I noticed my last update was something like 4 August, and it was talking about how busy we were. Little did I know that I would look back on that time fondly as a more peaceful time of the deployment.

To summarize, briefly, and without OPSEC violations, since the last post:

We found our first “real” IED a few days after that post. We moved from Asadabad back to Jalalabad. Once there, we helped the Company pack up, and we all made sure we got enough sleep, and hit the road for sunny Southern Afghanistan. Well, except for that part about making sure we got enough sleep, the rest of it’s true.

When we get to sunny Southern Afghanistan, we don’t even have time to unpack before we start running missions. Literally, we are going down routes looking for IEDs with peoples personal gear strapped to the top of our vehicles.

Fast Forward a few months (which deserve their own post, but will have to wait till after the deployment due to OPSEC and not wanting to freak families out while we’re still in country) : We wind down operations in Sunny Southern Afghanistan, pack up, and hit the road for Mountainy Eastern Afghanistan again - this time, for Bagram Air Field, which really should be renamed to a Fort (someone famous) because it’s basically a US Army base, just in Afghanistan. I’m honestly surprised they don’t have a post movie theater here yet. Also, the trip up here was 1000x more pleasant than the trip down.

Now: We’re finishing our time here in country, preparing to redeploy back stateside. Boredom and stupid rules are the name of the game now, provided nothing surprising (mission-wise) comes up.

Next milestone I’m looking forward to: 1st beer in Manas.

FOB Airborne, Home of the Proud 10th Mountain Division now. Near as I can tell, they’re most proud of their ability to correct soldiers in a combat zone on uniform violations.

  Well, we’ve been busy for the past few weeks, so not much time for updates. I have found out how to upload pictures so hopefully I can get that done. Some amazing sights here, especially with all the rain we’ve had - the mountains here are really green. A complete 180, vegetation-wise, from what we had last time.

  We’re in new barracks, so we’ve actually had good A/C for a few weeks. It makes a huge difference in my morale to not have to struggle to go to sleep because of heat. Otherwise, not much different at base - still having decent chows, still relaxing with call of duty gaming sessions, and still running missions.

  One negative (aside from being deployed to an active combat zone!) is pay. We’ve been in country two months and have not received our combat pays or tax exemption status. This applies not just to myself, but to my entire platoon and company. I’m not asking people to email senators or anything (yet), but just saying that it’s ridiculous to have an entire unit in a combat zone without their pay status being changed. Hopefully, this will be corrected shortly. We still have people with pay issues from being sent to Ft. Leonard Wood during our pre-mobilization, and that is even worse. Some of our soldiers paid out of their own pockets to go to that training, with the promise of being reimbursed, and they have not received a dime.

  Other than that, not much else to report.

  Hey bud, I’m at Bagram trying to get an air card. Are you at Bagram? - John

Hey John, I’m not at Bagram, but at Camp Wright in Asadabad. I was at Bagram a few weeks ago, and the internet I got was the wireless service offered by a local company in Camp Warrior. Really expensive, and very sporadic. Hope your air card goes better for you.

  We’re here at Camp Wright in Asadabad, our home for the deployment. We only have two more moves to make at this point - one to our awesome barracks they’re building for us, and then one long move to get us home. My move count is + or - x, where x= the number of moves the Army has deemed proper for fighting the war on terror.

  It’s very nice here, hot weather and weak A/C in our barracks aside. Not nearly as much garrison-types freaking out about us not wearing the proper patches or having our uniforms neatly pressed. That last part is a stretch, but not much of one. There are many people here who, if given the chance, would institute mandatory uniform pressing policies.

  Chow is excellent, with well-stocked drinks, snacks, and desserts. Internet is a bit spotty in the MWR, but I have fairly consistent connections with my cellphone.

  The biggest downer is the fact that we have very loud neighbors operating just across the street. Neighbors who go by the name Field Artillery. You haven’t heard loud until you’ve heard these guns go off. The first shot is the worst, but they say you get used to it. We’ll see.

  Got my leave date penciled in for late november, and thanks to my mom, I have my passport, so Australia should be a sure thing. Not much else going on but watching movies/tv shows or prepping/running missions.

  Most of my posts to date have been “Hi. I’m in [foreign sounding place 1/2/3/4]. It’s hot. Bye”, so I aim to change that today. We’re done with another day of training, and actually finished our major testing for this explosives class I’m taking. I’ve passed everything, not with as high a score as I wanted, but I can’t really complain with a 91 average (and without studying). Yeah, I’m gloating about that. Give me a break.

  Bagram is pretty much the same, weather-wise, as it was last time. Maybe not as hot, especially with my initial experience in J-bad, but still with violent, temporary thunderstorms that flood everything because the ground is too much like concrete to absorb much water. It’s still windy, especially at our training site (which is also an Army Ranger training site, which is cool…if you’re into that sort of thing, which I’m not). Lots of dust clouds that coat your clothes, gear, and face with a fine ashy substance that…that’s just great. I feel like our prehistoric ancestors must have felt like, with grains of sand grinding my teeth down to a nub. Good thing the army will take care of that, am I right?

  I’m staying in a clamshell tent at the moment, with enough bunks for hundreds of soldiers. It’s not packed out at the moment, thankfully, so it’s not as miserable as it could be. The AC is so-so, enough that you won’t cook inside the tent, but not as nice as a 1990 Honda’s AC would be. Bunks are mostly stable and comfortable. Getting plenty of sleep here, so I’m enjoying that part while I can. Most of my free time is spent watching my tv shows (Family Guy, Futurama, The Unit, Lost) or listening to music. I wander up to the coffee shop a few times (read: many times) for a Mocha on ice, which is the best form of R&R I can get at the moment.

  Not to focus too much on this part, but hey, we’ve been in-country approximately 2 and 1/2 weeks. That’s 2 and 1/2 weeks closer to coming home than we were before. I don’t do the countdown as bad as I used to, but it’s still nice to look at the calendar every once in a while and be pleasantly surprised at the time that’s passed.

  Oh, I’ve read that Gen. McChrystal has angered President Obama. Since that issue is way above my pay-grade, I won’t comment, except to say, “Really? President Obama needs a Hurt Feelings Report?”… but seriously, civilian control of the military is important.

  P.S. I’ve graduamated my course and should be heading back to join the platoon shortly.

Well, this is the 2nd time I’ve tried to make this post. First time - let’s just say we had a base-wide interruption. I’ll leave it at that.

We’re here in Kandahar, waiting on transit to [base redacted]. I’m being a little on the paranoid side of OPSEC, both to cover my ass, and to not cause any undue worry in anyone who reads this. Basically, we’ve gotten some training done, and we’re preparing to take over our sector of operations.

Still hot and smelly here, but KAF (Kandahar Air Field) is a lot nicer (and bigger) than Bagram was in ‘05-‘06. TGI Friday’s, ice cream place, coffee shops, and more. Aside from the smell of thousands of people living in close quarters, it’s not that bad.

Still no pictures, unfortunately. Haven’t really had anything interesting to take pictures of anyway. Will correct that asap.

Still no mailing address. Hopefully I’ll be able to put one out soon, but not yet. As it is, we’re not hurting for anything except air conditioning. If someone could mail us some global cooling, we’d very much appreciate it.

We’re pretty much done here. We’ll be gone from here in an unspecified amount of time, but we’ll definitely be in A’stan soon enough. Hopefully we can get our mission done and finished soon enough so we can be back as soon as possible. I can’t really post more without violating OPSEC, so I’ll post an update ASAP. Just don’t be surprised if it takes a while.

Today’s military fun-fact is regarding the phrase “Lima Charlie”. As you may or may not know, the military uses a phonetic alphabet to communicate pieces of information when using radios. Simply spelling something like Hello can end up as “Hotel Echo Lima Lima Oscar”. While this seems like a waste of time, it actually saves time when you shorten phrases such as “Loud and Clear” to “LC”, aka “Lima Charlie”. So, if someone calls you on the radio and asks how they sound to you, you can respond “Lima Charlie” if they sound ok.

Mission update: We are done with the majority of our training. Fourth Platoon has consistently been commented on as being one of the most squared away platoons the OCs (Observer-Controllers, basically referrees) have seen in a long time.  We have a 4 day pass coming up, when people will get to see family members for the last time before deployment. Some of us have chosen not to go home, or have family come to us, usually for a variety of reasons. I find that being this close to deployment, it’s just easier for me to focus on blowing off steam so I can be prepared for our mission, than it is to think about the fact I won’t see my family for a year.

That’s all I got for now. Hopefully I can upload some pictures from our training so you’ll have an idea of what training has been like for us. For the most part, it’s been pretty good training - definitely 100x better than what we went through for our last deployment.

  It’s been a busy week. The platoon was divided and sent to separate training missions. Both groups had to do both day and night training, but unfortunately, my group was tasked with staying out on the training site all day and returning only late at night. Several 17+ hour days occurred, with much less sleep. Combine that with the bruises, scrapes, and bumps that accumulate from running around in 35+ pound battle rattle, and you can see how that might take a toll. Infantry guys who do this full-time are out of their minds.

  As I put it to one of my troops, “Embrace the Suck, and all that shit”. For those of you who may not be familiar with the Suck, it’s an infantry term for basically, shut up and do the job. My variant, with “all that shit” thrown on there, is to emphasize the ridiculousness of embracing the suck. Regardless of how we feel about things (long days, MREs, cold showers or no showers) the mission still has to get done. Soldiers gripe, and this is just one way of getting through it.

  I apologize for vulgarity that may or may not have preceded this sentence, and will likely follow said sentence. Embrace the Suck readers…

  Anyway, to wrap this up, I’d like to include a link to the band, NothingSaint. The lead singer is PJ Hardy, a fellow soldier of the 2005 Afghanistan deployment, and his band rocks. Great guy, and great music.

  I’m out, time for bed. Hopefully, new pictures will start following. I’ve been uploading to facebook, but I like the layout of Tumblr better. Gotta save my good pictures for Kuppistan, I suppose.

**Edit**

I have a picture I meant to put up here after all, wait one.