F
Field Ethos
Guest
By Byron Harvison
The first thing I remember about landing in Kandahar wasn’t the heat or the noise, it was the smell. It hit the moment the ramp dropped. Thick, sour, unmistakable.
“Poo pond,” someone said behind me.
That tracked.
Lieutenant Col. Gibson and I stepped off the aircraft and onto the tarmac, adjusting our gear like it might somehow help. He carried his issued 9mm Beretta, nothing more. I had mine too, but I’d also grabbed an M4 before we left Kuwait. A friend of mine used to say, “you use your pistol to fight your way back to your rifle.” That stuck with me. Plus, I trusted the M4 more. I knew what I could do with it.
Not long before that trip, I’d traded in my life as an Armor officer for a JAG slot and somehow landed straight into Chief of Operational Law at 1st TSC. No easing into it. One day I was thinking about maneuver and fires, the next I was advising on rules of engagement and authorities across a theater. And now here I was again, back in the dust, walking into Afghanistan like I’d never left.
We got settled into transient barracks and started linking up with our folks. Nothing remarkable about the day, just the usual grind of catching up, syncing up, figuring out where we needed to be next.
That night, rockets came in.
I remember waking up just long enough to register the sound, deep thuds, distant but real, before exhaustion pulled me right back under. In the morning, we found out a contractor had caught a rocket in the chest. No abstraction there. Just bad luck and wrong place at the wrong time.
At HQ the next day, someone gave us a little grief.
“You guys didn’t check in after the indirect fire.”
Gibson didn’t miss a beat. “We were asleep.”
That was the end of it.
We spent the rest of the day moving around, talking to our people, doing what we came there to do. Eventually it was time to head north to Bagram. So, we made our way to the terminal and settled in for the wait.
If you’ve never been in one of those terminals, it’s hard to explain. It’s part bus station, part holding pen. People half-asleep, sitting on gear, staring at nothing. And then, right outside, you’ve got a TGI Fridays, a Burger King, a Pizza Hut, a Popeye’s, like someone dropped a strip mall into the middle of a war zone. It always felt off to me. Not wrong, exactly. Just … surreal.
I found a spot, pulled out my copy of “The Fountainhead,” and tried to pass the time.
Three hours later, we got the call to be on standby.
We grabbed our gear, hovered near the desk, and waited again. Then finally:
“Moose 32.”
We looked around. No one else moved.
“Guess that’s us,” I said.
We walked up. No line, no crowd. A crew member eventually waved us through and escorted us out to the aircraft. That’s when it started to feel strange.
We boarded the C-17 and realized we were the only passengers.
No pallets. No troops. Just empty space.
We stashed our gear anyway, sat down, and waited. One of the crew came by and told us we could move up to the cockpit once we were airborne.
I finally asked the question.
“So … we the only cargo on this flight?”
He grinned and pointed across the bay.
Two boxes. That was it.
“Not quite,” he said. “Buddy of ours up in Bagram, it’s his birthday. Guy loves Tim Hortons.”
I just stared at the boxes for a second.
All the movement across Afghanistan, all the coordination and fuel and planning, and we were catching a ride because someone wanted donuts.
The engines spun up, and we took off into the Afghan sky.
Once we leveled out, we moved up to the cockpit. The view alone made it worth it. Mountains stretched out in every direction, jagged, empty, almost unreal. I’d spent time in Afghanistan before but seeing it from up there was different. Quiet. Isolated. Like no one had ever touched it.
“Foothills of the Hindu Kush,” one of the pilots said.
I nodded, just taking it in, thinking about how much of that terrain probably hadn’t seen a human footprint in centuries, if ever.
The flight itself was smooth, uneventful.
The landing wasn’t.
As we approached Bagram, the pilot gave us a quick heads-up. Then the aircraft rolled hard and started dropping in a tight spiral. The horizon spun past the windows in sharp, controlled arcs.
“Corkscrew,” Gibson muttered.
It wasn’t comfortable, but it was effective. Harder target. Less predictable.
Then we hit the runway. Clean, solid, done.
We gathered our gear, stepped off the aircraft, and paused long enough to thank the crew.
“Tell your buddy happy birthday,” I said, nodding back toward the donuts.
They laughed. Said they would.
And just like that, we were in Bagram.
I remember walking away from the ramp thinking about how strange the whole thing was. In a war defined by logistics, firepower, and consequence, sometimes the thing that moved you across a country wasn’t strategy or urgency …
It was two boxes of Tim Hortons donuts.
The post The Donut Run appeared first on Field Ethos.
Continue reading...
The first thing I remember about landing in Kandahar wasn’t the heat or the noise, it was the smell. It hit the moment the ramp dropped. Thick, sour, unmistakable.
“Poo pond,” someone said behind me.
That tracked.
Lieutenant Col. Gibson and I stepped off the aircraft and onto the tarmac, adjusting our gear like it might somehow help. He carried his issued 9mm Beretta, nothing more. I had mine too, but I’d also grabbed an M4 before we left Kuwait. A friend of mine used to say, “you use your pistol to fight your way back to your rifle.” That stuck with me. Plus, I trusted the M4 more. I knew what I could do with it.
Not long before that trip, I’d traded in my life as an Armor officer for a JAG slot and somehow landed straight into Chief of Operational Law at 1st TSC. No easing into it. One day I was thinking about maneuver and fires, the next I was advising on rules of engagement and authorities across a theater. And now here I was again, back in the dust, walking into Afghanistan like I’d never left.
We got settled into transient barracks and started linking up with our folks. Nothing remarkable about the day, just the usual grind of catching up, syncing up, figuring out where we needed to be next.
That night, rockets came in.
Welcome Home
I remember waking up just long enough to register the sound, deep thuds, distant but real, before exhaustion pulled me right back under. In the morning, we found out a contractor had caught a rocket in the chest. No abstraction there. Just bad luck and wrong place at the wrong time.
At HQ the next day, someone gave us a little grief.
“You guys didn’t check in after the indirect fire.”
Gibson didn’t miss a beat. “We were asleep.”
That was the end of it.
We spent the rest of the day moving around, talking to our people, doing what we came there to do. Eventually it was time to head north to Bagram. So, we made our way to the terminal and settled in for the wait.
If you’ve never been in one of those terminals, it’s hard to explain. It’s part bus station, part holding pen. People half-asleep, sitting on gear, staring at nothing. And then, right outside, you’ve got a TGI Fridays, a Burger King, a Pizza Hut, a Popeye’s, like someone dropped a strip mall into the middle of a war zone. It always felt off to me. Not wrong, exactly. Just … surreal.
I found a spot, pulled out my copy of “The Fountainhead,” and tried to pass the time.
Three hours later, we got the call to be on standby.
We grabbed our gear, hovered near the desk, and waited again. Then finally:
“Moose 32.”
We looked around. No one else moved.
“Guess that’s us,” I said.
We walked up. No line, no crowd. A crew member eventually waved us through and escorted us out to the aircraft. That’s when it started to feel strange.
We boarded the C-17 and realized we were the only passengers.
The Donut Run
No pallets. No troops. Just empty space.
We stashed our gear anyway, sat down, and waited. One of the crew came by and told us we could move up to the cockpit once we were airborne.
I finally asked the question.
“So … we the only cargo on this flight?”
He grinned and pointed across the bay.
Two boxes. That was it.
“Not quite,” he said. “Buddy of ours up in Bagram, it’s his birthday. Guy loves Tim Hortons.”
I just stared at the boxes for a second.
All the movement across Afghanistan, all the coordination and fuel and planning, and we were catching a ride because someone wanted donuts.
The engines spun up, and we took off into the Afghan sky.
Once we leveled out, we moved up to the cockpit. The view alone made it worth it. Mountains stretched out in every direction, jagged, empty, almost unreal. I’d spent time in Afghanistan before but seeing it from up there was different. Quiet. Isolated. Like no one had ever touched it.
“Foothills of the Hindu Kush,” one of the pilots said.
I nodded, just taking it in, thinking about how much of that terrain probably hadn’t seen a human footprint in centuries, if ever.
The flight itself was smooth, uneventful.
The landing wasn’t.
As we approached Bagram, the pilot gave us a quick heads-up. Then the aircraft rolled hard and started dropping in a tight spiral. The horizon spun past the windows in sharp, controlled arcs.
“Corkscrew,” Gibson muttered.
It wasn’t comfortable, but it was effective. Harder target. Less predictable.
Then we hit the runway. Clean, solid, done.
We gathered our gear, stepped off the aircraft, and paused long enough to thank the crew.
“Tell your buddy happy birthday,” I said, nodding back toward the donuts.
They laughed. Said they would.
And just like that, we were in Bagram.
I remember walking away from the ramp thinking about how strange the whole thing was. In a war defined by logistics, firepower, and consequence, sometimes the thing that moved you across a country wasn’t strategy or urgency …
It was two boxes of Tim Hortons donuts.
The post The Donut Run appeared first on Field Ethos.
Continue reading...
