Well that was neat.

Hey everyone, since my last post I have been on about 4-5 missions, I cant remember.  I just got back from a 3 day mission to a base up north.  Its currently Sunday (June 10) and we got back at about 5pm or something, I cant remember its been a long few days.

For this mission it was all 1486th, our first mission as a stand alone company.  Almost all of 1st platoon went (my platoon) and it went really well and it was nice to work with people you actually know.  We went in the trucks we were assigned to which meant I was driving the scout vehicle.  I gotta say, I really liked it for the most part.  You get to see everything in front of you which is a lot, or a little depending on where you were at in Afghanistan.  Some parts were very desolate with little to no population whatsoever and other were very dense.  A few of the cities along the route had big bazaars, which if you don't know what that is, is basically a big outdoor shopping area where the Afghanis get a lot of their things.  One in particular in a city called Shah Joy was very busy and made traveling through the village pretty difficult.  I was trying to focus on driving, keeping control of the mine rollers (a contraption that sits on front of your truck to roll over any possible pressure plates for IEDs) and keep look out for people doing a variety of things and making sure we wouldn't get attacked.  The Taliban really enjoy shooting at us while we travel through busy areas because they know we don't want to shoot back into a crowd of people.  Luckily, we didn't see anything through Shah Joy.

I digress, we left in the morning from KAF at about 10am or so and got up to the FOB at about 1030pm.  We hit a few snags on the way, we were escorting HNTs or NATS (local nationals that transport supplies on their trucks to different bases) and they aren't exactly the most reliable means of transport on the world.  That is a severe understatement.  They break down ALL THE TIME.  If you go out with NATs and you don't have a breakdown, it is a literally a miracle.  We had one blow a tire and the convoy had to stop and pull security which basically means we block off the road and don't allow traffic through, which obviously pisses off the locals.  No one is allowed to get through our convoy when we have boots on the ground for obvious reasons.  So after we fixed the one's blown tire another's radiator blew out.  We ended up pulling that one back to a nearby FOB run by SF (special forces) who were none too pleased about that at all, but they were pretty cool about it.  We had to pick him up on the way back to KAF today.  We were stopped in the road for a total of about 5 hours or so between the two NAT breakdowns. Oh, also apparently they just randomly get out of their trucks for no real reason whatsoever.  Not while we are stopped, we are still moving as a convoy and they stop and get out and do..whatever it is they do and then hop back in and keep driving.  Thats not very comforting when you're rollign through an area known for their IED nad insurgent activity.  Not too mention before we left KAF we were supposed to have 20 NATs and only 10 showed up.  Either they forgot they were supposed to go (very unlikely because they wanted to get paid) or they got word of something thats going down on the route we were taking.  (Much more likely)

After we got the radiator fixed, we ran into something no soldier really wants to see.  The wonderful IED.  It didn't hit us, luckily it was caught so we had to stop AGAIN and wait for EOD (explosive ordnance disposal) to come and detonate it on site because it was dug in.  It only took them about an hour to get there and then they blew it and we had a front row seat.  I'll just say it was pretty awesome...and LOUD and it wasn't even a big one I guess.  They do a hell of a job clearing routes for us.  We got messages from the Romanians (they do a lot of route clearance as well) that the locals were claiming the Taliban had another one somewhere up the road, so we rolled pretty slow looking for it but we never found any indicators so we rolled through without incident. What we did see was a bunch of previous craters from either IEDs or us blowing the road up with MK-19 grenade launchers or howitzers.  Whoops.

So the base we went to was a blackout FOB, which basically means that after a certain time of the day there is no lights, no radio transmissions (including cell phones), no noise allowed, nothing because it is kind of in enemy territory and it is an SF FOB that they run missions out of.  We also found out at about 2am that they have artillery at this base.  Im sleeping very well after being o nthe road for 13 hours or so and I hear a voice over an intercom "Fire mission, fire mission, fire mission."  I was groggy so I didn't think much of it...Stupid me.  a few minutes later...BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!  Those howitzers were lighting somebody up, I mean raining hell on someone it was crazy and almost gave me a heart attack.  The next morning I woke up and saw that the howitzers were about 50m from where we were sleeping.  It was nuts.

My camera kind of died on the way there so I don't have any pictures, but I know some people on convoy did so when they put them online I will steal them and put them up on here for y'all.  Yes I said y'all, deal with it.  Time for me to go shower and get some rest.  Love you all!  Take care!

                                                            Bearcat 5

                                                              Scout Truck