Saturday, July 13, 2013

Month 11 Day 13

Notebook entry
14 reports given, trip to patrol bases and back, when 128°, Afghan national Army medical brief, Corps logistics officer leave, Lashkar Gah, manicure and pedicure.



Journal entry
I got up went to work out in the little gym in the MWR here, did my 3
S's and caught up with the S2 for breakfast.  The guy, Capt Reagles,
is really not on board with partnering.  He is taking the position
that until they have permanent personnel he is not going to train
them.  I said 'yah I know it's frustrating' he said 'no it's not
frustrating because I'm not doing anything until you get me some
people.' I can see where he is coming from in some regards, but still,
you're not teaching them to be rocket scientists, even if you train
someone who is ultimately transferred to operations, then you might
have made them just that much more capable.  I said 'this place is
going to turn over whether their intel section is ready or not, we
just need to make sure that they can stand when we go'  he said 'we
are going no matter what' I was not so sure.  Thus ended our
discussion on high-politics.

We left and went to two brand new patrol bases in Trek Nawa.  Both
were part of Bad company, we first stopped at the company CP, and then
we went to one of the new platoon CPs. It was good that we stopped at
the company CP first because they were actually traking on the
location of the platoon CP.  The Bn COC was not.  This is really
disconcerting because they are supposed to know where all friendly
forces are so that they don't drop arty or a Hellfire on them.  Oh
well.  The platoon position was really austere, but it was a little
piece of heaven.  There were socks with water bottles in them being
soaked to cool them down, the piss tubes were up and running.  The
marines were camped out under ponchos.  They had radio batteries
recharging on solar panels.  The best part for them was that I nearly
rolled my MRAP about 4 times trying to get to them.  That means that
no one is going to come out and bother them, it will just be them and
at peace in the desert, there aren't even any generators, so it will
be awesome.

We drove back to Geronimo, and I had two delicious milkshakes for
lunch. I love this chow hall. I had two milkshakes because the TCN
couldn't understand english, and poured me a full second one.  That
was not so good.

the General wanted to go to Ainak, up in northern Nawa, but we think
he was just trying to get up there so he could slip out to the Bost
Airfield and onto leave for Ramadan.  There was no other reason to go
there.

While we were on the drive back it hit 128 degrees.  The truck handles
were so hot that I burned my hand when I tried to dismount.  At 1900
Naikpai the weights in our prison yard gym were so hot that naikpai
still had to wear gloves.

in the nightly meeting it came up that all of the logistics in the
entire core had stopped because one guy, the Corps G4 had left.  He is
really secretive and locks his logbooks in his personal room, so the
entire Corps (all of Helmand and Nimruz Provinces) have to wait until
he is back to get any of their supplies.

On the bright side I guess there is a Manicure/Pedicure place going in
on mainside somewhere.  We need to leave.




The General (Left), and Tawoos right climb to the top of a building in the new position

One of our newest positions
roll out solar panels to charge batteries

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