A chronicle of my experiences preparing for and going on a deployment to Afghanistan
On Saturday after I got back from Achin I was sitting in my office and my buddy Cal came in and said, “You have to come to the ECP (entry control point), they have a MONKEY!” So I grabbed my camera and we walked out there. When I got there I saw this little guy sitting on the Hescos:
Click here to read the rest of Holy Crap, A Monkey! »
Servicemembers provide medical care to 120 Afghans
This was back at the Our Mother of Hope school. I wasn’t on this mission, it went while I was still in Qatar, but the medics both talked about how rewarding it was and how much they enjoyed it.
We took a trip out to Bati Kot the other day to assess some clinics and ended up a little lost. All we get for the locations are a rough grid and from that we have to try to find it on our own. We have some aerial imagery and maps to try to nail it down, but a lot of times that stuff is out of date and where there used to be a road there isn’t anymore. We found the first 2 clinics but while we were looking for the 3rd we hit a dead end when our road ran into a canal. We had driven through an old graveyard on a dirt road on our way in, so going back out the same way would be no problem, right? If that was true I wouldn’t be writing this story…
I was in the 3rd vehicle, an MRAP. The lead vehicle, also an MRAP, had the ground give away under it’s real wheel and was stuck. At the time we didn’t realize that the road we were on was right over the top of old graves, so we maneuvered our truck to get in front of the stuck one to pull it out. The TC (Truck Commander) and the other guy that was in back with me got out to ground guide our truck into position, so it was just the driver, the gunner and me left. We were moving pretty slow and had made it past the stuck truck when I heard the guys outside yelling for us to stop. The driver stopped and, assuming we were about to drive into a hole, backed up. It turns out we had made it over the hole as the ground was giving away, but when he backed up we backed right into it.
Click here to read the rest of MRAPs and Graveyards Don’t Mix »
Not much to write about in this one, just a few pictures to share. We went down to the Shinwar district the other day to check out some clinics and so one of the Civil Affairs guys could talk to the governor there. Everything went smooth and we found everything we were looking for (doesn’t happen often…).
Click here to read the rest of Shinwar DC and Clinics »
I finally made it back to FOB Finley-Shields. Traveling in Afghanistan sucks, we got bumped from 2 different flights out of Bagram, ended up being up all night, finally caught a flight at 0600 back to FOB Fenty. We called to get a ride back to FOB Finley-Shields at 0700. At 0900 we were still sitting out of the flightline at Fenty waiting for our ride. I called back and was told that they were just going to pick us up when they came at 1200 to get mail… We ended up sleeping on the ground beside the runway for an hour or so until SSgt Burtch saw a couple trucks from the Agriculture Development Team (ADT) who are also at FOB Finley-Shields. He went and talked to them and it turned out they had 3 empty seats and were headed back right then. So we hopped a ride with them. It was nice to sleep in my own bed again! It ended up taking me 16 or 17 days for my 4 day pass…
Subscribe