I finally had a chance to visit the most-exposed team in my unit last night.
My assistant and I jumped on a chopper that skirted alongside towering mountains before dropping into a valley amidst the mountain ranges. We arrived in the pitch black of night, as all lighting is kept to a minimum due to the vulnerability of the outpost.
The risk posed to soldiers there is not great, but it is ever-present. For a time, the enemy had an artillery piece locked on to the post and moved it around the mountainside by donkey cart before we could take it out. I talked with the chaplain of the infantry unit there--they have lost six soldiers and many dozens have been injured.
Two days ago, a team of contractors who work for us set off in an unarmored car to a nearby worksite, despite warnings that we had definitive intel showing the placement of an IED on that road the night before. I have a picture on my computer of what is left of their car, and it isn't much.
Our team is doing well in their journeys and stay-overs down there, despite the stress and strain. Not a one of them has been injured, and there team leader (who I mentioned in an earlier post) takes magnificent care of them, even if his own issues from previous deployment and leadership style can make him somewhat abrasive.
The team leader gave me a tour of the outpost this morning and the lead NCO gave me a tour of their worksite beneath the shadow of a nearby mountain. From that worksite, I was show the road across the valley where our contractors were hit, as well as the provincial governor's compound, which is left unoccupied (which is not surprising, since it is at the base of a mountain and asking to get hit).
While reading in bed last night, the building shook with a manificent boom. "Curious," I thought, listened for a few moments to see if anyone was scrambling around or running for bunkers, heard nothing, and resumed reading (it was a good book). Every couple of minutes, I heard and felt another large "BOOM!" Eventually, the chaplain's assistant at the outpost poked his head out of his room and said "By the way, that is outgoing, not incoming." So nonchalant, which is what you might expect from someone who lives there every day.
After meeting with the team leader for a little while more today, I rode back to our home base with the team in their battle-mobiles. The long and potentially hazardous drive, which often inflicts it own measure of stress upon these soldiers, was uneventful.
I was reminded over the last 24 hours of how cushy we have it here in our main outpost. And even our most exposed soldiers, there in one of most dangerous regions of the country for the majority of each week, are not experiencing what many other soldiers in the more dangerous regions are experiencing every hour of every day. Please keep our soldiers, especially those living precariously on the edge of life, in your prayers.
Danger is relative. Security is not. I belong body and soul, in life and death, to my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. The earth may shake beneath me, but caught in His hand, I shall never be shaken.
