May 31st started out as a pleasant morning, only 72 degrees, a bit cooler than the previous weeks had been, but I knew what that meant. The 1st of June would bring heat, wind and dust. But May 31st was a gift that I wasn’t going to overlook. I broke away from the office routine at my first opportunity and, instead of driving across the base to the dining facility, I decided to walk. The DFAC was only a mile and a half across the wide, flat landscape and it was always a joyful time to look at the sparse plant life and the unusually abundant animals and birds that made their homes in the Syrian Desert.
About a half mile before I reached the dining facility I walked past the Service Desk, the contact point between the military and the civilian contractors. As a matter of habit I stopped by to see if any orders had come in during the night that I needed to be aware of. I walked through the plywood building’s screened door and was met by two large soldiers who were huddled over the counter in a state of serious concentration. The soldier who was writing glanced back to see who had just come in behind him and John, the Service Desk attendant stood up from his desk. “Morning, John. Is there anything here for me?” John hadn’t been at the service desk for long, but he lived next to me in the shipping container apartments. “Jed! You’re just the man we needed to talk to here! This is Staff Sergeant Pullen and he has a mission for the Transportation Department.” The big sergeant turned again and we shook hands this time. “I’ve got 18 people coming in next week and we need to move them from the air terminal to their living area. The problem is that we don’t know what day the flight is arriving for sure and we still don’t know what time the flight will arrive.” His description of the mission was typical. Because of military operational security the details and schedules of arriving and departing flights were never made public. I knew that two hours before the flight arrived I’d get my first notice that things were about to happen and I’d have to get out and round up the drivers who had previously been assigned. Sometimes the drivers were sitting at the bus hub waiting for their next departure and the entire process would take a few minutes. But sometimes they were somewhere out on the base in the middle of their routes and it would take some time to find them and prepare them for the upcoming mission.
“Sergeant Pullen, I understand how this works for you. If you’ll just come to the Service Desk as soon as you find out about the flight, they can call me on the radio and I can get the bus to the flight line.” He was pleased at the simplicity of the process. “That’s all? You don’t need extra memos from my chain of command?” I understood how he felt. Everything needed more paper than Brazil could possibly produce in a year. The Syrian Desert was probably the result of millennia of military invasion and occupation. Any trees that had once been there were long gone as a result of the constant pile of memoranda moving from inbox to outbox and from office to office. I always saw my job as facilitating the military by cutting down on the craziness of the bureaucracy, but it was always a fine line, too. Without good paperwork the government wouldn’t be able to reimburse the civilian contractors, so I had to make certain that the necessary papers were submitted.
I put SSG Pullen’s bus mission on the calendar and made a large note of it on the white board at the office so that everyone would be aware of the upcoming mission because to miss a mission for the military was an unforgiveable offense. We’d never missed a mission since I’d been in Tal Afar, and I wasn’t about to begin now.
June 1st was exactly the way I’d expected it. The morning was unusually warm and a wind was beginning to kick up from the east. “Here it comes,” I thought to myself as I walked to the office. “In about two hours we won’t be able to see anything or breathe. I’d better warn the drivers about opening vehicle doors in the wind.”
It turned dark by ten in the morning and the dust was choking. It was a physical precursor to the mental and emotional roller coaster that had already begun its ascent toward the top of the first big drop in a ride that was, by far, one of the scariest and worst of my adult life.
Five more days ticked away, normally for the greater part, but there was an undercurrent of anger and frustration that I couldn’t put my finger on. Bling still seemed angry about being caught at the Tank Wash office and Grumpy had gotten very quiet. Lumpy was eerily silent, something that was completely out of character for him and I kept wondering what was going on. “What’s happening, Grumpy?” “Nothin’.” “Hey, Bling, what’s going on?” “Nothin’.” “So, Lumpy, how are things going?” “Uh, I dunno. Nuttin’ much, I guess.” How many more days would Maxx be gone? I was counting the days until his return from R&R so that I could get back to my normal routine and leave all of the office politics to the boss.
On the morning of June 6th I was shocked by an early phone call from the Service Desk. “Your buses missed a movement last night. Staff Sergeant Pullin called for the buses and Grumpy didn’t get them to the air field in time. The entire group of soldiers borrowed some trucks to carry them to their living areas.” Our department had just committed the unforgiveable sin! We had left the military standing out in the darkness in the middle of the night!
When Grumpy walked through the door I asked him, “Did you know that you missed a troop movement last night?” His answer was too casual and it raised the hair on the back of my neck. “It’s all right. They got to where they were supposed to go.” I couldn’t believe that this foreman was nonchalantly tossing this missed movement around the office! This was exactly the kind of thing that sucked corporate managers and directors into the field from Baghdad and left headless employees in their wake! What could he possibly be thinking! This could end up as a level 4 CAR! (That means a “corrective action request.”) A level 4 CAR was the kind of thing that shut entire corporations down in the theater of operations.
My stomach was in a tight knot through the rest of the morning. I finally reached Staff Sergeant Pullin just before noon to apologize. “It’s all right. We made it to where we needed to go.” His use of the same type of language that Grumpy had used sent another chill up my spine. Had they planned this? Had Grumpy already talked to Sergeant Pullin? Was this an effort to discredit the Transportation Department? Sergeant Pullin’s reaction was too benign. He knew the serious nature of the missed movement. Why wasn’t he bothered by it?
Later that afternoon Lalith Dahal came into the office. His eyes were deep red from the tears that he’d been fighting back. “What’s happening?” I questioned. Lalith sobbed pitifully, “Sir, Mr. Bling yelling at me. He telling me I go home. He telling me my bus jump too much at bus hub. I go slow but ground have too many holes. You like my father, but Mr. Bling yelling too much. Telling me I go home.”
Lalith’s words and emotions swirled in the room. Why was Bling yelling at the drivers knowing that they weren’t even his responsibility. Why did he think that it was so important to make a big deal out of the rough surface at the bus hub parking area? I tried to calm Lalith down, “Lalith, don’t worry. You’re not going home. I’ll check with Bling and see what’s going on.” Lalith began to cry again, “Thank you, sir. You good man. You like my father.”
It wasn't more than five minutes before Bling walked into the office. "I just had a driver come in crying because you'd been yelling at him." He bristled and blasted back, "That's BULL____!" I worked to calm the air. "I'm not accusing anyone. I'm just trying to find out what's going on." "He was speeding through the bus hub! He was bouncing the bus so hard that it looked like it was going to roll over!" I thanked him and added that I'd check it out.
Questions were suddenly blossoming in my mind. What EXACTLY was going on in our department? Something was just not right. It was as if the idea of a chain of command had completely evaporated and each American employee was now assuming the role of Supreme Executor of Departmental Command and Authority. It was a growing anarchy and I was struggling to maintain my small corner of the American Republic and hold it all together. I checked the bus over as it sat in the parking area. It turned out to be a huge problem with the front suspension. I drove it to the maintenance shop and the boss exclaimed, "I can't believe these guys have been driving this bus! The front end is absolutely shot! I'm going to have to deadline it."
The roller coaster car was still an agonizing week away from the summit where it would finally level out at the top of that first giant hump, and the other side would be a drop so steep that my gut would certainly careen through the hot, empty air and crater into the dusty desert below.
No comments:
Post a Comment