Kabul, Afghanistan (2004)

This guy was one of the more pleasant DynCorp contractors. He was a former Navy SEAL, but didn’t spend a lot of time showing off his tattoos or thumping his chest.

One day he invited me to go out in the desert to get some range time.

We drove out into the middle of nowhere and set up a couple of targets and just started shooting.

Pretty soon out of nowhere, we had an audience watching our every move while huddling a respectful distance away.

When we started breaking down the targets, they walked over while giving us friendly waves. We said hello and gave them some water bottles, which was really all we had with us.

They then indicated they wanted to collect the brass ammo casings we had just fired. We said sure, and they proceeded to pick all of them up.

They were so poor that they were going to sell them for a little bit of money.

Kabul, Afghanistan (2004)

On a trip to Kandahar with the DynCorp contractors on one of the only trips I made outside of the Presidential compound.

They were all very accomplished (former Special Forces, Marine Force Recon, Navy SEALs), but they didn’t have a lot of soft skills.

We had just left the front gate and were a couple of miles down the road when the wheel fell off one of the vehicles.

While some of us stood around pulling security, I heard them arguing about how they were convinced one of the Afghans had sabotaged the vehicle by loosening the lug nuts.

Being a subscriber to Hanlon’s Law (“Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by stupidity.”), I was pretty convinced someone just forgot to tighten them correctly.

Later in my tour they caught an Afghan bringing supplies onto the base with small amounts of explosive residue on his vehicle.

In a place like Kabul, there were any number of explanations for why that might happen.

But, since I was a trained “interrogator,” they brought him to me and got an Afghan to translate.

He was a young kid and clearly scared, but I felt like I had to show these tough Special Operations types that I had value as well.

So when my warm up questions weren’t getting any type of reaction, I decided to go full Reid Technique and began to pepper him with some tougher ones before I finally whipped out some bullcrap and threw out, “You know, the exact same explosive residue that we found on your vehicle was used on an attack at an Afghan police station last week. Would there be any reason why that might be so?”

The kid’s eyes started to quiver and his cheeks puffed out before he vomited on my shoes.

After they had taken him away for more harsh interrogation, all of the DynCorp guys came up and were slapping me on the back. “Holy shit, man! You made that kid puke! Great job!”

I don’t know if the kid was involved in something or was completely innocent. I just manipulated his mind and he was either terrified he had been caught or terrified that he was about to be accused of something he had nothing to do with.

In an environment like that and under those circumstances, unfortunately, there was really no way for me to tell.

Baku, Azerbaijan (2004)

My room at the Hyatt. Probably my favorite hotel of all time. If not that, then easily Top 3.

I was on my way back from Kabul and had to spend a couple of days here to catch the next flight home.

After being 42 days in the desert of Afghanistan, I still remember getting chills as we flew across the Black Sea. Then it rained the entire time I was in Baku. It was such a contrast from what I’d just experienced that I was absolutely smitten with the place.

And the giant indoor pool and fitness room? Phenomenal.

Battle Of Attu

From FB:

“This Memorial Day marks the 75th anniversary of the Battle of Attu off the coast of Alaska. It was the only land battle of World War II fought on incorporated territory of the United States and the only land battle in which Japanese and American forces fought in Arctic conditions.The two-week battle ended when most of the Japanese defenders were killed in brutal hand-to-hand combat after a final Banzai charge broke through American lines. American forces suffered more than 3000 casualties, including 549 dead. Nearly 2,400 Japanese soldiers died with only 28 survivors. Nearly half of the native residents of Attu, taken as prisoners to Japan, died during their captivity. The rest were never permitted to return to their homes. Today it is part of the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge.”

Still Valid

May 28, 2021

From FB:

“May 28th is the birthday of Walker Percy, born in Birmingham, Alabama in 1916. Percy’s early life was marked by tragedy: his grandfather and father both committed suicide with shotguns, and his mother drowned when her car ran off the road into a stream. When his uncle in Greenville, Mississippi, adopted Percy and his little brothers, things took a turn for the better; it was there that he met his lifelong best friend, the neighbor boy Shelby Foote.

As teenagers they took a trip to Oxford to meet their hero, William Faulkner — Percy was so overwhelmed that he stayed in the car as Foote and Faulkner talked on the porch.

Percy went off to college in Chapel Hill, and later to New York for medical school. He contracted tuberculosis and spent the next two years at a sanitarium. It was, he later said, “the best thing that ever happened to me because it gave me a chance to quit medicine. I had a respectable excuse.”

Instead, Percy decided to be a full-time writer. He finished two novels—one was based on his experience at the sanitarium—neither of which he could get published. But he kept at it, and his novel The Moviegoer (1961) came out when he was 45. A year later it won the National Book Award. Percy published five more novels and many essays.

In 1976 Percy was a professor at Loyola University in New Orleans when a woman called him, asking him to read her son’s manuscript. He felt guilty turning her down—the woman’s son had committed suicide in part because of his despair over not being able to find a publisher for his novel—so Percy agreed, and was so impressed that he conspired to get it published. ‘A Confederacy of Dunces,’ by John Kennedy Toole went on to win the Pulitzer Prize for literature.”

Miami Beach, Florida (2009)

If I may be modest for a moment, I Dad well.

Always have.

“School’s Out”

From FB:

“In a 2008 Esquire interview, Cooper said: “When we did ‘School’s Out,’ I knew we had just done the national anthem. I’ve become the Francis Scott Key of the last day of school.”On May 13, 2009, Cooper performed this song at Arizona State University’s graduation ceremonies, where his son, Dash, was attending journalism school. Alice wore his varsity letter sweater from Cortez High (Class of ’66) for the performance….”

I play it ever year for the kids on the last day of school to wake them up. Loud.

Milledgeville, Georgia (2019)

From FB:

“Old cemeteries are one of my happy places. So much to look at. So much to learn.”

Milledgeville, Georgia (2019)