The last few days have been quiet, but fairly busy. For one thing it has gotten wet, cold and miserable here. It poured the other night with thunder and lightning like we have not seen since July. The sky just opened up and let loose, which is good to keep the dust down and keep the enemy away but makes it very cold. Yesterday it was gray and overcast all day with sporatic rain all day. Today is the same thing, with rain almost all day. It is cold and drizzly all day. Which does not make for a nice Veteran’s Day at all.

Speaking of Veteran’s day, it is that today and for the most part things are relaxed. A lot of flags flying today as people fly them on any available pole so they can send them home as gifts. It is nice to see some red, white, and blue around here for a change. I have had my flag up on the flag pole that I had put in, but the big pole on the FOB has been empty because it offends someone around here or something. That is a whole other issue that I don’t want to get into.

The other day we did take our ANA out and shoot several of our D30 122mm Russian Howitzers again. Our ANA are the first in the entire ANA to shoot the D30s in direct fire mode and they are also the first to shoot them in direct and in-direct fire mode against the enemy, which they have done continually over the last 2 months. All of this is good, because it is one step closer to the ANA becoming more self-sufficient and capable of running their own army, small steps but one more step closer, nevertheless.

We also got another NYer back to the team today. CPT Ben joined us today from another team, so we have increased our NY team by one more here. Ben is a funny guy and should help keep things lively around here. He has seen more than his fair share of enemy contact and been in quite a few fire-fights so his experience will be welcomed to the team also. It is good timing since over the last few days Puss and I have finished putting our ILOVENY stencils on the rest of our trucks. I also made a “Never Forget 09-11-01” stencil for the backs of our gunner shields. We also painted our Ford Ranger trucks that belong to the team. There is no mistaking our team when we drive around now, that is for sure. Actually the stencil, which has an outline of the Twin Towers, is quite popular and we usually get people that want to take pictures of it when we travel to other FOBs.

On another note, we are finally done with 24. Last night at 1AM we finished the last episode of season 5. 120 hours of 24 is what we have watched since the first hour of season 1. Now Puss, Prophet and myself are all trying to figure out what we are going to do until November of next year when season 6 should come out on DVD. See we will go home to the states half-way through season 6, so there is no way we can start watching half-way through. Since we will be back in the US and won’t be able to buy a haji copy to watch early, like we did with season 5, we will have to wait until the real copy comes out next year. We are talking about the three of us getting together next November for a weekend and having a 24 party, watching the entire season 6 in one weekend. Until then, I will have to just keep playing my 24 PS2 game.

The next big thing in my tour is going home on leave, which for me is coming up very soon. I am not sure how much blogging I will be doing while home on leave, if any. So if you see a dry spell for a couple of weeks, you will know why. My plans for leave will be very low-key. I am not planning a lot and really don’t want to do much outside of the house except to go out and eat. There are some restaurants back home that I miss and would like to visit while home. Besides that I look forward to just spending time with Christine and the boys, hanging out in the hot tub, watching movies, going to Hunter and Jordan’s hockey games and relaxing. I know the time will go by fast, and if it were possible I would never sleep so I could enjoy every second.

Until Next Time…..

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My address has tweaked a little bit in order for my mail to find me faster.
First Name, Last Name
PRT Sharana ETT
4/2/203
APO AE 09354

Updated list of items of things we need/want.

1. Anything Christmas would be nice (i.e. decorations, garland, lights, stockings, cards, etc.)
2. Flour
3. small 1-2 oz hand lotions ( already dry here and getting worse as it gets colder)
4. AA Batteries
5. One time use hand-warmers
6. Lancaster chew
7. Copenhagen or Skoal Long cut
8. Western novels, sci-fi, or military based books
9. Paper-bowls
10. Deodorant
11. A 3 pack of tennis balls
12. Crab leg crackers
13. Pancake mix

Box sets of any of the following shows
1. Reno 911
2. Trigger Happy TV
3. Crank Yankers
4. Lost
5. The Shield
6. Southpark
7. Adult Swim

The other day we had a mission that was a huge success. Based on a lot of intel we had gathered, we had found a house where bad guys stayed when they were in the area. We put a mission together to nail this place and either capture or kill the bad guys. The mission was pretty big in numbers of people, as we needed it to be in order to cordon off and secure a whole village. I was in charge of the largest piece and my ANA I was in charge of was considered the main effort. This was a multi-kandak mission with another unit from another brigade taking part. Right on time we secured our side and had three sides covered by other teams or units.

One side was not secured as that element ran into natural obstacles that was impeding their movement. This was an immediate problem so we deployed the reserve force to try and cover that side. Once the area was almost secure, the Afghan police and security service moved to the house in order to search it. While they were in there I moved in with ANA and my terp to coordinate actions at the location and feed reports back to the US side as far as actions taken and people detained. While I was walking to the location shots rang out and a fire-fight ensued. The firing was to a corner that was not heavily covered because of the one team that was blocked from getting into place. I, along with my terp and a couple of ANA went running to the shooting that you could tell was coming from different places.

I found myself on a dead sprint with my M4 ready, scope to my eye and trying to breathe with body armor and vest on. I was talking on my headset, trying to give reports back to my teams and trying be understandable while sucking in oxygen. At every corner or open space I was expecting to get into contact as the firing was intense and I was getting closer. As I cleared the last mud wall I saw the ANA running and shooting hundreds of meters away and then disappear into a grouping of thick trees. The ANA was still running but it sounded like the shooting stopped, probably because of losing the targets in the trees. I called for Puss to bring the truck around and give me coverage. He pulled off his part of the perimeter but the other trucks were able to cover. He came up and we worked with the other team to guide them to the area. Since my truck was there I went back to the target house and helped the ANA and ANP with anything they needed. Other teams found other suspicious areas, and based on intel we were getting we started searching other kulats. Before I knew it the ANP had 8-10 people detained. I was there mainly feeding descriptions of suspects to all other teams and to let all teams know what was happening in the village. Our Kandak intel officer received information about a very bad guy’s house who is a leader in the enemy organization. We moved to that house, and while the ANA were surrounding it I noticed a sinkhole which actually had a tunnel opening. After looking into the entrance, the tunnel looked like it went back hundreds of meters. After I went back to the front of the house I noticed the ANA and ANP trying to break a huge lock on the front door with their AK-47s. Since an AK is not the proper type of weapon for a door breach, I called for Puss to bring the truck up to me. Once he got there, I reached in for something I had never used in an operation before, but was very glad to finally get a chance.

I always carry Betsy with me, but have only had to use her to keep people away from the truck when they get to close in crowded areas. The ANA does not have breaching shotguns, so it was time for Betsy to earn her keep. I grabbed her, walked to the door, told the ANA and ANP to stand back and then put a 3” shell of Wincheter Double-O buck into the lock. The lock and chain exploded with nothing left except a 1 inch piece of shank. I kicked in the door and told the ANA and ANP “there ya go, its all yours”. I walked back with a smile on my face, cause I finally got to shoot old girl at something besides a target or watermelon. This was the highlight of the mission for Puss and myself. Afterwards we both wished we would of thought of videoing the moment. Once the house was cleared and searched along with the tunnel being searched we moved back to the original spot and then back to the outer cordon where we had a dozen detainees located. The intel guys from the ANA and ANP interrogated all of the people and decided that some were not guilty of anything. The rest we loaded up and took back with us, to include the local taliban leader for this area.

Overall it was a great mission. Like all missions, not everything goes according to plan. In fact we usually say that the best laid and rehearsed plans go to hell as soon as the first shot is fired. That is what happened here, but that did not matter because it was a success. Nobody was hurt, we caught some bad guys and Betsy got to do her thing for the first time.

I was on familiar ground today. Ground that I had traveled on many times, ground that I had driven an up-armored humvee over with no brakes or steering. Ground that I had been going over almost two months ago to the day that exploded just 25 feet behind me and killed two good ANA NCOs and wounded two others. An explosion what was meant for my truck but was not able to hit me. I was on a mission today that for the first time since that terrible day I would be driving over again. I have been on missions since that day I was missed by 25 feet in another province and have not been back to this area.

Today we had a mission that took us here, and this morning as we were getting ready I was sitting in the gunner’s hatch thinking about what it would be like to drive over that same spot again. What it would be like to see the same rocks, hills, bushes that are forever etched in my mine. I figured I would be a tad nervous and tense as we drove over that same road that I saw erupt under a truck and right behind mine back in September. I was the mission commander today, so this morning after I finished the convoy brief to the other ETTs in the convoy I told them I would point out where the IED strike was so they could identify it.

As we drove along in the convoy my mind would drift back to that day and remember certain things. I remembered how long the line of traffic was that had to wait the 8 hours until we were done on that day. When I saw the areas that I remembered us passing all those trucks waiting my mind would drift back. When we would cross a bridge going to our objective on this day, it reminded me of when we were speeding over the same bridge coming back to our FOB on that day.

When we started getting close I called down to Puss, who was driving, and told him I would point out the IED hit site so he would know and then he could mark it for the other US soldiers in the other vehicles. As we came around the curve I looked up and saw we were about 100 meters from the site. There was one ANA truck in front of us and I told Puss I would point out the site as that truck drove over it. As the ANA truck got within about 20 meters I started calling “there, there, THERE,” and then as he drove over the exact location I called out “RIGHT THERE!”. As the last syllable of the work “there” exited my lips the ground exploded into a flash of fire, rock, dust and gray smoke. Time again had stood still.

As those seconds turned into milli-seconds my knees buckled as a natural reflex to shield myself from the blast. In the super-milli-seconds that passed while I was crouched my mind refused to believe what I had just seen, and I thought at that time I had some type of PTSD flashback and that what I saw did not happen. This thought raced through my mind in a flash. In the timeframe of about one second later as I rose back up, I saw the dust and smoke still rising and was astounded. For another second as my right hand was flipping the safety on my machine gun, I was in awe of what I was looking at. I could not believe as I said the word “there” that another IED went off in the road at the same, exact spot as the one 2 months prior. When I say “same, exact spot” I mean literally dug into the same hole that was made from the last blast that had happened when I was on this road. After yelling a few explicatives, I started yelling for Puss to “back up, back up!”. I did not care if we hit the ANA truck behind us and did not even look if we would. I just knew the ANA truck that was in front of us had to be damaged or have wounded soldiers in it. Even though the IED went off right behind them as they passed over it, a miracle happened in the fact that nobody got hurt or the truck even damaged. I was expecting to see the truck at least flipped over from the blast. What I did see was no truck there at all, but soldiers up ahead running after the trigger man going straight up hill. I guess the trigger man had a buddy, probably an observer, and they took off with ANA in trail with AK’s blazing. After a brief firefight, the bad guys managed to escape thanks to the terrain and their familiarity with it. I was on the radios talking to my other ETTs and talking to my higher HQ, giving them reports. In a matter of minutes I had air coverage provided by 10th MTN in the form of an AH-64 Apache gunship and an armed Blackhawk helicopter. I switched to a frequency to talk to the birds and then vectored them into where the contact was. They flew cover for us as long as they could with what fuel they had and kept looking for the enemy fleeing or any other signs. After we got good situational awareness, surveyed the scene for information, and accounted for the ANA we moved out onto our objective.

I remember as we sat there and as I worked the radios how angry I got. I was so ticked off that I took it personal. There had been no IED hits on this road, in this area, since the last time I was here and we got hit. Now here I come again and we get hit again. Last time I was 25 feet away, this time I was about 50-70 feet away and that was still way too close. I could not believe that the enemy was able to put one in the same exact hole and get away yet again. I pounded on the ammo cans and the roof so many times just venting my anger at how they hit us again in the same spot.

When we came back across that spot on the way back to our FOB later in the day, everything was really tight. Even though we took an alternate route around the site, I watched it like a hawk, wondering if the 3rd time was going to be the charm.

Yesterday on the way back to the FOB from a mission my truck was the lead humvee and the second in line of the entire convoy. Not far from our base we came upon some people standing by the road looking down at other people. As we got closer, I could see what looked like a motorcycle on the side of the road, and down from the road were two people laying there. As we passed, the people standing next to the road tried to wave us down and were pointing down to the two people laying on the ground. I looked down as we shot past and saw blood all over the dirt and knew someone had a motorcycle accident. I told my driver to stop and I got out along with some ANA and ran back to the accident scene.

When I came up on it, there was a kid about 15 years old rolling back and forth covered in dust and blood. His face was all smashed and bloody, so the ANA grabbed him and threw him in one of their trucks to rush him to the hospital about 5 kilometers away. I looked at the other person who was probably between 21-24 years old and realized there was nothing to do for this guy. Locals were running over a cloth to cover his body up. I saw something that I never could imagine I would ever see in my lifetime. I saw what the inside of a skull looks like without a brain. His brain was laying next to him in a mush. His head had been split open right above the eyes and pulled back, the brain had been ripped from his head and lay on the ground. I sat there for a second amazed that the inside of the skull was so dark. It was literally a black hole. The poor guy never had a chance and I don’t think he suffered since the impact looked so severe that he must have split his head on impact.

I have seen pictures of brains in laboratories or whatever, and seen parts of them coming out after a bullet wound, but never seen one so whole outside the body and in such bad shape. I also have never seen the inside of a head without one. Wasn’t really shocking, but is something I don’t think I will ever forget. Bottom line is that Helmets save lives and people in this country rarely ever use them.