Well, its been awhile since I provided an update and I’m sure everyone’s excited to see how the war on terror is going. So, here’s a hodgepodge of happenings since my last update.
Anyone who’s ever looked at pics of old airplanes is familiar with the old nose art once popular on our warbirds. Well, aside from an occasional shark mouth or the warthog paint on the A-10, this practice has become somewhat taboo. You’ll no longer see a girl in a bathing suit emblazoned on the nose of a bomber or anything like that. One thing that has become popular is the painting of barricades. Here at Kandahar, we have these concrete slabs all over the place to help protect us from enemy fire. Some units have left these awesome paintings to be remembered by.
Barricade art left by the 175th Fighter Wing out of Baltimore, Maryland.
Barricade art left by the 188th Fighter Wing out of Fort Smith, Arkansas.
I spent another Saturday with the boys at the Bazaar School. This time, I brought some Explosives Ordinance Disposal guys along. We started out with some crafts…
And then broke out the cool stuff!
For a robot that’s designed to take explosive blasts, I was surprised it made it through the abuse of these Afghan boys. This poor thing took a barrage of kicks, steps, and twists as the boys interacted with something that was clearly alien to them.
This is my good buddy, Mark Allen. Mark Allen is with the Fort Smith, Arkansas Air National Guard “Flying Razorbacks”. That’s a bottle of nonalcoholic Beck’s in front of him.
One of the highlights of my tour here was the opportunity to work with two different Air National Guard outfits. The thing I liked the most about them was their sense of identity. Being an active-duty guy, I’ve been assigned to about 10 different outfits. Most of us active-duty guys don’t get too excited about any particular unit. Its really not that big of a deal. With the Air National Guard guys, it’s a REAL BIG DEAL. There are guys that will stay with the same ANG unit for 30 or 40 years. For some, it’s a family tradition with fathers, sons, mothers, and daughters all serving generation after generation in the same outfit. While deployed, they advertise their presence everywhere….paintings on barricades, stickers on the General’s car, and, of course, the flag of the great state of Arkansas flying over some of our compounds.
I’ve recently had a few opportunities to hang out with the folks out at the Afghan National Army Air Corps outfit here on Kandahar. One of the big pushes with the war effort is getting these guys prepared to eventually take over the defense of the country. This seems like an awesome task. They’re basically trying to stand up a semi-modern military from the ground up. Some of these guys went from having no military experience to being in charge of an entire unit. Many of them sign on at great risk to themselves or their families. They are really great guys to hang out with and I really wish them the best of luck. This is some of us in front of the MI-17 helicopter, an old Russian helicopter they maintain and fly.
Last week, the ANAAC folks invited us out to a BBQ. It was a fun and interesting experience. One interesting thing was that they had the same Michael Jackson song playing over and over….guess old Jacko was just as popular in Afghanistan. The food was awesome. I asked to take a picture of the spread and this guy thought I wanted a picture of him…not sure who he was.
A picture of the spread…
And, my plate…goat on a skewer, rice with a subtle, sweet raisin flavor, spicy meatballs, honeydew, and some Afghan peaches? The only thing that didn’t taste all that great was the hamburger patty.
We recently had our own BBQ as well. I got to organize a cookout for well over 500 folks. This here is Captain Brighton cooking up a shit ton of brats and chicken breasts. My coworkers and I have had lengthy discussions over what exactly a “shit ton” is. We’ve decided that it is military term of measurement which is slightly larger than a “shit load” and somewhat less than an “ass ton”. In this case, it was precisely enough to feed over 500 Airmen. And yes, that is an Arkansas Razorback carved out of the side of that grill. Remember what I said about advertising their presence?
Mmmmm….battered and fried calamari rings……
To close out my update, I’ll showcase our famous AMMO goat. This little guy hangs out at the bomb dump and pretty much keeps the place tidy by eating absolutely everything in sight. He’s a friendly fella and was quick to nuzzle up to me. Around the time I took this photo, I was reading a book called “The Snow Leopard” about a man’s trek into the Himalaya to study the behavior of the mountain goats up there. In the book, the author goes into great detail about the mating habits of Himalayan mountain goats. Did you know that certain goats actually urinate into their own mouths during mating season? My AMMO Lieutenant was nice enough to inform me that this guy does the same thing. Nice…
We got to go to Marlon's school and see a nice little reenactment of the Nativity.
The Philippines version varies a bit from the one we're familiar with....two of the kings were of middle eastern origin while the third was actually Liberace. 
Rose came up with the fabulous idea of dressing me up as Santa Claus.
Rose had put together dozens of plastic gift bags for the village residents and candy for the kids. The bags essentially guaranteed most of them would at least have a Christmas dinner of ramen, eggs, and tuna.
