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I had only been at Bagram for a matter of hours when I was cleared on a military flight out to Forward Operating Base (FOB) Lightning, near the city of Ghazni east of Kabul. I was surprised, because I had been warned to expect a lot of time sitting and waiting for planes as the drawdown continues to strip away assets while increasing need for what remains. The flight would be a fixed wing at first to a base called FOB Shank, then I would seamlessly — four hours later — switch to a rotary flight the rest of the way.

In classic Army style, we stood by to stand by for three hours, and so I sketched Senior Airman Laura Shoff doing what she was doing. The last question we got before heading to airfield was if anyone was carrying any grenades. “Not in Kansas any more,” I thought.

A white school bus ferried us to the waiting plane. It had seen so much military wear and tear that the seats were mostly duct tape. The front was covered with unit stickers, a visual history of those who have fought here.

The flight to FOB Shank was uneventful except the landing. Fixed wing aircraft in Afghanistan stay very high till the last possible second, then drop like a stone towards the runway. I can only assume this has something to do with the perceived threat of a missile attack. I had a clearly perceived threat of throwing up.

At the transit hub they told us the flight from FOB Shank to FOB Lightning was cancelled. I could present myself tomorrow morning at 5 a.m. Determined to get something out of FOB Shank, I secured some digs in a hangar filled with 150 bunk bed and climbed an empty bunk up top. The guy down below said: “You are a bunkmate. You have to talk to your bunkmate.” Private First Class Andrew Roberts from Los Angeles was on his way home. He had just finished a nine-month tour and was glad it was over. Didn’t think much of Afghanistan, but didn’t exactly hate it either. “Last day at work,” he said brightly, with a big grin the next morning. I took him outside and sketched him sitting on a concrete force protection barrier.

Next, I found this beauty parked in a repair yard, a smattering of engineers and mechanics beavering away nearby. Sgt. Harold Greenwood gave me the thumbs up to sit and draw this MaxxPro MRAP in the shop. Across the yard behind it, the remains of an MRAP hit by an improvised explosive device sat, without any front wheels and no armor plate. All five on board had survived.

I had bitten off more than I could chew with this one. The most challenging part was the anti-RPG netting. A rocket-propelled grenade is armed when its fins deploy right after it is fired. The netting is designed to fold the fins back again milliseconds before it impacts the vehicle,disarming the projectile. A brilliant defensive innovation, but bloody difficult to draw and leave transparent.

By the time I was done it was close to dark. I had just sat down on one of the benches in the helicopter terminal to get wifi when the rocket alarm went off. “Incoming, incoming,” blared a prerecorded voice across the base.

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Rockets are the Taliban’s favorite yet least effective weapons; they have continued to use them as a general harassment tool throughout the 13-year conflict. The rockets are built locally and usually fired from a couple of miles away in the general direction of the base. There are sensors that trigger the alarm, and weapons that attempt to intercept them, but many still get through. The available interception time from launch to impact is around three seconds.

It has been a while, so I immediately did what you are not supposed to do: I stood up. I had a moment to feel a bit lonely before throwing myself on the floor and putting my arms over my head like everyone else. There was a concussive impact somewhere in the far distance. At that point everybody scrambled to the bunker right outside.

The bunker is a solid piece of concrete shaped like an upside down U. It is around twelve inches thick and surrounded by a double layer of sandbags outside the walls and roof.

There, I heard the first in what I hope to present as a series of short overheard bunker conversations. First soldier: ‘The chicken wings are definitely best at Kandahar.” Second soldier: “They were, but the cooks have now gone as part of the drawdown. The best chicken wings now are in Bagram.” First soldier: “But the best pizza is at Leatherneck.”

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The all-clear was eventually given, and I sat on the steps outside the transit hub, read some mail and smoked a cigarette. A lovely dog on the end of a very long leash came by to say hello. Tess is a Tactical Explosive Detector (TED) dog, although I think the word tactical may be superfluous. I guess TED made a better acronym. Tess and her handler Specialist Martin Zach were also waiting on a helicopter out of here. They have 42 days left in their tour.

TED dogs like Tess are all over Afghanistan, both within the military and being used by private contractors. Sniffer dogs have been an essential part of patrolling by ISAF forces throughout the latter half of the conflict, ever since the Taliban started making homemade explosives (HME) without any metal parts involved. They have saved countless lives through their ability to find these hidden killers.

I asked Tess if she wanted to sit for a portrait, and she sniffed my sketchpad. Spc. Zach held his hand up, and Tess didn’t move a muscle for ten minutes. Spc. Zach hopes he’ll be allowed to take Tess home with him at the end of his tour. They are a team, after all. Under the lone fluorescent light in front of the transit hub Tess sat, and I drew.

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I am hoping to reach my first destination tomorrow.

I actually don’t have an artist to feature in this post, so I am going to give another shoutout to my USMC counterpart also in Afghanistan creating art for the Marine Corps Combat Art program. Please don’t hesitate to write to him and show your support. These were a couple of sketches he did on the way over.

The same rules apply. Get out there and start drawing. Draw what you see – live – and send it in. I’ll publish it here in the deepest vault of Washington Post blogging. And please stop by when you can and if you like what you see pass on the blog link to all and sundry.

Got a question? Ask me at richardjosephjohnson@yahoo.com

Want to see more of my work? www.newsillustrator.com.

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