Humanitarian Aid

HA missions (Humanitarian Aid) are designed to win hearts and minds. What they consist of is taking food a supplies to a depressed are. The supplies consist of firewood blankets, jackets, shoes, and whatever else we might have on hand to distribute. They make you feel good and they are a good way of measuring how people in the area are feeling about coalition forces. Not that any of them are going to tell us they don't like us as we are handing them much needed materials. It is still interesting. You will see all the kids lined up wearing shoes and jackets and as soon as they see you pull the new jackets out they strip their poor kids down and send them up to us all shivering and looking pathetic. It is funny but kind of sad I guess they think if we see them wearing an old jacket that we aren't going to give them one, I guess it is a good thing we don't give out pants.

Here is what really happens, you get up at 4 a.m. to get ready to leave by 6. It is about 12 degrees outside and usually raining. This time of year it is always cloudy and rainy so everything is a muddy mess. Then you leave, you are in the back of the vehicle getting wet and cold and you know it is just starting and you have another 7 or 8 hours of the cold left. The temptation is to cover up from head to toe but you can't because you have to pay attention to everything that is going on around you. You don't try to pick the safe villages you pick the ones in Indian country the ones that take you right by the bad guys. What you hope for is someone to get froggy and start something, but this never happens. You just stay cold and hope one of the vehicles doesn't get stuck, but it will at least one always does. So no you are in cold mud trying to get a vehicle unstuck, good times. Also due to the everchanging Afghan landscape and lack of roads the route you pick never seems to work out, there is always a hill that is too steep or a Wadi that is too deep. It just happens. So now your 15 mile movement is 45 plus, keeping in mind that you average about 20 miles an hour. Yes sir goodtimes, goodtimes.

Not that I am bitter I mean I am glad to help the village out and really like seeing the kids faces, would just be nice to get in a fight on the way back.

M