A Year In The Sandbox

For anybody who hasn’t seen it on Facebook yet our team’s medic TSgt Kyle Baker took his own life just before Christmas. He had been in treatment for PTSD from our deployment. He left a wife and 3 kids.

http://www.texarkanagazette.com/news/deaths/2010/12/22/kyle-baker-61.php

Here are a couple stories from the Chicago Tribune about our security force company returning home. One has a short video of their homecoming, the other tells the story of the March 15th IED. Reading that story brought back a lot of feelings. Near he end it tells about how SFC Burleson reacted when he found out the other 2 guys didn’t make it. I remember exactly how I felt when I heard that, just crushed. Everybody expected to see SGT Abeyta and SPC Weinger again.

Not Everyone Comes Home

Celebration, Sorrow As Illinois National Guard Troops Return From Afghanistan

I’m in Manas now on my way home, should be there in less than a week!

The team that replaced us is interested in keeping this blog going. Once they get settled in and rolling they’ll start posting here. It’ll be nice to keep up with what’s going on in the province and I know some of you still have family there in JBad. So just because I’m coming home don’t delete this site from your favorites!

I’ve posted links to a lot of articles reporting positively about the PRTs and what we’re doing here. I came across one today that wasn’t so positive. The author makes a lot of good points and there’s really nothing in the article I can argue against based on my experience here. I don’t really have a solution.

http://photomaniacal.com/blog/humvees-in-a-china-shop-anna-husarska

We have a couple Chicago Tribune reporters embedding with us for a while and they did a story about our 4th of July celebration here.

4th of July in Nangarhar

Everything’s going fine here. If everything goes the way it should I’ll be back in San Antonio before August!