Guest Post: CPT Chris Myers in Afghanistan

A number of months ago I posted an email by a friend of mine, CPT Chris Myers. CPT Myers is finishing up his deployment in Afghanistan. He has a gift for prose and real talent at humor through sarcasm. I love reading his emails and enjoy sharing them here. This is his most recent email as he prepares for redeployment.

Dispatches from the Front Lines: 21 February 2010 - By CPT Chris Myers

21 February 2010
Kabul, Afghanistan

Salaam from Camp Phoenix, Afghanistan, where I find myself once again, gradually coming full circle enroute to redeployment at Fort Stewart, Georgia and, eventually, back home to San Francisco. In a way, it's hard to believe that I first arrived here in June, but lo and behold I've been in Afghanistan eight months now and you know what that means--time for Jay Leno to force me out of my job. Not much has changed here since I relocated to Camp Alamo back in August. Things are a little calmer, that's for sure, and there are fewer extraneous people lurking around--at least until the 48th Brigade's replacement unit arrives here in full force. Still, with nothing official to do until I board the plane out of country (any day now!), I once again find myself in the position of being a deployed soldier without a job to do. I am currently sitting in front of a computer, surfing the web and writing long-winded e-mails; proof that, even in the direst of circumstances, if you give an American Studies major enough time, he will eventually find a way to get paid for doing nothing.


>> Memories Can't Wait
With this experience preparing to fade into the rearview mirror, I suppose now is as good a time as any to look back on the past few months of life during wartime and fill you in on some of the details before they get lost in the blur of my impending post-traumatic stress disorder. Happily, I encountered very little of what one would consider dangerous, exciting or dramatic in terms of serving in an overseas warzone. Good for the mind, body and soul, I suppose, but it will leave me severely wanting when it comes to ripping-off a good wartime yarn. So if you ever hear me start rambling-on about the time "me and the platoon took the hill amid a flurry of dust, gunsmoke and bullets," you can be pretty sure that I'm snowing someone in hopes of either getting a free drink or getting laid. Possibly both. And since I'll be looking forward to those two things upon my return home, you can expect that hill-taking story to be a doozy.

In reality, though, my job (and I did, eventually, get a real one) may not have been the most dangerous, glamorous or exciting, but it was, by turn, both challenging and frustrating--and in the end, hopefully productive. Explaining this should probably involve alcohol, so for those of you who still need the prompt to drink while reading these e-mails, go ahead and pour yourself something now. The rest of you can use this opportunity to freshen-up your beverage and brace yourself for the next few paragraphs, which you will likely find ponderous, mundane and occasionally frustrating, but that I will try my best to enliven and infuse with interest and excitement. It will not be unlike this past season of Notre Dame football, so those of you who were able to endure that fiasco should have no problem getting through this, and because of such experience, you likely haven't stopped drinking since, oh, the fourth quarter of the Michigan game.


>> Road to Nowhere
As mentioned, I left Camp Phoenix in August, when it was eventually agreed upon by the Powers That Be that my role as an IRR recall would best be filled by occupying a job that actually existed, as opposed to one that they continually hoped would come into being. The politics of this are tedious and it involved a lot of high-ranking officers pleading their cases as to why there should or should not be a separate 48th Brigade staff in addition to the larger Joint Task Force Phoenix staff that was already in place. For my first two months in country, I was the de facto 48th Brigade Staff S6 (communications officer), but our Brigade Staff had not been approved as a separate entity, so literally, it was a non-existent job as far as most people around here were concerned. It was kind of like asking someone how they make a living and they reply, "I'm a blogger." I got the smile, a little laugh and a head-nod, followed by, "No, really, what do you do?"

I will say, however, that working at a non-existent job was a unique experience. Daily, I would report to the 48th Brigade's makeshift office, where the Brigade staff--all of whom also occupied not-officially-recognized jobs--huddled about and did things in the anticipation that, one day, Someone of Importance would see the error of their ways and officially bless-off on not only our existence, but dammit, our necessity, too. The novelty of this wore-off quickly, though, when it became apparent that inevitably we would all get farmed-out to other sections, locations and existing positions that needed our services, and no one really had much respect for the fact that we were trying to create our own little universe. As the weeks dragged on, there was palpable disdain between the hoity-toity Task Force Phoenix staffers and the annoying little revolutionaries of the wannabe 48th Brigade Staff. That's over-dramatizing a bit, but people actually got into heated arguments and fights over this--and these were people serving together on the same base in the same goddamn unit.


>> I Wish You Wouldn't Say That
The tedium of it all reached its zenith during a particularly sweltering August morning. Some of us on the fake-Brigade-staff were asked to attend a meeting to discuss long-term plans for the unit that would replace us in the spring (yes, planning actually starts that early). This was going to be a long, laborious meeting of vague ideas and unspecific plans--the kind of meeting that you don't have to be at but you're asked to go to anyways. There were about 30 of us crammed into a makeshift conference room of a wooden hut. One air conditioner did its best to cool the room, but everyone was drinking coffee (it started at 8:00 am) and within five minutes of "Let's get started now...," we were all beading with sweat. The affair kicked-off as virtually every military meeting is wont to do--with a parade of ponderous PowerPoint slides, apparently built with the hopes of conveying simple information in the most complicated way possible. The soldier giving the presentation clearly spent weeks preparing it--little arrows would slide in and out on pertinent text, and different parts of maps bulged into hyperfocus on his well-rehearsed mouse clicks--and when the final slide blessedly dissolved into view ("Questions?" in 48-point Helvetica, with a spinning question mark behind it), ninety minutes had passed and everyone looked ready to die.

I'm pretty sure he was talking about geography and different areas of operation that the incoming unit would be occupying. At least that's what he started out discussing. By the eighth slide (Header: "Geographical Concerns: Discussion") I began molding my oversized Styrofoam coffee cup into a square at the brim. Over the course of the impending geographic discussion, I found that, with careful handiwork, you can actually change an entire, circular Styrofoam coffee cup into a four-sided square without cracking the sides at all. You have to be patient, but if you are ever stuck in a five-hour meeting that does not require your participation, that is one way to pass the time. For general-use purposes, here are some other activities that can fill five hours of the day:

- Reenact "The Godfather" epic in your head. You can get to the scene in "Part II" where Moe Greene dresses-down Fredo in the Vegas hotel.

- Run a marathon in your mind. You'll even have time to warm-up and cool-down, and if you've done the San Diego Rock N' Roll Marathon, every nine minutes you can envision passing a U2 cover band playing "Vertigo" or "Mysterious Ways."

- Reimagine the classics. I got through the first half of "Alice in Wonderland" pretty straightforward, but at the mad tea party, I substituted the March Hare and Dormouse with Howard Roark and Lady Macbeth.

- As best you can remember, retake the Myers-Briggs Career Survey in your head, and then imagine yourself doing the most bizarre job that the results spit-out. Your imaginary life manually fertilizing livestock will have the hours flying by.

Alas, in the sweltering conference room hot-box, the hours did not fly by. Only about eight people at the meeting talked, and when they did, they tended not to stop until they were interrupted by someone else, who would then drone on and on until interrupted. By 11:00 (hour three by the clock, or the scene where young Vito sings to himself at Ellis Island before the dissolve to Anthony's First Communion), a look around the room indicated that everyone's soul had been summarily destroyed during the course of the proceedings. It was only now that things got somewhat interesting--enough to rouse everyone out of their stupor.

At one point during the fourth hour, frustrated by the lack of progress on anything, the Brigade S3 officer (another IRR recall tending-to a non-existent job) got annoyed at the continued discussion of brick-and-mortar building projects. He interrupted the guy who was talking and stated, "Oh, the hell with it. Sometimes I think the engineers are on the moon." Judging by the shared laughter, this was the most amusing thing said all morning, and it surprised me that so many people were actually paying attention to hear it. To me, though, it was a rather poetic image. "The engineers on the moon." Kind of sci-fi-mysterious, like the title of a Brian Eno album. Anyways, it stopped me from molding my coffee cup for a moment and I pictured little men with slide rules, bounding up and down in spacesuits on the cool, lunar surface.

The other remark was by far the best thing I've heard during the entire deployment, and the fact it was uttered publicly, amongst superior officers and in mixed company, illustrates the end result of a five-hour meeting where nothing gets accomplished. The Joint Task Force Phoenix S6 officer (the S6 job that actually existed) did not mask the fact he was annoyed at having to sit through four hours and thirty minutes of bullshit to eventually give his presentation, nor was he particularly pleased at the plans that the previous speakers had presented. In a rushed summary of his talking points, he said that all the plans had problems, pretty much none of them would work and "the whole thing is an abortion on rye bread."

THAT remark got everyone's attention, and an audible group gasp led to a rare moment of silence. The lone female soldier in the room looked physically ill after hearing it, and the rest of us had our mouths partially agape, as our brains still processed the words "on rye bread." Within ten minutes, the meeting was over. It was as if a tacit, collective agreement had been reached that nothing of any sense or value could possibly be discussed in the wake of that comment. As we peeled out of the room, the Brigade S1 officer (another IRR guy, another non-existent job) turned to me, exasperated but smiling, and said, "That comment made the entire meeting worthwhile." I'm not sure about that, but it did pretty much sum up my two months here at Camp Phoenix.


>> Found a Job
Eventually, news of my daily routine of reporting, Bartleby-like, to a job that wasn't there finally made its way to the Camp Phoenix headquarters, and the general in charge wisely decided to end this charade by relocating me to nearby Camp Alamo--a base that was about to lose its (real, existing) S6 officer to redeployment. After a few terse e-mails between full-bird colonels, the deal was done and I reported in mid-August to quaint Camp Alamo, home of the Kabul Military Training Center (KMTC) Mentor Group.

As you've seen from the pictures (they're on Facebook; e-mail me if you can't access them), Camp Alamo is a pretty small base here in Kabul, and when I arrived, only about 120 people called it their home. My S6 position there was a two-fold responsibility: As communications officer, I was ultimately responsible for all the communications assets on the base--computers, phones, radios and satellites. If you needed any proof that they don't ask for your resume when you're in the Army, my appointment to this position should provide ample evidence. Fortunately for me (and, for that matter, the residents of Camp Alamo who needed their communications equipment to work), the S6 office was also occupied by six civilian contractors who--let's be frank here--made an American Studies major look like he knew what he was doing with computers, phones, radios and satellites. The fact that they were civilians meant that I did not have to bother with all the military rank and mumbo jumbo and we more or less ran the S6 shop like a civilian IT office--right down to the morning coffee, tacky holiday decorations and occasional office party with Triscuits and summer sausage. Rounding-out our crew was Master Sergeant (MSG) Fred Castro, the only other military member of our S6 staff. With over 25 years experience in the Army, MSG Castro was another guy who made my job immensely easier and often provided sage military advice, such as, "Sir, I don't think the commander would approve of you having your Czechoslovakian bride sent here." Seriously, it is because of this staff that progress was made, work got done, and I will not spend the rest of my nights waking up at three in the morning in a cold sweat. Be it fate, karma, blessings or dumb luck, I was fortunate to spend the majority of this deployment in the company of these seven people; I honestly can't thank them enough for getting me through the year.

Staying on this aspect of the job for just another moment, you may ask what, exactly, the day-to-day work was for us. In a nutshell, it was pretty much what any office IT staff would deal with--creating e-mail accounts, mapping printers, installing software and generally having people come up to you asking "Why doesn't my computer work?" My role in this often ended-up being the first line of defense. When someone had a commo issue, I would immediately address it by examining the piece of problematic equipment, turning it off and then turning it back on. This line of troubleshooting, I found, had about a 60% success rate, and it truly is one of the only things that will stick with me as far as computer-savvy techno fixes go. When this failed, things were handed-off to the civilian contractors, who would type something into their computers, make a phone call to someone else and then--often just five minutes later--the dilemma would be remedied. I'm not sure of the specifics here, but usually the phone call involved the phrase "reset their account," which I think is system administrator code for "You won't believe what this stupid motherfucker did..."


>> The Democratic Circus
The other facet of being Camp Alamo S6 was assuming the role of mentoring my counterpart at the Kabul Military Training Center (KMTC). The Afghan National Army (ANA) S6, Lieutenant Colonel Jamil, was the communications officer in charge of the facility where over 100,000 Afghan soldiers are currently being trained. In many ways, this was the more important aspect of the job. After all, Camp Alamo is home to the KMTC Mentor Group--meaning that pretty much everyone there was acting as some sort of mentor to the Afghan Army. MSG Castro was mentor to the ANA S6 non-commissioned officer in charge (NCOIC); our commander at Camp Alamo, Colonel Quinn, mentored the Afghan commander of KMTC; the British troops ran the ANA's non-commissioned officer training team; the French contingent ran the ANA's officer academy; etc., etc. Whatever position you held at Alamo, you basically acted as mentor for your ANA counterpart across the street (which is where KMTC was in relation to our base).

This was, by far, the most intriguing part of the job (no similar responsibility was held by the Joint Task Force staff at Camp Phoenix, or the 48th Brigade Staff there, which, eventually, was recognized as its own separate entity, albeit after I was long gone). It was also the most frustrating, since the Afghan National Army...well...has their own way of doing things. That's not a bad thing, necessarily--after all, any military organization that can operate without the need to put every piece of information on a PowerPoint slide is doing something right--but nothing, it seems, in the Afghan Army moves particularly fast, gets done particularly quickly, or goes quite how you (or they) think it will.

If you step back and think about it for a moment, that makes sense. After all, establishing and running a facility that trains over 100,000 soldiers of a newly-developing army...just the logistics of it all is awesome to comprehend. Feeding them, clothing them, housing them, equiping them, training them--add to the fact that most of the trainees (over 75% by most calculations) are practically illiterate, and you can see some of the issues. Add to that the fact that most of the senior officers on staff (including my mentee, LTC Jamil) were brought up under the Russian Army, whose old-school ways of doing things conflict with modern, NATO/coalition sensibilities (one striking obstacle is that the officers pretty much don't trust the enlisted soldiers to do anything right) and there are more issues. Add to that the fact that the Afghan infrastructure is so weak, most of the supplies they get are through American or coalition contracts (rerouted through local contractors, when possible, but most of the big-ticket items of necessity are being paid for by your tax dollars) and there are even more issues. And on top of it all, there's corruption, nepotism, favoritism...frankly, if it wasn't for all the mountains and sand surrounding us, one might well confuse KMTC with Washington D.C.

There are many examples of the frustration involved with getting things done around here, and in summarizing this I'll invoke the Tale of the Light Bulb. A light bulb burned-out in an overhead projector for one of the KMTC classrooms. Such light bulbs are specifically tailored for that equipment and cannot often be found outside of office supply stores or industrial catalogs (because of this, they are rather expensive items). In America, you'd just take the company credit card, go to Office Depot, buy a bulb and be done with the matter. In Afghanistan, however, there are no Office Depots (but there are plenty of Targets! Rimshot!) and you can't just go online and order the bulb for them because "ANA problems require ANA solutions." So you do it their way:

You start this Kafkaesque process by submitting a supply request to the ANA Misistry of Defense. If they have the equipment, they will (usually) give it to you, but, alas, the light bulb was a piece of equipment that they did not have. So--theoretically--the Ministry of Defense clerk marks down that this is a piece of equipment they will need to eventually supply and--theoretically--eventually they will. But they didn't have it at the moment, so you then wait a few days and resubmit the same supply request to the Ministry of Defense, in hopes that:
a. the equipment is now in stock,
b. the equipment was in stock before but the clerk at MoD didn't realize it at the time,
c. the equipment was in stock before but the clerk at MoD was looking for a bribe or favor,
or--as was usually the case--
d. the item still isn't there.
Eventually, after doing this Kabuki dance a few times, you turn-in all the denied MoD request forms to the American supply officer (the S4 officer), who would then see that an "ANA solution" wasn't in place yet, and--for the time being--the problem would require an American solution. So you do it our way:

Back at square one, you can attempt to get Army money and try to purchase the item on the local economy if:
a. the item is approved for local purchase by the Army and,
b. you and a fellow soldier go through training on how to purchase items on the local economy and,
c. you acquire three competitive prices from local vendors for said piece of equipment and,
d. you fill-out 15-pages of paperwork to sign-for and purchase the item through the most-trustworthy and least-expensive local Afghan merchant.
Despite meeting these above requirements, no local vendors seemed to have access to the necessary light bulb in a timely manner. Eventually, it was reasoned that the U.S. Army S4 officer could set-up a long-term contract to supply KMTC with overhead projector light bulbs until the Afghan Ministry of Defense could supply their own, but that request would have to go through its own process of vetting, bidding and approval and could take weeks or, more likely, months if it ever received final approval. Sooo...in the end, we did it neither The Afghan Army Way, nor The American Army Way, but The Old Fashioned Way: We ultimately just found a spare overhead projector bulb in a supply closet and gave it to the ANA.

And that's how you get a light bulb in the Afghan National Army.

Sigh. In a nutshell, that illustrates the frustrating parts of the mentoring job. So much you wanted to fix, to help, to improve...but hopes and reality rarely play well together out here and you quickly realized that if you were indeed going to allow ANA problems to be solved with ANA solutions, the first supply you needed was patience. So after some expectation-adjusting, we--the ANA S6 mentors and mentees--focused on the things we could impact in the short-term and set realistic goals for progress during our time here.

And, despite the frustration, some progress was made. For starters, we got the ANA S6 officers and enlisted soldiers to start talking, meeting together and planning their training events on a weekly basis. The fact they had not done this in the past illustrates the expectation-adjusting necessity; you take it for granted that people within the same office would talk about and plan what they are doing on a regular basis. Prior to my arrival at KMTC, I was told that a meeting between the ANA S6 officers and soldiers ended when one of the ANA S6 majors got so upset at the NCOIC, he threw a remote control at his head from across the room. The fact that none of our regular weekly meetings featured launched projectiles or head trauma was seen as a sign of progress.

Likewise, we were able to see some significant "Good Idea Fairy" projects through to their conclusions. These were complex, highly-involved undertakings for the ANA that previous mentors had started, apparently not realizing they were working in Afghanistan with the ANA, and believing instead that these projects were taking root in The Land of Oz, where workers would toil in round-the-clock efficiency and Glinda the Good Witch would wave her magic wand and, Poof!, everything would come together in a matter of weeks. Not so much, it turns out, as one particular effort--the notorious KMTC Phone Center, started in the Spring of 2008--is now being inherited by its fourth U.S. Army S6 mentor, with the sincere hopes that he can bring this damned Bridge to Nowhere across the finish line.


>> Television Man
Still, the mentoring thing was a good gig. I got to work directly with the Afghan Army and, hopefully, put some ideas in place, some things in motion, that will eventually lead to their improvement, prosperity and--eventually--independence, which is the ultimate goal of the KMTC Mentor Group. Our "Mission Accomplished" moment will come when all the ANA's problems can be solved with ANA solutions and coalition mentors are no longer needed to provide outside counsel, guidance, supplies and advice. Perhaps it is a somewhat Quixotic notion that my presence here made any lasting impact, but being involved at this level was more rewarding than, say, sitting behind an office computer for twelve-hours a day, seven days a week. And for all the frustrations we endured, the interaction with the Afghans was, in truth, a lot of fun. We'd meet almost every morning (except Fridays, which is their Holy Day), and after tending to whatever business matters were at hand,
we'd sit in LTC Jamil's office and shoot the breeze over hot chai--me, MSG Castro, a few of the civilian contractors who also helped mentor, LTC Jamil and our interpreters. We'd talk with mutual interest about the cultural difference between Afghans and Americans; about dating and marriage (apparently Afghan weddings are ridiculous--they invite over 500 people and the event takes three days), work habits, schools, news, politics and television.

Television was often the source of conversation, as LTC Jamil had a small TV set in his office and it was almost always on. (Suggesting he turn it off during our weekly S6 section meetings was seen as yet another bold step in progressing the Afghan Army toward independent status). There are a handful of Afghan TV stations now and, according to my interpreter, each of them has its own political ideaology (sound familiar?). Since many of the Afghan TV networks are nacent endeavors, most of the daily progamming is filled with music videos--usually clips of Bollywood musicals or Pakistani Top-40 songs. MTV hasn't yet cracked the Afghan market, so the videos are often innocently naive in their production values--you half expect Toni Basil to shimmy across the screen in pigtails. Tinges of Western culture abound, though, none more evident than the weekly airing of "Afghan Idol," as well as Dari-dubbed versions of "24" (which is huge out here) and "WWE
Smackdown" (John Cena is a particular favorite of ANA soldiers).

I, personally, got hooked on a daytime serial that always aired during our morning visits to LTC Jamil's office; a show that he regularly followed the storyline of (he would often zone-out during conversations whenever his program came on, prompting the "TV off during meetings" mandate). Uncreatively-titled "Mother in Law, Daughter in Law" ("It means that the mother-in-law was once the daughter-in-law," as my interpreter explained to me), the show was a half-hour Indian soap opera, dubbed in Dari, that featured the usual plot elements of familial secrets, lies, affairs and courtroom cliffhangers. I didn't understand a word of it, but you didn't really have to in figuring-out what was going on and, anyway, the show featured a thunder-and-lightning sound effect every time something supposedly dramatic was happening. This got your attention the first few times it occured, but the novelty wore off after the producers employed this device dozens of times during the broadcast, often to fill in lulls when nothing substantial seemed to be happening at all. I will say, however, that I'l never forget the scene when, during a bizarre masquerade ball where everyone was dressed in elaborate costumes, the bad guy climbed to the roof of a nearby building and shot someone at the downstairs party with a crossbow. If they had done more shit like that on "Guiding Light" that show would still be on the air.

And speaking of soap operas, that's an appropriate analogy for the weekly KMTC staff meeting of ANA officers and their mentors. Every Tuesday morning, we'd cram into the KMTC conference room to hear the ANA staff discuss their current projects, progress and--quite frequently--how the fact that everything took so damn long was invariably the fault of the American mentors. Occasionally informative, the meeting was more often than not accidentally entertaining, as the senior Afghan officers are an old, weathered lot. Not that a meeting of U.S. Army officers is any GQ fashion shoot, but the ANA officers have the look of perpetually-hemmoroidal, middle-aged men who were trained by the old Russian Army and have suffered through decades of war. Sitting around their conference table, they look like a chapter of the Del Boca Vista Elks Club waiting to down a fistful of Doan's Pills and a few boilermakers.

Highlighting this weekly congress was the KMTC commanding general's end-of-meeting comments. Often, he would focus on important matters of immediate concern, but he was just as likely to go off on some stream-of-consciousness rant that no one could anticipate. At one meeting, he animatedly berated the ANA supply officer for a good fifteen minutes. I asked my interpreter what the problem was and it turned out the general was upset because word had gotten to him that the Afghan soldiers-in-training were not getting enough cake with their lunches. "I will not stand for this! They must all get an equal piece of cake with their lunch!" I'm not making that up. Another meeting featured the general going-off on a 20-minute diatribe that "All grapes given to soldiers should be ripe! You must inspect the grapes!" You kind of looked forward to the end of the meeting just to see what trivial, inane thing he might pontificate about that week (you also looked forward to the end of the meeting because being enclosed in an unventilated conference room with three-dozen Afghans for an hour really does a number on your olfactory nerves).


>> The Big Country
Anyways, somewhere between expanding the size and independence of the Afghan National Army and giving them enough baked goods and fresh produce lies The Road Ahead. Given the difficulties in making headway within our little piece of the Afghan puzzle, it will be a rocky road, especially considering the pressure to obtain rapid results amidst the general instability that permeates all corners of this country's government and military. In an attempt to curb rising attrition rates within the Afghan Army, the Afghans devised the solution to announce that, if you went AWOL from KMTC, you could come back and, not only would you be welcome back to your old job without punishment, you would be automatically promoted as well. So basically, you can quit your job, come back a week later, and get a promotion and a raise to boot (An ANA solution to an ANA problem if ever there was one). Ah yes, had the U.S. Army adopted that brilliant re-recruiting pitch, I'd be a major now.

The feelings here seem to be mixed for long-term success. This past fall, in the wake of the corrupted Afghan elections and President Obama's decision to send additional troops, my interpreter told me that "People here are hopeless. We have seen war for years; people come and people go, but nothing ever changes." Without hesitation, a second interpreter walking with us said that wasn't entirely true, and a lot of people--himself included--saw signs of progress. "It is easy to destroy something," he remarked, "but it takes time to build it back up. Things have gotten better over the last few years. It will take time, but we are not hopeless."

I should note that the latter interpreter is currently applying for an American Visa, in hopes that he and his wife can move to the U.S. and raise a family "where our kids can go to school and be safe." He has worked as a ANA-coalition interpreter for over seven years now, a job that--if certain people discovered what he did--he could be killed for doing. Hopeless, no, but practical, yes. As Iris Crowe told Tommy Dolan, "Pray to God, but row for shore."


>> This Must be the Place
Only time will tell what the long-term results of our involvement in Afghanistan will be. There are far too many mercurial political and cultural considerations to debate, and for that, a drink in my hand will indeed be necessary. Since that option is not available to me at the moment, you'll have to wait until I get back for further discussion on that topic. But that won't be long now. From here, there are only one or two stops to Georgia, and after a few days of outprocessing, I'll be home free to San Francisco, where there better be a double Manhattan on the rocks and a doobie the size of a Cadillac waiting for me.

As I mentioned, all things considered, there's been nothing traumatic that has happened to me during this deployment; I won't be arriving home with any gnarly war wounds or psychic emotional scars, so hopefully my transition from Army of One to Civilian Slacker will be a relatively smooth affair. Still, I will have about a week of outprocessing to go through at Fort Stewart, and if it is anything like the inprocessing at Fort Benning, then there's still time for some psychic scarring after all. And I can honestly say that, surprisingly, the most dangerous part of my travels will not be--as expect--riding in a miltary convoy through the streets of Afghanistan, but instead riding home from San Francisco International in my sister's Prius Deathmobile.

Provided I survive that, I look forward to seeing, or at least talking with, all of you. Typing "Thank You" again in another e-mail doesn't begin to do justice to the gratitude I owe you all for writing, e-mailing, keeping in touch, shipping care packages or just sending good vibes. Ditto for the incredible people I've met and worked with along the way, from the fellow IRRians (who are also--at nearly 400 days--trickling back to civilian slackerhood as well), to the soldiers and contractors at Camp Alamo, to the ANA soldiers at KMTC, to the crazy 48th Volunteers here at Phoenix, this deployment can be chalked-up as an overall positive experience thanks to them. Looking forward to staying in touch with many of them upon our safe redeployment home.

To wrap things up, I'll invoke a well-known Bay Area muse in saying what a long, strange trip it's been. Almost to the end of it now, and can't wait to get back home where I can tell those real and occasionally made-up war stories over a Trumer and Rosamunde at Toronado or an Iron City and Roast Beef sandwich at Primani's. On rye bread, of course.

Peace.

--chris