End of Week 5...

Greetings! First, to all of my fans out there I must apologize for failing to deliver on my end of the bargain and post an update to my blog last week. I really don't have a good excuse, so I'll just claim that I'm in a war zone and that my satellite internet connection went down for national security reasons. The best part of this week's blog is that I have passed the one month point, which is really hard to believe.

Before I get into the meat of this week's posting...I need to send out HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY wishes to my incredible wife, Jennifer and my 2 beautiful girls...Merritt and Campbell. I know ya'll are having a great time in Florida with Jerry and Lisa. I wish I could be with ya'll to celebrate!

As many of you are probably aware, the DC metropolitan area recently experienced its largest combined snowfall on record (if you are not aware, you are living in a cave and probably don't have access to the internet in the first place and won't be reading this blog). And no, I was not there to shovel any of it. So, to all of my neighbors on Montmorency Drive, I thank you for helping Jennifer and the girls dig out from "Snow-mageddon"! I owe ya'll huge when I get home in July. Let's just hope it is all melted by then. Just so that ya'll don't think I didn't have my own frozen precipitation to deal with here in Afghanistan, below is a picture to prove that Afghanistan does in fact get snow...



Now, I realize that this might not look like much, but hail in this part of the globe is pretty rare. Of course, it was all melted in about an hour...but for that short period of time, I felt some sympathy for all of my DC friends! With the hail, came torrential rain that lasted for several hours last Saturday. We are still dewatering several areas of the Camp that turned into large catch basins for the stormwater runoff. Turns out that when you fail to properly raise the elevation of life support areas to at least match the roads and other hard stands that surround them, any rain runoff will flow to the lowest point it can find. Seems like a pretty simple concept, but maybe that is because I actually studied this stuff for 6 years in college and grad school. I bet you are thinking, the US Air Force paid for 6 years of my higher education for me to learn that water naturally flows to the lowest point...and all I have to say is that you would be correct. I guess if the Marine Corps had sent one of their engineers that help set this place up to 6 years of schooling for civil engineering, they would have known to elevate the ground of the life support areas. Too bad for the marines that have been living in ankle deep water for the past week...needless to say, we are feverishly correcting the problem...

Below is a picture of a marine who decided to make the most of the situation and float his way back to his tent.

Besides the rain, we've been busy with construction here at Camp Leatherneck. Below is a picture of an MV-22, also known as an Osprey, landing on the recently completed Helicopter Landing Zone (HLZ). It's pretty odd to watch this aircraft fly directly toward the Camp and then transition to helo mode in order to execute a vertical landing. Being an Air Force guy, having an aircraft landing area right in the middle of the Camp is a bit odd...but really cool when you get to watch aircraft land right in front of you.


Besides digging out from all of the mud over the past week, I had the chance to tour the British water bottling facility that is on the Bastion side of the base. For those who haven't "googled" Leatherneck yet, the British established a presence in this part of Afghanistan about 5-6 years ago on a camp named "Bastion". When the US decided it needed a more substantial presence in the Helmand Province, it chose to follow the Brits lead and build its camp directly to the west of Bastion. B/c the Brits have been here a lot longer, they have more established facilities and processes, to include a first class water bottling plant. Recall from my comments above that I am a civil engineer who spent a lot of time studying about water and wastewater treatment...so this was a pretty neat operation to witness. For about 95% of you, the picture below will mean absolutely nothing. To the 5% of you who are still following along and think this is interesting, below is an air transportable Reverse Osmosis water purification system. I've also become very fond of the bottled water produced from this facility and now make sure I pick up a case each time I'm on the Bastion side of the base

Over the past 2 weeks, I've received several awesome care packages from friends and family! I want to send a quick shout-out to the Thethis, the Phillips, Matt Filosa and all the folks at Smith Barney, Heather/Mike and the boys, mom/dad, and of course Jennifer and the girls. I promise I'm sharing the goodies with the rest of the folks here in the office...well almost everything...I do hold back certain items for my own stash!

Finally, before I close for the week, I ask for your continued prayers for all of the marines, soldiers, airmen and sailors who are in harm's way every day here in Afghanistan. The reality of what we are doing here really came home this weekend. If you are following along with the news out of the Helmand Province, you are very familiar with the operations that are currently underway to defeat the Taliban stronghold in Marjah. I watched countless convoys depart the camp over the past week preparing for what started this weekend. As an Air Force civil engineer, being this close to the war fighter is a once in a career opportunity. I was privileged to have dinner a couple of nights ago with the Colonel who is the Marine Expeditionary Brigade Engineer, my defacto boss here at Leatherneck. During dinner, he described what he saw in the eyes of the marines getting ready for the invasion...a combination of pride, excitement, energy, strength and anxiety. I cannot imagine what was going thru the minds of those marines as they took off preparing to enter an unknown battle-space to defeat an enemy who does not play by the rules of war as we know them. What I do know, is that our country is safer because of them, and we should all be proud of the entire volunteer force who is sacrificing more than any civilian will ever understand. I am proud to call them my brothers-in-arms.

Until next time...