Notebook Entry
None
Journal Entry
We were all able to sleep in for a little while today though for
some reason my body wouldn’t let me
sleep past 0730. I went to the gym convinced a nice old Russian lady to
le me do y laundry same day and then set about the task of trying to contact
our escorts. I tried dsn, svoip, bft, it
was all a mess and none of it was working, or wasn’t being monitored. I finally
I just looked up bodik ratislav, the Slovak who was our poc for rc sw and let
him know my cell phone number.
While was searching around trying to find a sipr phone I ran into
some of the 205 corps advisory team staff.
They are structured very similarly to what we are, but there are a lot
more countries out here. The anglosphere seems to take thebrunt, there are
brits, aussies, and Canadians, but that is about it.
I managed to talk to their legacy guys, as always they were a bunch
of lively Brits. They said that their
collectors were doing pretty well, they were still developing a lot of sources
in Qandahar proper. They had issues with the hierarchy just like I did.
Somebody in their chain made off with all of their source funding as well and
bought himself a villa in Kabul. They had similar problems to me with their
collectors being turned into provisional riflemen. Afte the Qandahar prison break the MICO for
the 205th corps were manning the guard towers, not out collecting
and trying to get information on the guys who had escaped.
I had lunch with a british sergeant and warrant officer who were involved
with running an academy to train senior
Afghan Staff NCOs. They gave me a
different perspective on the unpartnering of the Qalat brigade. They flatly said that they did not think it
was going to work. They had all of the same problems with their ncos that we do
with everyone, them trying to get out of training by using prayer time as an
excuse when ordinarily they would not pray for days. Them working from 0930-1100 and 1400-1600 if
you are lucky. Them making up health
problems and other reasons not to train.
They see the same problems with literacy. They bemoan the decision to go with Quantity
over quality. On the bright side they were half-way through their six month
deployment, ready to take their R&R and at the end they got to look forward
to decompression on Cyprus.
Capt Brawny, Cpl Bryan, and
Naikpai are all going to stay back to try to get tractor-trailors for the major
end items that are being towed. The lift
is going to come from the USMC, this is not a shock to me because despite what
the Major seems to think these army guys don’t give a shit what Marine Generals
get pissed off about. Unless its coming down from Gen Petraus, they are not
going to give a shit.
I caught up with an army majr who was the 215th corps
G-2 advisor. Hwe was knew and didn’t know mch but knew that his guys were not
ready to transition. I made link-up with our escors from the 10th
mtn division.
I want to talk for a moment about that ied blast the other
day. For the first time in a long time I
felt fear, yes real fear as the VC for
the lead truck. Some people feel
exhilarated after near death experiences, and I don’t want to overdratize the
ied blast, but it was so very personal, I thought the blst hit my truck, I was
checking round to see if all my guys were ok. when we pressed on with me in the
lead, I didn’t show the fear to my marines, I didn’t even vocalize it, I did an
after acino with them so that they could learn what I did, but later an hour or
two later driving down the same stretch of road, I felt fear. I felt I wanted
to get out. I felt like this was all so stupid, why were people dedicating
their lives to killing me, and why was I dedicated to killing them. Obiously I knew all of the reasons, I knew
the theories I knew their own religion better than them, but at that personal
man to man level it just seemed like such a waste. Today when I sat down in the
mwr to read the news everything seemed just a little more pale a littlemore
trivial. I didn’t want it to. I wanted to want things, simple things that
make people happy. I thought of Suzan,
she makes me so happy. I felt like thinking about our house, our lives the new
experiences that we will have some day that they were just less important. I hate this feeling. I wondered to myself what it is all for, why
is it all here, what for. Obviously I
know the anthropological and relious explanations, but that blast somehow hit a
reset button. I don’t want to push this
down, I don’t want to push it away. I want to understand and that is why I
write this.
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