Welcome to Hell
Wednesday, November 26th, 2008After an entire night spent waiting up for a plane to show up and take me to FOB Salerno, I finally caught a ride at dawn on a giant C-130 transport plane. I sat in back with some enormous boxes of supplies and immediately passed out to the steady thrum of the giant propellers. It was a one-hour ride.
I showed up at a tent that will be my home for the next few days and a bunch of young soldiers were standing out front.
“You new here?” One of them asked.
“Yup.”
“Welcome to hell. This place got a pretty bad bomb attack the other day. They call it rocket city.”
Wonderful.
It’s actually lovely here, with fragrant pines and jagged hills all around. We’re only about 13 miles from Pakistan, and the Hindu Kush range stands huge and imposing to the east. It’s also much warmer than Bagram and there hasn’t been a cloud in the sky in the 24-hours I’ve been here. I’m rooming with a pack of hard-core war journos, including a documentary guy that I’ve been swapping stories with of my doc days in New York.
I’ll only be here for few days, until I can catch a Blackhawk to a smaller, more forward FOB.