16 March 09 Update from Afghanistan

Good morning,

First off, I didn't make it to church yesterday, I'm sad about it as church tends to rejuvenate me. I was stuck off base during church. Here is what happened. As many of you are aware I manage several projects all at the same time. I have been managing a new fence project just to the south of our existing fence line. Rather a safe project as I and the contractors work in direct sight of the Guard Towers and yes I'm all duded up in my full battle rattle. Well, yesterday I was off base verifying the progress of the new fence line standing talking to another American who actually owns the company performing the work, an American company won the bid but they must employee 90% local nationals. So we are standing there talking when all of the sudden a massive explosion happens a couple of miles away. Yes the explosion was quite a ways off however the noise was still great and the shock wave (vibration) was impressive. Of course the entire work crew crouched down just in time for two more explosions of equal size. A person could see the small mushroom clouds and balls of fire that reached a few hundred feet in such clarity that you would have thought that the explosions were on TV. I grabbed my camera, it's with me most of the time, so I could click the next explosion but, they were over. We listened for the base sirens which would have indicated an attack but heard nothing. We finished a couple of small things, loaded up in the hummer and proceeded towards the base. By the time we unloaded our weapons and secured the hummer church was almost over. Anyway, as it turns out everybody heard the explosions and felt the overall shock wave of the vibrations. Several helicopters took off from the base to see what was going on but came back rather quickly. And the word slowly trickled down that what had happened was that the EOD shop had decided that since it was Sunday and most normal shops were off for the afternoon, we never are, that it would be a good time to blow up some captured munitions. I guess there had been an e-mail on the secure side of our e-mails that I could have read if I had been able to read it first thing in the morning. Most of the people on Base don't have the secure e-mail ability so everyone relies on the giant speakers for emergencies. Since the giant speakers didn't go off overall we weren't to worried anyway. We all thought that it was funny in the end as even the helicopters must not have read their secure e-mails as they responded as though it was a real world incident. A lesson to remember, check all of the e-mail systems before heading out to work for the day. I hope all of you have a good day. Love ya all, Lincoln