Death Comes to Tombstone

Saturday afternoon, 5 PM. Hundreds of soldiers in brown camoflauge uniforms form a U-shaped formation around a large asphalt apron just to the side of the runway at Camp Bastion. Most are British with some Dutch and Danes thrown in. A handful of American soldiers round out the gathering. The Regimental Sergeant-Major calls the gathering to attention as a propeller driven C-130 appears out of the blue sky in the middle distance. The plane descends, touches down and decreases its speed quickly as it passes the formation, taxiing to a spot further down the runway.

The group is given the "Stand At Ease" command. Eight bareheaded British soldiers appear and march slowly at half step to the middle of the assembled men carrying a simple wooden coffin wrapped in the Union Jack. They place it on two stands next to the unit commander, sergeant-major, and unit chaplain who stand in the middle of the tarmac facing the gathered soldiers. Prayers are recited, comments praising the quality of the young man in the coffin are given. A statement from the man's mother is read aloud. We come to attention again. The eight bareheaded British soldiers reappear and once more lift the coffin onto their shoulders and march at half step towards the back of the C-130 which has backed into the open end of the U formation, its rear ramp open and ready to receive its new cargo. The soldiers gently place their load in the plane's hold. This is the only cargo the plane will carry on this trip. The eight soldiers depart the plane and head back to their place in formation. The plane's ramp closes and the plane turns onto the runway and takes off. We stand at attention until the plane is aloft and has circled around again to pass over our formation. It banks slowly to the right and fades into the distance as we stand silently, each wrapped in his private thoughts.

Corporal Damian Lawrence of the 2nd Battalion, Yorkshire Regiment was killed in action on 17 February, 2008. He was born in 1983 and had a three year old daughter. I didn't know him, but I did know him. He was the soldier standing next to me in formation, he was the guard at our compound gate, he was the soldier eating dinner at the dining facility a few tables in front of me. He was one of US. He was killed in a small village called Kajaki in the middle of nowhere, thousands of miles from home. Soon the granite block at the base of the two flagpoles on FOB Tombstone will have his name inscribed on the metal plaque affixed to its top. His name will be kept company by the thirteen others who departed FOB Tombstone on missions and didn't come back.

Settling In at FOB Tombstone

One good thing about Helmand Province - we're not in the mountains here so it's a lot warmer. The extreme cold weather gear I used all the time up in Kunduz I don't really need here. By mid-morning I don't even need a jacket. The flipside of that is by March it's going to be hot here and we'll see temperatures of up to 125 Fahrenheit this Summer which won't be fun in full individual body armor carrying a basic load of ammunition, water, etc. My little command consists of myself and two Corps of Engineers civilians in our very own fenced in compound a few hundred meters away from FOB Tombstone. There's a small US and British military contingent in Tombstone and the three of us across the way. Sometimes I feel like a carrot on a stick out here. I can see why the Corps of Engineers wouldn't allow these guys to be left without a soldier stationed with them. Both compounds are inside the Afghan National Army's perimeter wall, but we lock our gate every night just the same and bolt our room doors too. Lot of good it will do. The British have a firing range nearby so all you hear in the background is the constant sound of tank rounds and small arms fire at all times of the day and night. No one would even know we were under attack with the noise from all that going on.

Of course, we're also next to a brigade of the Afghan National Army but I'm not going to rely on them. Up in Herat one of the ANA soldiers came home from a month's leave during which time he was manipulated by the Taliban (most likely they threatened his family) into staging a one man jihad on the base. He killed one American, 4-5 Afghan soldiers, and wounded another 10 or 11 before his AK-47 jammed. I sleep with my pistol close by every night - I figure better safe than sorry. In the meantime one of our projects is to build ourselves a new office and living quarters inside Tombstone so that will certainly be a security improvement. Meantime I've inventoried and signed for all the military and computer equipment here and am familiarizing myself with the construction projects this office is engaged in. Next week I'll start getting out to the sites to see where we're at, most likely by helicopter as whatever direction you take from here is headed into Taliban controlled areas so I don't plan on using road convoys unless there's no other option available. The vehicle I would use, our HMMWV armored gun truck, is no good to me without at least one other soldier to man it and I'm waiting on our 240B machine gun to be delivered first anyway.

Photo One: The view outside the ANA perimeter wall - not a whole lot of cover for anyone trying to sneak up unnoticed.

Photo Two: Another load of British soldiers landing on the moon, er, I mean, at Camp Bastion..... Air is our primary means of traveling from place to place here due to the ambush and IED threats.

Photo Three: No, it's not Tombstone, Arizona. I've been there too by the way.

Reassignment

Hold all mail as I'm moving. Just got word I'm to pack my bags and relocate to a camp near Lashkar Gah in Helmand Province so my mailing address will change. That's the Southern part of Afghanistan and is currently under the control of British forces. It will take a few days to fly out of here as recent snowfall has grounded most air traffic in country. S-3 told me to make sure I wore my body armor. That's reassuring......

Just as well - it was time for a change. The Chief of Construction told me the move should not interfere with my mid-tour R&R the last 2 weeks of March as they'll send me another soldier before I depart for that. Let's hope so. Very small US contingent down there. Sounds like they found an even smaller group of US men to put me in charge of than I've got at the bridge.....and that's hard to do! We just don't have enough soldiers in our command to staff all these small outposts. I will, once again, be the only soldier on site so will be responsible for the security of the Corps of Engineer civilians there. We've got a brand new HMMWV gun truck there also. Too bad we can't use it as it takes at least 2 soldiers to man it. Well, here comes Part Two of my adventure.

Commuting Through Suicide Bombers (or Rush Hour with a Boom)

Each region of Afghanistan has different types of dangers that soldiers have to learn to live with. From my view of the intelligence indicators available to us the Southeast of the Country bordering Pakistan is the most dangerous. I won't go into the details for fear of accidentally letting slip some classified information, but there's a wide variety of tactics and techniques for murder and mayhem that the Taliban and Al Queda employ there. Compared to the provinces in that area of the Country, we're in a safe zone. But in this country the term "safe" is a relative term.

Any US or NATO tactical vehicle on any road in Afghanistan is a target. In the military we term it a "target of opportunity" meaning it's easily recognizable coming down the road and if the insurgents are in the area and have the time to react they'll take a shot at us. That's one of the things we have to look out for and I know the closest American unit to us took some fire a few weeks ago - RPG's and small arms - but it hasn't yet happened to me personally. We nearly made a trip to Kabul a week ago but cancelled it for security reasons - had we done it I'm 90% sure we would have been engaged. Our main "challenge" (the Army loves to use that word instead of what it really is, which is a big, fat problem) in Kunduz is the continuous presence of suicide bombers. Our support is in Kunduz and we'll be living there permanently in a couple of weeks so we use the main road there constantly. I've been deployed almost 90 days now. There's never been a single day in that entire time when we didn't know that there were bombers in Kunduz, sometimes up to seven at a time. So what do you do? We still have to do our work and that means we still have to get out on the road to go where we need to and do it. We do what we can to minimize our risk, again I'm not providing any details due to security concerns, but the bottom line is you either get through the high risk areas quickly and unobtrusively, or make sure you've got the thickest armor protection you can get if you can't be unobtrusive. Then it becomes a matter of simple physics - is my armor thicker than the penetration power of his explosives? So far, for the military in our area, it has been. Here's hoping our luck holds.

The photo I've attached is of all that remains to mark the passing of one of the last suicide bombers on the Kunduz road. He was a one-legged Afghan man carrying a backpack. He stepped out into the road between two vehicles in a German military convoy and blew himself up. The Taliban/Al Queda promised him they would provide financial support for his family if he went through with the attack. In a country with no social security and no social safety net, sometimes that's all the incentive that's needed to recruit the next attacker.

Return to Feyzabad

The first week of November we headed back to Feyzabad and Badakshan Province with the intention of scouting some more sites to build the Afghan National Police compounds at. This time we skipped the drive down the donkey trail from hell and flew by military C-160. My intent was to visit 5 proposed building sites in the province but due to the German contingent hand-off activities (the Germans only do a 4 month tour of duty here - I'll see 3 complete rotations of them before I leave....lucky bastards...) and enemy activity in 2 of the areas, we had to scrap three visits and only ended up doing two. At the last minute Rick Rieger, the Project Manager, dropped off the trip so we replaced him with LTC Mike Hesston of the Vermont National Guard. Mike is the executive officer of the 1/209th brigade who are embedded with the Afghan National Police and are training and equipping them. While we were on the trip some of his men fought alongside the Afghan police in an operation in the West side of the country where they surrounded about 160 Taliban in a village there. Last I heard the Taliban were getting the worst of it.

Photo One: 30 minute break on the tarmac at Mazar E Sharif enroute to Feyzabad. L to R is myself, LTC Mike Hesston, LTC Wayne Dick(S-2, Intelligence Officer), and MSG Steve Cotton.

Photo Two: Feyzabad PRT (Provincial Reconstruction Team) camp. The camp is in a valley surrounded by high brown mountains. Plenty of places to hide up there so as a result the camp usually gets rocketed at least once a month. One of my tasks is to build an office there for the work we'll be doing in the Spring. We've usually had to stay in heated tents when we come up, but the Germans have promised us barracks rooms in hardened buildings once we're a permanent presence there. I really got to like the German Officers and soldiers we served with while we were there and I really felt a great sense of comraderie between us. They didn't quite know how to take us but fortunately had a good sense of humor and learned to treat us as part of their little family.....albeit it the strange American cowboy cousins they didn't quite know how to take. So Vielen Dank Oberst-Leutnant Heckert, Leutnant Ingmar Schulz und Leutnant Alex Schiffers! Sie waren guten Kameraden!

Photo Three: Waiting for LTC Wayne Dick on one of his forbidden foot excursions. He kept our German escorts in a continuous state of nervous agitation. They weren't supposed to wander around on foot patrols in the areas we took them to, but had to put up with it every time Wayne wanted to stop and talk to someone or to get a photo or buy a scarf at a local roadside stand. Wayne is a madman - perfect guy to bring along on an adventure like this. The guy lives for the next adrenaline rush and will find a way to create one if things are too calm in the area. He was great company and I think the Germans were ready to adopt him by the time we left.

Meeting the Locals in Badakshan Province

For the most part, the local people we came into contact with during our trip were very friendly and very curious about us. Their needs are huge - no roads, no hospitals, decaying buildings, no electrity, no work. Most of the area survives as an agrarian economy. I've seen more donkeys here in a week than I've seen in my entire life before I came here. Lots of livestock - mostly sheep and goats and donkeys wandering the roads and fields. The Afghans I met were grateful for our help and genuinely recognized we were there to assist them. The problem is, sprinkled amongst the population are die hard religious radicals who are determined to keep this Country in the middle ages, only with modern weapons - Ak-47's, IED's, and Rocket Propelled Grenades. And you never know when one of them is going to step around the corner and take a pot shot at you - so you always have to stay on your guard.

Our S-2 (Intelligence Officer), LTC Wayne Dick, with his back to the camera, is talking to some of the local population in one of the villages we went through. Jawanshir, our translator, is facing the camera. You can see the curiousity of the local people when we'd get out to talk with them reflected in the faces of the crowd that would inevitably gather around us. LTC Dick was soaking it in and would stop often to speak with people as American intelligence knew almost nothing about the area we were in so he wanted to learn as much as he could. He's already prompted me to plan another excursion in early November before the snows come.

In photo two we are in the courtyard of the local Afghan police station we'll be tearing down and rebuilding in Jurm. We're talking with the local police commander (in the brown cap facing the camera) to coordinate the work for the Spring. He had a very impressive air about him and I very quickly got a good gut feeling about the guy. He also expressed his gratitude to us - he said he knew we had left our homes and families 1000's of miles behind in order to come here and help his country. Shortly before the photo was taken I'd been outside the compound on the street chatting with some of the Afghan police when MSG dragged me back inside the courtyard - he'd glimpsed a man down the street carrying an automatic weapon on a tripod eyeing us and told me to get my ass back inside. "Yes Master Sergeant!!"

Photo three is of some of the local police force in Jurm. The building behind them is their barracks - no windows, no electricity, no plumbing, no heat, no A/C. The condition of the building on the outside is better than it is on the inside and I think you can see from the picture the outside ain't so great. In our country this would be a condemned building. Here's it's all that they have. Made me glad that I'm going to be instrumental in giving these men probably the nicest facilities they've ever seen in their lives.

Into the Unknown Continued

I took quite a few pictures on this trip, but can only send them 3 at a time (something about the way earthlink sets things up)- so here's the next three.

Sorry - one more hilltop photo - the guys in the middle are two of my key staff, Nandy Perillo, my project Engineer, is my technical go-to guy who understands how the Army Corps of Engineers does business, and the thinner fellow is Jawanshir, our Afghan interpreter. They are both critical to our success. Little did Nancy know he'd be driving thru the wilds of Afghanistan when he was sitting in his thermo-fluid dynamics class back in engineering school!

This is the point where the road began morphing into the donkey trail from hell. This river gorge to the side of the "road" contained the kokacha river. Stunningly beautiful most of the way with crystal clear water. But, sorry, I've had dysentery before and there's no way I'm drinking anything other than bottled water no matter how pretty it looks. That's MSG Cotton in the 2nd photo.