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Aug 21
This morning, I rode in a vehicle that was intentionally driven through a minefield—seriously.
Bagram Airfield, home to more than 20,000 American troops and one of the largest Coalition bases in Afghanistan, is also the dumping ground for more than three decades’ worth of land mines and unexploded ordinance (UXO)—some left behind by Soviet troops after their disastrous war here, others planted by the fleeing Taliban. Now the soldiers of the base’s Mine Action Center (MAC) and their contractors are tasked with making more than 1.2 million square meters of land on the base mine-free. Said 2LT Scott Walters of the MAC, “Seven or eight years into this war, you’d think an airfield like this would be cleared, but it’s not. We still have pockets where land mines are located that we need to clean out and allow for new construction here and for the expansion of Bagram Airfield.” Added UXO expert Richard Weaver of MAC contractor RONCO, “The bad thing about the mines is that they’re randomly placed, and that is a problem because you just don’t know where they are. So we actually have to go in and clear an area and assume that there are mines there, because you just don’t know. And we have run across mines in unmarked areas.” Yet in other places, mines lay clearly exposed just a few hundred yards from the runway, and foreign contractors with metal detectors, special vests, helmets, and clear visors probe the soil as fighter jets streak past.
The first step in clearing these danger-laden fields is taken in massive, 11-ton armored vehicles called Casspirs. The Casspir is a South African creation developed in the 1980s as a mine-proof troop carrier. Its v-shaped single-hull design allows it deflect mine blasts, and is the inspiration for the MRAP of today’s American military. The soldiers of the MAC and their contractors use the Casspirs at Bagram to make initial forays into suspected mined areas, intentionally rolling its heavy metal wheels over spots where they think explosives have been hidden. Explained 2LT Walters, “The CASSPIR will roll over anything that’s on the surface or near the surface, and reduce some of the threats before we get any people going in there and demining the old fashioned way with mine detection equipment and old fashioned probes.” When LT Walters offered me the chance to ride along this morning, I had to accept.
The Casspir rides roughly like most armored vehicles, bouncing over bumps in the uneven terrain surrounding the airfield. We drove around for several minutes before hitting our first anti-personnel mine, then struck six more in quick succession. The noise made by the small blasts sounds like a combination of a loud “pop,” coupled with someone banging a hammer on the outside of the metal hull. The sound is followed quickly by a rising cloud of dust, about the consistency of talcum powder, which envelops the vehicle and settles inside through the open gunner’s turret on top. When I asked Walters to describe in his words how it feels to drive over a mine and cause it to detonate, he said, “You get a nice little boom there. It’s more noise than it is percussion. It’s an interesting experience, something you can take home and tell your friends about. ‘Hey, I rolled over a land mine.’ My count is up to about 85 now. I don’t know too many of my friends who can say that.”
My count is seven. I think I’m good for awhile.
Until next time - Michael
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It’s been an eventful couple of days at Bagram Airfield. Tuesday afternoon, COL Jesse Simmons invited me along for an aerial supply drop from one of the 165th Airlift Wing’s C-130s. We carried several huge pallets of supplies—including breakfast pastries, cereal, and sports drinks—to a remote combat outpost in the volatile Helmand Province in Southern Afghanistan. As loadmasters SMSGT Tim Gaines and TSGT Chris Odom opened the gaping back ramp of the aircraft, the massive bundles slid out in quick succession, a static line opening a parachute atop each one in turn to help slow its descent. All twelve bundles landed safely within the target area, the impact partially absorbed by thick cardboard “honeycomb” attached to the bottom of each one. As we winged our way back home to Bagram, COL Simmons glanced out at the imposing, barren peaks below and remarked, “I see a lot of rugged, harsh terrain. I’m glad to be flying. I feel safer in the plane than I do anywhere else.”
This morning, I found another Savannah connection here at Bagram. I met up with 1LT Drew Hill of the Alabama National Guard’s 166th Engineering Co. These Bama Boys make frequent use of the HMEE (High Mobility Engineer Excavator), a 60-mph armored backhoe manufactured for the US and British military exclusively by JCB, Inc. in Pooler. The Russian forces that built Bagram decades ago left behind numerous active minefields here—some marked, others unknown. Said Hill, “Being up in the up-armored cab gives you that extra sense of protection that you wouldn’t otherwise have.” But the HMEE’s real value for Hill and his soldiers lies beneath its armored hood. “All the rest of the diggers in the Army’s inventory have been underpowered,” Hill explained. “The JCB HMEE seems to have a lot more power than what we’re used to, so we’re able to work a lot more quickly and get the job done in half the time we normally would.” And to the Chatham County employees of JCB, Hill said, “I’d just like to say thanks for making such a wonderful piece of equipment. It’s not every day you get something of this caliber. So keep up the good job!”
I wrapped up the day with a visit to the Harlang UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) Squadron—yet another example of French-American cooperation in the war effort here in Afghanistan. Much like the well-known American Predator drone, the French Harlang gives American and other Coalition troops here a set of “eyes in the sky” to help them stay ahead of the enemy. Said the Harlang Squadron Commander, LT Col Richard Canet of the French Air Force, “With the UAV, you have two advantages: first of all, you can broadcast the video directly to the ground forces. And the other advantage is, we can stay in the sky a very, very long time—between 12 and 24 hours.” That’s a lot longer than any fighter pilot—French or American—could linger over the battlefield.
Tonight, The Coastal Source will air another of my TV stories featuring local troops in Afghanistan. This time, we’ll spend the night at an Afghan Police substation on a remote mountaintop, and feel an adrenaline rush as mortar rounds light up the night sky. Be sure not to miss this story tonight at 10pm on FOX 28, 11pm on WJCL/ABC, and again tomorrow on ABC’s “Good Morning” with Lyndy Brannen and Jessia Kiss between 5 and 7am.
Until next time- Michael
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Bagram Airfield (BAF) is a sprawling, bustling military hub about 40 miles outside of Kabul. Here, more than 20,000 people live and work at the center of the US Air Force’s contribution to the coalition war effort in Afghanistan. Shuttle buses carry people from one part of the complex to another, and you can’t even cross the street here unless you use a crosswalk (and even then, you’d better look both ways, twice.). Working from the old Soviet airstrip—much-supplemented with new NATO construction—dozens of massive airlift planes, fighters, and helicopters of all varieties make constant forays into the airspace over Afghanistan. In the midst of this milieu, the “Guard Dawgs” of Savannah’s 165th Airlift Wing—“Savannah’s Air Force”—are playing their own important role. *Though the unit is based in Savannah, many of its members are residents of the Atlanta area, living and working there when they're not called to duty.
“We’re getting the beans and the bullets to where they need to be,” says COL Jesse Simmons, the 165th’s deputy commander and the highest-ranking Georgia Air Guard officer on the scene here in Bagram. In other words, the Savannah C-130s and their counterparts from other parts of the US are doing what they were designed to do: ferrying troops, supplies, and ammunition far and wide throughout the battle space. The missions include medivac trips, aerial supply drops, even assignments to toss out thousands of Dari- and Pashtun-language leaflets over Taliban territory. Simmons says it’s a job for which the C-130 “Hercules” is perfectly suited. “This is Herc Heaven," he explains. "This is the type of flying the C-130 was made for. It’s mountainous terrain, dirt airstrips. It’s doing it ugly, and that’s what the C-130 likes to do.”
Simmons is specifically referring to the C-130’s unique ability to take off and land on short, unimproved runways, a feat made possible by the aircraft’s four 19,600-horsepower turboprop engines with reversible thrust and the 16-disc braking system on its big landing gear.
Savannah C-130 pilots flying over Afghanistan are also able to use darkness to their advantage, thanks to hi-tech NVGs (Night Vision Goggles) that allow them to fly the aircraft in near-total darkness. I witnessed this ability first-hand when aircraft commanders MAJ Brian Zwicker and CAPT Les Claxton, Navigator CAPT Brian Bowen, Flight Engineer TSGT Medie T. Still IV, and Loadmasters SMSGT Tim Gaines and TSGT Chris Odom took me along as a cockpit passenger on one of their overnight flights. Flipping their NVGs into the place, the flight crew cut off all the aircraft’s lights as we lifted off the runway and flew over the security fence and into “Indian country,” as many soldiers say. Said MAJ Zwicker, “This [the cover of darkness] is our best line of defense right now… Most of the stuff they [insurgents] have to hit us with is line-of-sight stuff, so if they can’t see us, that’s a good thing.” As if to underscore Zwicker’s point, we heard an American pilot in our area report incoming anti-aircraft fire during part of our journey. While the barrage was not aimed at our aircraft, it was an unsettling reminder of the volatility of the situation in Afghanistan.
We carried a load of cargo and troops to Camp Bastion, a joint British and US Marine Corps base to the southwest of Bagram. Surprisingly, one of the soldiers riding in the belly of our Hercules on the outbound trip was CPL Matt Williams, a Bravo Company, 2/121st soldier from the GA Army Nat’l. Guard who I met several months ago during a training exercise at Fort Stewart. As Williams disembarked at Camp Bastion, clad in his body armor and carrying his rifle and other equipment, I couldn’t help but wonder what sorts of missions he would soon undertake, and what the future holds in store for him and the other young GA Guard troops I’ve met here over the past few weeks.
As we closed the distance between Camp Bastion and Bagram in the wee hours of the morning, the flight crew noticed a series of rhythmic flashes lighting up the night sky a few thousand feet below us. The bright flashes, the officers explained, were most likely the muzzle flashes and subsequent blasts of American heavy artillery being unleashed on Taliban targets. What appeared to be cloud cover above the explosions was actually the resulting smoke settling atop the valley where the battle was taking place. The firing was so intense and the smoke so thick, navigator Bowen could actually see it on his weather radar—an innocuous green blob that obscured the ferocity of what was likely happening on the ground. “The Marines are really puttin’ a hurtin’ on somebody tonight,” said one of the crew.
I slept late today (Monday) after accompanying the crew on their early morning mission, then spent some time visiting the places where the airmen and maintainers of the 165th work, eat, sleep, and relax. I was surprised to meet yet another parent/child pair deployed together (I’ve already met several on the Army Guard side of the fence) here in Afghanistan. Mom SSGT Millie Miller works in the “Life Support” section, prepping and maintaining equipment such as helmets, oxygen masks, and NVGs for flight crews before and after missions. Her son, A1C Jerome Miller, works in the maintenance shop. While they work on opposite shifts and seldom actually see one another, both Millers say it’s a comfort to know their loved one is so near. On the other hand, says Jerome, “Somebody made a comment the other day that we need to clean up after ourselves, because we didn’t bring our mommies to war. But then someone else pointed out that, ‘Oh yes, Jerome did!’ So I get messed with quite a bit.” In any case, it appears the “blue” members of the GA Air Nat’l. Guard make their work as much a family affair as do their “green” cousins on the Army Guard side.
Until next time- Michael
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It’s been several days since my last blog about my experiences in Afghanistan. At first, I fell behind because of a combination of too many stories, too little time, and slow internet access. Later, I experiences things of such emotional magnitude that I found it impossible to process them and write about them in a timely fashion. Now that I’m on the verge of moving to another base with another group of Georgia troops, I’m under the all-too-familiar deadline pressure to get caught up!
On Tuesday, I rode in an armored convoy the short distance to Camp Blackhorse, a small American base encircled by the headquarters of the Afghan National Army’s Third Kandak (Battalion). Blackhorse is in the Pol-e-charki suburb of Kabul, in the same district as the infamous communist-era (and still-used) prison of the same name.
My primary mission at Camp Blackhorse was to spend time with the soldiers of Bravo Company, 2/121st Infantry Battalion (conversationally referred to as Bravo Company, “Second Foot”). First Lt. Jason Rich leads a platoon of the Newnan-based group, which I’ve been covering since early this year for CBS Atlanta News. One member of the unit, just-promoted Staff Sergeant Andrew Huffman, is a Savannah-Chatham Metropolitan Police Officer whom I’ve covered for The Coastal Source, WJCL/FOX 28 in Savannah. The “Goodfellas,” as Rich’s contingent call themselves, live in a cinderblock barracks that they have personalized with camouflage blankets and Georgia flags given to them when they began their deployment. The soldiers spend hours here engaging each other in online combat with the video game “Call to Duty.” Said Specialist Cody Griffith, “It’s kind of messed up that we come to war and play war in our time off,” as the sounds of machine gun fire and explosions—intermixed with exclamations of victory or online death—escaped from nearby bunks.
Early the next morning, I joined the Georgia soldiers in the Afghan training area as we watched the ANA troops learn to disassemble and clean American M-16 rifles, which are replacing their Russian-made AK-47s. I also got the opportunity to observe Afghan Army drill (marching) first-hand. It’s very similar to Soviet-style goose-stepping, with swinging arms, shouted orders, and lots of loud stomping in rhythm. Later, Lt. Rich and I had several cups of traditional Chai (hot green tea) with one of the Afghan commanders. It’s a ritual the Afghans insist on before every meeting, and not a favorite among the Georgia troops—most of whom don’t like the taste of the tea without a lot of sugar mixed in.
While some of the soldiers expressed understandable frustration with their teaching mission in this foreign land, others pointed out the bright side and the importance of the mission. Said Lt. Rich, “It’s exciting because we get to do new things. We get to operate very closely with a different nation. We get to learn their cultures and how they operate. These people here have been fighting for eons. So they have a wealth of experience and a whole new take on how to operate as military units. So it’s interesting to be able to gain the knowledge that they have and see if you can’t incorporate it into some of the ways that you do things.” Added SSG Huffman, “I would say this is the most important mission in Afghanistan. This mission is the future of Afghanistan. It’s the future of America, because the sooner we get then trained up, the sooner we get out of here.”
My last experience with the “Goodfellas” came long before the crack of dawn on Friday, August 14th, as I accompanied them on their regular trip to climb the Gar—a rocky crag just a few miles from the base. We were up at 3:30am, and moving down the dusty road in our heavy MRAP armored vehicles a short time later. I attempted to climb with the soldiers, who have shunned the marked trail and charted their own, steeper course up the side of this ancient peak. After turning my loose, easily-strained ankle tendons twice on loose rocks at the base of the hill, however, I waved goodbye, turned around, and headed back to join the rear guard at the MRAPs. When I saw how worn out the soldiers were when the rejoined us two hours later, I knew I made the right decision!
My primary host during my time at Camp Phoenix was Air Force Captain Charles Johnson, a man with many hats whose tasks include helping convince the local population to work with American and Coalition troops. Johnson showed me stacks of posters and leaflets in his office—all in the local Dari or Pashtun dialects—aimed at persuading people to shun the Taliban. The flyers were pretty graphic. One featured a little girl pleading, “Brother, don’t become a suicide bomber.” On the flip side, a suicide bomber melted in the flames of hell, and the text explained what the Quran reportedly prescribes for people who kill the innocent. Another poster—the English version of which is pictured in this blog—depicts Taliban fighters hiding beneath the burkhas worn by many Afghan women. The poster was drawn in a colorful, “Scooby-Doo” style that really tickles my funny bone.
Captain Johnson took me and Georgia National Guard CH (CPT) Shelby Grant of Dacula, GA to meet with the ANA religious leader, Mullah Wazir-Khan Thursday afternoon. In this fascinating encounter, the two men of faith found they had more in common than perhaps either realized. Chaplain Grant said the thing that unites them most is their concern for the soldiers under their care. Mullah Wazir-Khan is a heavy-set, square-shouldered man with wise eyes and an easy smile. He’s known to engage Taliban militants in arguments about Islam, turning their twisted logic on its head and leading some to lay down their arms. We need men like him on our side. As CPT Johnson pointed out, we cannot hope to win the hearts and minds of the Afghan people if we wage war against their faith.
While I was at Camp Blackhorse, I learned about two Savannah-area heroes. Captain Matthew Freeman was a bright young US Marine Corps Officer killed in a battle in the Kapisa Valley on August 7th. Freeman was an aviator who volunteered to come to Afghanistan and help train the Afghan army, so that his skills could be used to help call in airstrikes on Taliban positions when the inevitable attacks occurred. Captain Freeman was fatally wounded after successfully calling in an airstrike on militants who attacked his group of soldiers, Marines, and Afghan troops. During the battle, Army Specialist Chris “Kitt” Lowe—a Savannahian who serves in a unit based out of the armory in Calhoun, Georgia—saw that the medic working on Captain Freeman was in danger. Lowe jumped atop the structure where the medic was working, shoved himself to safety, and took a bullet in his leg in the process. Kitt Lowe survived his injury and his now recovering at Walter Reed Army Hospital in Maryland. I was able to interview his commander, Lieutenant Col. Russell Simmons, as well as several soldiers and Marines who served with Kitt and some who were in the battle alongside him. All say he is an amazing young man who did acted heroically in the midst of the battle. Several of Kitt’s comrades were awarded Combat Action Badges at a ceremony Thursday morning, and I’m sure Kitt will be recognized for his heroism as well.
The most moving thing I’ve witnessed since I arrived in Afghanistan unfolded yesterday (Friday) morning in front of the flagpoles at Camp Blackhorse. CPT Matt Freeman’s fellow Marines gathered for a memorial service to their fallen comrade. As a ‘final roll call’ was called out, three Marines silently placed a pair of combat boots, a rifle, dogtags, and a helmet at the head of the assembly. The symbolic items were flanked by a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart, and the Marine Corps’ Eagle, Globe, and Anchor was joined by the 108th Cavalry’s (Georgia National Guard) emblem between the toes of the boots. Seven riflemen fired three volleys—a 21-gun salute—and the haunting sounds of taps echoed off the surrounding Afghan mountains. Then, over the course of more than twenty minutes, Marines soldiers, and even troops from other Coalition nations filed past one at a time, dropped to their knees, took hold of the dog tags, and said farewell to CPT Freeman. Some kissed the dog tags. Others crossed themselves and silently prayed. One tearful soldier took off his own rank badge and placed it beside the boots.
I returned to my home base at Camp Phoenix after the memorial ceremony, emotionally drained and humbled by the way the troops of different service branches and nations paid homage to their fallen comrade.
Most of today was spent working my way through all the video collected at Camp Blackhorse (a much bigger task than I anticipated—so 1LT Rich, Chaplain Grant, LTC Coursey, MGySgt Crumpton and all others who’ve requested DVDs, please be patient with me!), and repacking my gear and equipment for the next step in my journey: I’ll be headed to Bagram Airfield (BAF) to spend a few days with the Georgia Air National Guard’s 165th Airlift Wing, as well as a US Army Unit that is employing the new, Savannah-made JCB HMEE armored backhoe, a piece of mine-proof construction equipment vital in the effort to rebuild places like Afghanistan and Iraq. I’ll be filing my next post from there, sometime in the next few days.
Some of our Georgia soldiers were close by the scene of an international news story today, when a suicide bomber detonated his explosives outside the NATO compound where the Georgia troops go every day to instruct Afghan soldiers. This is the same compound I visited and wrote about in my third blog on August 5th. I’ve spoken with several of my friends here who felt the buildings shake during the blast—but as far as I know everyone on the Georgia Guard team returned safely to Camp Phoenix.
One last note from here at Camp Phoenix: today I purchased a U.S. flag at the PX and had the chief and deputy chief of the Camp Phoenix Fire Department—Senior Chief Webster and Petty Officer First Class Tipton—fly it over their fire hall. The flag, and an accompanying certificate of authentication signed by the sailors, will be auctioned at an upcoming raffle to support the Savannah Council, Navy League of the United States Sea Cadets.
Until next time- Michael
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*For more from Camp Blackhorse, check out Senior Master Sergeant (USAF) Temple’s blog, www.afghanistanmylasttour.com
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Today I interviewed four soldiers who were in the firefight in which the Richmond Hill Marine, Captain Matt Freeman, was killed.
A Savannah soldier, SPC Chris "Kitt" Lowe, was shot in the leg during the same incident, and has been flown home for treatment. The bullet struck his artery, but he should be fine.
I think the Marine Captain was on the roof of a building attempting to call in an airstrike when he was shot, and a medic climbed up to help him. SPC Lowe saw that the medic was in danger, so he jumped up and pushed the medic down, and wound up taking a bullet for him--so he's truly a hero, as was the Marine.
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Thursday, August 6th - Sunday, August 9th
Don’t talk about roughin’ it until you’ve spent a few days with Captain Bob Harris and his squad of Field Artillery soldiers at FOB (Forward Operating Base) Tora in the mountains above the Surobi Valley.
Mind you—FOB Tora is a French base. Yes, French. But before you get any ideas about red wine or fine cheese, you should know that this outpost of the famed French Foreign Legion is no Parisian arrondissement. Instead, it’s a flat spot on top of a rocky mountain, commanding a 360-degree view of the surrounding sandy moonscape. The American corner of the base consists of two “Alaskan Tents,” a storage container, some HUMVEEs, and a flagpole. But for Captain Harris and his soldiers, it’s home.
The handful of troops based here hail mostly from coastal Georgia—primarily the armories in Springfield and Savannah—though there was an Atlanta-area soldier in the group during my short visit. The soldiers comprise a PMT—a Police Mentoring team—tasked with helping the Surobi Valley Precinct of the Afghan National Police force (ANP). Says Captain Harris, “We don’t teach them how to be police officers—we teach them how to run an operations center: how to account for their people and their weapons, how to plan patrol schedules—and then when there are operations that include the coalition forces, how to plan and prepare for those." Recently, when the Georgia soldiers found themselves embroiled in a fierce firefight with Taliban insurgents in the area, their ANP cohorts held up their end of the battle, proving themselves to be ferocious fighters. Adds Harris, “Do they know how to fight? Yes. Are they as efficient as coalition forces? Not yet, but they’re getting there.”
On my second day at FOB Tora, we piled into the squad’s HUMVEESs and went further out into the wilderness, bedding down for the night at the ANP substation in the Uzbin Valley, a place known for Taliban activity. The soldiers parked their HUMVEEs in a square, and spread out cots in the middle. As a full moon rose over a distant hilltop, we fell asleep beneath a curtain of stars and the silhouettes of turret guns atop the vehicles. Not less than half an hour after I closed my eyes, we heard a loud thud, and the sky turned a dark orange. “Mortar!” yelled one soldier. “What are you waiting for? Get under the HUMVEEs!” yelled another. A few of us were already sprawled out in the sand before we realized the mortar fire was outbound rather than inbound—an illumination round fired by friendly forces nearby. The barrage continued for a couple of hours—lending a very “Apocalypse Now” feeling to the entire evening.
Around 04:30 the next morning, we rolled out with the ANP—the latter riding in the beds of their signature dark green Ford Ranger pickups, AK-47s in their hands and long, checked scarves wrapped around their heads, with just a slit left for their eyes, to keep out the dust. We joined up with a large French convoy—roughly 100 vehicles with more than three times that many Legionnaires inside—and proceeded to a nearby mountaintop. With US and French military helicopters buzzing overhead and the noise of a fighter jet high above, the French vehicles formed a sprawling perimeter around the hilltop, with the ANP and our small squad on the inside. Captain Harris and a French Battalion commander—in charge of the entire French force—walked down the hill to the nearby village and brought the local men back up the hill for a short Shura, or meeting, to discuss coalition efforts to secure the village and bring in medical help and education for the children. It was an odd scene—the village men arranged in a circle, sitting cross-legged on the ground, with the colonel’s heavily-armed body guard forming a looser, outward-facing ring on the outside. As the colonel spoke in bursts of French, a “terp” (interpreter) conveyed his words in the local Dari, while Captain Harris’ terp repeated the conversation in whispered English.
I accompanied the soldiers back to Camp Phoenix this morning—a run they make on a semi-regular basis to obtain supplies and perform maintenance on their vehicles. It took us more than three hours to complete the roughly fifty-mile trip through the deep gorges and switchback turns of the Kabul-Jalabad Highway, one of just a handful of paved highways in the entire nation. Several of the soldiers dismounted to help direct traffic and clear a massive jam. The source of the trouble turned out to be not a wreck or a broken-down vehicle, but instead large numbers of impatient Afghan drivers who attempted to pass slow-moving vehicles and turn a two-lane road into four or five lanes. It makes you wonder if we need to create TMT’s (Traffic Mentoring Teams) as well.
I’ll spend the next couple of days here at Camp Phoenix before heading out Tuesday morning to Camp Blackhorse, another base nearby where there are members of Bravo Company, 2/121st Infantry Battalion from Newnan, Georgia, as well as other 48th Brigade soldiers.
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Tuesday, August 4
This morning, I donned my flame-retardant, tan flight suit and nomex gloves, torso body armor, ballistic glasses, and Kevlar helmet, and met up with members of the 1/118th Field Artillery Regiment near their armored vehicle parking area at Camp Phoenix. I’d been offered the opportunity to go along as the soldiers visited an Afghan National Police (ANP) station in the Bagrami district of Kabul. The troops circled into a tight group and bowed their heads for a brief prayer before we left, touching fists in the center of the circle—then climbed aboard their heavily armored MRAPS (Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle) and up-armored Humvee’s for the short ride across town.
My seat was in the rear of the 24-ton behemoth. Driver SSG Rodney Ellison of Jonesboro, Georgia, who is a big rig trucker in civilian life, says the MRAP handles well for a truck its size—though its sheer weight can be a problem on the mountainous, backcountry roads of rural Afghanistan. Gunner SPC Anthony Dodson’s helmeted head poked above the top of the truck. Dodson had the unenviable task of constantly scanning the street scene for possible suicide bombers or other attackers—yet not doing anything overtly hostile that might increase anger toward American troops and make it tougher for them to do their jobs. Never taking his eyes off his surroundings, Dodson explained it’s important to “never get complacent—make sure you scan everything. Any person could be doing anything. I see vehicles passing, people walking, people talking. I don’t know what they’re doing, what they’re exchanging. I try to make sure no one’s walking toward me or driving at me or acting aggressive at all.” CSM Dover says it’s crucial for the American soldiers to keep their cool and maintain what he calls “tactical patience,” staying constantly ready but keeping a smile on their face.
At the police station, we met a cadre of heavily armed cops who seemed very serious about their mission—standing behind the safety of stacked sandbags and peering over the barrels of large- and medium-caliber automatic rifles at passersby. Officers searched every person who entered the compound, with a black-clad female officer at the ready to discreetly pat down any burkha-clad women who wished to come inside. As several Georgia Guard soldiers inspected the Afghan’s weapons and chatted with them, with the help of interpreters, about their plans for protecting polling places during the upcoming Afghan presidential election, Command Sergeant Major (CSM) Melvin Dover and SSG Ellison sat down inside the Chief’s office and accepted an offer of traditional hot tea. The trio discussed the precinct’s logistical needs, and the Georgia soldiers offered to help out in any way they can.
Outside, one of the Afghan police sergeants, Amingha Muhadamy—speaking surprisingly good English--, told me, “I’m happy that the U.S. people, the U.S. army are working with us in the security of Afghanistan. I’m very happy, and good people are working with us. My hope is that, during the elections, all the people can go to the voting center and they can vote for their own president. This is my hope.” American troops plan to keep a very low profile during the election on the 20th, allowing their Afghan counterparts—both police and soldiers—to take the lead in providing security.
As he said farewell and stepped out of the chief’s office, SSG Ellison told me he’s proud to part of what he considers a history-making mission. “It makes me feel really good that we’re going to be a part of changing a country,” he said. “It just makes me feel good and makes my team feel good.”
The patrol group:
Prayer circle:
At the Afghan National Police station:
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Monday, August 3
Camp Phoenix, near the Kabul International Airport, is home base for Task Force Phoenix—a NATO mission aimed at training and mentoring Afghan National Army soldiers and Afghan police officers. Roughly 2,400 members of the Georgia National Guard's 48th Brigade Combat Team—some here at Phoenix, and others scattered throughout other parts of Afghanistan—are fulfilling this critical mission. Camp Phoenix will by my home base for the next three weeks as I go into the field with Savannah- and Atlanta-area members of the 48th Brigade and tell their stories.
I arrived here yesterday (Sunday, August 2) after flying from Savannah to Atlanta to Dubai, UAE. There I had an eight-hour layover before my flight into Kabul. I was surprised to learn that my seatmate was a Canadian Air Force Major General Charles “Duff” Sullivan, who is the air commander for the NATO coalition in Afghanistan. Needless to say, his conversation made it an interesting flight! Two Air Force air medics—Master Sgt. Greg Peppers and Master Sgt. Rich Kramer, met me in the arrivals area and helped me get oriented before my Georgia National Guard hosts came by to pick me up. We rode in specially-outfitted, armored SUVs. The ride to Camp Phoenix took just a few minutes—and in fact, the airport is so close by that we can see planes of all types flying by regularly.
This afternoon, I joined Brigadier General Larry Dudney, Jr., the incoming commander of TF Phoenix, and other officers and enlisted soldiers for a traditional Afghan lunch in a rug shop operated on-base by a local merchant. Over hot tea, rice, barbecued beef, and bread, we discussed the challenges the 48th Brigade faces and the opportunities his soldiers have to make a real difference in helping this war-torn nation take charge of its own future. Also at the lunch was Brig. Gen. Steven Huber of the Illinois National Guard, who will be heading home in a few weeks. The Illinois troops have run Task Force Phoenix for the past year and are turning the mission over to the Georgians.
Soon I’ll go “outside the wire,” leaving Camp Phoenix to watch our local troops training their Afghan counterparts. I’ll send another blog with pictures and update you on what I see and learn.
Chai with the General:
The rug shop:
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