Our First Taste

The following is an account of events that occurred several weeks ago. It was not the first time that we had been near incoming fire, but it was the first time that we were part of the specific target. The rocket that impacted near us one day as we entered Bagram was simply a “pot shot” taken at that large base. I have omitted only minor details of the attack, and only to avoid giving any operational information that could be at all useful to anyone.

It was about 1020 hours. The Maniac started the coffee and O came down the walk as we sat outside enjoying the quiet and the coffee. O had just topped off his coffee and was refilling mine when the idle chatter was interrupted by a loud “CARROUMP!!”

“That’s not good,” the Maniac opined as his butt lifted about an inch off of his folding camp chair. About five seconds passed and there was a terrible screeching noise… a low buzz with a high pitched shriek overlaid upon it.

BOOM! The glass and doors of the khalat vibrated. Loose dirt and chunks of dried mud shook loose from the khalat wall and sprinkled the gravel and concrete.

“Rockets!” said the Maniac, ducking into the doorway of our concrete room. “Hey man! Get in here!” O was just finishing off topping my coffee cup.

“Hey, almost done with the coffee,” I said. O was walking up the walkway towards his room. He stopped about halfway, turned, and said, “Are those rockets?”

“Yup, sounds like rockets.”

He turned and continued up the walk to his room. By the time I was into the room, the Maniac was already in his ACU pants and was finishing putting his socks on. He was ready for a fight. I started into my ACU’s, and within three minutes we were all suited up, including armor. Several more explosions sounded within the limits of the outer wall of the FOB. The Maniac was out the door, weapon in hand as he prepared to defend what the guys in the other compound referred to as, “The Alamo.” I was about 30 seconds behind him.

As I was on my way out the door there was a loud explosion that felt very close. “Son of a bitch!” yelled the Maniac. “That one was really close! I think it was one of ours… are they supposed to shoot that close? That was right out on the berm!”

As I reached the roof, the Maniac was pointing to where the round had hit. There was still smoke coming from the point of impact, about 250 meters away. “See? It was right over there! I saw it hit, and I’m kicking myself for not ducking. I saw it hit, and I thought, ‘hey, that’s a mortar’ and then it went off. That bastard was really loud! Now I’m kicking myself in the ass for not getting down when I saw it hit.”

The mortar crew was firing the large mortar to the southwest of the FOB. The Maniac, O and I were on the roof of the khalat. We peered over the mud parapet and observed the rounds detonating to the southwest, out on the area that was used days earlier as a machine gun range; out on the ground that we had stood on a few days before, showing the staff guys where some specific sites were. There was a flash and a mass of dust and black smoke. Seconds later, the report… “Crump!” The smallest mortar chimed in, the smaller rounds noticeable in the difference, but still deadly.

The handheld radio had died as O attempted to report to the team leader in the other compound that we were all okay. We were “out of comms” with the other compound.

The three of us watched as the mortars fired. The ANA checkpoint to the west began firing, and some of the heavy crew-served weapons began firing towards the mountain to the south and into the ravine that separated the FOB from the base of the mountain. Some time later we observed several ANA Ford Rangers and two humvees roll out to the southwest towards the finger that was used as the machine gun range. Some explosions were visible near the trail humvee as it rolled along the dirt road. We debated what these explosions were. We would learn later that they were hand grenades that one of the guys was throwing over the low ridgeline to clear that area.

The humvees pulled out to the edge of the finger and we heard the reports of automatic weapons as they fired into the ravine. We could see no other activity. Minutes later the silhouettes of several helicopters were seen and the sounds of “fast movers” overhead could be heard. The humvees and ANA vehicles returned from the finger.

The whole thing had taken about an hour and a half, but it seemed like 20 minutes. We were all happy to have made it through our first incoming with no injuries, and we had all reacted calmly and matter-of-factly to the fire.

We’d had our first taste, and we had weathered it well.
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Father’s Day

It’s Father’s Day. This is obviously not an Afghan holiday. It is Sunday, June 17, 2007. The internet has been down on the firebase for several days, and today I got to check my email for the first time in awhile. It moved really slowly, though… I could only answer a couple of them before my time was up. We also got mail for the second time in a month. There was still joy at re-connection… to know that I am still connected with the folks back home means the world to me, and to my compatriots. This will not be posted until tomorrow night at the earliest, but that’s the way it goes.

Today is a day for me to think of my father, who passed away twenty years ago, and to think of my children. I thank God for my children, for taking care of them, and for the people in their lives who care so much about them and take such good care of them. I am grateful, and I am honored to be their father. I miss them so very much. As hot as it is here, as much as we’ve been shot at, the lack of air-conditioning, the various and sundry privations are no match for the single greatest pain of this deployment… how much I miss my kids.

I’ve been so blessed to have gotten to hear news about them, how they are doing… and to be able to picture them in my mind’s eye as they have done their living in my absence. I’ve been able to picture my oldest daughter, my firstborn, placing first in one of her Irish dances at a Feis. This is an achievement she’s been working towards for years. I’m so proud for her. I’ve been able to picture my oldest son playing baseball and making First Honors at school for the first time. He’s getting to be a better student, making use of his wonderful mind. I’ve been able to picture my younger daughter swimming without her flotation device and chiding a boy her age for trying to impress her while he still wore his. She is so perceptive and funny. I’ve been able to picture my youngest son enjoying feeling the ocean waves for the first time, and clinging to a ladder while pushing his older sister back down with his other hand. He’s so hilarious and such a little man.

I’ve been blessed. I have no right to have been so blessed, but I am. My eyes are welling with emotion for them right now… not one emotion, but so many. I feel like my chest is going to explode.

I miss them so much.

A driving force in my sanity is being secure in the knowledge that right this minute, I am exactly where I am supposed to be. I am here for a reason, and nothing that can be done, said, written, or screamed can dissuade me from that knowledge. The pain has a purpose, too. Perhaps it is so that I can be more grateful for the blessings that I have. Perhaps it is because freedom isn’t free. A price has to be paid, and that price isn’t always life, limb, or blood. Sometimes it is time spent away, pain felt in the heart, sacrifices made not only by those who are here, but by those who are there. My children miss me, too. They suffer my absence, too. This is a Father’s Day that they will never have with their dad. They are buying freedom, too. They are little heroes, and almost nobody knows it.

I am here as much for them as for any other reason. There are many reasons why I volunteered to do this thing, but certainly they are a big part of it. I want for them to live in a world that doesn’t include watching events like those of 9/11. I want for them to live in freedom and liberty. I want for my sons and daughters to live long and happy lives without having to experience war. My oldest son is a young warrior; I recognize the signs of a young man’s mind with a warrior spirit inside. I was one once. Only a few years from now he will be of military age. I want for the world to have settled down by then. I don’t know about my youngest, because he is still far too young, still a baby, really. I am doing this for them, so that hopefully they won’t have to.

Call me a dreamer. Call me an idealist. I don’t care. All I can do is what I can do, but I will do what I can. I can’t stop the world from spinning, and I can’t single-handedly stop Osama or Al Qaeda. But I can do my little part. Hopefully it will make a little bit of a difference. A lot of little differences add up to a big difference.

There are a lot of thoughts, feelings and emotions that go into what I am doing in Afghanistan. I do have hope for this country and its people. I do feel for the children of Afghanistan… I see my own when I see them… and I do have hope that by freeing the minds of these people and making a difference in their lives that we can make ourselves and our children safer. But today is the day for my thoughts, feelings, and emotions about my children. There are more than I can possibly express, but a few of them are here. They are here primarily so that I can re-experience what I feel right now when I read what I have written years from now, and so that perhaps some of my friends can get a sense of what I think about on such a day in Afghanistan.


The sky at night here is a wondrous thing. The stars are so beautiful, and there are so many of them. The nights here are clear and dark, and the sky is littered with so many stars that it’s incredible. When the moon was full, it was nearly blinding in its brilliance. The moon has not made an appearance for a couple of weeks… it was so strange; one night the moon was nearly full, brightly illuminating the landscape with it’s glow, the next it was gone. The last couple of nights there has been a sliver of moon just sinking towards the western horizon after the sun has gone down.

This is the same sky that hangs above my children at night. I am 7000 miles away from them, but the same sky and the same moon look down on them at night. We are not so very far away, I think. But I cannot see them whenever I want. I cannot hold them in my arms, cannot kiss the soft skin of their faces. It will be months until I do. I can’t wait.

What I can do is rejoice in the knowledge that they are alive and well. I rejoice in the fact that they are well cared-for and they are bathed in love. I rejoice in their young lives. I can respect the sacrifice that they are making, giving their father for their country; a choice that they did not make, but the results of which they bear. Today is Father’s Day, and I’m so very honored to be one.

There are a lot of deployed fathers out there tonight. I wish each and every one of them a Happy Father’s Day and a safe return to their children. I wish each of the children to have their parent home safe and soon.

I’m going to call my children now. Thank God for my kids, and thank God for cell phones.
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The Bastard Children

We’ve decided that’s what we are: The Bastard Children. There are just the three of us, at a FOB where we are tolerated but not embraced, our own supply lines non-existent. We prepare to conduct our mission, not knowing when.

In the meantime, we do what we can to stay busy. We have constructed a simple training plan for our “clients” and some tracking tools to follow their progress using excel spreadsheets. Too bad I never learned to do Access database development. We can do without it, though.

Life has settled into a routine. We may or may not eat breakfast, but we always make a pot of coffee on our Afghan stove that the Green Mountain Maniac secured for us. We then sit and enjoy a few cups of coffee and talk about business or whatever comes to mind. The sun comes up about 4:15 around here, so by this time the sun is well up in the sky, but it is still relatively cool in the shade. It’s funny what guys will wind up talking about.

“Silly rabbit, trix are for kids,” was brought up in the context of something silly someone else had done. B-Mo O stated that he’d had a skate board when he was a kid that said it on the bottom of the board. That brought up the subject of skateboards, then snowboards, half-pipes and skis.

“Hey, what cereal was that for, anyway?”

“Lucky Charms?”

“Nah, that was the leprechaun.”

“Sugar Pops?”

“That was Sugar Bear.”

“Oh, yeah.”

“It wasn’t Frosted Flakes, that was Tony the Tiger.”

“Captain Crunch… that was that stupid captain.”

“Froot Loops?”

“That was the parrot.”

“Trix! It was Trix!”

“God, we are morons.”

We have taken to running on an uneven dirt road that winds around the inner perimeter but within the outer Hesco walls of the FOB. In some spots there really isn’t a road, just dirt covered with scrubby brush. We measured it with the Garmin GPS, and it came to exactly 800 meters… exactly a half a mile. We’ve been doing four laps… 2 miles a day. At first we were doing it in the evening, but we’ve decided to vary our times so that we don’t set up a predictable routine. For a couple of days we did it before lunch. The temperature has hovered near a hundred degrees while we did that. We’re amazingly well acclimated to the high temperatures now. At 5300 feet, you can feel the difference running. The uneven ground strewn with rocks makes it more difficult. You can’t establish a rhythm, and your stride is by necessity choppy and as uneven as the ground. It sucks, but you feel great when you’re done. Our goal is to work up to 5 miles… ten laps around this course that has all the smoothness of sheet copper that’s been beaten with a ball peen hammer and strewn with rocks.

I am the slowest, finishing several minutes behind the other two. B-Mo O, being eleven years younger, is much faster… even though he smokes. Green Mountain Maniac is a couple of years older than myself, but doesn’t smoke and is actually a physical freak for his age, being in astounding condition. He is addicted to weight lifting, becoming cranky as an old goat when kept from his weights. I smoke… gotta stop that. You can really feel it while running at this altitude. I do it, though… and I’m getting faster and more comfortable all the time.

We have no air conditioning, but that’s not our biggest problem. The concrete floor of our garden apartment draws moisture from the ground, creating a humid tropical feeling that is truly special. I think it has made a very positive difference in our acclimation. We do have a fan, though. The Maniac devised an ingenious plan to makes screens for the top of the windows (about a foot above the sandbags) using empty sandbags cut along the seams and taped to the frame. This has made something of a difference in the climate, and has resulted in only three times the outside ambient humidity within the walls of our sanctuary. He’s really a handy guy, and his hyperactive tendencies mean that he is seldom still, always looking for things to get his hands into. This often results in physical improvements to the AO (Area of Operations.)

He has fixed the dilapidated showers twice now.

We bought a bunch of movies from the vendor who sells movies with a lot of what we think is Chinese all over the covers. They are American movies, but they vary greatly in quality. During one, the silhouette of a man heading for the popcorn stand suddenly appeared, making his way to the aisle. One that I purchased for two dollars (the going rate for these knock-offs) started with Russian dubbing and Chinese subtitles. It took me several minutes to get it set to English with no subtitles… the sound was a quarter of a second off from the video. While screwing around with the Russian menu I managed to get it running with Russian audio and English subtitles that had nothing to do with the actual dialogue. It was hilarious! The subtitles depicted a flirty conversation between a man and a woman while two men were speaking Russian to each other in serious tones about a serious matter and their lips moved in English. Whadya want for two bucks?

There is one computer here for MWR (Morale, Welfare, and Recreation) use. There are over 30 guys who use this computer for keeping in touch with the people back home. Time on the computer is hard to come by, and sometimes it doesn’t work at all. I’ve taken to writing emails on my laptop and putting them on a thumb drive to cut and paste into the body of the email once addressed. I'm doing the same with the blog now, too.

So... overall, we are good. A couple of exciting times now, but we are all whole and healthy.
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Our New Home

I'm not sure how to write about this, but I'll do my best.

We are in the middle of nowhere. Actually, we are at the intersection of the Valley of Nowhere and the Valley of the Green Giant. I just haven't been able to see the Stokely water tower in the distance, but I know it's there. It took us a couple of hours over mostly bad roads to get here, and that ride was even more beautiful than the ride to Mehtar Lam. The farms and fields and trees are similar, but the valley is more spectacular than the rolling hills around Mehtar Lam. Lots of rice being grown, no apparent lack of water, lots of greenery until the mountain slopes begin to rise from the valley floor.

Here I've seen home-grown engineering like nothing I've ever seen before. Afghans are pretty much masters at managing water on the farm level. If they could do that on the national level they'd be in business, but that's another story. On the individual level, they do some fairly amazing things with primitive tools. Like parallel streams, one about 5 feet higher than the other. I've seen them carry a farm stream over a trench with a simple aquaduct made of branches and mud. I've seen them do some things bringing water into their paddies that people would pay to have in their back yards. They do all of this with the simplest of tools.

The children still break my heart. Today we did a convoy movement... only three vehicles... and when the children in each little village realized that American vehicles were coming through they came running out... mostly too late. It must have felt like missing the ice cream truck felt when I was a kid.

Here's a heartbreaker... a kid who for the second time (uh... that would be both times I've seen him in my life) signalled that he wanted a pencil and paper. He wasn't asking for candy, or for water even; he wanted paper and a pencil. I'm going to get him a pad and something to write with at the PX and toss it to him when we go by again tomorrow. An Afghan kid who wants to write... that's the future of Afghanistan.

We've got a huge challenge on our hands; the Afghan adults. The ANA have advanced a lot. Corruption is down, logistic efficiency is up, and the overall professionalism level has really gone up over the past several years. We are not working with the ANA now. Now we are working with the ANP (Afghan National Police.) They are not a Police force like an American would think of it... at least not yet. First, they must defeat an insurgency in their neighborhoods.

They are at this point more like the local armed militia. We are to work with them on Infantry skills as well as community policing concepts. They need to be able to defeat the Taliban when they encounter them, all while engaging the community. Sounds simple, doesn't it?

It's not.

The leadership are reluctant, possibly frightened. The soldier/policemen are ill-led. There is no direction, and no code of ethics. They have no professionalism. All of this will have to be built from the ground up.

They see no reason to change. They are getting paid for doing nothing... why should that change? One man with extensive experience in Afghanistan recently said, "Afghans are among the hardest working people on Earth... until you put a uniform on them." As we engage these leaders, we find a ton of excuses. We don't accept the excuses, but we must work through them. They try to tire us out with frustration. We will not give up. I've heard these excuses before... at homework time and bedtime. They really are that simple.

Afghans surprise me with their child-like qualities. It helps in this role to be a parent. I've seen this stuff before... from little kids. Nobody has ever made them accountable... at least not their public servants. The accepted norm is that they shake down the populace as a benefit of their office.

Afghanistan will not change to the extent that this country really needs until at least the next generation. The kid who points to his palm as we roll through, symbolizing his desire to write; he is the future of Afghanistan, but only if we don't quit on his dad. It's funny that we need to secure our own safety by teaching another civilization how to grow up.

We will teach these guys that they can defeat the Taliban when they meet them. The ANA did the same thing, and now they generally tear up the Taliban whenever there is a confrontation.

Once there is local security, all kinds of positive things will happen for the citizens... schools, water projects... all the stuff that people have time to work on when they aren't concerned about being shot at or blown up.
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Today

We are moving today. Waiting for a Lieutenant Colonel and his convoy to come here and get right this minute. Last minute check on the email... the people who write me warm my heart and keep me connected and sane. I love my friends.

A couple of days at Bagram and then we are off to the hinterlands. It's supposed to be beautiful and dangerous there. I'm not sure of the internet situation there. Another wall of the unknown... these walls are always paper; you just crash right through them and then what's on the other side is what it is. It was always that way... but I just couldn't see it behind the paper wall. This is that way, too.

Another paper wall. At sixty miles an hour.

Most times they don't hurt... much. See you on the other side!
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Farewell To Dubs... But When?

Someday soon it will be farewell to Camp Dubs. I cannot explain our new mission, other than to say that it is a mentoring mission along the lines of the ANA mission, that we are moving to the east, and the area we are going to is not known for it's friendly treatment of Afghan National or Coalition forces. That would be putting it mildly.

It isn't precisely clear when we will be leaving here. We know that first we will go to a larger base and then to a very small camp out near the area we will be operating in. There will be lots of challenges, and the living situation is described at this point as a tent.

Well... okay, then. Whatever.

We feel that we have the best mission out of the whole team. More difficult, in a more dangerous area, with the potential to get some work started that will probably take years to complete. We are starting a project from ground zero, and it is a blank slate.

There is not much information available about the people that we will be working with on the Afghan side of the house. We will be the ones to gather that information, like who is who and who is tied to who by what kind of link or activity. Some of them will not be happy to see us, of that we can be sure. The appearance of an American Army mentoring team is like serving notice that the corruption is going to come to light.

We cannot do anything to stop the corruption other than to document it as we find it, and report it. We can set an example. We can disapprove. We cannot stop it. But the beginning of change is to shed light on it. Some of it may change during our tenure, but a little progress will allow acceleration later.

There are other Afghan institutions that have seen great change in the past five and a half years. Those changes are bearing fruit. The ANA used to be a top-heavy, thoroughly corrupt, inefficient organization that hoarded supplies needed by soldiers in the field and had no accountability for any of its weapons or equipment.

There are still practices in the ANA that would make Americans cry out for an investigation and the incarceration of those responsible. The Afghans have been doing business a certain way for literally thousands of years... and we call it corrupt. Bribes, nepotism, gangsterism... these are all ways of life for the average Afghan. If you find yourself in charge of supplies, you don't just issue them, you charge the user. Or you hoard them.

People who have had nothing in the past often become packrats when they actually have something.

There is an enormous amount of money being spent here. Much of it does, in fact go to waste. On the other hand, progress is being made, and patterns of accountability are being established. Little by little, entities are changing. Afghans are by no means stupid. They see angles... all of the angles. There are honest Afghans and there are corrupt Afghans. There is a lot of cronyism. There are literally "mafias" within organizations that gain control of a certain commodity and use it to make profits for themselves. Supplies disappear. Pay is misallocated. Ghosts are "paid." Money lines pockets.

This is the way that business has been done in Afghanistan for thousands of years. It is a pattern of behavior that holds the country back as much as the inter-tribal distrust, hatred and warfare that has crippled this country to the present day. It is not something that is going to change overnight.

Afghanistan is like a diamond in the rough. These resilient people are not stupid, they are not lazy (I've seen Afghans do things by hand that an American simply would not do without equipment... and they keep at it until it is done,) and they are not hopeless. They need to be shown a new way of doing things. A lot of them simply don't know any better, or they cannot change the system by themselves.

We are still in the picking through the aggregate stage, trying to unearth the diamond. Parts of the diamond show through the rock and dirt clinging to the jewel, small glints of light making their way to the beholder's eye. Other parts of this stone are still securely embedded in the worthless stuff that stubbornly clings to the yet to be revealed gem. The hardened detritus of ages that seems so securely bonded in place will not give way all at once; it takes tenacious persistence to unearth this diamond.

Once that is done, there is time to cut and polish the stone to shine in the crown of Asia.

Afghanistan has so much potential. These are tough, hardy people. They are smart, if misguided. They are trapped by years of tradition that bind them to corruption, violence, age-old grudges, and death.

What we are doing here is lost unless the other pieces of the solution eventually come into play. Afghanistan has for too long been the backwater hillbilly heart of Asia. Landlocked, mountainous, isolated both by choice and by disregard, time has stood not quite still. This country is like a funhouse mirror of history and development. Part stone age, part industrial age, part primordeal mountain/desert with a touch of post-apocalyptic Mad Max society thrown in.

Afghanistan needs to be exposed to the rest of the world. Afghans suck up culture like a sponge, adapting it to their needs quickly and efficiently. Their isolation needs to be lifted. There is only one way to do this, really... commerce.

Afghanistan is full of mineral wealth. Metal ores, minerals, gems, natural gas... all of the products of a young mountain chain are here. The only gem of note that Afghanistan does not have in apparent abundance are diamonds.

Maybe I should have described this place as an emerald in the rough.

The country is full of smart, if uneducated people. The literacy rate is miserable here, but that should change considerably within a generation... unless we let the Taliban take this place back. The people are smart, and they are tough. They are also unemployed. There is a large labor pool here with no fear of hard work.

Once peace breaks out here, companies should be incented to come here and help Afghanistan exploit her natural wealth. This will both remove the breeding ground of the Taliban... ignorance, hopelessness, fatalism, and isolation... and it will raise the standard of living of the Afghan people. It will also make a lot of money for the companies who do.

There is a catch, however. Afghanistan is landlocked, and in a country roughly the size of Texas there are about 15 miles of railroad. Ooops. No good. There is trade route problem... but in a world strapped for natural resources, there may be some value in building a railroad to this ore-rich country full of smart, determined, tough-as-nails people.

There is word that the Chinese would like to build an overland trade route on the bed of the old Silk Road. Hmmmm.

I don't think I've ever seen such inventiveness as I have here. I've also never seen such harebrained antics in my life. Climbing up the beautiful gorges on the road back from Jalalabad, we passed a jingle truck, a semi, struggling up the grade. It move so slowly that as we approached it from behind I wondered if it was being drawn by camels. It wouldn't have surprised me as much as what I saw as we passed this truck. I looked down from my turret in amazement as I saw a man standing on the front bumper of the straining truck. Hood agape, he was pouring water into the radiator as the truck edged up the mountain road. It was insane.

Twice on the same trip I watched in a mixture of amusement and horror as a Toyota van filled to the gills with people passed and noted an extra passenger sitting cross-legged on the roof of the van as it sped towards J-bad. I've seen seven people on a motorcycle... an entire family. It looks like a circus act, and it happens all the time. Two on a bicycle isn't anything new here, but four looks pretty impressive. Afghans will ride anything with wheels, and they will have what appears to be a four year old clinging precariously to some part of it as they do so. Afghans will do things with wheeled vehicles and children that would have newpapers in an uproar back in the States. It is commonplace here. Goats are a whole other story... goats can be secured to any suitable surface of any vehicle... apparently by bungee cords or whatever is handy.

Afghans will modify anything to suit their purposes. The ubiquitous CONEX shipping containers that fill the decks of container ships are the real-life Legos of the Afghan urban designer. If there is a place where all the lost left socks of the world end up, this is the place where all the lost left shipping containers wind up. Afghans can make anything out of a CONEX... usually a home, sometimes a shop, I won't be a bit surprised when I see one rolling down the road with four tires of different sizes and an engine. And a guy on the front pouring coolant in.
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Darulaman: The Dowager Queen of Kabul

Ever since we arrived at Camp Dubs, we have all been fascinated by the Queen's Palace, Darulaman. Perched on a steep hill overlooking the camp, she stands a shattered symbol of the dream of Afghanistan. Several times since we've been here, someone was going to make coordination with the ANA for us to go up and tour the old Queen of Kabul, but somehow it just never seemed to get coordinated.

Yesterday morning, after working in the TOC (Tactical Operations Center,) my time-filler job until the new mission starts sometime this week, my fellow driftees and I had made plans to ascend the big hill for PT. In the meantime, one of our number made the outrageous claim that coordination was being made that very morning for us to tour the palace. Not having faith in any such nonsense, the Green Mountain Maniac and I decided not to forego our planned ascent and proceeded anyway.

We walked up the hill, which we do at a rapid pace, then back down... it's about 3 miles or so all told, and a 500 foot plus elevation change upwards. Then we got coordination to go up to the Queen's Palace, which was a welcomed shock. The hill the old Queen sits on doesn't look so high, but it is probably about 150 feet or so, and really steep. We had to put on all of our "battle rattle," which is our body armor, helmet, holster, and all of our weapons and ammunition. Like I've said, about 70-75 lbs worth of stuff, and then we climbed that hill.

After climbing the big hill, my legs were already tired. The much shorter, steeper hill was just what I needed! I'm not sore, but my thighs were just about to reach muscle failure going up that thing!

Upon our arrival at the top, we had to let the ANA who guard the place know that we were there so that we wouldn't be inadvertently shot while touring the old landmark. We found five jovial ANA waiting for us with the traditional greeting... chai. Chai is the ubiquitous green tea of Afghanistan. We were presented with glass cups (whose last time being thoroughly washed with detergent and clean water was probably when the palace was still occupied by a monarch) full of steaming pale green chai. It is an insult to decline the chai. We were made guests and we could not refuse the hospitality of our hosts. As we sipped the sweet chai, we did the best we could to communicate with our ANA hosts. I'll spare the struggles, but the gist of it is this: chai good, Afghanistan good, Pakistan bad, Osama in Pakistan, Osama in Islamabad, a hand-gestured demonstration that we should bomb Islamabad, and American snuff makes their heads spin. We were pleased with our ability to communicate without an interpreter.

We presented our hosts with gifts of Coke, Mountain Dew, Dr Pepper, and Sprite, and took our leave over the chai-swilling protests of our hosts to tour the ruined palace. Just then a Navy Commander rolled up with a terp in his Ford Ranger.

"Hey, I was going to give you a ride up the hill, but you guys had already taken off!" he announced. My thighs mumbled dirty words to me as we laughed.

The palace was really interesting. It was completed in 1931 and a German engineer was in charge of it. It is absolutely massive, and I can't tell you how many rooms it had. Very little of the interior hadn't been stripped. It was apparent that everything had been looted over the years. The walls were bare... and by that I mean that the marble, tile, or whatever had been removed... and even the electrical wires had been pulled out. Most of the stair railings had been removed, too. People will take any kind of scrap metal to sell. The marble floors had been torn up, with only remnants remaining, and in one bathroom all of the tile had been removed along with the bathtub, which had to be incredibly heavy, judging by the ones that remained.
In the center of the building there was a small courtyard, the palace surrounding it with glassless windows. It was ghostly, because of all the life that had once been there.

Some of the rooms were enormous, columned rooms that were large enough for the ANA guards to kick around a soccer ball, having a good time. The walls were bare concrete, the low-aggregate concrete having been used in construction like plaster. The only decorative features were the nicely poured concrete columns, much too massive to remove. Here and there some of the marble coverings survived.

She is a lifeless hulk now, stripped of even its wiring. Concertina wire fills some of the stairways, and sandbagged bunkers occupy what had been beautiful open balconies. There is dramatic evidence of huge blows to the building.

The sturdy construction of the building was violently exposed in one room by the impact of some type of high explosive projectile. Five layers of brickwork were penetrated, a hole about four and a half feet wide open to the air. Inside the room was a pile of shattered brick. The force of the explosion had been so great that brick material was blown onto the opposite wall like mud spatters, firmly adhering to the concrete wall.



With a little imagination it is not too hard to imagine the former majesty of this great edifice. It still bears a ghostly dignity, even as a matriarch of battle; a testament to the fact that no matter how hard this country is battered, it still stands, bullet holes and all. She may seem lifeless and bleak, but as long as she stands on the hill overlooking Kabul, there is hope she will be restored. Kabul teems with life, struggling to rebuild, but this dowager queen stands patiently on her hill, and life will not fill her halls once again until Kabul is restored first.



She is a fitting symbol of Kabul, and of Afghanistan.
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