I Wasn't Prepared For...

I had to hurry to get to Atlanta by 1300 today so that I could in-process for a flight that boards at 1815 this evening. Typical. Hurry up and wait. God bless the United States Army.

The wonderful people of the USO provide free wireless internet, which I am now gratefully using to post to the Adventure as I wait for my flight back to the war.

I had prepared for saying goodbye to my children. I set a calm and cheerful example, and being prepared for it kept my emotions more manageable. My kids did pretty well with it, and I'm pretty sure that being calm myself really made a difference for them. I was prepared to say goodbye to my family. It's not easy, but it's something that you know is coming. It's not a surprise, like when you know that you're going to get an innoculation... the pain isn't a surprise.

I was prepared for traveling in uniform... every soldier has been out in the public in uniform and knows that feeling of being something of a curiosity. It's like being a circus clown; people don't see the person inside, they just see a circus clown.

When people see you in uniform in public, they just see a soldier. That's why we have the responsibility to maintain the dignity of our uniform.

I would like to say that I've been nothing but supported when people have seen that soldier and it's me inside. People have said many kind and supportive things. People have shaken my hand and wished me luck. People have told me that they pray for me and all of us (prayers are always welcome!)

But I wasn't prepared for what happened today.

As my flight from Cincinnati to Atlanta was beginning its descent, the flight attendant began her normal spiel about landing and gates, and assistance finding your connecting flights and so on. Then she announced that I was on board and on my way back to Afghanistan after spending two weeks with my family.

The plane erupted into applause. I was stunned.

I nearly burst into tears. My emotions, barely contained under the thin fabric of my ACU uniform, rushed towards the surface and nearly made it out. Somehow, I managed to keep it all together, but it was close.

We arrived in Atlanta with only about a half an hour before my report time to the USO for processing for my flight to Shannon, Ireland and then Kuwait. I had to get a quick nicotine fix and find something to eat. They formed us into a line upstairs at the USO, probably 200 or more of us, and took us downstairs in two long lines. Soldiers and Marines paired two by two in a long line snaked through the airport towards the Army Personnel Command desk to do our formalities. As we wove through the airport, the throngs of travelers began to applaud.

I wasn't prepared for that, either. Again, I struggled not to lose it. It was like cracking the seal on a warm, freshly shaken coke. All the bubbles rush towards the cap, bringing the contents of the bottle along. That's what it felt like. I managed to keep all my fluids contained; but it was another close call.

How could I be so prepared for saying goodbye to my children that I could put a brave and cheerful face on and nearly lose it when perfect strangers applaud?
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Picture and Movie Time

Well, in the post below (also published today,) Blogger could or would not allow me to upload pictures. Gremlins; you know I hate 'em. Anyway, I ranted instead. However, the good people at Blogger are nothing if not astute, so they immediately fixed whatever problems the aforementioned gremlins had caused, enabling me to bring you these fine pictures. Enjoi.



In "Picture Time," I mentioned that it was strange to see these two vehicles parked side by side in the same livery. Here they are. This is just bizarre. Brave new world indeed.


Here are our intrepid EOD techs wiring up a couple of 60mm mortar rounds that magically appeared beside the road near one of our favorite ambush spots. Maniac called them in as IED's, which they weren't (yet.) There is a reason why we call him the Maniac.



Well, we had the C-4, might as well just blow them in place, right? Right. Nice.




This is a room full of poppy stems and bulbs. They were saving them for the seeds to plant next year. "What poppies? Those aren't mine. I don't know where they came from. That is just kindling for the winter fires."



Ummm... yeah. They score the poppy bulbs, which are just below the flowers on the growing plant, with razor tips embedded in wooden handles. Then they scrape off the black, tarry opium resin with a specialized metal cross between a spoon and a dustpan. Viola; opium. You can see opium resin residue on some of the bulbs. Kinda makes you want to lay around all day with a hooka, doesn't it?


Oh, looky what we found! Oddly enough, Mr. Taliban guy had an antitank mine (Italian, plastic, very nasty,) and four RPG rounds (Russian, metallic, very nasty,) buried within feet of the house in which his children lived. "What? Those aren't mine. My neighbor is angry with me and trying to get me in trouble!"

Ummm... yeah.

We took him with us. And the other guy. And the old man who was selling the opium.



Burning the poppy bulbs along with some marijuana we found onsite. We did a dawn raid on this compound to capture a Taliban bad guy and found more than we thought we would.





This is what we did with the mine. Boom. Nice. (Did I say, "Nice?")



Walnut trees in the Valley that Time Forgot. SGT Surferdude and myself were the only Americans to ever go up in there. Truly beautiful. They literally spoke a different language there.




The peaceful, beautiful valley counterpointed by RPG warhead tips. Art.



The bazaar in the little village in the Valley that Time Forgot. A dude in man-jammies, bazaar trash on the ground.


Doorways of Afghanistan. I should publish a coffee table book.

Right.



I can, however, show you where the doorways of Afghanistan are made. Fascinating, no?



Some of these kids had never seen an American before. Yes, I have read the book, The Ugly American, and it has nothing to do with my looks.



The Wily Afghan Black-Crested Rockhopper in its natural habitat. Nature photography at its finest. It took patience to capture these secretive creatures on film... errr... electrons.




Really cool house perched among the boulders. The mountain top in the background is over 12,000 feet. Our elevation here was about 7,800. GPS means never having to say , "I don't know my altitude."

The owner of the house invited us to breakfast and served us Nan that was like buckwheat pancakes and a buttery home-made cheese with chai. Delish. Afghans are very hospitable people.



The same 12,000 foot peak framed from outside the mouth of the Valley that Time Forgot. Yes, that means I was waaaaay the hell back there, and now I'm not. It was a big day. Sandcastle in the foreground framed by trees. More art.


At the patrol base we became the Afghan kids' version of Saturday morning cartoons every morning. Please get these kids televisions, as this behavior is really disturbing.




Ahhh, the beauty of Afghanistan.

Can you believe I figured out how to edit movies and put them on here? I'm an infantryman, you know. Wait until I figure out how to put music on the video. I feel like some kind of mad scientist. I know, I know... you all know how to do that.

I'm an infantryman, you know.
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Technology Failure, the Media, and the Osama Virus

Blogger has some kind of glitch that won't allow me to upload the eighteen pictures I had resized to post on the page today, so I'll just ramble for a minute.

Being home is both wonderful and weird. It's absolutely wonderful to see my kids. They are all doing well, and it's almost as if I never left in some ways. It's nice to know that the bond is just never broken. I don't know about them, but I have a newfound appreciation for them. It's a good thing.

Seeing my friends has been great, too; especially my old friends. It's a strange phenomena that most of you have probably felt... almost like time was suspended and you just saw them last week. You just kind of pick up where you left off. Neat. I feel like I owe many of my friends to see them while I'm here. Everyone has been so supportive while I've been in the year 1386 (that's what year it is on the Afghan calendar.)

It's also strange to walk among the people of 2007 and they have no idea of where I've been. There are no signs above my head, and so it's like being in stealth mode. It's strange because practically no one is really conscious of the war, especially the war in Afghanistan. There are no visible signs of the war here; other than on the news, I suppose. That which is reported is, to me, suspect and inaccurate. I will finish the topic of the mild feeling that I actually belong in Afghanistan more than I belong here right now before I get started on the other subject.

You will probably regret that I couldn't post the pictures instead.

My children (the older two, anyway) are acutely conscious of the war in Afghanistan, but most people are not. While the Afghan conflict is much more palatable to the average American, the level of consciousness is low. I do have to say that when people do know, for one reason or another, that I am currently serving over there, they are very supportive.

Yesterday I did a little picture show for the kids at my elder son's school and so I was in uniform. I was on the street later, still in uniform, when I was approached by a young man with a ponytail, a thin beard, and a guitar. He proclaimed himself a hippy and announced that while he did not support the war, he did support troops. He thanked me for my service.

That's a little different from the experience that my brother had returning from Viet Nam. His encounters with hippies involved dog feces and spittle.

So it feels weird to be in the society that I serve. At least for the moment. Not like Afghanistan isn't strange; I feel like I've seen all the characters in the bar scene in Star Wars in that country at one time or another.

Now the other topic... a topic of war just as serious as rockets and machine guns. We call them "non-kinetic" effects. In a manner of speaking, we are shooting ourselves in the heads. Our mainstream media, which is a funhouse mirror reflection of our national consciousness, is the hand holding the non-kinetic gun and blowing our collective brains out of our national skull in slow motion. The little bits and individual cells of gray matter are spinning in bizarre frame by frame motion out of our shattered national cranium, destroying our ability to think.

The media is a funhouse mirror because it consists of people. Any human organization is affected by the personalities and values of those people who influence, or manage, that organization. (Thank you, Mr. Obvious!) Remember who runs the mainstream media. These were the reporters who made their names reporting on My Lai, the Cambodian incursion, and all of the events of the Viet Nam war. To them, their greatest moments were moments that affected the national consciousness to change the course of that war. Beating the tar out of the military and especially a Republican president is actually romantic to them. It's like having their old mistress back.

I know from first-hand experience that the media doesn't report the news. I know from first-hand experience that there was not a single American reporter in The Valley during a very significant event in the history of the Afghan conflict and Afghan history. The media in Afghanistan sits in Kabul and reports reports. They look at the blotter at the headquarters and make up stories as if they know what they are talking about, as if they were there. It is insane.

The people of the United States are being treated like mushrooms... they are being kept in the dark and fed manure. The government bears responsibility for this as much as the media. I have come to the conclusion that we, as a nation, are afraid of the truth.

But the truth shall set us free... if we only accept it and embrace it.

We should always tell the truth. The Army should always tell the truth; good, bad, or ugly. Period. Instead, we occasionally lie. Once caught in one lie, we are always suspect.

Remember Pat Tillman? Why lie about a thing like that? Just tell the truth, accept responsibility for your mistakes, and move on. The loss of credibility has not been worth the few moments of thinking that no one would ever know that we screwed something up.

We had embedded reporters with us in The Valley. One problem; they were military reporters. No mainstream media outlet will publish what they have to say, because it is suspected of being merely propaganda. In short, we could be lying. Why would anyone think we are lying? Ummmm... could it be that we are known to have lied before?

Hmmmmm... could be! (Bugs Bunny moment.)

We should be the champions of truth, and we are not. We have become a nation of spinmeisters, liars par extraordinaire, and we like it! We value our ability to lie. We have come to treasure and reward those who do it well.

My father always told me to be very very careful of those who speak of themselves in the third person. Our media does that. "The United States today...," "In response, the United States said...,"

WE ARE THE UNITED STATES, NIMROD! I want to scream at them at the top of my lungs that pretending that you are an outsider is ridiculous. It is speaking of yourself in the third person collectively, and it has even crept into our speech with each other.

Hell, the very letters tell us the truth... U.S.

We are who we are. Pretending that we are outsiders so that we can pontificate judiciously about ourselves is delusional. Our media does that.

Do you realize that the rest of the world tends to give more credibility to Al Jazeera than to what our own people say? Why do they do that? Because we are delusional and we have been known to lie. We have an inflated sense of our own importance but we have forgotten what is really important. We are de facto leaders of the free world who are so self-absorbed and busy pondering our own navels that we fail to really lead and castigate those in our society who dare to.

The rest of the world takes Al Jazeera with a note of seriousness because at least Al Jazeera has their priorities straight.

Our national persona is that of a drug-addled teenager who is busily ignoring the real world.

Perhaps that is what gives milblogging the impetus that it has. Many do realize that the truth is out here. Just because we are collectively insane does not necessarily make us individually insane.

Don't get me wrong; I don't believe that this war is necessarily one of national survival at this point. Our nation will endure. What may not endure is our way of life. There will be a United States of America, but we may be either a secure country or an embattled society. Having been an operative in an embattled society, I am filled with gratitude that my children live in a secure society. The national fervor for ingratitude is another subject. Everyone should be grateful to be living here. We fill our minds with inconsequential problems of NO import. We have the luxury of having enough time on our hands and idle enough minds that we can actually make a big deal out of such inane things.

We are also quite self-important; so self-important and busy with things that are so ridiculously unimportant that we can do things like leave a year and a half old child in a car seat for the entire day to die of the heat. Why? Donuts for a meeting. How wrapped up in inanity can we be? The individual who performed that feat of fatal child endangerment and neglect is but a symptom of our national fascination with our own self-importance and what we set on a pedestal as important.

Seeing people who struggle mightily for their daily bread and have no bandwidth for such insanity brings me to view such events with different eyes.

They do have their own insanity, mind you. But pointing at the other mentally ill patient in the ward isn't going to help you get well.

The point is that we are engaged in a struggle that will not just go away if we leave. The Vietnamese were perfectly content to busy themselves with their own country after our withdrawal. These guys are not. It is more than a political struggle. It is a religious and economic struggle as well as a political struggle and it is the single greatest threat to our national security that can even be imagined. It is a threat to our way of life, and to our children's future.

These guys will not quit.

We can either fight as a nation, using all of our resources, or we can risk a slow protracted bleeding to death of our way of life and our values. While many of our values are screwed-up, many of them are what allow my children to live so safely and peacefully.

I've seen children who never knew if a firefight was about to break out in their hometown. In one recent ambush, the kids were dropping their bikes and scattering as the RPG's screamed in. I don't want my kids to live like that.

What are our strengths as a nation? Well, we have a very powerful military... we all know that. Our military is so awesome that nutcases here in the states ascribe it such tremendous capability that they wear aluminum foil under their hats to protect their brains from the Pentagon's mind probes.

We also have a powerful economy. We need economic warriors.

Who will go to Afghanistan and destroy their hopelessness with the might of our economic prowess? This war is not just military and political. We can warp Afghanistan from 1386 into the 21st century more quickly with private investment than with twelve divisions of soldiers. Afghanistan has tremendous mineral wealth and high unemployment. Anyone getting the hint?

Alas, we have no warriors in business. Not really. They are like weekend warriors... warriors in name only who pull hammies playing softball while sucking down beers. Where is the great American road warrior? He does not exist. The military tries to fight the economic struggle, but we are warriors, not economists and business leaders. We do the best that we can, but we never made millionaires out of ourselves. Oh, wait; I know of at least one millionaire fighting in Afghanistan. He is fighting the Taliban, not poverty. That's fine, because he is a warrior, too. What about those among you who claim patriotism but abhor weapons? Can you fight for your country economically? Can you employ the weapons that you are adept with? Can you defeat primitive resistance to change with economic opportunity?

Can you help a brother earn a paycheck and show a guy how to mine iron ore for fun and profit?

No? Too comfy behind the wheel of your Lexus to risk your butt in Afghanistan? We risk defeat on that battlefield, then. Oh, and take that American flag off your desk and quit talking like a sidewalk hero.

What's another strength of our country? Our information infrastructure. We are using that strength to strangle ourselves. Our own media uses its perverse bias to abuse our own country on the world stage. We are not just losing the information war, we are fighting for the other side. It's like boxing an opponent while insulting yourself in the third person and constantly slapping yourself in the face with your left hand.

It's pathetic, really.

We, as a nation, will be taught a terrible lesson, just as Osama promised. We are winning the war in Afghanistan, believe it or not. We are winning because the Afghans are actually helping; not all of them, but a committed few. Our nation was built by a committed few. The uncommitted many always benefit from the committed few. Have you ever noticed that we revere Thomas Jefferson, but we never built a monument to Alvin Thomas? Why? Because Alvin Thomas didn't do anything. He sat at home while Thomas Jefferson helped build a new country. Alvin did, however, write a letter to the editor of the local paper complaining about paying a toll to pay for the bridge that the new government built. He was a busy man who waved the flag on the fourth of July every year.

I have no room to speak about Iraq. My knowledge of the situation there is anecdotal at best. What I have had a glimpse into is the mind of the Islamic extremist and the mulch upon which it feeds... hopelessness, ignorance, and malleable minds filled with religious fervor.

Osama and his boys are like a virus. They are tiny and primitive, but highly adaptive and self-replicating. They are the HIV of human society on a planetary scale. Perhaps the bird flu... we seem to take that more seriously now. He's actually more like polio; he will not kill our country, but he may leave us crippled.

As a nation, we have the weapons to defeat such a challenge, but we are a schizophrenic culture who speaks of itself in the third person while enjoying endless delusions behind our welder's goggles.

Where we are winning, we are winning in spite of ourselves.

Wouldn't you rather have looked at pictures?






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Picture Time

Here are a few pictures of some of the recent happenings in The Valley.



The Valley has a lot of farms. They primarily grow wheat (already harvested,) corn (pictured,) potatoes, tomatoes, onions (they LOVE onions,) melons, and cotton.



Sunrise in The Valley. Pictures just don't do the mountains justice.




On patrol with the ANP. This guy's carrying a 120mm Russian mortar round that we captured. We blew it up later. BIG boom. This round can be used to create a powerful IED.




The radio operator during an operational pause in The Valley. We didn't know it then, but he had about a month to live. He was killed by the IED that claimed four of our ANP in September, 2007. He was the guy who was always right there when I turned to talk to the ANP Commander. Good, hardworking kid. This is what an Afghan hero looks like.




7.62 x 54R ammunition captured in The Valley. This type of ammunition is used in Russian-made machine guns and sniper rifles. It's actually a little larger than American 7.62mm ammunition. Very powerful rifle cartridge. This was part of a small ammunition cache.




Afghan blonde hash. To Afghans, marijuana in all of its forms is called hashish. This is the processed end result of the marijuana plants we found all over the valley. The Afghans smoke a lot of hashish.



Raw opium. They grow a lot of opium poppies in The Valley. We found and confiscated all sorts of opium harvesting tools during our searches, and about 4 kilos of raw opium. That's a drop in the bucket as far as the total output of The Valley, but operations didn't begin until the opium harvesting season was well and truly over. Politics. In any case, they use small pieces of wood with razor tips to score the poppy bulbs and then scrape off the black resinous sap that oozes from the cuts. That's raw opium. This was either for personal consumption or was waiting to be sold to a Taliban-controlled buyer to be transported elsewhere for processing into heroin. Afghanistan supplies 90% of the world's heroin, and this is where it starts.


ANA, ANP, and troops of the 82nd Airborne Division working together in The Valley.




ANP, followed by soldiers of the 82nd Airborne emerge from a village following a cordon and search operation in The Valley.



ANP soldier, foreground, and an ANA RPG gunner, background. The ANP and ANA worked very well together in my sector.



Searching a house where the Taliban were having chai within an hour of our arrival. We didn't catch anyone this time, though. This is a fairly typical Afghan compound. Note the steps made of mud, and the general construction.


An Afghan National Army M-113 armored personnel carrier (American made) with a Russian "Dashka" .50 caliber machine gun mounted on it. To an old cold-warrior like me, this is the height of strangeness. Seeing M-113's parked next to BMP-1 Russian armored personnel carriers, all painted in the same livery was just plain weird. It's a brave new world.


Our bedroom one morning in Afghanistan. My crew took turns at night sitting up with the NODS to provide security. There were four of us, a terp, and 100 ANP.



The landscape in The Valley is just plain striking. It is a harsh environment, but the Afghan farmers do a great job of water management on the local level.


Afghanistan can be visually stimulating.



Someday this country may actually have a tourist industry. I've already figured out where the golf course should go in The Valley. It will include a par-3 with a 200 foot vertical drop. Very challenging.



Our convoy coming up on a favorite ambush spot on the road in The Valley. Sometimes they hit you here, sometimes they don't. This kind of behavior is why they don't have a golf course and no tourist industry. There are a couple of prime skiing spots that need to be demined.



This is what it's all about. You can see a lot of the emotions of Afghanistan on their faces. Determination, friendliness, happiness, uncertainty, and trepidation are all there on one face or another. The children of Afghanistan are the future of Afghanistan, and when these children are educated and grown and live in an Islamic democratic society that works, there will be no home in Afghanistan for extremism. That is what will make our country and all the countries of the world safer.

It is not something that will be fixed overnight. And in the meantime there is more work for soldiers and police to do. Either we can do it, or our sons can do it for us. I know that I would prefer that my sons not have to do this.
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Leave

Well, it's finally arrived; my leave. I am scheduled to fly out of Afghanistan tomorrow, and I will be home for just over two weeks. I can't wait to see my children! I really look forward to seeing my family and friends, too.

I have a sense of unreality about the whole thing. It's strange. I spoke with a buddy, a DynCorp contractor here to work with the ANP, who has been on leave a couple of times. He had the same thing. When I first got into Afghanistan, everything felt new and strange. I didn't know what to expect. Bagram didn't make any sense to me when we left the flight line to eat dinner before they flew us down to Kabul International Airport (KIA.) I was straining to see out of the truck when we moved at night from the airport to Camp Phoenix.

A lot of this is reflected in what I wrote around that time. Now Afghanistan is normal. The Valley is normal. Seeing sheep and goats with enormous fatty rumps is normal. Sharing the road with camels is normal. Hearing the raucous braying of donkeys echoing through the countryside is normal. Carrying weapons, having a pistol strapped to my thigh, and riding in a six ton armored truck with a machine gun is normal. Driving with a 40mm high explosive grenade and a white star cluster on the dashboard is normal. Keeping an eye open for someone waiting to kill you is normal. Seeing at least one person in every crowd with unrestrained hatred wishing you dead is normal.

Cincinnati doesn't really exist. It's a distant memory somewhere in the back of my mind, an ideal that hasn't been realized. That's the feeling that I have right now. I'm excited, but there is such a feeling of suspended belief that I'm almost not excited. It's almost like I'm excited about an idea, not an imminent event. I'm looking forward to it on a conscious level, and I'm truly looking forward to it... practically longing for it, yet it just doesn't feel like it's really happening. My subconscious is truly lagging behind on this one.

For the past several weeks I have been really looking forward to seeing my city, to holding my children and kissing their faces. I've been planning to have lunch with friends, spending time with my family, and driving an unarmored vehicle on decent roads. Now it doesn't feel real. Perhaps it seems too good to be true.

Anyway, I'm surprised by the feeling.

On the other hand, I'm set enough on going that I would physically remove any obstacle in my path with whatever level of effort was necessary. No way anyone can keep me off that plane.

So they tell me that tomorrow I'm going to fly out of this place, a five hour flight to Kuwait. In Kuwait we will get a bunch of briefings, spend the night, and have everything searched and do the customs routine. We will schedule our connecting flights. We will then be locked down until we fly out of there, flying all night to either Atlanta or Dallas; then a connecting flight and I'm home.

How strange.

Skyline Chili, the skyline of Cincinnati, and all the familiar sights of my home city. No rocky heights towering above, no camels, no genetically aberrant sheep or goats, no IED's, no AK's, PKM's, RPG's, or Taliban. Paved roads. Traffic lights. Restrooms in every building. No buildings made of dirt. Electricity everywhere. Police who actually have time to give parking tickets and speeding tickets. No outgoing mortars firing. No explosions. Being able to drive anywhere I want without having to put a convoy together.

No body armor. NICE.

And then... the sight of my children... the physical sensation of holding them and feeling them breathe. Seeing the light in their eyes that means that they're alive. Seeing innocence again.

I'm working on my reality.

Perhaps while I'm there I can write a few stories down. There are a few to tell. You can't make this stuff up. Maybe I can post a few pictures. Everyone at home has a life, too, and they will be working and going to school during the day. I'll have a little time and much better bandwidth.
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How Can I Explain This?

This blog can only be updated on commercial systems. Military systems will let you get to your web-based email, but they will not let you get to the blogging sites. They are blocked as "personal and networking" sites. So, when they say that they do not block blog sites, they are not lying. They do not block them as blog sites.

They are also not really telling the truth.

Be that as it may, I can't update the blog while I am out in The Valley. So I must update it when I get to Bagram for a day or more. The last time I was at Bagram, it was for two meals and one night. I didn't have time to update the blog.

The very next day after the last blog entry, we returned to The Valley, but there was a change to how we were task organized for the mission. I can't describe why due to "keeping our cards close to our vest," but we changed the way that we were operating. It's more of an evolution of the operation than anything else. Operations are maturing. They still have not reached the state that they need to in the end. The change was at least a little bit welcome, as it offered the ability to sleep at night without having to wake up and strap on the night observation device (NODS,) to take a shower, and to have porcelain (or plastic... who cares) under my butt again.

We take a lot of things for granted as Americans.

We operated from the firebase, meeting up with our Afghan counterparts for the missions that we did with them. We did missions daily with them, many of them now vehicle-borne. On some, we dismounted and patrolled areas as a presence, to gather any intelligence that might be available, or fight whoever wanted to fight.

One patrol took us down to the main town that The Valley is named after. It has the dirtiest bazaar I've ever seen, and until recently the bazaar itself and basically the whole town was under undisputed Taliban control. Major Stone Cold bought a goat, and the guy who sold him the goat also came back to the district Police station and slaughtered it for us. It was really something else. We ate the goat that night. It was a special treat for the Afghans.

Every day, we patrolled the areas that had just a few weeks earlier been under such strong Taliban control that only the Special Forces went into the valley.

About a week later, we came back to Bagram for one night.

I did not post during that trip back, partially due to the finicky internet at Bagram. How irritating.

We returned to our firebase the next day and settled back into our new field routine. It was almost strange to have so many guys from the team in one place again. It had been over a month since I had seen O and the Maniac on a daily basis, and all the SECFOR guys were clearly ecstatic to see each other again. They were like a bunch of puppies.

The next day I was doing something in my tent... I can't even remember what it was... and someone came in and asked me if I was the mentor of a particular Afghan officer. I said yes, and he said, "Five of those guys got blown up by an IED down in the valley." The SF medics have one of them. I ran out, heart in my throat as I made my way over to their compound.

As I was on my way over, a medevac bird was taking off from the firebase with the fifth occupant of the truck. He would survive.

The SF were very understanding and very kind. They told me what they had tried to treat the man for, and then allowed me to see his body. He had bled to death on the way to the camp. He may not have survived even with immediate attention. He had some significant head injuries. I had a hard time recognizing him.

I had returned from the SF compound to our little compound when the others arrived. Three bodies in the back of a Ford Ranger just like the one that they had been in when it was shredded by the IED.

They were covered and wrapped in blankets covered in dirt and dead grass. I didn't want to look, didn't want to do this; but I had to. These guys looked to us for leadership and to know what to do when they didn't. Now here they were with the bodies of our comrades, looking for something from us. It was my job to provide some leadership and some guidance.

My American comrades knew that I was bereft, and they began to help with some of the aspects of what had to be done. The bodies had to be identified, sorted out, each put in a more suitable container, and some order made of what was going on. One of the officers said he knew where some body bags were in the medical storage conex. O began to organize the body bags. One of the medics, Surferdude, went to get rubber gloves. We would need them.

O knew exactly what I needed; someone to be the hard guy who was unaffected by the carnage that lay before us in the bed of that truck. Those guys who had been full of life were converted into things that you wouldn't want anyone you care about to see.

I set about trying to see who the casualties were. They were a mess. I will try to avoid being too descriptive, but there was a lot of unpleasant work to do. One of the dead had his ID card, a combination ID card and copy of his training certificate, in his shirt pocket. I looked at his face and had a hard time picturing him alive. When I saw the card, my heart sank.

He was a young man, just beginning to grow a beard, really. He had obviously been killed instantly. As Surferdude put it, he had sustained "injuries incompatible with life." They all had.

I had eaten with these guys, had had discussions about ethics and the future of Afghanistan with them, had trained them for the operation as best I could in the time available, had led them on missions nearly every day for over a month in the field. These were, in a sense, my men... I was responsible for them, and they had looked to me for guidance.

One of the others had also been very young. I recognized him immediately. His more horrible injuries hadn't affected his face as much. My heart sank again.

"Awwww, no!"

We carefully placed the remains of four Afghan heroes in the vinyl bags, tagged them in English and Dari, and the ANA loaned us their ambulance to carry the dead to the Police headquarters.

Some of the guys asked why the Afghans had brought the bodies to us. They seemed almost resentful. I explained to them that the Afghans looked to us for all kinds of help. When they weren't sure what to do, they looked to us. This was one of those times.

The next day the order came out that the Afghans were not to be given body bags anymore.

Initially, the remains of the truck were taken to the Police headquarters, but it was too upsetting to the Afghans to have it there, and the rats were picking through it for the pieces of the soldiers that hadbeen trapped in the wreckage. The truck was moved to our firebase, where it still sat beside two conex's burned by the Taliban; a daily reminder to me of the soldiers from my group who were so brutally killed.

The front half of the truck was gone. The engine was nowhere to be found. Everything forward of the backs of the rear seats was just gone. All that remained was the bed of the truck and the wheels. Scraps of sheet metal, most of the hood, the doors, and a portion of the roof lay in a heap next to the bed on two wheels.

I'm astounded that the bodies were as complete as they were.

I don't think I'll ever get the images of my Afghan friends' mutilated bodies out of my head completely. I know that I have no desire to watch horror movies for awhile.

It was a rough couple of days after that. The ANA lost a couple of soldiers during the same period, and while that was terrible to hear about, the deaths of my four guys was a huge blow to me. They had been on the return trip of the chow run. Each meal was prepared at the Police headquarters and then the group sent a truck to pick up the chow and then take the pots and platters back up for the next meal. Every time you move in The Valley, something could happen. It usually doesn't... but there are four lives that prove that it could.

I am a believer in what I am doing over here. I have a personal philosophy and a rudimentary understanding of counterinsurgency and the nature of trying to mentor underdeveloped governmental military/paramilitary organizations to do basic things. I believe that the world will be a safer place when Afghanistan is a peaceful country under the rule of a freely elected government and free of armed gangs who run the villages and countryside. I believe that the Police need to be the first line of contact that people have with the government in their neighborhoods, and that life with the police roaming armed in the streets must be better than life under the Taliban. All of that is on a higher level.

On a base level, I was/am pissed. I am hurt, and I am angry, and I want to solve this problem with my weapons. I want to find the cell that is responsible and I don't want for them to survive the encounter. I don't want a trial. I don't want any chance for corruption to set them free. I want to even the score.

Aggressive, ugly feelings.

Operations are continuing, but we are also getting back to the business of mentoring the Police at the Province and District levels in day-to-day operations. It's a two-sided sword. We split our time between The Valley and the Province headquarters and the more peaceful districts.

And then there are the occasional trips to Bagram.

In a few weeks, I will get to go on leave. I will get to fly home to the U.S. and see my kids and be in a place where everything is "normal." It will be a stark contrast to the mud buildings and dirt/rock roads. This is a beautiful country, but I miss seeing familiar sights. I miss my family and my friends. I really miss my kids.

I'll try to post some pictures soon.
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A Breather From The Valley

We got an unexpected break from The Valley today. We have been in one of the valleys that have been in the news lately, hunting the Taliban and their accoutrements with some small degree of success. We have been there for a month today, and we got a sudden break to go to Bagram for a day of rest and refit.

My humvee is in the shop as I type this, getting an oil change and some other important work done. I am going to get a haircut for the first time in over a month... the back of my neck looks like a heavily worn carpet. I ate cooked food that wasn't cooked by Afghans and eaten out of a communal plate with my fingers for the first time in weeks last night when we got here. I didn't even want breakfast this morning... but I did want hot, brewed coffee. Man, was that GOOD! Drinking lukewarm instant coffee out of a water bottle was getting OLD. Chai is good, and the Afghans can't give you enough of it, served in whatever cup someone just finished with and rinsed out with chai... but it's not coffee.

I've only got a little while... lot's of work to be done, the haircut to be had, etc... but I wanted to post real quick and give some idea of some of the experiences of the past month. I will go into more detail later (how much later, I don't know... whenever we are done, if ever.)

As I mentioned, I am a Police mentor. We have been out with the Afghan National Police as we searched the countryside and the houses for Taliban, weapons, and as it turned out, drugs. We have confiscated caches of weapons, explosives, and a few kilos of raw opium. We have also cut down a few hundred marijuana plants that would make a pothead cry like a baby. The "hashish" (that's what they call marijuana in all its forms) is grown literally everywhere in The Valley and all of its sub-valleys. It's like the local pastime there. I can smell it when I'm close to it now... it smells like springtime when the skunks are out seeking mates. Smell a skunk, look around... there it is; hashish. Sometimes, you just don't have time for it because you are busy looking for more dangerous things. Sometimes you've got the time to take some action. Sometimes it's just too much to deal with and you mark the grid coordinates and go about your business. Lots to see and do.

B-Mo O and the Maniac have their own teams elsewhere in The Valley, doing much the same thing. Some of us had altercations with the enemy, some of us haven't... we have all been looking for them with ardor. The ANP are where the ANA were five years ago; they need a lot of work, and there are a lot of problems to be solved, but for the most part they try pretty hard. They have actually done better than I have expected them to. Sometimes, though, my frustration level peaks. More on that another time.

O and I have had to laugh at having the same thought; we have both had experiences that made us think, "Wow, I feel like I'm in a National Geographic Magazine article!"

Counterinsurgency is a strange game. I've had chai, nan (flat bread,) and cheese with Taliban members; everyone acting like we actually are civil to each other. I've had chai with minor officials who were trying to talk me out of sending a guy who had senior Taliban leaders in his house within an hour of our raid to detention so he could be questioned. "Tea with the Taliban and chai with the bad guy." I've sneaked through the night with people who don't know how to sneak at night to wake a man up and arrest him before he can leave to hide in the mountains for the day, found deadly explosives and rockets buried three feet from his house, and had him tell me that another villager who wanted to get him in trouble had buried the stuff there. He left with us, wearing hand cuffs. He was an affable man, chatting up the ANP until I explained in detail to them that all that stuff laying out as if on display before them was meant to KILL them.

I've sat in Shuras as the village elders pled their case, insisting that they hadn't seen any Taliban in months, only to have a citizen on the outer reaches of the circle stand up and throw the "bullshit flag," recounting a recent event. That changed the song... it became, "What are we to do? They will kill us if we tell you anything about them." Lying is an art form in Afghanistan. At times it seems as if everyone is lying about at least some part of what they are telling you. Even the estimates of enemy strength are basically lies. There are always "200 Taliban" in whatever village or valley, lurking with their weapons, demanding food from the local populace and demanding immediate attention.

The more accurate number would be fifteen or so. They rarely congregate in large groups.

I have been alone in the middle of the night miles from any other American, a hundred and fifty Afghans and my "terp" (interpreter) as my only company. I've been told by hard-core paratroopers of the 82nd Airborne that I'm insane. O has had the same treatment. We tell them that it's our job, and it is.

I've been the only American to ever be in a certain place. It was absolutely beautiful; green, terraced fields climbing the mountainside to above 8,000 feet, water from mountain springs channeled to small canals that wind alongside the mud-walled houses around the valley's sides, Afghan engineering at its finest. The houses were as immaculate as houses made of dirt could be. We stood on a rock outcropping 200 feet (GPS is SO cool!) above the house that our ANP truck (I'm not sure that a humvee could make it up there... too wide) was parked next to and noticed that the mud roof had been swept. That valley was like a separate Afghanistan... everything was clean, the people were friendly, their clothing was immaculate, their children on the way to school in the morning, the fields well-ordered in their stair-step climb up the mountainside towards the 12,000 foot peak towering above. Shangri-La in the Hindu Kush. The two burned-out Russian armored vehicles a mile or so down the rocky road belied the perpetual tranquility of this valley hidden from time by huge fingers of ridgeline barely cracked open at the western end.

We stay awake at night, taking turns overwatching the security of our sleeping brethren with our night vision until day dawns and the Afghans begin moving about. On the mornings that we don't have an early mission we grab some extra sleep, awakening to find Afghan children watching us the way American children watch Saturday morning cartoons. We give them lollipops (thanks, Rosemary) and packets from our MRE's. They still sort through our MRE pouches full of the detritus of our meals, keeping whatever it is that they find interesting and strewing the rest about like a campground raccoon. Afghans are inveterate litterbugs. It is just as natural as breathing for them to drop whatever they are done with wherever they are.

The bazaars offer ample evidence of the Afghan litterbug at work; whatever wrappers or packaging on anything that is opened and consumed in the bazaar strewn wherever the item was unwrapped. No thought at all. Of course, they have no idea what a trash bag or barrel is. Cardboard, on the other hand, is never discarded unless it has been soaked with some type of fluid. Fuel for fires. The children will fight each other over our empty MRE cases.

I have two medics on my crew. Doc has office hours every morning and evening. He has performed minor surgery, stitched up wounds and lanced the most incredible ingrown hair I have ever seen or heard of. The hairball he pulled out of that guy would have made a cat blanch. Afghan medical oddities are truly something else. I could write more, but the details would make the hairball story seem like dinner conversation.

Afghan soldiers and American medics have a chemical affinity that is triggered by the sight of an open medical bag. The average Afghan soldier is drawn to a medic with an open medical bag like the backdraft from a fire seeking oxygen. They go together like peas and carrots... like peanutbutter and ladies... like waffles and cocaine (thank you, Forrest Gump and Talladega Nights.) Upon the opening of an American medical bag, Afghan soldiers begin a movement towards the aforementioned bag and its attendant medic that astronomers would liken to the behavior of stellar gases being drawn into a black hole. Suddenly, everything hurts. Mysterious ailments arise phoenix-like from the ashes of their health. While some merit serious attention, most are miraculously cured by Motrin and a few moments of attention from Doc. Doc is seriously considering the medical applications of Skittles for the stimulation of the placebo effect.

Doc has performed simple medical services that have implications beyond his treatment of a simple wound or headache. His least efforts have resulted in the opening of the eyes of dozens of Afghan villagers to the fact that American soldiers have a heart. It is the beginning of a new world for them. For those villagers, for the parents of the sick child who were given a pass to see the Special Forces medics, for the 70 year old man who fell from twelve feet up a tree and now is home and alive, we are no longer space aliens in a humvee. We are people who care.

I must keep my stories anecdotal for now; our operation is still in progress. But I have dozens of stories and hundreds of pictures from the past month and from the weeks preceding the operation. In time, I will be able to share these stories. Some of them are funny, some of them are unusual, and some of them are sad. Some of them are stories of quiet courage, like my new assistant, SGT Surferdude, who told me after a long mission in the middle of the night into an area that even the Special Forces had never gone that, "I have to admit it, I was scared." I would never have known from his actions that night. He did his job and did it well. That is courage. Courage is not the absence of fear, but the ability to keep going in the presence of fear. This American soldier, asked to do something with only one other American and forty Afghans in the middle of the night, going into an area where there was no hope of help within hours and no communication to ask for help if it was needed, followed me and did his job without hesitation. I never knew that he was scared until he told me the next day after we returned. We finally made it back to our little patrol base after noon. The mission had started at 1 am. Nobody except me knows just how courageous that man is.



Acknowledgments, Thanks, and a Response:

I would like to thank everyone who has supported me to this point in my deployment and in this blog, which has become something different than what it started out to be. My family has been incredible. My brother and my sisters have been so wonderful that I can't describe it. My brother has been taking care of business for me and my sisters have been keeping my kids connected to the family. And they sent me stuff that my crew has loved... like Montgomery Inn Barbecue Sauce that livens up the MRE's nicely. I'm saving the Skyline till we're all back at Bagram for more than a day. I've got to find some hot dogs and shredded cheddar... I'm tired of trying to describe Cincinnati Chili... they've got to try it to understand.

One extremely dedicated reader has sent me letters nearly every day that I've been out in The Valley, including a card that plays, "All-Star" by Smash Mouth when you open it... something of a theme song for my crew now... thanks for all of your encouragement with my writing and raw enthusiasm. Thanks for the Skyline and other stuff, too. You're a sweetheart!

Thank you to Rosemary, who sent lollipops that make us popular with the kids and 24 (yes, 24) soccer balls. The crew went through the chocolate like locusts in a Bible story. The crayons caused a riot on the main road one day and on another calmed a two year old with a fever.

To the very worldly-wise browser who posted this comment: "Um, didn't we win this war?" I would like to say, "Um, the calendar for this year is 2007, not 2012." No successful counterinsurgency has ever been won in less than ten years. There is a lot of work to be done here; and for the Afghan government and the young Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan to survive, the Afghan National Police must be capable of being the first line of interface with the people in the villages. The ANA and the ANP must be capable of operating on their own, and they must be reputable organizations that have gained the trust and respect of the people at the grassroots level. Life with the ANP on the streets must be better for the average citizen than life under the Taliban. Then and only then will the Taliban have a hard time finding safe haven among the populace. They will be treated as the criminals that they are, and citizens will not tolerate their operations in and around their homes. They will call the Police.

There is a lot of work to do, and some of my counterparts on another PMT gave their lives recently while doing it. The entire team. When you are out there all alone and things go bad, they have a tendency to go horribly bad. Trust me, MRJ, there is still a war here. I think that we are winning the war, but we haven't won it yet. By "we," I mean the Afghans and the Coalition (NATO.) This is not all about us, but really it is about Afghanistan... a beautiful country and a strong people held back by hundreds of years of warfare, strife, tribalism, ignorance, religious zealotry, and being the pawn of larger powers who have used it as a venue to mess with each other. That includes us (1980's... when it was convenient to mess with the Soviets.) We have to realize that in order for us to be secure, Afghanistan must mature so that it is not a safe haven for terrorists. This is not the only haven that must be denied terrorists, but it is the one that I am working on.

Thanks for the declaration of victory, but it's a bit premature.
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