Month 10 Day 1

Notebook entry

16 reports given, rearrange office, promotion, interpreter conversation, at lunch, Salim cardinal directions, beer with Central intelligence agency, regimental combat team communications Officer here, Capt. Arthur’s comments

Journal entry

In the morning I tried to help Salim put the office in order.  Papers are just laying everywhere, stacked on top o each other, nothing is actually filed in the filing cabinet, it is just stuff in there. In the process I discovered a ‘moush’ a mouse in English which we proceeded to kill and dispose of. 

Then it was time for my promotion.  I was promoted with then Maj Valquist and then LCpl Casbarro.  I had Capt Nowak pin me on.  I thought he would be really annoyed if I didn’t and he actually seemed to care about it, so I called him out.  I had Col Schmitt pin me on the with other. The Afghans were out there too and I got a million ‘Tabrik Boshi’s’ (congratulations) along with four giant pendant things to hang around my neck, they are basically a bunch of paper with some ribbon stapled to the front.  They are kind of corny, but they must take a long time to make. 

At lunch I had a converstation with the terps.  Sami said that after the US was out he might join the ANA.  The other terps were like wha?? He said that he wanted to serve his country.  The other terps were like, don’t you think that you are serving your country now?  He said “I want to serve my  country directly.”  Dinar said that he once thought about joining, but he never met the ethic qualifications for the jobs that he wanted in the government.  The affirimative-actionesq system kept him out of  the NDS. They said that they were in a really bad position.  They are hated by the ANA and they feel like they are hated by the Marines too.  Some of them never want to come back and others feel like it is their duty.  They are going to be a really interesting bunch to put in the book. 

In the afternoon I gave salim the weather and tried to work with him on the cardinal directions as well as the locations of the places within our AO. Capt Chuck CJ Radin then came over and worked with him for a while on briefing techniques. 

I bounced to chow and sat down with one of the guys who does contracting for the CIA here.  They live a whole different lifestyle.  They have a great gym, chow hall, tiled floors.  He’s like ‘man you wouldn’t even know it is Afghanistan.’  He also invited me over for a beer some night.  “they don’t like enlisted to come over, but if you ever want to come have a beer and relax, just walk on over.” HMMMM

Capt Arthur has been in a particularly foul mood.  I feel for the guy he has been tasked with this huge investigation, but he has not really freed himself from his normal job so he keeps getting reamed out.  He said that it goes deeper than that.  He’s like I’m not really a great Marine, but I would like to know that what I am working on actually makes a difference, but I have been a complete failure.  There is nothing that has gotten better here.

I’m not the only one.

To cap it all off Maj B tells me that some other guy is inbound for 2/1, so God only knows where I will be sent when this thing is done.  It will be somewhere on Pendleton, but no telling where.