To my peoples from the Stan

Hello to you all from a place on Earth that God didn’t forget he just didn’t put Americans! A little place I like to call…the Stan! It’s hot, smells like $h!t, it’s hot, and there’s a lot of sand…..did I mention it’s hot out?

So where does the time go? I tell you time out here just flies sometimes. I keep so busy with so many different things that I forget what day is what. I feel like it’s been a month since I last wrote to you but I think it’s only been a week. But a busy week it’s been for me. So this is what has been going on….remember….take what I say with a grain of salt….I’m in a combat zone and yes war changes a person and my ‘give a f**k is partially broken’…..especially if you’ve been shot at, rocketed and found more IEDs that were emplaced to kill you and your Marines. Don’t freak out on me…..we are all still here and that’s just part of my job! ;)

So….the word on the dirt road (I would say street but there are no streets here….LOL) is that the TB is not going to come into the area because of the Coalition forces here. Or so the locals have been telling us. Neither are the drug smugglers for the same reason. I don’t believe a word of what the people are telling us but I do still trust the elders. It’s a difficult thing this trusting that we have going on. Mostly I put a lot of faith and trust with the elders for one reason and one reason alone….we have more guns then they do!  I know huh? ….It’s a pretty warped sense of humor and way to look at it but it’s logical. This isn’t Vietnam so we are not going out there and butt stroking people with our rifles, drinking beer, finding Mamasan’s, smoking dope and having a good time. They don’t ship us beer, there are no brothels (and I’ve only see one woman’s face…..yes the ugly witch looking woman), plenty of dope out here but not one Marine has sampled the goods but we find a way to have a good time.

Right now the poppy harvest is in full swing. I mean acres and acres of this stuff is in full bloom and the petals are falling off. Some of the farms have started the cutting, scraping and collecting process….I’ll send pictures later on today to show you. There are a lot of workers (like from Home Depot….but out here it’s more like mud hut Depot) that are coming in from out of town to work in the fields. Most are young military age males looking for work. Almost all get stoned, high or whatever when they are working in the fields. My Marines caught a kid yesterday with about 2 grams of raw opium/heroin on him. Back home the street value would be around $5k but out here it’s not very much. It’s not even enough for us to arrest him! The rules out here just Freaking suck for us sometimes….don’t get me started on rules…..just one thing I hate about being an officer is following and enforcing the rules. (if I was still enlisted I’d be a Corporal by now!)

So one of my squads also found more Marijuana seed a few days ago. I have to laugh because I’ve been to Venice Beach where some hippie guy is always selling hemp seeds and he has like 10 lbs of it. And you look and are like, ‘holy crap look at all those seeds!’ Well that just chump change for my guys. They found another 2500 pounds of it….yeah 25x100 pound bags of seeds alone. I’ll send you the pictures later. That’s their 3rd finding of seeds totaling 5500 pounds of seed that they’ve found. We collect samples, for medicinal purposes only…just kidding it’s proof… and toss the rest into the river/canal. It’s just another day in the Stan.

Had our usual Shura on Saturday and let me tell you….these old timers are tough but not tough enough for my CO. We played ‘good cop’ and ‘super bad cop’…..guess who was the good cop: ME! LOL. The boss played ‘super bad cop’ to a T and we had a good time. It’s actually a good thing because I’d like to drop the ‘F-bomb’ a little more but I don’t think the translators can say it in Pashtu.  So I got to swoop in and ‘save the day’ with my grand idea of how to come to an agreement on what the Marines want to do with the harvest and what the elders want us to do about the harvest. Needless to say we didn’t get exactly what we wanted but we are going to get what we want one way or another…..we have more guns….simple as that. But it’s not as simple as that. I get to deal with the fallout from the elders on everything: detainees (which is a whole different ball of wax), farmers that are upset because we walk through their fields and step on their crops, business owners who are upset because they want to lie to us to get more money for damages to their shop from when the initial ‘clearing phase’ happened in the bazaar, compound owners that are mad and want reimbursement because we shot their dog (there are no leash laws and some dogs are aggressive enough to attack Marines or our Military Working Dogs (which are Marines) so we will defend ourselves and kill the dogs without hesitation, so on and so on. It’s a real pain in my A$$ but I’m the appointed ‘Mayor of Taghaz’ (no extra pay included….lol) but really I’m the representative for the Marine Corps to the people.

So our Council of Elders is working out well. At least they are all (mostly) coming to the Shuras on Saturdays. I had to put them to shame last Saturday telling them I’d be here, due to the request of the DG, even if they were not…. Shame goes a long way out here….and I lay it on thick….super thick! (Thanks Mom for all the Catholic Guilt Trips… Your tutelage and examples are being used out here! Lol)

We have regular meetings on Wednesdays out here too. They are called CMOC missions…I was told the name for CMOC but I forget…..we have way too many acronyms in the military….funny side story: there was list generated (true story no joking around) with all the acronyms used in theater so people would understand what the hell was being said….it was 5 pages long! Anyways on Wednesdays we offer micro-grants to villagers who want to start-up, change or whatever a new business. Some rules apply like you can’t grow poppy or do anything that will support drugs, trades, selling etc. That goes for hashish since it is the next crop they would start to grow but it’s not going to happen. We’ve only had one CMOC day and we had NO takers. But there were two elders that were there for the whole thing so I had a long conversation with them while we settled some claim disputes. So it was still a productive day.

Well we had some real meat this week. We had steaks (if you dare to call that thin piece of leather I choked down with lots of fat and no flavor) a steak! Better than Spaghetti from a box like we usually have. Just so you know I have Spaghetti almost every night for dinner…..like NO $H!T every night! We usually have the option of two things. But on a lighter note I’ve received a lot of mail the past two weeks. Mrs. P thank you for sending like 25 boxes! I came back from patrol and had so many on my rack and in my living space that I couldn’t dress down without moving the boxes. I gave them to the Marines in my platoon and they thank you. Momma you too. My guys are very thankful for all the socks you sent. Their feet were getting pretty bad and they’ve been throwing away socks like it’s cool. Martha my love thank you for the kites. They’ve all been passed out and we see kites flying on a regular basis and it’s only been 3 days….in fact the day we started passing them out I was on my way back from a patrol and I saw one flying. I even helped this little boy to fly it before we stepped off on our return. Every kid on the block wants one more than a radio now…..it’s great. If you don’t know kite flying is like a national past time to the people. It was one of the first things the TB banned when they first came into power. So flying a kite is like flipping them ‘the bird’ when they see them. Very cool! Mr. Robinson thank you for your package……Nothing like having a cup of Starbucks in the morning. From one Marine to another Thank you. And thank all of you for sending packages, letters and your love. It means the world to me and I really do appreciate it. I won’t have time to hand write letters to you I’m sorry. I’ll be home before they get to you anyways and I’d rather sit down with you and have a drink together and catch up in person. It’s more meaningful to me and I owe it to you.

We are still doing good things out here. It has been a struggle and it is a challenge every day. Your emails keep my morale up …….way up so please keep dropping me a line when you can. Okay well I’m going to go for a run here inside the wire. I need to keep active or all my old football injuries start acting up. I’m not getting any younger and combat is a young Marines battle.

Semper Fi,

ws

PS: Please pass this to all those not on the above list. I don’t have Tennille’s, Ghetto Mike, and several others email addresses. It would be great if they could get this…..also it’s nice to receive some kind of acknowledgement when I send this out…..I am half way around the world fighting the War on Terrorism for your freedoms where people are trying to kill me and my Marines every day (that’s not a joke). No reply is like…..well let’s just say you’re an asshole for not replying…..if that’s too much well then you’re the asshole and just let me know you’d like not to receive anymore emails. I promise you I will not be offended….there are worse things that I have to deal with on a daily basis!