My night in Afghanistan

Posted by Mark Silva at 11:04 p.m. CST

The vice president spent an unexpected rainy and chilly night inside a reportedly comfortable special VIP container at Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan, having been snowed and rained in the night before, causing his planned meeting Monday with Afghan President Hamid Karzai to be delayed.

This morning, Tuesday in Afghanistan, Cheney had breakfast with troops in a mess hall in the area of the Koele Barracks – and there is a lot more to follow on that geography.

We were able to stand outside in a covered breezeway of the mess hall, and watch the vice president step out of the mess, fully dressed in suit and tie, and walk through the breezeway toward us speaking with a two-star general, Maj. Gen. David Rodriguez, commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, in camouflage-uniform. They walked toward us speaking cheerfully, but the VP did not appear inclined to even recognize us standing there at the end taking pictures and waiting for crumbs, so we asked, how was the mess?

"Breakfast was excellent,'' said Cheney, passing on with a smile, at 7:37 am Bagram base time.

Rifles were lined up in racks in the middle of the mess hall as the troops chowed down.

This hadn't been a staged op, but rather something your poolers requested, having awakened in an altered state after a night in a B-Hut. And we were accommodated most graciously, sans sweep.

The VP went off at that point, and the pool mustered in the USO hall, a very warm, nice stone and wooden chalet-like building with a loft where soldiers huddle to watch TV and grab the wifi.

This is the Pat Tillman Hall. And Tillman's red jersey, No. 40, hangs on a stone wall above the flat-panel television screen on the main floor.

"Meet the Parents,'' with DeNiro was playing on the big TV.

It was nice and hot in here, still damp and chilly and overcast outside.

And, please, a necessary respectful note here on the Koele Barracks, where we had spent the night, before we delve into the gory details: They are named for the late Staff Sgt. Shane M. Koele, who was killed in action on March 16, 2005, leading a squad on combat duty in the Zer Kho valley.

A moment.

That said, our friendly base bus driver couldn't find these Koele Barracks last night, after our planned brief stop at Bagram turned into a sleep-over. After we nearly had a collision on the tarmac with a fuel tanker, our bus wandered around the base in search of someone who knew where the barracks were. They were in a large section of the base where all these B-Huts are arranged chock-a-block in aisles filled with rainwater and mud and lined with soggy sandbags. This is the housing where most of the base soldiers live.

"It's like summer camp,'' one senior officer told us, "except you have to stay for a year.''

It was after 9 pm when we started searching for Koele barracks, near 11 when we bunked down.

A B-Hut is a Butler Hut, a rectangular plywood building maybe 40 feet long and 15 feet wide, sort of like a shotgun shack but without insulation. The interiors are bare plywood, and they are equipped with bunk beds cut in half because the sloping ceilings can't accommodate them stacked, apparently. No mattresses seem to match and there is dangling wiring hanging around apparently used for radio antennas.

Some are divided in two to accommodate several bunks for men on one side, women on the other, as was the case with your segregated poolers. Some get portioned for more personal space, we're told. Ours was in a line of huts in an alley filled with rainwater, down the line from an odoriferous latrine and a two-story shower building which we were advised not to use.

We learned the duck walk: A halting step along two rows of sandbags lined up on either side of the puddle between the lengths of two B-huts. We duck-walked to the latrine and back.

There really was no need for showers this morning, because our plastic-bag chock-full USO care packages came complete with a sealed plastic bag of "Operation USA All-Purpose Body Wipes.'' They also included one camouflaged toilet kit filled with every morning necessity, including one USO roll-on deodorant, one "travel toilet tissue,'' one shrink-wrapped package of Smokehouse Original Beef Jerky, one bag of Gatorade mix, one bag of Planter's peanuts, one Reader's Digest, one back of Bicycle playing cards, one ATT phone card with 100 available minutes and one Patriot Nutritious Booster Bar.

Heck, a guy could have a great time in Vegas (Dallas) with all this. (credit here to Kubrick.)

We're told the guys and gals of Bagram air base get these on arrival. This place is mostly Army, which handles the helicopters, and Air Force, which handles the fixed wings.

In the morning, they delivered hot coffee and bagels -- better room service than they had at the Shangri-La in Oman, where we had spent the night before.

We were provided woolen blankets, pillows, warm meals in Styrofoam boxes, bottled water and an outpouring of apology from both the vice president's office and the travel aides working this detail for the unanticipated stay. And we owe great thanks to Megan McGinn and Lea Anne Bride of the VP's office and Steve Savage of team travel for going out of their ways to make our stay in the B-Hut memorable.

We are holding at the USO, awaiting word on our next deployment.