Looking Back

As I mentioned in my last post, my forth deployment has come to an end after a little more than a year. After spending well over a week conducting a handover with my replacement I left NKAIA, Kabul and flew to Kuwait; which, as usual, was boring, too warm, and as close to purgatory as I think one can experience in this plane of existence.

I then spent a day and a half at Camp Atterbury, Indiana turning in equipment and doing lots of sleeping. From there I flew to central Virginia and began my inprocessing with my program at NGIC. It was frustrating at first because after a year all I wanted to do was take some time off where I wasn't stuck on some base and had the freedom to get away. Of course, after all my previous deployments I had to sit in either Kuwait or some other base for several days before going home and then do all the annoying redeployment stuff that the Army requires. This time just felt more irritating, especially when I was in Virginia and didn't have anything to do but couldn't leave work because "you still need to put in your 8 hours."

Ok, I'll just sit here and stare at the wall then.

Sitting in Kuwait as usual gave me too much time to look back and think on the deployment. It felt a bit like at the end of my third deployment. The mission felt incomplete; I think this is because I didn't leave with a unit. As a contractor on my own time schedule I was the continuity between the deployments of V Corps and III Corps as they took over ISAF Joint Command. III Corps still has a few more months to go and it kind of felt like I was abandoning them.

There was also a lot of frustration in the lack of success I had with my jackal targets (the insider threat target set). I did everything I could within my lane and capabilities and in that sense I was successful. However, in terms of removing the individuals from the battlefield, there wasn't much progress.

But that's the nature of deploying in support of counterinsurgency operations. You're not going to fix everything, put all the puzzle pieces together, or get all the targets. One of these days I'll remember that.

A Year Already?

Where did this year go? It doesn't seem all that long ago that I was arriving at Bagram to spend my time at the Detention Facility In Parwan (DFIP) and then after only a short time moved to ISAF Joint Command in Kabul. Days spent looking over target packets, gathering information on insider attackers, and arguing with lawyers have certainly made the time fly.

My replacement arrived a few days ago and I only have about a week left in Afghanistan. I've enjoyed my time here much more than I thought I would, most likely because my luck in getting assigned to a NATO base/Corps headquarters. So much less stressful than any of my previous deployments. The military personnel and civilians from multiple countries I worked with also made this deployment go easier and occasionally fun. I'm going to miss a lot of these folks.

Blog posts will be extremely light in the coming weeks as I redeploy to the States. Between sitting in Kuwait, dealing with equipment turn-in at Camp Atterbury, IN, and inproccessing NGIC/finding a place to live in Virginia along with moving my stuff from Tacoma I don't think I'll have the internet/time to update much. Once I'm settled I'll come back to my usual blogging.

Afghanistan...I won't say "goodbye." I'll say "until we meet again."