Hopefully everyone got to watch the ball drop, got their New Year's kiss, and it will not come back as a restraining order. It was nothing big here, I hung out with a fellow LT, and a couple of Brits from Royal Marines. All my guys are spread out in Kandahar and Zabul provinces, and I check up on them via phone/email to see how they are doing. It's a different fight out here, than it was in Iraq. We are fighting a unique enemy, one with a whole another mentality level. It's not better or worse, it's just a different mind set.
I was stuck on a small FOB couple of weeks ago due to almost zero visibility and my bird could not fly out. Read a whole bunch of literature on the flight line while waiting for weather to get better. There was an interview with one of the Taliban fighters. And one thing that he said really stood out. "You have the watches, we have the time". He couldn't have said it better. It is true that pretty much every servicemember that arrives in theater starts his or her deployment countdown. 365, 364, 363.... For these guys who grew up on this land, time is measured by how quick their hair grows. They are not going anywhere, all these fighters, young and old, are content with where they are, and what they are doing.
New Years are always about resolutions. I, personally, have not really thought about one, I mean I do have goals and expectations. They are very specific for me this year, and there are only a handful of them. As time goes by, I will talk about them in detail. It's a different year/role for me this year. Technically I'm still a platoon leader, but my whole platoon is broken into small teams and is spread out far apart. At the same time, I'm working in a staff position, which is a natural progression (or a halfway point) for an Officer. What do I think about it? Mixed feelings... Kinda like a kid who went from crawl to walk...
