Won't Back Down...

I love the song Won't Back Down.  The Tom Petty arrangement is good, but my favorite one is Johnny Cash's.  There's just something righteous about it and it always gets my attention and makes me want to listen intently to it when it plays.  


Here are the lyrics:


[Verse 1]
Well I won't back down, no I won't back down
You can stand me up at the gates of hell
But I won't back down

[Verse 2]
Gonna stand my ground, won't be turned around
And I'll keep this world from draggin' me down
Gonna stand my ground and I won't back down

[Chorus]
Hey baby, there ain't no easy way out
Hey I will stand my ground and I won't back down

[Verse 3]
Well I know what's right, I got just one life
In a world that keeps on pushin' me around
But I stand my ground and I won't back down

[Chorus]
Hey baby, there ain't no easy way out
Hey I will stand my ground and I won't back down
No I won't back down.


[written by Tom Petty and Jeff Lynne]
copyright EMI APRIL MUSIC INC.

Christmas cheer? You tell me... (possibly NSFW)

Well... this Christmas is one that will be remembered forever, no doubt.  This is my good friend (and our squad's medic) SGT Larmer.  He's nuts, as I'm sure you can see at this point... and apparently has no problem risking his own ... well you get the idea.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Christmas Decorations!

Well, it's Christmas Eve and I finally put up some my decorations... I moved my roommate's tree because he's on leave and then set up my own in its place.  And then I strung lights all around my bed and shelving (as you can see in the pictures).  I don't have a whole lot to say about all this, I just thought I'd share the pictures, really...

Santa Shoemaker

So I got to play Santa over here in Afghanistan. My dad and his office sent over lots of food and batteries and some socks and head-lamps. There were tons and tons of Snickers bars, and Twix, and Milkyway. And tons and tons of AA and AAA Batteries. And also assorted snacks from other candies to beef jerky to chicken salad packs.

It was surprisingly difficult to get started, figuring out how to mix and match so many items without an assembly line so to speak... and all the moving around made me feel hot, and then I started to sweat and then my head felt itchy; but I powered through, Santa doesn't let an itchy head keep him from rewarding the nice with gifts and embarrassing the naughty with coal. So I had to trek onward.

Eventually I got sort of a system going, keeping track of which bags had what items and got them separated into different piles. Then it was basically as simple as just going around in a circle distributing the goods to the bags. As you can see, there was plenty of stuff and it all took up a lot of space in my little living space. I'm glad my roomie had just left for leave because that would have been more stuff and 1 person too many walking around our little room.

I kept stepping on the bags, and almost tripping myself, and catching stuff on the wires around

the computer, etc. But eventually, the bed was cleared off, the floor was covered with full bags, I was sweaty and ready to begin delivering the presents. Let's face it, there was no room for me to hang on to the bags until Christmas...

I took 3-4 bags at a time to each room and dropped them off.

Each guy was glad for the bag of goods (speaking of which, I hope my roommate doesn't mind that I used all his extra shopping bags...) It was fun to watch the ones that got head-lamps walking around with little red lights on their heads... and wearing smart wool socks with their flip-flops... silly soldiers.

It felt really good to give the presents to the guys, even if I didn't buy them. And it is really neat to see joy, happiness, and excitement in the guys. Morale has been a bit low as of late, but it's wonderful to see how the Christmas season can make a difference for soldiers who see hard things, traumatic things, and stupid things regularly here and where they don't have family to help them deal with it.

Mountain-Scapes and Sky-Scapes

Well, we just went on another overnight mission recently to support one of our platoons first missions into 'dangerous territory'. The most dangerous part turned out to be the trip out there... we had to travel along a mountain pass that was bumpy and sometimes was only a hair wider than the truck's track.

The last picture was at the Motor Pool at FOB Salerno. We had just returned from the mission and were getting our trucks looked at and maintained. The sunset was just gorgeous with the swirling clouds and the orange tinted sky... so I figured I'd share that with everyone.

Night Rainbow

I'm sure glad God chose to not flood the Earth again; and I'm grateful that He's given us the rainbow as a sign of His promise. But now I'm so thankful for Him giving me the opportunity to witness his promise at NIGHTTIME!

A friend of mine, SGT Larmer, was telling me this is pretty rare, and I know it's a bit hard to see it in the pictures, but there is a rainbow in the night sky, given off by the light of the moon. In fact there is a complete ring around the moon. If I had a camera and a different lens I could have tried to capture it, but as it is I couldn't

back away far enough to get it; but you CAN see the faint light arc above the moon in what I did manage to snap! The middle picture is probably the best one, you can make out the color change from inside to out, infrared to indigo.

I felt a little dumb... it's the kind of 'happening' that normally I would have liked to tell Natalie, take her outside and hold her hand and sit out in the yard staring and talking. But she's not in Afghanistan with me, so I went and got SSG Baker (my squad

leader). We didn't hold hands...

Well, we're moved. We've been moved for around a week now. As you can see it's tight but it's not too bad. We built shelves and stuff so we have places for most all our gear. We even have a little space set aside for Christmas! (not that presents will fit under our tree, of course...) What you can't see in the pictures is that I took my big Wall-Locker shelving unit from Salerno to here... hey, it fit in the trailer, so I took it! And good thing! It has all my clothing and food items on it! Anyway, we're all glad that it's not near as bad as we thought it was going to be. Granted, we have to go back to FOB Salerno every few days for laundry and showers... but still, it's not so bad.

Moving...

Well we're moving. My company is being moved off of FOB Salerno out to a communications outpost where we will be intended to operate as normal and come back to do duties at FOB Salerno. No one is exactly sure of the purpose of the move and the logistics make it apparent just how close impractical and impossible really are. It will be difficult to do our jobs at all if we can even pull them off. We will have to take regular trips back to Salerno for laundry, fuel, and as I said before, duties on the FOB to include security and convoy escort and taxi missions.

Moving is stressful, but for some reason packing is the worst part for me. I hate it. I get jittery and irritable and really feel the stress as i try to fit all my crap into bags and boxes and contemplate getting it all set up comfortably somewhere else.

We're all hoping the company is able to get high speed internet set up out there for us since most of us use the internet as our primary (if not sole) source for connecting back home. I know it's a necessity for me personally. I'm pretty sure I will lose my mind without the internet; but at least now I have an Xbox360 to give me a chance to zone out and disconnect from Bravo Company and Afghanistan.

Also, please note that it may be a LONG time before I am able to update this page... it will entirely depend on whether or not the company is able to get something set up for us, internet-wise.

(My camera was already packed, so I borrowed a friends to get these pictures for you all.)

when you work, you work hard

It used to pain me to admit when I was wrong; but even worse than me being wrong, it was so much worse to admit that my dad was right. Thankfully, I've grown and matured (I think...) over the years. Now I just go to great lengths to be sure I'm right. HA.

Anyway, a long time ago, my dad told me that we, as humans, are designed to work. Intended to work. He did what he could to teach me to work when there was work to be done, and to prioritize my activities to accomplish the work first before play. He told me, "when you work, you work hard; when you play, you play hard." I used to hate it when he gave me these talks (and many others), but now I'm glad he did it; in fact, I plan to torture my own child(ren) with many of the same rhetoric and timeless philosophies.

What I've noticed about myself, using others around me as comparison, is that I'm one of the few that received this valuable training. In the Army there are lots of orders going out all the time, many of them replacing or altering the previous orders. So, you never start working on a project the moment the order comes down the pipe. Instead you prepare to work on it. Gather guys, equipment, paperwork, etc... then hopefully by the time you've done all that you'll have a more finalized version of the order to operate on. This discourages men to work hard and to take action and initiative; but many of them are just plain lazy to begin with and this simply exacerbates the problem. What I've found is that others will begin to do the work, but not to get it done. It is obvious by the way they do their work that their goal is completely different than mine. I work hard, and I work fast. I work with the intent of finishing the task I was given. The others simply work to appear to be moving, to appear to be working. Successfully meeting their goal means someone thought they were working; success for me is moving the whole stack of wood, or unloading the entire trailer, etc. And, here's the crazy part, I feel GREAT about it. Seeing what I'm accomplishing and working hard to accomplish it feels good. Sadly, many of the other guys just don't get it; the feeling or the understanding.

There are a few who do not hesitate to work, and they work very hard right along side of me but their goal is still completely different than mine. For them it is still about appearances. They are military "Yes-men". They work hard to complete tasks to impress higher ups. This is great for being seen and earning promotions, but it's still not working because it feels good to work.

As bad as my attitude was toward work when I was younger I am surprised and relieved to see that somehow I accidentally ended up with a decent work ethic. Now if only I can convince a few other guys around here...

mmm, beans and lard

When we were at Khowst Provincial Headquarters (KPHQ) the police there made dinner for us each night. They don't use silverware or individual plates, but they know we do so they provided them. When they eat, they just use centralized plates and share from there and they use bread as their spoons. They also don't eat at a table...

You'll also notice, they made us dinner, at a table, with silverware and then didn't join us. They had their own group dinner in other rooms. I guess sitting in a chair hurts their butts about the same as sitting on the floor hurts ours... :)

The food tastes pretty good actually. But they use a good amount of fat in the beans and potatoes, and if there's meat in the beans it's gonna be fatty and have gristle in it. So I usually just push the meat off to the side. The rice and bread is always good; I look forward to that part each night.

Google Voice

So, instead of me explaining what's so great about this service and why I'd like to have it. I'll just post this link and you can watch the video for yourselves (by clicking 'Watch the Overview')...

Google Voice

KPHQ "Hotel"

So, this one is for Natalie. She had asked what I was sleeping in/on over the past and upcoming mission. And this is it!

It's not super impressive, but it's a bed with a mattress and there's only 4 of us in a room... not bad at all! AND it was warm during the night! Quite the change from our usual 'over-nighters'!

Cityscape:

Well, I took some pictures of the city at night but none of them turned out. Which is too bad because they would have better proved my point than these...

The thing is, at nighttime when you look out across the city it doesn't seem so far away; so foreign. At nighttime it's just a dark bunch of buildings and street lamps.

It's interesting how 'American' it all feels when all you can see are city lights and as you look out over the cityscape it just fades into the darkness. It's calming... for awhile.

But eventually, the light comes back and exposes the city for what it is... which is not American at all and it loses all that reminds me of home, as you can see from these daylight pictures.

Friends who care

Andrea:

God, be with Nate today...give him your love...and let him know you are with him every minute of the day...let him know that his family and friends miss him and are constantly praying and thinking of him...let him know you love him...let him feel your presence....give him strength to be the man you want him to be...AMEN

(edit: Sorry about the font size previously! I'm not sure what happened.)

"God Rays"

Look at the "God Rays" here. It's as though God is right there, right behind the cloud curtain. Without the clouds there it's just the sun in the sky, but when He pulls the clouds in front of His face it gets your attention as His glory comes peeking through. He just can't be contained. Thank you, God, for letting me find you.

Poor widdle guy...

So there are two puppies that wander around the Musa Khel DC. One is super timid and starts screaming and yelping the moment it thinks you're chasing it... the other one runs from people but at least doesn't cry about it. So, we chased it, caught it, cleaned it (with shaving cream), made it a house (complete with an MRE heater under the 'floor' for a furnace), fed it, and pet it a bit. And after he slept for a bit, we'd found we made a fast friend.

While we were sleeping, he had apparently sneaked into our room and cuddled up next to SSG Roberts... who later rolled over on him by accident... but that's beside the point.

It was neat to see how fast his attitude changed toward us once he figured out that we like dogs... which is a bit different than the sentiment afforded them by the Afghan soldiers and police...

Musa Khel (10th-14th)

So we left for Musa Khel on Blackhawks rather than Chinooks... which meant for less gear and multiple trips, but it did allow for much better pictures!

Musa Khel is a short flight from the city of Khowst over the mountains to the North.

The District Center (DC) is where the Afghan Uniformed Police (AUP, previously referred to as Afghan National Police or ANA) are stationed (supposedly... more on that below**), as well as a platoon of Afghan National Army (ANA) while we're there. The place has undergone a few attacks in its day, but as you can see it's still standing and is plenty secure.

Afghanistan is made up of a few different types of landscapes; as you can see, where we're stationed is absolutely beautiful. The mountains and rocks are simply stunning as the sunlight changes through the clouds and over the ridges. I find myself just sitting outside and constantly snapping pictures of the same things just because the light changed and I'm newly fascinated every few seconds or minutes. Even here on the other side of the world I'm provided with evidence that God knows exactly what He is doing and that He truly knows what it takes to create beauty.

**(So, the ANA heads out to the DC the day before we head out there because they serve as our security force, and then they leave a few minutes after we leave; the AUP, however, are supposed to always be out at the DC. It's supposed to be like police stations in the US where there is always someone manning the station. But, it turns out, they leave. As soon as we take off they go into our rooms, take all our bottled water, "rat" our MREs for the food they like (leaving the mess behind) and then head to their own homes, leaving the station completely empty until they hear the helicopters signalling our return. Sneaky sneaky...)

Years Behind...

So it's taken me WAY too long to get into the blog sphere... and for some reason I feel that I owe everyone an apology for that.

Natalie's blog has inspired me to attempt to 'catch-up' and since I'm in Afghanistan now this seems like the perfect time for me to give online updates about the goingson in my life.

I will do my best to provide text and photos that give you an idea of what I'm doing, what we're doing, and some just to let people remember what I look like :) I will do my best not to provide anything that will be 'scary'... so no one should be afraid to stop by and check out what's going on with me.

Now I guess all that's left is to see how I do at keeping it all up to date...

Wish me luck and report back often to see how things are going!