BOOM!-!CRACK!-WIZ! 
These are sounds heard by most travelers. I’m talking about the sensual
explosion felt when you enter a ‘new place’, one completely foreign to that
with which you are familiar.  The smells,
tastes, culture, people…it’s endless.  
For most of us that is the type of trip we dream of, the trip we long to
experience, or do we?

The sounds I was referring to were the explosion of
RPGs and the crack and wiz of bullets ricocheting by.  I’d like to share with you the experiences of
today’s soldier, the ‘traveling soldier’. 
My brother is in the army and serving in Afghanistan. This is a brief
summary of his experiences.

******

I remember one of the first e-mails Michael wrote
home, he said “the people over here are like cattle.”  What he meant was that the people he has
encountered in Afghanistan are poor, uneducated, and know only 2 truths.  One truth is the Taliban.  The other is NATO and U.S. forces. 

The Taliban has a strong hold on a lot of the people
in Afghanistan, and for good reason: they pay well.  They pay well for serving in the Taliban and
also for farming poppy.  The U.S. forces
on the other hand, have been trying to counter this by building schools and
homes, creating jobs, and bringing things like running water to some of the
remote towns.  Michael said that this has
been having some positive effects but it will still be a long time, if ever,
that the Taliban are removed from power.    

Michael painted a picture for me of what it was like
over there when he first arrived.  He was
stationed in a small village a hundred miles or so from Kabul.  When he first arrived there was no running
water.  In order to take a shower they stood
under a garbage bag hung on a post with small holes poked in it.  His platoon slept on the ground in sleeping
bags and ate MREs for every meal.  MREs
are dried, Made Ready to Eat, meals.  You
can imagine how tasty they are just by the name. 

As for the terrain, it’s all mountains and valleys
as far as the eye can see, peak after peak stretching the length of the
horizon.  There are trees and underbrush;
fields take up what little flat land there is. 
There are a few dirt roads and paths that wind around, up and over
mountain after mountain.  Aside from the
fighting this is a very picturesque place.

Close your eyes. 
Imagine you are there.  The
mountains protrude from everywhere, valleys cut through the mountains, water
from the river rushing by.  It’s
beautiful, quiet and yet full of noise. 
The staple meat is goat.  The
people speak different dialects in every other valley and the local cultures
are different from town to town.  The
culture is so rich and diverse that even if you learn some of the local lingo
and traditions you’ll be lost again the minute you enter a different
village.  It’s almost overwhelming; it’s
truly unique.     

Exhausting is the word that best describes Michael’s
job [a soldier’s job].  It’s an
all-the-time job; 24hrs a day, 7 days a week. 
When not running patrols or pulling guard duty they are still kept
busy.  Any remaining time they have is
either filled with boredom or fatigue.  [Travel
for an avid traveler can be tiring, but 24/7 sounds overwhelming.]     

On patrol Michael has been in two major
firefights.  He describes the
sounds:  the crack of bullets, the thump
of RPGs, the whock-whock of helicopters. 
He tells me he can hear the distinction between different guns and
bullets by their unique sounds.  The most
distinctive sound he described was that of a 7.62 round.  7.62 is the size of the bullet fired by most
Taliban weapons.  When 7.62 rounds hit
and whiz around you, they make a cracking sound almost like the sound of a
whip.  It can really send a jolt through
you when one hits close. 

Some of the men haven’t been so lucky.  In the first firefight they encountered one
of Michael’s friends was directly hit with an RPG in the shoulder and
face.  He lost an eye and has plenty of
scars to go with it. 

Another heart-breaking story Michael told was about
a friend that had died.  His last words to
my brother were that he just wanted to see his baby girl born; he just wanted
to live long enough to see his daughter’s face. 
He died a few days before she was born.  
I don’t know the circumstances of the firefight; Michael didn’t want to
talk much about it.  But I guess the
where, the when, the why and the how don’t really matter, the damage is already
done.  I guess this is the price we pay
for war.

I want this article to paint a vivid picture of what
our soldiers are living through every day. 
It’s an intense experience. It’s very hard on a lot of the soldiers who are
unprepared for this kind of experience.  Its
more than war, it’s the stresses, triumphs, tastes, sounds… all the sensual
explosions involved with traveling too.  They
truly are ‘traveling-soldiers’.

For anyone who is interested in ways to help support
the soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan here are a few links worth checking out.   http://www.anysoldier.com/, https://islandwest.powweb.com/MikeGallagher,
http://www.americasupportsyou.mil/americasupportsyou/index.aspx

My brother has said that the support he receives is
amazing and it helps keep him and his men going.  He has received care packages from people he
doesn’t even know.  He said that kind of
support really makes the soldiers feel that people DO care about them. I think
we all know how much a little something from home can affect us when traveling,
even if it’s just something simple that you haven’t had in a while.  So don’t be afraid to send a care-package.

Michael will be in Afghanistan till [at least]
August of 2008.  Travel safe Michael.