Along for the Ride

On my last mission, the 1SG came along and rode in my vehicle. This is usually not a good thing. Having someone like that in your vehicle invites nitpicking on everything you do and how your vehicle is set up. I was surprised to find that he did not have a lot to say during the journey, but invited me to talk with him when the trip was over. I thought, okay, here it comes. It turned out that he wanted to tell me how impressed he was with my vehicle set up and asked a few questions about what I do before and after mission to get it ready. I ended up sending him an email detailing what we do before and after so that he can make it into a company standing procedure for everyone to do. I have to thank my team leader, SGT Q, for putting on a few extra touches of love to the vehicle before our trip with special guest.

Today is our first mandatory fun day and relax day. We have never had one yet. The troops will be sleeping in, no work is to be done nor training to be given. The uniform of the day is PT shorts and shirt. Nice. I awoke at my usual time and took my laptop and microphone to the chai room with the intention of using the morning to finish reading Because of Winn-Dixie to Jeffrey, but just after reading one chapter, someone came in to use the phone and I had to stop. That plan went up in smoke. There is nowhere else to go here that offers any constant peace and quiet, so I will have to wait for another day. I am a bit disappointed in that. I had been intent on finishing the book and burning it onto CD by lunchtime.

I decided to spend my morning working on some photographs taken over the last few days. I plan to spend the rest of my day with a photography book, the scriptures and The Lord of the Rings.

My day off turned out to be a big letdown. I went to the chai room to record a story for Jeffrey and got no more out than one chapter when people started coming in the use the phone. I did get an hour of reading in before a mission came up. After that the rest of the day went on as normal putting out fires as they lit up and chipping away at the normal work load I am expected to maintain as a squad leader. This was like waking up Christmas morning and running into the living room to where the Christmas tree is kept, only to find that it is really a July morning.

The Road Not Taken

It is only just after lunch and already I declare today to be a hectic day, but in a way I like it because it keeps me on my toes, gives me a purpose, and makes my time go by fast. I usually end my evening by making a plan for the next day, both for myself as the squad leader and for my team leaders so that they can make their own plans to fulfill tasks and conduct training. Every day my plan gets obliterated by last minute items, but at least I have something to adjust from rather than taking every day blind. Making a daily plan has also helped me to keep what is truly important to me within my sights. I know that if I get a few minutes to myself that I will read the scriptures, and play around with some of my latest photos because I already determined yesterday that I wanted to complete that today.

I am working on a photography workshop that I would like to present to the ward on an activity night. In thinking about how I would start out my best idea so far is to recite the well known poem by Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken. After reciting it I would go into how its components make it a memorable poem with great visual cues all leading to a deeper meaning than a fork in the road. I can then compare this to how different components of a picture come together to make it striking a memorable. I like the idea of the poem so much that I looked it up on the internet, and then printed it off on a sheet of paper which I taped to my wall in my room.

The Road Not Taken

TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads onto way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence;
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and I –
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Just when I thought I was going to have some time to myself I was called in to answer for a piece of equipment I signed for to explain how a small part of it came up missing. I signed for the equipment, but it turned out to be several of my soldiers who used it during the hours of darkness. The next day I got it back from them, but because I was completely unfamiliar with the equipment myself I did not detect the missing part until after we had left the site and it was too late to go back and look. I am not really in any trouble for it. The army understands that we use equipment under rough conditions and things are going to break and get lost, but I did feel stupid for not having checked more carefully after receiving the equipment back on site. Lessoned learned.

Triumphant Return

There is a small group of Marines that live on our FOB. Their job is to train the ANA that also live on the FOB to conduct operations in preparation for them to fully take back responsibility for the security of their country. The Marines have been working with the ANA for the last six months teaching them not only how to fight, but how to plan and prepare for operations; the latter being the harder to teach. Soon the Marines will be rotating out for another group that will take their place.

Our platoon conducted a short mission today which put us back in our staging are just as the sun was beginning to go down on the dusty country side. I was closing up the vehicle with my driver when we looked up and saw a convoy of ANA trucks coming back onto the FOB and pulling into the staging area. The dust that the wheels kicked up covered the vehicles in a thick haze leaving only their dark outline, and back lit with the sun with head lights on cutting through the chalky dust the first vehicles drove by waving an Afghani flag on its hood. The scene was quite dramatic in presentation and immediately I wished that I had my camera on hand. To add to the drama of the scene, we realized that there were no Marine vehicles in the convoy. The ANA had gone out on their own to conduct an operation and we were there to witness their triumphal return.

This group of Marines should be very proud of their hard work that has paid off in making the ANA prepared to take back their country and defend it themselves.

Photos From My Adventures

This is what I see out of my window as we travel through the desert.

This is a cemetary. Few people get more than a rock as a head stone.

This is life in the big city.

Bicycles are quite common to see.

Here I am showing one of the new soldiers how to fire the machine gun.

Busy Week

We have had an eventful week. Time spent in Utah isn't really ever a vacation...or a Staycation which is a new word I've heard....whatever that is. We're more busy than we are at home. Not that we don't love it, but we just always have busy days.
This is the diaper duck that Jeffrey has turned into a rocket ship...you don't want to hear about the stress it caused him when the diapers wouldn't roll back up.

This is one of the pages of a Monster album that I am making for Jeffrey. It's been a project I've made with my sisters and it's turned out to be pretty fun.

This is the first general session of convention...it was PACKED! But see that tall fellow in the middle of the picture? It's Thurl Bailey. I'm not gutsy enough to go and ask people for a picture...I'm too much of a chicken. But he was there with his name tag and his bag of goodies! Chriss...your friend was my cashier at the Momento mall today...I didn't have the guts to talk to her either...the 40 million people in line behind me wouldn't have appreciated it.

I asked this mom if I could take a picture of her daughter's CUTE headband! Cutting fabric with the big shot is the big thing folks! You all need one!

I also cut my hair. I've been going back and forth for a while, but I decided to do it. (Mom did it with Paige as the style consultant) It grows so fast that it'll be back to the old length in no time!

The Events of a Day

I slept in this morning and so I could not go to the chai room to make any recordings of stories for Jeffrey. I felt good for sleeping in, but as soon as I was up, I felt bad for missing out on my opportunity to make a story for him. Even if I find free time later in the day, the noise of my radio which I have to keep on and other people who might come into the room to use it make this impossible.

At an early morning weapon inspection one soldier in particular had a very dirty weapon; one obviously not cleaned in a long time. I let him know that I would be inspecting the weapon later in the day, only to find him just before lunch with his boots up and reading a book with his still nasty weapon next to him. I could tell that he had hardly touched it without even getting close. When questioned about it, he felt it was satisfactorily clean. It became apparent that what he thought of as clean was not meeting the standard. I took two pieces of the weapon from him and back to my room. Rather than say in words what I want I showed him by cleaning the two myself. I think that it took a lot less time to effectively convey the meaning of clean when I use the word by showing rather than telling.

Tucked away in the audio books I have on my iPod I came across a book called “Goals,” that I picked up while in Germany. I listened to it again and recalled what I had learned two years ago about the power of writing down goals daily. I have picked back up my tradition of starting out my day with writing down my short and long-term goals each day. Taking time to write about them each day puts them at the front of my mind and helps me to have a larger perspective when planning my day. After a while the goals that just sound good but do not have any real drive behind them fall away and the true desires of the heart emerge. From this, I can accurately identify what I want most and start my day by thinking about these things.
The platoon went down to the firing range to work with our M4 on reflexive firing skills. That is moving and shooting, and turning and shooting accurately at a close range; the way you would fight in a close urban environment. Once we had expended all of our ammunition on that, we took the new guys up on 21 and had them go through some drills of firing the .50 caliber machine gun. I had each one get in the gunners turret, clear the weapon, perform the head space and timing test, load and shoot. Firing the weapon revealed that it would not give us a continuous burst of rounds. We called in the armorer for his expertise and went through an ordeal the rest of the day of cleaning the weapon, correcting the timing of the weapon, taking it back down to the range and again firing to see if we corrected the problem.

I spent one dollar at the barber shop and got just as good a hair cut as I do back in Colorado Springs for 14 dollars.

All through the rest of the day and into the evening my soldiers kept getting called away on details to help the platoon sergeant conduct inventories. I became tired of getting called over the radio to send another one or two of them some place to meet up, so they must have been taxed today having to drop their current project or assignment to go help out elsewhere.
For a while today I started to feel overwhelmed with all that I have to accomplish. There are daily tasks, implied tasks, specified tasks, last minute tasks, little tasks with big significance, and big tasks that have to done ten minutes ago. Just when I started feeling sorry for myself I thought about how my soldiers have to perform all of these tasks, I just have to organize them and check up on their accomplishment, making necessary corrections on the spot. My soldiers complain amazingly little and get the job done well. Rather than taking time to feel sorry for myself I decided to think about how I can give meaningful thanks to my soldiers and help them to feel appreciated in these hectic times.

Training

It is the beginning of a new month and I am glad for it because it means that I have completed another month of saving toward the purchase of some wanted photography equipment. I made a list of things that I wanted before I left, added up the total cost, and then divided it by the twelve months that I would be here in Afghanistan. I have to wait until the end of the month to make any purchases, and this only happens as long as through the month I did not spend any money on other things. Having this list laid out in front of me makes it easy to ask myself when tempted to make a purchase, do I really want this now, or do I want to be able to make my planned purchase at the end of the month. By the time I return home I should have a nice set of lenses, a new flash with a stand, and a few other items that will help me to take my photography to a whole new level.

LT M is always excited by training. Any time I run into him he is conferring with me about plans to train the new guys or take our current squad to the next training event in preparation for a mission. We noticed that our new soldiers are hurting in the aerobic area, so we went out for a 0700 run around the track this morning. The LT and I had no problem getting around the track, but after half a lap, or just under one mile, all of the new privates were hurting. We had planned to take them around three times, nearly a six mile run, but on the second lap it was apparent this was not going to happen without someone receiving a heat injury. At our half way point when our small group was really strung out along the track I stopped in the lead and made everyone do an aerobic exercise until all had caught up. We then got down and did push-ups until everyone had a common unison desire to get up and run together as a group rather than do one more push-up. I cannot make any of these privates run around the track quickly. That is out of my power. But I can make them wish that they could run around the track quickly. I can do that all day long.

At 1500 everyone in the platoon lined up outside of the platoon sergeants living quarters to take our weapons and other accountable items in to have them checked off. It is important to do this once in a while to keep careful track of all that we are responsible for. Each morning at 0530 I go to everyone’s room to check on their items, but my check is not at thorough and far reaching as this one was. All items were present and we moved on with our day.

The new soldiers have allowed us the freedom to move around some of the positions that my squad members fill. I now have PV1 C as my gunner, but he will not be able to go out on a mission in that position until we have taught him all he needs to know. I prepared a list of things he needs to be able to do and know. CPL G turned that list into an hour and a half block of instruction held out on my vehicle where PV1 C was able to get hands on training. I went out to observe the training, but sat in the back and did not say anything. I cannot stand it when I am leading instruction and someone in the audience decides to try and take over by sharing useless information, or skipping ahead to another piece of information just because it popped into their heads. We will have a chance to take PV1 C down to the test fire range tomorrow and let him go through some scenarios with the gun.

I found myself with two hours of free time at the end of the evening and used in reading about photography and the adventures of Frodo Baggins. It was very relaxing and a good end to my day.

A Few Days Up North

My Brother Steve and his wife Sherri live up in Clinton. Before I was married I used to go up for the weekend to their house all the time, it was fun to see their kids and visit with Steve and Sherri and stay up much too late watching movies. I'm pretty sure 9 times out of 10 I'd fall asleep.

Jeffrey is OBSESSED with airplanes right now so we decided to go to the HAFB Aerospace museum, it was fun, when he saw the airplanes outside he got all excited and started screaming Emplane, Emplane!
Um, oops, let's try that one again!

Cheese!

This one was a short stubby kind of airplane. I thought you'd all like to see a picture of it.

My niece's Elena and Gwynnie, so cute!

Jeffrey wasn't down with taking a group picture, he was riding on the back of Claire's awesome Joovy stroller!

The cousins, Elena, Gwyneth, Addy or Lizzy (picture's too small!), Anna, Elyse, Lizzy or Addy, Quincy. edit: I zoomed in, Addy's on the left, Lizzy on the right.

Wednesday morning we went with Sherri and the kids to the movies. It was a cheap movie ($1 to entice moms to bring all their kids) and Jeffrey spent most of the time going up and down the stairs. He loves Quincy though and wanted to hold his hand when we walked in and walked back to the car.

Crashed after a full night of playing!

Wednesday July 29, 2009

On our way back to Uncle Steve's house with Quincy (who took the picture) after going to the movies!

Ooops I mean to post this on our other blog, One Year at Noon the linky is on the left hand side there...but if you haven't been following it, we take a picture of Jeffrey every day at 12:01 to show daddy what we're up to that day!

Counseling

My A team leader finally made it back to day from training. He went to another base nearly two weeks ago to learn about a new piece of equipment that we may be getting in the future, but after his training had ended, he spent several days waiting for a helicopter to pick him up and bring him back to us. I am glad for his return because he is the more aggressive and consistent of my team leaders. After his two-week absence, I appreciate even more than before what he brings to our squad.

On a mission several days ago, I had to take some road measurements as part of a recon. Finding it hard to pull all of my squad together for training I have decided to conduct some on the spot training, or as it is know in the Army, hip pocket training. Most of the soldiers observed me making my measurements, from either the vehicle or right next to me as my security. Today I took the time to explain what I had been doing and its importance to future missions.

It is the end of the month, and therefore time for counseling my team leaders, and they to their team members. Counseling is a formal way of communicating together, leader to subordinate to address issues, give praise, let them know how they have been doing and what direction to go in to continue improvement. The paperwork side of it is simply to show that I did my job, and made a record of what I communicated for future use. The real meat of the deal is the one on one communication that flows between leader and subordinate. It is easy to talk to others about a soldier that you have that is messing up all the time, but this does the Army no good unless we address the issues directly and specifically. This is also an opportunity to give praise to an outstanding soldier for specific acts and make an official record of it.

A few care packages came to us from AnySoldier.com, which means goodies to go around for everyone. After the soldiers had taken their pick from the box, I still found two boxes of mint chocolate Girl Scout cookies and walked off with them quickly.

My original plan was to spend an hour reading from The Lord of the Rings before going to bed, but I found myself working on a few photos from the last mission and enjoying it so much that I forgot the time. I have been handing over a few photos to the Aco website at the end of each month for posting and also for the FRG news letter. Bringing my photography with me has been a great relief from the stress of the day and gives me something to look forward to with my time.