"Give me an address and I'll fix that for you," Rollins promises. He'll even call Pantera to solicit replacement albums. Whatever he can do.
What to do out here is something Kilpatrick struggles to process. The actor renowned as the unkillable Sandman in "Death Warrant" is famous for the line, "Welcome to hell," but this is his first actual visit. While signing autographs, he hugs the few female soldiers around and plants kisses on blushing cheeks. He stays up until 5 a.m. drinking forbidden beers with a group of military police. He slips beef jerky to guard dogs who wag their tails at the sight of his hulking frame and easy smile.
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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But the superficial antics are the cover story for a much deeper passion, a cinematic patriotism that makes him confess that "I'd be lying if I didn't admit there weren't some element of proving to myself that I am a person who will move toward the sound of guns if the cause is liberty." His father earned a Silver Star on Okinawa. And though he was already past 50, Kilpatrick himself tried in vain to enlist in the Marines after 9/11, telling the recruiter that he did his own stunts, that he was sure he could handle it. He lost firefighter pals from his old rugby league in the World Trade Center. Even as months and then years passed by, he couldn't shake the urge to do something, to contribute somehow. He shot skeet with paralyzed veterans in Hollywood. Okay, but not enough. He kept calling the Department of Defense and the USO, until finally he got this tour.
Famed for its Bob Hope holiday extravaganzas on aircraft carriers and American bases in Vietnam, the USO sent 66 celebrity tours to 25 countries last year, drawing from a roster of famous volunteers who run the gamut -- soap opera stars, "Sopranos" cast members, Jessica Simpson, heavy-metal band Twisted Sister. Many of the visits are low-key "handshake tours" such as this one.
And during the holidays, it's not uncommon for multiple tours to touch down in the same place. While Henry Rollins and Patrick Kilpatrick are meeting soldiers at a tiny post in Sharan one afternoon, Robin Williams and John Elway are back at Bagram, traveling with the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on his private jet.
"Robin Williams? Damn, I would have liked to have seen him. Bastard," says Pfc. Forest Cauthorn, a 19-year-old waiting at Sharan's card-table mess hall to greet Rollins and Kilpatrick. The infantryman from Richmond has been here nine months, and the boredom makes the three months he has left loom like three years.
"It's great if you like riding round in a damn Humvee all day," he says. He got married the week before he left. "The only time we get to shoot is when we go to the range."
The letters kids send him from classes that adopted him off AnySoldier.com provide welcome levity. "Thank you for protecting our country," he quotes. "I like ice cream. What's your favorite animal? I like giraffes." He writes back: "I like penguins."
Five rockets were fired at Sharan the night before, Cauthorn and his buddies report, and a few landed 20 yards from their barracks. "It's not much of a war."
Another soldier has cornered Rollins's road manager, Mike Curtis, and opens the one-way conversation by announcing that he took three contraband Tylenol PM from home the night before and was still feeling it, and one time he got these hives on a mission and so he took some Benadryl even though he wasn't supposed to and he kept falling asleep on the mission, and the other guys had to wake him up and because he's kind of a little guy, he's the one they send into caves to look for bad guys, and one time it was all dark and he felt the bad guy race right past him, whoosh, and he got off a shot and then they went in after him and radioed back out and said we got your body, and it was a hedgehog.
Curtis nods. What can he say?
On the military flight to the forward operating post at Khost, the goodwill tour is wedged in tight by pallets of mail. Rollins squeezes beside the front gunner to snap digital pictures of the barren landscape. He takes mental notes to tweak his monologue for an upcoming European tour. There's a riff here, he is sure. Something about the way the housing and even the people are indistinguishable from the land, how everything here just seems to be dust reconstituted.
"Imagine trying to sell this to a tourist," he jokes with a soldier after the chopper lands. "There's lots of dirt and . . . dirt."
Both the entertainers and the once-a-week mail delivery arrive on the front steps of the forward operating base in Khost. The visitors head inside while soldiers wander up to root through the care packages, under the intense gaze of an old Afghan woman and her two small grandchildren.
