“History is a relentless master. It has no present, only the past rushing into the future.”    JFK

       Welcome back everyone; as usual it is my hope that this posting reaches all of you in the best of health and spirits.   We are ever so close to the end of this mission, and I am so anxiously, but patiently awaiting the end.   I know my couch has been missing me desperately.  This experience has been nothing but life altering, but as with all things, it too must come to an end.  Recently my time has been spent just trying to wrap things up around here.  I want to make sure that I leave my post as best I can, so the next guy can step in and make as seamless a transition as he can to his new post.  I still have not received any news on a replacement, but do not worry, as it does not stop my leaving here.   We have had tons of new soldiers moving to our area of the country as we slowly replace our rotation with theirs.  This place is so overcrowded, as we make this transition, that we have people sleeping on cots in all kinds of strange places.  Standing in line to get a meal, use the phones, or to use the washer and dryers, has now become the norm here.  Thankfully, this is only a temporary predicament; soon a lot of the folks from our rotation will be making the move towards the USofA.  Ohh … the sounds of those words are like those Thin Mint cookies sold by the Girl Scouts.  Awesome.   As we are getting ready to move out, the season of a hundred and twenty days of wind have moved in.  This place has been nothing but a giant wind tunnel, and I now know that I am a proven aerodynamic being.  I could do without the dust storms though.  These things are crazy, one second the sky is clear and beautiful, the next thing I know, I can’t see the mountains anymore.  The whole atmosphere is blanketed in a mass of dust and crap flying through the sky, I have never seen anything like it, and I don’t remember it being that bad in Khowst last summer.  Fortunately we will not be here to see out the whole one hundred and twenty days.  Hey, speaking of seeing the mountains around here.  I know I talk about the views around here, and always try to explain just what the vistas here are like, I thought I would give you all a three hundred and sixty view of the place.  If you click on the link below, you’ll get to take a tour of our camp.  You will need the QuickTime player to get it to work, which should be pretty simple.  But once downloaded, simply left click and move your mouse cursor around the image, and it should move you throughout our chunk of Afghanistan.  You can also use the plus and minus sign on the window to zoom in and out.  You can either click the link below to view it in your browser, or you can right click it and do a “Save Target As”, to keep a copy of it for yourself. Either way works, but if you open it in your browser, simply click the “Back” button to return to the Blog. Enjoy.
Click here for the Panorama

       As I look at all the new soldiers moving in our area, I think back a bit, about a year to be exact.  I bet I had the exact same look on my face as these guys do now.  It’s a look of not knowing exactly what to expect out of the deployment.  The unknowing is the hardest part, and whenever I engage in a conversation with any of them, I try to tell them all I am familiar with, give them some sort of morsel of information that may be helpful.  It’s odd though, there’s this fine line between being helpful, and sounding like the guy at the legion who starts all his stories with, “No shit … so there I was.”  I always make sure I am not that guy.  Plus a lot of guys would rather have their stories unfold in front of themselves, without any sort of foreshadowing.  Call it a male thing, or some sort of Army thing, but I usually do not start a conversation about my experiences here unless asked.  The male psyche can be such an odd thing.   Seeing all these new soldiers here is a good sensation though, because it is one more way to gauge just how close we are to getting out of here.   I also like the enthusiasm the new guys are bringing with them.  They all seem all fired up to get started with the mission, and continue where we left off.  There are also a lot of the new guys here who will be embarking on the newest facet of our mission, and that is to train the Afghan Police.  We kind of got it started, but as with anything new in the Army, it takes a little bit to really get things running.  I think these guys have the energy to push it to the next level, and really get something going there that will help the police secure their cities and towns.

       It has been a good year for me overall, and I feel pretty successful about what I have done here for the past year.  I had been training in the National Guard for eighteen years, and it was positive for me to finally be able to put my training to work in a real life mission.  But, even if I took all the Army stuff out of the mix, just on what we were able to do with our humanitarian efforts makes the year worth it.  I think we made a heck of a difference here with the citizens, and if we were measuring success by thankful smiles, we would be off the charts.  I wish we could have done more, but our mission didn’t always allow for it.  I also sometimes wish we could have done some other programs, like vocational training.  It is great that we are able to help the people on the short term, but with something like vocational training, maybe we could also help them long term.  I am sure that will be a consideration for the future.  Right now, I would make the assumption that it is just not feasible with the security situation as it is.  Just getting, and keeping, the children in school is challenging enough work.

       As far as the Afghan Army is concerned, I think we made some headway towards putting this Army into a position where they can do these things by themselves, which was our mission.  I can’t say we did this all by ourselves, they were pretty much on their way when we got here, but I think we helped with some fine tuning.  Right now as we speak, the Afghan Army is planning a mission where they will take the entire lead.  This is the first time that they will plan, prepare, practice, and then execute the mission with their Army as the lead element. They will, of course, have the support of us, but usually it is the other way around. This is a huge step for them, and I wish them all the luck.  Sadly, we will not be here to see the results.  Just the other day, during one of our mega-planning sessions, the Afghan Army took a field on the camp and turned it into a giant model depicting our mission.  Once again, they had a little help on the model, but they moved their guys all over the model like giant chess pieces, depicting the movements they will execute during the mission.  This is cool stuff to watch, although I am not a huge fan of the massive amount of time we spend sitting in meetings planning for this mission, but it is a necessary evil, to make sure all goes off without a hitch.  This mission will be an enormous test for the Afghan Army, and I am sure there are a lot of people with much more rank than I, watching very intently over this whole thing.  I am also sure that the ANA are aware of this, and they want to show everyone that they are a force to be reckoned with, and that they can do this stuff autonomously.   I know people are going to want to know if my time here was worth the investment, and I am sure when I return, the question will come up quite a bit.  It’s a tough question, and I think I better come up with something before I get there.  But, if I had to give the first instinctual answer my brain comes up with, then it is yes, we did do good things here.   Maybe they are not articles that are immediately measurable, or they may not be bulleted objective outcomes on some freaking Power Point slide that can pinpointed for some politician.  Hopefully they are small thoughts within the intellect of the people of Afghanistan.  That we are not here to change their Muslim beliefs, make them westerners like us, or that we want to open a Wal-Mart on every corner for that matter.  That we are here to help them.  Help them towards an Afghanistan that can stand on its own, and provide for its people safety and prosperity in a civilized fashion.  Hopefully though just my interacting with the friends I have made here, that I have passed on these principles, and as they grow and develop, that they pass these ideals on.  I will always keep Afghanistan, and all my Afghan friends, in my thoughts and prayers for a long time.  I hope for progressively continued success for them, and for the soldiers who fall in behind me to continue the mission.

       Whew … Sorry about that, didn’t mean to get on my philosophical and political soapbox.  Sometimes that happens.  I guess I just want to make sure people know that this isn’t all about removing the Taliban from Afghanistan.  We can do that a million times over.  It is about leaving the Afghans with the idea that they can do it, and trust me, sometimes it is a tough sell for a people who have been involved in some sort of a war for so many decades.  Anyhoo, check this out.  We have been looking for ways to get more involved with the Afghan Army here on a more social level.  Someone got the brainchild to challenge our Afghan brethren here to a soccer game, or it could have been the other way around, I am not sure.  C’mon now, this is Afghanistan, these guys are nutso for the soccer, and they will destroy us.  Not only that, but this is their home court.  They are used to the altitude and the fans will totally be on their side.  This was going to be tough.   One of the Iowa guys here spent a ton of time putting together the contest, and to ensure we had a fighting chance, we enlisted the help of our coalition partners, the Polish, Romanians, and even a couple of Interpreters.  If we were going to take on the mighty Afghan Army soccer team, we had to do everything we could.  Call it stacking the deck if you will, we called it making sure that our coalition partners were involved in the fun, but deep down we wanted to win.  Who doesn’t? The cool Iowa guy even created a traveling trophy for the event.  Why traveling?  Well, we knew no matter who won the challenge, of course there would have to be a rematch.   Neither team would let it rest at one win, or one loss for that matter.  I am sure this will develop into some sort of recurring challenge.  For our replacements, sorry about that, hope you like soccer.  After much planning, preparation, and trophy building, the big day came along.  The Afghan was a svelte athletic looking bunch; our team had quite a challenge ahead of them.  Our team didn’t look half bad themselves.  Game on.  It was a rousing contest, and if I were even remotely in soccer I may have been able to tell you what occurred, but the end result.  Afghan Army scored one, and the Coalition team had two of the balls roll into the netted area, which means we won… I guess.  Cool, but I am guessing that the rematch will have a better prepared, or stacked, whichever way you go on that one, Afghan team than ours.  Wish the next guys all the luck on that one.

       Here is another example of progress in our area of operations.  Our first big group of basic training soldiers have graduated from their training.  It was a cool occasion, mostly for them, as they have officially become Afghan Army soldiers.  The next step for them is moving on to the job specific training.  We will be keeping a lot of the soldiers around here, because we have now opened a basic infantryman’s course here.  I remember how much trouble they were having marching when they first started here.  I was hard not to laugh, but I think it was not really they, but memories of myself going through the same thing almost twenty years ago.  Now when they march around the camp, they are doing it synchronously.  They also seem to hold their heads up just a bit higher than when they first got there.  We are all so pumped up for them, and were so proud of the progress that they have made, so I thought I would show you all a few shots of them.  This is the future of the Army of Afghanistan.  Good luck gentlemen.

       Well, this is the saddest part of the posting.  This is the part where I have to say good-bye.  However, I will see you all sooner than you think.  About nineteen days to be exact, give or take a day, so I guess I can’t be all that exact.  If I do the math, that’s only two more steak days, two more showers, and two more clothes washing days.  OK, only kidding about the shower thing.  It’s close though, and I am counting the days.  I also wan to make sure that I thank all the people who have supported me though this crazy year and a half.  There really is no way to properly show my gratitude.  All the packages I have received, humanitarian aid and morale wise, were all so appreciated.  The letter and cards were always fun to read, and too so deeply appreciated.  Everything was awesome, ad I couldn’t have made it through all this time without them.  I thank you from all that I am, and see you all soon.  I believe I may owe some of you a libation or two, I’ll see what I can do to remedy that when I return.

Until Next Time,
Mark