Heat and a Coincidence

Letter from Michael
May 23, 2008

It has been pretty quiet around here as of late. It seems like more an more personnel are moving into our FOB. Real estate is becoming more scarce, and we are having to move our stuff around. My berthing area is right smack dab in the middle of the FOB. I am right next to the chow tent, which makes that part of my life a bit easier. The hardest part about life in Afghanistan , other than the sheer boredom, is the heat. Now that we are in late May, the temperatures are rising with no relief in sight. Last week was a personal record for me, as I experienced temperatures above 120 degrees for the first time. It was 122 to be exact. Yesterday, our Navy docs said that it hit 130 degrees, breaking my week-old record. At 130 degrees, there isn’t much you can do other than find shade. We received a shipment of energy drink, and it was sitting in the sun on palates, boiling in the heat. The stuff is carbonated, and I guess the heat was just too much, as the cans started to explode. I was walking by, and at first it sounded like someone was taking pop shots at us. But we are so far removed from anything that I knew nobody could be shooting at us. Then I realized it was the cans of energy drink exploding. Weird.

I have been sleeping outside as of late. It just gets too hot inside of our bunkers, and I like sleeping under the stars, which are as bright as can be out in this desert. The other night, I was sound asleep, when all of a sudden, THUD! THUD! THUD! Several loud explosions rocked our camp. I jumped up, ready to don my body armor and grab my weapon. Then it dawned on me that those explosions were the sound of outgoing British artillery, and not incoming. The Brits, known the world over for their manners, could have kept up their reputation and given us fair warning. Nevertheless, I fell right back asleep under those stars. The same cannot be said of the Taliban.

I have become good friends with our chaplain. He is from the little town of Bayou Chicot , Louisiana . He’s Southern Baptist, so we get along well. As the Chaplain, he is officially in charge of cheering up the troops. He receives big care packages from churches around the country, usually filled with razors, toothbrushes, candy and gum. The other day, he got a box from First Baptist Church of Jacksonville, NC, which happens to be his church back at Camp Lejeune . The box was filled with goodies for the troops all sorted into ziplock bags. He took them out to the troops to distribute and was about to run out. He noticed that he only had 2 bags left, but it didn’t look like anyone else needed a bag, so he decided to keep one bag for himself, something he rarely does because he rarely has extras. He stuffed one of the ziplock bags into his backpack and asked if anyone needed the other extra he had left over. One Marine raised his hand and stated that he didn’t get a bag, so the chaplain gave him the bag. As he sat down to go through that one last bag he had left, the one he stuffed into his backpack, he noticed something. Back at First Baptist Church of Jacksonville, the people who had taken the time to lovingly put together those ziplock bags of goodies had also slipped in a Polaroid photograph of the person who had put the bag together. They were random pictures of various members of the church. Well, this particular bag, the last bag he had left, after distributing dozens of bags, just happened to have a Polaroid picture of none other than the chaplain’s very own daughter. How amazing is that! He unashamedly said that it brought him to tears. A big cardboard box full of dozens of ziplock bags to be given to Marines, of which the very last bag left, the one bag the chaplain decided to keep for himself, which he rarely does, happened to contain a picture of his little girl. God truly works in amazing ways.