Night Life

Here at Kalsu I am the Assistant Airboss, which means I work the night shift (the Airboss, a LtCol, works during the day). It’s been a long time since I’ve consistently been up late at night (much less all night), and I have found a mix of the interesting and different, along with the lonely, tedious and boring.

Although I am now gainfully employed (as opposed to my previous life of leisure), I am far from busy. Being the airboss is not very taxing, especially at night; in the course of my 12-hour shift, I’ll have about an hour or two of actual work. The rest of the time is spent waiting for things to happen or trying to be proactive about things that are coming up. I try to fill the waiting time with reading, web surfing, journaling, writing posts, and practicing my guitar. So far I have had trouble concentrating on reading and writing thanks to the fatigue of adjusting to this new schedule.

So what takes up the 2 hours of actual work? I am essentially a central coordinator and information manager for the air operations at the FOB. I coordinate and facilitate the air support provided to the ground units by our aircraft, and function as an extension of the Marine Aircraft Wing’s Tactical Air Command Center. I spend a fair amount of time on the phone and computer communicating with various people and agencies here and throughout the area.

In becoming a night owl, I’ve realized just how dark it can be here at Kalsu. There are no streetlights, vehicle lights, or white lights of any kind. There is starlight and occasionally moonlight, but when cloudy it is pitch black. As I walk along, people come and go like ghosts. It’s actually more attractive, not being able to see the mud, vehicles, and barriers. Unfortunately it’s also easier to step in puddles, wander off the road, and run into things. With "light discipline" in effect, a small colored light is OK, and is usually enough to keep me out of trouble. Coming out of a brightly lighted tent or chow hall, however, leaves me without any dark adaptation, and thus pretty blind for a few minutes. I have some scratches and bruises from running into things, and when it was raining I stepped into a calf-deep puddle.

An interesting side effect of the eyes’ decreased nighttime acuity is the brain’s compensation with other senses, such as hearing. Sounds seem to be magnified at night, and I’ve noticed some noises I hadn’t heard during the day. For one, the A/C unit in the Internet Café tent makes a periodic squeaking noise that sounds uncannily like a field full of spring peepers! At first I thought there were actually some frogs brought forth by the recent rains. I was somewhat disappointed to realize it was not – my son would be very interested to hear about frogs in the desert. The other sound I’ve noticed is a repetitive clanking noise like a blacksmith’s hammering. I’m not sure what it is – perhaps a pump or engine of some kind.

Even the food is backwards at night - I eat dinner for breakfast (Saturday it was lobster tail) and breakfast for dinner. Lunch, if I want it, is called "mid-rats" (midnight rations), and it's usually the same food as dinner.

One aspect of this job I hadn’t anticipated was the loneliness. There is really nobody else around most of the night. I would have thought that as a lifelong introvert I would appreciate all the solitude, but what do you know – I’m lonely! Maybe I’m not such an introvert any more...