Afghanistan Rocket Attacks

Well, my mission was to give aid to coalition soldiers, only coalition soldiers. We didn’t do any humanitarian work at that point. The conditions in Haiti were extremely hot, about 45 degrees and humid. It was summertime when I was there. We lived in tents. No air conditioning. No running water. So we had to use porta-potties, outdoor showers that water collected in like huge buckets. It’s the closest thing I can compare it to. Food was, most of it was ration packs which is already pre-made food, boil in the bag. I enjoyed my experience in Haiti. We did not have a lot of casualties. We were very fortunate, but it prepared me for Afghanistan, to live in a tent with a whole bunch of people, and yeah. Afghanistan was a little different. Afghanistan was, as soon as you went into theatre you hit the ground running, go, go, go. We were extremely busy. We were still living in tents, no air conditioning at the beginning. We did eventually get air conditioning. We did have electricity. Our food was made by Americans. A little different than what we’re used to. It was from down south, most of the Americans that were there, so the food was according to how they ate. So a lot of deep fried food. A lot of food with gravies. Something I’m not used to. That was, for me that was the hardest thing, but it was a lot easier than eating ration packs which, I’ll take fresh food over ration packs any day of the week. We lived on a camp that had 10,000 people. Haiti was about 600 people and we had different nations throughout the whole camp. So we had Romanians and English and Australians and Dutch and French, and there’s probably a whole bunch more that I can’t even remember. The conditions in Afghanistan was quite safe compared to going outside the wire. Outside the wire it means our perimeter. Outside the wire is where you have to go fight. The only thing that we had that was a little bit nerve wracking was rocket attacks. We had about 38 rocket attacks and about two to three per rocket attack. The first few ones were a little nerve wracking until you get used to it and it becomes daily living. Oh yeah, bomb, in, out. Like we’d know by the sounds if they were going out or they’re coming in and how close they were. The only, twice I was spooked. Besides that I laughed the whole time I was there every time a rocket attack happened. Unless patients got hurt, then you become a little bit more serious, but only twice. Once was about 35, 50 metres from the hospital, they hit, and the other one we heard it go over our heads while we were at Canada House and we, I saw the infanteers on the deck. Canada House is our patio where we socialize and they hit the deck and they were bringing us down with them because they’re used to it a lot more than we are. They were telling us we weren’t going down fast enough. But that was like, okay, that was close, and then ten minutes later you’re like, okay back to normal, like as if it didn’t happen. You have to live that way if you’re going to survive in places like Afghanistan. If not, you’re going to worry about dying the whole time and that’s not good because then you can’t function.