Afghanistan held their first legislative elections in over 30 years on September 18, 2005.  I felt honored to be part of this historic occasion.  Although we were located at a small Forward Operating Base far from Kabul and any other semblance of a town, our platoon helped provide security for the locals by eliminating some Taliban who were trying to disrupt the democratic process.  Read More...

The forward operating base that I was stationed on my first deployment to Afghanistan was located far from any hard surfaced roads or large cities.  Logistical support to our base was a nightmare and mainly consisted of helicopters and heavy drops by aircraft on a small drop zone outside the wire.  We did have some jingle trucks driven by locals that would take a 3 day drive from the larger airbases to bring us some supplies.  However, these trucks did not have any security and were often ambushed and hijacked.  I even recall one brave driver who was shot in the shoulder but continued to drive on to our base.  Once he arrived within our gates, he passed out due to blood loss.  Read More...

For those of you that have faithfully followed the site, I have finally started the process of penning more stories from my time in combat.  This story takes us back to Christmas Eve 2005 while I was in Afghanistan.  Despite the tragedy of losing a soldier during this deployment and seeing several buddies wounded, this was my favorite deployment because of the great group of guys that we had the honor of working with.  These guys were true professionals but also knew how to find fun in our time at the remote FOB near Pakistan.  Read More...