"Its not a downsize" assured the friendly retention officer during a brief to our platoon last week. "Its a resize!" It did not occur to most members of our platoon, understandably frustrated by the lack of options for re-enlistment, that there was a lick of difference between a downsize and a resize. Indeed, to the average soldier both mean the same exact thing. The Army is getting smaller. Re-enlist bonuses will decline, school opportunities more scarce,...read more

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I returned from leave a few days ago, coming back to Afghanistan after spending the past two weeks at home in Chicago, where I grew up. I still think of home as 'home', even though I am seldom ever there. I suppose it is important for people, psychologically, to believe they have a home, no matter how nomadic their lives may be. Coming off the plane in Atlanta, the first thing you notice about the States is how clean everything looks - and smells. I remember back when I was in...read more

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When I began this blog a few months ago I intended to write a post about the multi-cam uniform, the acquisition of which was an event widely celebrated by our platoon. Having been busy getting ready for deployment, I didn't get around to the subject at the time, but seeing some of my fellow soldiers still sporting the crappy old ACU's has introduced the issue back to the front of my attention. The problem with the ACU has always been in its concept of being a universal...read more

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One of our missions as an FTF platoon is to train a squad of Afghan National Army, so I thought a post about how this process is going and what we have learned might be an appropriate subject for discussion. When we first arrived in theatre, we were not very impressed with our Afghan counterparts. They seemed poorly motivated, physically out of shape and, what is more, completely apathetic about improving themselves as soldiers. The unit we replaced, the FTF of 3-101, had to physically...read more

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So we tried to equip our Afghan National Army friends with some night vision goggles but their commander, a tough looking dude by the name of Swahili, refused to accept our offering. His reason was simple: night-vision goggles, he believed, stole your soul. You cannot make this stuff up. STEALS your SOUL. Coming from a culture obsessed with the latest gadgets, the existence of such superstition is something you find astonishing.But the small mindedness is as much on your part as it is on...read more

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I apologize for the gap in between posts. The busy schedule of the FTF platoon, together with my lack of internet access, has made updating this blog far more difficult than I had originally anticipated. I hope this will change in the future. For now, though, I will say a few words about the recent past. We left the United States in late December, spending New Years at Manas Air Base in Krygyrstan. Its an interesting how military installations can take the exotic out of a foreign country....read more

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Since we are only a few days from being deployed, I have developed an interest in finding motivational speeches that have been used, either historically or merely in fictional art, to inspire courage in combat soldiers. It is a difficult to find anything, partly because I don't have access to the relevant sources but partly, I think, because the task of motivation is so inherently spontaneous, drawing on emotions that exist only in a few sublime moments. The majority of speeches, by...read more

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I have never trusted acronyms. Whenever I am confronted with one, which happens very regularly in my field of work, I am filled with dread. There is just something swarthy about them is all Im saying, like they have something to hide. Condense a word or larger phrase into an acroynm and you are basically saying: "This thing blows in reality, but maybe if I represent it with generic members of the alphabet you will think its not so bad" A good example would be SRP, which stands...read more

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One of the big achievements of the blog had been to make it possible for men to publish their feelings without embarrasment. After all, blogs are basically just diaries translated on the internet and diaries, as everybody knows, exist for preteen girls to record their various crushes and to write their lame poetry. At least this has always been my understanding of the trade. Throughout the course of my childhood, the...read more

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