Turning the page

The last four and a half months flew by. We are now a trained team, having been tested in training grounds across California on a variety of missions from convoy operations to infantry patrolling. The team roster will not change anymore (finally, we have Buddha, our Corpsman!), the location is set, all our bags are packed. As I write this, the rest of the Civil Affairs Detachment says their goodbyes to loved ones and friends, and pretends not to be too excited about the challenges lying in wait.

Our final weeks were accompanied by massive personal upheaval. The tectonic plates of my world shifted radically and I have reacted as best I could. I owe more than I can ever say to my family, who accepted my retreat into their embrace wordlessly and gratefully. No one could ever be more aware of their support system than I have been recently. Everyone contributed in their own way, and in each instance it was exactly what I needed.

Oddly enough, a simile relates my experience better than describing individual events. To me, the impending deployment was like a huge stone wall. It drew closer and closer, and my vision seemed to be restricted a little each day. The narrowing space pressed on me - emotions gain a new sense of urgency and threaten to sweep the comfortable world away. My anxiety never grew, however, as wave upon wave of individuals appeared to soothe my concerns and retreat quietly. Much has been given to me in this state, and I know who I owe.

This new vulnerability mixes strangely with my professional confidence. While recognizing the stresses inherent in our mission, a young(ish) man can't help but feel invigorated by the same knowledge - I am possessed by the blending of so much I value in my life into a vibrant seven-month strand. The task left to me is suppress the ego and allow my training and openness to suggest the correct course of action. What I mean to say is I will try to create the space for good to develop around me, and this concept has been applied when I return.

I think I'm spent. All that's left now is to negotiate the steepest learning curve of my life with the help of a few good men.

P.S. If you're interested in a more emo send-off, please see my blog post Saying Goodbye from last deployment. The specifics are no longer relevant but the substance remains the same.

Cleaning house

The six weeks leading up to deployment has been interesting to say the least. Focus has shifted in both the personal and professional sense toward re-orienting and simplifying as the days keeps sprinting by.

Right now Team 1 is focused on the culmination of our Civil Affairs training: the exercise known as Enhanced Mojave Viper, or EMV for short. For our partnered infantry unit this is the month-long comprehensive field test of all the skills they will need to accomplish their mission in Afghanistan. They incorporate all their organic and attached assets on missions as varied as intelligence gathering, combat operations, meetings with village leaders, and call for fire missions using artillery.

Did I mention it takes place in the southern California desert in late July and early August?

We support this infantry unit but are only involved in certain parts of EMV, specifically the last third or so. Our primary task is to set and run a Civil Military Operations Center (CMOC, pronounced "sea mock"). The CMOC will run over several days meant to simulate the three phases of stability operations according to classic counterinsurgency doctrine: clear, hold, and build.

The "clear" phase implies active combat operations, as in we're clearing the area of enemies. Our job here involves responding to humanitarian needs, possible setting up a dislocated civilian (DC) camp, or providing payments to people who have suffered losses during our operations.

"Hold" refers to the consolidation of our monopoly on security and the development of strong ties with local power brokers. Team 1's job here is to identify important civilians, gauge the population's sentiment, identify short- and medium-term projects, and to dispense funds.

Finally we have our "build" phase when the focus is on furthering local self-governance and security capacity. Here the messier work of placating angry leaders, reintegrating former combatants, training indigenous military and police forces, and reforming (or more likely instituting) the rule of law.

All these operations will be condensed into a very short period of time, of course, and we only "notionally" accomplish many of our tasks. Still, this time with our partnered units is invaluable: it allows us to see how we will integrate into their force structure and daily "battle rhythm". They get to see our faces and we become familiar with the movers and shakers on their end. All this makes our work in Afghanistan that much easier.

Our actual work in country will not be anywhere near this defined but it does help to have such clear expectations for desert dress rehearsal. The junior Marines and sailor in Team 1 - Creole, Mumbles, Dominicano, and our replacement medic that I'll call Buddha - will now get to see how many of their skills are to be used. Part of my job as the team Sergeant is to focus their attention on the most important aspects of our training given the mission at EMV, and then offer guidance on how best to accomplish them. This is no easy task but it's necessary to prove our value to the infantry Marines whose job is create the peace necessary for long-term stability in Afghanistan. The better we do at our jobs, the more LT can focus on the big picture and engage effectively with the other Marine leadership.

Focusing my Marines means first focusing myself, and that is a completely different task. Rather than working hard on simplifying my life as I have before, I have instead allowed those closest around me whose opinions I most value to point me in the right direction. Their honesty and perspective is what will help pare down the flotsam and jetsam I've accumulated over the months and even years. Only then will the important components of my Civil Affairs work appear as they should. And so, in keeping with this idea, I will say no more about my personal opinion (this is a blog after all) and just let the results speak for themselves. Who knows - I may even try to apply this to the rest of my life as well . . .

Civil Affairs vs Everyone Else

Much of the Civil Affairs mission appears strange to other Marines and to civilians who think they know what the military does in Afghanistan. The Marine Corps as a whole prides itself on being self-sufficient; we look to leverage other resources before using our own. The Marine Corps focuses on its primary mission to locate, close with, and destroy enemies; we try to get indigenous forces to complete this mission instead. Really it's a yin-yang dynamic. The Marine Corps is primarily military, so we must be political.

I'm well-aware of all these differences, but a recent conversation with another Marine veteran demonstrated just how much my perspective has changed in the last few months. Ten minutes after sitting down with our drinks we were arguing about the what was happening in Afghanistan. A little background here: my friend was in the infantry during the invasion of Iraq and then served in the second battle for Fallujah (the most intense urban combat seen since Khe Sanh in Vietnam) so his perspective is one of offensive military operations. The details of our conversation are not important; what really struck me was how I immediately sought ways to understand or identify with the Taliban and see them as a complex organization rather than as "the enemy" whose goal was to kill freedom-loving people all over the globe.

Of course, we need a lot more Marines with his perspective than mine, but in this particular fight we could probably stand to balance out the ratios a bit. As a Marine Officer put it to me, "The worst non-lethal threat we face in Afghanistan is Marines who don't get it." That is, those stuck in the offensive military model. There's a lot more to this fight than the Taliban as an insurgent group.

We often hear from others in the Civil Affairs/State Department community about how easy it is to discredit the standard arguments given about why people join or support violent movements. If it was religion, there would be a lot violence because fundamentalist madrassas [Islamic schools] are sprinkled all over the world. If it was money, there would be more of the 1,000,000,000 people in dire poverty taking up arms. The truth is we don't know - or more accurately, it's impossible to know for any one person or area by looking at large trends. It's our responsibility as CA Marines to analyze the local environment and figure out which factors are contributing to instability and (more importantly) which are NOT.

There may also regional or transnational points to consider, but the concept applies across the spectrum. That's what is so refreshing about CA compared to a lot of other work: it takes away the mental comfort of "knowing" things. There's an intrinsic humility in this sort of work when it's done properly. We seek out advice from the people around the area for everything we do. It's their problem so it has to be their solution. In fact, the more successful we are, the less credit we'll be given. The locals will see how much they've put into a given project and quite naturally decide the weird guys in the crazy camouflage suits didn't do a damn thing. We get to leave and they get to live. Fair trade in my opinion.

The best statistic I've heard illustrating this point is that approximately 75% of the schools we build in Afghanistan end up destroyed, while about 75% of those built by the locals survive. It might not be entirely accurate, but it's worth pondering.

TCAPF Round Two

The Tactical Conflict and Planning Assessment Framework was developed by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and adopted by the Marine Corps a few years ago. It has been folded more and more into predeployment training in hopes it will improve the effectiveness of our projects and activities in Afghanistan. Its actual implementation has been contentious and haphazard: many infantry Marines are not convinced of its utility. As with so many other things related to the difficulties of civilian-military coordination, the onus lies on Civil Affairs to prove all these new programs can help win the fight.

It has been a month and a half since Team 1 went to San Mateo for its first iteration of TCAPF training, and we started this three-day session with mixed feelings. Some of the USAID instructors were the same and they were duplicating much of the content from our previous training. To make matters worse, we lost the most charismatic instructor and he was replaced by a French Canadian. I don't know who exactly plans these things, but they were not thinking about their audience when they deemed a Canuck with an accent a suitable replacement.

As feared, the repetition had its effect almost immediately and most of our team did not engage the instructors. Things were spiced up slightly when the class was divided into two groups that competed against each other for points (which, so far as I could tell, were assigned pretty arbitrarily). Unfortunately this focused the Marines more on accumulating points than learning the material but at least it raised the enthusiasm level.

The first day closed with little being accomplished in the class, but we did learn a little about some of our classmates. Many of the others were from a reserve unit called the 3rd Civil Affairs Group (CAG, pronounced "kag") with CA deployment experience. They were able to bring their personal history into the class and offer different perspectives than the instructors'. As day one dragged on, the atmosphere became increasingly charged with tension between us and 3rd CAG, mostly due to the Canuck's sarcastic sense of humor - case in point: his comment after a silence in response to a question was "Come on! I heard Marine know how to think."

Way to go, Frenchy. What a great example of the charm that wooed the Germans into submission.

Day two moved from collection of information to analysis and then designing solutions to the identified problems. This was mostly review but we began to understand things better the second time around. The basic premise is simple: traditional aid, whether delivered through military or civilian, public or private, has not helped stabilize Afghanistan. For those of you keeping score, that's billions of US tax dollars wasted.

In any case, military commanders have resources at their disposal they will use in their local community. Our job is to use TCAPF to differentiate between needs (existing in endless supply) and sources of instability. To do this, we have to figure out what a significant percentage of the local population identifies as a problem. From there, we screen these priority grievances against a set of principles and what comes out the other end is . . . POOF! The local sources of instability. After that we figure out objectives and ways to measure how successful these efforts are.

All of this sounds common sensical but it hasn't been done consistently across any country we've given aid to, including Afghanistan. Civil Affairs Marines are the ones trained to do this and so we must occupy the role of advisor to those Marines tasked with approving projects, meetings, training programs, and so on. The military has limited time and resources - we rarely look at the opportunity cost of our efforts. After all, who wants to turn down the project building schools or digging wells? These are difficult things to turn down because they appear to benefit the community and (more importantly) they fit into our understanding of helping people.

These things swirled around in my head as we logged in hour after hour of checklists, questions, and matrices. By day three my comments had distinguished me to such an extent the USAID instructors asked me to be another assessor for practical application. Apparently they decided I "got it" and should be used to increase the number of groups. So instead of practicing I ended up grading other Marines as they worked with role players and interpreters (all Afghans here on visas) to develop their TCAPF skills.

Abilities varied widely and did not track with age or experience. Some of the older Marines with deployments to Afghanistan were not very good, and the two best interviewers I saw were corporals under 25. One red-headed female from Georgia came across so genial and friendly the role player answered all her questions despite his orders to the contrary. I suppose it will be somewhat different in country, but what do I know?

Taking stock of the training over the week, I decided this was very helpful. I learned the one thing I had been missing from the last round: perspective. My team should be able to ask the right questions for the right reasons and create a accurate picture of the local community, taking us one step closer to stabilizing the country.

Training at Fresno State

I was sent along with the senior officers and staff non-commissioned officers to a five day training course at Fresno State, the first of its kind. We had two main faculty who spent each day with us and led the wrap-up discussions following the final class on each subject. The course was broken down as follows: basics of small farms and soil analysis; irrigation; livestock; food crops and "agribusiness"; and post-harvest. An eight-hour training day was devoted to each topic.

We opened with an overview of the whole course, the instructors' backgrounds, and our expectations. After a brief presentation on the agricultural history of Afghanistan, our first class on soil began. The rhythm and sequence of instruction was familiar to anyone with military experience. A broad treatment of soil and its attendant issues followed by several narrowly focused classes before a Q&A session and break. After spending ten minutes trying to forget everything we just learned, the group reassembled and began the practical application portion, or "prac app" as it's known by Marines.

For the first day, our prac app was folded into a tour of the Fresno State farm, which is really a group of small farms with very different organizations and growing practices. We trudged through monocultures of corn in various stages of growth, then walked around small organic plots with at least ten plant varieties coexisting happily. Orchards of fruit trees, a new miniature kind of olive tree known as arbequina, large vineyards, and even a small area managed by a solar-powered sprinkler system were all on display. At each stop our instructors would point out the basic characteristics of the field and then focus on the soil and how it was helping (or hindering) optimal growth.

The most hands-on portion of day one was actually in a small lab near our classroom. Various tubs of soil were laid out on a table with little squeeze bottles of water next to each one. We had to take a handful of the dirt, get it wet, and identify the soil type. This required clenching, squeezing, rolling, fingering, pinching, and otherwise manhandling mud for the better part of an hour. We learned to notice little differences between sandier, siltier, and more clay-like soils.

It would become apparent on the second day during our irrigation courses just how much of an important the composition of the ground would have on crop yield and long-term agricultural viability. Given the primitive/dilapidated nature of Afghanistan's irrigation system, we could expect to have substantial impacts on productivity if irrigation could be better-matched with ground conditions.

We were attending the first run of this course, and the instructors were learning just as much as we were. Our irrigation training made this quite clear: we ended up spending time learning about technologically advanced systems of water distribution requiring electricity, trained mechanics, and a stable water source. Although our teachers had experience in many developing countries, they were still farmers and wanted to show off the best and brightest. Good feedback thus became crucial to this course's value; we needed to make the most of our allotted training and constantly focused the instruction on conditions we could expect to see once we arrived in Afghanistan.

By far my favorite day was the third, livestock. We spent the morning in the classroom learning about basic biological and physiological characteristics of ruminants (goats, cattle, sheep). These are the most common large animals in Afghanistan and represent much of a poor farmer's "investment" in the future. In a country with where per capita GDP hovers around $450, one goat worth $70 is nothing to scoff at.

Immediately after lunch the group ended up at nearby Reedley, a small two-year community college. There was a brief meet-and-greet with one professor and a few students, then we dove into an afternoon that should have been called Sheep 101. It covered a little bit of everything. We were given a chance to try herding approximately twenty-five sheep around a large pen, and learned quickly how difficult that can be with only one person. Our teacher for the afternoon relayed several tricks about minimizing your size, slowing your approach,and ascending toward them up a hill. These all shrink the sheep's "flight zone", the area around them you can't penetrate without provoking some kind of movement.

Next the sheep were herded into a small paddock and the day got a lot more interesting. Here we were taught handling skills: what direction to come from, where to grab their hind legs, where to grab their head, how to make them sit down, and so on. After an hour or so getting dirty, I felt confident I could tell if a sheep was having any major problems through a combination of visual, behavioral, and physical clues.

A two month-old lamb had died sometime the night before and this provided us an opportunity to see and touch the viscera. At this point several of the city-dwellers in our group showed their stripes and graciously bowed out, while the rest of us with at least a minimum of farm exposure hunkered down to smell what Lambchop had for dinner the night before.

Day four focused on agricultural business, or agribusiness as it's now known familiarly. This was mostly a study of various crops that grow in southern Afghanistan representing potential competitors to poppy. We covered many options and closest one from a commercial standpoint was actually marijuana-an odd coincidence. The big takeaway from this day was born of one instructor's experience in Africa: intercropping. Instead of trying to directly compete in a one crop to one crop model (e.g. wheat as a substitute for poppy) we should present alternatives with overlapping crops that can cumulatively match illicit crop's market price. The best example of this was a wheat/clover/honey combination with the added advantages of controlling pests, reducing vulnerability to bacteria, and diversifying income sources.

We wrapped up training with post-harvest activities. This could be anything from drying to storing to marketing and often involved all three. Many interesting and "low-tech" options for processing were presented in the morning and our group left with schematics for several solar dryers, a great option for Afghan farmers who grow pomegranates, cherries, grapes, and other cash crops.

Certificates and handshakes went around on Friday evening at the university president's house a few miles off campus. I left with forty hours of instruction under my belt, thirty pages of notes, over four hundred pages of material, and (most importantly) a little glimpse into a farmer's mindset. The value of this training lay mostly in its ability to get our group to look at the land differently or, as one instructor put it on the first day, to guess us "to think like dirt."

TCAPF

There are many tools at our disposal to carry out our civil affairs mission. The most interesting and innovative, in my opinion, is the Tactical Conflict Assessment and Planning Framework, known as TCAPF ("tee-caf"). My team recently attended some TCAPF training at San Mateo in Camp Pendleton, the home of the 5th Marine Regiment. One of the three battalions, 3rd Battalion, will be our parent unit in Afghanistan. That is, we will be attached to them and used as the Battalion Commander sees fit.

Though it was developed by the United Stated Agency for International Development (USAID), TCAPF has been adopted by the entire Marine Corps. USAID still operates the training program, and they use contractors to teach classes to the Marines. These are all former State Department, USAID, or military personnel, but none of them are currently employed by the federal government. I see this another nod to the stresses of war-time and overextension of our government's assets.

In any case, our team dutifully drove the winding stretch of Basilone Road that leads from Las Pulgas to the School of Infantry, and then took San Mateo Road to our destination. Like most mornings in late May and early June, it was overcast and chilly. The LT drove up separately in his truck (a domestic, of course) while the enlisted crew crammed into a Honda Accord. No one was in a particularly good mood: we had formed up for physical training (PT) at 0500 and barely had enough time to shower before we needed to leave Pulgas.

I can't speak for everyone else but the classes quickly made me forget the day's bad start. We had three instructors with over a decade of collective experience just in Afghanistan, and over twenty years if you counted Iraq and several African countries. They were all youngish--mid-thirties I would say--and quickly overcame the natural uneasiness felt by the assembled Marines with stories about their time in country.

The best thing the instructors did--and the most depressing--was recount individually how much money they had overseen in projects during their time as Foreign Service Officers. "$98 million." "$150 million." "$212 million." Then they dropped the bombshell: "None of us can tell you whether any of those projects really made a difference." What a statement to make! The point, it turned out, was how obsessed governments and NGOs are with performance measures: kilometers of road built, schools opened, vaccines delivered, and so on. TCAPF alters this focus: it is designed to measure impact, not performance. Using the measurements above, they would be changed into: Are people traveling more? Is the literacy rate going up? Is life expectancy increasing? These are things we should care about if we seek to stabilize Afghan society.

The instructors went over all this in the overview class, which was followed by a TCAPF basics class, then we rolled into Collections. This was a chance for the Marines to get up in front of the group and try their best to go over the four questions in the TCAPF questionnaire. The goal is to get the person's opinion on the general state of their area and gauge their attitude toward the government. These exchanges generally take place during patrols and are conducted by a junior enlisted Marine with villagers at random, ideally over a period of months.

A corporal from 3rd Battalion volunteered, and I held my breath. Thus far I was not feeling too welcome as one of their Civil Affairs Marines, and the general attitude toward this training would help me understand how difficult it would be to get these infantry Marines to respect (or even acknowledge) us.

"Salam Alaikum" So far, so good. At least he knows the greeting.
"Ah, hello sir, pleased to meet you. What is your name please? What are you doing here?"
"Don't f*cking worry about it." Crap. This is going to be painful.

Recounting the rest of the exchange wouldn't do much good. Sufficed to say things did not go well on the first try. Several other Marines went, including a Civil Affairs Marine from Team 3, and the atmosphere thawed out a bit. Later on in the training a few of the senior NCOs offered war stories from Iraq that showed how important this type of interaction can be, and I could see some of the younger guys nodding their heads. Maybe this wouldn't be so bad after all. We have a lot more training to go and not too much with these Marines before we meet up with them in Afghanistan, but hopefully they will remember enough from these classes to take us seriously when the time comes.

Motley Crew

There are four main civil affairs units in the Marine Corps, two reserve and two active duty. The reserve units are located in Washington DC (4th) and Camp Pendleton (3rd), while the active duty units are housed at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina (attached to the 10th Marine Regiment) and at Las Pulgas (attached to the 11th Marine Regiment). It is to the last of these that I belong.

Marines think it is strange that we are located here. After all, 11th Marines (AKA The Cannon Cockers) is an artillery unit having nothing to do after with our mission. In fact, we seem to have been placed here as an afterthought, perhaps having to do with available space on Pulgas. We have heard rumblings of being moved to the First Marine Expeditionary Force (I MEF) headquarters further south in Del Mar, but so far that has yielded nothing solid.

Our position is just one indicator of our pariah status. Another would be the Civil Affairs Course offered in Quantico, Virginia. The four-week class began less than a year ago and is staffed mostly by senior enlisted Marines with very little experience in civil affairs. Marines returning from the course found it compelling only because they started knowing absolutely nothing about our work.

This brings me to the most interesting aspect of our civil affairs detachment (all forty-something of us) and that is the variety of backgrounds. Most of the Marines arrived at this unit after being "offered" by their parent command, usually an artillery battery from 11th Marines. This crew comes from communications, heavy equipment, motor transportation, utilities, and so on. The officers also arrive from a variety of places and rarely have any background in civil affairs. I would bet less than one in ten would even have heard of this job before arriving at the shop. My story--an idealist dead set on working in civil affairs--seems to be almost unique.

The one exception is a fascinating young lance corporal I'll call Tongue. He spent four years as an interpreter for the United Nations, two for Doctors without Borders, and then two for USAID. For some reason (one I have a hard time fathoming) he focused on joining the Marines and is now working as our unofficial cultural/linguistic advisor. He already speaks five languages, improves his pashtu every day, and will prove invaluable for his team when they deploy.

I see Tongue as a harbinger of the future. As the Marine Corps recognizes the importance of governance and reconstruction as they relate to our broader objectives, it will begin to draw in people from more diverse backgrounds focused on non-traditional fields. They will enlist because they recognize the value of the challenges and traditions of the Marines while seeking broad and varied training applicable in the civilian sector. I hope time does not make me into a liar, because otherwise we will remain a motley crew.

Immersing in infantry

The pace of our training from day to day varies pretty dramatically. There tends to be a period of intense training followed by several days where we lick our wounds (in the form of vehicle maintenance, weapons cleaning, group discussions, physical training, and the omnipresent Pashtu training). This schedule works pretty well for me; it acts as a cycle of stimulus-response-recover that quickly pushed me back into my old Marine Corps habits. I've also discovered that my time in school gave me additional perspective. I can see how every part of our training interacts with and supports the others in ways that were impossible five or six years ago.

The Infantry Immersion Trainer (IIT) in northern Camp Pendleton is a great opportunity to take advantage of my maturity (a term I use lightly: I am still a seven year-old boy by most measures). A large L-shaped warehouse located in the middle of some old tomato fields, the IIT was the brainchild of Marine General James Mattis. He oversaw its construction in 2007, envisioning it as a realistic environment designed to produce the stresses of combat. Mistakes made in training could be used to improve performance on the battlefield, as well as to build confidence and unit camaraderie.

We arrived on a Monday morning and were greeted by the now-familiar contractor. Few of our instructors are Marines nowadays, instead former military dominate the ranks. They dress in the same fashion regardless of the weather or location: tan/khaki shirt, tan or olive green trousers, combat boots, a tan hat, goatee or beard, and wide, dark sunglasses. "Adam", as he introduced himself, ran through the safety rules of the IIT and had us start preparing for the first scenario.

The IIT is designed to look like an Iraqi village but has been modified as much as possible to Afghanistan's architecture now that the Marine Corps focuses exclusively on the latter. It has a small residential area on one end with several two story buildings, a marketplace, a district police station and hospital, a mosque, and then a residential area criss-crossed with narrow alleys. Each scenario is meant for a 7-13 man group and usually entails meeting with a village elder or the police chief, securing an area for a meeting, then patrolling out of the village.

During each mission our team was tested in different ways. Once we received fire immediately upon entering the village but ended up treating an Afghan who was wounded in an IED blast. A second time we received sniper fire and had to clear some buildings. In our third run-through an assassin tried to kill the district governor as he was giving a speech.

Despite only lasting about an hour per patrol, we were thoroughly tested in many of the skills we'll need in Afghanistan. Of all the great lessons here, however, the best is operating under stress. We use rubber bullets with paint tips (called sesam rounds) shot at about twice the muzzle velocity of a paintball fun: translation, they really hurt. The anticipation of this pain adds to the stress of the situation: the masks fog up, your heart rate skyrockets, breathing is unsteady, it's hard to hear the other Marines, the Muslim call to prayer sounds hauntingly over the loudspeakers, and you can taste the sand kicked up by everyone ahead of you. Take all this and then add in civilian actors, any of whom could be an insurgent, and this training feels pretty darn real.

After training we sat down with the assessors (contractors, naturally) and went over what we did well and what could be improved. After two days of this, broken only by a road march around 0400 the second morning, our team felt much more confident yet very aware of how far we had to go. That night we rode home to Las Pulgas in our uparmored Humvees, a little more prepared for the upcoming journey, now less than three months away.

Learning Pashto

On any given day where we are not in "the field" (a broad term encompassing training areas spread all over Southern California) you can expect to see language training on the schedule. There are two main languages spoken in Afghanistan, Pashto and Dari. Pashto, or the language of the Pashtuns, is used mostly in the south and the east. Dari (otherwise known as Afghan Farsi) more in the west where Afghanistan borders Iran. Many educated Afghans can speak both languages, but with a literacy rate of 4%, the odds of finding one is rare. My unit therefore focuses on the language we will most likely be using: Pashto.

The first time I looked at a weekly training schedule, I knew something was wrong with this so-called language training. It was plastered across every day for at least two hours, generally after noon chow. There were two explanations for this: either we had a dedicated Pashto speaker who was going to train use as a unit; or someone was using it as an excuse to avoid coming up with real training. In my experience, few people can sit down and work on anything by themselves for more than twenty minutes without getting distracted.

My first session revealed the answer. It was a joke: the training consisted in sitting at computers without speaking, running through the Rosetta Stone Pashto course with headphones on. I think it took six minutes before the first Marine was texting under the desk. Maybe five minutes.

My team and I sat through four of these days without complaint until I felt like I was going to lose my mind. It's not that Rosetta Stone is worthless, quite the contrary. It is, however, poorly tailored to the Marine Corps deployment cycle; Marines do not have enough time to get comfortable with the basic language before heading overseas. We instead focused on learning simple, direct phrases that are important to our civil affairs mission. I saw no need for us to know how to say "Two boys and one girl on the table."

I approached LT on a Friday (when he was sure to be in a good mood) and pitched my plan: Let me take the Marines and run through audio clips I've downloaded onto my computer. We can simulate conversations dealing with questions, important nouns - buildings, farm equipment, money - and pick up the habit of speaking in full sentences. LT didn't even hesitate. "Good, go do it." In case you didn't know, these are the four greatest words a Sergeant can hear.

These shorter, interactive sessions were received well by the guys. Some of the Rosetta Stone stuff helped, but their inability to say "Thank you" or "My name is" showed how little was being accomplished; they had, after all, been working on their Pashto for over a month before I got to the unit.

Mumbles actually shows the most aptitude for Pashto, proving yet again that God has a sense of humor. The others work hard but tend to get caught up in the repetitions and do not listen carefully to the accent and inflection. My time working on Spanish in college helped my ear and I try to work with everyone on pronunciation. Dominano has a hard time understanding why Pashto cannot have a Spanish accent.

On days or weeks when we go to the field I try to maintain our level of proficiency through games. I might have the Marines call out radio frequencies in Pashto, or count pull-ups out loud that way. People tend to stare when we exercise as a team with push-ups and count "Yow, Dwah, Dre - Yow! Yow, Dwah, Dre - Dwah! Yow, Dwah, Drew - Dre! Yow, Dwah, Dre - Saloor!.

I harbor no illusions about this training. We can only lay the groundwork and hope everyone gets enough exposure in Afghanistan to actually speak to locals. If we learn nothing else, however, it's a great exercise to build up the team's camaraderie.

Combat Lifesavers

Despite our grumblings, first team was split apart and sent to the four corners of the earth for the next week of training.

LT ended up in Arlington, Virginia for a week-long Provincial Reconstruction Team course. He basically learned a lot about the mindset of our civilian counterparts along with a better understanding how we can coordinate on projects in Afghanistan. They were a few Marines from our Civil Affairs unit, some Army guys, and then civilians who were soon to be deployed. Word on the street was the soldiers did not get along with anyone--apparently they were a little too Army Strong. LT returned with the look of a man who now has nightmares about PowerPoint briefs.

Creole and Dominicano went to the rifle and pistol range. This is an annual training requirement: classes on aiming and breathing, practicing the firing positions (with such exciting names as "the low kneeling" and "the sitting"), and finally qualifying on paper targets from distances up to 500 meters. It's mostly considered a joke by the Marines but can degenerate into pure hell if the weather takes a turn for the worst. It rained a bit for our guys, but it was nothing compared to my time spent on the windy, snow-covered fields of Quantico. Once again I found myself as the old man, starting off a story with "You guys have it easy. I remember . . ."

Drama was supposed to go to the range as well, but he managed to find a way to screw that up. During the classroom instruction portion he "had" to miss some of the mandatory classes to take care of his bed bug problem mentioned in an earlier post. After talking to the range coach at my behest, Drama said it was fine and he would be able to continue on the range. Two days later he nervously explained that somehow he had misunderstood and could not participate after all. And so he lived up to his namesake yet again.

Mumbles and I were planning to drive to 29 Palms for several days to attend a counterinsurgency course but that was put on hold so we could instead take a combat medic course known as Combat Lifesavers. I had been CLS qualified (meaning I finished the course conscious and with a strong pulse) immediately prior to my last deployment but was pretty skeptical of its value. A bad instructor made the entire curriculum worthless. If this was to be our fate, however, I would make the best of it.

The course got off to a bad start. The instructor, a young Filipino Navy medic from the Regimental Aid Station, showed up twenty minutes late out of breath. Mumbles and I were sitting with a few other Marines from our detachment arguing about whether Sylvester Stallone's tattoos were real or airbrushed for his new movie "The Expendables". Obviously we were upset at having to cut short this valuable discussion.

We launched right into the classes (after troubleshooting the obligatory laptop-projector malfunction, of course) and began learning about hemorrhage control. Pressure dressing, tourniquets, hemostatic agents: all the medical knowledge we would ever need flew by in standardized PowerPoint format. This is what the military refers to as an information dump. There was little we were expected to retain; practical application and follow-on testing would cement our new skills.

The same format - class, application, testing - was followed for breathing and chest injuries. At exactly 1030, after less than three hours of class, we were pronounced done for the day. CLS is supposed to be a four day, eight hour course! I'm as lazy as the next guy and really liked the idea of getting off early but the Marine in me (now commanding over 50% of my brain) would not waste this training week. Mumbles and I went for a run, hit the chow hall, studied some Pashto (the language of Southern Afghanistan), and then did some machine gun drills before getting off for the day.

Day two was not much better. Heat injuries, shock casualties, burn casualties, triage, and casualty evacuation came and went in quick succession. Again, done by 1030. Again, Mumbles and I worked on other skills and rehearsed everything from the previous day before heading back to our rooms. The only cool thing was getting to administer IVs to each other; my right arm still shows some bruising from the fumbling handiwork of nervous 19 year-old.

Day three was the last day because we'd gone through the classes so quickly; Mumbles and I tested first and both passed easily. Apparently I had learned something in the last five years (since originally leaving active duty). The course was pretty much a wash, but I had salvaged some sort of value. Mumbles and I were slightly better prepared to deploy as Marines, if not practitioners of civil affairs. And life goes on.

First Team

Armed with almost ten hours of sleep on Sunday night, I began the second week of training with my team. Days that are not composed of a strict curriculum (as was the case during Convoy Operations Course) allow LT and me to use a lot of creativity. There is no rule for what needs to happen on a given day, but everything must be tied into either building proficiency in our civil affairs mission or the basic Marine skills needed to operate in a combat zone.

This strange mix of the civil and the military is representative of our bastard child status in the Marines Corps. In no other unit would one go from PT (physical training) to machine gun drills to a brief on Pashtun culture in the span of three hours. As autonomous units we also need to focus on uncommon skills for enlisted Marines: powerpoint presentations, building assessments, Afghan agricultural crop information, and so on.

I got to see many facets of each Marines' strengths, weaknesses, and personalities as they struggled through the eclectic training each day. The junior team members coalesced into a fascinating group that never fails to frustrate, confound, or amuse me. Sometimes they manage to do several at once.

Creole is a twenty two year old finishing up his first enlistment. His dark skin and hair make him appear distinctly Latino but he is actually of French, African, and Native American descent, something his height betrays. For the last three and a half years he was attached to a Motor Transportation unit here at Last Pulgas, and he has the spare tire around his midsection to prove it. Creole volunteered for duty in civil affairs because he wanted to deploy to Afghanistan, and even his new bride's constant requests to the contrary could not change his mind. Of the young guys, he is the most motivated and willing to dive into the messy business of (re)building Afghanistan.

The next member of the team is Mumbles from Guadalajara, Mexico. Although Spanish is his first language, he has no problems speaking English; his biggest problem is actually the inability to speak above a fifty decibel level. Mumbles was my driver to 29 Palms: trying to hear him over the diesel engine's roar proved to be the most frustrating experience in a seven hour traffic jam. He is dating a girl who lives up in Reno but, in true native Mexican style, spends the weekends visiting his mother in central Los Angeles. Mumbles is the only junior enlisted Marine with deployment experience: he spent six months in Iraq last year cooped up in the cab of a 7-ton (big armored truck).

Our youngest and smallest Marine is Dominicano. He stands around 5'5" and probably weighs 135 pounds, which will present some interesting challenges as our communications guy responsible for carrying batteries that weigh 2 pounds each along with the rest (the total probably equals his body weight). There is an off-again, on-again girlfriend in the picture but Domicano fancies himself a ladies' man and thus rarely mentions her. His quick wit is matched perfectly by his mouth, and he impresses me constantly with his ability to learn. He recently confided in me he wants to earn a B.A. in Political Science and return to the Dominican Republic and "fix shit".

Along with all other Marine units, we have a Navy Corpsman who is responsible for medical training and care. I have not made my mind up yet, but I am very worried about our guy, Drama. Although he was recently promoted to Petty Office Third Class well ahead of his peers, Drama has a 6 month pregnant Marine wife and just about every personal problem you can imagine. In less than three weeks I've dealt with bedbugs in his apartment, moving apartments at the last minute, complications with the pregnancy, a huge fight with his wife, and now arranging marriage counseling for the happy couple. His nickname is obviously well-earned, although on his better days I can see what a huge asset he could be to the team. Only time will tell whether he makes the cut.

These four people are the members of Team #1, Civil Affairs Detachment, for whom I am responsible. I am their counselor, mother, father, accountant, personal trainer, and main source of information. I am the first person they see every morning to start the training day, and the one who lets them off in the evening. Even though we have spent little time together, I already know this will be a great group. I've already wanted to kill each of them several times over, but my affections for them to continue to grow with each passing day. First team, my team, our team.

The LT

Sunday morning broke clear and cold over the Pendleton mountains as the sun spilled out onto Las Pulgas. I awoke quickly and showered, one resurfacing military habit among many. Shaving, dressing, cleaning--all these were accomplished within twenty minutes. I was determined to make the most of each day, and my mind was already focused on the work to be done for the upcoming week.

Before being dismissed on Saturday, LT had requested we get together to discuss the team's training schedule and along with some general thoughts on methodology. He lived near the 101 Diner on the Pacific Coast Highway in Encinitas, so we agreed to meet there around 1230.

Finding him in the normal Sunday brunch crowd was not difficult. LT stands a full 6'6" and weighs around 220 pounds. A narrow, intelligent face and piercing green eyes seems almost out of place on top of his large, muscular frame. Even a pair of thin framed glasses could not soften his overall appearance. He spoke deliberately and with good grammar, a deep baritone voice matching his appearance perfectly. I had to remind myself that this 2007 Notre Dame grad was actually two years my junior.

As a ground intelligence officer, LT had been to some of the most demanding training offered to new Marines, including the Infantry Officer Course. His first posting was with a Military Transition Team in Iraq, and he had only returned a few months ago from that deployment. Pushed into an intelligence job confining him to an office, LT quickly sought out another opportunity and landed at Civil Affairs.

LT was hard. None of his skills had had time to atrophy--he did not know yet how quickly the body and mind forget without sustainment. His expectations of me and the team would be very high, and this scared me. Well, it also motivated me but when I lay alone at night on my bed going over the day I would only see the deficiencies endemic to my "on again, off again" military career.

On this warm Sunday afternoon, however, the conversation was much more abstract. We spoke about the Civil Affairs mission, Afghanistan, politics, food, and women. I'm sure he learned more about me than vice versa, but he was an intelligence officer trained to gather relevant information--that and no one ever had to pull my leg to get me to talk. We conversed until the diner closed at 1400, then walked the four blocks to his westward-facing home.

Sunlight floated onto the porch where we sat with our feet (my shoes, his sandals) propped up on a off-white wooden patio table. I laughed thinking back two days to our conversations at 29 Palms: they were similar in content but took place on metal cots in a freezing K-span 100 miles from a name anyone would recognize. How many more of these informal debriefs would we have over the next year? In how many different places?

The day and the conversation began to cool so we parted ways about 1545, feeling more confident in the next week, each other, and our team. I walked with LT as far as the main road on his way to a haircut, shook his hand, and headed on my way. I drove north on I-5 slowly, letting the sun warm my face as my mind went over the day.

Home

After finishing the Convoy Operations Course in 29 Palms, our detachment headed back to my new home: Area 43, also known as Las Pulgas ("the fleas"). Located approximately halfway down Camp Pendleton on its north-south axis, Pulgas is the home of the 11th Marine Artillery Regiment--The Cannon Cockers. The regiment breaks down into batteries, and my unit, Civil Affairs, is attached to Headquarters Battery.

Before heading to 29 Palms, I had left everything I brought in my car, which I parked in the Headquarters Battery parking lot. We turned left on the first road past the baseball diamond/soccer field and I let out a long-held breath: the old Buick was where I left it and appeared intact. Petty theft is not unheard of on base, especially with vehicles loaded to the gills with military paraphernalia.

The convoy pulled onto the parade deck (a big concrete tarmac with metal bleachers on one end) parallel to the Civil Affairs building and we offloaded our gear. Being a Saturday, we could not turn in the vehicles so they were staged in a dirt lot several hundred meters down the road. We also had to take our radios and turn them once they were deemed suitably clean. After everything was completed to our leadership's satisfaction, we were let go and told to be back "on deck" and ready to train on Monday at 0630.

I had one of the Marines show me where the junior enlisted (Sergeant and below) slept, and he directed me to the Duty NCO, a sort of on-call Marine who takes care of problems during the evenings and weekends. She gave me the key to a temporary room used for newbies like myself and a rough sketch of how to get there. Despite my recent work with map reading, navigation, and GPS, I found myself lost in a series of small quadrangles and spent a full twenty minutes finding the room.

A flickering bulb greeted me when I flipped on the light switch. Dusty wall lockers, incomplete bed frames, and a small army of detached lamp shades filled what little space existed. I dropped my stuff off and wandered around Pulgas to get some food and a better sense of the place.

Immediately outside my barracks to the west is the Johnson Mess Hall, named after an old Sergeant Major from WWII. A tiny hill sits behind, crowned with the enlisted club and gym. To the southwest is the PX and parade deck along with most of the regimental headquarter buildings. Further on lies the Chapel, a small but clean white building occupying the highest point in camp.

Radiating out from the center of the base are supply, the armory, a tiny post office, and countless non-descript buildings of various uses--administrative, tactical, and so on. A new barracks is being built just north of my housing complex, and it promises the latest and greatest for the Marines of 2012 and onward.

Several sports fields lie on the eastern portion of the camp near the main access road. Groups of pull-up bars sprout like metal weeds from almost every bare patch of ground. I stopped at the the edge of the camp and shivered suddenly. A cold breeze pushed me back to my barracks room, where I continued reading Craig Mullaney's "A Soldier's Education" and breathed the stale air of my temporary quarters.

Afternoon dissolved into a cold night as I listened to the sounds of young men preparing for a night out with their buddies. Music, bravado, and alcohol flowed all around me and I smiled at its familiarity. Almost like being at Stanford, except the testosterone's about fifteen times higher. I drifted off the sleep around eleven, the barracks finally abandoned by my neighbors in search of the elusively memorably night. I slept soundly, my roots digging tentatively into this new home.

Convoy operations

The rest of the week up to Saturday morning was spent at Camp Wilson on 29 Palms. It's a desert training environment several miles away from the main base, which is many miles away from almost anything resembling civilization. For all intents and purposes, I was completely isolated, and this was exactly what I needed.

Every movement from the billeting area (the half soda can I mentioned in the last post) with my team became an opportunity to get to know them better and slowly ease myself back into the life of a Marine Sergeant. I made the team walk in formation, listened to their problems (two are married, one has a girlfriend, one went through a messy breakup, another should have been promoted last month, et cetera) and laid out my expectations.

During this week I made large strides in terms of my perspective and attitude. It was great to focus on something besides myself for a change. All of my college experience up to this point has been characterized by self-obsession: do the work, snag the internship, get the grades, check the boxes to ensure that good career, meet the people. Thinking instead about how to best prepare my team for Afghanistan was like being reborn.

The training during the week was about perfect for a first week back. The entire group (two teams and most of our headquarters unit) sat in on classes for the first two days with only a little break to practice HEAT and MET. This basically entails sitting in a armored Humvee and MRAP, respectively, that rotates while you are in it, simulating a rollover. After they stop the vehicle, you have to free yourself, get out, and set up security. This becomes very difficult when you are suspended by a seatbelt across your neck from (what is now) the ceiling of an MRAP with fifty pounds of body armor and a rifle.

The third day was a testament to technological progress. Separate bays resembling huge silver eggs were arranged around a combat operations center (i.e. a trailer with high-speed computers in it). Inside each egg was a series of projectors and screen arranged 360 degrees around a model Humvee. Once the program loaded, our teams were able to see each others' vehicles on their screens and go through several convoy scenarios. The guys running the simulation could add other people, IEDs, Obstacles, and blow up our vehicles. After each exercise we collected in one room and discussed what we could have done better.

The fourth and final day was our live convoy training. The instructors left earlier than us (meaning sometime around 0500) and set up compressed air IEDs, pop-up targets, and the like. We ran through an entire route filled with these obstacles, covering less than 10 kilometers in eleven hours. Each time we stopped, the unit practiced immediate action drills for responding to ambushes, IEDs, small arms fire, and other likely scenarios.

My role for most of the training was just a vehicle commander (one of five) sometimes in the lead vehicle, sometimes all the way in the back of the convoy responsible for rear security. It wasn't until the final exercise on the last day I was bumped unexpectedly up to convoy commander.

This was something the LT had mentioned I might have to do. It involves directing all the vehicles, calling to headquarters to report any issues, and generally making sure we don't get killed or lost. I was not feeling terribly prepared for this less than 100 hours back into the Corps but I couldn't exactly tell them no.

We kicked off my convoy slowly--there were lots of problem with our radios (collectively referred to as "comm"). Eventually we all had to switch to one frequency, which complicated the radio traffic significantly. I let HQ know we were rolling past checkpoint 5, and they gave the green light to proceed on our way. About one kilometer later, I dispatched two vehicles to check out a wadi (dried river bed) running perpendicular to our route, and soon realized this would be my test.

"Victor 2, be advised, there is a MAM (military age male) squatting by the side of the road. He appears to be digging. How should I proceed? Over." This transmission kicked off a 45-minute period of nonstop radio calls and heightened anxiety on my part as I struggled to use my brand-new training and almost-atrophied skills to call in the reports, clear the IED our "insurgent" had planted, and question the detainee. Whether it lived up to my ever-increasing standards or not, we at least accomplished all the missions and I lost it on the radio.

After a good late night team PT session of pullups, carrying sandbags, dips, and situps, the LT and I talked with the team about the course we had just completed. We touched on point after point related to their professional, personal, and unit performance. The junior Marines stood around us, sweating from the workout despite the cold desert air, their faces flush with exuberance at the successful completion of the week.

I woke up the next morning at 0500, ready to convoy back to Camp Pendleton but a little sad our team's first training had to end. The men were beginning to stand our in my head as distinct personalities with problems, senses of humor, personality quirks. I paused while conducting radio checks in the predawn light, thinking of how far I'd come in five days. It felt great to be responsible for Marines again, to be part of something larger than myself. The moment passed and I turned to the next task before we could turn our vehicles toward home.

First day back

I arrived at Camp Pendleton late Sunday night (April 4th) and snagged a temporary room for the night. The headquarters unit was already expecting me at 0730 so I only had a few hours to kill. Sleep didn't come easy, I was too excited about returning to the Corps after a year and a half away. Unfortunately, I hadn't even spent a day back in the Corps yet, and would describe myself as 5% back into "Marine mode".

The next morning was a great example of how much prior planning can avert headaches. I think I spent less than three hours running around base and managed to: 1) check in to the 1st Marine Division, 2) get my orders to 11th Marines, 3) get an ID card made, 4) register my vehicle, 5) start my financial paperwork, and 6) get issued all my field gear.

11th Marines is located at Las Pulgas (AKA Area 43) about twenty minutes from the main southern gate at Pendleton. I pulled up with my Buick full to bursting with all kinds of junk and reported in to my unit, Civil Affairs. My Lieutenant (from here on out known simply as "LT") met me and cheerfully informed me I had about fifteen minutes to assemble my Flak Jacket and find a Kevlar Combat Helmet--I was going to be a vehicle commander in our convoy to another Marine base out in the desert called 29 Palms.

Less than an hour later I stood equipped with most of my gear assembled, a borrowed helmet, an M4 rifle, and an armored Humvee with three Marines I had never met and a large M240B medium machine gun. "Welcome back", the Detachment Gunnery Sergeant told me, "You're now responsible for these guys and that vehicle. Make sure everything is good to go."

We left shortly after our convoy brief. It was a jumble of route names I didn't recognize, acronyms that had been created since my last tour, and a passenger list with only one familiar name: Treseder. I felt lost and completely unready. I wanted to raise my hand and call a timeout so I could review a few of my old notes on radio protocol and vehicle inspections. No one heard my mental request, and I tried to look like I was completely at ease. Unfortunately, it worked.

As the convoy commander gave the signal to head out, I steeled my resolve and tugged on the armored Humvee door; it's 350 lb weight a reminder I was not in the civilian world anymore. The vehicles (called "Vicks" in military radio jargon) rumbled to life and pulled out of the parking lot.

Besides my driver not remembering to switch the transfer case to 4-low on our drive (and thus slowing the entire convoy to a crawl on several inclines) nothing too crazy happened. LA traffic, which is not anymore fun in a military convoy, turned our 4-hour movement into a 6 and a half hour ordeal. We arrived in one piece and I silently congratulated myself on not doing anything stupid.

After finding our housing (a large building resembling half of a 150 foot soda can on its side) and fueling up the Humvees, we turned to the all-important tasks of hygiene and hitting the rack (AKA sleeping). Everyone was bone tired and just threw their gear down, but I was now 15% back into Marine mode and remembered enough to make all the guys from my team (#1, of course) put their cots together.

I spoke briefly with the LT about how the day went, our training schedule, and even swapped a few personal stories. He and I immediately hit it off--this was going to be a great deployment. Up to 20% Marine, my thoughts rested squarely on whether I would live up to his expectations of me as a college-educated and experience Sergeant.

When I was in Iraq I always brushed my teeth by the moonlight for some reason and I immediately slid back into this habit. Something about not having lights, I guess. As I stood in the darkened desert with a full starry sky sitting patiently over my head, I shook my head slowly and a smile half appeared.

Welcome back, indeed.