Month 9 Day 15

Notebook Entry 20110514-20110515

Refueled refueler, attack on convoy? Escort the escorts, improvised explosive device, operations at night, Poles let them go, stealing water, small arms fire, streetlamps.

Journal Entry

We caught up with the tail of the convoy, one of the rangers was swiss cheese on the left side from bullet holes.  The ana had stopped there.  We stopped to assess and started taking SAF.  I again contacted the battlespace owner for QRF, Wrecker, and air, they had nothing available.  Of course not, it was the night time and as we were learning the poles don’t work at night.  There was no air, and no wrecker.  I got one ‘helpful’ message from the battlespace owner that we were in a very dangerous area and that we should get out of there.  No shit, I just told you they shot at me idiot. The poles wanted to know if there was another road we could use. I’m like this is your AO you should know that there are no other paved roads here, this is really the only paved highway in the country. Capts Brawny and Nowak basically lashed the ranger to the back of a fuel truck they lifted the front off the ground and just basically let the thing drag.  The back wheel which was all shot up disintegrated en-route and they had to keep stopping to re-lash the thing.

I let the Romanians know that the kandak was just about at their pos, they wanted to know if they should push without us.  We were still with the tail-end of the convoy 30 miles back, we told them to push and that we would catch up.  It was a shit-show the rest of the night. 

We passed some of the last polish areas, there were no lights because all of the solar lamps that CF had bought had been shot out.  There were burning civilian vehicles all along the road to include a tanker that was in the process ofbeing raided by about 50 civilians under the supervision ofANCOP.  This is what happens when you let the enemy own the night.

We finally bid the polish AO goodbye and entered into US army battlespace augmented by Romanians.

We started to catch up with other elements of the convoy, the brand-new vehicles were in all states of direpare. I witnessed two accidents between ana trucks personally and I wondered if they had driven some of the civilians off the road.  It was every man for himself, as the sun was coming up the ana still drove like afghans even though they were part of one convoy. If a truck slowed down they would pass it by whatever means necisary and push to the front. I got to watch a sad spectacle of one dump truck towing another with hmmwv chains, trying to pull it up to speed then having the chain snap because it isn’t rated for anything like that weight.  This was while it listened to the saga of NandB towing as Capts Nowak and Brawny started referring to themselves rig and rerig the dragged vic, the force kept snapping the straps.  We got a message from the Poles that an ana ambulance and 3 ana were still on one of their fobs, they had pulled in there for some unknown reason and were wondering if we were going to come back for them.  They also sent me a BFT message that we were passing through another danger area 2 km after wehad already passed through.  Thanks again poles.

The major was tired and started to instruct me to drive like an Afghan instead of using my dismounts to refuel the ana and help ri them for tw he wanted me to push through th traffic to qalat. He reasoned that there was plenty of security on the road and that the ana could deal with the last 5 km since we had delt with the last 155.

We pulled into eagle/apache and the Romanian escorts wanted to know when we were leaving, we told them we appreciated their verve, but  it was now 0530 and the ana and Marines had been on the move since 0730.  We were going to wait at eagle/apache for a day.  Everyone grabbed breakfast and passed out.

When I woke up in the afternoon I informed the next battlespace owners of the shifted timeline via bft. Worked out, ate dinner with a nice army major who worked with the Arkansas national guard agriculture program who told me that all of the trees I had been admiring were recent gift from America, and that his was the only agriculture team trying to wean the afghans off of opium in all of rc(s)