Loyalties, God, Country, and Corps, Leave Flight and calc, Intelligence Preparation of the Battlespace and Cardinal Directions, Ablution Hookup.
Journal Entry
Our power went out in the morn and I spent time working on my book proposal. I came back and had to deal with the leave flight. I did some calculations. We are basically saying that the Afghans are worth $100 per hour. It took three guys three full days in Kabul to pull off the flight. It took twelve of us basically the entire four hours to pull off the flight. By my calculations this adds up to just over 100 man-hours. We save the Afghans a grand total of 3 hours driving to Shorabak where they already have leave flights. We sent 105 pax and got 95 back. This means that we probably had about a 2hour return for every hour marines invested. Add to this the $20,000 flight, means that for every man-hour we spent about $100. That is a high-paid Afghan indeed.
I had to stop two of the officers from getting on the flight because I cross-referenced the roster with their names they already had 64 and 69 days respectively since Dec. The Major brought me into the room with the General when he openly mocked him and starting clapping when the general ‘proved’ (by pulling out the sign-in roster that they had been here for the last two months. Despite the policy he just signed he said that these two guys deserve leave because they had been here for two months. Clearly the Major had not gotten any buy-in for the new leave policy.
It occurred to me that the prologue of the book should talk about God: Country and Corps. This is supposed to be the hierarchy that we recognize. If writing this book makes me ‘betray’ the Corps, then I am still doing my duty, I am just doing it to a higher ideal.
In the afternoon I work with the S2 [Intelligence] guys again. Jabar remembered none of the 5 slides I showed him previously. I did try to teach them cardinal direction, and where they were in Afghanistan, and what cities are in their area of responsibility. Sigh.
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