My Corner of Afghanistan

    Every war is different, certainly. Although there are generalities and commonalities in all, normally most fighting and combat have many elements that are similar. Some conflicts  are more outliers. I think I got to participate in an outlier war. It was war, and combat, but I was blessed, as were many of us. For a number of reasons. Yet certainly there was death, suffering, privation, and loss.

    Over a decade after the terrorists of Al Qaeda took down our huge symbols of might, plus wounded and maimed our military headquarters, and made martyrs of many an American, never to be forgotten, I found myself as a contractor over there. In the 'Stan. I was lucky, really, because I signed up to do my part yet I was not faced with the huge privations of so many. Not the incoming rockets, or sleepless nights in the field, or bullets flying, or smelly soldiers, them or us. 

    I had my corner. I wrote a book about it, sort of, starting near the end of 2021, and more or less done by 2022. I need to get it out there, but all in due time. It is a combination of reflection, memoir, and fiction. Perhaps like other war novels, or books. Movies and series. Some are even funny. Funny war shows. Maybe the thought is incongruous, but many of them work. MASH, Hogan's Heroes, McHale's Navy... There are the mixed dramas and more serious shows, too.

    My book is mostly serious, but there is fiction in it too. We shall see how it is received. Maybe for the good.

    In the meantime, I think about those times, those places, those peoples. I read about other conflicts, the books and articles and analyses. I think I have read the most about World War II and the U.S. Civil War. But there are endless cases to know about, to compare and contrast.

    Then there was mine. My little corner, if you will.

    I was assigned to Regional Command North, which covered nine provinces of the north, bordering a little of Iran, more Turkmenistan, a little of Uzbekistan, then more Tajikistan, and then... China. Yep, our northeast corner touched China at the Wakan Corridor. That little finger way over there.

    During my nine months up there, closer to the Uzbek border, we did not take many fatalities. There was one, pretty close to home to my roommate, but that was an exception. Notable, nonetheless.

    Every life counts; every life matters.

    My corner was more or less clean, but a family or more back in Arizona was altered back then, the month of October, thinking about it 12 falls later...

    Back in my corner of a safe home, on a pleasant and peaceful weekend in the homeland. Wars in Ukraine, with some North Koreans joining, and the mess in Palestine and Lebanon, while the Yemeni lobbing their missiles and drone rockets everywhere they can, and Iran looming with their occasional strikes and launches.

    Me I had three good meals, or if I skipped a breakfast or so to keep my weight in check. I slept in warm, comfortable places, got hours off of work. Met and grooved with many good Europeans.

    I have not read War and Peace, yet, but I started it in the 1980s when our mujahedeen (yes, same country as a kid, where I found myself in my young forties decades later) were dealing death and destruction upon the Soviet troops and their vaunted empire. While I did compel my 6th grade daughter to read it, and she did. She says she was glad that she did, some twelve years later. Now she can re-visit it, as I do partially. France versus Russia. How things change and they do not.

    We in our corners of our schools, our homes, our towns, our memories, our dreams.

    And the wars and troops march on.

    I need to publish that book. Although we know that truth is stranger than fiction. My fiction will not be too strange. Perhaps just right. To address a war. My corner. My time and place over there.

    Sleep well, my travelers and readers, dreamer and peacemakers.

    And later I might tell you of about the Lieutenant Colonel that trained me in the North that my platoon sergeant back in the States was effective at killing and striking back in 1999. Bozovic and Andrea, the European military man versus the American (U.S) one. A married man in his young forties, with a son in his teens. The second a former Marine, the first a former Serb Lieutenant. One the predator, the other the prey. The former Yugoslavia propped by Yeltsin's Russia, the NATO powers commanded by General Clarke, as it were. Both lived to tell the tale, and both should be done with the military now, I would imagine. Maybe now in Montenegro's case. 

    Look it up. Should cause less hurt feelings now. All is not fair in love and war. We should know.

    A different war, of course, but somehow all connected. Like us.

    The widows of those Afghan years of war, many hopefully young enough to re-marry and have a child or more, the Gold Star spouses and families.

    God love and bless them all. And us. And not jump into too many wars...