When I was driving truck, I spent a lot of time in what we jokingly referred to as the War Zone — a 25-mile radius around New York City, including places like Bayonne, Newark, Elizabeth, and Jersey City, N.J.

Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx counted, too. But the fact is those spots were pretty hospitable compared to the parched landscape of southern Afghanistan, which truly is a war zone.

It’s a trucking zone too. The men and women serving in one of Canada’s Combat Service Support groups based in Kandahar run daily excursions from the base near Kandahar Air Field (KAF) — about 20 km outside Kandahar City — to various forward operating bases (FOB) located 25 to 100 km away. It’s a fairly small geographic area, but even an 80-km roundtrip can take a day or more. In all, there might be 25 groups including police substations and combat outposts in the field that need to be kept supplied.

Two of Canada’s finest that have served in Afghanistan are Master Corporal (Mcpl) Rob Wall (now a sargeant), 39, and 27-year-old Corporal (Cpl) Jeff Carpenter.

Being "base brats," each has lived in several places in Canada and around the world, but both now call Edmonton home. They serve in the Transport Trades as part of 1 Service Battalion (1 Svc Bn) based at the Canadian Forces Edmonton Garrison, which fielded the National Support Element for Task Force Afghanistan between 2006 and 2008.

The transport trades involve driving and operating a variety of vehicles, including refuelers, tractor-trailers, plows, buses, specialty vehicles, logistics vehicles, support vehicles, and more.

Mcpl Wall has over 40 endorsements on his "404," — a military driver’s licence — not including additional qualifications needed to operate equipment on an airfield. Even with all those qualifications, it can take up to a year to prepare for front-line deployment and to complete what they call TMST (Theatre Mission Specific Training), such as operating convoys of supply vehicles in hostile territory.

Canadian forces roll with the AHSVS, a militarized
version of the Mercedes Actros truck.

And even then, nothing quite prepares you to operate in a place like Kandahar.

"The area between KAF and the FOBs stationed in the heart of the Panjwayi/Maywand districts is mostly city driving, and it’s an area known for IEDs [improvised explosive devices]," says Mcpl Wall.

"You’re not speeding through there. You’re driving the speed limit and often a lot slower. It’s a 63 km trip, but it can easily take five hours."

They weave through crowded streets and markets, steering around damaged vehicles, and taking great care not to hit anything or knock down telephone and power lines.

"The locals tend to move aside and let us pass, but we still don’t make very good time," he says. "We try not to stop or slow down, but sometimes it’s unavoidable."

How do the local people respond to these convoys rolling though town?

"It depends on the last convoy that went through there. If they just rolled through not caring who or what they hit, or if we knock down their power lines, that creates some animosity," says Cpl Carpenter. "Sometimes they throw rocks at us.

"If we hit something, we’ll call in a report and mark the grid. We send out a crew to fix it. If we hit a vehicle, we usually don’t stop. One of the trucks behind us will take a picture of it so when the owner makes a claim we have a record of it."

It may all sound a bit rough and tumble, but they are in a war zone. Between the rocket attacks, suicide bombers, random gunfire from the insurgents, and the explosive devices planted at roadside, these guys have to keep their wits about them, because the operating bases have to be supplied. It’s all in a day’s work for men and women of 1 Service Battalion.

LIFE AT KAF

Just getting to Kandahar is an experience, Cpl Carpenter says. He’s done three tours over there, and hasn’t taken the same route twice to KAF.

"I’ve gone through Winnipeg, Trenton, Iceland, Scotland, Germany, Zagreb… it’s always an adventure. I guess it depends on where the aircraft we’re traveling on is headed," he says. "It can take as much as 24 hours travel time to get to Camp Mirage — a secure location somewhere in the Middle East. Our Airbus transports don’t fly into KAF, so we land at Camp Mirage and transfer to smaller planes there.

"While we’re waiting for a transfer, we get a briefing on life at KAF, the dos and don’ts, and then we wait for the next plane. The first time, I was 20 minutes. The last time, I was a full day there."

His first thoughts on arriving at Kandahar? "Damn it’s hot!"

It can reach nearly 60 C degrees there in the summer. It’ll hit 40 by 10:00 in the morning, but their BATs provide an air-conditioned haven of about 25 degrees night and day. BATs are the structures they live in. Jokingly, they are known as Big-Ass-Tents — cinder-block walls covered by a canvas top, like a tent. (There’s actually a technical term for the BAT, but neither Wall nor Carpenter could recall what it was.)

Cpl Wall recalls 16 rocket attacks on the camp during his last seven-month tour.

"They were fired into the camp from outside," he says. "Nothing came close to where we were, but it’s still a bit unnerving to be in a tent with that stuff flying around."

Food on the base is an interesting mix of the nations present there; Dutch, French, American, British, Belgian… mostly, the groups kept to their own messes, but depending on what was on the menu and how good the food was, there was plenty of sampling going on.

"The Brits liked the deep fried stuff," Cpl Carpenter notes. "And we’d often go over to the American mess for the Canadian bacon."

And everyone was pretty pleased when Tim Hortons set up shop on the base.

"We’d joke about grabbing a double-double before heading off to war," Mcpl Wall told us.

The local markets opened on Saturdays — after security checks — and pretty well anything any red-blooded Canadian soldier could want or need was available: DVD players, X-Boxes, digital cameras, computers, Rolex watches, and more, along with the supplies like shaving cream, soda pop, energy drinks, etc.

"I bought stuff like scarves and a handmade chess set to send home, you know, as a bit of a souvenir," says Cpl Carpenter.

While life on base is fairly laid back and relaxed, the business of delivering supplies to the FOB is taken very seriously. A typical convoy assignment is a two-day affair. The first day is spent preparing, planning, loading, and inspecting; the second day is out in the field.

"We’d usually begin around 10:00, when the column commander would assign teams, tasks, and vehicles," says Mcpl Wall. "Around 1300 hours, the right-seaters would show up, they’d get their briefings, and start loading their trucks. Around 1600, we’d get our final briefings, arrange helicopter support if it was needed, and do a final inspection. At that point, we were ready to go."

Next morning, at "0-dark-stupid", the convoy was on the road. Mcpl Wall says the departure times varied so the insurgents wouldn’t get used to the schedule. A typical trip out to an FOB and back would be between 10 and 16 hours, but could easily turn into two days, sometimes more. The trucks carried 72 hours of supplies, just in case. If they couldn’t get back by nightfall, they’d hunker down and spend the night in the field.

"The first convoy of the day and the last one before sundown were most vulnerable," notes Cpl Carpenter.

There were 12 convoys of about 10 trucks each on base, and usually six were on the road at any one time. They travel in small groups — no more than 10 vehicles — for safety.

Keep in mind that these distances traveled by the supply convoys were modest, seldom more than 100 km one way. Many trips took the convoys through the heart of downtown Kandahar, and the rest of the travel was on open, paved, two-lane highway — not much different from what you’d see in rural Saskatchewan, or more appropriately, rural Arizona or Nevada.

Few of the locals have driver’s licences there, and they drive like crazy, notes Cpl Carpenter. Their answer to traffic control is speed bumps –150 to 200 of them over a 60-km route.

"They’re everywhere, and some of them are huge," he says. "Mostly they are like the ones we see in shopping mall parking lots. They slow the locals down, but they slow us down too."

They pull seven-axle trailers, each with individual air suspension, so they can’t go terribly fast over the bumps, but after getting to know the routes, and where the worst of the speed bumps were, they got to know how fast they could take various bumps.

And then there are many sections where the pavement is too badly broken up to drive over at any speed. Some of the freshly broken up sections were cause for concern.

"We’d have to get out and search the area for IEDs," explains Mcpl Wall. "The other constant threat to the convoys is the culverts under the roads. Afghanis are masters at channeling and diverting water, so these culverts are everywhere — and they’re an ideal spot for an IED."

The teams used infrared scanners to see if the dirt had been recently moved around in front of the culverts. That was a sign of dangerous activity. As a precaution, large metal grilles were installed at the openings of the culverts to keep the insurgents and their IEDs out.

"That worked for a while, but then they started coming along at night, cutting the grill and welding it back up again," Mcpl Wall says. "We caught on to that pretty fast. So we just check all the culverts all the time anyway. If they stay close to the side of the road as we drive by, it’s cool. If they all run away as we approach, we stop and get out to look around."

For safety, positions were reported regularly using code-named check points, often named for brands of beer, "for morale purposes," Cpl Carpenter notes.

If all goes well, the trucks are fueled and cleaned up upon return to base, and readied for the next outing. But like any logistics exercise, foul-ups happen. (That’s not standard military terminology, but you get the point.)

They haul a lot of sea-container-type boxes, stenciled with little more than a long number. Sometimes they get mixed up or go missing, and hours can be spent looking for one. Sound familiar?

Breakdowns happen too, of course, and that sometimes requires a little ingenuity. They have large recovery vehicles in the fleets, but sometimes it’s just a little bailing wire that’s required. Sound familiar?

The men and women in 1 Service Battalion from Edmonton, as well as their counterparts of 2 Service Battalion from Petawawa, Ont., and 5 Service Battalion from Val Cartier, Que., perform invaluable support services in Afghanistan.

They deliver the bullets, the beans, the fuel, and other supplies to the forward units. They get the call, and load up the trucks and deliver. The work can be risky, but it’s part of the soldiers’ job description — and all in a day’s over there.