Tag Archives: Derek W. Whaley

CHAPTER ONE

Dirty-K

Fwapp, fwapp, fwapp, fwapp, fwapp. The sound you are hearing is that of my neighbor, the 3-man of my four-member fireteam, masturbating. You see, the walls here in dirty-K are pop-star thin and your neighbors are millimeters away. I am currently trying to go back to sleep but will have to wait thirty seconds or so until things quiet down. I cannot explain to you how important sleep is when you are in a combat zone. Your head must always be on a swivel, as bullets, bombs, and mortar rounds can literally fly right next to your brainbox at any moment. If you are not mentally alert here, you are dead. Anyway, I don’t know why the hell I’m telling you these things. I need to get back to sleep. I have an awfully long day of bullshit tomorrow— much like every day here in the dirty-K. 

Welcome to Kandahar, Afghanistan, known to us as dirty-K. Everything in Kandahar, including the soldiers, is dirty, broken, or so old that ninety percent of it is held together with good old duct tape. We recently got plumbing, but before that we were using a hole in the ground or a port-a-potty. I don’t want to complain about the hole in the ground too much because it is normal operations for Middle Eastern individuals, but it still sucked for me. You have to try to hover over a hole with your pants half down, aim your asshole, and then not shit on your feet—freaking difficult. No thank you, I prefer a normal American–style toilet. I feel like you need to understand just how great we have it now with fresh plumbing. When everything constantly smells like shit, it starts to wear on unit morale. That’s how our life was. Our building smelled like shit, our rooms smelled like shit, our uniforms smelled like shit, and we smelled like shit. People would move two or more tables away from us in the chow hall because of how we smelled—though that might be a perk. We recently got the showers fixed as well, but before that, you just held a water bottle over your head. If you had a really good friend, they may have dumped water on you so you could use both hands to wash faster. If you were a loner, you had to master the art of scrubbing and pouring water on yourself at the same time—a serious challenge for some. There were plenty of people who opted out of taking showers for days at a time due to the pain in the ass it was to accomplish such a trivial task. Staying clean is nearly impossible with all the sand and people crammed into such a small space. After all, thousands of soldiers live within just a couple city blocks. There is mud everywhere. I generally have no clue how there is mud everywhere because it never rains, but I digress. Sand is also everywhere … but then a sandstorm hits and sand really is EVERYWHERE. I have never been to an environment so harsh, to be honest, and this is my tenth deployment. The bottom line is that living in the dirty-K is, well, filthy, and trying to maintain some level of sanitation is a constant struggle.