Out to save the world

Afghanistan - the worlds largest/dangerous landfill

2008-11-17T06:46:00.001-08:00

Well I've finally made it to Afghanistan. I've been here for 5-6 days now. We arrived last thursday night and on friday went right into more power point. Anyhow, my team that I've trained with for the last two and a half months got split up. I did still retain 4 other guys and we got put with another team. We have all fit into the team fairly quickly and have started missions. We're working with the Afghan National Army. This is very different and interesting because I'm learning much about their culture at the same time. The country itself, is a giant landfill. There are destroyed Russian tanks and garbage everywhere. Soon, my team and I will be moving to a different part of Afghanistan to an area where I'll be for probably the rest of the time here. This could very well be my last post here because from the sounds of things, they don't have internet where i'm going. With that in mind, please continue to pray for my group when you think of us. Well, sorry to keep this so short but I'm writing from a public computer and there is a time limit and a line of people waiting their turn for the computer. That's all folks!

We're not in Kansas anymore Toto...We're in Kyrgysztan

2008-11-11T17:33:00.000-08:00

Hello to all from Kyrgysztan! If you don't know where this country is, don't be ashamed, I hadn't even heard of it until we landed here. Wherever it is, it's cold and wet all the time. Getting here took some doing and some serious traveling.

Thursday night we left the Topeka airport at roughly 9:45 pm. We flew for a couple hours to Bangar, Maine where we sat in the terminal for about 2 hours waiting for the plane to refuel. We boarded the plane and sat for a 6-7 hour flight across the atlantic to land in Liepzig, Germany where we once again sat for a couple hours to refuel. Once we had boarded again, we set out to our final destination of Kyrgyzstan and landed there 6-7 hours later at 5:30 local time here....on saturday. All in all, we left thursday night at 9:45 and landed saturday at 5:30. Quite a way to spend a friday. I guess I could have had it worse, one of the guys I'm with had his birthday on friday. lucky him.

Once we landed in Kyrgyzstan, it was raining cats and dogs. We're at some airforce base here, so there is internet, showers, shops, a gym, and a chow hall that's open 24/7. however, due to the high terror threat, we can't leave here and there is really nothing to do. Being fairly exhausted after our flight, we all wanted to just rack out on the bunks for a while. However, due to a lodging problem, we had to wait a couple more hours.

The lodging problem was a multinational problem. The billets we were going to stay in, already had some Marines, and some Spanish forces in there. The Marines, being on top of their game, had doubled up and used the bunk beds the way they were meant to be used. The Spanish, had decided to put one man per bunk bed. This left us not nearly enough room and we had to ask them to move. I have no idea why this took two hours, but if you know anything about the military and common sense, you'll know exactly why.

Finally we were given our bunks and in the early afternoon i decided to take a short nap...for 9 hours. I've been running on what I consider 'vampire time'. This is because Kyrgyzstan is 12 hours ahead of us and we're all having trouble adjusting a full 12 hours. I'm frequently eating at the chow hall at 2 in the morning and doing most of my internet at that time too. This does work out however, becuase that's when people back home are online.

We've been giving a fly out date but it keeps changing. Plus for security reasons, even if I knew, I probably wouldn't post it. More than likely, I'll finally be in country here within the next week some time. This would be great since there is nothing to do here. I should have internet for the next few weeks for sure, so shoot me an email or put some posts on here and I'll get back to them in short time.

Leaving On a Jet Plane

2008-11-05T07:20:00.000-08:00

After a short break at home I am now back in Fort Riley again. Last week we finished up our training and turned in the necessary equipment and completed our 'final' in training. Because our group has some of the youngest, lowest ranking people who have gone through the training here, we were watched a lot closer than others. However, the group of guys I'm with are first rate guys. We outperformed most of the other groups despite being under ranked.

Now we're all sitting here bored out of our minds waiting for our flight out of this place. We're all more anxious than ever just to get out of here and go find out exactly where we're going and what we're going to be doing. While we have been told where we're all going, everything is subject to change. I'm struggling to find anything interesting to write about right now as there is absolutely nothing going on. If I have Internet once I get in country, I'll update this a bit more frequently.

Long time, No Update

2008-10-08T19:54:00.000-07:00

Sorry it's been a while since I've written last. I could say that it's because I have been too busy or because my Internet was down for a period of time but it's really because I got lazy with it. Anyhow, things have been a bit better than they were before. We finally got to go out to a few ranges where I qualified on numerous weapon systems and used new optics on them for the first time. This was especially neat because with those weapon sights, we control the night. Looking through those optics, we were able to shoot at targets a very long distance out accurately because of their heat signature. Our weapon training makes the shooting part of combat fairly one sided. The enemy isn't disciplined in their firing techniques as we are. I'm also working on getting an ACOG weapon sight for my M4 rifle. This should allow me to reach out and touch targets accurately at 700-800 meters. Outside of that, we really haven't done much else exciting. We sit through class after class from people who have gotten back from Afghanistan in the last two years or so and tell us what they did and what to expect. Pretty much this is what to expect: The police aren't going to do the right thing most of the time, you equipment is falling apart, the roads(if you have any) are terrible, we're out in the middle of nowhere all by ourselves, and other little things. Despite how bad this all sounds, which it is, I'm still looking forward to this. As messed up as it sounds, I'm actually forward to this. Being out by ourselves means we're our own bosses. We don't have to worry about people on FOBs (forward operating bases) whose sole purpose in life is to enforce uniform rules, like don't smoke and walk, don't drink a water and walk, don't walk outside without your hat. Not that I'm a rebel and don't want to follow those rules, I mean, I don't even smoke. It's just that, we'll be by ourselves and have more important things to worry about than if you can walk and drink water at the same time. The problem is though, if and when I go on future deployments after this one, I'm probably going to be stuck in the mentality of being off by ourselves and not pleasing the fobbits(people who live on the FOBs and never leave the security of the FOB).

Right now, myself and three other guys are camped out inside Kansas City International airport waiting for our fight in the morning. We are the only people in the entire terminal. Everything shuts down here at 8:30 so I now have plenty of time to update my blog. We are on leave this weekend and going home for Columbus Day. I'm pretty excited to see Marcy and my family again. This week has really gone on long since we all new we'd be leaving at the end of the week to go see our families. Plus, we've been sitting through a really dull power point led class the entire week for 8 hours a day. I'm not sure when the military decided that power point was an acceptable replacement for practical application. anyway, I'll get off my soapbox on that issue, it's just wasted air. well, that's all I've got for now. Until next time....

23-24, A Year Like No Other

2008-09-18T15:49:00.000-07:00

Well folks, I turned 23 on tuesday. I had wanted to at least go out to dinner that night to celebrate, but training didn't allow us the luxery to. We had Humvee night training where we drove with the lights off and wore night vision goggles. However, I did have a great suprise in store for me. Marcy my wonderful girlfriend, had ordered a cake for me and got a hold of one of the guys down here with me to go pick it up. So, despite not being able to leave, I was still able to celebrate with a good chocolate birthday cake. This picture here is me about to cut the cake with my Ka-bar fighting knife.

Lately, nothing really entertaining has been going on. We typically sit in various classes all day and then work out at night. I believe next week we finally sign for vehicles and start doing field work. Thank God. All of us fall into the combat arms group and all this paper work/power point is slowly and painfully draining the life out of us. Getting out and actually working on weapon systems and tactics will actually be the enjoyable part of our mobilization.

I came to the realization a short while back that I will more than likely be spending not only this birthday, but my 24th also on this deployment. With that being said, the 23rd year of my life is going to be like no other year I will ever have more than likely. I'm dissapointed that I won't be around to share the next year with many of you, but I am proud to be able to come here and to do what few people can and choose to do.

Down here at Camp Funston, it is officer city. You can't walk from the barracks to the chow hall without saluting at least 4-5 officers. This is because the transition teams we are on are typically officer heavy. I'm not just talking LT's, there are a number of Lt. colonols and full bird colonols running around. The officers made a big fuss about saluting at first when we wouldn't, but now I see them do a 90 degree turn to avoid a large group of us to have to salute each individually. Well, that's it for now folks, time to go play some volleyball against some other teams.

too little training, too little time

2008-09-04T04:48:00.000-07:00

A number of us have come to the realization that the amount of training up we need to do and the amount of training in reality we're going to do are completely different. I am only down here at Fort Riley for two months before I am sent over to Afghanistan. Much of this time is spent on learning how to be a combat advisor. Therefore, less time is spent learning to perfect the basics of how to shoot, move, and communicate. This is made up for by having people on the team who are all of higher ranking and numerous have combat experience. due the nature of where we're being sent, there are a lot of variables of whether we're staying together as a team or being split up and the ever increasing equipment issues. Because of all this, everybody wants to be well trained in every aspect of our jobs, not just combat advisor roles. As a result, we will probably spend our down time out at the the ranges getting more trigger time in. In a perfect world, I would feel more comfortable probably with 6-7 months of training. I'm sure by that point I'd be begging to go over and get out of the training as it does get boring. Although, in a perfect world, I suppose I wouldn't be doing any of this.

This week has been fairly interesting despite all that. We've been sitting through 8 hour language and culture classes. This has been a neat experience as the language and everything is taught by afghan people. They tell us all about culture like what to expect, how to act, what to do and not to do. This should help us to befriend the people we're going to be living and working with. Classes like these are going to be going on for the whole first month while I'm down here. If anybody has an questions feel free to leave a post and ask me. There is a decent amount of downtime here so I can answer questions to the best of my ability fairly quickly.

Sick and Exhausted

2008-08-29T13:50:00.000-07:00

Good news folks. I Have internet now that I'm assuming will work everyday. The picture to the left is of me (on the right) and a couple other guys right after we got all our body armor handed out to us. We put every piece on for the picture and then promptly tore the arm pieces off the armor. With those on, I feel like the kid from 'A Christmas Story' who couldn't put his hands down after his mom dressed him in all his clothes to keep him warm. If that wasn't bulky enough, that picture doesn't do it justice. Since then we've all added our pouches for magazines, grenades, and such. All in all, it's something like an average of 85 pounds of gear. I'm the grenadier for my team so I carry the M203 grenade launcher.

Today we moved out of our nice two man rooms to a forty man bay. While this severly stinks(figuratively and literally) we do have the trade off of having internet all the time (if it works) and being on the first floor. The last two days have been rough as my body is fighting off the small pox shot they gave us. I feel like I have the flu and am sleeping at every chance. I cannot wait until I get over this. The next few weeks it sounds like we're just sitting in briefings all day. I'm opting not to take my knife to these briefs for fear of trying to use them due to bordom and death by power point.

Until next time...

Literally in the Middle of Nowhere

2008-08-19T18:37:00.000-07:00

Hello to all from Fort Riley, KS. I am without a doubt, out in the middle of nowhere. Driving here, the area was devoid of houses and farmland even for probably 50 miles. This is not to say it's not a nice scenery because it absolutly is. This entire place is gently rolling green hills with trees only in the valleys of the hills.

The drive down took roughly 10 hours. Myself and another guy on my PMT took our own vehicles down so we'd have some transportation while we're down here. This was great until we reached the front gate. The other guy, whose name ironically is Lance Armstrong(no joke) already had his vehicle registered in the department of defense so he drove right on. I however, did not. This is not really a problem, except that my insurance card that I had in the car was not the current one so I couldn't bring my car on post. We decided to leave my car at the visitors center and I just got on the bus that most of the guys rode on. The bus then preceded to side swipe the guard rails at the front gate causing a large commotion with the MP's. Eventually we got to our barracks and were issued rooms. These rooms are nice. I have my own room and I share a kitchen/bathroom area with another guy. However, my room key didn't work so I couldn't get in. Yeah...that was just more fun trying to get that figured out. eventually I did make it in my room.

Today we started our SRP(soldier readiness program?). This went quickly at most stations due to the efficiency of the mini-srp's that Illinois had us do. However, I did receive my first anthrax vaccine and a small pox vaccine. I'm not worried about the anthrax one, it's not too contagious. This is not true for the small pox. It's highly dangerous and all the skin around where they poked me 15 times with it will die and scab over and fall off. I have to make sure and keep this covered as I could accidently spread it to other parts of my body.

I will have probably 10 or so more days of all this SRP stuff and then I will have to give up my room and go 'down range' and live at a pretend FOB(foward operating base) to conduct the rest of my training. I'm still working on the internet situation. It appears I can get it, only it's like 3 times as expensive as we all thought it was going to be. I've resorted to walking a few buildings over and using their free internet. Hopefully I'll get this resolved soon.

Well so long folks.

well...let's get this started

2008-08-10T20:54:00.000-07:00

Greetings to all. I've been asked by numerous people to start a blog or something to let people know what i am up to and what is going on in my life concerning my deployment. So being very unoriginal, I've decided to go the route my cousin Roger took when he used this same blog website to use when he was deployed to Iraq in 2006 with the United States Marine Corps. (I even am using the same background as Roger...sorry Roger). Please feel free to comment and question about what I am writing/doing. I can't promise how much I will have internet access once I am in Afghanistan but I will try and keep up. With all that being said, I guess I'll start.

Monday morning the 18th of August will be the start line of my deployment to Afghanistan. I will be sent down to Fort Riley, KS for a period of something like 75 days. At some point during that time I and my PMT (police mentor team) will be sent to a 2 week (I think) training event in California called NTC (national training center). In my time at Riley, my team will undergo Afghan culture and language training. This is because my team is going to be living alongside the Afghan police right in there villages from what we're being told. If it comes to your mind during the day, please pray for the safety of my whole 16 man team since we will be working directly with the Afghans.

One more note before I finish this post. I realize that most people don't have much exposure to Afghanistan as they do to Iraq. However, there are some differences in how you refer to them. In Iraq, they are called an Iraqi. In Afghanistan they are called an Afghan, or the Afghans. Most people (myself included) assumed that because you can add an i at the end of Iraq to label the people that you could for Afghanistan also, however this is not the case. Afghani is the Afghan form of currency. Apparently they get offended if you call them by there money.