Hi everyone.
I'm still alive but freezing my tail off. We
got 8 inches of snow last week and it reached 5 degrees below zero that night.
That's not why I'm e-mailing though.
You may have heard about a suicide
car bomb attack in Kabul last Thursday. It was at one of our FOB's (Forward
Observation Bases) about 27 miles from here.
But the real story is why
no one was killed.
We employ several thousand Afghans on our various
bases. Not to mention the economy that is fed by the money these locals are
making.
Some are laborers and builders, but some are skilled workers. We
even have one Afghan that just became OSHA qualified, the first ever. Some are
skilled HVAC workers.
Anyway, there is this one Afghan that we call
Rambo. We have actually given him a couple of sets of the new ACU uniforms (the
new Army digital camouflage) with the name tag RAMBO on it. His entire family
was killed by the Taliban and his home was where our base currently resides. So
this guy really had nowhere else to go. He has reached such a level of trust
with US Forces that his job is to stand at the front gate and basically be the
first security screening. Since he can't have a weapon, he found a big red
pipe. So he stands there at the front gate in his US Army ACU uniform with his
red pipe. If a vehicle approaches the gate too fast or fails to stop he slams
his pipe down on their hood. Then once the gate is lifted the vehicle moves on
the 2nd gate where the US Army MP's are. So he's like the first line of
defense. Last Thursday at 0930 hrs a Toyota Corolla packed with explosives and
some Jack Ass that thinks he has 72 Virgins waiting for him approached the gate.
When he saw Rambo he must have recognized him and known the gig was up.
But he needed to get to that 2nd gate to detonate and take American
lives. So he slams his foot on the gas which almost causes the metal gate to go
up but mostly catches on the now broken windshield. Rambo fearlessly ran to the
vehicle, reached thru the window and jerked the suicide bomber out of the
vehicle before he could detonate and commenced to putting some red pipe to his
heathen ass.
He detained the guy until the MP got there.
The
vehicle only exploded when they tried to push it off base with a robot but know
one was hurt.
I'm still waiting for someone to give this guy a medal or
something. Nothing less than instant US citizenship or something. A hat was
passed around and a lot of money was given to him in thanks by both soldiers and
civilians that are working over here. I guess I just wanted to share this
because I want people to know that it's working over here. They have tasted
freedom. This makes it worth it to me.
JOHN, CPT , US ARMY