Having sojourned far and wide on Logistics Civil Augmentation Program (LOGCAP) projects, I have had the opportunity to witness the kinds of interesting and unusual events one doesn’t see every day.
Take, for example, when a group of expats I was with were headed out on R&R, transiting from Camp Stronghold Freedom (K2) Uzbekistan, to the Karshi public airport to catch a flight to Tashkent. That day I learned that getting livestock and farm animals from Point A to Point B in Karshi is accomplished by any and all practical means possible. When my traveling buddies and I saw a guy carrying a goat on his motorbike, we all howled to the moon thinking it was one of the funniest things you could possibly ever see. But when we came upon a guy with a goat in the backseat of his car, we nearly fell over in uncontrollable hysterics.
And then there was the time on a convoy for the first big push into Iraq on April 7, 2003 that one of the KBR trucks broke down in the desert in the dead of night. After trying to push it to no avail, it was abandoned, for better light and a safer recovery time. When the recovery team arrived at the site the next morning, however, the truck had vanished. Hitched in trade to the discarded trailer were two highly displeased donkeys loudly braying for their freedom.
I know that many of you have witnessed and have been privy to fist hand accounts of events while on deployment that cannot be found even on YouTube. I, as well as others, would like to hear about them so here’s your chance to share. What’s the strangest, most outlandish or interesting story to accompany your work experience in an overseas assignment or deployment?
