Some are going home

Well I wish it were me, but I still have work to do here in the wonderful world of Afghanistan. I am glad to see about 90 Vipers going home in a few days, our main body 1 is scheduled to be wheels up June third. I am on main body 2 and it can't get here soon enough. We will depart FOB Wolverine on or around the 7th of July for a wheels up from Kandahar on 9 July. I am being told that there is some mandatory training that we have to go through in Manas but hopefully that will only be a few days. I hope to be home by the ire to last week in July.

I am on the schedule a lot more now that we have fewer pilots here, we are shifting to pure QRF starting June first. That mission set will be TIC ( troops in contact ) or urgent medevac, we will posture for quick reaction force to support the ground troops. 

I spent the last week dealing with the BDE attorney because of one of our engagements. That's when I truly realized its time to get out of here. One of my teams was called in on two military aged males who were caring a PKM machine gun, once the AWT (attack weapons team) was on station the two males busted into a house where they shot at the low Apache then they made a run for it down a dried river bed. The team engaged the enemy and called two EKIA ( enemy killed in action) to higher. Then things got crazy, the GFC ( ground force commander) called for an immediate re attack so the AWT set up for an immediate re attack. They did all the right things they cot clearance to fire again from  the GFC and even got initials. But what they did not capture was why? They did not ask why the GFC wanted a re attack, under the laws of war once a target is considered to be out of the fight they can not be targeted. It took me a week to get the attorney off our back, the GFC two days after this engagement redeployed to the states. So the time it took to get sworn statements from him made it next to impossible to put this engagement behind us. What we were not tracking was that the GFC had a UAV (unmanned arial vehicle) in the stack that was giving home info that led him to be leave that the two males were still in the fight and he still considered them to be hostile and a threat. And that was all we needed to be in accordance with the laws of armed conflict. This is a different fight this tour, there are to many rules and there are too many people who sit behind a desk who have no idea what it is like to make those kinds of decisions especially when you are under fire. The ROE ( rules of engagement) is so restrictive this tour, I got it no one wants to have a bad shoot lord knows I don't but I tell my guys all the time that the right to self defense is without question. And that is why I know it is time to pack this place up and go home. This place has changed so many lives for the worse and the cost has just been to great. So many kids who came over here to fight our nations war will never be the same, and the outcome of this decade long war has not really changed anything. I would like to think that maybe just maybe we prevented some of these nuts from coming to America to do harm on our streets but I see in the news all the time of all the crazy things happening at home. Only God knows, but I know I am ready to go home. Well it's getting late and I need to get my beauty sleep so I will say good night for this one, night all