KHOWST PROVINCE, Afghanistan — Camp Clark dining facility manager George Piccardi has lived a Forest Gump-like life which has taken him from the glitzy hills of Hollywood to the riddled landscape of Afghanistan. Easy-going and cheerful, and with a quick grin, he shares with any and everyone. Piccardi runs a dining facility like no other on this remote U.S. forward operating base.

To an outsider, a warm personality like Piccardi might seem out of place here, a mere 20 miles from the volatile border region of Pakistan, but to the soldiers who have to spend their lengthy deployments in this hostile land nobody is a more welcome sight.

“He’s an amazing person. Everything he does for us improves morale,” said U.S. Army Pfc. Luiz Torres from Los Angeles.

“Out of four deployments at small FOBs, he is the best DFAC manager that I’ve ever seen by far,” said 1st Sgt. Curtis Wright of Montgomery, Ala., and Camp Clark Mayor. “Especially when it comes to boosting morale.”

It’s not necessarily his food that has endeared Piccardi to the soldiers of Camp Clark, although it is definitely a few notches above the typical DFAC. It’s the extra things he does, particularly the movie nights and football parties he throws every weekend, which have set him apart and made him the talk of Khowst province.

It wasn’t too long into his first year at Camp Clark that Piccardi decided he could do more than just cook good food for his soldiers.

“I thought, what if I try something different and do a movie night. So I bought a projector and a player and set that up,” he said. “It was a hit right away, packing the DFAC every Friday night.”

Thinking he could still add something to make the atmosphere more festive, Piccardi purchased a roll of raffle tickets and started handing out prizes too. Once the NFL season started, it was only logical to add a football night as well.

For this year’s Super Bowl, Piccardi went all out by purchasing a plethora of NFL memorabilia including signed jerseys and helmets and even an autographed picture of Madonna to raffle off during the commercial breaks.

“Getting the signed jerseys and stuff, it’s something else. He puts all his own money into it,” said Wright. “To have a guy like him ... it blew me away when I got here. Even on the bigger FOBs I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“I love football and I love doing it for the soldiers,” Piccardi said. “Every week they come up to me and say, if it wasn’t for you I’d go crazy. Thank you for everything you do.”

“We’re out here in this combat state of mind,” Torres added. “But when you get a bunch of us just sitting around watching football – all of a sudden you’re not here, you know? You’re home.”

So what brings a man like Piccardi, who could live and work in the lap of luxury, to a place like Camp Clark?

Turns out his life story is as colorful as his parties.

“I feel like I’ve lived four of five lives,” he said. “I was brought up in musical theatre, my dad was a director, so I was in [show business] since I was a kid. When I got older I moved to Hollywood and got into acting, where I did background and a lot of extra work.”

Piccardi’s face could be seen in many TV shows in the 1980’s and 90’s, including “Beverly Hills 90210” in which he was a featured background regular, and he landed plenty of film gigs as well.

“You can see me blow smoke in Jean-Claude Van Damme’s face in a movie called “Death Warrant”,” he said. “I’m the gang member with the bandana when he first comes into prison.”

After he’d had enough of Hollywood he moved to Biloxi, Miss., just to see what the South was like.

“I went to work in a little mom-and-pop pizza place called Hugo’s, which is mentioned in several John Grisham books, and that’s where I started cooking.”

While at Hugo’s he was featured in a morning TV show called “Good Morning South Mississippi” and naturally, he was so popular that they gave him a regular spot.

“I had kind of a little cooking show there for a while,” he chuckles.

Soon after that he went to work for many years in the high-end casinos that were springing up all over the South, and then a friend suggested he apply to be a cook for soldiers in Afghanistan. Just for the heck of it, he did – and within two weeks he was on his way to Dubai for processing, landed in Khowst a few days later, and has been rooted here ever since.

“At first it was for the money,” Piccardi said. “I only planned to do it for a year. Well, here I am eight years later because I really got to like these soldiers.”

“The thing I love about it is when soldiers come up to me and say ‘You know I’ve been here for eight months and if it wasn’t for you and your movie night and your football night, I don’t know if I would have made it. I look forward to every Friday and every Sunday, and thank God for you.’”

“Well I hear that and I think, I’m going to keep doing this. I hope they let me do this forever. That’s what makes it for me now, it’s not so much the money any more. I don’t really need the money. It’s the soldiers. I’m doing this for them.”

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