IStock Photo 2265622 © Rockfinder

On this little remote base we call home, we have a certain rhythm of life. We live untouched by the hassles of big Army. Things like mandatory formations, haircuts, clean-shaven faces, and uniform standards. What we have is little, but it suffices. The chow hall is a small tent that can seat about one hundred people, and we have another small tent with intermittent satellite Internet on about a dozen computers for communication. But one of my favorite places is the gym.

The gym is a tent with the sides rolled up. It consists of some pull up bars, a few weight benches, some free weights, kettle bells, and a couple of medicine balls. Everything you could possibly need. Sometimes we haul the weight benches outside in the early morning sunrise and work out there to give us more space. It looks like something you would find in a prison yard: a bunch of sweaty tattooed guys standing in an odd circle around one grunting man struggling to thrust a barbell upwards.

And then the Air Force arrived. A squadron of construction engineers from the US Air Force came in with a resupply convoy late one night. This small piece of heaven, or hell depending on how you look at it, was about to get a lot larger.

I was at the gym watching beads of sweat drip off my forehead into the sand like little meteors. Too many pull ups. My shoulders were on fire. Metallica's Whiskey in a Jar was blaring in my headphones. I had set a bottle of water on the weight bench next to me to prevent it from getting kicked over, when I heard a voice.

"Are you using that?" she said meekly. "Or do you have more sets to do, ‘cuz that's cool too."

I look up at the small freckled redhead female in Air Force blue workout shorts and gray t-shirt. Her hair was pulled back in a tight bun and she had a thin headband to keep stray strands out of her face. Her clothes were clean, her nails neatly trimmed with a light coat of clear polish. Her shoes were a brilliant white, free of the coffee colored stains of Afghanistan's soil. She had piercing blue eyes and tweezed eyebrows. She smelled like she had showered recently.

I realize I am gawking. A female? What's that? Here? I rub sweat out of my eyes. She isn't particularly attractive, but I am more startled than anything else, just doing what I do best: be an awkward goof. I act cool only to crash and burn.

"Huh? Uhh, yeah, um, yup I'm set, done. All yours." I snatch my water bottle and retreat to a corner where a fellow Lieutenant and platoon leader is doing squats. I punch him in the shoulder and he pops out one of his ear buds. Obnoxiously loud country music blares from the uncorked headphone. "Dude" is all I say. He looks over his shoulder at the half dozen Airmen who have filed into the gym. "Is that a girl?" he exclaims under his breath. "No way. I think I heard them talking on the radio last night when I was coming back. They are here to build this place up."

In the coming week a lot of changes came about. The chow tent is expanded to be a large pre-fabricated metal dome. We could get a ready supply of fresh vegetables, fruits, and much to my dismay, cottage cheese. I say dismay because my driver is slightly lactose intolerant and he is determined to pack on twenty pounds of muscle while we are here—consequential gas be damned. Our latrine, which previously consisted of a plywood shack built over some oil drums, has been converted into a much more professionally constructed mansion with plastic toilets that empty into a tank that gets pumped out. They even erected showers and a small shack with laundry machines.

For those of us who have not been to Iraq, we hear legend of sprawling bases with Olympic quality gyms complete with indoor basketball courts and a smoothie bar. For those of us who have not lived on the edge of civilization before, we actually hoped to be sent to the most remote outpost possible. This is war dammit. For those of us who were part of the early years of this conflict, the days of flak jackets and desert camouflage, it is preferable to have the easy life. My Platoon Sergeant can get fired up when he is reminded that we were originally slotted to go to Iraq. "Them fuckers in Iraq got it easy" he would growl. "Afghanistan is light fighter country, if you can't hump it on yer back then it ain't be needed. I seen the glory days of no showers and shit for chow. I'm too old for this."

The Airmen operate like worker bees, erecting new living quarters for more people to arrive. They build new blast walls to expand the FOB. They dig another gun pit for artillery cannons. They have a handful of women in their ranks, and now I am faced with keeping my Soldiers from cross-service fraternization while pretending I am not intrigued myself.

As for our precious little gym, it too was changed. A pre-fabricated sheet metal dome, smaller than the chow hall, was built. Refrigerators with cold water and racks of weights on cables were brought in. To top it all off, the ultimate blasphemy: three elliptical machines and two treadmills. What is the point of so much exertion of energy just to stay in one place? I could just be a snobbish purist.

ODDS CHECK:

• The odds an enlistee in the US Air Force is female are 1 in 5.1. In the Army, the odds are 1 in 7.37.
• The odds a person will do free weight exercises at least 50 days a year are 1 in 7.36.

Click here for the previous entry.