Another Day, Another Mission

Only red lights of headlamps show up in the darkness. I am jumpy, there are rats in my tent and I’m all alone. Down by the shitters the burn pit’s light flickers across the berms of sand, I stop to stare at the clusters of stars brighter, more vibrant in this sky, only the light of the fire in the background illuminates anything here on earth. The smell is too awful to stick around.
The air is cooling off and the black night makes you believe you could see anything, a Marine walks beside me, or maybe it’s just a shadow. In the tents beyond, Marines are watching movies or looking at pictures of their fiancés on their screen savers. A mission awaits us in the morning. Some will go to the bazaar, some to different companies, some will go out into the fields and receive fire and hopefully everyone will come home, meaning our home here at the base.

I am wondering how much I am missing back home because I know everyone there is missing so much here.


Yesterday KVAL published on their website www.kval.com, a story about female Marines in Afghanistan. The first thing I remember when meeting these two women, was that they were so thin, with delicate features and they looked so young, so untouched by their harsh surroundings. But within as few days I realized that that their looks betrayed them. They have been here since March. As a firefight begun just outside the base walls one of the female Marines, shrugged and said it happens all the time. Then I saw her running laps in the sun just before noon.
The next day the females had a mission, they would go out into the nearby village and engage with the people. They spoke with the children, with the old men and the women. But they seemed older now, sweaty and bits of sand sticking to their cheeks. And they walked through the streets with heavy weapons in their arms and sometimes it was hard to tell them apart from any other Marines except for slighter figures and telltale buns sticking out beneath helmets.

Read more about their story at: KATU.com and KVAL.com