First Sight

(story and photo by Simon Klingert)

I will never forget the very first thing I ever saw of Afghanistan back in 2007.

I touched down at Bagram Airfield. It was the middle of the night. I was relegated to a large transit tent. As I crossed the street heading to the tent, large yellow floodlights illuminated the flight line where various military aircraft were getting ready for a mission that would lead them to a destination somewhere out there in the darkness. (photo: A gun crew of the U.S. Army 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team services a M198 Howitzer artillery piece, lobbing a 155 high explosive grenade onto a distant target from Forward Operating Base Bermel, Paktika province Afghanistan, Aug. 2007.)

I was the only person in a tent twice the size of a football field, laying alone in my sleeping bag on a cot that had its best days already behind, darkness surrounding me. Although I was dead tired, sleep was not an option. F-15 fighter jets continued to take off on the runway maybe 300 meters away with a thunderous roar that left me and the ground literally shaking. A blaring voice on loudspeakers kept on calling out military call signs that I could not quite make sense of. What if they announced something of importance to limb and life? In short, I was a bit on edge and after spending a while, or an eternity on my cot, I realized I was not going to catch some sleep this night and decided to venture out of the tent, where a scence was about to unfold that to this day has never left me.

As I stepped out through the wooden door, I was surprised to see light. The morning sun was just rising above the snow- covered mountain ranges that surrounded the air base, dipping them in a picturesque pink color that could have come straight out of a Bob Ross painting. On the sides of the street leading to the airfield, military personnel in uniform were lined up every five meters or so, saluting. Slowly, a Humvee turned around the corner and advanced towards the men and women who stood at attention. On the truck bed rested a coffin draped in an American flag.