Little Girl

Months ago I was gunning on the lead humvee of our patrol south of Lashkar Gah in an area that sits in the shadows of the ruins of a once great fortress built during the time of Alexander the Great. It was our first patrol in the area and we were the first US forces in that area in a year. We were in our up armored humvees with our gregarious American flags whipping in the wind like we were powerful knights moving across the landscape.

There was a little girl sitting on top of a wall that ran close to the road. She saw us from a good distance and as she sat straddling the wall she was waving wildly in her dark red dress. I could see her excitement and beaming smile from a good distance away. My heart was filled with a feeling of joy. When we passed her my heart sank. Her left eye was severely swollen and even though it looked painful as hell she still looked happy.

This is not my first rodeo, she was not the first sick child that I have seen in a war zone and I know that she will most certainly not be the last. Yet, those few seconds have lasted much longer in my memory. I saw the little girl again in a few dreams and I have seen her in the faces of other children that we pass routinely. I went on leave and I saw her again when I held my niece.

This week we were moving through the same area. This time I was driving the third humvee. When we passed the same wall she was there again. I got so excited that I was waving just as vigorously as she was and I said to my gunner excitedly, “That girl is there again, she’s there again!” He had no idea what I was talking about because he was not on our team when I first saw her and I have told few others about her and almost no one about the dreams. As we continued past her I told him that the last time we passed she had a very swollen eye and it broke my heart. Because of our speed and my position as the driver of the humvee she looked fine. My heart was lifted I felt a feeling that has been hard to come by since the first time I saw her. It was a feeling that would only last a long second. My gunner told me, “She looked like she didn’t have one”

A good soldier wears ballistic goggles to protect his sight and enhance his vision. Sometimes a good soldier wears them to hide the welling up of tears.

An Old Photograph, A New Memory

There was a photograph taken of me once where I was sitting on a beautiful beach. I was on vacation with the woman I loved. I was just back from my first tour in Iraq and I could not have been anywhere else in the world at that moment that would have brought me more happiness. However, the photograph captured the truth; it froze a moment in time when I could not have been father from where I really was…

I have been thinking about that picture because an old man brought a young child to us while we were at a police checkpoint. He brought the young child to us in a wheel barrel. The child was severely burned over half his body. Some soldiers tried to help but as an army, the world’s most powerful one, we did not do enough. The child will probably die before to long because the type of care the child requires is out of reach for most Afghan’s. What keeps echoing in my thoughts is that dying is probably the best hope for him.

Since the type of mission we are on has not and probably will not put us in a position where we will be heavily engaged with the enemy, today could be the type of battle that stays with some soldiers for a long time. I hope it does not because I have fought that type of battle before. I hope that today is just another day for the other soldiers on my team. I hope they will not have dreams of the young child. I hope that when they are home, far away from this place, a photograph is taken that will not be a portrait of a tormented soul.

What will photographs show about me?

I Can Read (written sometime in July)

Do you remember when your parents said you were to smart for your own good? It was probably immediately following the time when your mother asked your father in your presence to go to the store and get some I-C-E-C-R-E-A-M for after when the kids go to bed. It was also about the same time you realized your parents were to dumb for their own good because you learned to spell the year before.

That in essence is the overwhelming feeling I get every day as a Police Mentor. Not that I am to smart for my own good, I proved that false by volunteering for this again thinking some how it would be different. But my parents (i.e. the levels of leadership high above my own chain of command) do not have a C-L-U-E.

In my case I was a mentor of sorts during my first tour in Iraq. Albeit the mission was slightly different, we were expected to “Go forth and do great things” with minimal direction, zero training, and extremely limited resources. I still regret that we could have done so much more if the jerks who said, “Go forth and do great things.” would of provided the resources necessary. The kicker is this job makes that year look like a C-U-P-C-A-K-E.

All I want are the direction and resources necessary, not some R-E-M-F telling me everything I need to know is on a hard drive. Apparently they forgot I could read and what I heard was B-S.

Ways to pass time in Kandahar

Do laudry... (5 - 10 hrs)
You might wonder how you can kill a whole day doing laundry, well, if you are American and have ever had to do your laundry here at KAF then you will know. I am not talking about trying to wash everything you own and wash everything else you find lying around the base. I am talking about one simple load. The first gate you have to pass is finding a washing machine that works and that is not currently in use. Once you have procured a washing machine the next step is to open the single packet of laundry detergent they sell in the PX. I do not know which NASA scientist developed the glue that holds that little bastard to gether but it wasn't the same genius who came up with the compound that holds the heat shields on the shuttle, because you cannot break the seal on the laundry detergent. Of course, it could just be Infantry proof. Next comes the most difficult task... selecting the wash cycle. Is everything that damn hard to understand in Europe? I spent 30 minutes just observing little ninja like europeans and asians flip, dial, push and start their washing machine's just fine. Finally, someone must have seen the confused look on my face and offered some assistance. Maybe they saw the U.S. Army on my uniform and figured out quite correctly that I am used to 4th grade instructions and that I was over my head trying to decipher the Rosetta Stone of symbols present on my washer.

Yet the battle continues because once you get the damn thing started you must wait for it... wait for it... wait for it... Who designed these things? Father Time? Apparently the same helpful person that helped with giving me a knife to open the detergent and helped me start the washer must have also had a sense of humor and had me put the washer on the longest setting. One click past the end of time is the setting I apparently selected.

I have been washing those clothes for close to two hours. I thought I was close to the end about a half hour ago but those washers have a better defense system than Fort Knox. Just when you think it might be done and you make your move to try to open the washer, it starts spinning again. Is there some control room at The Hague that montiors these machines? Do they purposely screw with us Americans?

I can't imagine how much fun drying will be.

Home is Afghanistan

I am on the last few days of my leave and I am getting ready to come home. If home is where the heart is, Afghanistan is my home. I have had a wonderful R&R, I have seen everyone I wanted to see and done everything I wanted to do. The places and people I have visited have not changed much, and that in it's own way is comforting and good. But my heart, my spirit, is in Afghanistan. One question I was asked over and over again was if this would be my last deployment. I usually said it was fifty/fifty. Truthfully, I will keep deploying as long as my body holds up. (My mind went a long time ago) I have always been seeking something that I have never been able to describe. Maybe someday I will be at peace with myself, but until then you will know where to find me. In a few days I will be there, I will be home.

Bench Warming in Afghanistan

We landed at CENSORED at approximately CENSORED. We were told by an overpaid contractor that we were to report the following morning at CENSORED to be manifested for the next leg of our flight home. We arrived promptly at CENSORED to be asked, “Why weren’t you on the flight at CENSORED last night? You will probably be here for a few more days until we can find you another flight.”

Of course soldiers would never tell their families when they were going to be home (wink, wink) on account of OPSEC (see Censoring above). I do not know how much money is spent on OPSEC commercials, both in print and television media to brain wash us. Apparently more than is spent on recruiting and hiring people with any semblance of intelligence. But does the military have to distrust the soldiers so much they ensure OPSEC by stranding them because of someones stupidity, making a grueling trip even less pleasurable? Seriously folks, the war aint that bad but the trip home.. damn, that's what makes us edgy and missunderstood.

I know I should chill… I am going on leave… It’s not like someone tried to issue us a .50 cal machine gun that did not have all it’s working parts, then question why we would need one anyways… That would never happen.

I love being in the Junior Varsity war.

PowerPoint Diplomacy

It’s a damn shame that soldiers are busting their ass over here for what amounts to a bullet point on a PowerPoint slide given to Generals at the Pentagon who are so deep into their day dream of which corporation they will lobby for after retirement that they don’t even see it.

I’m just saying…