Month 10 Day 22

Notebook entries

18 reports given, convoy to Delhi, met new camp, 0706306370?, Patrol Base Amir, sharp, Khoshtay, breakdown on the way back, Base defense operations center.

Journal entry

Went on a convoy to Garmsir. 

The First stop was Dehli the Battalion HQ.  The Maj Tawoos immediately set out networking.  I am proud of the guy.  I did the same.  I ran to try to find the new guys who just came down from the Corps Military intel company.  I found them and when I came back I walked in on Maj Tawoos talking to the head ANA G-2 HUMINT trainee, nice.  We also went to talk to the Legacy mentors.  The Legacy Mentor said that their funds for HUMINT were stopped by MoD, the ostensible reason for them is HUMINT funding irregularities.  He has his own conspiracy theories, the general up there didn’t get a cut, the general up there doesn’t like the Helmand, who knows what the truth is.  He also said they have major problems with things like target acquisition because their source can’t look at a map and make heads or tails of it, so they need some way for us to que other ISR assets to make actionable into out of it. There is a really murky relationship between the MICO guys and the regular ANA intel, but the long and short is that their mentor is saying that we can task them, that’s good. We had lunch with the General at the Afghan chow hall.  It was pretty decent, especially this jerky-chicken thing they had.  That was really good.

We went from there down to PB Amir.  Sgt Mondt, my driver, absolutely sucked.  He has a difficult time understanding the dimensions of his own vehicle, he ran into a bridge, and drove like he was scared the whole time.  He ran into old IED holes.  I miss LCpl Zach Rausnitz, my old driver. 

I don’t see any real change in Garmsir, same mud huts, same boys jumping in canals or Whacking goats/donkeys/cows with sticks to herd them wherever they should go. 

We got down to PB Amir where one of the new companies from the 4^th kandak was placed.  I wanted to go around and check everything out and talk to everyone, but I got food poisoning, as I usually do, from the ANA food, go I emptied my colon and tried to take a nap. 

From there we moved to COP Sharp and COP Khosarabad, both company positions with about a platoon worth of Afghans the general gave a little speech with his kevar on the back of his head and his belly protruding, and then he demanded cold water.  The little princess.  The Afghan soldiers told him about their problems, and he moved on.

On the way back we dropped off the team commander for 1/3 a captain who looked for all the world just like the guy Jacob from Twilight at Dehli and we headed back home.  I found a decent route so we didn’t get bounced around too bad, and I thought we were going to make decent time, then the seat of one of the Afghan HMMWVs collapsed.  The seat was over the batteries and the Afghans had no idea how to fix it, but they knew the seat was tangled up in wires, so what did they do, but start cutting wires.  When Capt Nowak came up they had somehow splashed water all over the area, had exposed wires, the entire mess was sparking and smoking, so what was a small problem became a big one and we had to rig the stupid thing for tow.

I got us back to the base with little further incident, but when we got there we were held up by the BDOC, base Defense Operations Center. These guys are reservists from Texas and they view the Afghans like Mexicans.  We had  permission to enter the base, permission to enter the military ECP, but when we got there they were giving us all kinds of grief.  I was pissed off and tired, by now it was past 2000 and we were not going to turn around and got to the main ECP, it was straight bullshit.  They try to stop the ANA under the auspices of making sure they clear their weapons, but it’s just bullshit.  Anyway I about lit the kids up on post, and the Gunny went crazy on them.  The LtCol was much more calm and was able to brow-beat the BDOC into figuring it out.  Good thing he was there.  If it were up to me I would have just driven onto the camp and broken their little string.  All this way and who do we fight with, ourselves, our own stupid fucking policies and nonsense.  We’ve got to go.