I just hadn’t gotten enough sleep.  A half truth.  I was still trying to find out how to tell Nikki.  I resolved to tell her after the delegates had left for home and I had some free time.  Procrastinator.

That afternoon, after seeing off the delegates, I finally called her.  Oddly enough, I don’t remember the conversation.  I know I told her.  I know she wasn’t happy about the news but tried to be understanding and supportive all the same.  All I really remember is feeling much better after we had talked.  God bless good wives.

I had one more week to go.  The Uzbeks were coming to town next week.  Once they were gone, it was clean up then home.  But that was next week.  Right now, I was feeling a bit stressed out.  I really wanted to go to the beach.