Precerpt from In with the East Wind: A Mary Poppins Kind of Life - Afghanistan, Part 2: Camp Julien
Precerpt (excerpt prior to publication from the forthcoming memoir, In with the East: A Mary Poppins Kind of Life by Dr. Betty Lou Leaver Camp Julien: Barren Beauty and Blunt Reality When I arrived at Camp Julien, I was surprised at how barren it was. The surrounding mountains looked more than arid—they looked as if the “green” had been bombed out of them. It probably had. Facilities and Perspective The facilities, from what I could see, were pretty good—though everyone has their own comfort level with roughing it. Mine is fairly high. Life in Acton had been just barely on the grid. We grew our own food, milked our own cows, and butchered our own animals for meat. (I hated that part, so it’s pretty amazing that I ended up serving in the Army and then spent much of my civilian career working for the Army.) All the structures at Camp Julien were tents—large and small. The teachers worked in the same tent they slept in. They complained about it, but I couldn’t fully underst...