Afghanistan My Last Tour

Hydie sleeping on the steps

This morning three-fourths of my team left early for a mission.  The Captain and I stayed behind for a separate mission.  After my teammates departed around 0530 hrs, I tried to fall back to asleep but was kept awake by a growling sound outside my window.  It sounded like a puppy but I couldn’t be sure.  I peeked out my door and there was Hydie playing with a much older dog.  The other female dog was rolling on its back and Hydie was growling and trying to bite through the other dog’s thick mane of fur.  When I returned from the shower hoping to take a picture, I found Hydie asleep on a door step.

AF Ssgt providing security from turret

After a scrumptious breakfast, we readied our vehicle for our mission.  Today we would escort the Air Force Combat Arms Training personnel to the shooting range.  They would conduct a site survey to ensure we had adequate distance to our targets.  This range is rather unique too.  The shooting range separates two divisive village tribes.  The friendly

UN demining operations

villagers are to our right and the unfriendly villagers reside to our left.  These villagers have planted IEDs on the roads leading down to their village.  In a way, it kind of marks their territory.  But the entire flat plateau you see in the picture is an active mine field littered with anti-tank and anti-personnel mines left over from the Soviet era.

Village boy hiding from camera

The United Nations is actively demining the field.  According to a French soldier, recently one of the deminers was killed when he activated a land mine.  So the mine field also acts as a defense and keeps the bad guys out.

Initially we were down at ground level sighting in the tank for the M-240 machine guns.  The distance is about 600 meters and we should easily hit our mark from this distance.  While we were there two boys (Kuchi—nomads) appeared out of nowhere.    Our visiting squadron commander felt the need to give the boys some bottles of water.  One of the village boys was very timid and shy of the camera.  But the boys weren’t satisfied with bottled water, they wanted food.  The AF LtCol went back

AF LtCol giving MREs to boys

to the vehicle and retrieved some Meals Ready to Eat (MRE) and gave each one of them a pouch.  Afterward, my interpreter told them to leave the area because it wasn’t safe.

To qualify on the .50 caliber machine gun, we had to be much farther way.  So we drove to the top of a steep hill to evaluate our target.  Our target is the abandoned

Can you find the tank in the center of the picture?

Soviet tank situated in the far background.  It’s about 1200 meters away and we have to hit it with our 50 caliber machine guns from on top of the knoll.  If you look closely at the base of the mountain (about 1 inch above the large rock), you will see a small irregular black spot in the center of the photograph.  That small black spot is our target.  If you see a black rectangle, you are looking too far to the right and those vehicles belong to the UN demining operations.

Now it’s just a matter of planning a date for the range so we can meet the Air Force crew serve weapons qualification.  After we left, the French came out to the range and their helicopters practiced some maneuvers and fired at the targets too.  The day was uneventful and we all returned safely.