BAGRAM AIR FORCE BASE, Afghanistan -- Christmas comes cautiously to this hostile place. A tinsel wreath appears outside an Army tent. Military buzz cuts are hidden by camouflage Santa caps. An inflatable snowman wobbles in the desert wind. Across the freezing dustscape of Afghanistan, the soldiers fighting America's war on terrorism, Operation Enduring Freedom, do just what the slogan advertises. They endure.
Entering a fourth year now, their war is rarely headline news anymore, not like Iraq with its daily battles, its suicide bombings, the kidnappings and beheadings, the flag-draped coffins sent steadily back home.
Kilpatrick leaves his mark on the head of an unidentified soldier in Gardez. Wanting to contribute after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Kilpatrick called the Defense Department and the USO and eventually got on the seven-base tour.
(Photo Mike Theiler For The Washington Post)
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This war is more subtle than that, shifting from combat to reconstruction. Enemy rocket attacks are rare now, and the American troops rolling into remote mountain villages are more likely to be digging wells than foxholes. What the service members talk most about is not fear, but about months passing without having to fire their weapons even once. They talk about isolation, boredom, about the way loneliness can burrow so deeply into hours so empty.
Last week, though, out of the flat, white sky, a Chinook chopper appeared, swooping down on a handful of bases to deliver a quick dash of holiday cheer, courtesy of an organization famous for that: the USO. From the dust cloud, two men emerged. One was a graying punk rocker, the other an actor few readily recognized.
And with that, a strange war briefly got even stranger.
Politically, Henry Rollins and Patrick Kilpatrick occupy opposite corners. Rollins, the 43-year-old frontman for the '80s punk band Black Flag, focuses now on "spoken-word" tours peppered with rants against the Bush administration and its motives for war. Kilpatrick, a strapping 55-year-old who specializes in playing on-screen villains, defends as righteous both the president and the invasions he ordered.
But the two entertainers share common emotional ground, believing that the troops deserve unconditional respect and gratitude. Their determination to express that, in person, put them on the same handbill when the USO organized a five-day, seven-base holiday tour to Southwestern Asia. This would be just meet-and-greet, handshakes and autographs, chitchat -- but no show. A chance to connect, no matter how fragile, or forced, or fleeting.
Faces From the Outside
On this whirlwind trip, the people, the places, the problems hurtle by, an unmixed demo tape of war, pieces that shouldn't fit together but somehow do. Soldiers preparing for a month-long mission in the bitter mountains leave behind a mess hall decorated with paper snowflakes they cut out by hand. A reservist major put in charge of his small post would normally be managing a Lowe's in Knoxville. The pirate radio station run by a grunt broadcasts Led Zeppelin, not propaganda.
A VIP tent at Bagram Air Force Base serves as home on this tour, with Chinook helicopters ferrying the entourage to four smaller outposts. One afternoon, a Chinook with gunship escort sweeps through the stony canyons to a remote firebase near the Pakistani border. Rollins and Kilpatrick missed lunch at the last stop because the autograph line was so long and chatty. Now USO tour manager Tracy Thede is alarmed to discover that mealtime is over at this stop and all that's left are field rations of jambalaya and Good Humor bars. Thede eventually scores some microwave pizzas and herds fans into line while the celebs hastily eat. Rollins has barely had time to uncap his Sharpie when he hears an urgent voice somewhere near his elbow.
"You're in the outside world . . ." A squirrelly Marine has executed a stealth weave-and-cut maneuver to the front of the autograph line. Rollins turns to him politely.
"I heard Dimebag Darrell got killed. That true?" the Marine blurts out.
"Yes, he got shot," Rollins replies, recounting how heavy-metal guitarist Darrell Abbott was gunned down recently during a bizarre melee in Ohio as his band Damageplan played. The Marine looks ready to cry.
"That's so depressing," he says.
"Really depressing," Rollins agrees. This is his fourth USO gig in a year, and he has come to realize that just showing his recognizable face to a generation of fans now in uniform brings reassurance: "You make them kind of think, 'Okay, the world is still there.' " He tries to resume signing autographs and posing for pictures, but the Marine hovers. He begins to ramble about his old Black Flag and Pantera CDs. Dimebag played for Pantera, too. Somehow when the Marine moved overseas, his prized CD collection got cracked. Now the discs are gone and Dimebag Darrell is dead.
