Afghanistan My Last Tour

Teammate landing at Camp Dubs.

I had to wake up early this morning and pick up one of our teammates from the LZ at Camp Julian.  I stopped at the DFAC and grabbed a hot cup of coffee to pacify my caffeine craving along with a blueberry muffin.  If I timed it right, we would return in time for breakfast.  There was a lot of smog blanketing the city this morning as a result of citizens burning firewood to heat their homes.  The mercury has dropped down to the 40’s in the morning and late at night.  Soon winter will be upon us.

I didn’t have to wait long before hearing the metallic thumping of rotors in the distance.  One of our teammates was coming to visit.  At first I thought the helicopter was going to miss the LZ and land on top of me.  But the pilot hovered for a few seconds, spun around the nose of the helo and touched down perfectly in the center of the LZ.  My AF teammate sprinted from the helo and made his way towards my direction.  If we hurried, we could still make it back to camp in time for chow.

Later that morning I went to ANA land and couldn’t find anyone in their office.  But on my trek back to camp, I found the entire Kandak standing in formation.  Apparently the new commander wanted accountability of his new troops and ordered them to formation.  But once again, he spoke to our ETT team leader and within minutes a truck pulled up next to them and they disappeared down the road.  I decided not to stick around and walked back to the office to work on some administrative issues.

Camp dogs playing.

While at the main gate, I saw two of the camp dogs playing around.  The female looked like she was pregnant or perhaps she had given birth to some puppies recently.  Before the day was out, someone informed me the camp has 3 new puppies.  So tomorrow when I have time, I will try to find them.  Hydie disappeared about the same time the last French personnel departed the camp.

Right before doing my weekly radio interview with WUSF Radio, it was announced President Karzai would accept the final election results.  Almost 1,000,000 of the 3,000,000 ballots cast for him was determined to be fraudulent and tossed out.  As a result, his win percentage dropped below 50 percent forcing a mandated runoff election between him and his strongest challenger Dr. Abdullah Abdullah.  The date for the runoff election is going to be November 7^th.

Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: Afghan National Army, Afghanistan, ANA, Deployment, Dr. Abdullah Abdullah, ETT, Hamid Karzai, U.S. Air Force, war