more from last deployment

Pages 1, 2, 3 and 4
2009 July
Dearest
Although the mail is still messed up, with it almost impossible to send outgoing letters
and completely impossible to send outgoing packages, I have decided to resume writing you
in the hopes that eventually I will be able to send mail. It is the beginning of July, and
we are in Logar province. It is Summer, so the days are hot, clear, and bright. The valley
would naturally be hard dirt, little scrub, a few grazing animals, but the rivers here are
tapped so extensively for irrigation that about half the valley is cropland. The irrigation
canals are streams, hand-dig, with hard-packed mud dikes on either side. The streams are
several feet wide, the dikes maybe three feet tall and a foot wide and made entirely of hand-
packed mud, as I have said. The water in them is fast-flowing, by dirty with animal and human
waste, which probably substitutes at least in part for fertilizer. The largest, by far, crop
in this area is wheat. Right now, the river is almost dry, the irrigation canals still have
water, and the wheat crop is turning gold in the sun. Every family has at least a couple cows
or goats, a few chickens, perhaps a donkey or horse, a dog or two. Each extended family lives
in a collat, a walled compound made up of and surrounding a group of connected buildings. The
outer wall is usually square when viewed from above and serves to keep animals where they should
be, provides privacy and security. The outer wall varies in height from eight to fifteen feet.
The buildings are largely single story, a few have a second floor. All have easy access to their
roofs, where they hang laundry, look out at you as you pass, and so on.
Outer walls almost never have windows, but houses typically have several windows on each side.
The less prosperous do not have glass for their windows, but cover them with cloth. The more
prosperous use smaller pieces of glass to fill a larger window in a simple, yet elegant design,
which I attempt to show here
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|00000000|00000000|
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|000|0000000000|000|
|000|0000000000|000|
|000|0000000000|000|
|000|0000000000|000|
|000|0000000000|000|
|000|0000000000|000|
|000|0000000000|000|
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|00000000|00000000|
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(two long ones on the top, two long ones on the bottom, those four all on their sides, one long
one on each side, on its end, a large window in the middle, if you cannot understand the so-so
graphic)
Each of the side outer pieces is about 18 inches by 54 inches, making the complete window
very large. The outer wall of the collat is pieces with a single door inside a gate, either
one of which can be opened, the gate being large enough to admit a car, the door a single
person. Both door and gate are composed of a thin metal, not strong at all, and is usually
painted a welcoming color, usually a shade of blue just darker than turquoise , although some
have a simple geometric pattern painted on them. These collats are everywhere. Most are
freestanding, some clump together like termite mounds to form villages. There are very many
small villages, and very many freestanding collats. The center of the valley, where the river
is, is full of crops, trees, plants. The outermost irrigation canal is a line dividing the
cropland from the barren scrub, which stretches from the outermost canal to the mountainside.
Such scrub is fit only for light grazing by sheep or camels. There are many different tribes
in Afghanistan, meaning some locals speak Dari, some speak Pashtu. (there are 26 dialects
used in Afghanistan). One interesting tribe are the Choochi's, who are a wandering nomadic
tribe.


Pages 5,6, 7, 8, 9, 10
They live out on the open scrub, raise camels and sheep, and live in large, but very low
to the ground, tents shaped kind of like the top of a geodesic dome, open at the bottom on
all sides.
The people of the region.
The two largest, by far, axes of difference for the people of this region are age and gender.
You have the young boys, young men, men, and old men, and you have the young girls, the young
women, and the women. The young boys are small, have short hair, tend to be beggars, thieves,
and troublemakers. Every last one of them knows to ask for "Pen? Pen?" Whether they actually
want a pen or whether any gift at all will do. They either wear western clothing, jeans or
pants, shirt jacket, baseball hat, or else they wear punjabi clothing, light weight linen pants,
a shirt very long in the front and the back, all of a dark materiel. The overall impression is
of loose pajamas. On their head they wear a little Muslim hat, straight sided with a rounded
top. This hat has a small slit in back so that it can fit the head closely, and is often sewn
with beads or sparkles. Their shoes are sandals or other nondescript hand-me-downs, worn without
socks. In fact, in six months I have only seen two locals ever wearing socks (and I think one
was Taliban). These boys attend school during the day, wander about on their own at other times.
(They make excellent home-made slingshots)
The young men range from eight or nine years old till twenty something, and are sullen, quiet,
angry (and small of stature and build). They hold very little place in society so are trying to
find a way to make a living. Some work in the fields or the little shops. Some join the afghan
national army. Some dress in flashy western clothes and try to latch on to us, whether as
shopkeepers, translators, or as liaisons between the two cultures.
Young men are expected to find work and provide most or all of the money they earn to support
their extended family. They are almost at the bottom of the society, till they earn their place.
The men have succeeded. They are married, they have a home and family of their own, with
several (or many) children. Each man is head of a household. They wear a heavier punjabi, sometimes
with a vest worn over it. They work each day, except Friday. Their little hats are sometimes plain and
austere, if a man is very religious, sometimes very decorated, if a man is successful and wishes to
show it off. If they wear a beard it is short and neatly trimmed. They have the most to lose, and so are
careful, quiet, respectful. They are all married. It is not considered right for one of these men to not have
a wife, so if a mans wife sickens, he marries a new wife before the old one dies. My interpreter talks of
a man in Kabul to whom this happened. Then the sick wife got better and came home. Very embarrassing.
The old men have long beards and are the ones who wear turbans. They work much less, their clothes
are darker and often dirtier. They are probably aged from forty to sixty, with anyone sixty plus being a
village elder.
The young girls are dressed in very bright punjabis with sparkles sewn on. Bright red, orange, green, purple.
You can see them from far, far away, sparkling in the sun. Here in Logar, the young girls attend school half
days, walking in groups of three or four or gaggles of a dozen. When they are old enough for school, they
start wearing scarves over their hair. School seems to be, for girls, from ages four to ten. This is, I must
emphasize, in Logar. In Wardak, girls did not go to school at all. At younger ages, girls will wave, but by
the time they are young women, perhaps eight to fourteen, they no longer wave. Rather they look away,
studiously ignore you, confident that we are barbarians with no sense of what is right and proper in human
behavior. They are proud, upright girls, slender of form, long of limb, with hair of black or brown or stained with
henna. Their faces, at this age, are still attractive, their eyes are dark or an electric blue that stands out against
their dark skin, the color of wood. Their punjabis tend to be brightly colored, but are not quite so flashy. The
hard scarf is often a contrasting color, a deep red punjabi with a dark green scarf is an example that sticks
in my mind. If the young woman particularly despises you, or Americans in general, she will spit on the ground
as you pass. They remind me much of you when you were angry and disdainful of me, such as when you dated xxxx and scorned me. Much the same. When not going to school, girls and young women work. Bringing the
cows and sheep to graze, weeding, helping with the crops (caring for their younger siblings). Often, sisters wear
matching clothes. It may be that only one color was for sale when they were bought, though I doubt that. More
likely I suspect it cuts down on household squabbling especially if the girls have different mothers.


Pages 10 (cont), 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17
The women.
The women in Wardak province were never seen outside the home. Here in
Logar Province, the women are seen almost as much as the men. When outside
the home they almost all wear the burka, I can think of only one or two
exceptions in the past three months, and those wore a scarf instead. When
away from strangers it is worn over the shoulders and head, but flipped up
in front to reveal the front and face. It is flipped down when they are near
strangers. It is, almost without exception, sky blue in color, though that
is simply because said color is what is for sale. I have seen one black
burka, and one green. (for the record, I must note that I think the woman
wearing the black burka was the wife of a Taliban leader). It is impolite
to look at or interact with women one does not know. Taking pictures of
strangers is a serious breach of manners. The women wear high heels, which
is shocking considering where they walk, but which ruins their feet. I have
never seen the hair of an adult woman, nor the arms of any girl older than
about two or three. I have heard that the culture finds body hair to be
unclean, and shave their entire body. I am not certain whether to believe
this; however, it is the norm to wash hands, face, and feet before prayers,
which are said five times a day, so I consider it possible.
The roads and paths here are of several types. First, there are the paved
roads, Route Utah and Route Georgia. Route Utah runs North-South, Route
Georgia runs East-West (with it's easternmost point intersecting with Rt Utah.
Sort of a giant 7). Route Utah runs through largely flat, empty land, and is
two lanes wide, with a shoulder (this makes it one of the best roads in the
country, by the way). We can get up to forty-five miles an hour on it, which
is mind-numbingly fast. In the south of Rt Utah is Fob Altimur, in the middle
is Fob Shank, in the north is the intersection with Rt Georgia branching off
west and if you followed it (utah) north further, you would eventually reach
Kabul (the capital). Altimur is about 1/2 hour drive from baraki barak, were we are
right now. When we move later this month, it will be about 20 klicks west of
where we are right now. Rt Georgia is the other paved road, it is two lanes, no
shoulder (and hugs the mountainside). The rest of the roads are made of dirt.
In America, a dirt road is a place where the underbrush has been cut back so
you an drive on the ground. Here, a dirt road is somewhat different. Here, a
dirt road is actually a made road, made of dried mud. Mud hand packed and dried,
perhaps six inches or a foot deep. Almost invariably with an irrigation ditch on
at least one side. The ditch is made of mud walls, so if you drive off the road
you will likely break the ditch and flood the field (yes, it's happened. It
sucks like you would not believe). If there is no such ditch there will be, without
exception, a wall. The wall will be either a collat wall or a wall fencing in
animals, or a freestanding wall (there for no readily apparent reason). Either way,
it will be made of mud, will be eight inches to two feet in thickness, and will be
four to twenty feet tall.
People get around on foot, on bicycle, motorcycle, car, jingle truck, yellow cab,
by horseback, on mule, or by camel. I am still startled when I see a motorcycle go
by with a man riding it, his wife on the back, in burka, with a little baby balanced
between them. It's an odd, but not uncommon sight. Whatever method of travel they use,
there are probably twice as many people on it as is prudent.
The jingle trucks are going to take some effort to describe. Imagine, if you will, an
English double-decker bus. Paint it blue. Have you ever seen a Cadillac that a Puerto
Rican guy has airbrushed with the scene of the crucifixion? Have someone who cannot
paint with any skill paint mountains and stuff (swirls, patterns, flowers) all over
it (with a paintbrush, no airbrushes here). Attach hanging tassels all over it. Throw
in a bunch of flashing lights of various colors. Add stickers and posters to taste.
You now have a jingle truck.
The air, the mountains, the look of the land is that of central new Mexico, south of
Santa Fe, in the mountains. The differences are few, and small, between here and there.
There are more people in an area of Afghanistan than there would be in New Mexico,
the land is much more heavily irrigated, and less land is left wild. There are no
cacti here (thank god!), that I have seen, just some prickly plants. The bugs here
are huge, weird, and seriously scary. The ants here, for example, have a body just
like the ants in America, perhaps a centimeter long. But they have long legs, like
water spiders, and can zip about at frightening speed. The pill bug is here, but it
is four or five times the size of the ones back home, and their front half is
beetlelike. I found a spider in my hat a couple weeks ago. The spider was about an
inch and a half long. My hat was ON MY HEAD at the time. There is a "spider" here,
actually a land crab, that grows to the size of a dinner plate (and can jump) and
DRINKS BLOOD. I shit you not. There are wild dogs that wander at night.


Page 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24
The food.
Afghanistan has wonderful food. The best food is footbread, or naan, a flatbread
that comes in big discs, maybe twelve inches by six inches, maybe a quarter inch
thick. It's not quite the same as the Indian bread of the same name. The crust is
light, not heavy like American bread crust. If we could get it in America every
sandwich I ate would be made with footbread. They make decent kabobs, although theirs
are all meat, no vegetables. Still the lamb or beef is heavily seasoned and very very
tasty. The local tea, or chai (same word in Russian) I have not yet gotten to try.
When we visit a local village the lieutenant drinks chai with the village elders.
We pull security. There is a delicious dessert they have for holidays, very small
and very sweet, with sliced almonds on top.
Almost every person here has a scarf. The girls wear it on their heads, over their
hair wrapped around their neck when it is hot. Our interpreters fold it and put it
on their heads to keep the sun off. Sometimes locals will unroll one, like a picnic
blanket, to eat off of.
I should mention something about the women. After they have been married for a couple
of years, and had a couple of kids, they are worn out. By mid-twenties that have big
workmans hands, you can see the veins in their feet, and they are wrinkling in the
sun. When young, they are certain of what is right. By the time they find out
differently, it is far too late. This is an absolutely typical Afghan situation.
Let met tell you about myself, so you can have a clearer idea of things. I shave my
head bald, because in the daytime it is over 100 degrees. It's pretty funny, before
I joined the army, I was going bald. After joining, my hair grew back. The stress of
my civilian life was causing me to lose my hair, and I'm so relaxed now that my hair
grew back in. So I shave it off. Pretty silly. Anyways, shaving my head works for me,
it looks neat, clean and professional, and you always know when it's raining. I'm
far stronger than I ever was before, but I have a little bit of a gut, mostly because
I can do 76 situps in two minutes. All that muscle makes me thick in the middle. No
love handles or other fat, though. I weight probably about twenty pounds more than I
did as a civilian. I wear glasses, because this country is far too dirty for contacts
and I have not yet had the surgery. I wear a digital watch at all times. I am well
liked by those who know me and rely upon me, and I am disliked intensely by
acquaintances. People who don't know me think I'm a know-it-all. People who know me
well are aware that I just know a lot, and like to talk about stuff. I tend to take
things too seriously, and have a very dry sense of humor. I never fight or quarrel,
unlike most people in the army. I'm older than anyone else in my unit. No one ever
makes a joke or wise ass remark about my wife or children. Ever.
I am a grenadier. That means I carry an M-4 semiautomatic carbine (like a rifle, but
a little shorter) with an M203 grenade launcher slung underneath it. The grenades
themselves are cylinders, perhaps three inches long and 40 mm wide, rounded on one
end (the gold end). I can shoot one of those to a distance ranging from 100 to 400
meters, and whomever is at the point where I hit is going to be very sad. I carry
twelve high-explosive grenades and 210 rounds of M-4 ammo on my person, strapped to
the front of my body armour, on a given day. If we go on a dismounted patrol, I
carry an extra twelve rounds of high explosive. If it is to be a night patrol with the
Afghan National Army (ANA), I'll switch four or five rounds for parachute flares that
provide illumination. ANA cannot see in the dark the way we can. My ACU's (the camo
uniform I wear) are the fire-retardant kind. I carry, on my person, at all time, at
all times, two tourniquets, one in my right calf pocket, one in my left. If I have my
body armour on (which is eight hours a day, absolute minimum), then I have a third
tourniquet in a pouch on my hip, along with a lot of other gear to keep me alive,
such as would dressings, a tube to put up my nose if I can't breathe through my mouth,
a needle to perform chest decompressions with, and so on. On the front of my armour I
have: a second watch, identical to the one on my wrist, angled so I can glance down and
see the time even when my hands are busy; a set of earplugs; a large D-ring that I clip
stuff to when I am in a big hurry and can't put something away where it needs to go; a
plastic spoon; and a safety pin. The last two items happen to be useful more often than
you would expect. On my D-ring I have a headlamp, because I need to have a light
readily available, and a smaller D-ring tied by a long cord to my night vision gear,
so it can't ever get lost. In another pouch I have a Garmin GPS (which was a christmas
gift from my inlaws) loaded with maps of Afghanistan. On my belt I have my dogtags,
another safety pin, and a gerber multi-tool (the one for demolitions). I used to carry
a knife, but there is one on the gerber and one knife is enough.
I neither smoke nor dip, and when stateside I don't drink. I do eat candy. Lots and
lots of candy. I sleep very little, and am not the best person in the world to startle
or wake up suddenly, as I tend to be wound up pretty tight. I am methodical, careful,
I always pack extras of things. When we go on dismounts I carry a backpack with my extra
ammo, a combat lifesaver bag (a bag the size of a very large purse, loaded with medical
supplies), single servings of tuna in case we are out longer than expected and don't get
resupplied. Oh, yes, I also carry on my armour: spare AA batteries, four; spare AAA
batteries, three (for the headlamp); a length of cord, about six feet; two bottles of
gun oil; and a speedloader to load loose M-4 ammo into magazines quickly (all my ammo is
in magazines, but if we have to resupply, then it comes in handy). On the back of my
armour are two sets of restraints for taking people into custody. They are called
"flexi-cuffs", but each looks like someone fastened two big zip-ties together.


Pages 24 (cont), 25, 26, 27, 28
I carry a waterproof notebook and many pens, in several colors.
There are three kinds of days. There are days when you pull
guard, "force protection", forcepro.
Today is one of those days.
Some days you go up to the OP (observation point) and are there
for ten days. Those are the second kind of day.
The third kind of day are the kind with missions.
Today is a guard day, so I'll start with those. If you are
lucky, you pull three hours guard, six hours off, like I'm doing
today. If you are less lucky and we don't have enough guys, it might
be four-on-four-off all day and all night, or worse. When you are
on guard you are in full battle rattle (ie all your gear) and either
in a tower or in the turret of a strategically parked vehicle
(like the one at the front gate that blocks the entrance which
we move to let friendlies in or out). Whether it's three hours or
six, standing in one spot (sitting if you're lucky) watching a
road or field can get pretty tedious, especially with all your
gear on. I like tower #2, because it is by the road, and I can
watch people go by, which can be interesting. While not on guard
you sleep, play games on your laptop (if we have power that month),
call home (if we have phones that week), read. If it rains, snows, is
hot, or is nighttime then it can suck. Often badly.
The second kind of day I shall write about is up on the OP.
See, we have a little fifteen-person compound up on a nearby
mountain spur. We have binos and a giant nighttime spotting
device called an LRAS and we go up there for ten day rotations to
watch the valley and radio in what we see. Up there, no one is around,
so if the weather is nice you can tan, walk around in shorts, pull a
couple hours guard, sleep, rest. If the weather is nice it is awesome.
If the weather turns bad, well, you are on top of a mountain with
pretty much no shelter, in fucking afghanistan, in bad weather.
Last deployment three guys got hit by lightning one night. This deployment,
the day before my birthday, i got poleaxed by a big plywood sheet from
the roof. It was doing between thirty and fifty when it hit me.
Had my body armour on or I'd probably be in a wheelchair. As it is, I was
back on my feet in five or ten minutes and fine after that. Afghanistan
looks pretty, but you can't trust it, or you'll wind up dead. Just one of
those things.
The last kind of day is missions. Some missions are just a drive down to FOB
Altimur to pick something up and get some good food. Three MRAPS, an ASV,
maybe sixteen personnel. Keep your eyes open for IEDs or snipers. Easy.
Some missions are crazy. You and the ANA (afghan national army) get picked
up at midnight by chinook helicopters, and flown at speeds greater than
100 mph across the dascha. You touch down and jump out. Someone in one of
the collots is shooting at the choppers. Later, you walk back, cross country,
twenty klicks. Some missions are sudden. The lieutenant comes into the tent:
"Get your shit on! The taliban just shot the home of the chief of police
with an RPG" or "get it on! The french just hit an IED" or
"Get up! The taliban are burning down a girls school!"
Yes, all those pretty girls walking to school who so despise us? Without
us, no school. Irony. Eight minutes later we rolled out the wire. That kind
of quick reaction is hard to pull off, but it makes all the difference in
the world to the guys outside the wire waiting for us to come save their asses.
Sometimes you go out and give away radios and schoolbooks and talk to them.
You leave, they phone your location and direction of travel, IED.
So, that's how we spend our days.


Pages 28, 29, 30, 31, 32
I'll talk a little about our COB
(note: I write this on paper, then transcribe it to digital.
So there is a lag involved, and in this case, we are at a new
COB, not the one written about here. Just a note)
It is COB Barak-i-Barak, named after the little village here.
It is about 300 meters wide and maybe 500 meters long. It holds
about sixty American troops, although only half that number are here
at any given time, the rest are on OP Spur, on missions, on leave,
at another COB or FOB (FOBs are bigger bases, COBs are smaller).
Half the COB is American, the other half belongs to the ANA and
ANP. That is, the Afghan National Army and the Afghan National Police.
There are another sixty or so men between those two groups. We have it
pretty good here. We sleep in big tents, about fifteen to a tent.
That means that each of us has a cot and a space next to their cot
about two feet wide. We keep dufflebags under our cots, and our armour
and weapons at the foot. I have a pillow, and sleep wrapped up in an
Afghani blanket. The Afghani blankets look like something you'd buy
at Target, mine is purple with a tiger on it, but they are fuzzy,
and far warmer and softer than any such blanket from the states would be.
That is important, although it is 105 degrees right now, in the afternoon,
it will drop to sixty tonight, and it will feel like cold winter.
I sleep in a fuzzy hat and fuzzy top designed for winter in the US.
We have power, off a generator, and lights, three of them. There is an air
conditioner, although mostly it just takes the edge off the heat.
We have porta-potties, which are the height of luxury. They are hot in the sun,
there are flies, they are small, but to appreciate them you have to deal
with the alternative for a bit. First, piss tubes. Dig a trench several feet
long and perhaps three feet deep. Get a piece of PVC pipe, perhaps six feet long and
three inches wide. Place the pipe in the trench at a 45 degree angle. Fill the
hole in, so that the end of the pipe is at waist level. Voila! If you are very
fancy, you can cover the end of the tube with wire mesh to keep out flies and bugs.
The other alternative to the portapotty is "The Shitter". Take a 55 gallon
fuel barrel, cut in half. Take a piece of wood about two feet by two feet
by a half inch thick. Cut a hole in the wood. Place the wood on top of the
fuel drum. Voila! A shitter! But wait! There's more! Not only is the shitter
a great home appliance, but it affords you the opportunity for hours of fun!
After the shitter has been used for a day, it gets full. Then you pick the
worst, or most unlucky soldier you know, the guy who always fucks up, or who
just fucked up most recently. This lucky winner gets to burn shit! Yes,
folks, our lucky winner first gets diesel fuel. He might get a mouthful of
diesel while siphoning it, or perhaps he pours some on himself so he can
smell diesel for hours. He pours fuel on the shit, and then, wait for it,
then he sets the shit on fire! But it's even better than that! Now he
gets a metal rod and stirs the shit while it burns. While he burns the shit,
the metal rod gets hot hot hot. And he keeps stirring the shit and adding fuel
to the burning shit ALL DAY LONG, till all the shit has burned to ashes.
Half our section of the compound is a big parking lot, with between eight
and twenty vehicles in it at a time.
I have been trying to figure out how to describe the walls for days now.
Imagine, if you will, a wicker basket. Imagine it without a handle. Imagine
it isn't rounded, but is squarish. Make it bigger, about two meters on a side,
a big wicker cube with an open top. Replace the wicker with metal wire. Open up
the weave so that there is a lot of space between the wires, almost two
inches. Line the inside with cloth. Pour dirt in the top, till full. This is
a "hesco". If it sounds like an ancient roman fortification, then you have the
right idea. The base of the wall is two cubes deep, with a third cube on top.
Each cube is 7 feet on a side. So, at the base this wall is fourteen feet
thick, at the top it is seven feet thick, and it is fourteen feet high. On top
of this is a double strand of concertina wire with some barbed wire running through it.