Standby
After much trial and tribulation, made it to Camp Leatherneck, Helmand Province, Afghanistan. Again.
I've got just a few days to do my handover with the guy I'm replacing, but even then it may be more than I can use. As soon as we're done, we're moving to another base entirely, with a different unit, and they may have an entire different idea of what they want me to do for them, and how to do it their way. So, fun training. Whee!
Raining today, a possible harbinger of a wet and nasty Afghan winter. Hopefully this will keep the Taliban down, and continue a bad year for them, punctuated by fizzled offensives, supply and personnel problems, and repeated US drone strikes on leaders. They've made a lot of noise about how they're going to continue the fighting season through winter to make up for the lackluster year, but given how poorly the rest of the year went for them, I'm not holding my breath. So I might have a quiet winter.
That's a happier thought than this: A foreign army with a decades-old standard weapon fighting Afghan guerrillas in the winter in the mountains of Afghanistan? What could go wrong? I do work next to quite a lot of Brits, come to think of it...
Anyhow, one week down, 25 to go. Later, folks.
I've got just a few days to do my handover with the guy I'm replacing, but even then it may be more than I can use. As soon as we're done, we're moving to another base entirely, with a different unit, and they may have an entire different idea of what they want me to do for them, and how to do it their way. So, fun training. Whee!
Raining today, a possible harbinger of a wet and nasty Afghan winter. Hopefully this will keep the Taliban down, and continue a bad year for them, punctuated by fizzled offensives, supply and personnel problems, and repeated US drone strikes on leaders. They've made a lot of noise about how they're going to continue the fighting season through winter to make up for the lackluster year, but given how poorly the rest of the year went for them, I'm not holding my breath. So I might have a quiet winter.
That's a happier thought than this: A foreign army with a decades-old standard weapon fighting Afghan guerrillas in the winter in the mountains of Afghanistan? What could go wrong? I do work next to quite a lot of Brits, come to think of it...
Anyhow, one week down, 25 to go. Later, folks.