Month 9 Day 17

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 205^th 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 215^th 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 10^th 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. 

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)

Month 9 Day 11

Notebook Entry

Australian Sergeant Major, Battle Sight Zero Snipers, Useless Afghan national Army Staff teaching, Commander doesn’t want star, Quantity versus quality, Croats, Jordanians, 128 go unauthorized absence of 488 after they hear they are being sent to Helmand. 90 New Personnel.

Journal Entry

I got a decent sleep-in today.  That was nice. I went to the spectacularly clean and well-equipped gym that they have here then dropped off my laundry for next day service.  This is a place that I could really handle living in for a year, the buildings are cement, the climate is nice the internet is lightning fast, the chow is great.  Everything about this place is better than our spot in Helmand.

I had the chance to have breakfast with two of the Aussie army warrant officers they were a wealth of information about the ground truth of this place.  They called it the sausage factory. In theory they should get soldiers who have completed their advanced individual training after boot camp, assemble them together for some unit-training, and then push the unit down the road.  Once it is proficient and at the appropriate manning level.

In truth, rarely have any of the soldiers completed their specialty schools by the time that they make it here.  Or our kandak alone they are getting 90 brand new soldiers tomorrow and fielding them on the same day that they come in because they are required to have a unit at 85% of the tashkil before it is fielded. 

The soldiers that do get to go through the training are not really taught by Afghans, they are taught by Americans and by contractors who are often American ex-military.  There is no testing whatsoever that happens after the Afghans teach the classes the attitude is ‘I’m a LtCol and I told them so they should know.’ There was an individual in on of the classes who did not speak Pashto or dari, but the classes were so uni-directional that they did not find this out until two weeks into the course. Even the testing that the CF provides is a bit of a joke. Our kandak commander sent all of his staff officers on leave because he worked here prior to his assignment and thought that the validation process was useless.  In truth it is pretty toothless. The route clearance company failed its validation and they were still fielded, likewise, this kandak has done poorly, but they are still being fielded on time. One of the aussie sgtMaj’s who I spoke to about this related a conversation he had with a 2star general this way the two star told him to ‘pull your head in, this is just a numbers game, we have to field 30,000 soldiers, so that is what we are going to do.  That is also the reason that we are getting 90 new soldiers fresh out of boot camp with no connection with this unit. Because they have to make a numerical threshold of 85% and they have to do it by a certain time. Thus they dub this the sausage factory.  They admit their frustration at it.  They are ultimately sending substandard soldiers into the operating forces where many will lose their lives, but what else are they going to do.  It seems like this level of command is obsessed with the stuff solution as well.  It is not about what you are actually able to teach them, but about how many you can push out the door.  The conspiracy theory that I hear from these guys is that the brass are just doing CYA for the politicians, the politicians need to be able to plausibly say that they provided the ana with all that they needed to function and that their failure is on them.  My kandak understood that they were going to helmand when they saw the marines and 128 of 488 went UA. That didn’t stop the fielding either, they just robbed from another kandak that is supposed to be fielded later and gave them to us. They said that a lot of them will probably go UA en route along with a fair bit of equipment.

A couple of other anecdotes that they told me about.  As part of the standard training package (the training seems to be very similar regardless of the type of kandak that is being fielded). They have the guys shoot at 25 yards, this is not a battle, sight zero range, they don’t zero their weapons properly, they just shoot at the target.  A few soldiers are selected to be snipers and they shoot a few additional shots at about 100 yards.  There was one guy who did not hit paper at all and they tested his vision to find out that he was blind in the eye that he was putting to the sniper scope.

Most of the countries send a training team up here to mentor their afghans while they are  in training, just as the afghans at Pol-i-charai barracks are being mentored by all of the permanent staff here. Sometimes that does not happen, so there is an emergency on-hand mentor team here.  They are Jordanians and because they are not going to be fielded with the kandaks that they are training, they do not give a shit what happens to them.  There are also Croats here, no one can tell me what they actually do. I seems like a lot of the time of the Brits, Aussies and Americans is spent mentoring these other countries in their jobs as well as mentoring the ANA. What a cluster-fuck.

Apparently the commander was offered a general’s star and command, but he was very comfortable where he is and he has worked himself into the community, so he had no desire to be promoted, I am sure there is a booming business here with all of the men and material that move through here. 

We had a walk through the motor pool today.  The gear that these guys are getting is amazing. Brand new rangers, dump trucks, international flat beds, bulldozers, graters, wreckers, howitzers.  A total of 138 pieces of rolling-stock the convoy is probably going to be longer than 20km.  this is truly a stuff solution.  Magically though some of it has already been pilfered, a bobcat skid-steer is missing, half of the RPGs that they are supposed to have, and a bunch of the comm gear.  I am sure that none of it went to the Taliban…

Month 9 Day 9

Notebook Entry
Trees, Afghan National Army tanker. Year round work, eves on buildings. Lone Hill. No Tree shot holes. Poles Area of operations equals shot holes.

Journal Entry
We moved from Qalat to Ghazni today

The thing that struck me as we moved through the counryside were the trees. There were orchards and rows of lovely trees. I am nor arbor day fanatic, but they seemed odd. I also noticed that where there were trees there were no holes in the road from where IEDs had gone off. I wonder if trees would be a good metric for success in this campaign, they are a tenure crop that basically says, I am going to be here for a while, I will have buy-in with the community, work hard etc. I also wonder if people are idle for less of the time if they plant trees . so many of the problems that we have in helmand are the result of idle hands. There are [migrant] workers who come in an work feverishly for the poppy harvest, ther are almost no sigacts [significant activity] during this time, and after the poppy harvest is done, then the sigacts shoot back up. needless to say there were no trees in helmand or qandahar. Along with the trees I noticed an architectural feature called a ‘Nawa’ it sounds kind of like the city. Basically it is an eave. It keeps rainfall from running down the entire mud wall and damaging it. I started to see these in qalat, toward the end of the day they petered out. As did the orchards. As soon as they did I started to see tons of shot holes in the road. We were constantly vering around them or using the dirt on the side of the road because they had blown up a culvert.

I asked the linguists about it they said it was because the people in that part of the country are just lazy and they don’t give a shit. They said at the Kabul zoo they have a [sign] thatasays don’t feed the animals at the Qandahar zoo they have a sign that says don’t fuck the animals at the Helmand zoo they have a sign that says don’t eat animal food. This is what they think of their countrymen.

I can’t help but think that it is something deeper than that. People with no hope or thought for the future.

One thing I noticed about a lot of the old villages what that they almost all have a lone high-hill with I evidence of some fortification on top once or currently. I am sure these would have been ideal stops for the caravans, but it lets you know what an isoloated and war-torn country this was even then

We traveled into the polish battlespace. We are actually staying on a polish base. There are always a few Americans around I got connected with an army MSGT and she set us up with a decent place to stay

I had a run around base and on this ‘small’ army FOB I nearly got lost.

Had a decent dinner in the chow hall until the indirect fire warning went off. Then I spent the next hour in an air raid shelter with an army SgtMaj and an air fore retiree. They told me that the polish owned this battlespace, but that the us army was here to mentor them. So the americans are mentoring the poles who are mentoring the ANA. They complained about a lot of the same issues that we have to deal with. Stealing, ineffetive chain of command, little regard for human life. It looks good on paper to have the polish running their own battlespace, but in fact I am starting to see why there were so many shot holes in the road.

What is old is new again, an old fort re-purposed as a new fort.

An old minaret outside Ghazni

One of the innumerable 'jingle trucks' so named because of the jingling decorations that festoon them.

If only the Russians could see it now, Polish Hinds ready to fly air support for us.

Month 9 Day 8

Notebook Entry
Cipher from the Ministry of Defense, cell phone, Qandahar Vehicle-borne Improvised Explosive device and threat empty. Use of Blue Force Tracker. Keeping Nice things from Aghans. Remain-over-night Qalat.

Journal Entry
Went to the 215th corps HQ Unis got a cipher from the Corps HQ but it did not say what it needed to. It said that 17 pax [people] and 4 vics [vehicles] needed to be supported with chow on the way to kabul, it made no mention of fuel, maint, or any other useful thing that they might need nor did it mak any mention of the 500pax that were coming back down and the 130 vics that they would be bringing with them. I was not happy. The major and I went back to speak to the ANA [Afghan National Army]  OpsO [Operations Officer] about it and they promised that there would be a new cipher. The we also got the corps guys on it so they will be tracking when it is appropriate.

On the way out they told us to let 3rd brigade know that we were coming through their ao [Area of Operations] on the way by so they could provide support. Really, guys these are your subordinates and you are standing five feet from your coc [Combat Operations Center] and they all have cell phones and so do you. You shoud call your own guys. Unis forgot his cell phone on the way out and we had to hold up the convoy to get it.

The tripswent pretty well . it was pretty fast traveling with a small convoy and on blacktop we tried to keep it going at about 40 Mph.

The only hiccups were in qandahar we got a tip from the ana [Afghan National Army] that some bad hit had one down in Qandahar the day before, so I sent a BFT [Blue Force Tracker] message back to the rear. They confirmed that there had been 7 simultaneous attacks the day prior. When we got to qandahar there was a major roadblock on the way in. Gunny, my gunner heard 1 shot of SAF [Small Arms Fire] but couldn’t PID [Positively Identify] we found out why once the army directed us around. There were two ieds that they had just found about 100m away from an engagement spot. I could tell because the army actually uses the bft and puts enemy on there as well as friendly, nice idea. They blew one in place about 150m from us and shredded the back of a little hatchback then let us through. I saw a mass of vics [Vehicles] on hwy one on the bft up ahead I asked for clarification from the army guys. They said that they were in the middle of a firefight and that commandos were clearing the building. I asked for permission and then took us one street over. The place was really reminiscence of Haiti, the small open sewers. The little bit of greenery bravely holding on to the brown soil. It was really odd to drive through there. The entire city was dead. All of the shops were closed the only people on the street were cops and military.

Once we made it out of qandahar and started to hook up the eastern side of the hindu kush things started to look a lot better. There was natural greenery. The peoples houses didn’t all look like shit. In fact with the mountains in the background it looked down right bucolic and nice.

As we moved to the edge of zabul the buildings changed we started to see some of the old ghaznavid architecture. Some of the little towns though smaller than they once were were clearly maintained much better than the stuff further south. Once we made it into qalat the buildings actually started to look decent, not like the run-down stuff in the south.

When we made it to eagle/apache the ana had a little trouble getting on, but the army 1stSgt in charge of billeting told me that they had already unpartnered one ana kandak and that the whole base we are staying on is about to be taken over by the 2/205

Maybe I am wrong. Maybe this is possible. I wonder what makes this different than helmand.

The 215th Corps Headquarters building, they lived better than the Marines, as it should.

Month 9 Day 5

Notebook Entry
Concept of Operations all day. Samir Fired. Communication problems.

Journal Entry
I spent the entire day working on the conops for the trip. What is really funny is that for all of the high speed communications gear that we have almost half of the numbers that you dial on a SIPR [Secret Internet] or DSN [military telephones] do not work. That is immensely frustrating when you are trying to coordinate billeting, repairs, fuel, across half of the country. The Major brought up a good point, it is unlikely that anyone else has conducted a convoy this long, going all the way from RC(SW) to kabul and back

Samir was officially fired today

I thought the word 'tank' on the back of this truck was somewhat wishful thinking.

Month 9 Day 4

Notebook Entry
Ten Reports given, actually chewed out Slovak. Leave flight, varsity level Military Decision making process. Make believe staff in the afternoon. General stomp out. Power/generator. Intelligence guy back.

Journal Entry
Lots happened yesterday, but nothing happened. It turns out I actually chewed out a Slovak not a Croat. I found out that our coalition brethren are just as litigious as we are. He needed something in writing from one of his own brigade combat teams that I had been given an exception to the rule. The word of an officer Is not good enough. Fuck the coalition. It has made communication almost impossible with all of these extra networks. In coming together we have actually pushed ourselves farther apart. I spent the whole day just trying to get in touch the the FOBs [Forward Operating Bases] that was are going to stay at and doing basic updates on the ConOps [Concept of Operations].

The rest of the team, basically in its entirety, was dedicated to the leave flight. What a waste, and just a few days before we are supposed to go, stupid. Samir and Salim both made it back on the leave flight, but I am told that Samir is just here to check out.

I guess the Military Decision making process class that the RCT [Regimental Combat Team] did was comically bad. The ANA [Afghan National Army] showed up in the morning and Maj Kraus asked my guy in front of everyone “so what’s happening in Trek Nawa?” He is out of touch, the guy can only remember where Trek Nawa is about 75% of the time. In the afternoon none of the ANA showed up except for the S-3. All of the RCT guys were pissed off. They were like, where is my guy, this is the ETT’s fault said LtCol Walcott. Our fault? You told them where to be, they didn’t listen to you, they don’t give a shit that you are a pissed off LtCol. The afghans just started pulling in random guys and claiming that they we part of this section or that section. It was complete bullshit, but because the guys from the RCT have been here so little they didn’t know the difference. The General came in for a couple of minute said he was embarrassed, knocked over his water bottle and stomped out. LtCol Walcott fell asleep in his chair. Maj Kraus came up to me afterward and was like “have you been working with them on this?” I said that this was the RCT’s thing and that we were told to stay out of it. I also mentioned the convoy in a couple of days again and I think he understood that we had more pressing concerns. He went one talking unrealistic things about the Socratic method. I spoke to Qais later about it and he told me that the Marine Sergeant, SSgt Robert Burns, was no good and that he wanted me to teach him. It will be an interesting few weeks without us to be their crutch.