Readjustment And Trivia

The Army warns you about readjustment and "reintegration." Oddly enough, a lot of it is true. They warn about depression, or let-down. They warn about the family and things that happen normally as part of reintegration.

A lot of it is true.

I never felt overly "jacked-up" in Afghanistan. It all felt pretty normal to me, actually. There were a few times when I knew that I could easily be killed, and there were several times when I knew without a doubt that if the ACM had chosen to hit us at that moment that I was in a very very precarious position.

I did, however, feel alert. There have been times here in the States that I have been inattentive, even though I was going through the motions. For instance, driving around town running errands but thinking about something else, to the point that I would suddenly realize that I had lost track of where I was. I never lost track so much that I was endangering other people or vehicles around me, just the bigger picture.

I was on autopilot.

That never happened in Afghanistan. I always knew when I was outside the wire what was going on, at least what was going on in proximity to me, even if the rest of the situation was unclear.

At the time, I wouldn't have described it as hyper vigilance; it felt normal, and not uncomfortable. I liked being outside the wire. I pitied those poor fobbits who never left the wire... there are so many of them. I couldn't have felt good about myself had that been my existence in Afghanistan.

When you get so used to having to have your "hand on the stick," being where you can put it on autopilot and get away with it causes the spring to uncoil. When the spring uncoils, the lack of tension sends a ripple through the rest of the heart and mind.

It's disconcerting.


Trivia

Being back in American culture takes on a whole new perspective after having been in Afghanistan. The apparent inattention of the American public to the war, the seeming lack of support for the task, even with the apparent support for the individual, is something that requires some getting used to. It was my life for nearly a year and a half, counting the spin-up time and the deployment itself. To find it so trivialized in the daily life here is, for some reason, mildly disturbing.

I'll get over it.

I try to keep in mind that my brother, upon his return from Viet Nam, was encouraged by many to engage in physically impossible acts of self-love and was showered with dog feces at the airport in San Diego. I actually had to avoid running over people who stepped in front of me not to shower me with feces but to say, "thank you."

Like I said, I'll get over it.

It is truly the electronic age. The mess halls on even some of the smaller FOB's had a big screen TV in it, with military satellite TV. We often watched AFN (Armed Forces Network) Europe while we ate. This was not the case at the firebase at the top of the Tagab Valley, but in many other places there was AFN.

The "commercials" on AFN consisted of such things as OPSEC* awareness commercials starring "Squeakers the Mouse," an evil, yet unnamed cat that was constantly spying on Squeakers with apparent ill will, and an occasional guest-starring hamster whom I'm not sure had a name. Other "commercials" were such things as military organizations advertising what they did for the overall war effort ("We are the Logistics Command, supplying everyone with everything everywhere") and so on.

Apple did have an iPod commercial; it warned that wearing earphones on a military base is generally against regulations and exhorted iPod users to avoid incurring the wrath of military justice by being smart about not using their products in violation of post policies. It was done in the typical iPod crazy-dancing silhouette with white iPod wires style; and the silhouette was obviously wearing bloused combat boots, and then he was busted by a silhouette wearing an MP armband.

I thought that was pretty cool; a civilian company who paid enough attention that they would actually spend money to cater to the military market.

I've always enjoyed imaginative, humorous commercials. I used to quote the "Beggin' Strips" commercials in Afghanistan ("What is it? I can't READ!")

The amateurish Squeakers commercials were a stark contrast to the stylish commercials that even the most ridiculous of products sport here in the States. Smilin' Bob looks like a pro compared to the AV Club reject products that adorn AFN Europe.

Right now, though, the seriousness with which advertisers present their pleas for Americans to spend their money on trivial... well, there's just no other word for it but crap... it's just so glaringly obvious to me.

After having spent a year in combat, the vigor and earnestness with which such minor luxuries are touted just seems more than comical; make that nonsensical. Americans actually have the time to think about "increasing the size of that certain part of the male body" (eyes batting in amateurish seductiveness.)

Sheesh.

Now, like I said, I enjoy products being presented with humor, and production value is much appreciated after having been subjected to Squeakers scurrying past a mousetrap baited with obviously paper cheese; but commercials that pander to the obviously asinine just grate on the soul.

My sense of being a "fly on the wall" in my own culture will probably decrease with time, but right now I am a witness to the slack-jawed amazement with which others can view our trivial thrashing about.

The network news is a whole 'nother issue. The American public has never been shown the truth about what is going on in the theaters of combat. They don't even pretend to try to present a snapshot of what is really going on; yet they will, with all seriousness (bordering on somberness,) present a fingernail clipping-sized snippet of deeply disconcerting "news" about something without ever really showing the value of what is being attempted, even accomplished, by a very tiny portion of our population.

No wonder that sizable chunks of the American public appear to be more than willing to vote for somebody, anybody, who promises to "bring the troops home." I can tell you one thing; if we "bring the troops home" before we can leave the two governments capable of governing their countries, then all those lives will be wasted, and we will find ourselves less secure than we have been in a very long time.

I didn't go to Afghanistan to win the war. I am not that powerful. It takes the efforts of many like me for a long period of time to do that. I saw a lot of actions/inactions that were completely counterproductive that end; but I also saw a lot of people performing small acts of greatness.

Keep this in mind; we are fighting a counterinsurgency in both Iraq and Afghanistan. In history, there has never been a successful counterinsurgency that has been won in less than ten years. What we are doing requires consistent effort over a period of time. This is not a sprint, it is a marathon. We are a nation of 50 meter sprinters. We need to be a nation of marathoners, a nation of patience, and a nation that views itself as a citizen of the world. That doesn't mean that the world should dictate our actions, nor does it mean that we need to seek the approval of the world.

The past year and a half have changed my viewpoint in a number of ways. None of the above means that I am anti-American. I love this country. While I am concerned about our country failing to follow through on this endeavor, thereby wasting my efforts and the lives of those who lost their lives in putting forth their efforts, I still have tremendous faith in both this country and the amazing Constitution that established our great nation. I tear up when the National Anthem is played, and I am stirred by the sight of the flag.

While I was overseas, America was the ideal... it was the paradise willingly left behind to dwell amid the hostility and mud huts and poverty and strange languages. America is an ideal that our terps aspire to, even a lot of the Afghans that we advised dreamed of how to get here, to be allowed at this huge table of peace and plenty. To be American.

It means so much more than I can convey with words. Many have tried to express it; I don't think that anyone ever will... just little bits of it at a time.

I'm not saying that America is bad, or trivial; but we do some absolutely inane things.

The biggest fear of most of the "good" Afghans that I dealt with is this; that we will leave. What they fear is real, and it is our pattern as a nation. We get halfway through and we get bored or tired and we leave.

And then the bad guys win.

Hey, I'm just wondering... what did everyone do that pissed off the oil companies so badly while I was gone? I cannot believe what is going on with the price of gasoline. How does a refinery strike in Scotland drive prices at the pump up ten cents a gallon overnight? Did the price of the fuel delivered to the zippy marts change overnight? Does anyone else see anything wrong with the "binocular price fixing" going on?

That's how the gas station managers I've talked with justified raising their prices.
"The guys up the street bumped theirs up to $3.79... so we went $3.78. Pretty smart, huh?"

Uh... yeah. Especially when you were charging $3.56 this morning. Did you get a new delivery that was more expensive this afternoon?

When I left the country, gas was $2.80-something a gallon. What in the hell have you guys been doing while I was gone?

Now, I don't think that there is some big cabal fixing prices on a national scale... maybe there is, but it's happening at the neighborhood level, too. One guy raises his $.15 a gallon, so everyone else goes $.13 to $.15 a gallon, too. Don't want to be left out of making an additional profit now, do we?

What would happen if one guy raised his prices $.15 a gallon and nobody else did? But that's not what we're seeing now, are we?

Tell me how that's not price fixing. It's not a conspiracy, but it works just fine all the same. We are even having our expectations managed. We are all set for $4-plus a gallon gas prices. We have been primed.

A lot of investors are taking advantage of this situation by speculating on oil prices. Even in Afghanistan we got the news that major oil companies had never made so much money in their entire existence as they did last year. With our economy already strained by a war that I view as necessary enough to jump through hoops to participate in, what kind of patriotism is that, to individually seek to profit so much by driving up the cost of what has become a necessity to the average American?

Okay... so there's a chunk of my reintegration shock.

Back In The USA

Coming home is an adventure all its own.

The final flight out of Afghanistan, for us, was on a C-130. The C-130, a four-engine turboprop whale, is a slow and torturous ride to go the distance from Kabul to Qatar, where we boarded a C-17 for the short hop to Kuwait, from where we embarked on a civilian charter that took us through Germany and then to New Jersey and finally Kansas.

In Kansas the whirlwind of out processing started in earnest. There were briefings followed by a welcome home ceremony in a gymnasium attended by a few officers and NCO's who had been responsible for training us to go to Afghanistan and the few families who had been able to make the trip to Ft Riley. The days that followed brought a myriad of out processing tasks; medical, dental, turning in equipment, turning in our personal weapons, briefings about everything from our reemployment rights to dealing with post traumatic stress and the difficulties of reunions and readjustment to the family.

And, spending the last few days that we would ever spend with a group of men with whom we had shared a lot over the course of the past fifteen months.

There was a lot of joking around, a bit of celebrating, some evenings were spent together. Some of the men's families had made the trip to Kansas to greet their warriors and welcome them home. Most of us had to wait to see our families, but it was only a few days. The good people at Ft Riley did all they could to speed us through our out processing and move us on to our final destinations.

But we were still in our little enclave. While we were mentally breaking our ties with this ad-hoc organization, we were still just our little group. We were each looking towards our own reunions, still looking towards returning to our individual lives. We were from many states, and each of us would go our separate ways, beginning to live what had been normal to us.

I don't know about the rest of the guys, but it will never be quite the same again for me.

Everyone flew home via Kansas City. When I arrived at the airport, I had very little time to get checked in and get to the gate. Kansas City is a small airport, and it's a short trip from the ticket counter to the gates. The good people from Homeland Security carefully scrutinized my military ID and I moved towards the metal detector. Mind you I was wearing my newly donned Combat Infantry Badge and I forgot the foil on the tobacco in the lower leg pocket, but I tripped the machine twice and was slowly and carefully subjected to The Drill, a maneuver which many travelers have performed.

My uniform and accompanying bona fides had no affect on the defenders of our homeland. I was clearly up to no good, and my heinous plot had to be foiled.

I doffed my combat boots, had my feet carefully wanded, and then the full body wanding was artfully performed. This was followed by an equally artful full body pat-down, whereupon I was informed that I was cleared to proceed home. At just this moment my name was called over the intercom to report to the gate immediately for final boarding.

I was lacing my boots as quickly as I could when one of the HSA employees, an underutilized astrophysicist on loan from NASA, decided that my carry on bag had to be hand-screened. I was carefully maintaining my cool, but I was just about to lose my mind.

"Are you insane?" I asked the young Herbert Dingle reincarnate. "See my name tag? They just called me to the gate, and this guy just cleared me."

"This will only take a moment. They won't leave without you," he asserted.

"Yes, they will. They have no idea that I'm here. I have four children waiting for me in Cincinnati," I pled.

He was carefully examining my doxycycline, mentally evaluating the explosive potential as he slowly rotated the bottle at eye level.

"Those are my anti-malarial pills," I said, careful not to raise my voice or appear hostile.

The supervisor arrived and casually leaned on one of the posts. "We really appreciate your service, sir."

"Really?" I asked, restraining myself from having a post-Afghan meltdown, "Cause you're not acting like it. I just spent a year fighting actual terrorists, and you're treating me like I'm one of them."

One of the junior astrophysicists ran off to inform the gate personnel that I was being detained and would be there shortly. She was the only one of them who really seemed interested in whether or not the appreciation of my service included actually being permitted to make my flight.

I finally boarded the plane and they immediately shut the door behind me after cordially greeting me. I found my way to my seat and was relieved to see that the plane was perhaps a third full. I had the two seats to myself. Very pleasant.

The flight attendant was very solicitous and took very good care of me on the flight to Cincinnati. The flight was uneventful. Again, as the decent to Cincinnati began, the flight attendant made the normal announcement and then mentioned that I was coming home. The passengers applauded.

We landed and taxied to the island terminal. From this terminal you must board a shuttle bus to go the main terminal and make your way to the baggage claim. I was in a huge hurry to see my children, to be home.

As I made my way towards the shuttle boarding area, there was an airport employee who was providing assistance to people who needed to make connecting flights. I needed no such assistance, so as I made my way around this woman, she stepped out.

"Excuse me," she said.

I changed direction and tried to go on my way.

"Excuse me," she said again, stepping in front of me.

Knowing that no one had any reason to stop me, but not wanting to be unkind, I stopped, exasperated.

"I cannot allow you to pass..." (I'm about to revert to my basic infantry training) "without shaking your hand and thanking you for your service."

"You're welcome," I said, shaking her hand.

Puff of smoke. I was on my way as quickly as I could.

The long walk from the outer terminal to the baggage claim area was the last obstacle. I traversed it as quickly as possible, and as I neared the end, I could see a little girl hopping kangaroo-like. It was my five year old daughter, who was very excited. My total focus was riveted on her.

At that moment, I was passing an airline pilot who was walking in the same direction. He reached over and grabbed my shoulder and said, "Welcome home. Thanks for your service."

I was so totally focused on my daughter, I'm not sure that I even acknowledged him.

My thirteen year old son was beaming. My two year old son appeared excited, too; but I'm not sure if he really understood what was happening or was simply under the influence of the excitement of the others. I ran the last few steps, shedding my laptop bag and backpack, and knelt to hug my daughter and son, oblivious to the rest of the passengers passing through the terminal. My eyes stung.

Sweetness.

It was now real. It was over. The Afghan journey was over, and I was back in the arms of my children.

Readjustment is a difficult thing. The time change has really struck me since I got back home. The kids are just starting to get used to having me around. I've got projects to take care of as well. There is a lot to do.

It's weird, too.

Just a few weeks ago, I was in the hinterlands of Afghanistan, aware of the local happenings and the changes that were happening. I was aware of the reports of this Taliban leader and that village swinging one way or another, of what our next step was with the local ANP. Now I'm back in Ohio, and nobody cares about any of that.

It's weird.

I took my children to the mall the week after I arrived back home. I've repeated many times the quote, "America isn't at war. The military is at war. America is at the mall." As I drove towards the mall with my little ones in the their car seats, it occurred to me that I was on my way to the mall now, too. How odd. I laughed to myself.

But I am not one of them. They cannot see it, but I'm not one of them. I have been at war, and part of me is still there. Perhaps that's what we're actually purchasing with our time spent over there; the peace of mind to go to the mall and not think of Afghanistan or Iraq unless they see a report on the news.

I got an email this morning from Jacques Pulvier, who is still in Afghanistan and should be leaving in the next couple of weeks, telling of one of the teams that replaced our old team in the Tag Ab Valley, sometimes called the Tagab Valley. They had gotten into a fight there yesterday, and I could picture exactly where that ambush had happened; one of the places where they like to ambush us there in the valley.

Part of me will always be able to picture that area, that valley, the people, the khalats, the riverbed, the fingers that pointed from the mountain at the villages along the newly paved road. The Ala Sai District center that you can see from the town of Tag Ab; it would take nearly a half an hour to get there and as many as three ambushes to get back from there.

There are still people who I know working in that valley. There is more work to do there. It is the changing of the guard, though. There are new people, new teams, a new division.

Jacques has run his last mission into that valley, thank God. He's about to return from our forgotten war, another single victory; a live American soldier who has been there, done his best, and returned.

Last Look At Afghanistan Up Close

I remember arriving in Kabul just about a year ago. It was night, and we did a short convoy from the airport to Camp Phoenix. Today we left Phoenix for the last time and moved to another location from which we will leave the country.

Last year, there was nobody out and about as we rolled through the streets in the back of a five ton truck with a bench seat down the middle of the bed so that we faced outwards. All of the smells of Kabul were there in the night air; the strange not-quite-woodsmoke smell that I would smell thousands of times over the course of the past year, the occasional whiff of sewage, the smell of dust and exhaust and poverty.

The woody smoke smell would turn out to be a combination of wood and animal manure, shaped into round patties. Afghans make great use of animal manure as fuel.

We caught glimpses of a strange, ancient world blended with the 21st century; mud brick walls connected at times by electrical wires and the odd satellite dish. Dirt roads that felt the hooves of animals daily with Toyota Corolla's parked in alleyways.

Over the course of the year, I would spend hundreds of hours on the worst roads imaginable, out in the middle of nowhere, humvee working hard, and here would come the ubiquitous (and I am not using that term lightly; I mean ubiquitous) Toyota Corolla headed in the opposite direction, often crammed to the gills with Afghans. Sometimes it would be just one guy. I have never seen a woman operate ANY piece of equipment in Afghanistan.

Unless you count goats as equipment. I was thinking motorized transport or farm equipment.

Today we moved by armored bus, which is a step up from an up-armored humvee comfort-wise. We had armed exscort... in UAH's... but we were just like tourists on our way to a tour of the local cheese factory.

As we rolled through the streets, I took in the sights that no longer surprise me, but I noticed one thing that I never ever ever got used to.

Children sorting through a pile of garbage. I don't know if they were doing it out of hunger or out of curiosity or looking for stuff that could be sold, but that sight just screams in my brain. It may be that they are just industrious little capitalists, but to me it is a spear of bone-crushing poverty being lanced into my visual cortex.

It is visually painful. It is emotionally painful. It is heart-wrenching the way that the Christian Children's Fund commercials intentionally try to be.

Try seeing that for real; barefoot kids in the middle of a pile of trash, picking through it looking for God knows what.

Okay, so I saw that today... possibly, probably, hopefully for the last time.

There were a lot of other sights that I said goodbye to easily; the mud brick Afghan construction, burqa-clad women moving like blue trick-or-treaters down the side of the street, haphazard electrical wires strung on flimsy poles running between houses like a drunken spider web. I won't miss the general shabbiness, the vague feeling of quiet desperation, the feeling overwhelmed by the enormity of the problems; the destruction.

I am glad to be an American. We don't know what we've really got; we take it for granted. Overseas, our flag is a symbol of so much. It stands for things that citizens of other countries resent us for in a lot of ways, but they envy us, too.

Sometimes we are proud of the wrong things; we don't even know the preciousness of what we have. We are so lost in ourselves that we misidentify our real strengths; but they are there.

One thing that we take for granted is the intactness of our seemingly fractal society. Our infrastructure, which we sometimes become exasperated with, is so intact. Infrastructure; roads, bridges, electricity, water, sewage, garbage collection... it's so fragile. It's the stuff that takes years to build and lots of time to maintain, and it's the first thing to get blown to pieces when significant groups of people fight with each other over control of a society.

Our political system is robust; our wars are mud-slinging contests replete with slick graphics and such childish buffoonery as portraying opposing political candidates as having red palms, being puppets, and assailing their characters on all levels. There is no shooting. There are no battle lines. There are no ad hoc checkpoints where any evidence of support for the opposing candidate draws immediate execution.

Not only do we have the liberty to live our lives, for the most part, as we see fit, but we have the established Republic that gives us the freedom from internecine war and allows our work to stand.

This, of course, is what drives American anarchists completely insane, for they cannot possibly recruit enough nutcases to tear it all down. It takes work to destroy a country so thoroughly as Afghanistan has been destroyed.

Then it takes work and a long long time to build back up what has been torn asunder.

We live in a country where the work of our fathers and mothers still stands. We live in a world where destruction is a scheduled event to make space for new construction. We have throngs flocking to have good seats for the explosive-powered implosions of major structures, instead of throngs fleeing cities because of them.

We don't have so many tiny little graves. Afghanistan is full of tiny graves. I will not miss seeing them. I will not miss that javelin to the visual cortex that cleaves the heart.

I will not miss the incessant dust and dirt. I will not miss the constant question; does this guy want to kill me?

I will not miss being held in a Hesco prison.

God only knows what the future holds. I am not a youngster, and it is possible that I may not be called upon, or permitted, to do my part for my country again in such a way. I know that my children would like that. I promised a Colonel that I would not retire upon my return, and I will hold true to my word; but the fact remains that I may not be given another opportunity to perform such a service for my country, my family, my friends.

In short; it is quite possible that all of those scenes have been seen by me for the last time ever in person.

I am a volunteer; I had to struggle to get here, and it has been my great privilege and honor to have been here to do what I have done, see what I have seen, and hopefully make what contribution one man can make in one tour; to have served. Now the Afghan portion is over, and I have survived. I'm still in Afghanistan, but I'm in a safe enclave just scant yards from where the wheels of the Freedom Bird will leave Afghan soil for my last time. My days of conops and operational mentoring are over. Just a little more to endure before I can once again hold my children in my arms again and feel their warmth.

I hope that I never lose this sense of reality; that we are incredibly lucky to have such a place as America, that I have four healthy children who will have the luxury of taking it all for granted. I will try to tell them what I have learned of the preciousness of all that they have and all that we are, but how do you convey that to anyone?

Semper Gumby

Well, we still don't know when we are flying out of Afghanistan, and we don't know for certain when we will be released from Ft Riley to go home; but that's par for the course, really.

When things are constantly changing, as they have so many times during this deployment, there is a simple motto to keep us going; "Semper Gumby." Semper Gumby is Latin for "Always Flexible."

The ancient Greeks, the same good people who invented Latin, also invented Gumby. This was proven by the recent finding of a several thousand year old Gumby at the site of the battle of Marathon.

Okay... I made that part up. Except for the part about Latin. The Greeks did invent that. That part is true.

Semper Gumby does mean, "Always Flexible," though.

Gumby is the ultimate warrior. The Chuck Norris fans (Norissians) would disagree and cry out that Chuck Norris could roundhouse kick Gumby into next week; but that's not true. His head would go into next week, but due to his flexibility, his feet would remain in this week, and he would simply unbend himself back into the same time frame as his feet, thereby defeating Norrissian mojo.

Flexibility is the key. All else leads to insanity and pissing off the leadership who make the plans that require the ultimate in flexibility from those who must execute them with no visible means of support.

"With flexibility comes serenity. With serenity comes power. He who is capable of bending like the Gumby will pass through great forces without shattering to overcome his foe." -- Sun Tsu*



Gumby maintains an M-240 machine gun at an undisclosed FOB

It doesn't matter what someone in a position of apparent decision-making ability says, because it will change. Rigidity in the face of such rapid changes of direction will result in cracking, peeling, chafing, and an overwhelming irritation. Combat Rigidity Fatigue is a major contributing factor in many cases of PDCD (Post Dysfunctional Command Disorder.)



Gumby prepares to head out on another exciting patrol

Working with Afghans also requires a great deal of flexibility. Afghans will drive the mentally rigid to distraction with their sometimes unpredictable, seemingly whimsical behavior. Gumby was heavily involved in all of our mentoring and advising operations with the ANP.



Gumby mentoring the ANP on flexibility operations

Dealing with Afghan civilians requires a gumbylike flexibility, too. Nothing will screw up your timeline like an Afghan who suddenly decides that his 50 goats need to be on the other side of the road. Gumby is vigilant, yet flexible to deal with capricious Afghan conditions while on combat patrols.



Gumby maintains vigilant flexibility on a combat patrol

Gumbyish flexibility is a combat multiplier, which is militarese for, "it makes you fight better." Counterinsurgency operations require a particular flexibility. This isn't some barren wasteland where there are only two opposing armies. The enemy here dresses in no special uniform. His forts are mud-walled khalats that look just like every other mud-walled khalat. It takes flexibility to work your way into the cracks between the average working Afghan and the local Talibs.



Gumby says, "If you can't find a crack, go in a window."

There is a lot of beauty in Afghanistan, as well as the mind-numbing poverty and, of course, rocks. Gumbyish flexibility permits one the mental room to appreciate the quiet moments of combat, too. The peaceful serenity of a mountain stream is still the peaceful serenity of a mountain stream in the midst of war.



Gumby enjoys the peaceful serenity of a mountain stream.


If the Russians had Gumby, the Soviet Union would never have collapsed, the Berlin wall would never have fallen, and we would all be quoting Marx to avoid being beaten with sticks. The Russians did not have Gumby, because Gumby is all-American (the part about the ancient Greeks being made up,) and he demonstrates the amazing flexibility of Americans. Being made of gumbyite, the most flexibly tough element in the universe, he is the only thing that cannot be destroyed by a Chuck Norris roundhouse kick. If Chuck Norris and Gumby ever teamed up, they could conquer the known everything, and Gumby would let Chuck Norris be the emperor of everything because he is just that damned flexible.

Gumby saved the free world.




"Semper Gumby!"

* Okay, I made that part up, too. I don't know if Sun Tsu ever said such a thing, but you can't prove he didn't, either. He just didn't actually write it in his best-selling book The Art of War.

Out Processing Up The Chain

When you leave a theater of operations, you have to "out process." Out processing means filling out paperwork, clearing hand receipts* and making sure that you don't have any open issues, like legal issues or investigations. Here at Camp Phoenix, the headquarters of Task Force Phoenix (the people who I've supposedly been working for this year,) we are out processing for the third time. Each subordinate command has its own out processing, because each subordinate command has had some responsibility for us (at least on paper,) and some have actually given us equipment to use that they need returned.

Some of this has been purely ceremonial. We belonged in name only, gaining no support from that organization whatsoever. At least nothing that was visible at my level; dirt level.

We have been called heroes by some senior officers. I know a couple of guys who are in for hero-type awards, but for the rest of us it's just a verbal pat on the ass. The guys that I know who are in for hero-type awards deserve them; O and his old boss, MAJ Stone Cold. O saved an ANP's life under fire when the RPG he was firing exploded as he fired it, and MAJ Cold gathered up a bunch of ANP during an ambush and attacked up a mountain towards his attackers, breaking the ambush. Ferocious.

Ferocious is not what would come to mind if you met him in person without knowing what he has done. It's funny, but it's true. He is one of the finest officers that I have ever known. He does his job to the best of his ability with seemingly limitless energy and an underlying sense of humor about what he is wrapped up in. He's not a superman, but the heroes that I know are not supermen. The only thing that separates them from anyone else is what they do when the chips are down. There are no visual clues, and while O could be described as very confident in his abilities, he's not the cockiest man I know.

Actually, the cockiest man that I know is a demonstrated coward. He can't get enough of telling others how great he is, and he can't take cover and stop doing his job fast enough when a shot is fired.

MAJ Cold looks like the contract manager that he was before he came here. He carries no air of cockiness whatsoever. He carries an air of capability, but he carries no air of ferocity. But when he and his ANP were getting shot at, he dismounted his nicely armored humvee, grabbed his ANP by the shoulder, and said, "We're going up there," and he went.

And they followed him.

Soldiers tend to be cocky. Elitism is something to be admired, and the right to wear some badge or tab is a sought-after thing. But I'm here to tell you that the badges and tabs and patches and swagger don't make anyone a hero. You can't pick the real ones out of a crowd, and the only ones that you can know of are the ones who have actually had the situation thrust upon them and did more than many would. Not that doing one's job under fire isn't admirable; it is. There are many who do that; but that's the job. It's what's expected. We are soldiers. There aren't many who get out of the vehicle while bullets are flying around and they don't have to and they do more... not to be showy, but because there is something that they know needs to be done, and they do it. Nobody would have faulted O or MAJ Cold for staying inside their vehicles and continuing the mission from right there; nobody except them.

But the rest of us have been called heroes... it should have been accompanied by a clown horn noise.

There were some interesting things from the General's little out-brief today, though. You would expect him to have the statistics, the big picture. Apparently we made a big difference with the ANP. Ten times more of them were dying before we picked up the mission to work with them. District centers were being lost on occasion. Where we are working with them, they have lost no district centers, and their death rate has decreased to a tenth of what it was.

They still die ten times more often than ANA soldiers, but that's the nature of the beast. They are the softer target. They operate in much smaller numbers and they don't have the heavy weapons of the ANA.

There are stages of insurgency, and last year... the bloodiest year since we entered Afghanistan... the Taliban tried to take it to the next stage. They tried to take on government forces head to head conventionally. It didn't work out so well for them. The government of Afghanistan is operating in more places now than it was a year ago. I've seen it with my own eyes. Valleys that were contested a year ago are relatively peaceful, and valleys where there was no IRoA (Islamic Republic of Afghanistan) presence are now in the process of becoming governed. The boundaries of ungoverned Afghanistan are shrinking.

The Taliban isn't on the run, but they are being squeezed. Of course, the Taliban aren't the only ones out there. There are warlords and criminal gangs and some of the same players who helped push Afghanistan into chaos when the Soviets left. There are corrupt government officials, and there are corrupt Army officers and ANP officers. There are drug lords and there are villagers who will grow opium until someone forces them to stop.

Afghanistan looks like a kaleidoscope of problems, and it is. There is no quick or simple cure for all of this, and it is frustrating and confusing. I'd say that many of us feel frustrated and beaten down by this past year. Some of my brethren don't see any hope for Afghanistan. They come by it honestly, but I disagree. I see hope. I have seen progress. I have seen change; small, slow, but it is there.

The easiest answer is, "Nope; we're wasting our time here. This country will never amount to anything."

I can tell people at home that we are making a difference, we have made a difference here... but it is enormously taxing on the soldiers who are out there in little teams here and there all over the country. This is like doing occupational therapy with a severely brain damaged drug addict who suffers from delusions of normalcy and harbors resentments against the therapist. Oh, and the patient's evil cousin, who shares a love-hate relationship, keeps smuggling drugs into the ward.

Good old Cousin Pakistan. The Pakistani involvement is as plain as day to us. Most of us have seen Pakistani's here. They were employed, and they weren't on vacation.

I saw a sign today in, of all places, the JAG office. It struck me. It was a picture of two guys wearing body armor, weapons present, sitting on a crumbling khalat wall... it could have been anywhere in the country, and they could have been any of us. The sign said, "What have you done for the ETT's today?"

What indeed. Who made this sign, and why did they hide it in the JAG office among the Dilbert cartoons and all of the other stuff all over the wall? It struck me that this was the only original thought that I'd seen at Camp Phoenix. What should be the driving philosophy behind the whole organization is an anomaly on a lawyer's wall.

There is not a single one of us who were out there in the teams who feels like we were well-supported. There's a lot more that could be said about that, but that's the short story. We felt like we were truly "out there." We felt like this place was on another planet. If someone said, "Oh, they've got those at Phoenix," when we needed something, our reaction wasn't, "Oh, thank God! We're saved!" It was, "Crap. We'll never see it."

Being here brings feelings of resentment from ETT's and PMT's. We universally hate this place. It is a symbol to us of being out there, at the mercy of whatever unit was closest to us (a lot of that was a good experience... the 82nd and 173rd did good things for us a lot... but sometimes not,) and feeling like this place was a self-contained puzzle palace with no direct bearing on our success.

They sure as hell wanted us to wear their patch, though. None of us really want it. We aren't wearing it now. It was bragged to us today about how some staff guys had busted their hump to get us special antennas that we had to pull teeth from chickens to get ahold of. We never did see enough of them. We borrowed from the 82nd. We still didn't have what we needed. Nope, this place is a self-contained Peyton Place of social intrigue and we hate being here. Any place where soldiers have enough time on their hands to form a prostitution ring is a place where they are not connected to the war. Nobody goes out of their way to spend the night at Phoenix.

Where we were, saluting was basically your way of telling an officer that you wished someone would shoot him. Around here you can wear your arm out saluting. Officers are plentiful and salute-hungry.

Nope, this place is just another waypoint to do paperwork and justify their existence. O and MAJ Cold's awards have had to pass through here on their way to CSTC-A** for approval, and they still can't tell anyone with any degree of veracity where those awards are right this minute. They were submitted months ago, and I don't mean two. Actually, both of their awards have been downgraded once already. Nobody will stand up for these guys and really push to have them recognized as much as possible. O got a pat on the ass today, and his accomplishment was trivialized by calling all of us heroes. Yeah, yeah, talk is cheap and so are ARCOM's.

Every one of the senior officers who have spent all of their time here on this camp will go home with a Bronze Star, minimum. Every one.

So, that's irritating.

There is a feeling of accomplishment, and there is a feeling of wanting to grab the wily Afghan speckle-throated bull fobbit by the neck and shake it like a terrier with your favorite slippers, and there is a feeling of simmering tolerance for any amount of bullshit that they want to put us through so that we can go home and be with the people who truly matter to each of us.

*hand receipt: a way that the government has of giving you equipment that you need to do your job and keeping track of it so that you can return it when you are finished using it... but in the meantime, you are responsible for it.

**CSTC-A: Combined Security Transition Command - Afghanistan; they are Task Force Phoenix's higher headquarters.

Marking Time

Patience.

How much patience does it take to wait through wasted time while your kids wait for you over 7000 miles away?

How much patience does it take to wait for days to do ten minutes worth of out processing and then wait for days to do the next little bit?

How much patience does it take to out process at a place that you never in processed, just so that an intermediate command can assert its authority?

How much patience does it take to spend three days to go to that intermediate command to do their dog and pony show before you can finally go to the final authority and get your ass out of the country?

Less than I've got.

I'm sure that there will be more back at Ft Riley. There I will take my time and make sure that my medical stuff is straight and I have my I's dotted and my T's crossed as best I can.

Here, I will stand on my head, spit nickels, and sing patriotic songs if they want for me to. I know that it all leads to one place; home. It all leads back to my kids, and it has become like water... it all flows towards that sea.

There is a part of me that already misses being operational. There is a part of me that feels a sense of having abandoned the Afghans that I was working with. There is part of me that will forever remain here in the dust, mountains, fields, villages, khalats, district centers, and FOB's of Afghanistan.

There is part of me that will remain forever in the moment of recognition of the young man with half of his head gone; a moment of heartbreak and anger and powerlessness and denial and acceptance. So real that it will never go away.

There are other moments that will hold a part of me forever.

But those moments are also part of me now, too. Am I diminished by leaving a part of myself here or am I more than I was before by virtue of the same?

This is not the end.

In the meantime, there is patience.

Rugby Is A Mood Altering Activity

There hasn't been much of two things required for writing lately; time and motivation. The time issue is pretty obvious, there has been lots of travel. O, Maniac, and I are back at Dubs now, reunited with the original team. Everyone's got stories to tell, and everyone is fine... for the most part.

Mac and Cowboy have been key players in getting nearly everyone on the team into an exercise regimen called P90X that has yielded tremendous results for them. The change in the Cowboy is very visible. They are in great shape. O, Maniac and I were busy working with the ANP downrange until the day got pretty close, so we are in the worst shape on the team. Funny how that works. Most of the rest of the guys have lost all kinds of weight and are looking good. There are a couple of notable exceptions.

We won't talk about that, though.

Seeing the guys again is good. I have been the farthest flung from the team, winding up out east all by myself (no original team members around me,) so I felt a little out of place at first. I have also been wrestling with my anger and frustration with the overall American situation here. So my motivation to write has been low... when you don't have something good to say....

The original team has been working closely with the French these past few months, and so last night the French threw a little party for us. Our Sergeant Major secured some steaks and charcoal and the French brought a lot of French things, like different cheeses and baguettes and foie gras.

Most of the French are with the Foreign Legion. Legionnaires are really good guys, and all of the French soldiers are pretty good guys once you get to know them. There is a bit of a language barrier at times, but a lot of the French speak a little English at least. Some of them speak English quite well. We played some volleyball and then it happened; a rugby game broke out.

I played Rugby once in college as a stand in. I had no clue what I was doing. None of us knew what we were doing last night. A Foreign Legion Sergeant Major who is originally from South Africa coached us on it as we went along, and he was very patient and did a wonderful job.

We just knew that we got to tackle people.

It was more fun than human beings should be allowed by law. We wound up taking the net down on the sand volleyball court behind the FOB and just going at it. The Legionnaires were tough, but we finally wound up winning. I've got to try that P90X stuff, because the Cowboy runs like a squirrel on crack now. He's here, he's there, zipping around... running across wires... up and down the Hesco's... scoring "tries" (the rugby equivalent of a touchdown) and generally scooting about like a cocaine-enhanced arboreal rodent. He's got too much energy, and he's very quick. It has to be a great fitness program. It was hilarious.

Okay, I was kidding about the wire running and Hesco climbing, but the rest of it is true.

Everyone had a good time. Everyone wound up banged up, too. Injuries included various abrasions and contusions, bumped heads, kicked body parts, sand in the eyes, a couple of human bite wounds, a cut lip, and a broken big toe. Honorable wounds acquired battling against the French Foreign Legion on foreign soil. Now that's a good day of wholesome fun.

You can't help but have fun playing a game that includes something called a "scrum."

The team of guys from America beat the French Foreign Legion at rugby, but it didn't matter. Everyone had a good time, and we were all sharing a lot of laughs by the end of the evening.

This morning the doc told me that there's not much that can be done for my toe. It'll heal.

We still don't know exactly how we're getting back to Ft Riley, or exactly what day. Some of the plans briefed have included zodiacs, unicycles, and Radio Flyer wagons. I'm not concerning myself with it. I know that we are talking about a spread of a couple of days in either direction, not a year. Just another example of amazing staff work done by our joint services in the theater of combat operations.

Yes, God bless staff officers; every one.