Afghanistan Notebook

Running the roads of Afghanistan

Every once in a while, a S.C. license plate can be spotted on a humvee around these parts. As you might imagine, the humvees are being driven by members of the S.C. National Guard's 218th Brigade Combat Team.
Above, is the humvee of Capt. Jason Cain, commander of SECFOR's Charlie Company. Cain, of Charleston, snapped this shot of his truck parked at Camp Hughey, in Jalabad.
Back in South Carolina, Cain's unit is part of the 1st Battalion, 118th Infantry, and headquartered at Union.
To the left is a shot of one of Bravo Company's truck parked at Kandahar Airfield. The soldiers bolted on the S.C. plates shortly after they arrived in Afghanistan. The plates are definitely attention-getters as the trucks roll through the heart of Taliban-friendly Kandahar Province. Bravo Company, also a unit of the 1-118th, is headquartered at Fountain Inn.

218th troops back medal for Brits

Soldiers of the South Carolina's 218th Brigade Combat Team have lent their support to a London paper's campaign to honor British troops.
As hard as it may seem to be believe, the British military doesn't award a medal to personnel who've been wounded or killed in enemy action.
The Purple Heart, awarded to U.S. personnel, was instituted by the first general of the Army -- George Washington.
The Daily Mirror has taken up the cause to see that British troops receive a similar honor.

Here's the Mirror's story quoting members of the 218th:

"Sgt Brian Craft, Colonel Ed Kornish, Sgt Major Andrew Bolt and Major Bill Connor agree that the American Purple Heart medal awarded to US soldiers killed or wounded in action is seen as vital to troop morale and the families of those who die. Sgt Craft, 30, summed up their feelings by saying: "No American soldier out here can believe you guys don't already have a similar medal." Sgt Major Bolt, 42, added: "I've seen what reaction people have to the Heart in the US. I've also seen how British soldiers work out here and they really are great professionals, who lay their lives on the line."

The paper also reports that 89 British troops have been killed in Afghanistan since 2001; 174 have died in Iraq since 2003.

Check out the following link:
http://www.mirror.co.uk/ourboys/news/2008/02/19/us-troops-in-afghanistan-back-the-mirror-s-medal-campaign-89520-20324181/

Salute to the Cav

Members of 2nd Platoon pose for a picture after a recent ceremony.

Take a close look at the images. They may be last you’ll see of a member of the S.C. Army National Guard wearing a Stetson.

That’s right, the cavalry is going away.

B Troop, 202 Cavalry is being decommissioned as part of the Guard’s transformation and reorganization.

Here at Camp Phoenix, about half of the soldiers in Delta Company, which is under the SecFor Battalion, are members of the Beaufort-based unit.

Serving as an armored scout unit was B Troop’s primary mission.

But as part of the 218th Brigade Combat Team, the soldiers have handled an assortment of missions from convoy operations to intel gathering to presence patrols. Almost every day they venture outside the wire.
In September, B Troop, which traces its lineage to before the Revolutionary War, will be out of business. An MP battalion is being stood up in the Cav’s place.

Wearing a Stetson is just one thing that sets the cavalry apart from the rest of the Army.

True to their heritage, the troops also wear spurs.

But first they must earn them.

To wear silver spurs, a soldier has to march 15 miles with a 35-pound rucksack, pass a 50-question test on the unit’s history, and be familiar the all the weapons the troop uses.

A cavalryman earns his gold spurs by going into combat with the unit.

As this deployment for the 218^th Brigade Combat Team winds down, various units are handing out awards.

These images are of the 2^nd Platoon’s award ceremony, which was held at the RRF (Ready Reaction Force) shack at Camp Phoenix. The troops were awarded the Army Commendation Medal or Army Achievement Medal.

Back in May, I wrote a feature about riding along with the 2^nd Platoon. A video is posted on the S.C. at War page.

 

 

Wild about Harry

Prince Harry with Capt. Dylan Goff of Columbia. Look closely and you'll see
the prince is sporting a beard, something that appear in the photo op images released
to the news media. (Photos courtesy of Dylan Goff)

Before this gets to the Fleet Street press, thought we'd publish via the blog some more pictures of  Prince Harry hanging with the S.C. troops.
The above phone shows the prince posing with Capt. Dylan Goff of Columbia.
Goff said the picture was taken near Musa Qaleh in Helmand Province, a hotbed of Taliban resistance.
"Harry was serving as a joint tactical air controller providing close air support for my team of U.S. mentors and ANP (Afghan National Police) clearing the villages and tunnel complexes in the area," Goff said in an e-mail.  "We met afterward and I was able to speak with him briefly and have the picture taken."
At left, is a picture of the prince and Sgt. 1st Class Lamar Johnson, who's the team sergeant of Goff's police mentor unit. Johnson's a member of the Georgia National Guard and hails from Atlanta.
Goff, a graduate of The Citadel, was in his third year of law school when he was called up for the Afghanistan mission.
Last week, The State ran a story about Harry meeting another Citadel alum, Lt. Col. Bill Connor, of Orangeburg.
The prince spent 10 weeks in Afghanistan and his whereabouts had been embargoed until the Drudge Report broke the story.
After the world knew where Harry was, the British military decided to pull him out of Afghanistan. Commanders feared that the Taliban would target the prince, exposing him and his fellow soldiers to greater danger. In other words, the prince would be a "bullet magnet."

Catching up with the notebook

This may be one of the dirtiest and nastiest places on Earth, but it also can be
one of the most scenic. This is a pic of the snow-covered mountains south of Camp
Phoenix. The camp's outside wall is in the foreground.

Heartfelt thanks

The pundits say Afghanistan is the forgotten war, lurking somewhere in the American subconscious as the country grapples with what to do next in the bloodier and unpopular Iraq war.

And, after being here for almost a year, it’s possible to think that even you have been forgotten.

But that isn’t the case for S.C. National Guard troops. Families, friends, neighbors, churches, and businesses across the state have jumped in to back the troops of the 218^th Brigade Combat Team.

“Tell everyone back home how much we appreciate their support,” Staff Sgt. Clyde Waddell told me the other day as we talked outside the PX.

“It means a lot, it really does,” his voice choking.

Then Waddell, a Vietnam veteran, put his hand on my shoulder and fought back tears.

“I’m sorry,” he said, shaking his head.

There was no need to apologize.

Making a difference

When I was back home for a break, one of the most frequent questions folks I fielded was whether “we” were making a difference.

“We,” I inferred, was the U.S. military and its coalition partners.

It’s a tough question to answer because in Afghanistan nothing ever is what it seems.

For every negative statistic and fact, you can counter with a positive.

But the other day while convoying back to Kabul from Bagram, I thought we had taken a different route. The road seemed different than the one I had traveled about eight months ago.

As we approached Kabul, I noticed that small businesses and villages had sprouted from the ground.

The commanders say the best measure of how well a counterinsurgency is working is whether the people feel secure. If they feel secure, they will open businesses and build houses.

Apparently, in that stretch of the Kabul-Bagram Road, a difference has been made.

War costs going up for Taliban, too

What the Taliban and al Qaida are paying people to fight for them is another way to gauge how the war is going.

Pay for a Taiban fighter is up to $600 a month from just $60 a few years ago, said Command Sgt. Maj. John Harrelson, the brigade’s senior enlisted leader.

The going rate to plant a bomb is $500 to $1,000, and suicide bomber’s family earns $10,000.

The Taliban’s costs have increased because it has to recruit foreign fighters from places like Chechnya Yemen, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, added Harrelson, of North Myrtle Beach.

Don’t expect the Taliban to go broke, though. Most of its money comes from the country’s illicit drug trade. And, with Afgahnistan producing about 95 percent of the world’s heroin, the Taliban won’t be running out of money any time soon.