Every base camp perimeter was a front line in the Vietnam War. Is that true in today's Middle Eastern conflicts?

I worked as a contractor on Camp Eagle/FOB Apache in Qalat-E-Gilzay, Zabul Province, Afghanistan for about ten months. Whenever I was done getting dinner for my local national guys, I would always grab a handful of cold bottles of water and shoot the shit with the gate guards for a bit. Those guys worked directly out of the Mayor's Cell, and my contract meant that nobody really knew what I was doing (not secret, just boring), so BS-ing with those guys was all the intel I could get.

Anyways, one day, I'm talking with one of the guys as we sit behind his SAW in the bunker, and this group walks up, getting ready to head out to the Afghan side of the base. About five people walk up, and only three of them leave. One of the two that stayed was this young girl, E-2 I think, second day in country, and she had those big googly eyes that young people get when they see everything new for the first time. She asks us, "So, how far are we from Afghanistan?"

My buddy and I look at each other, "You're in Afghanistan."

"No, no," she laughs, "I mean, how far are we from the Afghans?"

My buddy and I look at each other again, then we both point at some guys playing soccer on a pitch just outside the gate, "About that far."

If her eyes were wearing pants, they would have been shit in. We tried to calm her down, she was seriously freaking out, by telling her that those were Afghan National Army soldiers, so she asks, "Oh, so we don't have problems with them?"

This was a few months after a "Green on Blue" happened right on the soccer pitch we were looking at. The SAW we were sitting behind was the very weapon that ended the situation. A few months before that, the guy who taught literacy classes across the road from my shop was busted trying to sneak detonators onto the base. The investigation found the explosives in his office, he just needed the detonators. On top of that, tensions were still high because a young Afghan soldier claimed to have fallen asleep when the armory he was guarding was emptied of every M-16 on the shelves.

All my buddy and I could do was say, "Eh.." as we waved our hands in a "so-so" level, palm down wave.

I don't know if it was the same for the Viet Nam veterans, all I know is that's what it was like. We had a runway between our base and an SF compound, and I remember how crazy it seemed when I was dropping somebody off for their C-130, and just as the plane is coming into land, a kid tries to cross the runway. He's some local kid, riding his bike, pissed off because some guy in a baseball cap with an M-4 is telling him to back the hell off. I couldn't believe it; we were landing a C-130 on an unsecured runway that had a 40MPH sweep on a Gator just before landing. I know the Mayor's Cell had a camera on the whole thing, but come on.

Before anybody says anything about me being a dumbass for picking the gate guards to get my intel from, I know; you don't spend time at the gate unless you have to. I had to do something, though, because I had no weapon and a radio that nobody ever listened to. I needed to make sure somebody with some weapons gave a shit about me enough to check if shit went down.

The answer to this question is yes. The more truthful answer to this question is... Not really....

While it's true our Super Fobs in theather do get mortars and and vbieds commonly... They're not effective. usually. On KAF people would have incoming weekly.... But could go a whole deployment without even ever feeling a round land.

As you push out though and the fobs grow smaller, more isolated, as the paved highway (better paved highway than most of America) falls away to gravel and dirt...... That's when you really enter theather.



Then you return to a super fob and get chewed out for having dirty boots and not having my CAC displayed hanging off my collar....after convoying 10 hrs to get there.

I would have to agree. FOB's and COP's are enemy magnets. Let alone attacking the bases, you are more likely to get attacked the closer you get to a base or shortly after leaving one.