To start this off, this is an older picture taken a month or two ago. I was on a small British helicopter when the pilot took off roughly from the pad. We sped low over the red desert and I knew something was wrong.
"What's up?" I asked the pilot.
"Nothing much." He said, "Just out-running the weather."
I peaked out the door which was still open and saw a giant sandstorm approaching. The picture does not do it justice. The entire sky was a slightly cloudy, crisp fall day and coming from the direction of our hasty take-off was a wall of sand.
Here is a picture of the area I was in. For the most part the land it is flat as a lake, dotted here and there by "ghars" --jutting mountains of rock. Flat wide valleys and high jutting peaks may be signs of recent (geologically) glaciation. Running down the center of the flatlands is a river that appears dry but runs just under the soil. The farmers in the areas surrounding the river have built up vast irrigation cannels over a period of centuries which are fed by pumps that bring the groundwater to their crops. The ditches, walls, irrigation, houses-- everything is made of mud. It's a civilization built on mud. Imagine a 4 year old building mud pies after a rain and scale it up a few orders of magnitude.
This picture, taken at night, is of a graveyard. These dot the landscape sandwiched in between villages and farms. They are found on small plots everywhere. In Islamic tradition a body must be buried as soon as possible after death. It's handy to have a graveyard next door. This particular one caught my eye because it must have belonged to someone influential as there is a headstone and footstone. In the typical Pashtun burial the person is wrapped in a shroud buried in a shallow grave. Rocks are piled on top of the grave and two large rocks (or as above, something fancier) are placed at the head and feet. A string is strung between the two large rocks and flags are tied to the string. Something else common is a stick around 3 meters high is placed at each end and colorful flags are flown from them.
Here is another view of the mud-civilization. The mud walls can shrug off small arms fire as if it were nothing but 500 lb bombs… not so much. In the foreground the dark green is Afghanistan's # 2 crop, marijuana. # 1 is opium.
This is a picture of me at one of our rendezvous sites. Notice the lack of beard. I'm not happy about that. Prior to my cutting it I had a very nice 2-finger beard (measured across the fingers). I was working on a 4-finger beard which is a respectable length among the locals when orders came from on high that everyone had to shave.
See the building that has all the slits in it? Those are grape-huts. This is where the Afghanis dry their grapes to make raisins. After opium and weed, grapes bring in the most money to this region. The pity is that with all these vineyards they still haven't figured out wine.
The grape huts are made of mud (as is everything) but the roof is made of tree branches and bushes supported by logs that run across as support beams. The semi-open roof and slits in the walls make them light and airy for the grapes. The slits also make perfect medieval firing holes like the ones adorning the sides of a castle turret. These are the perfect fighting positions for the Taliban and they know it. That is why whenever we have to poop in the field we choose to poop in abandoned gape huts. Take that mistar Taliban!
This is an interesting picture and there is an interesting story to go along with it. Ask me about it some time.
Here we are clearing a village. I'm in the TC seat on the machine gun. Ahead of my truck is one of the British. They are good lads and are great to have next to you when something happens. Too bad the Scots with them don't speak English. Ahead of the Brit is the pickup trucks used by the ANA. It's just a standard pickup with a mount on top for a Dishka machine gun.
There are fields of this stuff as far as the eye can see. You come into the area and you are overwhelmed by the skunky smell of it. They say that the olfactory sense is the strongest tie to memory. When I walked into this field I was transported back to the Pink Floyd concert I went to in highschool. The ANA went hog wild, and shoved large buds in their pockets. Normally, if someone wants to get a little high and relax I'm all in favor but that night we had multiple "accidental discharges" of AK-47s. When we tracked down the culprits we invariably found a giggling afghani who said he saw something move around the perimeter. Later, when we had more permanent lodgings, some of the Afghanis smoked so much dope they passed out, burning their guard shack down.
Welcome to Afghanistan.
Picture taken at sunset from a ghar. The rows in the fields are grapes. In California's wine country grape vines are strung up on wires run between fence posts. Here, they have neither fence posts nor wires. Instead they build mud walls that come up to your chest. The vines are run along the walls. To water the vineyard they simply flood the field.
BOOOOOOOM! To be honest I can't remember what this was. There are a few possibilities.
Ironically enough, here I am in the Army of the most technologically advanced nation on earth (sans the Japanese--they have robot hostess bars and panty vending machines) and I spend my Xmas holiday in a place that comes straight out of a nativity scene. No, this is not a manger; this is the living room of an abandoned compound we took over for the night. It was easily defendable and secure. Well, as secure as you can be with a few stoned ANA giggling and shooting imaginary Taliban from fighting positions on your roof. It was comfortable enough. We had MREs, water, Ipods, and a nice grape-hut to poop in.
Sunset from the roof of our temporary lodgings.
Poor little fella was rabid and foaming.
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