Transcript
We did move around a bit, but most of it was based in a place called Bagram. Bagram is a former Russian military airbase. It was there, we were, we occupied a fairly large place. At that time we were there, it was very, very basic, incredibly basic, and we occupied a perimeter position on that. We had basic, we had this building that didn't have any power, we did have to run a generator.
So that base was, even though it could potentially come under threat, most of the action really happened outside rather than on the base itself, although people did try and shoot at the place and sneak in, all sorts of things. Amenities, so I had slept in a stretcher, like a camp stretcher for pretty much all that time. We got inventive. So we got the boxes that we had, we used the American meals, MREs, Meals Ready to Eat, they came in these really sturdy cardboard boxes. So I would collect those and we'd make ourselves a little furniture like shelves, and you just make yourself a home really, but we carried what we needed to do. We had a very light logistic footprint, and we didn't need an awful lot of resources, we were very…
Our shower was initially, we used, like those camp showers canvas buckets, and we'd tip that in, hoist it up a tree and that was the showers. Then that did change because the Americans they'd put up these showers which were not too far away, so after a while, this is months in we'd walk to their showers and just use theirs, so it did change. But we ate MREs for, I can't remember exactly, I mean this is almost 20 years ago. But we ate MREs for a long time because we didn't have any cooks, we didn't have any fresh rations for ages and then eventually that changed and they got people in and it was just lettuce, tomatoes, it was fantastic. So these things, logistics, amenities, they did change over time, we had port-a-loos for toilets.
I remember one day, we shared a lot of logistics with the Americans, they were kings, they were absolute masters at this, and they had a water truck one day to refill our water. Our water is housed in these like gigantic bladders, I don't know how, they were just huge, they take up a room. They were just, I don't know how many thousand litres. So this truck would come in, and they said, "Oh, we've come to refill your water". They were basically an American crew with some Afghani workers. And so they filled up our water, and they'd go, "Okay, that's your stuff for your ablutions. Now where's your stuff for the whole of your base" and we go, "No. That was it." So we ran so minimally they just couldn't believe that we didn't take up much resources. Yeah, it was basic.
