Soldiers watch the US withdrawal from Bagram through the lens of Pokemon Go
The FOBs in Afghanistan felt like America to me. All the best years of my life were spent there. What I came back to was often unrecognizable. This feels a bit personal.<p>Little anecdote: Bagram is quite large, and sometimes I used to run late at night into the places where nobody goes. Well, &#x27;nobody&#x27; is a legend of some old contractors from back before the centralized personnel tracking systems, who had set up a shantytown in the junkyard in between contracts, and eventually just &#x27;went native&#x27; and made it their home. I can&#x27;t be sure, but there seemed to be signs of life in strange places. I would have bought property and settled in myself if I could. There were a lot of men I worked with who had been completely replaced by their families, stopped taking leave, and didn&#x27;t want to go back, ever. I can relate. My fiancee died during my first tour, and out there I could be fully in love with a ghost; it was like a superpower. I think I needed a few more years of that.