WEBVTT

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this opportunity was advertised ,

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deploy , you want to volunteer to

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deploy , want to go overseas , you want

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to go to Iraq Afghanistan , want to do

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these crazy things and you know , we

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really need the support this and that .

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And I thought okay , that wild hair was

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there . Okay , I wasn't an emergency

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essential person and I was , but I

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thought I would go with that wild hair

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and so uh I went to my bosses and I

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volunteered and I said okay , I would

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like to give this a try and they came

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back because I was already uh GS 13 and

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the marking I done and I was already a

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sales contracting officer and quite a

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few other things . I was very

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experienced with those type of things

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and they approved me to go . But what

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they approved me to do was to go to

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Afghanistan and they said we're going

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to open up a site there . But what we

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want you to do is to uh work with the

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Department of State and Afghanistan in

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order for us to get sales authority

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there and start working so we can get

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contracts and such . And I thought ,

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okay , I can do this , this is great .

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Um until that day that I'm walking up

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the back side of a plane with the bag

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on my back thinking you've done some

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stupid things in your life . But this

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is about takes it . But anyway , So we

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get there and realize there's no site .

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We went to bagram Afghanistan , there's

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not a site , there's not anything we're

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living in wouldn't be huts , you know ,

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20 by 40 wouldn't be huts and those

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kind of things . And the individual the

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lead individual that knew about sites

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and such . His back went out within a

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month . His back went out . So that

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left myself and another individual he

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was a GS seven . That was very very

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experienced . As far as sites are

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concerned you know forklift driver

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really knew that kind of thing but not

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the other . So we just started pulling

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out the manual , we went page by page

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and we figured it out and when we

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opened the gates to say hey you know

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here's duomo baghram and we're open we

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had a wouldn't be hut as an office with

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no heat , no light . We had a gate and

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um nothing else . And so when the

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trucks would pull in for us to you know

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do property we would actually literally

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get up on the truck and we would shove

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it off because we didn't have anything

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or we would borrow forklifts as such

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from other folks . And it was it was

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crazy and we would take shifts because

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it was really cold when we opened in

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bagram with snow . So he would take the

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first shift and I would be a couple of

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hours in the building doing inputs back

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with regular D . L . A . And then we

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would switch because we would get so

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cold but anyway you know kind of five

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miles uphill both ways in the snow .

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Right ? The old school . But that

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started in 2000 and that's when we

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opened 2000 and five . Yeah , yeah ,

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2005 December . So we opened bagram

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um .