IDF

Bagram is a pretty large base. You'd think that would make it a pretty large target. I'm sure there are insurgent pipe dreams to spectacularly attack Bagram, but no. Attacking large bases is such a huge risk for them, unless they mass forces, they likely won't accomplish much. They're fighting a war of attrition, and them losing 15 fighters and only wounding 2 Soldiers doesn't meet that end. They usually stick to the smaller bases and such.

That doesn't mean we're not occasionally hit with IDF. IDF is the military acronym for Indirect Fire. It encompasses rockets, mortars, and the like. Technically, it is anything that lands that isn't aimed directly at the base, like lobbing a water balloon over the fence. You can do it with accuracy if you are good, but it's different than chucking the thing at your buddy's face.

Since my time in Iraq, I've learned to identify the various sounds before, during, and after an IDF attack. The most common one, of course, is the boom. I can differentiate a rocket explosion from a mortar explosion and tell you the millimeter (mm) size from listening to the sound of the boom. I also know the whistle of mortars screaming in, the whoosh of a rocket flying by, and the subtle boom of a mortar launch or a rocket motor igniting. Usually I can tell the kind of fire as well, whether it's target practice, aiming one at a time to get the shot group right, or what is called "Fire for Effect" which translates into, your aim is good, so fire everything you have until you run out.

Bagram has only had one IDF attack while I've been here. That hasn't stopped me from hearing the whistle of a mortar or the screech of a rocket everywhere. It's amazing how you get conditioned for those specific sounds. The biggest culprit is jet engines - they whistle for 2 seconds before they start up, and it is exactly like the whistle of an incoming round. I have more than once jumped out of bed to take cover, only to realize it's just a plane. My peers don't do this, partly because they were never shelled, and the ones that did experience it, were never to the extent we were. It was routine to get hit 5-6 times a day, every day in Iraq. Sometimes this last for weeks at a time. I lost count of the near misses I had, at times making me glad I'm not a cat, because my 9 lives are long since gone. Stories are available upon request.

Anyway, I'll likely continue diving under my bed for planes and reacting to other sounds here for quite a while. It took me 2 years to just get used to fireworks after my last deployment (to this day I am uncomfortable with them, don't like them anymore, and prefer to not be around when they go off), so I doubt it is something I will stop doing in the near future. It keeps me safer, I guess.