Wednesday, August 10, 2011

Helicopter

So it has been a few days since the Chinook was shot down.
It is truly heartbreaking.
Most of us here haven't read very many of the news reports as it is a little too close to home for some of us. The crash happened only about 15 miles from our base.

Equally tragic, however, are the soldiers who are killed and not recognized or mentioned in the news, like the 2 killed when the IED hit their MRAP last week. Even the engineers in Kabul didn't know about this. It is really sad that we have gotten so accustomed to soldiers dying and such that it takes an incident of this size to make the news.

Things are fine for me here in Wardak. I'll be leaving here in just under a week to go finish my tour in Kabul.

Today we went out on movement for a meeting with the DAIL, department of agriculture, irrigation, and livestock. Our agribusiness team is working with the DAIL to set up seed associations and a variety of other agri-business programs throughout Afghanistan, it was an interesting meeting. They needed a quick structural evaluation of a building on their site, so they brought me along.

The interesting part about our trip was that it was all on foot. We took 12 soldiers, 2 civilians, and 2 interpreters and walked from our base through the village to our meeting site. It was hot and we were in our full battle-rattle. I sweated through everything...it was hot. It was a pretty interesting walk...a little "higher speed" than I'm used to because you never know who is a friend and who isn't. Additionally, we planned our route before we started moving but as we were walking we turned down a street and it was full of locals working on the foundation for a wall. We had to walk by over 50 people to pass through this street...it is tough on the nerves because I don't have the experience to tell friend from foe. One of the men that we passed yelled something derogative about the women in our group in Pashtu...our interpreter told me. Our interpreter informed the man that language like that was not OK during Ramadan and that he should shut-up.

There is talk that the locals don't really like us, but I'm glad nothing more happened today.

2 comments:

  1. Glad to hear that you are safe Kevin! It's great to see your posts and know that you are okay. You will be home before you know it!

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  2. Hey Kevin,

    Wow, I was nervous just reading this entry I can only imagine what you must have felt like.

    Back in Portland Sarah and I did the Bridge Pedal. It was a great time and at the end they let us on the Timbers field which was a lot of fun. The field was quite something super soft.

    Hang in there you are on the home stretch now. Thank you for your service and all the best out there.

    Brian

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