Month 8 Day 28

Notebook Entry
At the Combined Combat Operations Center planning all day. We kicked out the Russians, 2M Khost Bridge, Halon Fire Suppression, volleyball.

Journal Entry
I was at the CCOC [Combined Combat Operations Center] all day working on the planning for the move to Kabul. We gave a brief to LtCol Walcott and that went fine. It didn’t bother me too much to miss out on a day of interaction with the ANA [Afghan National Army] because it was the 19 anniversary of the day that the Russians left the country. They had a little parade.

I spoke to the ANA AirO [Air officer] about the whole thing. He was an officer in the Army when the Russians were here. I asked if he thought that the Afghans would have another day to celebrate the kicking out of the Americans in 19 years. He looked at be for a second and then said after a long pause that he didn’t think they would celebrate our departure. I gathered from his pause that he was lying and trying not to hurt my feelings.

When I sat down to have lunch with him and a Sgt from the Logistics section we talked about women. Apparently in Khost province a bride can cost 2 million Afghanis. They were again wowed by the fact that I had been married for four years to one woman, that I had no kids, and that my wife worked. The wanted to know how much I made, I lied and told them that I made a couple thousand dollars a month and that in America stuff was very expensive, so this didn’t make me rich.

One of the Afghans was smoking a cigarette inside of his HMMWV and it activated the Halon fire-suppression system. It basically sucks the air out of the entire truck. The Afghans had no idea what was happening, a little bit comical to see guys coming out thinking they had released a smoke-grenade.

The Marines again got destroyed in volleyball.