The Other Side of the Looking Glass: The Memoir of a Military Contractor

By W. Hairston

This is a memoir. Four years out of the life of an average American who did his time in service, only to find that he has to start over again in a country still at war and with a shattered economy. He finds that there is a way to make a living, and that is in the military-industrial complex, the new job market that had arisen when the Twin Towers fell on 9/11.

In this world, he makes ends meet. He is able to support his family but is in the crosshairs of the enemy 24/7. All it takes is one mortar shell, one rocket strike, and one bullet to meet his fate. Although he is out of active military service, he is in a combat zone. His life is in danger, just like theirs, but for him, there are no welcome home parties and no yellow ribbons. Before, he was looked at as a hero; now, hes just an opportunist, a mercenary. But on this side, you see the way things are in this new world of outsourced war.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jul 22, 2013
• ISBN: 9781483661353

W. Hairston

About the Author Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and raised in Camden, New Jersey, he graduated from Camden Catholic High school in 1988 and went on to serve twenty years in the U.S. Navy as a part of the U.S. Naval Construction Force. While in the military, he earned his bachelor of science in social science from the University of Maryland University College and associates degree in management studies from Excelsior College. After retiring from active military service in 2008, he went on to work as a contractor for various global construction companies under the LOGCAP III and IV contracts during OEF and Operation New Dawn in Iraq and Afghanistan. Today he is residing with family in Pennsauken, New Jersey.

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Copyright © 2013 by W. Hairston.

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Rev. date: 07/16/2013

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Contents

Retirement

Houston

Kandahar

Camp Lane

Dad

Aftermath

Back To Work

Iraq

Afghanistan Again

Camp Julian

October 29, 2011

Glossary

Bibliography

To Ernestine and Wilford Botny Hairston Sr.

I am not a known figure. All I am is a man who graduated from high school and directly joined the service. After completing my time and doing my part for my country, I left to become an electrical contractor in some of the most dangerous places on earth. In many ways, I had seen more action than I had in uniform.

This book is a memoir because it is told through my point of view from when I had walked down the red carpet of my retirement from the navy in Naples, Italy, to the present, and this is when I had journeyed to the other side of the looking glass, where up is down and down is up and corporations are exploiting the talents of the labor force from the United States and various countries around the world. In other words, a massive jobs program where Western craftsmen are training the people of Afghanistan, India, Nepal, while America and its citizenry are drained economically, and at the time of this writing, the unemployment rate hovered at 9 percent at home.

Finally, what I would like to convey is that our American treasure aren’t just the men and women in uniform; they are those trained and licensed men and women who were economically driven away to seek a better way of life for themselves and their families. They are making just as big a sacrifice, with less support in some cases.

To the Congress:

Unhappy events abroad have retaught us two simple truths about the liberty of a democratic people. The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is Fascism—ownership of Government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power.

The second truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if its business system does not provide employment and produce and distribute goods in such a way as to sustain an acceptable standard of living. Both lessons hit home. Among us today a concentration of private power without equal in history is growing. This concentration is seriously impairing the economic effectiveness of private enterprise as a way of providing employment for labor and capital and as a way of assuring a more equitable distribution of income and earnings among the people of the nation as a whole.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades.

In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.

Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.

Eisenhower’s Farewell Address to the Nation

January 17, 1961

RETIREMENT

September 21, 2008. I thought this day would never come; it’s the day of my retirement. Today, I am retiring out of the navy from Italy. I have my uniform pressed, my hair cut, and I’m squared away. I’ve been in since 1988, and twenty years goes fast. My peers set this up for me. My chief is a guy I knew earlier in my career, and now I’m working for him. I was sort of a slacker, but I had a ball in my career. It had its ups and downs like everything else, but I wouldn’t trade them for anything. At this point, I had been around the world, and I thought it was a great place, and now I might be able to live a normal life just like everyone else—just had to walk the red carpet and get piped ashore.

When I got home in October after processing out of Norfolk, I kissed my mother and hugged my father, but this was not the same man staring at me whom I left a year ago. He was much thinner and frail. This was a hyperactive man who drove trucks for a living and never sat in his equipment. He usually off-loaded his freight himself, could stay outside from dawn to dusk just painting the house and drinking beer; but when I returned, I found only a shadow of what I knew of him.

When I was helping him around the house, I saw a frail man who had to sit down at regular intervals to catch his breath, but the times he chose to take his breaks were when I was not around to see him; he made sure that I was out of sight. He was still a dad to the core because as I was helping him clean the gutters of the house, he was still holding the ladder for his thirty-nine-year-old son. He was a gruff guy, a truck driver; this was his identity, but unfortunately, he had always taken jobs that had no benefits, no retirement plans. He was usually paid under the table.

Three weeks later, I had received a phone call from a recruiter from KBR (Kellogg Brown and Root), a global construction company that was at one time part of Halliburton and infamous for its connections to the government. The guy sounded cheerful enough. Calling me from Houston, Texas, he asked me if I was still looking for employment. I told him I was and that I had just retired from the navy; that led him to ask me if I was motivated to go over and make some money. He told me what the salary was going to be, and almost immediately I said yes. I had this conversation in early November 2008, and pages and pages of paperwork were sent to me via e-mail requesting my credentials and background information. At that time, I didn’t even have an electrical license that would’ve been accepted by the state. It was a license that was given to me by a government agency based upon my military experience, but the company accepted me anyway.

HOUSTON

When I had completed all of the paperwork, they had finally sent the flight itinerary, which had me arriving into George Bush International Airport in Houston. My accommodations would be in the Houston Hilton North, right across the street from the Greenspoint Mall, where the company had a processing center within an abandoned department store. This is where they performed their PowerPoint presentations, lectures, and, recently, some medical functions.

During this process, I had met many people who told me that they were the third generation who had worked for Halliburton or they were going to Iraq/Afghanistan because they had relatives who were working there Along with the fact that at the time I was going through processing for the LOGCAP project. I was one of six hundred this week alone.

I knew that this was something huge.

Before progressing any further, I think it would provide much more clarity for you, the reader, if I were to define what LOGCAP is, because there is an enormous disconnection between what the average American knows about the particulars of modern American-style warfare and the players involved.

LOGCAP is known as the Logistics Civil Augmentation Program, and it is supposed to provide contingency support to augment the U.S. Army force structure to adequately support its forces using private military companies. In other words, the army is using private military contractors to supply day-to-day base functions such as laundry, food services, waste disposal, and power production. This also means