Firepower Forward

2009-03-02T02:38:00.002+01:00

Friday, January 25, 2008

Where do we go from here?
13 Jan 2008Where do we go from here?I have spent the last couple of months, contemplating life, and what my purpose is on this earth. My name is Glen Delaplane, I am Brian's little brother. You may or may not know the circumstances that have come about in the last three months, but I am going to give you my perspective. My brother was my mentor. I admired him for what he had done in life, and compared my progress in life to his. Brian was someone that I could count on to give me an honest answer whether or not I wanted to here it. He gave me advice, and helped my become the person that I am today.I have told people that the moments that are the hardest are the moments that you would have spent with him. For me those times were too far, and few between. I find myself in certain circumstances that I would have previously fired off an email or made a phone call, to find out what his opinon was. Unfortunatly those moments now leave my in a place of grief for the loss of my bother, and a place of loneliness due the obvious fact that I will not be able to gain his opinon or advice, except by looking back to what he has already told me.Even now I find myself learning from my brother's experiences. What I have learned in the past few months is to not take life for granted. Most of the time that we spend in life involves maintaining our selves, and our lifestyle, but there are those moments that we experience in between the lines of this thing that we call life. Those moments are what we should live for. Watching your first child born, realizing that you are now called "dad". Helping your little girl learn how to ride a bike. Laying on the grass watching the clouds go by, trying to see the bunny rabbit that was just pointed out. The moments are endless, but they will pass you by without you even noticing them. What I have learned from Brian, is that the things that we remember are not the things that we have, the places that we have gone, or how successful we have become. What we remember are the moments. The ones that passed us by, and the ones that we caught. Don't let the moments of life pass you by.
Posted by Disciple186 at 8:15 PM

http://www.disciple186.blogspot.com/

2009-03-02T02:36:00.001+01:00

May 6, 1960 - Oct 9, 2007
Lieutenant Colonel Brian N. Delaplane passed away suddenly on Tuesday, October 9, 2007 in New York following a pulmonary embolism. He was a Logistical Officer in the United States Army currently serving as The Professor of Military Science at Saint Johns University in Queens, New York. Brian Neal Delaplane was born on May 6, 1960 in Glenwood Springs, Colorado to Helen and David Delaplane. He graduated in 1970 from Glenwood Springs High School. He joined the Army in 1984. He received his Bachelors Degree from Metropolitan State College, Denver, Colorado and his Masters Degree from St. Bonaventure University, Olean, New York. He continued his career in the U.S. Army for 23 years and rose to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. He received multiple medals and accommodations to include the Bronze Star Medal and the Meritorious Service Medal. Brian was a man of distinction, character, and integrity and was known for his compassionate leadership, mentorship and friendship. Brian married Pamela Mackowiak on May 22, 1999 in Olean, New York who survives him and lives in Colorado Springs. LTC Delaplane is survived by his wife: Pamela, his parents: Helen Delaplane of Silt, Colorado and David Delaplane of Denver, Colorado. Pam's children: Molly, Matthew and Sarah, children by his first wife, Felice: Matthew and Jessica, and his brothers: Timothy, Mark and Glen. Visitation is planned for 4-7 pm on Thursday, October 18, 2007 at the Shrine of Remembrance Chapel in Colorado Springs. A Vigil Service will follow at 7:00 pm in the Chapel. A Mass of Christian Burial will be celebrated at 10:00 AM on Friday, October 19, 2007 at St. Gabriel the Archangel Catholic Church, 8755 Scarborough Drive, Colorado Springs, Colorado 80920. Graveside services with full Army Honors will follow at Evergreen Cemetery. The family and friends will return to St. Gabriel's Church Narthex for Fellowship.

2008-05-27T06:10:00.001+02:00

A Day to Remember, a Day to be ThankfulPlease bear with me, our communication is still a little sketchy as we continue setting up our operations here. My unclassified computer has been sent away to Bagram's Shaolin Techie Temple where it is being BAFtized in in order to exorcize it of all evil spirited viruses and corrupted files. When I finally get it back it will be a lean powerful machine with a calm and serene spirit. It will aslo be purged of every byte of usable data and totally useless. I would probably be a bit more serene if I could purge my memory once in a while too. In the mean time I am borrowing other computers as they come available to take care of important tasks like this.I want to share a letter that my brother sent me for Memorial Day:I just wanted to take a minute to say hi, and thank everyone there for theirsacrifice. I think that the best way to say thanks would to be to explainwhat I am thankful for. I am blessed to live in a country that is "of thepeople, for the people". The freedoms that I use every day need to beremembered and recited so they are not taken for granted.When I attend church on Sunday, I am thankful for the men and women thathave put their lives in harms way to defend my right to express my beliefs,even when their beliefs may be different.When I vote, I am thankful to these same individuals, that may or may notalign their political beliefs to their current or previous Commanders inChief, and for allowing themselves to be distanced by thousands of milesfrom their families.I am thankful that I live in a country that allows me to keep and bear arms,for the purpose of defending myself, my beliefs, and my country. Thank youfor missing birthdays, anniversaries, and personal family events.I am thankful for my ability to express my beliefs in the local newspaper,without worry of arrest. Thank you for missing the birth of your children,or the loss of a loved one.I am thankful for the men and women that consider it a privilege to defendmy way of life, as well as carry that way of life to others. Thank you for your years of training, moving from state to state, crawling in the mud,choking on tear gas, and being told to do something that every fiber of youbeing is screaming not to, like jumping out of a perfectly good airplane. Iknow you love it. Thank You.Most of all, I am thankful for my family, for being able to watch mychildren grow and learn in a country that provides every opportunity forthem, for being able spend my life with the woman I love, and for theability to provide a living for myself and my family. I know that the onlyreason that I have these abilities is because of those that are sacrificing the very things I love. Thank You.GlenThanks Glen.

2008-01-26T04:41:00.000+01:00

Letters to the Editor
On war, weapons and shields

Dear Editor,

I first want to express my thanks to the sons of both Joyce Holman and Kristi Nicholls for their service to our nation during its most trying time of this generation. I empathize with the feelings expressed in their letters of May 8th and 10th. I am both awed and respectful of Sgt. Holman's spirit and would love to hear first-hand the feelings of Ms. Nicholls' son, as I am always wary of making judgments based on second-hand information.As a parent, soldier, and a veteran of the current conflicts, I want to word this carefully out of respect for the anxiety and trepidation of these parents. Personal body armor is designed for protection against small arms fire, and all soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan have it. This means that they have the ballistic plates, otherwise it is not armor, but merely a fabric vest. In some cases, the enhanced plates are not issued until troops reach staging areas near Iraq, as it makes distribution more effective. This was not the case in 2003-4, and some troops bought armor at personal expense for which reimbursement has been offered. Personally procured body armor is no longer authorized to prevent the use of inferior and defective body armor, to include Dragon Skin.Losing soldiers to improvised explosive devices (IEDs) is preventable, but not through technological means as Ms. Nicholls states. All HUMMWVs that travel the roads of Iraq are armored, some more heavily than others; but as the armor increases, so does the lethality of IEDs. While prudence demands the use of armor against smaller, more easily-identified threats, bombs that leave swimming-pool-sized holes will defeat not only the best-armored HUMMWVs, but Strykers and tanks as well. The race between better weapons and better shields will always be won by the weapon. See both www.michaelyon-online.com/wp/jungle-law.htm and http://bdelapla.typepad.com/firepowerforward.The key to prevention lies in avoidance. That solution is ultimately political, and the responsibility for its implementation lies with all of us. Brian Delaplane
Mehlingen, Germany

2007-05-21T12:59:00.000+02:00

Better Bombs Vs. Better Armor

I've been maintaining an ongoing skirmish of words with with a small segment of the population of Glenwood Springs, CO and the encompassing Roaring Fork Valley through the editorial pages of the local newspaper there, Glenwood Springs Post Independent.

The entire Roaring Fork Valley has become decidedly more liberal in it's political views since since my upbringing there and while there is no intent or desire to sway that through my prosiac jousts, it does make for good debate from time to time and I mainly continue the sparring because my mother likes to occasionally see my name in the paper.

There was a recent letter that I think deserves a bit more widespread scrutiny though, that from the mother of a new soldier apparently in or on his way to Iraq. Among other things, Ms. Nicholls states that sustaining casualties from IEDs in Iraq is preventable. All we need to do is provide up-armored HUMMWVs to every soldier in Iraq.

What concerns me about this is that the letter was published on the 8th of May and there have been no rebuttals. Is this the generally accepted point of view in America, that is is all just a matter of money and the only reason troops are dying from IEDs is that we don't care enough to simply provide them with up-armored hummers?

The reality is that the Army hasn't been allowed to send unarmored hummers to Iraq (or Afghanistan for that matter) for more than 2 years and any unarmored vehicle already there is certainly not taken off the FOBs. The sad fact is that the lethality of IEDs has increased far faster than armor technology and it always will (see Michael Yon's "Jungle Law" dispatch).

Deaths of American troops by roadside bombs may very well be preventable but when we are seeing IEDs in Iraq with enough lethality to detstroy Stryker vehicles and M1 tanks, conventional wisdom tells us that throwing more armor on a Hummer isn't the method that is going to achieve those ends. Adding more armor to HUMMWVs has a diminishing marginal utility. More armor is not only expensive but the additional weight reduces the performance and handling of the vehicle which plays its own factor in endangering troops. Additionally, adding more armor requires upgrades to not only the electrical system and air conditioning (putting the windows down on an armored vehicle pretty much defeats the purpose) but significant upgrades to the suspension, all of which gets vaporized when the bad guys simply wire one more artillery shell into their IED.

Militarily, we can't stop the lethality of IEDs from increasing, nor can we achieve a high rate of success in preventing those intent on emplacing them from doing so (see Michael Yon's "Rattlesnake" dispatch). The solution lies in removing the desire to emplace them and that solution is not, primarily a military one, but a political one.

2007-05-11T12:58:00.000+02:00

Farewell Tour

So after arriving back in Germany following our whirwind tour of the US, I find myself once agina counting days until I leave a country. I began the process of clearing the military installations as soon as we arrived back and also started trying to squeeze in all those things that we said we would have to do before we left Europe. Good luck with that.

One thing that we did manage to do was finally get to a home game of 1FCK, who are trying to work theur way back into the top flight of the Bundes Liga after gettign bumped out last year. The weather was perfect, sunny and warm, the bear was cold, and the fans were boisterous, and although the game ended in a tie, the experience couldn't have been any better. The game did coincidentally fall on my birthday and the C-17s that frequently whined over Fritz-Walter Stadion on their approach to Ramstein were a constant reminder of a birthday recent past where I endured incessant harassment from my staff in FOB Salerno, and reminded us also of those still spending important occasions far from home and in harm's way.

Friday night found us at the opening night of the Lauters Kerwe, the annual spring festival in Kaiserslautern. I paid 3 Euro for ten chances to bounce a ping-pong ball towards a large display of beer steins and much to the proprieter's chagrin, ball #10 rattled home into a stein in the back of the top row. Now the proud owner of a limited edition Zoller & Born beer stein, the next logical step was to try it out. So after shouldering our way to a table near the band in the fest tent, Pam promptly received lessons for the proper hand and arm gestures for the music, something to do with cowboys, a lasso, and totem poles (hard to believe that its a German folk song).

We have had BBqs and dinners with friends, CPT Parrish, whose departure coincides with ours, will be having multiple parties before she leaves the active Army in favor of grad school at Georgetown, and we will be able to squeeze in Memorial day weekend at the Bodensee on the German, Austrian, Swiss border.

So while we may not complete the "Everything We Wanted to do in Europe" list, I'm sure that by the time we are wheels up for JFK we will have completed enough items to be satisfied with tucking the list away and calling it a win.

2007-05-03T12:56:00.000+02:00

Back in Deutschland

We have returned from a 6 week excursion in the States and are now preparing to permanently depart Germany.

2007-03-13T12:55:00.000+01:00

There was a lot of furor two weeks ago when a sucide bomber struck the front gate of Bagram Airbase while Vice-President Cheney was visiting. Most of the uproar was predictable about a resurgence of the Taliban, security lapses and so on. The truth about this incident is that it was an anomally. The Taliban do not have a base of support in the Bagram area and it is more likely than not a mere coincidence that the Vice-president happened to be there when the attack occured. Mr. Cheney was never in any danger and security was not breached, but what is being lost here as everyone grasps at straws as they attempt to validate their own point, is the sacrifices of those who perished.

PFC Daniel Zuzumbo was the U.S. soldier that was killed in this attack. He was a member of the 251st Cargo Transfer Company, a subordinate entity of my old unit, the 191st Ordnance Battalion.

I didn't know Daniel, he rotated to Afghanistan after I had returned to Germany and given the XO position. I didn't know Daniel, but I know that after serving 4 years in the Marines he struggled with civilian life in Chicago before joining the Army. I know that he was aware of the risks associated with his job and he accepted them. I know the job that he was doing in Afghanistan, and I have walked the ground where his life was taken from him, here where these children gather every day to talk to soldiers. I know that more than 20 other people died along with Daniel that day.

I know that Daniel was honered by thousands in Afghanistan as he began his final trip home. I know that he was honored by hundreds here in Germany in the chapel right across the road from where I work. I know that he was honored by thousands at home in Chicago.

I know that he was a hero. I know that he will be missed.

2007-03-11T10:06:00.000+01:00

Fait Accompli

I would truly like to believe that our judicial system has not completely collapsed. I write this because it is one of the branches of government that is established in our constitution, the document that I have taken an oath to support and defend. If we were to judge solely on the basis of the Lewis "Scooter" Libby trial, I think we should be seriously concerned about the fairness and equitability that can be expected from juries of our peers.

I wasn't so much surprised that Mr. Libby was found guilty, I hadn't really followed the trial and I surmised that there were any number of facts that could have come out during its conduct that could point to his incontrovertible guilt but I was stunned at what I saw in the post trial press conference. Not the press conference by the defense attorney or even the prosecuting attorney but rather a juror. Did you get that? A press conference from a juror.

Mr. Denis Collins, juror #9 was apparently so overwhelmed by his sense of civic duty and sympathy for those in the press (his own former profession), that he took it upon himself to explain in nauseating detail the deliberative process of the jury.

I use the word nauseating here because this was such blatant display of pandering to the public eye by someone so desperate for their 15 minutes that you half-expected him to be accompanied by his publicist and agent.

There was feigned sympathy, a stated vow of the entire jury's political ambivalence, and a step-by-step account of the deliberative process that was supposed to lend credibility to the findings. In the midst of all this it seems that only two things were forgotten; facts and the law.

Mr. Collins stated that there were some very good managerial types on the jury who broke the whole process down into building blocks so that in the end all they had to do was look at a monstrous pile of Post-it notes and say "Hey, there it is." Of course at the same time he mentioned that the categories they used in evaluating Mr. Libby's guilt or innocence were "motivation to lie", "motivation to tell the truth", "believability", and "state of mind".

I would hate to think that if I were to find myself in a similar situation as Mr.Libby, the only thing that could separate me from a federal penitentiary would be the ability of 12 people who don't know me to subjectively determine what my frame of mind was 3 1/2 years prior. Here's a radical idea Denis; how about deciding guilt or innocence by facts?

I also understand that during the deliberations, the jury sent a note to the judge asking if one of the charges against Mr. Libby was "lying to a reporter". Talk about "believability". I wonder which one of the "really good managerial types" on the jury asked that brilliant question or even allowed it to be asked. What confidence it must give the new convicted felon that he now knows that his fate was decided by people who, a) weren't absolutely crystal clear on the crimes he was charged with and, b) possessed a collective mental capacity that believed lying to a reporter is even a crime, let alone a felony to be tried in federal court.

The whole thing comes together though when you learn that in spite of the jury's stated political ambivalence, Mr. Collins provided a 7,500 word account of the entire deliberation process within hours exclusively to "The Huffington Post".

So in the end, we have really good apolitical managerial types building a mountain of Post-it notes, idiotic questions being asked of the judge, a person spending the entire deliberation writing memoirs for instant publication by a liberal columnist, Mr. Libby apparently headed for federal prison, and the rest of us wondering what has truly happened to justice in our nation as it is provided for by the constitution.

2007-03-11T10:02:00.000+01:00

Americal Idol?

After a 42 year wait, LTC(R) Bruce Crandall received the nation's highest honor last week when he was awardeed the Medal Of Honor for actions as a helicopter pilot in Vietnam. Then-Major Crandall's heroism was immortalized in the LTG(R) "Hal" Moore's classic book "We Were Solidiers Once...and Young" and later in the Mel Gibson movie of the same name.

I had the opportunity to see this ceremony broadcast live and it was moving to say the least.

The tragedy is not so much that this took 42 years to accompllish, but that so few people even know that it occured. We have been able to see almost live updates of the Anna Nicole debacle and we are promptly informed every time Britanny Spears checks into and out of rehab, shaves her head, or "forgets" to don underwear, but Mention the name "Bruce Crandall" and you will get stares like you were doing card tricks for a dog.

That said, I was pleasantly surprised to find this article in the Wall Street Journal:

"The Real American Idol March 1, 2007; Page A12
Amid the mad jumble that makes the news in our time, the White House on Monday held a ceremony for a Medal of Honor recipient. His name is Bruce Crandall. Mr. Crandall is 74 now, and earned his medal as a major, flying a Huey helicopter in 1965 in the Vietnam War.

The Medal of Honor is conferred only for bravery in combat. It is a military medal, and it is still generally regarded as the highest public tribute this nation can bestow. It is also very rare.
Still, the Medal of Honor does not occupy the place in the nation's cultural life that it once did. This has much to do with the ambivalent place of the military in our angry politics.

In the House debate just ended on a "non-binding" resolution to thwart the sending of more troops to Iraq, its most noted element was the Democratic formulation to "support the troops" but oppose the war. We will hear more of this when the members of the Senate debate their own symbolic resolution.

In last November's congressional election, the Democrats picked several military veterans as candidates to mitigate the notion, a burden since Vietnam, that an endemic hostility toward things military runs through the party's veins. Those Democratic veterans won.

Notwithstanding the bitter divide over Iraq, the presence of these veterans in Congress should be a good thing, if one thinks that the oft-publicized "divide" between the professional military and American civilians is not in this country's interest. It surely cannot be in the country's interest if over time more Americans come to regard the life of U.S. soldiers at war and in combat as an abstraction -- as say, mainly Oscar nominees or as newspaper photographs of scenes of utter loss at arms.

Two men have received the Medal of Honor for service in Iraq: Army Sgt. First Class Paul R. Smith, who died defending some 100 fellow soldiers, allowing their withdrawal; and Marine Cpl. Jason L. Dunham, who died after he dove atop a live grenade to protect his squad. (Cpl. Dunham's act was the subject of a 2004 Wall Street Journal story by reporter Michael M. Phillips and later a book, "The Gift of Valor.")

Bruce Crandall's Medal of Honor, at an emotional remove of 42 years, offers a chance to ponder just where the military stands now in the nation's life. The particulars of Lt. Col. Crandall's act of heroism, and what others said of it at the awarding of the medal on Monday, offers we civilians a chance to understand not merely the risks of combat but what animates those who embrace those risks.

Mr. Crandall, then a major, commanded a company with the 229th Assault Helicopter Battalion, carrying soldiers to a landing zone, called X-ray, in the la Drang Valley. An assault from the North Vietnamese army erupted, as described at the White House ceremony Monday. Three soldiers on Maj. Crandall's helicopter were killed. He kept it on the ground while four wounded were taken aboard. Back at base, he asked for a volunteer to return with him to X-ray. Capt. Ed Freeman came forward. Through smoke and bullets, they flew in and out 14 times, spent 14 hours in the air and used three helicopters. They evacuated 70 wounded. The battalion survived.

A Medal of Honor requires eyewitness accounts, and an officer there attested, "Maj. Crandall's actions were without question the most valorous I've observed of any helicopter pilot in Vietnam.

Gen. Peter Schoomaker, the Army chief of staff, spoke at the ceremony of what he called "the warrior ethos." Look at his words and consider whether they still stand today, or whether as a matter of the nation's broader ethos of commonly accepted beliefs, they are under challenge. Gen. Schoomaker said: "The words of the warrior ethos that we have today -- I will always place the mission first; I will never accept defeat; I will never quit; and I will never leave a fallen comrade -- were made real that day in the la Drang Valley.

At issue today is the question: Is that ethos worth it, worth the inevitable sacrifice? And not only in Iraq but in whatever may lie beyond Iraq.

The secretary of the Army, Francis Harvey, went on in this vein: "The courage and fortitude of America's soldiers in combat exemplified by these individuals is, without question, the highest level of human behavior. It demonstrates the basic goodness of mankind as well as the inherent kindness and patriotism of American soldiers."

An American soldier in combat demonstrates "the basic goodness of mankind"? And the highest level of human behavior? This was not thought to be true at the moment Maj. Crandall was flying those choppers in Vietnam. Nor is it now.

To embrace the thoughts of Gen. Schoomaker and of Secretary Harvey is to risk being accused of defending notions of American triumphalism and an overly strong martial spirit thought inappropriate to the realities of a multilateral world. This is a debate worth having. But we are not having it. We are hiding from it.

In a less doubtful culture, Maj. Crandall's magnificent medal would have been on every front page, if only a photograph. It was on no one's front page Tuesday. The New York Times, the culture's lodestar, had a photograph on its front page of President Bush addressing governors about an insurance plan. Maj. Crandall's Medal of Honor was on page 15, in a round-up, three lines from the bottom. Other big-city dailies also ran it in their news summaries; some -- the Washington Post, USA Today -- ran full accounts inside.

Most school children once knew the names of the nation's heroes in war -- Ethan Allen, John Paul Jones, Stephen Decatur, the Swamp Fox Francis Marion, Ulysses S. Grant, Clara Barton, Billy Mitchell, Alvin York, Lee Ann Hester. Lee Ann who? She's the first woman to win a Silver Star for direct combat with the enemy. Did it in a trench in Iraq. Her story should be in schools, but it won't be.

All nations celebrate personal icons, and ours now tend to be doers of good. That's fine. But if we suppress the martial feats of a Bruce Crandall, we distance ourselves further from our military. And in time, we will change. At some risk. "

While it is impossible to do now because of the ongoing Congessional debacle over the President's troop surge, I hope that at somepoint in the not to distant future we can begin to embrace our soldiers and all those who have placed them selves in harms way at the call of our nation. I hope that we can collectively honor them for their bravery and sacrfice without worrying that we are sending the wrong message to a politically correct world. I hope that we stop running from the debate.

2007-03-07T16:28:00.000+01:00

Closing the Loop

Okay, so I know I've been AWOL from the blogosphere for an intolerable amount of time but I 've had good reason...really...okay not so good, and not really "reason" as much as "excuse" and since it's not so good, I won't insult you by giving you a bad one.

My duties in Germany are, for all intents and purposes, complete. I have orders to Saint John's University in my hot little hands and we are busily preparing to (in Army slang) un-ass the AO. We will take off for Colorado on leave next week where we will help Mollie and Al clean out the house in Springs as they head for the Azores, then we drive to NY. After spending a few weeks house hunting and familiarizing we're off to Virgina for a couple weeks of school then back to Germany at the end or April. We'll be back here just long enough to see all our stuff get packed up, sweep out the house and say "Auf Wiedersen" before landing back in NY to report by the 1st of June.

Most people refer to leaving an assignment as "bittersweet" and while that may just be pandering to political correctness for the sake of those assembled, I have to honestly say that our leaving Deutschland will be much more sweet than bitter. There are certainly things that we love about Germany and a lot of great people that we've known here, but the last 3 1/2 years have been so turbulent and demanding that we will be glad to see it in the proverbial rear-view mirror.

To put things in perspective; during the first 14 years of my Army career, my most exotic TDY locations were Fort Chaffe, Arkansas; Fort Monmouth, NJ; and Fort Lewis, Washington. I never once left the country.

During the last 1,200 days I have been through 17 countries on 3 different continents, been shot at 6 different times, earned 1 badge and 4 different medals, celebrated Christmas mass in 4 different countries and been separated from Pam for 425 days.

Enough. It's time to trade the solitude and silence of the German village for the hustle and bustle of New York, the surliness of soldiers for the enthusiasim of cadets, and the suffocating bureaucracy of a command headquarters for the enlightened elitism of academia.
With that in mind, it is time to start closing down this blog. I still have a few more posts that I will make here regarding recent happenings, but I have opened a new blog, Red Storm Rising,(St. John's "mascot" is the Red Storm...see...it's a blatant rip-off of Tom Clancy for the sake of a cute little play on words there) which will be more appropriate for our continued adventures in the Big Apple.

Thank you all for your support over these past many months and I hope to hear from you there.

2006-10-29T10:34:00.000+01:00

CNN Sniper Video

I recently received the following email from the father of a 3/3 Marine that we had served with in Salerno last year. This young Marine along with the entire 3/3 battalion left Afghanistan and after a short break were deployed to Iraq. After 7 months in the An Bar province, they were relieved by the 2/3 Marines and have recently redeployed to their home station in Hawaii.

Recently CNN showed an insurgent video of the sniper killing of an American
soldier in Iraq. The decision by CNN to air the film on national
television was beyond bad judgement. Our anger turned to outrage when we
found out the victim was 2nd Lt. Joshua Booth from 2nd Battalion, 3rd
Marines. Not only are his pregnant wife, child, and parents forced to come
to terms with the death of this twenty-three year old Marine, but they now know
his final moments and violent death has been gratuitously aired for the world to
witness. Bobbye and I know the video could easily have been of Daniel or
any number of Marines we have come to know, since the killing took place in
Haditha, Iraq.

I found CNN's explanation proved to be bland and devoid of
substance. There are any number of guesses as to why CNN chose to air the
insurgent video; however, in my judgement, none are of overriding value. I
am further distressed the video has not been discussed and editorialized to any
degree in the mainstream press. I cannot imagine the WWII press airing
footage sent to them by Nazi Germany or the Imperial Japanese Army depicting the
killing of American soldiers in Europe or Marines on Iwo Jima. I've always
believed the media's support for the troops never went much beyond ratings and
their financial bottom line. 2nd Lieutenant Booth's killing, now aired on
a world stage, reinforces my opinion.
I would ask everyone to consider making a conscious decision to boycott CNN in protest and avail yourselves of another national news source. Further, I would ask you to forward this email to friends and relatives for their consideration.

I have watched this bit of "journalism" when it was aired on CNN International last week and I have to say that it was disturbing at best. Of course it was preceded with all the warnings as to the graphic nature of what was about to be aired and a brief description of the decision process used in producing it. I found both to be lacking. The warnings took on the enticing nature of promotion and the justification was a weak attempt towards public service alluding to the emerging threat of a "new" shift in insurgent tactics in utilizing snipers.

I certainly share this father's outrage but I find CNN's motivations to be a bit different. Maybe it was a function of watching this piece on the international channel rather than with the domestic newscasters but I found the pandering to an anti-U.S. policy sentiment to be blatant and the timing of its release during the run-up to the mid-term elections less than coincidental.

I have to wonder if no other major news outlet aired these video pieces because they didn't have them or because they didn't find them news worthy. If they didn't have them, it leads to the question of how CNN came to possess these insurgent created items and why they would choose CNN to give them to. If everyone had them but only CNN showed them, it baffles me why many will continue to chastise Fox News for a pro-administration bias but proudly hail the credibility of what is fast becoming an American based Al-Jazeera.

My heart and utmost gratitude go out to the Booth family. To the 2/3; Semper Fi and come home safe. Those who truly care know all the good things that you are doing.

2006-10-27T14:11:00.000+02:00

I thought of calling this post "Farewell to the Trinity" but I realized I already have a post by that name when 3/3 Marines left Salerno in June last year.

This is not about that Trinity, or even the Holy trinity, but of the other Trinity, Captains Burt, Giera, and Parrish who were 3 of my staff officers throughout the Afghanistan deployment. The other major component of the staff was Captain Mahoney who was the S-3 or simply the "3". SInce Tucker has already left Germany and is currently making his way through the Career Course in Ft. Lee, VA; this is not about the "3" but the "Three"

Two of the "Three" are making their way out of Germany in search of new adventures and I can't help feeling that we have reached the end of an era. Captain Burt will join Tucker at the Career Course before going to better things, maybe in the Army, maybe not. Captain Giera is leaving the Army in favor of a law enforcement job in North Carolina but with one foot inthe Army through the Reserves, we probably haven't heard the last of her either.

What follows is something I threw together for their farewell luncheon the other day:

Unsure of what I’d hear when I stepped through the door
Of my new BC’s office on this eve of war.

Said Langowski to the XO here is your team.
Please don’t worry, they’re not as surly as they seem.

A Captain as a 3 was not meant to be
for he was now a Major And can be of more use in counting containers

A Lieutenant as a 3? How will we get on?
Ah, no worries Ferris Beuhler is made of Teflon.

But this ode is not of that 3 but of those 3
It makes a more interesting story you see.

Your 1 is a star, he said, she smiles all the time,
And assumes all the taskings without whimper or whine.

She’s my number 2 Lieutenant, who could ask for more?
In fact she’s so good, she’s also your 4

Your 2 has potential, for excellence she’ll strive
Given the time she may even learn how to drive.

I fret for the rear so PBUSE must stay
Lest MAJ Roose give all my property away

So downrange for property who else could it be,
Only the third member of the Lieutenant Trinity.

She need only learn PBUSE and the property book ways
She has plenty of time, an entire 3 days.

So off they fly with a mighty whoosh
To transform the land of the Hindu-Kush

Salerno’s not nearly as bad as it seems,
There’s always the bazaar and espresso at the Green Bean

Then the rockets explode with a thunderous roar
So we grab our gear and head for the door

We must have our people we lack only three
Damn those Lieutenants, where the hell could they be?

“We were on a mission of great importance it seems
Swirling green tea with our friend Noor Amin.”

3 months in Salerno and their mission is done
So it’s off to Bagram in search of more fun.

Much of that year now is now lost in a haze
Wondering how those 3 passed their days

The PBO says sir my 1 block you must erase
Though I have not failed my mission, I’ve signed for half the base.

My judgment has been questioned and my career now doomed
For my poor choice in clothing for my Halloween costume.

The S2 says these MP’s are incompetent you see,
Armed only with my knives, I’ll find the detainees

And the 1 keeps smiling irregardless of what’s said
And boldly wades in where Angel fears to tread.

After only a year the Trinity is done
We must go back home for BAF has no more fun.

We came and we worked and have been all we could be
Suffering under TJ, and Dad, and of course STG.

So back to Germany the Triplets fly
Where they meet their friends and all hug and cry

While all good things must end, and these things must be,
Though two are now leaving they are forever the Trinity.

Best of Luck to Kristin and Trish, they will be stars in whatever they decide to do.

2006-10-27T14:10:00.000+02:00

It's Official

So we've known for a while that I was going to get promoted, but it's always a long, painful, drawn-out process. First you get selected, then you get a sequence number. Then every month the Army announces what sequence numbers will be promoted. Then you have to actually do the promotion ceremony.

First it was announced that there would be no promotions until October 1st, the beginning of the new fiscal year. Then in September, it was announced that there would be no promotions in October since the list hadn't been confirmed by senate.

Then suddenly on Monday, it was announced that senate had confirmed the promotions as of last Friday and that I was effectively a Lieutenant Colonel as of the 30th of September. Then we had to wait on orders which finally came this morning, then you have to round everyone up and do the actual ceeremony.

At last, all is complete. at 3:00 P.M. this afternoon, Pam ripped the gold oak leaf off my uniform puncehd me in the chest pinning the black leaf on.

Lietenant Colonel at last.

2006-08-30T20:00:00.000+02:00

Coming to America

And the winner is........St. John's University!!!!

We received word today that I have been selected as the new Professor of Military Science for St. John's University in (wait for it).....Queens, New York.

Considering that the selection rate to become a Professor of Military Science at all was 15% (51 selected out of more than 300 applicants) we are very excited to know that we will be coming to America in true Eddie Murphy fashion.

More to follow.....

2006-08-30T19:58:00.000+02:00

Sideways Through Deutschland

In our constant effort to keep our minds averted from the fact that our fate, future assignment, and our location for the next 3 years is dangling tediously with the Army's Professor of Military Science board in Washington, we decided to vacate the area and occupy our minds elsewhere.

As we are entering the wine fest season here in Germany, we took a look a the local paper and found all the villages that were showing wine fests this weekend, plotted them on the GPS and did our best imitation of the movie "Sideways" travelling from winerey to winery along the Deutsch Wein Strasse.

Starting in the south and moving north along the Rhein river, we stopped at no less than 6 wineries tasting their various offering and buying the ones that tickled our fancy. By 3 P.M. we had enough bottles to fill our new winerack but that didn't keep us from stopping at the vineyard owner who was plying his wares in front of his neatly ordered rows of grapes in a stand next to the road.

Brian and Pam: Guten Tag

Herr Boos (I swear that's his name): Guten tag

Brian and Pam: Ich Sprechen Kein Deutsch (I speak no German)

Herr Boos: Nicht? (None?)

Brian and Pam: Nicht.

Herr Boos gesturing to his wares: Probe? (taste)

Brian and Pam pointing to a particular bottle: Ja Bitte (Yes Please)

Herr Boos continuing to speak in German: Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, Kaisersluatern, blah, blah, blah. (This is a particularly vile wine that we just we just squished with our dirty feet this morning. It contains leaves, stems, seeds, and a few rat turds, but you will taste it and buy a few bottle, take it back to Kaiserslautern and drink it because you know less than my dog about choosing wine.)

Brian and Pam: Ja, Ja. Is Gut. Ich Mochte Zwei das, und Zwei das, und Eins das. (Yes, Yes, it's good. I'd like two of these, two of these, and one of these.)
And off we go further down the wine strasse.

Ok, that might not be exactly what Herr Boos said, in fact the wine was very good.
So we eventually found ourselves at a wine fest in Bad Durkheim linked arm in arm with more Germans that spoke no English, weaving back and forth to the sound of German folksongs.

All in all, it was a good trip "Sideways" through Deutschland.

2006-08-09T17:42:00.000+02:00

The More Things Change, the More They Remain the Same

Well, I suppose it's time that I started writing again.

Pam and I have been back in Germany since April now, and it's been an experience of extremes. This seems to be a place that you alternately love and hate or even sometime simultaneously. There seems to be no middle ground. We love our house, but the neighbors are psychotic. The weather went from 2 solid weeks of rain to 3 solid weeks of intense heat then back to rain. We're ready to leave, but we want to stay.

We did get to experience the World Cup here in Germany, an experience to remember, culminated by a trip downtown where we joined tens of thousands of fans watching Germany take on Portugal for 3rd place. Truly an experience to remember.

The 4th of July weekend found us in Bavaria checking the "I went to Germany" block of visiting Mad King Ludwig's castles followed by a short jaunt through Austria and a night in Garmisch.
We also made the journey back to Bastogne in Belgium and were able to walk the grounds of Foy, Noville, and Rachamps which were immortalized in "Band of Brothers" (watch episodes 7 and 8).

We have a number of things we are looking forward to in the next few months:
I have submitted all the applications to compete for a Professor of Military Science position beginning next summer. The board meets near the end of this month with the results expected by the 1st of September. We're waiting on pins and needles for this one as it will hopefully tell us where we will be for the next 3 years.
Simon and Schuster is set to release "The Blog of War" on September 5th. Several of the posts from this blog are included in that book and we are looking forward to seeing them in print. More importantly, most of the proceeds are being donated to the Fisher House. Please take a few few minutes to order your copies. They are very compelling stories, the nature of which you will not find in any other format and the proceeds will be doing worlds of good.
We received word last month that I had been selected for promotion to Lieutenant Colonel and with any luck should be able to pin on the silver oak leaves by October.

So now I find myself back at the 21st Theater Support Command working the same job I was before my diversion to the 191st and Afghanistan. it seems a little surreal now to think of all that has happened over the past 18 months and while the memories and heartache fade with time, I find myself making a concerted effort to keep them as a constant companion and reminder of our other comrades who are still there or headed that way. Our Son in Law Alan is toughing out his last couple of months in Baghdad, as is Brian Moore who I worked with at 21st before. My buddy Scott from the unit in Colorado Springs is set to head back that way soon, and Lance Corporal Daniel Wiesen who was with us in Salerno last year is now finishing up a subsequent tour to Haditha, Iraq.

These are just the ones that spring to mind immediately, but the chartered DC-10s that regularly fly overhead on their way in and out of Ramstein serve as constant reminders that there are still many of our comrades far from home and in harm's way who require our daily prayers

2006-05-17T10:26:00.000+02:00

Regarding Dean Berry,

This is the comment that Rev.(???) Dean Berry left on my previous post:

DEANBERRY said...
BE A MAN AND LEAVE THIS POST INTACT.JESUS CHRIST HAS REMOVED HIS BLESSING FROM AMERICA BECAUSE OF YOU AMERINAZIS. YOU CAN’T MURDER PEOPLE TO STEAL THEIR OIL, THEN LIE ABOUT IT! YOU DON’T THINK YOU’RE GOING TO HELL FOR THAT?http://www.deanberryministries.org/index3.html

Well, God Bless Dean Berry and his demostrative abilities in showing that the 1st amendment applies to all Americans regardless of political viewpoint, Messianic Complex, historical ignorance, or mental capacity.

Rest assured Mr. Berry that I would never remove your comment from my blog. This is not because I have any concerns about my manhood. Nor is it only because I truly do believe in free speech and consequently have never removed any comments (spammers withstanding). It is also because I find it entertaining to know that your lunatical ravings do more to promote a conservative agenda than I ever could.

There are not enough hours in the day to point out all the faslehoods, misinterpretations, and misguided points of view in the website that you referred my readers to, nor would I care to attempt to engage you in a battle of wits since I do not believe in fighting the unarmed.

I will leave you with this though, and I write this only because I care, but your repeated questioning of the manhoods of those who may disagree with you leads readers to believe that it's a reflective behavior masking your own insecurities. There are prescriptions and therapies that can help.

P.S. There's no oil in Afghanistan

2006-03-26T18:11:00.000+02:00

And Now, Get On With Your Life

So where were we before being so rudely interrupted? It seems for the first time that we have changed while the world around us has remained relatively the same instead of the other way around. While a few new stores and restaurants have popped up around our home in Colorado Springs since I was last here, the place still looks virtually as I remembered it over the past year in Purgatory. While the environment has remained constant my perspective seems to have changed. It doesn't seem to bother me when someone cuts me off in traffic or the overworked and underpaid waitress forgets to bring the hash browns. There are more important things in life worthy of indignation. Even the simple treat of being able to look at the mountains through clear air rather than the dust and smoke of Bagram is enough to bring a smile.

Today is our last day in Colorado for a while as we will soon be headed to DIA for a non-stop to Frankfurt this afternoon. The month has gone by so fast. There have been days and evenings with the neighbors and family, trips to the mountains, Colorado Avalanche game, and hundreds of other normal activities that I just can't take for granted any longer. The highlight of the trip though was the wedding.

On Friday, March 17th, St. Patrick'sricks Day, our daughter Mollie married her fiance Alan at the Peterson Air Force Base Chapel. It was a fairy tale wedding that seemed to go Without flaw with my father conducting the ceremony and friends and family from all over the country in attendance. The reception at the Officer's Club was then followed by a Hooley (a loud and boisterous Irish party) at the house which was an overwhelming success. While there was a decidedly unfortunate turn of events a few days later, it was a flawless day that was the crown jewel of our time at home.

So soon it will be back to work and all the routine tasks that we seem to fill our days with, but while the train of life keeps rolling down the track with unvarying speed, we certainly seem to be enjoying the view more.

2006-03-26T18:08:00.000+02:00

A Toast to Mollie and Al

I had a little while to work on this toast that I gave at Mollie and Al's wedding.

"First, I'd like to thank everyone for coming today, I know it means a lot to Mollie and Al, and it certainly means a lot to us that you would take the time and effort to be here to share this occasion with us today.

I don't want to steal any of the best man's thunder here but I've got a couple of things to say. I asked Mollie and she said it would be okay so..well I didn't really ask her, I just told her I was going to do it and she was alright with it..which was kind of a moot point because I was going to do it anyway.

A couple of months ago when Mollie asked me if I would walk her down the aisle along with her father I said 'Sure, I'd be honered.', and I didn't give it a second thought. A little while later though, I mentioned it to one of my staff officers and she said 'I don't know Sir, that sounds a little, well, gay.'

I said 'Gay, what are you talking about?'
She said 'Well, think about it Sir, 'My name's Mollie, and these are my two dads. This is my biological dad, and this is my other dad.'
Well thank you so much for that image, but when you put it that way it does sound a little gay. So, Gary, if you're getting any strange looks around here Big Guy, that's probably why. But, I said I would do it so at the risk of having my hetrosexuality called into question, I did this for you.

Seriously, I was honered to walk Mollie down the Aisle today along with her father, and I'll tell you why. You see, about ten years ago, I found myself in what Dante described as the 'dark wood, the true path having been lost.' Regardless of anything else I had done, I had been an absolute failure as both a husband and a father. I was making my way through life day to day without any inspiration or motivation. Then one day, I came home, and there sitting on the front porch was my redemption.

That's been 10 years Pam. It's been a long road from there to here, and that journey has brought us so many wonderful times that we have been ecstatic to share with those around us, like today. It has also brought us some extremely difficult times that we have had to lean on each other very heavily to get through, but I wouldn't trade a minute of it. I call Pam my redemption because she gave me the second opportunity to be a good husband, and I tahnk God every day for that and for her.

Along with Pam though, came Sarah, and Matthew, and Michael and Kristin, my little buddy Max over there, and of course Mollie, and therein, the second opportunity to be a good parent.
Now Mollie knew this, and she was determined to make me earn this title of "Good Parent". She managed to squeeze enough parent/child anxiety and drama to last a lifetime into a few short years. Now I know that all of you are looking at her right now and thinking 'She looks like a princess, what kind of drama could she possibly cause?' I knew that you would think that, so I brought along these index cards with some examples. Here's the time that Mollie wrecked her car on the way to work. Here's the time that she wrecked her car on the way home from work, quite a feat since she only lived two blocks from work. Here's something about a rocking chair, and...this is going to take too long so I'll just leave these cards up here and you can go through them on your own.

Seriously, I was honered to do this for her today because I know that when Mollie asked me, she was telling me that I had indeed earned that title of 'good parent'.

Now I would like to stand here and wish for Mollie and Al that all good things in life fall at your feet and that joy and happiness folow you for the rest of your days, but I'm not going to because it doesn't happen that way. It's work, a lot of hard work, and it's even harder when your in the military which as of today, you both are.

What I will wish for you though is the challenge to grow a little closer together each day, and to find new ways to love each other every day. I will wish you the opportunity to one day, years from now, look at each other and realize that when you first saw each other you were looking at true love.

So if you will raise your glasses with me, to Mollie and Al, to challenges and opportunities, and to true love."

2006-03-12T16:49:00.000+01:00

Were you ever Afraid?

I have been drunk now for over two weeks, I passed out and I rallied and I sprung a few leaks. -Jimmy Buffet -

After two weeks in Germany completing the mandatory reintegration tasks and various administrative functions I found myself at Frankfurt International Airport waiting for the 10 hour non-stop flight that would take me to Denver and finally re-unify me with the other half of my soul.

Scanning the departure board for my flight I was suddenly struck by one of the many stark differences between the civilized world and the war zone. In contrast to the past 14 months of fighting, bartering with, and coniving the Air Force for rare seats on flights from Purgatory to Hades which may or may not depart at the whim of the flight crew, I was overwhlemed by the steadily clicking board indicating dozens of flights departing frequently and punctually to Rome, Amsterdam, New York, Paris, and other destinations all over the world. I thought about how I had whisked over the 100 or so kilometers of autobahn to the airport in a under an hour and recalled how we had waited days for Jingle trucks to struggle over Afghan roads for the same distance. It occured to me that it hadn't been so much a geographical move of a few thousand miles that I had undertaken in early February as an advancement through time of a few centuries.

Even in the 21st century world of civilian aviation, our Lufthansa 747 didn't depart as scheduled, but the time was made up enroute and we slid on to the DIA's runway as scheduled 9 hours later. After waiting what seemed a veritable eternity for my lone checked bag to materialize, I made my way to the customs agent.

"What countries have you visited since leaving the U.S. on this trip?" asked the agent without looking up.

I wanted to laugh.

"Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kuwait, Uzbekistan, Qatar, Kyrgyzstan, and Germany."
The agent peered up at me over her glasses

"Business?"

I displayed my ID card.

"Welcome Home." she said with a smile handing back my passport.

When I finally stepped through the doors to the terminal, I was promptly charged by Max with Pam only a step behind where hugs, kisses and tears that had been reserved for 7 months finally poured out.

When we could finally move again, we walked only a few feet more into the terminal where cheers erupted from my immediate and extended family who had seemingly occupied the entire north end of DIA by force with flags and banners. Two Denver PD officers were drawn by the commotion and started asking a couple of questions only to find that one of these men in blue had been one of my instructors while I was a ROTC cadet back in college. The retirement lifestyle had not agreed with the old Master Sergeant and after a short stint with the Sheriff's department had convinced DPD that his talents were being wasted and has been wearing that uniform ever since. Quite a feat seeing that I graduated college in the 80's.

There was a quick dinner with the family at the Cherry Cricket so I could remember what a smothered green chile burrito is supposed to taste like, then finally back home.

The days since have been filled with wedding plans, train rides to and from Glenwood Springs, hockey games, multiple taste tests to ensure they haven't changed the recipies for Guiness and Fat Tire, and a lot of doing nothing.

During one of these moments of doing nothing when Pam and I were sitting on the front porch watching the sun set over Pikes Peak she suddenly asked me if I had ever been afraid. The answer; the honest answer; was 'yes', but not when someone looking from the outside might have thought. The fear hadn't come when riding in Blackhawks or Chinooks over inhospitable terrain, or when crouched in concrete bunkers with rockets exploding around us. I remember that I genuinely felt the cold touch of fear on my heart while staring into the absolute blackness of a Salerno night and realizing that that darkness held people close at hand that wanted to kill me. Having grown up in the security of America's borders, this thought had been only an abstraction to me as I'm sure it is to most Americans.

I had thought back to another night nearly 4 years earlier when I had felt fear of what the darkness held. I had watched the horrific events of September 11th on the large screen TVs at the Merrill Lynch Campus in South Denver and had felt the same shock, horror, and disbelief that each of us did. Driving home that night though, I had crested the top of an exit ramp on the far eastern edge of the Denver metropolitan sprawl when I had been struck by the absoluteness of the dark. From where I sat that night, I should have seen the lights of dozens of planes either landing or departing from DIA but instead there was just the suffocating blackness of an empty sky. It was the first tangible evidence that I had seen of that day's events and I had been horrified at what the darkness held.

So now as I find myself in a supermarket aisle standing in awe of the hundreds of choices of deodorant or cereal that I have, my mind drifts back to thoughts of Afghan children selling trinkets outside the Bagram gate or of throwing bundles of supplies to beleagured families in the mountains of Pakistan and I realize how fortunate I am.

It is not though, until I think of the my comrades still half a world away standing in an absolute blackness that holds people close at hand who wish them harm; knowing that they continue to stand there so that you and I may never again share that feeling here at home, that I realize how truly blessed I am.

2006-02-15T07:05:00.000+01:00

Willkommen in Deutschland

Finally back in Germany. After loading the plane, which the Air Force made a 6 hour process of, we flew for 7 hours finally hitting the ground at 8:30 P.M. German time on Monday. The obligatory handshake with the General getting off the plane was followed by the customs inspection then meeting with the unit reps where after a year of carrying it around, I was disencumbered of my 9mm. There was a reception at Rhine Ordnance Barracks where the families would finally get to see their long lost spouses and parents, but with Pam still waiting for me in Colorado for a couple of weeks, I opted to secure a ride straight from Ramstein to the house where, God bless them, our landlords had turned on the heat, and stocked the fridge with a few morsels and some beer. The food will last a while, the beer is gone.

2006-02-09T05:33:00.000+01:00

On Flying

Pam loves to fly.

She hates the chaos of airports with the parking, security, rude people, long lines, and waiting, but she loves to fly, and the take-off is her favorite part. She could be running late through heavy traffic to DIA, not be able to find a parking spot within the same county as the terminal, be in line through security behind the guy that has to strip down through his first 3 layers of skin to get through the metal detectors, and be seated in the center seat in the middle a section reserved for insomniac toddlers, but when the plane turns onto the end of the runway, the pilot opens the throttles, and she is pushed back in her seat, hardly able to contain herself, she never fails to turn to me with a beaming smile normally seen on children taking their first carnival ride.

I know exactly how she feels.

Last night, our C-17 turned onto the end of the Bagram runway, the cabin lights went dark, and then with brakes holding us fast, the massive engines roared up to full throttle. Suddenly the brakes were released and I was jolted back in my seat as the mammoth aircraft lurched down the runway. A moment later we rotated into I am sure was a space shuttle like trajectory, and at 14:45 Dublin Pub Time I left Afghanistan soil for the last time.

I know I'll be in Kyrygzstan (sp?) for a few days, and I know it will still seem like an eternity before I see Pam or German beer yet, but at 14:45 DPT last night, I was thankful for the darkened cabin so no one could see me with the smile of a child on his first carnival ride and tears in my eyes.

If

2006-01-30T11:00:00.000+01:00

If you can keep your head when all about you

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you

But make allowance for their doubting too,

I suppose that the reason you area reading more and more of the politics of the GWOT here than before is that it is a function of where we are in the deployment cycle. Our time remaining here is in the single digits now and I think it is normal that when you reach a juncture such as this, you cast a retrospective glance at the things you have both accomplished and endured.

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,

Or being hated, don't give way to hating,

And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

Looking back down the path that I have followed over this past year and remembering the places that journey has taken me and people I have met there, it causes the emotions to run deep. I see monumental challenges and Herculean achievements; I see pain and devastation along with empathy and sacrifice. I see victories in the eyes of a child, and losses in a flag covered casket.

If you can dream--and not make dreams your master,

If you can think--and not make thoughts your aim;

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

And treat those two impostors just the same;

More than that though, I see heroes and patriots. Volunteers all, brought together from all walks of life for any manner of reason for this common purpose. Together they have achieved accomplishments of epic proportions for a noble and righteous cause only to be slighted by uninformed, self-important misanthropes who have apparently been deprived, or deprived themselves, of the intellectual capacity necessary to grasp the elusive concept of selfless sacrifice.

If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken

Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,

And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

I do feel a bit of pity for those that will revile our involvement in this conflict for many years to come, particularly those who have been able to view it from a detached position of ignorance solely through the media. This pity is born out of the knowledge that after years of standing firm on their misinformed beliefs, they will one day awaken to the knowledge that their personal values and convictions never demanded the sacrifice of body and soul for something larger than their own personal well-being. Though reviled by some now, my comrades and I will pass the remainder of our days with the peace of knowing that when our nation cried out, we were there while others will always wonder of the ability to risk all they have and all they are for an ideal larger than themselves.

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

And never breath a word about your loss;

The pity for these people will take a back seat though to the empathy I feel for those that will follow me here. I will empathize with their feelings of isolation and abandonment; with their desperate longings for family and home; with their cursing of the seemingly interminable passing of time; and with their overarching sense of duty which will not allow the mission to fail.

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

To serve your turn long after they are gone,

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

I also know that I will rejoice with them as they approach the place I currently occupy, with their mission completed and both reunifications and celebrations days and hours away. I will remember the satisfaction they will feel for their accomplishments, secure in their knowledge that they have done all that was asked of them, appreciated or not; a satisfaction formed from sacrifice that can be neither inflated by compliment nor diminished by disparagement

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,

Or walk with kings--nor lose the common touch,

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;

If all men count with you, but none too much,

From where I stand now, these are the things that I see looking both forward and back down the road that I travel, but for today it is enough to know of you few who will read this and say “Well done Soldier, it’s time to come home.”

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,

Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,

And--which is more--you'll be a Man, my son!

--Rudyard Kipling

An Open Letter to Arianna Huffington

2006-01-28T23:38:00.000+01:00

Now I normally don't let the simpering drivel of the left wing bother me too much, but a column regarding the stability of Afghanistan by Arianna Huffington showed up in Stars and Stripes the other day and it is so far off the mark that it demands a response. So I hope you will indulge my politicizing this blog for a post.

Dear Ms. Huffington,

Ms. Huffington, your January 9th column is not only grossly misleading, it is irresponsible. Clearly relying on skewed and second-hand information it draws false conclusions to support your myopic political perspectives.

While it’s true that there are severe problems with Afghanistan’s infrastructure to include severe electrical shortages and a sputtering economy, these are problems that pre-dated the toppling of the Taliban and all these problems are exceptionally less severe now than they were then.

You indicate that Sen. Hagel is courageous his criticism of the president, the courage of which escapes me since it seems to be the national pastime, but he lends nothing to support his claim that Iraq is “sucking the oxygen out of [Afghanistan]”. In the past year that I have been in Afghanistan I have never been short the resources required to accomplish the mission at hand and certainly have never been told, “Sorry, you can’t have that, we need it for Iraq”. Just because the media and hence the American population as a whole may have lost focus on Afghanistan, doesn’t mean the military has and to make people believe that is the case is irresponsible at best.

Ironically, in the same paragraph that you accuse the president of a “numerical cavalcade” you yourself skew the casualty numbers beyond recognition when you claims nearly 100 U.S service members lost to the Taliban led insurgency. First, while there were 99 U.S. service members lost in Afghanistan in 2005, 33 of them were due to non-hostile related causes. ( http://www.icasualties.org/oef/ ) Of the 66 who died as a result of hostility, at least 30 were in eastern Afghanistan in or near the Kunar province region. This is important because it points out the ignorance of your professed knowledge of the Afghanistan conflict. The Taliban is a fanatical organization based on Muslim Extremism. It is, however, a culturally significant portion of the Afghan population and as such is, in part and parcel, being offered a piece of the political restructuring of this country much as the Sunni muslims are in Iraq. Violence at the hands of the Taliban is historically centered around their religious center of gravity in the Kandahar region in Southern Afghanistan. The vast majority of the hostility in the Eastern Afghanistan is at the hands of foreign fighters. These are not insurgents, they are terrorists who infiltrate this coutry from across the Pakistan border. There is a vast difference.

Your tirade on the reduction of both aid and troops to Afghanistan is anathema to your attempted conclusion of a faltering U.S.policy here. The number of troops in Afghanistan is dropping because responsibility is being handed over to the NATO led ISAF. 50% of the country is already under ISAF control and within a few months it will be 75%. Of course the amount of aid is being decreased, it is inversely proportionate to the international community’s increase in support. Walk down the street at Bagram Airfield or sit in any one of the dining facilities and you will see French, German, Canadian, Australian, New Zealand, Polish, Romanian, Slovakian, and Korean troops as well as those from a host of other countries. The Chinese are rebuilding roads to the east, the Germans have control of the northern regions,Jordan still runs a hospital in the north, Spain and Italy have control in the west, and Canadians will soon be moving into the south. This is what it looks like when the job is nearing completion and is being handed over.

It sounds, Ms Huffington, as though is disappointed that we are completing the mission here and getting out since you will have less ammunition to sling at the Bush Administration. Glad to disappoint.

I am similarly confounded by your lambasting of the President for taking a “hands-off” approach to the alleged drug kingpins in the recently elected parliament. I can only ask what you would have written if the Bush Administration had directed the removal of duly elected Afghan members of parliament in the first free election in more than 30 years. It is not a surprise to me that your cited source of information is Newsweek, the same publication that caused riots across this country and were responsible for 16 civilian deaths with their flawed story on the desecration of the Koran at Guantanamo Bay. Remember, these are the people who have unbridled access to the Taliban leadership and will not share their information with the military because they are journalists before they are Americans.

Of all the mis-statements and half-truths in this column though, the thing that is most indicative of your flawed perspective is the last sentence. Let me see if I understand this. If we keep troops in a combat zone we are in a quagmire, an unwinnable war. If we pull troops out, we are cutting and running. Make up your mind, you can’t have it both ways. How about this: we keep troops in the combat zone until they are no longer required and then pull them out as their mission is completed.

Afghanistan is a success story Ms. Huffington. Do the research next time before you try to spin something that clearly doesn’t have the legs to reach your objective.

Stockholm Syndrome

2006-01-19T07:04:00.000+01:00

There was a phenomenon that I read about when soldiers were due to rotate out of Vietnam that for some reason they couldn't bring themselves to get on the airplane. I imagine it to be something similar to Stockholm Syndrome where hostages begin to develop symathy for their captors, or what was described as "institutionalization" in The Shawshank Redemption" where paroled prisoners had become so familiar with life in prison that they couldn't adjust to living as a free person.

Whatever you call it, I can certainly relate to it now. With the end of our rotation here just beyond our fingertips, I seem to be looking at this country through a different prism seeing and appreciating its beauty in ways I never thought possible before. It is a stark, harsh beauty where the richness lies in it's simplicity rather than its complexity or texture, but I have found that I can now appreciate it for what it is rather than despise it for what it's not.

The mountains surrouding Bagram are now completely covered with snow and their appearance is more rugged than even the most isolated high country of my native Colorado. The sunrises are magnificent quickly trancending the spectrum from midnight and slate blues through crimsons and deep oranges before the western mountain tops are finally illuminated with golden rays of sun.

While I will miss these sunrises along with the vivid starry nights that precede them and I will miss the simplicity of the life that the Afghan people lead with their methodical, unassuming ways; I have not succumbed the Stockholm Syndrome or "Institutionalization". The list of things that I will not miss about this place is far longer and the list of people and things that I have missed so much for the past year is longer still.

I can relate more with Morgan Freeman's character in Shawshank as he rides the bus towards Mexico. I am so excited that I can barely hold a thought in my head.

So while I will still appreciate the Afghan night sky, It brings me more joy to know that I will be home before the moon is full again.

God Speed Renegades

2006-01-13T14:39:00.000+01:00

When you live at one end or the other of Bagram Airfield, you are awakened at some very odd hours by the noise of various and sundry aircraft conducting maintenance runs on their engines, pre-flight checks, or most notably, C-17s performing a short field take-off (consisting of running all the engines to full power while standing on the brakes) or reversing their engines in order to stop before over running the end of the runway and drifting into a minefield. Regardless of the aircraft or the procedure, it takes a little while to get used to all the noise and develop the ability to sleep through it. We used to find it very irritating and were thoroughly convinced that both the Air Force and the Marines intentionally scheduled their flight times more around the sleeping times of soldiers rather than those requisite to mission support.

This morning though, at roughly 0045 Dublin Pub Time, as we were vainly trying to squeeze out those last few Zs, I heard the rumble of a C-17 running up it's engines then felt the slight tremble of Stalag 17 as the behemoth aircraft lumbered off Afghan soil and pointed itself in the direction of the Hindu Kush. Even though I was now fully awake and had abandoned all thoughts of the snooze button, I find myself smiling rather than cursing the Evil Flight Planing Voo-Doo Witchdoctor because I knew that the 1st contingent of our battalion was on it's way back home. It will still take a few days and there will be multiple legs to their trip, but the Renegades of the 26th Quartermaster Company have completed their roatation and have headed home albeit with a couple of hitchhikers most notably, SPOXO Minor, Jeff Knight.

I apologize again for the posts becoming fewer and further between, but aside from handing off our mission to our successors, cleaning up quarters, mailing excess baggage, and trying to retain some semblance of mission focus there has been very little to write about.

This is an exciting time though. We have weathered the difficult separation from family and friends through the Christmas holidays and now there is an air of anticipation. We are beginning to feel like school kids cleaning out their lockers and waiting for the final bell before summer vacation.

I'm not sure how many more posts I am going to find the time to write before I leave Afghnistan in the rear-view mirror so I would like to take this opportunity to thank all the readers who have stuck with us through this past year. Thank you for all the thoughts and prayers, for the care packages and cards, and for all the kind comments. All these things have meant the world to us over the past year and I can't thank you enough.

I hope to have a few more posts up over the next few weeks, but in the event that I don't, I hope everyone will be understanding if the next post you read here is written under the influence of German beer.

A Long Year and a Long December

2005-12-20T06:44:00.000+01:00

“…and it’s a long December and there’s reason to believe maybe this year will be better than the last.” – Counting Crows

So how do you define a good year? Is it a span of time marked by moments of happiness, notable achievements, and successes? Do the days punctuated by laughter have to outweigh those stained with tears, or is it a cumulative effect of how we recollect our overall experience of the preceding months as the church bells fade from midnight mass on Christmas Eve?

Sliding into December, it would be easy to look back and say this has been a bad year. By the time the ball drops in Times Square and people are kissing and singing Auld Lang Syne, I will have been apart from my wife for 349 days of 2005. That in itself is enough for 2005 to merit the moniker of “Bad Year” in my book.

During this time, Pam has had to deal with moving for the 5th time in as many years and 2 more moves to look forward to over the next year. She has had to deal with her own personal version of “Pacific Heights” tenants in our house, shady land managers, shoddy contractors, disrespectful and difficult Tri-Care and hospital employees, hospitalizations, and surgeries.

During this same time, aside from the normal trials and tribulations of military duty, I have traveled through 14 countries on 3 continents, trained in the snow, endured the stifling desert heat, experienced thunderstorms of biblical proportions, and witnessed brutal and indiscriminate devastation wrought by both man and nature.

And yet, there have been moments of spontaneous joy along with heartfelt outpourings of love and kindness, the nature of which can only be born out of tribulation. Coinciding with the heart-rending tragedy that continues to permeate this region of the world where so much of my past year has been spent, were extraordinary moments of compassion and kindness; spontaneous and heartfelt demonstrations of caring and generosity and overwhelming occasions of camaraderie and sharing.

How then do we weigh these blessings against the magnitude of heartache, loneliness, and sorrow of being separated from family, or can we? I think now, that even though they all must be taken as pieces that create the whole, one cannot be weighed against the other. They are of different genres and should not even be competing on the same field for my emotions. While we have to accept all the challenges that life brings us, they are only things to be endured, things which add contrast and texture to the moments we cherish in life.

As the end of this year approaches, I find myself separated from my wife and family by half a world. While all the reasons that I find myself desert purgatory are just as valid as they ever were, there are days when I just don’t care, days when I just miss my wife and when I yearn for home. During these times, Pam and I will commiserate with each other through our hardships. We will put aside all the noble and honorable reasons for our tribulations and allow ourselves a short time of self-pity because duty and honor aside, being apart from your loved ones through this time of giving and sharing just plain sucks.

Tomorrow though, the world will seem just a little brighter as we wake up one day closer to being together again. Our contributions and sacrifices will mean just a little bit more as this fledgling bastion of freedom progresses that much further through its infancy and we will see if we can find just a little more strength and perseverance from some untapped reserve to help push us through the final stretch. So while it has been both a long year and a long December, with the end of our mission right around the corner, there is reason to believe that maybe this year will be better than the last.

Sorry About the Hiatus

2005-12-20T06:37:00.000+01:00

Sorry about the sporadic postings recently. Not only did we find ourselvels in a bit of an operational lull when there just wasn't that much to write about, I managed to procure a 4 day R&R pass to Qatar. For 96 wonderful hours, Craig and I were able to bask in the sun, take a dip in the Persian Gulf, visit western style malls with American Fast Food franchises and of course imbibe in limited amounts of alcoholic beverages. The just as quickly as it came, we find ourselves back in Metropolis scraping frost from windshields again. Funny how the Air Force never cancels return flights from places like this.

2005-12-03T13:31:00.000+01:00

A couple of items here about the Christmas season.
First, if you have a problem with me calling it the Christmas season rather than the "Winter Holidays", the "Happy Holiday Season", the "Non-Religiously Affiliated Season of Giving", or some other sort of nonsense, then you're probably reading the wrong website. It's Christmas folks. It's a religous holiday. If you don't believe that, don't celebrate it. Ooooh, by the way, I'm writing this on a government computer. I hope that doesn't violate the separation of church and state. I'd better make sure I get the Chaplain to look at it first. You remember the chaplain right? A soldier of God whose earthly salary is paid by the U.S. Government. Church and state in the same uniform. Hmmm? Well, enough of that. In God We Trust, and Merry Christmas.

Second, I have had more than a few conversations/emails from people asking what they can send in packages for the soldiers. Folks, I can't tell you how much we appreciate the giving and sharing. The small momentos of support go so far in boosting the morale of the troops during this particularly stressful time. The difficulty here is that for the people I'm associated with, our time remaining here on the ground is short and in over the next few weeks we're going to try to reduce the amount of things that we have to carry out of here by shipping it out early.

Since giving is the most important thing during this season and your well-wishes, thoughts and prayers are the most important thing to us right now, here's the best thing that I can think of:
Visit Soldiers' Angels and select from any one of the operations that they have listed there to contribute to. They are all fantastic programs that go directly to helping soldiers and families who need it most. Then just drop us a card with your well wishes, thoughts and prayers and letting us know that you have given in our honor to help our comrades who need it most. cards can be sent to:

Any JLC Soldier
c/o Claude Crisp
HHC JLC
APO, AE 09354

Finally, I want to share this poem that somone forwarded to me. I normally shy away from forwards, but this captures very well, the spirit of the CHRISTMAS season from my perspective this year.

The embers glowed softly, and in their dim light,
I gazed round the room and I cherished the sight.
My wife was asleep, her head on my chest,
my daughter beside me, angelic in rest.

Outside the snow fell, a blanket of white,
Transforming the yard to a Winter delight.
The sparkling lights in the tree I believe,
Completed the magic that was Christmas Eve.

My eyelids were heavy, my breathing was deep,
Secure and surrounded by love I would sleep.
In perfect contentment, or so it would seem,
So I slumbered, perhaps I started to dream.

The sound wasn't loud, and it wasn't too near,
But I opened my eyes when it tickled my ear.
Perhaps just a cough, I didn't quite know,
Then the sure sound of footsteps outside in the snow.

My soul gave a tremble, I struggled to hear,
andI crept to the door just to see who was near.
Standing out in the cold and the dark of the night,
A lone figure stood, his face weary and tight.

A soldier, I puzzled, some twenty years old,
Perhaps a Marine, huddled here in the cold.
Alone in the dark, he looked up and smiled,
Standing watch over me, and my wife and my child.

"What are you doing?" I asked without fear,
"Come in this moment, it's freezing out here!
Put down your pack, brush the snow from your sleeve,
You should be at home on a cold Christmas Eve!"

For barely a moment I saw his eyes shift,
Away from the cold and the snow blown in drifts.
To the window that danced with a warm fire's light.
Then he sighed and he said, "Its really all right,
I'm out here by choice. I'm here every night."

"It's my duty to stand at the front of the line,
That separates you from the darkest of times.
No one had to ask or beg or implore me,
I'm proud to stand here like my fathers before me.

My Gramps died at 'Pearl on a day in December,"
Then he sighed, "That's a Christmas 'Gram always remembers.
"My dad stood his watch in the jungles of 'Nam',
And now it is my turn and so, here I am.

I've not seen my own son in more than a while,
But my wife sends me pictures, he's sure got her smile.
Then he bent and he carefully pulled from his bag,
The red, white, and blue... an American flag.

"I can live through the cold and the being alone,
Away from my family, my house and my home.
I can stand at my post through the rain and the sleet,
I can sleep in a foxhole with little to eat.

I can carry the weight of killing another,
Or lay down my life with my sister and brother.
Who stand at the front! against any and all,
To ensure for all time that this flag will not fall."

"So go back inside," he said, "harbor no fright,
Your family is waiting and I'll be all right."
"But isn't there something I can do, at the least,
"Give you money," I asked, "or prepare you a feast?"

It seems all too little for all that you've done,
For being away from your wife and your son."
Then his eye welled a tear that held no regret,
"Just tell us you love us, and never forget.

To fight for our rights back at home while we're gone,
To stand your own watch, no matter how long.
For when we come home, either standing or dead,
To know you remember we fought and we bled.

Is payment enough, and with that we will trust,
That we mattered to you as you mattered to us.

Thank You all for your continued prayers and support. To really make this holiday season better for us though, find a family member whose loved ones are deployed and share your appreciation with them. We've been through a lot here, but we have been through it with each other and we will lan on each other the rest of the way. Our families don't always have this, and for people to share their thoughts and prayers with them is priceless.

2005-11-25T15:10:00.000+01:00

Thanksgiving Dinner at Bagram

2005-11-25T15:07:00.000+01:00

Thanksgiving in Bagram

While it certainly wasn't home, the Army, and KBR pulled out all the stops to make Thanksgiving in the Hinterlands a memorable event.

While I don't think that come this time next year anyone of us are going to be saying "Gee Honey, that was pretty good, but you should have seen what we had in Afghanistan last year", the tremendous effort by everyone who helped with this celebration is truly appreciated.

2005-11-25T14:43:00.000+01:00

Heard in Passing

"We've got to be getting close to leaving, we're on our 3rd set of Air Force guys."

-Anonymous- regarding disparity between Army and Air Force rotations.

Double Digit Midgets

2005-11-22T11:09:00.000+01:00

So as much as you try to tell yourself that you will remain mission-focused throughout the entire rotation, that you will concentrate on the job and the time will take care of itself. It’s an exercise in futility. Like an addict who needs the fix to keep going from one day to the next, you find yourself in the evening, marking off another day on the calendar and counting those remaining.

Hello, my name is Brian, and I have a counting problem. I know, I know, every one tells me that it only makes the time pass more slowly, but I can’t help myself. It started with a simple tear-off calendar and that was depressing because I could see the thick stack of the days remaining in the year as opposed to the paltry few sheets signifying those that had passed. One day though, I realized that the torn off stack was larger than the ones remaining on the calendar, and I started to feel the thrill of counting.

Then came the full size calendars with each “X”d out day adding depth to a strangely comforting geometric design. Of course, then the more I counted the more I wanted to count. I became insatiable, but time was only passing so quickly, so I found new ways to mark off the days. Counting in percentages of the total deployment became the Crack Cocaine of my new found addiction and counting down the days remaining is my Ecstasy, the new designer drug of the time killing habit and today, I found a new high from a number that is increasingly lower. We have cracked the century mark. There are less than 100 days remaining for us in this deployment. We are “Double Digit Midgets” and getting shorter every day.

So, tomorrow I’ll stop counting and get my mission focus back. I’ll find a 12 step program to get off the calendar “X”tacy, but today we’ll do the countdown limbo and see how low we can go. Tomorrow, I’ll put the tear-off calendar in a drawer and turn my attention back to the tasks at hand, but not today. Today we will show each other our calendars and in true vintage Steve Martin vernacular, proceed to “Get Really Small”

For a Day of Thanks

2005-11-18T07:25:00.000+01:00

For those of you who have been reading my blog long enough, you know that we have a Thanksgiving tradition, certainly not unique but a cherished ritual none the less, in which all who celebrate with us take turns telling everyone present what they are thankful for on this day. The miles and hours that separate me from my family’s Thanksgiving celebration this year is not nearly reason enough to forgo this tradition, so here are some of the things that I am thankful for this year.

For the opportunities that have been provided to me over the last year where I could help provide for the future well-being of people less fortunate than us, for the security of those near us here in Afghanistan, and for the lives we were able to save in Pakistan; for what I have seen and the lessons emblazoned upon my heart of how very fortunate we are, I am truly thankful.

I am thankful to be able to provide for the security of the country that has given me so many opportunities and blessings throughout my lifetime. I am blessed to know of the millions countrymen who will be able to avail them selves of those same opportunities in the future.

I am thankful that I was raised in a home that taught and lived the values that guide me today, lessons anchored upon a faith in God, where what I was able to share was more important than what I thought I was entitled to, and where the thought truly did count more than the gift.

For the company of heroes with whom I will share this celebration as I have shared the past year, the lessons in leadership that I have been able to both learn and share, the examples of selflessness, duty, and patriotism that I have witnessed, and for the Herculean efforts that I have received and been able to put forth for a noble and righteous cause, I am truly blessed.

I am thankful that my family will celebrate this occasion in a warm, safe home filled with love in a place they cherish. A home where all the sounds and smells that warm my heart and bring a smile to my face just to think about, football games, turkey, card games, pies, and children laughing, will fill the rooms from morning to night.

While I am extremely thankful for the well wishes and prayers of all who wander through this site which I truly believe have kept us safe this far as well as the rest of the way home, for all the heartfelt sentiments, none of which included pity for the hardships of our chosen profession, I can not express enough gratitude.

I am sure you will understand when I decline to share with you the details of what I am most grateful for, even more so this year than last, in favor of sharing the gratitude for my most cherished possession, the love and support of my wife, only with her.

Happy Thanksgiving.

P.S. I am also ecstatically thankful for the AFN televised Thanksgiving eve opportunity for the Colorado Avalanche to put the hurt to the Detroit Red Wings, and the Denver Broncos Thanksgiving Day thrashing of the Dallas Cowboys. Gobble Gobble!!!

Happy Veterans Day

2005-11-11T14:50:00.000+01:00

There is a bumper sticker that reads: "If you can read this, thank a teacher. If you are reading this in English, thank a veteran."

While I appreciate the sentiment, I'd like to take a minute to expand on that.

To all those who wore the uniform before me who ensured that those sitting next to me while I was learning to read and write were both male and female of all faiths and various ethnicities, and from all walks of life; Thank You

To all those before me whose selfless achievements are now my honored heritage; Thank You

To all who have placed the love of this country and it's underlying tenets above their own welfare; Thank You

To all those who have cast absentee ballots while far from far away places while fighting to secure the right of others to choose their own destiny; Thank You

To all those who have missed birthdays, anniversaries, graduations, and holidays, whose marraiges and relationships have endured months and years of separation for the sake of the security of others; Thank You

And thanks especially to all those who have given pieces of their body and soul for just a small hope that the world my children and their children grow up in will not need those who will wear this uniform after me to live for months and years far from home and in harms way.

Back to Bagram Once Again

2005-11-11T12:10:00.000+01:00

As promised, I have once again returned to Metropolis. The hustle and bustle of this fortified American city in the middle of Afghanistan is much the same as I left it with the exception of the weather. Not long before my Pakistan journey, people around here would have killed or died for a cloud. Since my return on Tuesday, not only do I think I haven't seen blue sky, I have actually witnessed precipitation. When the clouds do lift a bit you can see that the snow level is creeping down the mountains and the temperature is dropping right along with it.

Hard to believe we're only 2 weeks from Thanksgiving. While many people may find the thought of the Holidays here in the Hinterland a little depressing, Thanksgiving will be significant, because it brings with it, the coveted century mark - 100 days remaining.

Still in Pakistan

2005-11-07T14:08:00.000+01:00

Sorry it's been so long since I put a post up here, it's hard to believe that I've been here almost 3 weeks. During that time I have been to the Embassy several times working out various issues, worked with people from all branches of service, British, Germans, Japanese, and of course Pakistani. I've flown on British CH47s, Navy MH-53s, Chinooks flown by the Big Windy Commander, and fellow blogger, Glen Siegerist. I've heard gunfire and fireworks light up the sky at the first glimpse of the new moon, signifying the end of Ramadaan.

Most importantly though, on my last trip out, I noticed a significant difference in the Pakistani population. It may have been a function of the places we flew to, but there was no swarming of the helicopter when we landed and and we flew over a great many tent complexes on the way in and out. Aid has been reaching most area, and while there is still a great deal of work to be done before the snows come, it will have to be done by others not coming from Afghanistan. All but myself and a couple others from Afghanistan have been replaced by counterparts from the U.S. or Europe, and with luck, I will be back in Bagram tomorrow.

While my heart still breaks when I think of all that I have seen here, I am thankful that I was in a position to give what little bit of help I could, and I will be thankful for the rest of my days for the things that I have.

2005-10-26T18:21:00.000+02:00

Behind the Scenes of the Relief Effort

Well, I haven’t been forward in a few days. Sometimes I wonder how it is that I have found my way into the forefront so many high profile situations when it is the traditional lot of us logisticians to make camp in the rear echelons. For the past few days I have been working at the airfield where all the helicopters performing the relief missions are staged and it is taking on more and more of the flavor of what I imagined the Allied airfields in England to be during WWII.

Somewhere around 4:00 A.M., the chirping of watch alarms begin to echo through the cavernous hanger where all the flight crews, maintainers, and support personnel are housed. The lights are already on in one end of the hanger as the aircraft mechanics who work the night shift are just finishing up their duties. People begin shuffling from one end of the hanger to the other some hoping to get at least a warm shower before the water becomes either frigid or disappears all together. People pull on uniforms and flight suits, and make their way across the darkened flight line either to the briefing room in the headquarters building or to begin prepping their respective aircraft.

By 5:00 A.M., the briefing room is full of aviators grumbling for coffee and waiting to find out what their first mission for the day will be. They listen carefully to the weather and any other information that can be had before heading to the aircraft that crew members have already opened and begun loading with gear.

As the sun turns from crimson to orange over the numerous mosques and smaller white buildings to the east, APUs are fired, piercing the silence of the Islamabad suburb. Flight controls are checked and shortly after, main engines are brought on line but soon drowned out by the whir and thump of spinning rotor blades.

By 6:30 A.M, the first Chinooks lumber aloft followed minutes later by their partners, and then the smaller Blackhawks. Somewhere in the middle, the massive CH-53s have found time to churn their way out, with the tall grass along the runway swaying in the rotor wash leaving the silence to swallow this little airfield once more, broken only by the morning calls to prayer broadcast from the loudspeakers of nearby mosques.

The support personnel rise a bit later and start going about their daily tedium while the maintenance crews prepare for the return of the aircraft, then breakout cards, or settle in to watch movies. There’s usually a football being tossed around somewhere, and inside the headquarters, the progress of the missions are tracked by radio.

The lunchtime MREs are long since finished and the sun has begun to lose it’s brilliance in the western skies by the time the first thumping of rotor are heard returning the pilots and crews to their temporary home.

The aircraft make their ways to designated parking spots and as engines wind down and rotor blades slow to a stop, the maintenance crews day begins in earnest. Crew members tell of any maintenance issues, and pilots make their way in to the operations center for debriefing so priorities can be set for the next day.Now, as darkness settles, flight crews grab their dinner, and try to relax a bit before their unit commanders return from the nightly command briefing and huddle them around to tell them what to expect the next day. Big Windy 6, just finished briefing his folks across from me a few minutes ago, and soon the banks of lights will start clacking off leaving this cavernous hangar in darkness except for the far end where maintenance crews will work through the night making sure everything is ready to do this all again tomorrow.

Neither we, nor the Pakistanis, or the Brits who have just moved into the far side of the hangar know how long this routine will last, but we have all seen the devastation in the mountains and we all know winter is coming.

2005-10-25T06:27:00.000+02:00

On to Islamabad.

2005-10-25T06:24:00.000+02:00

More injured on the 4th stop of the trip.

2005-10-25T06:22:00.000+02:00

Some buildings fared better than others.

2005-10-25T06:18:00.000+02:00

Flight medic tending to the injured enroute to Islamabad.

2005-10-25T06:17:00.000+02:00

Pakistani military bring the injured to the aircraft.

2005-10-25T06:15:00.000+02:00

3rd landing of the trip.

2005-10-25T06:13:00.000+02:00

Family sitting on what remains of their home.

2005-10-25T06:11:00.000+02:00

Displaced families.

2005-10-25T06:09:00.000+02:00

Mountain landing zone.

2005-10-25T06:07:00.000+02:00

Collapsed houses.

2005-10-25T05:49:00.000+02:00

Piles of debris where houses once stood.

2005-10-25T05:39:00.000+02:00

Pakistan soldiers loading Big Windy 6's Chinook from Jinga trucks

2005-10-25T04:51:00.000+02:00

Over Islamabad

2005-10-25T04:31:00.000+02:00

Leaving for Pakistan

2005-10-23T05:34:00.000+02:00

On Break From the War

As far as an emotional impact, yesterday has to stand as the most significant of the deployment to date.

Monday night Craig and I received a warning order to be prepared to move to Pakistan. We didn’t know exactly what the mission would be other than logistics support to the Task Force Griffin, the aviation unit flying the helicopter relief missions out of Islamabad. We didn’t know how long we were expected to be there, only that the relief effort would become more urgent as the weather deteriorated. So on Tuesday, we packed our bags and prepared for a Wednesday departure.

Throughout the day, the normal confusion that surrounds air travel in the theater, continued to reign, and Wednesday night, Craig and I found ourselves sitting on the on the back ramp of a Casa 212 as the Blackwater Aviation pilots waited for diplomatic clearance into Pakistan. It never came and we shuffled back to Stalag 17 for the night. During the course of the evening though, it became a higher priority to get KBR contractors on the ground rather than logisticians. It was decided that Craig was more important at Bagram, so I was headed east alone.

Yesterday started at with a 3:30 A.M. wake-up and a 4:30 arrival at the terminal. There was still the normal confusion as to who had precedence and which cargo was flying, and to confuse things even more, we were switching planes from the Casa to a Metroliner which had more seats, but less cargo space. In the end, we got everything to fit and we lifted off the Bagram runway about ½ hour after sunrise. Passing by Tora Bora and cruising leisurely over the Khyber Pass, there seemed to be something surreal about leaving a combat zone to head to a disaster area. It seemed the we were, in effect calling time out from the war to go to an earthquake. A few minutes later, we slipped over the expansive white checkerboard of Islamabad and skidded smoothly onto the runway of Qasim Airfield.

A pick-up truck pulled up to the Airplane as I was stepping out, and I was greeted by MSG Moore, the Aviation Brigade logistician who I had come to know well during our time at Purple Ramp when deploying from Germany. He had been in Pakistan for about 10 days now and gave he gave me a quick rundown on the status of things as he took me to the hanger where all the flight crews and other support personnel were being housed. I dropped my gear there, then headed for the operations center. On the short walk there, I passed Russian made MI-17 and U.S. Made UH-1 helicopters both owned by the Pakistani Air Force, A massive CH-53 brought in by the Germans, a plethora of other helicopters that I couldn’t even identify let alone want to ride in, and of course our work horse CH-47s brought in by Big Windy and Task Force Griffin.

Following introductions and a quick tour, we jumped in the Suburban with the Task Force Commander and headed for Chakala Air Base. After the death defying drive through Islamabad where our embassy driver put every New York cabbie I’ve ever ridden with to shame, we pulled into the airbase. The main road leading in was lined with the ever-present Jinga trucks and when we reached the runway, I stood stunned. I had grown up in Army aviation as an enlisted crew chief on UH-60 Blackhawks but I have never seen more helicopters in one place at the same time than on this day. They lined the runway in all shapes and sizes, from one end to the other and down the taxi-ways. In the triangular grass area formed by the runways and taxi-way, was a mountain of humanitarian aid products waiting to be loaded onto the next available helicopter. On our side of the runway, farther down, massive cargo planes from China, Switzerland, Germany, and Canada were disgorging even more assistance material. The 53s and 47s thundered overhead, while their smaller brethren buzzed around like little gnats.

We walked around the base camp for a few minutes making introductions and talking to people then walked across the runway to hitch a ride up north. All the flight crews were living in Qasim with us, so it didn’t take my counterpart long to find a crewmember that he recognized.

“Do you have room for a couple of passengers Sergeant?”

“As long as you don’t mind working Sir. I just need you to manifest inside the control tent, and we’ll crank as soon as they finish loading.”

After giving the Sergeant in the control tent our information and getting manifested, we walked back to the Chinook while the Pakistani soldiers finished loading. Hundreds of bundles marked “China Aid” filled the center of the aircraft from floor to ceiling. Plastic tarps and tents filled the areas to the front and rear of the Chinese donations, and German donations filled out the area forward to where the crew seats began. By the time the Pakistani soldiers directed the Jinga trucks to clear the area, more than 17,000 pounds of humanitarian assistance supplies were on board. A few minutes later, the Jinga trucks pulled away from our sister Chinook parked in front of us.

Crew members pulled on flight helmets and manned fire extinguishers, a Pakistani pilot manned the jump seat between the two Griffin pilots and the APU cranked followed shortly by the main engines. We wobbled heavily on the runway as the rotor blades built up speed and I listened to the familiar chop as they turned to a blur overhead and the wobbling settled into the normal vibration associated with these beasts. The chop turned to a heavy slap as the pilots pulled in power and pitch and we lumbered skyward with our 8 tons of supplies.

We turned to the north, and Islamabad spread out before us. The stark differences between what I was seeing here and Afghanistan could not have been more vivid. Gone were the mud huts, and compounds swept with dusty winds. Gone were the networks of trails dissecting the country side, replaced with divided highways and paved city streets It was my first real view of the thousands upon thousands of small white houses and buildings spread across this wide valley floor like so many alabaster tiles or ivory dominos. I saw a river snaking through the center of the city, and the unmistakable green strips of golf courses cut through the symmetry of the streets and buildings.To the north of the city a massive mosque with four immense columns dominated the landscape and then we left the city was behind us.

Leaving Islamabad to the North, the terrain rises rapidly. The valleys narrow and grow sharply steeper. Fir, pine, and spruce trees cover the mountain sides and as we climbed high up the valleys it was hard for me not to tell myself that we were flying over my Colorado mountains. Here though, civilization rapidly melted away. The mountain side were covered with houses, many of them beautiful with picturesque views of the valleys below, but the solidified infrastructure was gone. The houses that were wedged into every possible location that would facilitate them were connected by only one lane dirt roads at best, and in many cases only trails. Power lines were non-existent for the most part and I knew there was no way to pump water to these locations, yet here they were, all these houses from the lavish to the ramshackle spread across every mountain and valley that we traversed.

We continued climbing to the northeast and the air blew continually colder through the open windows next to the crew chief and flight engineer and I regretted not bringing new issue black fleece jacket on what was a 75 degree day at the airfield. The mountain ridges we were crossing now glimmered with what looked to be a dusting of snow, but is in fact the beginning of the annual snow pack that will not disappear until late spring. The Himalayas rose into view no longer very distant.

I watched the still ever-present houses slip beneath us, and I wondered if there was any limit to the altitude that they would build in when I began to notice a difference in the structures I was seeing. The tin roofs were set low to the ground with what looked to be only a small support structure beneath them. At first I though that these house were dug into the side of the mountain or possibly they were shelters for animals or grain then I suddenly realized that the houses themselves were no longer there, their roofs had collapsed on top of them. These collapsed house were intermittent at first, but a few minutes later, scarcely a standing structure could be seen. Roofs that were intact had slid down the valley leaving trails of rubble behind them Where the roofs were not intact, only piles of rubble, twisted metal and splintered wood remained. The valley walls were scarred by landslides and now we flew mile after mile without seeing a standing structure.

Our big Chinook finally labored over one last ridge and we slowly descended into the valley beyond, weaving back and forth across the restrictive terrain searching for the best approach into the area that had been designated for our relief mission. The crew chief tapped me on the shoulder and pointed out across the deep valley where I saw sparkles and flashes of light from the mountain sides.

“Mirror flashes Sir, every time they hear a helicopter they signal us trying to get us to land there.”

Too isolated, too sick, or too hurt to get to the central points we were landing only a few miles away, there were far too many needing help in places unreachable even by our mode, that would have to rely on help coming by foot.

We looped around and descended towards a small clearing with a makeshift flag acting as a windsock and suddenly the ground below us was teeming with people. We pulled into a hover a few feet off the ground and I started heaving supplies towards the crew chief who in turn dropped them out the window. Box after box tumbled out, none of them hitting the ground and rolls of plastic and tents were pulled from our hands before they were even clear of the window. After five minutes, I could see over the supplies remaining in the helicopter the hordes of people gathered around the tail ramp while crewmembers in the back did the same thing as us. Then the power and pitch were pulled in again, the rotors slapped at the air and we struggled back over the mountain ridges towards another site.

This time, we set down at the makeshift landing zone. I jumped out the crew door and headed around to the tail ramp barely ahead of the crowd of men and boys streaming down from the tents and makeshift shelters above our landing site. Ee began throwing the bundles of Chinese blankets as far as we could from the rear of the helicopter to keep the majority of the crowds at bay. It was only marginally effective. While the women huddled together higher up on the side of the hill with the girls close beside them, the men and boys charged towards the helicopter, desperately scrambling for the next thing to come off. We struggled to keep the boxes and plastic rolls flowing out of the helicopter faster than waving hands could receive them, but it was like fighting a tidal wave with a stick, and care had to be taken not to bowl over old men who even though weakened by the elements and hunger, were gamely trying to carry their share of the workload.

The 4 tons of supplies that we landed with melted into the crowd almost without a trace and still, desperate faces crowded around the tail ramp hoping for more. As the engines spooled up again, several of the younger men in the crowd were pointing frantically at a box under the seat. It was a box containing packages of cookies that the crewmembers adamantly refused to distribute and while I appreciated the fact that these crewmembers had been doing this job for a lot longer than I had, it didn’t seem characteristic of these kids to hold back the last thing we had that might relieve even a small part of these peoples misery.

We lumbered back up the valley, leaving this makeshift refugee camp with the boys running up the hill behind us and the girls hiding their faces from the rotor wash behind their shawls. We circled to gain altitude, and at first the cool mountain air flowing in the windows was a welcome respite, but soon it chilled us in our sweat-soaked shirts. Soon enough, we slipped over the snowy ridgeline, and quickly descended into the warmer air of the valley to the south and in a few minutes we started to see increasing signs of civilization but the devastation increased along with it.

As we crossed over the edge of Mazaffarabad, I began seeing devastation that my mind struggled to comprehend. Block after block of this city had been reduced to rubble. Streets were impassable, and people flocked towards the soccer field near the center of town where a rudimentary hospital was set up and where we settling to the ground. Our Pakistani pilot disembarked and disappeared into the crowd. Other helicopters of various makes and nationalities joined us and soon people bearing stretchers began carrying patients towards our aircraft. First came the litter patients, each identified with a number and letter on their forehead, mostly the elderly who were laid along the bench seats, and then on the floor. Then, the ambulatory patients came aboard, filling in the vacant spaces, many carrying wide eyed children in their arms. As each of these children passed the crewmember at the tail ramp, they received a package of cookies from the only remaining box on the aircraft. The eyes remained sharp and piercing, but a child’s smile is disarming in any language.

We finally lumbered back into the air for the final stretch, and with the all the seats being occupied, I stood holding onto an overhead bar having a smiling contest with a little girl of maybe a year, who was getting more utility out of her package of cookies as a toy, than as food. Her protective mother held her patiently but obviously wary of this strange American who couldn’t do anything but smile at her daughter.

Behind the mother, a young husband held his wife’s head, and next to them, the flight medic looked up at me from his patient, with that universally understood expression, of “There was nothing I could do”. Next to him, a son squatted next to his father, comforting him oblivious to the medic behind him.

We descended back to the airfield in Islamabad, and minutes after landing, the patients had been hustled into ambulances bearing red crescents and whisked away. Suddenly I found my self sitting in the cavernous empty cargo bay in awe of this crew of young soldiers who began preparing the helicopter for their next trip into the devastation, their fourth of the day. I will stand in silent awe of these soldiers, on break from the war to save as many lives as they can, for years to come. Long before that awe begins to fade, I will find a day to sit and cry for everything that I have seen today.

Off to Pakistan

2005-10-18T09:17:00.000+02:00

No sooner than I praise the efforts of those providing relief to Pakistan, than I get selected to be one of those heroes. I should be headed over the border within a day or two and I don't know what the status of any connectivity, so please be patient if you don't hear from me for a while, and keep checking back.

Snowday at Bagram

2005-10-18T09:16:00.000+02:00

In the midst of everything else that has been happening, I failed to point out one significant event. During my morning two-wheeled commute to the other end of Metropolis on Sunday; I felt an extra chill in the air and a closer inspection revealed snow on the mountains around BAF.

This is significant for a couple of reasons, one, it tends to drive the cave-dwellers out of the mountains and underground for the next few months. That's not to say that some enterprising young zealot won't poke his head up from time to time, but for the most part, they will head to warmer climes to regroup, lick their wounds, and ponder the futility of their chose quest.

Secondly, there was snow on the mountains when we arrived in Afghanistan and it's return is just one more sign of the approaching end of our rotation. It can’t come soon enough.

The Nature of Today's Soldier

2005-10-17T16:07:00.000+02:00

They were wearing the woodland camouflage pattern BDU's instead of the desert DCUs, but otherwise, there didn’t seem to be anything overtly different about the troops that arrived at Bagram on Sunday than any other soldieryou might find in Afghanistan. Like every other soldier before them, they stepped off the C-17, shook off the stiffness of the long flight from Rota, Spain, and tried to familiarize themselves with their new surroundings. Like all their predecessors, they would face tedious welcoming briefings from the Personnel, Finance, and Base Operations, before being shown to their temporary housing. The difference is that these 17 soldiers of B Co 2/227 Avn Bn. accompanying a disassembled CH-47 Chinook helicopter are not staying in Bagram, or even Afghanistan. These troops are the vanguard of what has been dubbed Task Force Quake, an emergency response to the earthquake that has devastated large portions of Pakistan.

Now it's been 9 days since the earthquake struck, and most of you have already seen U.S. helicopters providing humanitarian relief there. These are all helicopters that were already in Afghanistan and are now stretching their legs a bit. They are people that you may have read about here before, Task Force Griffin, Sabre, and of course the ever present Big Windy. I can't tell you what kind of mindset it takes to put the war on hold, fly to another country over hostile terrain, and begin working relief efforts with nothing to look forward to but returning to the war.

Over the next few days, more than 20 flights like the one that arrived Sunday with 20 more Chinooks and more than 80 more personnel, will drop into Bagram and one by one, the helicopters will be reassembled and test flown while their crews are familiarizing themselves with the intricacies of flying in the dusty high altitude conditions that prevail in this region. Within a week, these crews will have their Chinooks in the air and they will be on their way to Pakistan to begin relieving our guys there.

The most remarkable thing about these people is not that the left their families and homes in Texas with less than 3 days notice, but that they did it for the 3rd time in 4 months. These people are all fresh off the relief efforts of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Now they get the added joy of flying through a combat zone to get to their next humanitarian effort.

I never though that I would get the better deal by going to war. At least I know when I'm going home.

Journalism and Patriotism Part II

2005-10-15T12:02:00.000+02:00

Probably the most ironic thing that I have seen since I started writing this blog is a journalist asking rhetorically if my 11 OCT post caused journalists to be targeted on the battlefield. Keep in mind, that this is the same post where I describe journalists interviewing Al Queda terrorists, the same terrorists who are responsible for the placing mines in girls schools, assassinating truck drivers, indiscriminately firing rockets into populated areas, and ambushing and killing American soldiers. I remain wholly unconvinced that journalists have ever been targeted, but somehow I don't think that my writing is what sparks or furthers the animosity of service members towards journalists. Somehow I don't think I'm the only one who finds something fundamentally wrong with American journalists interviewing the most wanted man in an Afghani district while Soldiers and Marines are humping the mountains day in and day out in search of bad guys. Somehow, I don't think I'm the one not seeing the forest for the trees.

Just this and then I won't say any more on the subject, hopefully, because I truly do not want this to turn into a political blog. The answer to the question in my 11 October post regarding journalism and patriotism being mutually exclusive, is no, they absolutely are not, but it's unfortunate that some journalists act as if they are.

I have met and talked to a great number of journalists who want nothing more than to report the truth. They would not hesitate to report fraud, or incompetence, yet they hold the utmost respect for public servants, military and civilian, who do out of conviction and character the jobs most people shy from. I have the utmost respect for these people like Sean Naylor whose book "Not a Good Day to Die" demonstrates the ability to be respectful of an institution and ideals while being sharply critical of many individuals and their actions.

In an effort to further explain my position here, my research brought me across this posting on Jay Rosen's blog from the NYU journalism department in which he discusses New York Times reporter Alan Feuer's book "Over There: From the Bronx to Baghdad". Now this book has come under a lot of criticism, even from the New York Times, for being "recollected memory, not recorded fact", and yet there is a very telling passage when he describes an argument he had with CNN's Bob Franken where Franken allegedly states:

"How can you be a patriot and a journalist? They're mutually exclusive occupations."

According to Feuer, Franken further declared that America was not his country, he was a citizen of the world and goes on to say that the New York Times would be horrified to hear that Feuer believes he can be both a patriot and a journalist.

When questioned about this quote in Feuer's book, Franken clarified, “What I said and what I meant is you can be a patriot and a journalist. My point was and is that we exhibit our patriotism by being journalists — that is, skeptics… What I said was, ‘When I’m reporting, I am a citizen of the world.’”

In Franken’s view, “Wearing an American flag while on the air leaves the impression that we are believing the U.S. government and not believing those who challenge the U.S. government, and that is a lesson we should have learned a long time ago from Vietnam — that we have to be skeptical about claims no matter who makes them.”

This is a fascinating albeit confusing read and I find it particularly telling when it's coming from NYU's journalism department that it includes the statements:

Franken seems like a good journalist of the old school — a tradition that lives according to certain dogmatic principles...(such as constantly placing oneself in opposition to the government, seeing ones role as journalist as “carrying the mantle of the downtrodden,” etc.) are held to be “non-political” beliefs.

In fact, these beliefs are laden with political implications. As frequent NRO contributor Tim Graham put it when I asked him about this story, “Readers expect a certain amount of American-ness in their reporters. They expect that since the source of these reporters’ liberties is the U.S. Constitution, then perhaps they owe the U.S. a tiny bit of loyalty.”

Jay Rosen goes on to ask some very interesting questions regarding what he describes as the journalist's dogma or religion, but my point is made above. While this certain population of journalists believe that their professions and actions are non-political, they intuitively have to know that they are acting, as though by virtue of a journalism degree and the first amendment, as if they have been appointed as some pseudo 4th branch of the government, the final check and balance.

The problem with maintaining a constant skepticism though is that it prevents an open mind. The world is viewed through the myopic sense that there is always an underlying evil plot; the sense of objectivism, the truth and fairness that people turn to journalists for, is lost.

It is possible to maintain an healthy skepticism of the government, the administration, or the military without harboring a fundamental distrust. It is possible to point out falsehoods and fallacies within the government without maintaining the belief that it is inherently evil. The Newsweeks, CNNs, and New York Times, will learn this when people begin to vote with their subscriptions and viewerships. They will learn that people are beginning to hold them accountable for their actions. They will learn that people will hold them accountable when reading their casual interviews with the same people that ambush, and behead their sons and daughters.

Freedom of speech is one of the very basic tenets that this nation is founded on, and the ability of the press operate freely and un-coerced by the government is paramount to the ideals of our constitution. Voicing a constant disdain and distrust for those who protect the source of that freedom is counter-productive at best.

Alternate Firepower Forward Site

2005-10-11T10:02:00.000+02:00

For a few different reasons, I've arranged for all my ramblings to be posted to another site. In the event that you can't get to this site, you can go to http://www.dataprep.com/fpforward/blog.html and see the same thing. Go take a look, see what you think.

Are Journalism and Patriotism Mutually Exclusive

2005-10-11T07:21:00.000+02:00

The PX was out of news magazines the other day so I bought a copy of Newsweek where I ran across an article titled "Unholy Allies", the gist of which (strategically dated 26 September, 9 days after the parlimentary elections in Afghanistan) is the increasing violence and effectiveness of the Taliban fighters along with their close links to Al Queda insurgents in Iraq.

What boggles my mind about this article is that the Newsweek staff can apparently make an appointment to meet with Al Queda leadership in Afghanistan at any given moment. They have taken to dropping the "Al" and refering to the ultra-extremist terror sponsoring organization as just "Queda". Kind of a nick name between buddies. But then why wouldn't these two organizations be on the best of terms? After all, it was Newsweek that spawned the rioting in Afghanistan which killed 19 people over the stories of Koran desecration at Guantanemo Bay which were exaggerated at best. (See "Priveliges and Responsibilities")

Sami Yousafzai and Ron Moreau, the authors of this article, give surprising creedence to anything their Taliban contacts tell them while brushing off any explanation or response from the U.S. military. It seems amazing to me that this article, boasting of a 300% increase in this local Taliban commander's force, and increased liaison with Al Queda (excuse me "Queda") in Iraq had never heard of this letter written by an Al Queda leader which admits defeat in Afghanistan. But then, "Unholy Allies" goes to great lengths to imply increasing levels of violence when by all credible counts, hostile actions in Afghanistan have decreased more than 50% since the September 17th elections. Immediately after this little bit of creative writing quotes the Taliban commander's spike in troop strength, it points out that 2005 has been the deadliest year for Americans in Afghanistan since 2001 with 51 killed. This jump in fatalities is credited largely to "shaped charge IEDs", a technology imported from Iraq. The reality is that 33 of these 51 fatalities were in helicopter crashes, one due to weather, the other to hostile fire but nowhere near this commanders region, and in no related to shaped charge IEDs.

I remember watching a documentary on reporters in the Vietnam war when I was in college in which a panel of journalists was given the scenario of being allowed to imbed with North Vietnamese troops and sitting in ambush of an American patrol. The question was asked of each of them "Are you a journalist first, or an American? Would you let the Americans die or would you try to warn them first." I remember being sickened when most answered that they were journalists first. Strange that they would say that as citizens of one of the very few countries that would protect them as such.

The people that were so willingly interviewed by our friends from Newsweek in September, attacked an American patrol in October. One of our soldiers lost both of his legs during the attack and subsequently died of his injuries. That means he bled to death in a dark hostile land half a world from home even after all the help his friends could give him and the best medical treatment we had available. Perhaps if Newsweek had been a little more American and a little less journalist, things might be different.

It's clear that Newsweek's intent with this article is to sow doubt and malcontent about our progress in Afghanistan. This is precisely the intent of the Taliban's information campaign. The only way that they can win this war is if America loses her will and the fastest way for that to happen is through irresponsible yet constitutionally protected journalism like this.

The Schismatics in Dante's "Inferno", those who sowed discord during their lifetime, were punished throughout eternity in the 7th circle of hell by by being cleaved nearly in two allowed to heal before the process is repeated. I would like to think that I am not a vindicative person, but someone will have to explain to me why I should not wish this punishment on the likes of Newsweek.

What's the Worst That Could Happen?

2005-10-08T15:37:00.000+02:00

Mom always told me that you shouldn't leave the house in the morning without a good breakfast. I've usually tried to adhere to that advice and, like most advice from mothers, it has rarely steered me wrong.

Now, with my working at the Crystal Palace on end of BAF, and still residing in Stalag 17 at the other end, I find myself face with the commuter's dilemma: Do I take the time to eat before I leave for work and risk being late, or do I hope to find time to eat something at work? Well, this morning I flew directly in the face of motherly advice and conventional wisdom and took off for work without eating breakfast first. There's usually enough food lying around the Crystal Palace to feed a stray regiment so what's the worst that could happen?

As usual though, things didn't go quite to plan and one distraction led to another with the hours clicking away on an empty stomach. Finally, there was a break in the action and determined to make good on breakfast, I sat down with some Special K and just as I started to eat, the chair started moving under me. The room seemed to move around me and I felt unsteady even though I was sitting. I've never had low blood sugar before, and as I tried to steady myself through the vertigo with a hand on my desk, I wracked my brain. Had I skipped dinner last night as well? How long HAD it been since i'd eaten? Am I going to have to have someone drive me to the medics for an IV?

Just then, the Operations NCO stuck his head through the door. "Sir, you can't stay in the building during an earthquake, we need to move outside."

The Crystal Palace is still standing and my blood sugar's fine

All Good Things to Those Who Wait

2005-10-06T16:11:00.000+02:00

Just as it begins to seem that there is no end to the tedium of the passing days, we begin to get subtle and poigniant reminders that the sand continues to fall through the hour glass and time continues its relentless march.

Pam writes that the weather has changed in Colorado, and while that's significant considering that the leaves hadn't even budded when I left for this place, there was an occurence of even greater significance yesterday.

At midnight Dublin Pub Time, after 16 months, the NHL finally dropped the puck for a regular season game. 15 regular season games actually, as all 30 teams were in action for the first night of the 2005-06 hockey season. Now, since there are only about 409 hockey fans remaining, and 398 of those live in Canada, this is important to the rest of us because, in the words of Tom Cruise in A Few Good Men, "Six months is nothing, it's a hockey season." In actuality, we have less than 5 months remaining here and we'll be home for the playoffs. Game On.

I hesitate to write about another occurence because I don't want my motivations for this blog to be misunderstood, but the word is out and it is significant. Black Five reported yesterday that Simon and Schuster has agreed to publish a collection from military bloggers sometime in mid to late 2006. They have graciously requested permission to publish several pieces from this blog, and if they meet the editor's intent, you may see them in print next year.

Whether or not anything from this blog is included, this proves to be a milestone event. The power that an anthology like this can have to change the perception of not only the war, but also of those who fight it is astounding. In my opinion, it couldn't come at a better time. These are perceptions that need to be changed and the viewpoints of my blog bretheren should should be disseminated in every manner possible.

I fully intend to read this book from cover to cover...while on a beach in the Virgin Islands sipping a refreshing beverage. All good things to those who wait.

2005-09-30T18:18:00.000+02:00

The LTF 191 staff who have made a difficult job even more difficult for me to leave.

Off to the Crystal Palace

2005-09-30T18:14:00.000+02:00

Well, I've been back on the ground now a little better than a week and it's been, well, like I never left except a little cooler. That's not exactly true. While the air is still filled with dust, there is an atmosphere of change. The parliamentary elections were held nearly 2 weeks ago now and the level of violence has dropped markedly While it's too early to say if this is the beginning of a long term trend, reorganization by the cave-dwellers, the beginning of their winter hiatus, or an enemy resigned to the fact that democracy has taken hold in this country and their war is lost, I can't say.

What I can say though is that things are changing for me. While I knew this was coming, I was still holding out a little hope that something would change. I have lost my battle to keep dancing with the girl that brought me to the ball, and starting next week I will leave my position as the Executive Officer of LTF 191 and will ascend that Crystal Palace at the other end of Metropolis known as the Joint Logistics Command. I know all the reasons behind the move and while they make sense in a way that things can only in the Army bureaucracy, and while I know the move will benefit me professionally down the road, it's a difficult blow not being able to finish this thing with the people that I brought here.

People have different concepts on how to build a successful military career, one of the more popular being the “Hitch Your Wagon to a Rising Star” method. This might work for some, but I've always had more success with surrounding myself with good people and giving them the support they need to do their job, then staying the hell out of their way.

If I have achieved any success in this job it is due to the staff that was assigned to me. If I had planned my whole career for this job, I couldn’t have done any better than this talented group of people who took this task force from the planning sequence in Germany to the dusty wooden huts here in Metropolis. Through the mind-numbing minutia of the deployment planning, the personnel certification, the shipping of equipment, the training exercises conducted in a deluge at Lampertheim, Convoy Live-Fire in the frozen waste-land of Grafenwoher, deploying, establishing operations, enduring rocket attacks, and relocating the entire operation here, they succeeded in carrying the workloads where larger staffs of far senior people have failed.

The staff truly made this job easy and any good things that may come my way are certainly due to them.

Notes on the Ride Back to the Sandbox

2005-09-21T17:39:00.000+02:00

Sometimes I think half of my time on this earth has been spent pondering life while staring out an airplane window. My two weeks of R&R leave have evaporated and I'm now on the first leg of the long journey back to Bagram. The sun is setting out the opposite windows and I feel the tinge of the presence of an old companion. The shadowy figures of homesickness and depression, demons from my past who I thought I had long since banished are wafting up and down the aisle, slipping between the seats amongst the hundreds of soldiers on board, now and then finding time to touch me briefly with a heaviness of heart.

Like a certain smell that evokes memories of childhood, the touches of sadness bring to mind with crystalline clarity the waves of depression and homesickness that used to sweep over me like clockwork in the late afternoons twenty years ago as I struggled through the catharsis that is Basic Training.

I know that the sadness will not overwhelm me tonight as those onslaughts did years ago, leaving me to repress sobs while a shower before bed hid my tears; today I gratefully fear that I am much too callous for such emotions. It serves to remind me though of the youth that surrounds me, and the obligations that I hold. It reminds me of the pain that Pam must feel without benefit of the years of emotional conditioning. I know it is incumbent of me to ease the suffering around me and push forward to those better days that are now just around the corner.

Just as clearly as I remember those cruel afternoons of depression, I recall the giddiness of impending success and freedom that followed as I approached graduation from Basic Training, and I know that this happiness will follow just as surely as the sand continues to fall through the hourglass.

A beautifully clear full moon has now appeared through the pink stratus clouds out my window and as I look at it, I can hear the amazement in Max's voice as we peered at it 2 nights ago through the telescope in the back yard. Scientists have been wrong all this time. There is a man in the moon after all. Well, at least a boy.

It's 0430Z and we are continuing our trek across the Atlantic after a refueling stop in Gander, Newfoundland. As I gaze at the fluffy white carpet of clouds spread out thousands of feet beneath us, I realize it is 9 A.M. on Sunday the 18th of September in Afghanistan. I know that beneath those clouds, the ocean, as Melville closed Moby Dick, rolls on as it did 10,000 years before, but the polls are open in Kabul and today the world beneath me is changing.

After a 3 hour layover in Shannon, Ireland, we are called to board. 200 soldiers begin making their way out of the small terminal towards the gate. Several of the American tourists in the terminal position themselves near the door and shake hands with soldiers or clap them on the back wishing them good luck as the exit. I remember visiting Dublin last year and having our host go out of her way to show me some anti-Bush posters on lamp posts and billing them as a general indictment by Ireland against the war. Today though, as I near the terminal exit, I hear the clapping start sporadically then rapidly spread throughout the terminal. Looking over my shoulder I saw every person in the terminal on their feet applauding. My eyes misted over as our contingent made our way out of the terminal and back towards harms way, thankful for the hospitality of the Emerald Isle.

An hour layover in Budapest followed by another 4 hour flight brings us to Kuwait City. The plane hits the runway at midnight local time, 27 hours after I left Pam at the gate in Colorado Springs. Another hour bus ride to Ali Al Saleem, another briefing and billeting assignments. I get to a tent at 4:00 A.M. Not much sense in sleep now. Roll call at 9:00 A.M. and we are told to be prepared to leave at 1330. Another roll call followed by another manifest and another bus ride back to Kuwait City. Flight canceled tonight, get something to eat and get back on the bus. Another hour back to Saleem with the air conditioner set somewhere between “Meat Locker” and “Cryogenic”. Another billeting assignment, another 9:00 A.M. roll call. 1230 departure time and we’re back on the bus to KCIA. This time, the air conditioner is pitifully low on Freon and struggles in vain to counteract the 120 degree outside temperature. We are all bathed in sweat as we reach the airport.

At 6:00 P.M. we leave the terminal and the dust in the air obscures the setting sun, serving instead to cause the entire western sky to blaze a deep orange as though by some distant inferno as we walk across the ramp to the C-17. 3 ½ hours later as the engines slow, we are directed by the load master to secure our seatbelts. The cabin is illuminated only by pale green lights. The plane takes a decidedly nose down attitude, then banks sharply to the left, straightens, banks sharply to the right and straightens again. Air brakes are applied and we are pulled sideways in our seats towards the front to the cabin. I hear the hydraulics whine as flaps extend fully then the nose levels. Only now do landing lights appear through the cabin window and we bang heavily onto the runway. The engines reverse, we are pulled sideways in our seats again and the two 5-ton trucks in the center of the cabin strain at their tie-down chains as this mammoth airplane tries desperately to rid itself of the momentum it carried onto the ground.

R&R is over.

2005-09-12T16:06:00.000+02:00

Nessie Lives

It's a little known fact that the Loch Ness Monster makes an annual migration from her home in Scotland to a mountain lake in Colorado.

I suppose it's a bit of a coincidence that the lake happens to be in Estes Park and the appearances always coincide with the annual Scottish-Irish Highlands Festival where increasingly inebriated clansmen spend the weekend lobbing bowling balls at her from an old trench mortar and trebuchets. Fortunately, the consumption of scotch and stout ale remains constant and the aim continues to get worse so by Sunday afternoon, Nessie has usually survived to migrate another year.

This past Thursday, Pam and I, along with Max and Mollie made the drive from Colorado Springs to Estes Park for the start of the annual gala. This 4 day festival at the base of Rocky Mountain National Park is a ritual that Pam and I always try to attend and it has never disappointed us. If you make reservations early enough you can get accommodations at the Stanley Hotel where Stephen King penned "The Shining" and the TV miniseries was filmed.

Then it's 4 days of pipe and drum bands, highland games, single malt scotch, Guinness beer, scotch eggs, haggis, deep fried mars bars, single malt scotch, Guinness beer, shooting at Nesssie, jousting, Irish dancing, single malt scotch, Guinness beer, tattoos (the military review kind), Celtic bands, shopping, rugby, single malt scotch, and Guinness beer.

Sunday morning found me in a kilt with sunburned legs and a wee bit of a hangover, but thoroughly satisfied and looking forward to the drive home since a slight detour would take us by the original Bucksnort Saloon.

So not only does Nessie live, but I can report that the Bucksnort Saloon is still standing and still serving some of the best green chili smothered burritos west of the Cherry Cricket (but that's a story for another day.

2005-09-09T14:35:00.000+02:00

God Bless the State of Texas

Ok, this is a little difficult for me. You have to remember that I am a Colorado native, raised in the heart of the Rocky Mountains that hunters from Texas invaded like clockwork every fall with bottles of Jack Daniels and high powered rifles; a place where the elementary schools used to teach "Reading, Riting, 'Rithmetic, and Texas Sucks". Now I have to retract every evil and mean-spirited thing I've said or though about the Lone Star state.

The trip home for my 2 week R&R leave started with an early morning flight out of Bagram to Kuwait. Stepping off the C-17 in Ali Al-Saleem (sp?), the sun hadn't yet risen and it was a comfortable 75 or 80 degrees. I should have relished it while I had the chance. By the time the buses got us to the Personnel Holding Area, the sun had cleared the horizon and the temperature was rising exponentially. We were herded from building to building where the customs and safety briefers strained to make themselves heard over the air conditioners which were fighting an increasingly futile battle to keep the indoor environments habitable. By 2 P.M., I fully expected to see signs above the doors leading outside saying "Abandon hope all Ye who enter here...". The temperature was pushing 125 and if there was a breeze, it only served to make things hotter, like putting a fan in front of an open oven.

By 5:30 P.M., the 265 troops from Iraq, Kuwait, and Afghanistan who would be making their homeward bound connections through Dallas had finished the briefings, cleared customs, and were in the "Sterile Area" waiting for the buses to Kuwait City. By 10:00 P.M., the temperature had finally started to drop, but it didn't matter as we were herded aboard a fleet of air conditioned buses and whisked across the Kuwaiti desert behind our MP escorts. A little after 1:00 A.M., the DC-10's landing gears tucked up into the belly and we rolled onto a heading which would take us to Ireland.

I drifted off for a couple of hours, and when I opened my eyes and looked out the window to the east, a pale band of white light stretched from north to south across the horizonand perfect spectrums of color rose above it into the black sky where stars still shone above us. As if on cue, the plane rolled further to the west and while not quite fast enough to outrace the light, we held the cusp of the new day on the horizon. Only when the engines slowed, and we began to descend, did the sun finally begin its ascent, illuminating the lush green fields of Ireland.

As we stretched our legs and prepared to disembark for an hour layover, I felt genuine pity for the Captain who had been given the assignment of troop commander who had to announce over the intercom that there would be no consumption of alcohol. What kind of twisted mindset takes 265 troops out of the desert where they have been sober for 6-8 months, drops them into the land of whiskey and Guiness and tells them not to drink?

6 hours later, after the third in-flight movie, I opened my window shade and saw fields of crops stretched across the American Heartland, crossed with the perpendicular farm raods and dotted with small towns. Wispy white clouds stretched across the horizon and my eyes moistened as I felt like I was 8 years old on Christmas morning.

After a descent and approach into Dallas that seemed to last for hours, the plane thumped onto American soil, and as we turned onto the taxi way, the captain came over the intercom telling us that if we looked out our windows we would see that we were being welcomed by the city of Dallas. The airport firetrucks had positioned themselves on both sides of the taxiway and streams of water arced over our plane as we passed between them.

Finally the doors opened, and we collected our belongings and made our way thourough customs. Aiport attendants asked each of us our final destinations and directed us towards our respective terminals and as I rounded the corner, to leave the terminal, I was greeted by a throng of cheering supporters. There was easily more than 100 people cheering and waving flags, reaching out to shake our hands and welcome us home. By the time I reached the terminal doors, I had bags of brownies, posters from the Dallas Mavericks Cheerleaders, bottles of cold water, and tears in my eyes.

American Airlines opened their Ambassador Lounge to us as we waited for connecting flights, allowing us to take showers, sit in the lounge, and feel like normal people again. I will neither confirm or deny that I imbibed in alcohol before I reached my final destination, but I will say that for all the well-wishers in that lounge I couldn't have bought a drink if I wanted to.

I was graciously upgraded to first-class for the short flight to Colorado Springs and the next thing I truly remember is sitting on the floor in the middle of the Colorado Springs airport holding my wife for the first time in 8 months with tears rolling down both of our faces.

Now there have been days of roller hockey with Max, celebrating his 6th birthday with a new bicycle, Brats on the backyard grill, a Sunday afternoon Rockies game at Coors field followed with a night at the Brown Palace in downtown Denver. And now, we are sitting at the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park at the base of Rocky Mountain National Park waiting for the opening of the 29th annual Longs Peak Scottish-Irish Highland Festival.

As good as the last week has been, as the next 3 days promise to be, or as I hope the next week will be, I will never forget the reception that 265 weary warriors received from the wonderful state of Texas.

And Then There Were None

2005-08-29T19:41:00.000+02:00

I've been BAFtized. I am doing precisely what I warned myself against a few months ago and have turned this into an exercise in endurance rather than a mission oriented task. I give reports of contact their due diligence and actions are still completed, but while I have fought to keep my emotions and passion for the mission actively engaged I have lost that battle decisively.

Through these past few weeks I have been preoccupied only with tearing the next day off the calendar and counting how many remain until I my wife and home again. I concede. I have become completely mission ineffective and I will not fight it any longer, but then I don't have to. In the morning, I will turn in my weapon and head to the terminal to begin those sacred 2 weeks of R&R. I no it will be an incredibly tedious series of flights fraught with stupidity and bureaucracy at every turn while the end result will be two weeks expire faster than anyone could imagine time could pass. I wouldn't trade it for the world.

So forgive me if the posts are rather sparse for the next few weeks, If I'm no too inebriated to type, I fully intend to be otherwise engaged.

To those who read this from home, I hope to see you while I'm there, and to everyone else, you'll hear from me when I get back, rested, refreshed, and mission focused once again.

Cheers.

The Spectrum of Support to Our Troops

2005-08-22T12:25:00.000+02:00

I was reading a post to Black Five's blog the other day about what he calls “Clueless” mail rather than “Hate” mail. It's a http://www.typepad.com/t/trackback/2990165 letter from a Joan Mackie Ochoa and you can decide for yourself how you would classify it. After she spends a paragraph running down President Bush and letting us, the military know that we are all “brainwashed”, she states that she supports us.

I've been stewing on this for a while and it's taken me a little while to separate all the self-contradicting statements but it made me start thinking about what it means to “Support Our Troops”.

Like one of the many people who left comments this post on Black Five's blog, I wonder just how it is that Ms. Mackie-Ochoa has been supporting the troops. Has she been sending care packages to troops in Iraq or making donations to Soldiers Angels, Books for Troops, Toys for Iraq or any number of other charitable operations that support deployed troops or their mission, sadly, I think not. I may be wrong, but I think Ms. Mackie-Ochoa just came to the blinding epiphany that war is bad, assigned blame at the top (because that doesn't require the effort of research and the forming of an independent opinion), then considering herself intellectually enlightened, attempts to lend credibility to her statements by blithely throwing out that she supports all of us brainwashed lemmings sent to fetch riches for the president.

Enough about her, I don't like to take up space in this blog reacting to someone’s caustic, ignorant ramblings but it was necessary as a contrasting segue to a true shining example of support that I came across.

I ran across this article http://www.glenwoodindependent.com/article/20050821/VALLEYNEWS/108210010 in the Glenwood Springs Post Independent yesterday. Having grown up in Glenwood Springs, Colorado, and with family still living there, I try to stay up with the Post Independent. As you would probably expect from a community 40 miles removed from Aspen, the majority of letters to the editor are not supportive of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan or the President's policies. Political differences aside, representatives from across the community are contributing goods and services to provide vacations for soldiers returning from the deserts.

<p>This is what “Supporting Our Troops” looks like instead of just paying lip service to it. Each of these organizations didn't contribute much but what they gave collectively, means the world to a troop and their family who have endured months of separation and hardship.

If you have the time and inclination, please take a few moments to let these people know their support is appreciated.

Roaring Fork Outfitters - http://www.rfoutfitters.com/

Vicki Lee Green Realtors - http://www.vlgrealtors.com/

Glenwood Hot Springs Lodge and Pool - http://www.hotspringspool.com/

Glenwood Caverns Adventure Park - http://www.glenwoodcaverns.com/

Glenwood Canyon Brewing Company - http://www.thehoteldenver.com/brewpub.html

The Shoulder of the Mountain

2005-08-19T06:44:00.000+02:00

Sometimes it's called a “false summit” because as a climber works his way up the most difficult vertical parts of the ascent, it appears as a horizon with nothing but blue sky and emptiness behind it. When the shoulder is reached however, the climber sees that it is not the summit, but merely an intervening crest which marks the final ascent to the apex.

With 10 days remaining here until both the halfway point of our deployment as well as my 2 week R&R leave, I fell as though I have reached the shoulder of this mountain. The summit is in sight and the ascent is no longer hand over hand and searching for toeholds but walking upright, breathing easier with a clear field of vision.

By the time I take leave, It will have been 8 months since I have seen my wife and I hold no illusions about the hiatus passing slowly, but I wouldn't trade those fleeting moments for the world.

So even if this isn't what Churchill referred to as the beginning of the end, at least I can see it from here.

Something to Chew on

2005-08-15T09:05:00.000+02:00

“Strange thing. You would die for it without further question, but you had a hard time talking about it. He shook his head. I’ll wave no more flags for home. No tears for Mother. Nobody ever died for apple pie.” -Michael Shaara “The Killer Angels”

I have often thought about how to answer the continually re-occurring question, “Why do you fight?”, and I wonder why it’s so difficult to put into words.

The parents of a 3/3 Marine had included a book in a care package to me, Michael Shaara’s “Killer Angels”, a book that I have read many times but have always found inspirational. Somewhere in the first 20 or 30 pages Colonel Joshua Chamberlain ponders the same question before the battle of Gettysburg.

…The faith itself was simple: He believed in the dignity of man. His ancestors were Huguenots, refugees of a chained and bloody Europe. He had learned their stories in the cradle. He had grown up believing in America and the individual and it was stronger faith than his faith in God…

I usually have a fairly decent ability to put my feelings into words yet somehow I struggled with how to portray my feelings about this, about the compelling reason I feel to be here and be a contributor to this campaign. Some may perceive this to be a lack of substance or conviction, that isn’t the case. It’s more that the issue is so vast that it can’t be capsulated into a few quick epithets or euphemisms. In my mind, to say simply that this is a “Religious War” or “Blood for Oil” is a not only hubris, it is condescending, arrogant, and indicative of overt laziness. Even a precursory overview of the history and issues surrounding this region will make it very evident that you could no more encapsulate this conflict in a single sentence than replicate the Mona Lisa with a single brushstroke.

…This was the land where no man had to bow. In this place at last a man could stand up free of the past, free of tradition and blood ties and the curse of royalty and become what he wished to become. This was the first place on earth where man mattered more than the state. True freedom had begun here and it would eventually spread over all the earth…

If freedom is the ability to choose your own destiny, then the recent history of this country that has been engaged in war and conflict longer than most of its citizens can remember, is truly the antithesis of freedom. Following a peaceful monarchy and a bloody subjugation by the Soviets, a new, more sublime method of enslavement manifested itself, a slavery of the worst kind. It is a slavery in which the chains that bind a person are the scriptures and sacredly held religious beliefs which have been perverted and used to exploit the most vulnerable, the ones whose physical condition has become so desperate that they feel the only tangible possession they have is the paradise that awaits them in the afterlife.

…The fact of slavery upon this incredibly beautiful new clean earth was appalling…They were forming a new aristocracy, a new breed of glittering men, and Chamberlain had come to crush it.

There is no higher noble purpose and intent motivating the Taliban, it simply lust for power; the same age-old lure that we have seen replicated through history. It is the irresistible urge to exploit others for personal gain and sanctify it through some perverse interpretation of laws, secular or religious. It is nothing more than the subjugation and exploitation of a class of people for personal gain.

“…Sometimes we broke down their doors and went inside their homes. And…I’d…I’d sweep the barrel of my machine gun around the room and fire and fire until the smoke blinded me. You don’t know the meaning of the word ‘liberating’ until you’ve done something like that, stood in a roomful of targets, let the bullets fly, free of guilt and remorse, knowing you are virtuous, good, and decent. Knowing you are doing God’s work. It’s breathtaking….” -Khaled Hosseini “The Kite Runner”

The fact that an attack on our country precipitated this conflict is almost secondary; it was a symptom of the disease that has spread through this region ripe for exploitation. A regime, drunk with power, provided sanctuary to terrorists who subscribe to the same twisted ideals. Now with their hold on power broken, they find themselves with nothing to lose and have resorted to the same murderous tactics of the terrorists they sponsored while in power. In the end, it’s almost shameful that, as the most powerful nation in earth, that it took the attacks of 9/11 to spur us into action, but that doesn’t suffice as an argument to not do anything now.

But he was fighting for the dignity of man, and in that way, he was fighting for himself. If men were equal in America, all these former Poles and English and Czechs and blacks, then they were equal everywhere, and there was really no such thing as a foreigner; there was only free men and slaves. And so it was not even patriotism but a new faith. The Frenchman may fight for France, but the American fights for mankind, for freedom; for the people, not the land.”

I can’t answer for why no action was taken before, but there is action being taken now, and it is noble. I can’t answer for why here and not Rwanda, but I’m here now, and we are needed. I can’t answer for why others don’t come or for the reasoning they use to indict these actions as evil; people will say what they will in order to look at themselves in the mirror and sleep at night, but at the end of the day I don’t have to answer for their actions or inactions, only my own.

What doth it profit, my brethren, though a man say he hath faith, and have not works? can faith save him? James 2:14

Up in the Sky!!!

2005-08-15T06:50:00.000+02:00

If there are any scientists or smart people reading this maybe you can help us. There's something in the sky over Metropolis and we're trying to figure out what it is. I can't get a picture of it, but it's sort of a white color and it looks a little puffy; something like a big cotton ball. Someone told me they had seen one of these in a high school text book but they couldn't remember what it's called. Nobody recalls seeing one around here in recent memory.

It's nice because sometimes it blocks the sun and the temperature drops from “Inferno” down to “Hadesesque”

Never mind, it's gone now.

Bad Day for the Boys in Blue

2005-08-11T13:09:00.000+02:00

There's a light at the end of the tunnel. At first we thought it was a train, but it turn out that the powers that be remembered that we were here and sent those poor bastards from the unit who is scheduled to replace us for a visit. What was already a pretty tightly scheduled “See 4 FOBs in 5 days all for $19.99 in AAFES pogs” tour got derailed before they even made it to the right country.

As our tour guests were loitering in Kyrgistan waiting for their ride to Metropolis, they got word that they would be delayed a bit due to a slight problem at their destination airfield. The slight problem was an aircraft approximately the size of Lower Manhattan blocking the runway. A C-17 landing at Metropolis the night before had drifted just a touch off the center of the runway and its right main gear was dragging in the dirt a bit.

This normally wouldn't be much of a problem since the C-17 is a pretty sturdy aircraft until you take into account that the airfield is also used by Marine aircraft who practice carrier landings from time to time. Now there's a big iron rod drilled into the ground along side the runway where the Marines can secure an arresting cable to stretch across the runway to practice their sudden stop landings. Short of trying to describe the entire scene, suffice it to say that we now have reason to believe that a C-17 can do a carrier landing...once.

In the meantime, Specialist Aranzamendi, on board a C-130 bound for Metropolis following his R&R leave is diverted due to our cargo plane carrier landing. Shortly after changing direction, this airplane decides it doesn't like it's new destination and one of its engines fails. Flying in a C-130 is not exactly the lap of luxury to begin with, but when one of the four engines decides not to work, it gets you attention. At least most people. Now with mechanical difficulty the aircraft changes course for a 3rd destination which has a higher density of aircraft mechanics and for some reason, the aircraft decides it likes this even less and another engine fails..on the same side of the aircraft. I'm not sure how many people can truthfully say they've done a barrel roll in a C-130, but Specialist Aranzamendi is now one of them. He says that at one point he recalls hanging onto the bottom of his seat with his legs hanging hanging above or below his head as the case may be.

Well, the airfield is clear again, a C-17 crew is trying to figure out how to enter “Carrier Landing” qualifications in their Air Force flight records, our adjutant is searching for a “C-130 Aerobatics” badge for Specialist Aranzemendi, and most importantly, our replacements have arrived at Metropolis for their sneak preview.

Through the Looking Glass (repost)

2005-08-10T06:51:00.000+02:00

OK, now I'm convinced that the world has gone completely mad. No, I'm not talking about the Uzbeks kicking us out of K2 (not a big surprise), or Bin Laden's deputy reiterating that Muslim extremists still hate the British (although he hopes it doesn't adversely effect his chances for the International Mr. Congeniality Award), I'm referring of course to the NHL free agency moves.

After waiting an entire year for the NHL and the Player's Association to get their collective acts together, they not only come to terms that mean players salaries are reduced from the astronomical to merely exorbitant, but they also introduce rule changes that open up the ice for offensive players, restrict goalie movement, shrink their equipment, and add the shootout to get rid of those tiresome tie games. Hopefully this translates into the average person being able to go attend an NHL contest in which some goals are actually scored without refinancing their home.

Now this was great news until I found out that the salary caps imposed on the teams meant that the rich teams like my Colorado Avalanche would no longer be able pay the king's ransoms required to keep more than one or two of the league's elite players.  In short order we saw a flurry of activity that made the Chicago Board of Trade commodity pits look like a neighborhood garage sale and when the smoke cleared upside down was sideways, and backwards was inside out.

Trying to make sense of it all and knowing what an international following the NHL has, I went to the outskirts of Metropolis to see what the local Afghani population thought of all the free agency moves.

I asked this young Afghani lad what he thought of the Colorado Avalanche's prospects for capturing a 3rd Stanley Cup after losing Peter Forseberg to the Philidelphia Flyers.

YAL: “I don't care, I'm a Los Angeles Kings fan, you can tell by my purple backpack.”

Me: “Well, getting Peter Forseberg meant that Philidelphia had to send Jeremy Roenick to the Kings. (that was about the time he got that look on his face)

YAL: “Wasn't Roenick the guy that told ESPN that if the fans didn't like the strike they could go....”

Me: “Yes, that's the guy, and you shouldn't that kind of language.”

YAL: “@*$%*@*!!$#, I don't want that guy playing for the Kings.”

Me: “Where did you learn that kind of language?”

YAL:“That's what my dad told me a Soviet soldier said when Sergei Federov signed with the Detroit Red Wings back in the old days.”

I couldn't argue with that sentiment so I moved on to the discussion where the cool looking sunglasses dude was tring to explain the finer points of the free agency moves to the Afghan National Police.

National Police in blue: “What did you say say to my boss that made him look like he's going to slap you?”

Cool looking sunglasses dude: “He's a Dallas Stars fan, I could tell by the green shirt, so I told him that Pierre Turgeon was traded.”

ANP: “Is he going back to the Blues, or is that Adam Foote?”

CLSD: “No, he's going to Colorado, Adam Foote is going to the Blue Jackets, not the Blues.

ANP: “Well I don't care about him then, my friend here is a Blue Jacket fan, you can tell by his Bluer Jacket, I'm a Blues fan, what did they get?”

And then there was the little girl with the New Jersey Devils head scarf pondering the impact of Scott Niedermeyer leaving the Meadowlands to go play with his brother in Anaheim.

So clearly the widespread chaos of the NHL free agency has turned the whole world topsy turvy.

OK, that might not be exactly what all the locals were talking about the other day, but hey, if we think the Stanley Cup being in Tampa Bay is normal how far fetched is an expansion team in Kabul?

Lucky Strikes (Almost)

2005-08-08T11:38:00.000+02:00

LOST DOG!!!

3 legs, Brown with some patches of fur missing, tail cut short from lawn mower accident, blind in one eye. Answers to the name of "Lucky"

So this might be a bit of gallows humor, but "Lucky's" human counterpart showed up at a US Installation the other day.

Chapman PRT in the Khowst area reported the other day that a man with one arm and one eye showed up at the front gate allegedly seeking medical attention when he produced a grenade, pulled the pin and held it waiting to see 80 virgins promised to all suicide bombers. He's still waiting. The grenade didn't go off. He had another grenade on him as well as 2 anti-tank mines strapped to his body which he apparently was hoping would explode as a sympathetic detonation from the grenade in his hand.

So now Lucky is a guest of a US detention facility and in light of the considerable increase in his quality of life, maybe fortune has finally started to swing his way.

2005-08-06T17:24:00.000+02:00

2005-08-06T17:23:00.000+02:00

2005-08-06T17:22:00.000+02:00

Through the Looking Glass

2005-08-06T17:21:00.000+02:00

Now this was great news until I found out that the salary caps imposed on the teams meant that the rich teams like my Colorado Avalanche would no longer be able pay the king’s ransoms required to keep more than one or two of the leagues elite players. In short order we saw a flurry of activity that made the Chicago Board of Trade commodity pits look like a neighborhood garage sale and when the smoke cleared upside down was sideways, and backwards was inside out.

I asked this young Afghani lad what he thought of the Colorado Avalanche's prospects for capturing a 3rd Stanley Cup after losing Peter Forseberg to the Philadelphia Flyers.

YAL: "I don't care; I'm a Los Angeles Kings fan. You can tell by my purple backpack."

Me: "Well, getting Peter Forseberg meant that that Philadelphia had to send Jeremy Roenick to the Kings." (That was about the time he got that look on his face)

YAL: "Wasn't Roenick the guy that told ESPN that if the fans didn't like the strike they could go...."

Me: "Yes, that's the guy, and you shouldn't that kind of language."

YAL: "@*$%*@*!!$#, I don't want that guy playing for the Kings."

Me: "Where did you learn that kind of language?"

YAL: "That's what my dad told me a Soviet soldier said when Sergei Federov signed with the Detroit Red Wings back in the old days."

I couldn't argue with that sentiment so I moved on to the discussion where the cool looking sunglasses dude was trying to explain the finer points of the free agency moves to the Afghan National Police.

Afghan National Police in blue: "What did you say say to my boss that made him look like he's going to slap you?"

Cool looking sunglasses dude: "He's a Dallas Stars fan, I could tell by the green shirt, so I told him that Pierre Turgeon was traded."

ANP: Is he going back to the Blues, or is that Adam Foote?

CLSD: No, he's going to Colorado. Adam Foote is going to the Blue Jackets, not the Blues.

ANP: Well I don't care about him then, my friend here is a Blue Jacket fan, you can tell by his Bluer Jacket, I'm a Blues fan, what did they get?

CLSD: &$%#@&*.

And then there was the little girl with the New Jersey Devils head scarf pondering the impact of Scott Niedermeyer leaving the Meadowlands to go play with his brother in Anaheim.

So clearly the widespread chaos of the NHL free agency has turned the whole world topsy turvy.

OK, that might not be exactly what all the locals were talking about the other day, but hey, if we think the Stanley Cup being in Tampa Bay is normal how far fetched is an expansion team in Kabul?

2005-07-30T10:24:00.001+02:00

Salerno Moon

5 Moons and Counting

2005-07-30T10:24:00.000+02:00

Since our move to Metropolis I haven't been as cognizant of this as in Salerno, but we have now been in Afghanistan long enough to witness the waning and waxing of 5 full moons. Here in BAF all the nocturnal celestial bodies are fairly well neutralized by the plethora of lights. Having not had to use a flashlight for 2 full months now, It takes a conscious effort to remember how much of this country lives and dies, sometimes literally, around the phases of the moon.

Having flown almost directly from the modernization of Germany to Salerno back in February the sudden absence of illumination at night was only minimized by the fact that majority of the moon was still visible. Within a little better than a week however, the illuminated portion decreased to a sliver then quickly vanished and the dark seemed to swallow us. I had never been in a place so spartan and devoid of light that I could actually gauge how much our visibility decreased when the stars were obscured by clouds.

By the second week in March as the illuminated portion of the moon expanded to it's full circumference you could have sworn that it was bright enough to play baseball in the middle of the night. It was a mixed blessing though because along with the illumination came the heightened probability of rocket attacks. Given the options of stumbling through the dark or sitting in moonlit bunkers we much preferred a moonless night with it's breathtaking display of stars.

That said, I still keep an eye on the moon at night, praying for the safety of those in greater places of danger than here when it is full, and wishing I was someplace darker when it waning so I could witness the full majesty of the stars. All the time, though, I welcome each little change because I know that less than 7 more of these lunar cycles will be witnessed from this place that both resembles and revolves around the moon.

2005-07-28T15:11:00.000+02:00

The coveted Good Dude Tab

The Coveted Patch

2005-07-28T10:53:00.001+02:00

Well, I feel as though I have achieved the apex of my career and have been tangibly recognized for all my long hours, hard work, dedication, and devotion to duty. In a moving ceremony rich in heritage and tradition, myself and 5 others were officially presented with the coveted “Good Dude” tab by LT Tucker Mahoney and all the Good Dudes of his Operations Section. Other “Good Dude” tab recipients included Major Short, Lieutenant Giera, SFC Ramerth, SFC Wilson, and Specialist Rashawnda Stogner.

The Good Dude Certificate

2005-07-28T10:53:00.000+02:00

Still Can't See This Blog

2005-07-20T09:02:00.000+02:00

Once again folks, due to filters that are in place here at Bagram, I can still post to this blog, but I can’t see it. If you have comments or feedback that you would like me to see, please visit the sister site at http://bdelapla.typepad.com/firepowerforward/

Thanks for your continued readership and support.

What the Hell Was I Thinking?

2005-07-19T16:25:00.000+02:00

It’s well known and heralded fact that the Evil Flight Planning Voo-Doo Witchdoctor has a long-running blood-feud with Short the Great. You know this, the world at large knows this, and I, of all people, know this only too well. Why then would I ever consider trying to get on the same airplane with him lest I become collateral damage to the Dark One’s powers. This is how it happens. Firepower 6 says “I need 2 people to go to K2.” And of course Short the Great and myself are the only 2 people in the room when he says it so the assignment process becomes pretty simple.

Beginning on Sunday, Craig gamely tried to play by the Air Force rules showing up at the terminal in the early evening hours to submit our paperwork and see what the Secret Squirrel Flight Decoder System had to offer for Uzbekistan. He returned with an itinerary of 0730 Dublin Pub Time for Monday but if I listened through the dust-laden wind I could almost hear the Evil One’s demonic laughter from Stalag 17. Be that as it may, we were at the terminal at our appointed time only to find “K2” nowhere in the Secret Squirrel’s vocabulary. No explanation, just “Check again this evening.” Short the Great and myself, half of the field grade representation of the Logistics Task Force had been dismissively brushed away like annoying little gnats. It wasn’t even worth the effort to toy with us a bit. It didn’t bode well, but later last evening, the Secret Squirrel chattered out 3 flights for K2 scheduled for today starting with the one that required us to eat an early and hurried breakfast and walk to the terminal because the main road was closed for PT. But, there we were promptly at “0 Dark 30” right in time to see the first flight get canceled.

After heading back to the headquarters to get done what could be done in a couple of hours, we headed back down to the terminal and now our persistence was beginning to irritate his Unholiness; it was game time. The second flight was canceled but Secret Squirrel showed another only two and a half hours later. We stood fast watching bad movies, eating stale popcorn, and drinking warm bottled water. We were stalwart and resilient, determined to overcome the adversity. 2 Hours to go and we submitted orders and ID cards. 30 minutes to go and we were herded across the flight line and shepherded aboard an aircraft that was eerily quiet but the portion of the crew that was present directed us to seats and ensured that we understood how to get off in a hurry and then we just sat. We sat inside this metal cocoon on the flightline with the outside temperature in the mid 90s and there wasn’t a breath of air to be had because the engines weren’t running. The engines weren’t running, because the auxiliary power unit had been started, which made sense because there were no pilots on board to start them. In fact, the pilots weren’t even on the flight line for another 20 minutes and they timed their arrival perfectly. As soon as the APU was started so the air conditioner could be turned on, the crew chief promptly announced that the flight had been canceled and passenger services was on their way to shepherd us back to the terminal.

What the hell was I thinking? I am trying to travel with a person who publicly challenged the ancestral lineage of the Dark One himself. This is a person who sat on the tarmac in Kuwait for 3 hours without air conditioning on his way back from his R&R leave. Any Air Force person who were to let Short the Great travel without a minimum of a 3 day wait would probably be stripped of their Air Force rank and held up for ridicule among all their blue-clad brethren. The detainees who escaped the detention facility and caused a 3 day post-wide lock-down, probably had an easier time getting off Bagram than Short the Great ever will, and yet here I am gamely trying to accompany him on the next thing smoking.

No more! I’ve had enough. I disassociate myself with Short the Great as a traveling partner and will complete my mission with the telephone, email, smoke signals, and carrier pigeons if I have to, but I will not board anything owned by the Air Force with him until his penance is paid and his Unholiness has granted him clemency.

Craig’s going back to talk to the Secret Squirrel in a few minutes, and like a rat deserting a sinking ship, I’ll be headed for Stalag 17.

The Long Ride Home

2005-07-17T13:23:00.000+02:00

A couple of weeks ago, just after my last entry, I found myself sitting in one of the canvas seats that lined the side of the C-17. Thirteen other people sat to my left and right and thirteen others sat in the seats on the other side facing us. Uncharacteristic of a flight headed out of a combat theater, there was no laughing or joking. All the normal yelling and good natured taunts were replaced with a stoic silence as we gazed at the two rows of caskets between us, each meticulously covered with an American flag. The plane leveled out, and some began to shift in their seats to get comfortable for the long ride. One of the two Slovakian soldiers on the other side stared at the casket nearest him with an expression that was not irreverent but seemed to indicate that he couldn’t comprehend something. Straight across from me, a young Sergeant wearing a Special Forces patch on his right sleeve sat ramrod straight gazing at the casket nearest him. We would accompany these warriors for the next seven and a half hours, the first leg of their final journey. We would each come to terms with it in our own way and wonder what it was that put us on this aircraft at this time.

Somewhere around Thursday, June 23^rd I was assigned a mission of an administrative nature that not only promised to be tedious, distasteful, and time consuming it would carry the added benefit of being my primary mission until completed. I waded in, and by the weekend I was so thoroughly immersed in this newly assigned duty that I barely took notice of the LTF commander’s absence as he circulated the area of operations to see our soldiers in remote locations. I should have seen the omen. It seems that each time LTC Langowski departs, catastrophes emerge and crises erupt. The first time he left Salerno back in March, rockets rained down in the worst attack in over a year and while the details escape me, the tradition has faithfully continued upon each of his departures. This time would be no different.

On Tuesday, as the commander was making his way to FOB Ripley in the south, and I was deluged with paperwork, LT Mahoney put his head in my office and asked “Sir, are you aware of the Chinook that’s down?”

What had been my primary duty seemingly evaporated.

“Precautionary landing?” I asked hoping that a prudent aviator had sensed something amiss with the aircraft and chose to land, a fairly frequent and not very serious occurrence.

“No Sir, it was shot down near Asadabad, they’re not sure how many are on board but we think there are at least 2 survivors.”

My mind was whirling with questions, ‘How do we know it was shot down?’, ‘Where exactly was it?’ ‘Can MEDEVAC land there?’ but the first one out of my mouth as we walked back into our operations center was “Do we have anyone flying today?”

LT Mahoney was answering me, but I wasn’t paying attention, the question had been unnecessary. The screen was showing that it was an MH-47 that had been lost, a Special Ops version of the Chinook and it was logically being reported by CJSOTF, the Combined Joint Special Operation Task Force. We wouldn’t have had anyone on this aircraft. The initial sense of relief quickly dissipated though. There were still troops on the ground out there possibly badly injured and still in harm’s way.

I read through the reports. Not much was known and I chose not to frustrate myself by staring at an immobile screen.

“Make sure that all our people are accounted for just in case,” I told LT Mahoney as I began to leave “and make sure that Mortuary Affairs is aware.”

The Mortuary Affairs detachment which has the sad and gruesome task of attending to the bodies of those lost here, recently was realigned to fall under the control of our task force. I sincerely hoped that they would be they only unit in the task force that never had to do their job.

As the day wore on, I repeatedly made my way back into the TOC to see any updates, but little changed. It was quickly verified that it was a Special Ops flight and that all our people were indeed accounted for, but the number of people on board ranged from 14 to 22 and the number of survivors was unknown. It normally takes a bit of time piece all the details together from an incident like this but the information was painstakingly slow this time.

By nightfall, what we did know was that a formation of Apaches, Blackhawks, and Chinooks were traveling up a mountain valley north of Asadabad near the Pakistan border. As they approached their landing zone, the smaller Blackhawks slowed to allow the Chinooks to move ahead. A Blackhawk Crew Chief looking from his side window as the ill fated Chinook moved ahead saw the smoke trail of an RPG from the trees below then the explosion as the round hit the rear of the Chinook. Reports varied on whether the Chinook hit the trees wheels first or inverted, but it was very clear that it had then rolled to the bottom of the ravine. There were secondary explosions and there was fire. What we also knew by the time we went to bed that night was that there was no way to land an aircraft at the crash site, and we obviously knew that there were bad guys in the area. The terrain was brutal and inaccessible by vehicle. Help would have to come by foot from Asadabad. It would be a long time coming, and the question was how to protect the crash site until that help arrived without endangering more aircraft. These were special ops guys on the ground and they would have their own unique solutions to these problems, but all of them would take time.

What followed was waiting, no answers, and more waiting. By morning nothing new had developed. Predators had flown over the area all night and Apaches had over watched from the ridgelines above, but news was maddeningly scarce and hope dimmed with each passing hour. The day crept by, and as it passed, the only thing we really became sure of was that there had been 16 people, SEALs and Task Force 160^th Aviators, on board the Chinook.

By Thursday, word finally came from forces that had reached the aircraft that there were no survivors. The LTF Commander had also returned from his trek by this time, and I informed him that it was becoming increasingly clear that the mission I had been assigned was going to require me to return to Germany for a few days.

On Friday, the Mortuary Affairs unit was unfortunately employed and I was at the air terminal trying to figure out the best way to get to Germany. I had finally produced all the required paperwork and signed up for what I though was the most expeditious route to Germany through Kuwait, when an announcement was made that a flight directly to Ramstein with seats available had just been scheduled. The delight over my good fortune of a flight directly to my destination was quickly tempered when I heard the PA announcement that the fallen comrade ramp ceremony was scheduled a half-hour before my flight was due to leave. It was going to be a somber ride.

At 9:00 P.M., for the fourth time since our return to Bagram, I found myself standing on the flightline as part of a long solemn line rendering respect as Humvees carrying our fallen comrades slowly rolled towards the mammoth aircraft. For three of these four times, it had been the CJSOTF colors that marched alongside our national colors leading these men who had made the ultimate sacrifice towards the beginning of their final journey. Only bits and pieces of the bagpipe rendition of Amazing Grace caught my ear over the wind before the rear doors of the C-17 clanged shut and the color guard made their way back into the darkness of the flightline.

A half-hour later, I was being led across the flightline with a group of 20 or so others towards the same C-17. As our group rounded the rear of the aircraft, enroute to the side passenger door, we saw that there were still a large contingent of CJSOTF personnel milling about. Our Air Force escort asked us to stand fast and she disappeared into the aircraft.

From time to time CJSOTF people would disembark the aircraft alone, or in pairs, after having said their final farewells to their comrades, and walk somberly back to the group of people huddled in the dark. Feeling like a plumber or mailman who had arrived at a house during a wake, decorum seemed to dictate that I divert my attention from the scene but it was impossible not to be drawn back to it.

Two people standing alone but very near me watched the procession, unmoving and in silence for the nearly 20 minutes I stood on that ramp. Instinctively, I knew that it was the CJSOTF commander and his Sergeant Major and when our escort thankfully turned us around to return to the terminal for a few minutes, this instinct was confirmed when I caught a glimpse of their name tags and ranks.

Thinking back, I’m not sure why I did it or if I would do it again, but I was surprised to see my hand tugging at the commander’s sleeve. When he turned to face me I saw the trails of tears glistening on his cheeks, and I could say only “Sir, I’m sorry for you loss.” Words failed him but were unnecessary as he reached out and squeezed my shoulder before I started my walk back to the terminal. What I did know at this time was that this man had completed his tour and was scheduled to hand over his command. This couldn’t have come at a worse time for him personally, but what I didn’t know then was that the reason those aircraft had flown up that valley to start with was to search for four other SEALs who had gone missing. Though I’m not sure why I tugged at this man’s sleeve, I knew that as I made the walk back to the terminal, I no longer felt like an intruder but rather a person who was fortunate to have been given the opportunity to express my condolences when it mattered most.

The lights illuminated in the cabin stirring me from my slumber and the crewchief announced that we would be landing at Ramstein in about 20 minutes. After zipping up my bag and tightening my seat belt I looked across the cabin to see the soldier with the Special Forces patch still sitting ramrod straight gazing at the two rows of flag covered caskets giving every indication that he hadn’t moved for the past seven and a half hours.

When the door finally opened and I made my way to the front of the aircraft, I noticed something different about the last casket I would pass. There was something on the flag. Thinking that something had fallen from a rucksack on the way out the door, I reached to remove it before I saw that it was a dogtag with an inscription. I touched it briefly then continued out the door, and standing on the ramp with the cool, early morning German rain streaming down my face I considered the inscription I had just read:

“And I heard the voice of the Lord saying “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” Then I said “Here am I! Send me.” Isaiah 6:8

Cold Beers and Hot Baths

2005-07-16T15:47:00.000+02:00

Please excuse the hiatus. I was recently assigned some duties that took me TDY back to Germany for a few days. The hot bath, cold beer, and cool rain were a welcome respite from the heat and dust of Metropolis but unfortunately, the Evil Air Force Flight Planning Voo-Doo Witch Doctor was all too willing to get me a timely return flight from Der Fatherland to this dust bowl I’ve come to call home. There is quite a bit to write about but I still have some work to finish up first. The Army is funny that way. Thanks for your patience, and check back soon.

Aircraft Down

2005-06-29T06:35:00.000+02:00

A helicopter has gone down near the Pakistan border. This has already been on the news, but there are some inaccuracies being reported.

CNN's website has a pretty sketchy report, but the picture of the type of aircraft is accurate. The picture on the Fox News website is NOT accurate but the story is much more comprehensive.

This is not a "Big Windy" Chinook, all of our Task Force Sabre friends are in Blackhawks and Apaches, and all of our LTF folks are on the ground.

There's not much more that can be said right now except that, as Fox News reports, there is reason to believe that this is still a rescue mission.

There are some very urgent and difficult actions underway right now and our continued prayers are with these folks.

Feast or Famine

2005-06-26T07:42:00.000+02:00

Some might call it writers block, I call it lack of subject material. When I go back and look at the posts I have put up recently, it looks like there is not a lot going on. The reason for that is, well, there’s not a lot going on…here anyway. It seems somewhat paradoxical to me, because from March to June, the work was overwhelming, if there was a moments peace we were probably forgetting something, and yet it seemed to slip the media’s mind that there were still people fighting and dying in Afghanistan.

Now, I’m finding myself with more down time and a more relaxed rhythm as we settle into our new roles here at BAF, but I’m also finding an increased sense of isolation and I wonder if it’s not self-inflicted. I see the reports of enemy contact from the field, and it doesn’t seem to phase me but then I see the AP report that 178 Afghan rebels were killed in the heaviest fighting since 2001. What am I missing here? Have I become so desensitized to reports of fighting and casualties that the intensity of this conflict has escaped me? I guess that may be part of it, but then again, the article also states that 29 US troops have been killed during this period. Well, that “period” stretches back to March, and nearly half of those 29 troops lost their lives in a helicopter crash that had nothing to do with combat. Yes, there are still brave soldiers and marines beating the bush and combing the mountains in search of the cave-dweller on a daily basis, and yes they are achieving a good deal of success in finding them. The vast majority of the time things go very badly for the cave-dweller, and I guess it’s those reports that I tend to dismiss. I am more concerned with the 5 troops that get MEDEVACed from the field for heat exhaustion than I am with the 76 turban-wearing zealots who got an up close look at Raytheon’s newest version of improved conventional munitions. I’m more concerned with the Afghan mine clearing technician who was unable to defeat the booby-trap on the anti-tank landmine, than the 56 “suspected insurgents” who are currently finding that in spite of all the reports of abuses, their standard of living increased by about half a millennium once they relocated to a US detention facility.

So either I’m a little out of touch with what’s going on around me here, or it’s just a bit of feast or famine with the news cycles. I’ll consider myself duly warned regarding my inattentiveness but at the same time, I’ll choose to believe the latter.

2005-06-21T17:19:00.001+02:00

Mr. and Mrs. Smith

You Choose the Superstar Couple

2005-06-21T17:19:00.000+02:00

Mr. & Mrs. Smith are a boring suburban couple who keep their lives as spies secret even from each other. They end up with assignments to kill each other.

Mr. and Mrs. Stogner are dynamic couple based in Germany deployed to Afghanistan to fight terrorism. They end up with airborne assignments with their 6 year re-enlistments.

Short the Great Feels the Wrath

2005-06-18T16:41:00.000+02:00

I have come to make peace. I hereby retract every evil, mean, or snide comment I have made about the Air Force. I will hereby render proper respect to our Nomex clad brethren and will no longer use the term “Crew Rest” in a disparaging manner. I now see the true mastery of their evil genius and stand in awe of their diabolical ways. I truly did not appreciate the breadth and depth of the vindictive power of his unholiness, the Evil Flight Planning Voo-Doo Witchdoctor until I saw Short the Great wither, reduced to near madness at the stroke of a button.

If you recall, Craig was in the trailing element of our unit as we made the move from Salerno to Metropolis, in fact he was the one charged to ensure that the Air Force safely evacuated all our people. Now charging MAJ Short to work hand-in-hand with the Air Force is like asking the Attorney General to fetch some fruit from the street side vendor for John Gotti, but Craig swallowed his pride and saluted smartly. Two weeks later, after being driven to the very edge of madness, Short the Great and the trailing elements of our task force finally closed on Metropolis, but not before Craig publicly criticized the professionalism of the Air Force. Now some, not me mind you but some, may consider this to be similar to the WWF publicly acknowledging that there is a bit of acting involved in professional wrestling, but it was a slight not taken lightly by the dark one and time was on his side; he would have his revenge.

Finally, after months of hard work, the time for MAJ Short’s R&R leave was at hand. He packed his bag, took his leave form and made his way to the terminal at the appointed time to manifest for his flight back to Germany. It was not going to be that simple. To begin with, he was not going to be allowed to fly straight back to Germany, he must go via Kuwait and secondly, the forms were not filled out properly. Didn’t matter though, the plane wasn’t scheduled to depart now anyway. This was just a pre-manifest call to determine if you had the right paperwork and understood the procedures, kind of like a pre-rejection, rejection, so feel free to come back later tonight and try again.

Undaunted, Craig returned to the headquarters, obtained the proper paperwork, and waited for the manifest call. At 1700 Dublin Pub Time, I drove him back down to the terminal, shook his hand, told him to have fun and I’d see him in a few weeks, all the time wondering what type of vindictiveness would be released on him when he stepped through the doors of the terminal.

A couple hours later as I was laying on my bunk reading, the door to Stalag 17 opened and true to our concerns, Short the Great, shuffled back in muttering under in his breath.

“What are you doing here?” I asked, not really surprised, “You’re supposed to be half way to Kuwait.”

“Plane was diverted.” He replied in a resigned tone.

He stuck his head through my door and I couldn’t help but note the shell-shocked look on his face. Now I was worried, He should have been hopping mad right now, spitting fire, and cussing a blue-streak. We had been through this drill before, there should be anger and indignation. There should be copious amounts of profanity laced with intermittent challenges to the professionalism and the hereditary linage of anyone in an Air Force uniform but instead all I got was the sad eyes of a whipped puppy.

“Where was the plane diverted to?” I asked hoping a destination of obvious critical importance would relieve some of the despondency but the stunned look that he gave me before answering made me feel as though I was living that interminable moment between the pressing of the detonator and the explosion.

“Ramstein,” came the flat answer, “It was diverted to Germany.”

“You were bumped off your R&R flight because the plane was diverted to your final destination?”

He slowly nodded his head, then turned and shuffled down the hall to area of Stalag 17.

Craig finally did make it out the next day and is now drinking his hefeweisen and getting to know his new daughter, but having witnessed the enormity of power that can stun Short the Great in his tracks with such a diabolical deed, I am determined to absolve myself of all complicity in any form of Air Force bashing lest I fall victim to the same sinister plot.

2005-06-16T08:05:00.000+02:00

Around BAF

2005-06-16T08:04:00.000+02:00

The Widowmaker.

2005-06-16T08:03:00.000+02:00

West of BAF

Life at BAF

2005-06-14T18:02:00.000+02:00

It occurs to me that since our move here to Metropolis, I haven’t really written about the day to day life on Bagram.

In many ways, Bagram is a lot like my hometown of Glenwood Springs, Colorado was when I was growing up. There is one main street running north and south through town and everything of interest, the Dairy Queen, Burger King, and Wal-Mart (ok it’s really a PX) is located on this thoroughfare and the entire place is surrounded by mountains. I would guess that the population is even comparable to Glenwood Springs circa 1970s. So, in a lot of ways, if you squint a little, this place looks just like home. Except for the land mines, I don’t remember any of those on the shortcut to school. Other than that though..well, and the rivers. Glenwood Springs has the Colorado and Roaring Fork rivers running through it and all we have is a stinky little patch of swamp land along the north edge of town. I can’t even squint that much. We’ve also got some burned out Russian tanks, APCs, and Migs lying around and I don’t remember playing on any of those when I was a kid, although the neighbors at the bottom of the hill had an old ’39 Plymouth so if you use your imagination, well no maybe not. I guess it’s really not that similar after all.

Bagram is divided up into little sub-divisions though, and they all have really catchy names like “Camp Lacy”, “Blackjack” and “Infantry Village” Since the Marines were the first to occupy our little piece of paradise, we have the pleasure or residing in “Camp Teufel Hunden” which is German for “Devil Dog Town ” or “Satan’s Little Helper Village”, but then that might be the Simpsons, I’m not sure.

Our accommodations here are 15’ by 40’ plywood shacks known as a B – Huts which have been numbered in sequence. The commander lives in 16, so naturally, the Bucksnort Saloon’s replacement is “Stalag 17” Craig and I picked up a new cell...er..room mate, Jeff Knight. Jeff has been here working as the Support Operation Officer, Bagram, or SPO Bagram, or SPO BAF, or BAF MAN. Now that Craig, the original SPO, has shown up on BAF as well, we now have a title conundrum. We’ve been working through some ideas like “SPO Major” and “SPO Minor” and after watching “The Usual Suspects” last night I think one of them may end up being “Kaiser SPOsae”

Stalag 17 has been recently renovated to create a little more room and one of the remnants of this semi-professional contacting work is a piece of two by four that sticks out from the wall right about forehead level to SPO Major. This little bit of unfinished deconstruction has been dubbed the “Widowmaker” because of Craig’s repeated attempts hammer it through the back wall with his forehead. We could just cut it down, but the entertainment value in Stalag 17 would diminish drastically, so we just put hash marks on the Widowmaker every time Craig whacks it.

So life goes on and the days tick by and the longer we are here it feels that much more like home and we miss home that much more.

Help!! I'm Blind.

2005-06-14T16:29:00.000+02:00

I have ventured into a new realm. Blind Blogging.

In an effort to save band width, the sensitivity of the Websense system here has been significantly increased. Unfortunately this means that I can no longer see my own blog. I still have a workaround that allows me to post, but I can no longer see the site. I would ask that people tell me if anything is significantly wrong but I won’t be able to see any comments that are left here either.

I will continue posting to both this blog, and it’s soulmate, Firepower Forward (at Typepad) I can’t see this site either, but I can retrieve comments through a backdoor. So if you’re posting comments for the general audience, feel free to leave them at either site, or both. But if this site is really screwed up or you think it’s important that I see the comments, please go to Firepower Forward (at Typepad).

Thank you to everyone for your continued support and interest.

From A Marine's Parents

2005-06-13T17:19:00.000+02:00

I received this a little while ago from the parents of a 3/3 Marine in response to the loss of the 2 Marines in May.

you will never again see the dancing light of a morning sun or the soft, shimmering beams of a quarter moon.

nor will you feel the moist grass liquid on bare feet.

you will not inhale with eyes tight shut the sweet fragrance of grasses freshly cut...

your perpetual winter has begun and a sightless ebony blinds you as life no longer allows you to participate with joy and easy laughter.

dirt on wood with lonely stone sentinels overhead announces in stark relief a birth, a death and very little in between...

your rueful, crooked smiles stare silently at me as i walk in your garden of stones wondering what untold stories lie sleeping under this mantle of soft, brown earth that caresses the soles of my canvas shoes and the leather of this hardened heart.

i am humbled by your sacrifices as this uncomfortable walk ends and i sit with my back to an aging oak staring at the field of green that houses your shields of white stone. i seek your presence and can only hope that should i ascend to heaven's gate my request to enter will not be denied by the ever vigilant guards of honor

2005-06-09T17:07:00.000+02:00

In the Blink of an Eye

The final vestiges of our task force finally closed on Bagram a few days ago, more than 2 weeks after we started the move. We have had people here prepping the ground for our occupation of camp Teufel Hunden (Devil Dog), one of Bagram's many subdivisions, for about a month now and even though all our people all of our people have made the move from Salerno, we still have a long way to go before it will feel like home.

There is a sense of sterility about Bagram, not in the sense of cleanliness, but rather it's safety. We know that we are still squarely in a combat zone, but there is a sense that we are watching an "R" rated movie that has been edited for network television. The only hostile activity we tend to see is that which flickers across our computer monitors or broadcast over video teleconferences. Even while seeing and hearing these constant reports, we watch them from a position that carries a sense of invulnerability. Living in this isolation, this no-mans land between civilization and the foxhole, complacancy comes easy. Our vast resources of technology and machinery can whisk us from this fortress into harm's way in a matter of minutes and it requires a significant mental effort to dissipate every shred of complacency along the way. It's not in the cave-dwellers best interest to provide reminders that your world can change in the blink of an eye, he would rather just ruin your day..or your life. We have to remember this and practice it whenever our mission requires us to catch a ride to some remote location. The aviators have to live it on a daily basis, their survival may well depend on this binary way of life being ingrained in them, and for that, they have my total respect.

When you catch a ride on a one of Big Windy's Chinooks, there is an orderly and prescribed manner in which everything is done. Some hand and arm signals from the Crew Chief or Flight Engineer guide you to seats and ensure that you are strapped in. The overwhelming cacophony of engines, hydraulics, and rotor blades make the earplugs a necessity and you soon find yourself in a muffled aluminum cacoon whisking over the countryside faster than you could ever imagine that this ungainly beast could move. Crew members in flight helmets with visors drawn man the machine guns at either door and on the ramp while either a second Chinook or an Apache leads or trails nearby. The windows are open and the ramp is down to accomodate the gunners, and at this time of year the cooler air from the higher altitudes swirling through the cabin is a welcome respite from the overbearing heat. The swaying and vibration contribute a new but familiar aspect to the sense of security and you soon find yourself drifting into a slumber like a child in a carseat.

Perhaps it's the change in altitude, or the rotorblades cutting the air at a different pitch that stirs you, and though slightly disoriented you are fully aware of the Chinook's descent to a landing zone. You become aware of the heat again and as you shift in your seat to relieve the stiffness of your immobility you feel your T-shirt sticking to your skin. You know your t-shirt is saturated with sweat now due to the weight of your body armor. You feel persperation trickle from beneath your helmet but it dries to your cheeks and neck after being exposed to the constantly wamer air circulating through the cabin.

You try to shake the last remnants of slumber from your system as the crew prepares for landing. The door gunner and flight engineer are leaning out their respective passenger doors searching for any hazards to the sides and rear of the aircraft outside the pilot's field of vision. You know from routine that there will be personnel waiting by the landing zone to retrieve all the cargo tied down to the floor of the cabin. It will be rolled off, then you and the other passengers will disembark. There will be other people waiting to load additional cargo, and more passengers waiting for the crews hand and arm signals before boarding and buckling in.

Reading the reports as they filtered in from Shkin, I can imagaine myself leaning forward, elbows on knees, trying to ignore what seems to be the painstakingly slow progress of the cargo download, wanting nothing more than to step out into the open air, to a place whereI could rid myself of this ungainly armor. The prescribed routine is followed methodically though, and in routine we find security.

The thud, clearly audible but possibly unidentifiable over the continuing cacophny over turbines and rotorblades, accompanied by the vibration would have caused me to raise my head. A geyser of dirt, rock, dust and metal. People scrambling. Crew-members in antimated inaudible converstation through the intercom. The increased pitch of the turbine engines. Different vibrations. Unfamiliar but clearly urgent hand and arm signals would send me fumbling for the seatbelt, adrenaline surging. The whine of the engines rapidly decreasing. Stumbling for the ramp. Open air thick with dust. Bodies prone. Scrambling over uneven ground. Collapsing into a crowded bunker heart pounding beneath the armor.

I don't know the details of what happened at Shkin on Wednesday other than the Chinook carrying our people was on the ground when the rocket exploded. The pilot's immediate reaction to get the aircraft out of danger was thwarted by the fast action of the flight engineer who had seen shrapnel hit the aircraft. Staying on the ground was now the more prudent action and the aircraft was promptly evacuated.

Two who were waiting to load or unload that aircraft perished and more were wounded in that blink of an eye that takes us from routine to crises, but the passengers and the crew who were charged with their safety, emerged shaken but unscathed. For that we are thankful, but now comes the delicate, mental balancing act of guilt and gratitude for the safety of those we know and the loss of those we don't.

So here we sit in Bagram, piecing this together as we read reports and desprately try to contact our people and wondering what sort of perverse mental attitude we maintain that makes us silently wish we were back in Salerno. I know it's nothing more than loathing the separation, not from the danger, but from the ability to directly influence the actions; the futility and helplessness we feel can be overwhelming. Be that as it may, that is our cross to bear, and we remain thankful for the professionalism and dedication of all these Army Aviators; all the Siegs and Purdys and Frazees, all the crew chiefs and FEs, be they Big Windy or Saber, Blackhawk, Chinook or Apache, anyone who can make going from one place to another seem safe and routine when your life is balancing tenuously on so many different levels, has my undying respect.