Tag Archives: Embed

An Embed Revisited

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You and your fear are fenced in together. Nowhere to run to (Photo: Loesche)

A week after our return to Germany I’m still pretty knackered. Our embed with the Apaches in the dusty country called Afghanistan just lingers there, hasn’t completely sunk in yet. It was a physical and mental challenge, bigger than I had anticipated.

For now, I have found refuge in the microcosm of the work office, where things are orderly and clean and predictable. This is the settling back into “normal” life, the Western world wants the Afghans so desperately to share with us.

I like being back in Germany where people stand for five minutes at the red lights at the pedestrian crossing even though there are no cars to be seen for miles. On the other hand, I hear, the army sends their soldiers to some Mediterranean resorts to decompress for a week. I could have lived through that, no question!

Dust
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Out of the Country

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Outskrit of Kabul from above (Foto: Heimken)

Outskirts of Kabul (Photo: Heimken)

We are finally out of the country. After 21 days. I’m sitting at the gate in Dubai typing this. It’s politically not correct to say, but when I was flying in to this filthy rich country shortly after 11.00 a.m. and I could see the well paved roads, the traffic, the high rises, I was just very glad to be back in “civilisation”.

We knew we could have trouble getting from the military terminal in Kabul first to the military main gate, which is a few kilometres down the runway, and then after passing through the security check point manned by the Belgian paras, getting onwards travel to Kabul International, the civillian part of the airport.

Getting out
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The Way Back

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Finally, the full V.I.P. treatment on our way back through Sharana (Photo: Loesche)

Meanwhile, Axel and I are back in Kabul. We arrived here yesterday at the military part of the airport. We are scheduled to fly on tomorrow in the morning to Dubai. The further we get from our embed, the more we wind down. Now, that we have some time to gather our thoughts, we slowly realise how exhausting this journey really was.

Three weeks were plenty.

We left the COP Sar Howza late on Saturday after we had the encounter with the mullah and mujahedeen Tuti. We were driven to the 172nd’s headquarters by MRAP convoy to Sharana and got there at around 22.00. The brigade’s PAO Major Buccino was waiting for us. He showed us our rooms. I was lucky to get room V.I.P. 2 this time. (About time. Buccino had been promising us the whole V.I.P. treatment since we first got here!).

In the news
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Jokes on the Radio

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The Afghan DJ in his studio in the combat outpost Sar Howza (Photo: Heimken)

Today, we did an interesting story on an Afghan DJ who runs a radio station on camp, for the population outside the wire. The station was set up by ISAF. Interestingly Iranian music seems to be all the hype. It’s what the 20-year-old plays a lot.

Apart from playing music he also reads out news he gets from the 3-66 Battalion headquarters in Sharana and he reads out jokes every now and then. It must be hard for him living on base with all the Americans, the only company he has are the interpreters working for the unit.

Lobster and Steak

Captain Perkins and his two platoons came back inside the wire, the outpost, from their five day mission yesterday evening. The company’s cook made them a special welcome meal – lobster and steak – to greet the men that were living without showers and good food for almost a week.
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Travel Pt. IV – Sharana to Sar Howza

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Veranda in the Foward Operating Base Sharana (Photo: Loesche)

We slept in. I got up at 8.30 a.m. Axel and I had breakfast and prepared for our over land travel to Sar Howza. We were driven to the headquarter barracks of 3-66 Battalion and met the commander Lieutenant Colonel Curtis Taylor from Texas in charge of the western part of Paktika province.

We were briefed on the activity in our area and how the war was going in general. The most interesting point he made was that the structure or make-up of the insurgent force was changing. Taylor said that there was a split occurring within the movement.

The older generation of fighters who had joined the mujahedin in the 1980s to fight the Russians was retiring. Incoming were young more radical fighters from Pakistan who Taylor described as a more thuggish type of insurgent who unlike the older generation had less respect for the general populous and wouldn’t care for civilian casualties.

Just after we had our chat in Taylor’s office we met Lieutenant Wolfsley who was going to take us with him to the combat outpost some 10 kilometres from Sharana. The drive would take us 30 minutes.

We were relieved to hear that the threat of an attack wasn’t that great. The road to Sar Howza was paved, which means the insurgents couldn’t bury pressure plates to set off roadside bombs. All the military vehicles also have so called jamming devices which block any attempt to detonate explosive devices via mobile phones.

MRAPs

Four huge Mine Resistant Ambush Protected Vehicles (MRAPs) were waiting for us. Axel got into one, I into another. I drove in the last vehicle under the command of Staff Sergeant Travis Colter, 26, from South Carolina and three other soldiers.
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In those vehicles you feel like driving in a submarine with wheels. They are stuffed full of electronic equipment from radios to fire extinguishers. The armour that protects the passengers from anything from gun rounds, rocket propelled grenades to roadside bombs is probably more than 10 cm thick.

Beef Jerky

I handed out some beef jerky to break the ice. We rolled past a rugged semi-desert landscape. All traffic that came our way from motor cycles with men with black turbans to battered cars and colourfully painted trucks loaded with firewood stopped ahead of the convoy pulling up by the roadside to let the MRAPs pass.

Somehow the trip was less nerve racking than I thought it would be. After 35 minutes we reached Sar Howza without any incident. When we entered the home of Apache Company 2-28 we had after four days of travel reached our final destination for the trip – some 8300 feet (2700 meters) above sea level.

Travel Pt. I Frankfurt to Kabul

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Pretending to work at Kabul International Airport. Relieved to have reached the first base (Foto: Heimken)

It has only just sunk in: I’m in Afghanistan and I’m with the military, going on an embed. It hit me hard whilst sitting on a bunk bed in an air conditioned tent full of US marines, US army and British soldiers and their gear. This is real, and Axel, the photographer, and I are complete rookies in this biz. Glad to have him with me though, may I say.

We touched down at Kabul International at 06:40, landing with the Afghan carrier Safi Air on a misty morning. I hadn’t slept at all since we left Frankfurt at 15:20 with Emirates flying to Dubai and landing there close to midnight – getting hit by 38 degrees Celsius leaving the aircraft.

The malls in the terminal were nicely air conditioned though. We sipped on a café latte from Costa, talking about our plans of what we might be able to cover in the three weeks in Afghanistan. To be honest we didn’t really have a clue what we were in for.

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