Winding Down

Shortly approaching 11 months of deployment, we are starting to wind down.  In fact, we received notice our tours may be cut short by a couple of weeks.  The mission we had has changed and the Army is implementing the partnership concept.  This means they will work much closer with the ANA counterparts and they [...]

View From A Gunner’s Turret

It has been awhile since I have crawled up in the gunner’s turret and took on the responsibility of a gunner.  On today’s mission, this was my position.  Admittedly, I don’t favor being a gunner because of my height and size (and age) because it’s very demanding and your team relies on your keen sense [...]

Licked By A Lamb (for real)

Over the past year, I have taken many photographs of sheep in Afghanistan.  I never got very close to them.  But on today’s mission, not only did I get close, but a baby lamb got quite “intimate” with me. A few weeks ago we received notice that our AF Group Commander, several squadron commanders and [...]

This week’s radio chat

From Liisa, SMSgt Temple’s wife: Rex is out on a mission and asked me to post this chat he had with WUSF Radio’s Bobbie O’Brien earlier this week – it was a time consuming production as they lost Internet service in the middle of it and had to conduct the rest of it on the [...]

173rd Airborne Commander’s Cup-Part 2

After watching the teams assemble the weapons, my interpreter Omid and I started the hike back down the hill.  The 173rd Airborne’s joint teams found it much easier going down the mountain and proceeded into a run to their next event.  Their next tasking would evaluate their land navigation skills.  They were provided a map [...]

173rd Airborne Commander’s Cup

I don’t know if the winter is over, but it seems like everyone is taking advantage of the warmer weather.  ANA land seems to be bursting at the seams with new recruits being trained to become ANA soldiers.  Today I took some pictures of them conducting push-ups.  Most of these recruits didn’t know what a [...]

Bad Water Flows From The Spring

Today during my mentoring session, the topic of corruption surfaced again.  An ANA officer who I don’t mentor summed it up with an Afghan proverb, “Bad water flows from the spring”.  He was inferring that corruption starts at the very top and then flows down through the various levels.  This officer used to be an [...]

Education & ANA Discussion – Part Two:

My conversation with the ANA soldiers continued.  I relayed a conversation I had yesterday with the ANA Mullah about Taliban Mullahs; the ANA Mullah had told me the Taliban Mullahs are not really Mullahs and use this title to their advantage to control the uneducated followers and villagers.  As such, out of fear and respect [...]

Education & ANA Discussion – Part 1

Famous playwright and poet, William Butler Yeats said, “Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.”  Today I returned to the ANA literacy classroom for another interactive exchange of information.  This time I was bearing gifts that included notebooks, pens, and pencils for the students.  This immediately got the [...]

ANA Mullah’s Perspective

Note:  My intent is not to offend my Muslim readers and the context below is based on my research and my memory of an intellectual and theological conversation with an ANA Mullah. It was another one of those unpredictable days, not knowing what was in store for me as I ventured over to ANA land.  [...]

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