A Year In The Sandbox » Afghanistan

Article About PRTs

Mike — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 09:15:48 +0000

I’ve posted links to a lot of articles reporting positively about the PRTs and what we’re doing here. I came across one today that wasn’t so positive. The author makes a lot of good points and there’s really nothing in the article I can argue against based on my experience here. I don’t really have a solution.

http://photomaniacal.com/blog/humvees-in-a-china-shop-anna-husarska

4th Of July

Mike — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 10:26:22 +0000

We have a couple Chicago Tribune reporters embedding with us for a while and they did a story about our 4th of July celebration here.

4th of July in Nangarhar

Everything’s going fine here. If everything goes the way it should I’ll be back in San Antonio before August!

Outside the Wire: The Forgotten Children of Afghanistan

Mike — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 08:46:42 +0000

A while back I received an email from a film maker about an upcoming documentary on Afghanistan. The film is almost completed and there’s a trailer up for it. Below is a short blurb about the film from Anthony Hornus, the man behind the project:

…in Feb. and March of 2008 I traveled with a cameraman to Afghanistan to film the first in our series of “Outside the Wire” documentaries. It is entitled “Outside the Wire: The Forgotten Children of Afghanistan.” Certainly crushing poverty, years of war and oppression and lack of basic human needs (water, sanitary conditions) makes Afghanistan a land of despair.

But, as my modernist-thinking Afghan friends believe, there is now at least a strong new sense of hope. I got sick and tired of hearing about the “Bad Americans,” blah, blah, blah by the far left. We’re not doing an infomercial for the military, but with the grace of God we’re going to balance the story of good vs. evil, and helping those who can’t help themselves.

The entire key to the success in Afghanistan-Pakistan region is education of the young toward tolerance, understanding and respect for all faiths and cultures and empowering them with basic aid, school supplies and economic opportunities, while providing security from the bad guys.

I’m excited to see the end result which should be out this fall or winter. Keep an eye on the project as there will be other films to come in the Outside the Wire series.

Watch the trailer here!

Alternate site for the trailer.

Collective Development Incorporated
Dennis Therrian

Misc Videos

Mike — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 06:56:44 +0000

Here are the rest of the videos that don’t really fit in any one theme.

This is a view of Torkham Gate panning from the Pakistan side to the Afghanistan side.

I don’t remember where this was, but it’s a turkey!

One of our SECFOR guys falling asleep in the back of an MRAP on the way back to the FOB from the Sherzad district.

One of our drivers snoozing outside a school near Jalalabad.

Video of the countryside I took from the window of an 1151.

Quick pan of the view from the Dari Noor DC.

Camel train outside the Dor Baba DC.

That’s all the videos I have uploaded right now!

Kid Videos

Mike — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 06:55:32 +0000

Took me a little while to get around to it, but here are the videos of kids I’ve taken here.

This one is at a school here in Jalalabad, we were walking back to the trucks and I was trying to get the kids to steal Cal’s pen.

This is one of our Civil Affairs guys spraying some kids with silly string.

Took this one walking through a school in the Shinwar district.

Took this one of some kid trying to trade me a potato down in the Achin district.

Some excited kids outside a school near Jalalabad.

This was up in the Dari Nor district outside a new school we were building there. The soldier in the video has his viewfinder turned to face the kids so they can see themselves.

Some kids saying the alphabet in a school just outside of Jalalabad.

The rest of the videos I have don’t fit in to a set theme so I’ll stick them all in one post soon.

Range Videos

Mike — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 00:46:25 +0000

We went out in the middle of nowhere a few weeks ago to get rid of some old ammo. Here’re a few videos I took that day.

This is a Mk19 40mm machine gun being fired by one of our SECFOR guys.

I carry an m203 40mm grenade launcher which most of the folks on the team have never fired. We had a bunch of ammo to get rid of, so I shared. This is one of our medics firing it.

This is our other medic firing my 203. I crack up every time I watch this one. “Where’d it go??”… *BOOM* “Ahhhhhh”.

This is one of the PSYOPs guys firing an AT4 anti-tank weapon.

This is one of our Civil Affairs guys tossing a frag grenade. He’s very proud of himself.

One of our SECFOR guys firing his m249 SAW.

Our medic struggling to charge the Mk19…

Then when she finally got it charged it blew up on her…

Tomorrow I’ll post a bunch of videos I’ve taken of kids.

Vehicle Recovery Videos

Mike — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 02:45:35 +0000

I finally got all the videos uploaded, so here’s the first post. Some of the videos are more interesting than others, but they’re all kind of cool to watch.

This one happened pretty soon after we got here. We were checking out a water tank that was being built just outside of Jalalabad and the driver got the truck stuck in some mud. The commander was standing next to me and I asked him what he thought the poop content of the mud was.

This one and the next one happened in the Bati Kot district. We drove through an old graveyard that didn’t have any headstones or markers. The old graves collapsed under the truck tires and got the trucks stuck.

This is the 2nd one from the graveyard.

This one was when we were on the way to Sherzad with relief for the earthquake victims. This was probably the widest dirt road I’d been on in Afghanistan but the driver still felt the ditch was a better option.

This happened just a couple weeks ago in the Khogyani district. We were checking out a road that was being built and on the way back we got a little too close to the edge.

This last one happened on the way back from Kuz Konar. This one and the 1151 were the only 2 that I wasn’t in when it got stuck, I was in the truck behind it.

That’s it for this post, I’ll put up some more videos tomorrow.

Videos Are Coming…

Mike — Sun, 31 May 2009 00:05:45 +0000

I severely underestimated the time it would take to upload my videos. The internet connection here moves at the speed of smell, and on top of that I keep getting errors from YouTube just as the videos are about to finish. I have a few uploaded but I was hoping to group them in to a few posts of similar videos. If I can’t get enough uploaded for that by tomorrow I’ll just post what I’ve got uploaded so far. Sorry for the delay!

Quick Update

Mike — Sun, 24 May 2009 14:08:51 +0000

Everything’s going good here, we’re in the home stretch now. My shop got reorganized and I don’t have an office anymore since all I really do is the convoys. Unfortunately that means I don’t have internet access on my laptop anymore so it’s a little tougher to update now. I’m going to try tomorrow to get some videos that I’ve taken uploaded, there are some good ones. We spent a day out in the middle of nowhere last week just blowing stuff up.

Nine months from today I’ll be out of the Air Force! A couple weeks short of 11 years in the service and I’m punching out. I’m really excited about it, I’ll be going to school full time and hopefully not working at all for a couple years. I’m looking forward to being a bum.

Check back tomorrow, if I’m not too lazy there’ll be some good videos.

Earthquake In Sherzad

Mike — Thu, 07 May 2009 16:29:44 +0000

A couple weeks ago I lucked out and got two days in a row with no mission scheduled, a Thursday and Friday. Most weeks I only get Fridays off, and a lot of weeks there are no days off, so I planned to take full advantage. We spent the day Thursday building walls in our hooch to replace the hanging sheets and blankets. Even though we actually worked the whole day it was much more enjoyable than another combat patrol. Friday I planned to sleep until noon.

Friday morning at 8am a guy I work with woke me up. “Hey Brameld, there was an earthquake out in Sherzad, killed a bunch of people. They’re throwing a mission together to take some HA (humanitarian aid) up there, you want it?”

“No I don’t want it, I want to sleep till noon!” I thought as I said, “Sure, I’ll take it” and climbed out of bed. He told me they were leaving right away so I shaved and dressed and made it to the trucks with all my gear in 15 minutes only to find out they weren’t leaving for another hour and a half There’s a reason I call this particular co-worker “ready, fire, aim!” although chicken little would be an apt nickname too. So I went back and took a shower and ate breakfast before we left.

Our Civil Affairs team has had a few 1151s since we got here and they just picked up a couple new MRAPs a couple weeks before. They haven’t had very good luck with them. They’re the ones that almost rolled the MRAP off the side of a bridge. File this tidbit under obvious foreshadowing. I ended up in the back of their MRAP, which was the lead vehicle. We made it just past the ECP before the driver managed to get it stuck in a ditch beside the road. We hadn’t even made it completely off the FOB and we were already stuck. We hooked up the winch to a tree and managed to get it out and on the road again.

The first hour of the drive to Sherzad is on hardball, after that it’s all dirt roads. About 5 minutes after we left the hardball we were in another ditch. These trucks are actually more narrow than the 1151s but it’s hard to judge how much road is left on the sides from the cab, especially on the right side. So the new drivers tend to stick close to the left since they can judge a little better over there. In the picture below it’s hard to see but this is about the widest stretch of dirt road I’ve seen in Afghanistan but our driver thought the ditch would be a better option. This time there were no trees to hook the winch to so we used the 5-ton that was carrying the HA to pull it out. We switched up the order of march and had the SECFOR MRAP lead the rest of the way.

Stuck again

We finally made it up to the Sherzad district center and after a short meeting the sub-governer led us out to the village with the most damage. It was way up in the mountains but there were still a lot of people living up there, lots of mud houses. The earthquake happened pretty early in the morning at 1am or so, by the time we got there they had already evacuated the seriously wounded people. The docs worked on some minor injuries while we unloaded the HA. We were only on the ground for an hour or so but the commander made the decision to take off so we wouldn’t end up camping out.

Walking down to the village

Close up of some of the damage

Elders surveying the damage

Kid fixing the plumbing

We made a few personnel changes in my truck: the TC (truck commander) took over driving duties, I became the TC, and the old driver became a quivering puddle of useless shame in the back.

The trip back was uneventful for the most part. It got dark when we were about 45 minutes from the city so that made things a little more interesting. When we got close to the city the convoy commander chose to take the shorter route through the city instead of the bypass around thinking that there wouldn’t be much traffic out at 8pm. Little did we know Afghanistan had won a spot in the cricket world cup that evening and the whole city was out celebrating. The streets were packed with people. They were cheering, dancing, setting off fireworks, running around like crazy. Some people had aerosol cans they would spray and light on fire. It was nuts. It made it very scary for the gunners. With all the noise and lights and people everywhere it would have been a mess if somebody had started shooting at us, it would have been impossible to figure out where it was coming from. Luckily we made it through without incident and got back to the FOB.

A rainbow we saw on the way back

It’s not just MRAPs that get stuck out here…

From what I read in the news later there were 20 or so people killed in the earthquake and hundreds of homes damaged. I’m sure they’ll be cleaning up and rebuilding for a while.