AFG 03: Preparation

After leaving Tampa where I spent a week with Special Forces (SF), which was my first week of work at my new job, for some reason I went off to my second week of work at a conference in Chantilly, Virginia. The event was held at a mega-conference center that had the feel of an American version of Versailles built by the Marriott Corporation on short-notice. There in Chantilly I tagged up with my new boss, JP, and told him that the meeting at SOCOM went well but that I had unexpectedly been invited to go to Afghanistan for six months to be a political-economic analyst for SF. I then gently hinted that he probably didn’t want me to go because he hired me to do important work for him, right?

JP reaction was like a kid on Christmas morning: “You were asked to go to Afghanistan? That’s awesome! You should totally do it! What a great opportunity! That’s a once-in-a-lifetime adventure! You should totally go!”

Thanks JP, I had been sucked into and trapped within his reality distortion zone, and so began the Lowell Goes to Afghanistan (LG2A) project.

Now what I didn’t understand at the time is that it takes a lot planning, preparation, and paperwork to get yourself into a warzone, which is counterintuitive because, let’s face it, who really wants to be in a warzone? Given the work I put into it, apparently I did.

After I got back to work proper, I called my buddy Darrall who was in the Army and said, “SF wants me to go to Afghanistan – what do I do?”

Darrall said, “I hate to say this, but I’m now in the business of sending guys there. You want me to do that for you?”

I said yeah, so that’s how Darrall became my program manager, a kind of boss, for a while. So the paperwork started with me writing up what we were going to do. Now this was supposed to be Bob’s job, because: (1) recall that he was the one who knew the SF guy Fred, (2) this was his dream; and (3) I didn’t even really want to go. However, Bob worked for this gigantic defense contractor for whom a contract in the tens of millions was considered small potatoes, so this small, two-man analysis LG2A contract wouldn’t even appear on their radar, so because I worked for a small company that’s adapted to small contracts, writing up the proposal became my job.

The interesting part was that I had to write about what Bob and I were going to do in Afghanistan, a place I had never been, for a command about which I knew little, and for people I had never met. However, as a professional defense contractor, this didn’t stop me because if it was easy, then everyone would do it. Basically, I made up a bunch of stuff, including a schedule, which is insane because when I’m working for the command, basically I’ll be an analytic resource that will be tasked by the command, in a warzone, so how do I know what their schedule will be. And they’re in a warzone, so guess what? They themselves don’t know what their schedule is! But I made up a schedule anyway, which said that I’d provide a schedule a few weeks after Bob and I got there and figured out what was going on. One thing I made sure to do was write in my coming home for Christmas, the one precondition I had for going on this insane adventure. So we finished the proposal, sent it off, and after a few months, amazingly, it was accepted. Also, because I wrote up the proposal and my company was in charge, I became the project leader, what’s called the Principal Investigator or PI.

Increasing numbers of people in my new company had gotten wind of this proposed project over time because, let’s face it, it was so outrageous and interesting that how could you not have heard of it? I remember walking into work one day, and this other scientist, Ross, came walking in behind me.

Ross asks, “Are you Lowell?”

I answer, “Yeah.”

He says, “And is it true that you’re going to Afghanistan?”

I wonder how this guy I’ve never met knows about this, but say, “Yeah, there’s talk of it, but until I’m actually on that plane, I can’t believe it’ll actually happen.”

And that’s exactly the way I felt. I was going through all these motions and putting in all this work to go somewhere that I didn’t really want to go, which probably wasn’t going to happen anyway for some stupid reason, but that’s defense contracting.

One day, I’m sitting in my office with no windows directly under an air conditioning vent freezing. At my level of seniority, I should have a nice office with windows, but because I’m going to Afghanistan, the company has decided to give me a bad office and will take care of me when I get back. So I’m sitting there, freezing and not really believing that I’ll actually ever make it to Afghanistan, when this crazy senior corporate bald advisor guy with a cane, COL Ted (retired), shows up at my door. “Are you Lowell?”

“Yeah.”

Ted says, “I just wanted to meet you! You’re going to Afghanistan right? That’s awesome! You’re going to have a great time! I wish I was going!”

I have no idea what to say, so I basically just smile and nod. I was starting to feel like a semi-celebrity.

I call Darrall and ask what to do next, and he says schedule CRC and my shots. CRC is the CONUS Replacement Center, which represents one of my favorite military achievements, an acronym within an acronym, as CONUS stands for Continental United States. CRC is a center in Ft. Benning, Georgia that prepares military personnel and contractors, like me, to travel OCONUS, which stands for Outside the Continental United States, to places like Afghanistan. I get on some military website, which requests endless pieces of information, including paperwork with very specific serial numbers. I do my best, can’t complete the paperwork, and move on. Darrall also sends me lists of all the shots that I need to take. So I schedule an appointment with a local doctor for my shots.  

I go to the office building and go inside. Finally I get taken to the back where I am shot with multiple needles filled with various liquids. Suddenly things have gotten very real, and I reflect on the nature of trust in society. Here’s somebody, purportedly a doctor, that I’ve never met, and I trust him to inject stuff into my body that will supposedly protect me when other people who I trust take me off to some faraway and dangerous land. The doctor tells me that I may feel a little weird. I go back home where I actually feel a lot weird – for a while.

After a few more days, I finally get Bob and me scheduled for CRC in late July, but there’s still one final piece of crucial paperwork that I have to obtain, the elusive Letter of Authorization or LOA. I call, I write, but somebody in Afghanistan has to authorize our arrival there, and it’s tough to motivate and move that bureaucracy. Nevertheless, I finish off a proposal to the Defense Advanced Projects Research Agency or DARPA, and then head down to a computer-based analysis conference at a Hyatt in Washington, DC.  The conference is a bit of a wasted effort however as I spend most of my time writing emails and making phone calls to try to spring loose the LOA because, without that, Bob and I are not going anywhere. I’m scheduled to get on a plane to Atlanta to meet Bob on Friday as CRC starts on Saturday, and the thought of going back to work and facing my colleagues after all the build-up and excitement is not pleasant. I finally receive the LOA in an email on Thursday, with almost 24 hours to spare before going to Atlanta! No problem! Off to Georgia!