The war in Afghanistan basically started in this the Northern part of Afghanistan. The prison in which "The American Taliban" John Walker Lind was found, and the first American Casualty of the war in Afghanistan CIA Operative Mike Spann was killed in Qala-i-Jangi. Qala-i-Jangi is just outside of our base. Planning to take a tour of the prison in the next few weeks, once all the hand over of authority is completed.
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
I'm here.
Made it safely to my new home for the next 9 or so month of Camp Mike Spann this past Saturday. Mike Spann is on the southwest side of Mazar-e-Shariff, in the Northern part of Afghanistan. It has been surprisingly warm since we got here, at least compared to what I was experiencing while training in Germany. Germany seemed like it rained 80% of the time that we were there. I still have yet to be able to find a working phone in order to call my family, and it took me about three days to find internet access just to email them. Thus far I have been training with the LT that I am replacing to learn his job, the main thing that he has been passing along is to have patience.I have met my Afghan counterpart a couple times, and haven't really developed an initial impression of him yet. My one impression is that I grossly overestimated this base. There is no PX here in which to purchase basic necessities, so I'm going to have to rely on my family to supplies I might need. The base has more than 4 or 5 times the population than what our team had when they arrived, I would estimate more than a 1,000 people here including 10th Mountain Brigade headquarters, a Brigade Support Battalion, several different European OMLT teams including our combined team, plus numerous civilian contractors. As you can imagine it is a little tight living here. Currently I'm living, with my team, in a tent waiting for the team we are replacing to move out of our future quarters. The first night that we got here, there was a tremendous rain/thunder/lighting storm. The base the next day had turned into a giant mud-pit. Fortunately because of the heat, the ground has been drying out quickly. I'm looking forward to getting to work with my Afghan counterparts, and blogging about my adventures. More updates hopefully to follow soon.
Friday, May 21, 2010
What Got me here.
As I write this first update to my blog in close to a month, I am currently at Manas Air Base/International Airport in Northern Kyrgyzstan about 25 miles north of the capital Bishkek. The past month I have spent training at Camp Hohenfels, which is in the East-Southeastern portion of Bavaira Germany. Unfortunately I do not have personal computer, and had a difficult time find a public access internet to update my blog.
We ended up leaving Ft Polk a week later than we had orginally planned, being deplayed to ash over Europe from the erupting volcano over Iceland. Our travels had up leaving Ft Polk at 11:30pm to drive all night, only to arrive to Continental's Houston Airport 2 hours before the airport even opened. We departed Houston around 8:30am enroute to our first stop of Newark. To kill some time during our long layover in Newark, I wondered around the airport for a bit and ended up spending some time talking with a group of girls from Scotland enroute to Las Vegas to party and celebrate a friends birthday. While chatting with these gals more than once I found myself recalling the George Bernard Shaw quote of "We are two peoples, seperated by a common language." More than one occasion I had to polietly ask them to repeat or explain themselves while I worked through their accent and slang terms. A bit later I found out that as soldier flying overseas I would be allowed access to the Continental Club room, which I gladly took advantage of the offer. The best part of their Club room is they have showers available which was a great relief after being up as long as we had. For as much as I fly, I would give Continental an endorsement for the customer service and professionalism that they provided us that day.
Upon landing in Munich a bus took us to our new home for the next few weeks, Camp Hohenfels. We were also given the first opportunity to meet our new Croation partners for the first time. Initial impressions were overall pretty good. Most of the Croations are about our age our older, and most spoke pretty descent english. A couple of the drivers on the team struggle with english a bit, fortunately they know more english than we know how to speak Croation. Because we arrive a week later than we had orginally planned, we got right into training and preparing for "going into the training box" of JMTC Hohenfels.
While we were at Hohenfels there were several other teams from throughout Europe training to go to Afghanistan as ANA military advisor/trainers. Next to our barracks was a combined team, similar to ours, of National Guard soldiers from Ohio and Hungary. Additionally there were teams from Germany, France, Norway, Great Britian, Poland, Belgium, as well as a couple other countries which slip my mind. We were also given the opportunity to work soldiers from Afghanistan who were brought to Germany to do trainig away from Afghanistan, and at the same time give us an opportunity to experience working with Afghan soldiers for the first time.
The experience of learning to work with our Croation partners, while out in the field with soldiers from Afghanistan was a bit an experience. The Afghan soldiers proved that they are not afraid to fight, more than once when we would encounter an mock battle we had to slow them down from running into the fight. It became obvious that when we reached Afghanistan the challenge wouldn't be training them how to fight, as they have been fighting for a better part of the past 30 years. The challenge would be training them on the other parts of being a soldier such as supply and logistics, advance mission planning, mission and battle tracking. Some things that we as a western army seem to take for granted.
Our two weeks "In the box" seemed to go by quickly, and we developed a much closer working relationship with our Croation partners. After our training had ended we still had a week left at Camp Hohenfels to kill before our scheduled flight to Afghanistan. So we decided to take some time and do some sight seeing before leaving the area. The first day we had free, was one of the worst days of weather. Several guys decided to travel to the town of Regensburg, however I decided to stay behind hoping the weather would be better the next day. I was wrong the weather pretty much rained for the rest of the week that we were still in Europe. That weekend though we did charter a bus and travel to Prague the capital city of the Czech Republic.
Prague greatly exceeded my expectations, even though I truthfully didn't know what to expect. It was much larger than I expected, very old, very historic, filled with beauty, and most importantly very english friendly. My friend Mark and I ended up spending a couple days walking all over the city, and taking the subway system to see some of the major sights. Couple of the highlights were going to a Czech beer festival, and spending much of one day touring the Prague Castle complex. We spent a few dollars for admission to see the ancient mid-evil torture museum, as we as the museum of communism. Prague was also relaxing because it gave me the opporunity to get away for some of the guys in my team that I had been needing a break from.
After returning from Prague the rain still refused to stop coming down in Germany. We spent the next couple days preparing for our next move, packing up our supplies. Many of us sent back gifts and cards to our friends and families. As well as sending forward boxes to Afghanistan. The military had given us so much stuff that we were running out of room in our bags in which to carry everything. When it finally came time Hohenfels we got to look forward to couple days of intense traveling. We started in a bus at 11:30 in the evening to drive all night to Ramstein Air Force Base. We arrived as it opened to get in line, to be on the Space Available list to Afghanistan. Fortunately there were enough seats on an outbound flight and around noon we departed on the first leg of our journey. Our first leg has us flying approximately 5 hours to Incerlink (sp?) Air Force Base in Turkey to refuel and drop some folks off there. From Turkey we boarded the same flight and continued on to Manas Air Base/International Air Port in Northern Krygyzstan arriving around 2 am in the morning. After a few hours of unloading the plane, and briefings it was close to 7 am before we were able to get some descent rest. Almost 36 hours after our travels first began.
Below is a classic Python clip of what I felt like at times trying to deal with so many different languages at one time, German, Croatian, Dari (Afghan), Czech.
We ended up leaving Ft Polk a week later than we had orginally planned, being deplayed to ash over Europe from the erupting volcano over Iceland. Our travels had up leaving Ft Polk at 11:30pm to drive all night, only to arrive to Continental's Houston Airport 2 hours before the airport even opened. We departed Houston around 8:30am enroute to our first stop of Newark. To kill some time during our long layover in Newark, I wondered around the airport for a bit and ended up spending some time talking with a group of girls from Scotland enroute to Las Vegas to party and celebrate a friends birthday. While chatting with these gals more than once I found myself recalling the George Bernard Shaw quote of "We are two peoples, seperated by a common language." More than one occasion I had to polietly ask them to repeat or explain themselves while I worked through their accent and slang terms. A bit later I found out that as soldier flying overseas I would be allowed access to the Continental Club room, which I gladly took advantage of the offer. The best part of their Club room is they have showers available which was a great relief after being up as long as we had. For as much as I fly, I would give Continental an endorsement for the customer service and professionalism that they provided us that day.
Upon landing in Munich a bus took us to our new home for the next few weeks, Camp Hohenfels. We were also given the first opportunity to meet our new Croation partners for the first time. Initial impressions were overall pretty good. Most of the Croations are about our age our older, and most spoke pretty descent english. A couple of the drivers on the team struggle with english a bit, fortunately they know more english than we know how to speak Croation. Because we arrive a week later than we had orginally planned, we got right into training and preparing for "going into the training box" of JMTC Hohenfels.
While we were at Hohenfels there were several other teams from throughout Europe training to go to Afghanistan as ANA military advisor/trainers. Next to our barracks was a combined team, similar to ours, of National Guard soldiers from Ohio and Hungary. Additionally there were teams from Germany, France, Norway, Great Britian, Poland, Belgium, as well as a couple other countries which slip my mind. We were also given the opportunity to work soldiers from Afghanistan who were brought to Germany to do trainig away from Afghanistan, and at the same time give us an opportunity to experience working with Afghan soldiers for the first time.
The experience of learning to work with our Croation partners, while out in the field with soldiers from Afghanistan was a bit an experience. The Afghan soldiers proved that they are not afraid to fight, more than once when we would encounter an mock battle we had to slow them down from running into the fight. It became obvious that when we reached Afghanistan the challenge wouldn't be training them how to fight, as they have been fighting for a better part of the past 30 years. The challenge would be training them on the other parts of being a soldier such as supply and logistics, advance mission planning, mission and battle tracking. Some things that we as a western army seem to take for granted.
Our two weeks "In the box" seemed to go by quickly, and we developed a much closer working relationship with our Croation partners. After our training had ended we still had a week left at Camp Hohenfels to kill before our scheduled flight to Afghanistan. So we decided to take some time and do some sight seeing before leaving the area. The first day we had free, was one of the worst days of weather. Several guys decided to travel to the town of Regensburg, however I decided to stay behind hoping the weather would be better the next day. I was wrong the weather pretty much rained for the rest of the week that we were still in Europe. That weekend though we did charter a bus and travel to Prague the capital city of the Czech Republic.
Prague greatly exceeded my expectations, even though I truthfully didn't know what to expect. It was much larger than I expected, very old, very historic, filled with beauty, and most importantly very english friendly. My friend Mark and I ended up spending a couple days walking all over the city, and taking the subway system to see some of the major sights. Couple of the highlights were going to a Czech beer festival, and spending much of one day touring the Prague Castle complex. We spent a few dollars for admission to see the ancient mid-evil torture museum, as we as the museum of communism. Prague was also relaxing because it gave me the opporunity to get away for some of the guys in my team that I had been needing a break from.
After returning from Prague the rain still refused to stop coming down in Germany. We spent the next couple days preparing for our next move, packing up our supplies. Many of us sent back gifts and cards to our friends and families. As well as sending forward boxes to Afghanistan. The military had given us so much stuff that we were running out of room in our bags in which to carry everything. When it finally came time Hohenfels we got to look forward to couple days of intense traveling. We started in a bus at 11:30 in the evening to drive all night to Ramstein Air Force Base. We arrived as it opened to get in line, to be on the Space Available list to Afghanistan. Fortunately there were enough seats on an outbound flight and around noon we departed on the first leg of our journey. Our first leg has us flying approximately 5 hours to Incerlink (sp?) Air Force Base in Turkey to refuel and drop some folks off there. From Turkey we boarded the same flight and continued on to Manas Air Base/International Air Port in Northern Krygyzstan arriving around 2 am in the morning. After a few hours of unloading the plane, and briefings it was close to 7 am before we were able to get some descent rest. Almost 36 hours after our travels first began.
Below is a classic Python clip of what I felt like at times trying to deal with so many different languages at one time, German, Croatian, Dari (Afghan), Czech.
Friday, May 07, 2010
Made it safely to Germany a couple weeks ago. Unfortunately I do not have consitent Internet access so I probably will not be able to update my blog till I reach Afghanistan. I will try and send some cards to my friends for whom I have addresses for.
When I reach Afghanistan, in a few short weeks, my mailing address there will be
CPT Marc Rassler
MN CS OMLT
Camp Mike Spann
APO AE 09368
I look forward to updating you more when I get in country. Till then, more Army training (fortunately for this block it is in Southeastern Germany).
When I reach Afghanistan, in a few short weeks, my mailing address there will be
CPT Marc Rassler
MN CS OMLT
Camp Mike Spann
APO AE 09368
I look forward to updating you more when I get in country. Till then, more Army training (fortunately for this block it is in Southeastern Germany).
Friday, April 23, 2010
lifesaver
Not only can I ride a motorcycle, pilot a plane or helicopter, shoot a machine gun, I also save lives by donating blood! I am now to almost 7 gallons of blood donated in my lifetime.
Thursday, April 22, 2010
My Name Ain't Baby, it's "Marc", "Mr. Rassler" if your Nasty.
Very early Monday morning my team and I drove to Houston International Airport without very high hopes that we would be able to fully complete our journey to Germany. After about a couple hours of driving someone in our gang with a new 'smart' phone was able to look up and determine that our flight to Germany had been canceled. We tried making some phone calls back to Fort Polk to see if we could turn the bus around, as it wasn't worth continuing the trip. Their answer was to continue to the airport, as part of the flight was still showing as good. After a couple more hours of driving we finally made it to the airport, and I walked in and talked to the gate agent. Her polite response, was I don't know why you guys wasted your time driving here as we would have never boarded you in Houston only to have you stuck in Newark. So we made the four hour drive back to Fort Polk, and began the waiting game for our next flight. At this point, because of the back-up caused by the giant ash cloud over Europe, it looks like it might be a week spent waiting here at Ft Polk.
Because we have graduated, and have no duties or tasks to complete we have been doing a bit of sitting around. Yesterday I went to the gym twice, and did a long session today. Forecast for the rest of the week, more gym time. It's probably best that I've been spending a lot of time in the gym, in order to help keep it clean. Yesterday I noticed some mice running around, so I rolled up my sleeves and let my pythons out of their cages, and choked the mice!
In order to make it seem like we are actually doing some Army training while we are sitting around, yesterday and today we practiced doing close quarters building and room clearing. We have also been doing trying some styles of self defense for some of the new modern weapons that the enemy might posses. The video below is a good example of the training we have been doing.
Because we have graduated, and have no duties or tasks to complete we have been doing a bit of sitting around. Yesterday I went to the gym twice, and did a long session today. Forecast for the rest of the week, more gym time. It's probably best that I've been spending a lot of time in the gym, in order to help keep it clean. Yesterday I noticed some mice running around, so I rolled up my sleeves and let my pythons out of their cages, and choked the mice!
In order to make it seem like we are actually doing some Army training while we are sitting around, yesterday and today we practiced doing close quarters building and room clearing. We have also been doing trying some styles of self defense for some of the new modern weapons that the enemy might posses. The video below is a good example of the training we have been doing.
Monday, April 19, 2010
Graduate of Fort Polk!
This past Friday my team and I, class 94, graduated and earned the right to leave Fort Polk. Truthfully one of the lamest "graduations" I have been a part. Mostly for the fact that we spent approximately an hour the night before, and a half hour the morning of just practicing the graduation ceremony. The only difficult thing that was tasked of our group was to stand in a straight line formation, come to attention and salute at the playing of the National Anthem. We also had to sing both the Army and Air Force songs, I didn't have the Air Force song memorized but I was able to lip sync it and I doubt anyone knew the difference.
Because of how are training was scheduled even though we had gone through a graduation ceremony we still were not to call it a day and bask in all of our new knowledge. Immediately after the ceremony we had to go to our arm's room and draw our our weapons and head out to the mounted convoy live-fire range. After about an hour drive, and a half hour of initial safety briefings we headed out to try our luck on the range. The first half of the range was the "blank fire" lane, which is designed to refine the battle drills that we have drawn up for given situations. For those unfamiliar with the term "battle drill", basically it means "If the enemy does 'X', our plan is that we will do 'Y'." Like learning how to run a play in football or basketball, they take practice to do the right and do them quickly. The blank fire range allowed to us to practice what we should do if we encounter a roadside IED, how to cross a water culvert (which according to recent enemy tactics is where IEDs are being hidden), or simply if bad guys appear from a hiding spot and start shooting at us. Simple answer for that last one is, we shoot back! After practicing many of techniques, we swapped out our blank rounds and began the live fire portion of the range. Unfortunately we had some weapons issues, and by the end of the lane only had one working weapons which sometimes happens in the real life. One weapon wouldn't work from the beginning, a second kept jamming and could only shoot a couple rounds at a time, and the other weapons just did not have many rounds and were out of ammunition by the end of the lane.
At the end of the live fire lane we simulated a medical emergency and bringing our soldiers to medevac helicopter. One thing that we learned from this portion is that having a man wounded is an instant force reducer. Not only is the injured man taken out of the fight, but it can take several healthy men also out of the fight to rescue and treat the injured. One of larger soldiers was notionally injured with all of his uniform and body armor pieces he was probably near 300 pounds, add to that the weight of our body armor and the awkward angles that our weapons create it can take more than four men to lift one man on a stretcher.
Saturday and Sunday we spent cleaning up our equipment and vehicles for turn-in, and preparation to leave. After handing over the Humvees that we had checked out from the Army, we spent the next couple days preparing for our departure from Fort Polk. With all the uniform pieces, equipment, and personal clothes and reading materials; it was like trying to stuff 12 pounds of crap into a 10 pound bag. By the time I finished packing my duffel bags, ruck sack, and carry on items there was hardly an once of free space. It is amazing at all the stuff that the Army gives to go to war. In addition to my weapons helmet and body armor we also have a load/ammo vest, four additional new sets of uniforms, a new multi-layer set of winter clothes, winter boots, sleeping bag and pad, first aid fanny pack, chemical protective suit and mask, PT uniforms, shave and shower kit, and whatever additional personal items a person can fit in with their remaining space. Since we know the unit we will be replacing, many guys took to mailing some items forward to meet us in theatre in order to make space in their duffel bags.
Because of how are training was scheduled even though we had gone through a graduation ceremony we still were not to call it a day and bask in all of our new knowledge. Immediately after the ceremony we had to go to our arm's room and draw our our weapons and head out to the mounted convoy live-fire range. After about an hour drive, and a half hour of initial safety briefings we headed out to try our luck on the range. The first half of the range was the "blank fire" lane, which is designed to refine the battle drills that we have drawn up for given situations. For those unfamiliar with the term "battle drill", basically it means "If the enemy does 'X', our plan is that we will do 'Y'." Like learning how to run a play in football or basketball, they take practice to do the right and do them quickly. The blank fire range allowed to us to practice what we should do if we encounter a roadside IED, how to cross a water culvert (which according to recent enemy tactics is where IEDs are being hidden), or simply if bad guys appear from a hiding spot and start shooting at us. Simple answer for that last one is, we shoot back! After practicing many of techniques, we swapped out our blank rounds and began the live fire portion of the range. Unfortunately we had some weapons issues, and by the end of the lane only had one working weapons which sometimes happens in the real life. One weapon wouldn't work from the beginning, a second kept jamming and could only shoot a couple rounds at a time, and the other weapons just did not have many rounds and were out of ammunition by the end of the lane.
At the end of the live fire lane we simulated a medical emergency and bringing our soldiers to medevac helicopter. One thing that we learned from this portion is that having a man wounded is an instant force reducer. Not only is the injured man taken out of the fight, but it can take several healthy men also out of the fight to rescue and treat the injured. One of larger soldiers was notionally injured with all of his uniform and body armor pieces he was probably near 300 pounds, add to that the weight of our body armor and the awkward angles that our weapons create it can take more than four men to lift one man on a stretcher.
Saturday and Sunday we spent cleaning up our equipment and vehicles for turn-in, and preparation to leave. After handing over the Humvees that we had checked out from the Army, we spent the next couple days preparing for our departure from Fort Polk. With all the uniform pieces, equipment, and personal clothes and reading materials; it was like trying to stuff 12 pounds of crap into a 10 pound bag. By the time I finished packing my duffel bags, ruck sack, and carry on items there was hardly an once of free space. It is amazing at all the stuff that the Army gives to go to war. In addition to my weapons helmet and body armor we also have a load/ammo vest, four additional new sets of uniforms, a new multi-layer set of winter clothes, winter boots, sleeping bag and pad, first aid fanny pack, chemical protective suit and mask, PT uniforms, shave and shower kit, and whatever additional personal items a person can fit in with their remaining space. Since we know the unit we will be replacing, many guys took to mailing some items forward to meet us in theatre in order to make space in their duffel bags.
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