Home is where your platoon is... itching to get back

(photo: Spt. Choike and Spc. Whatcott eating Easter dinner out at COP Badel)

"I feel bad being here," Sgt. David Camarillo said, "knowing my guys are out there." 

We'd flown into Jalabad Air Base (JAF) a few hours earlier.  Outpost Badel, 2nd Platoon's home, is less than an hour's helicopter ride away, but worlds apart.  The difference between us sitting on picnic benches drinking Greenbean's coffee, smoking cigars, pondering hot showers, and Camarillo's platoon taking fire three times that morning out at Badel.

 (Photo: Sgt. Aaron Dawson teaching 2nd Platoon's adopted dog Duke, how to beg for chips.)

It was a sunny day after all.  Maybe the fighters came down from the Korengal valley to attack as promised.  All Sgt. Camarillo could do was wonder.  He was at JAF for a dentist appointment.  I was moving on to a different reporting location.  My feelings were bittersweet, his were real.

"You can't wait to get here, (JAF has amenities like a PX) then after about ten minutes you say, ok, I want to go back," Camarillo said nodding.

As for myself, I can say it's a privledge to live for a month with an infantry platoon like 2nd Platoon of Able Co. 2-503rd.

To watch 19, 20, 21-year olds hustle up and down that hill all hours of the day, and think what I was doing when I was 19- going to college, mostly partying. 

(photo: Trying to help the Afghan soldiers fix their seemingly always broken heavy machine gun.)

See guys manning gun positions all night, climbing a mountain strapped with 800 rounds of ammo and a rocket launcher.  Standing in the burning sun so their platoon leader could meet with a sub-governor who might or might not show up to the meeting.  Trying to be nice to Afghan Army soldiers who stalled two days on helping them sand bag their own towers.  Switching guard duty with a buddy who was just too exhausted from diarreah or a fever, common where there's no running water.

Later that night I spotted Camarillo outside a transient tent with Ssgt. Puthoff,  who'd just returned from leave to the States.  I asked Puthoff what he'd done on his leave. "Not much, helped my Dad with some things," he said.

"I know it's crazy, but I'm excited to come back," Puthoff said, kind of smirking. "In Kuwait they asked me where I was going, said I was going home, not home, but back to my family."

(photo: One of 2nd Platoon's favorite interpreters wears a mask when they go to the district center because he and his family live in the area.)