News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
It's hard to make up for more than a year away from family and friends in just one week, but Vern Johnson came pretty close this month.
The National Guard veteran arrived home to Sisters after a tour of duty in Afghanistan to find the entrance to Junipine Acres festooned with yellow ribbons and the road to his house lined with some 300 American flags. Then, during the Sunday performance of the Sisters Rodeo on June 10, he was welcomed by the rodeo announcer and received a prolonged standing ovation.
It was all a pretty satisfying wrap-up to a long, hardworking deployment.
Chief Warrant Officer Johnson served at Camp Phoenix, Kabul, Afghanistan, with the Oregon Army National Guard's Company B, 141st Logistics Task Force, 41st Combat Task Force. He supervised two shifts of maintenance people working seven days a week, dawn to dark, to keep equipment in good repair in the harsh conditions of Afghanistan.
The rugged terrain and climate of Afghanistan takes its toll on military equipment. Vehicles get battered to pieces on bad roads; radios break down; weapons need constant maintenance. That's the work Johnson's unit took on - with the added task of repairing steel school desks dating back to the 1930s so that school children would have a place to work and study.
With a grueling work schedule and a security situation that has deteriorated over the past year, Johnson didn't get out of the capital city of Kabul much, but what he saw of Afghanistan left a strong impression.
"It's an extremely, extremely poor country," he said. "If it wasn't for cell phones and vehicles, you'd think you were in the 14th Century.
"Donkey carts with wooden wheels are a common sight. You don't see many women, and most of those that you do see are in burqas (head-to-toe veils and robes)."
Johnson dealt with vendors for tools and steel, and he said they were friendly and were happy their country had been wrested from control of the Taliban and its draconian Islamic-law rule.
"They don't like the Taliban," Johnson said. "They looked forward to returning to their old ways."
Afghans have to look back nearly three decades to see any peace in their nation's history. The Soviet Union invaded the country in late 1979 to overthrow a destabilized and "unreliable" government and install a puppet regime. That touched off a brutal war that lasted until the Russians left in 1989.
That was followed by destructive conflict between rival warlords and the eventual takeover of the country by the Islamic student movement known as the Taliban.
After the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in the United States, the U.S. invaded Afghanistan to root out the al-Qaeda terrorist harbored there and to depose the Taliban regime that had given them sanctuary.
After a period of relative calm, a resurgent Taliban has returned the country to low-level guerrilla conflict over the past year.
"Even the suicide bombers are in Kabul now," Johnson said.
Johnson said that most of the men he saw in Kabul were 18 to 25 years old and had never known peace.
"They have no idea what freedom was and what it was like before," he said.
One ancient tradition lives on in the capital: the weekly bazaar. Johnson frequented the bazaar, haggling with the traders and returned with fascinating souvenirs. He displayed a massive flintlock pistol with a bore of some 1.25 inches and a 19th Century British Snider Rifle. He also has several beautiful stone vases and a luminous chunk of indigo lapis veined with quartz.
The great prize still eludes him: a dilapidated 1949 Buick Roadmaster that was housed in a compound in Kabul. Johnson kept his eye on it for the entire tour, purchased it and is working on bringing it home through the U.S. embassy.
The car belonged to an international pharmaceutical company that used it during the 1960s to ferry clients and dignitaries around Kabul.
"They decided it was too dangerous to be driving because the Russians had invaded the country," Johnson said.
The car was left parked, and soon the Russians stole the tires. It's been sitting idle for some 20 years or more. But other than the ravages of a harsh climate, the car is in good, restorable shape.
"It's in a compound, so it doesn't get shot at," Johnson said.
The year-long deployment, preceded by three months of training at Camp Shelby, Mississippi, was Johnson's first lengthy deployment in a 38-year career in the National Guard. His wife Betsy Johnson once commanded the unit in which he served.
That helped her understand the mission and get through the long year, though Vern thinks that long deployments are often "harder ... on the people who stay home than on the soldiers who leave."
Betsy wished she, too, could deploy. She was prevented from serving by an old injury from an automobile accident.
"I kept trying to figure out a way to get over there, and I kept telling (Vern), 'don't be surprised to see me at the gate,'" she said.
Modern communications ease the burden of separation. There was steady computer access in Kabul that allowed regular e-mail communication, and 15-minute phone calls were available on a regular basis.
Everybody in the unit got care packages, mostly organized by Caring For Soldiers in Bend.
"More than once a month we'd be getting boxes of you-name-it - from food right down to socks," he said.
Johnson said that support was greatly appreciated.
Johnson, who moved to Sisters in 1994, is retired from the Oregon Department of Transportation. He said he joined the National Guard because he "likes fixing things" and enjoys passing on his skills and knowledge to younger men.
And, "it's always been kind of an adventure."
And for Johnson, a year in-country in the Afghanistan theater is the crowning adventure of them all.
Jim Cornelius is editor in chief of The Nugget and author of “Warriors of the Wildlands: True Tales of the Frontier Partisans.” A history buff, he explores frontier history across three centuries and several continents on his podcast, The Frontier Partisans. For more information visit www.frontierpartisans.com.
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