“Please lower all U.S. flags to half to honor our Fallen Warrior that has just arrived on KAF.”

Unfortunately, it’s an email that I get on a daily basis. A few hours later, another email is sent across the post:

“Our Fallen Warrior has departed KAF. Please raise all U.S. flags to their full position.”

It’s a reality that we deal with here in Afghanistan as a result of ongoing combat operations, support operations, and stability operations. A major killer of our troops here are the IEDs, which also indiscriminately kill fellow Afghans.

As part of the dignified transfer of our Fallen Warriors, Soldiers from all over post head to the airfield – when allowed – to pay their respects to a fallen brother or sister. A precise and honorable ceremony follows in which the Warrior is transported into the plane for his final trip home. It’s a somber ceremony that affects every Soldier in attendence, even though most of the time the Soldier is completely unknown to those in attendance. It doesn’t matter. He’s one of us.

Troops bow their heads during a chaplain’s prayer during transfer of a fallen comrade at a ramp ceremony on Kandahar Airfield, Afghanistan. Photo courtesy Department of Defense.

The good news is that the Afghan people here are largely fed up with it. They are beginning to recognize that the bad guys aren’t necessarily the foreigners. In fact, it’s becoming increasingly clear that perhaps the only people they can trust are the foreign troops. We’re building soccer fields (Afghanis LOVE soccer), teaching lifesaving farming techniques, training the police and military to defend their own territories, and educating doctors, nurses and administrators of hospitals. More schools have opened – and opened to everyone – in the 10 years of U.S. presence than the entire prior 30 years and the literacy rate has more than doubled over that time.

Our troops are making a difference here. Of course, this makes the insurgency that is committed to Sharia law that doesn’t respect rights of certain sectors of society being the law of the land. They fight for power and for a political objective of showing that Americans don’t have their best interests in mind. It’s a more difficult message to convey in a land that isn’t as resource rich as a country like Iraq where it was easy to argue that Americans only wanted to steal from the Iraqi people’s wealth. It’s pretty obvious that wasn’t the case.

While many folks back in the states have lost sight of our purposes here, the troops on the ground are well aware of our accomplishments here. Sometimes, they are only seen in hindsight, but they are seen. It’s also been nice to see such a global coalition represented in country. Anyone who says this is a U.S. operation is sorely ignorant of the contributions of many of our allies here that I get to see every day on the streets. I won’t mention them here since I’m not sure whether or not their contributions are public. I’ll just say their numbers aren’t few.

Things are started to fall into a routine for me. I manage a small team of LNO (liaisons) with a wide range of responsibilities. To keep it broad, we support the warfighters out in the field. We manage personnel, equipment, and transportation that directly affects the troops outside the wire. We process all new troops coming in and troops who need to return home for one reason or another, ensuring they are properly briefed and trained prior to heading to their front line units. It keeps us hopping and sometimes it’s a thankless job, but it’s very rewarding personally. We take great pride with every convoy that leaves having successfully accomplished all their missions while here in Kandahar. It’s a quick response, short suspense job that requires a lot of attention to detail and focus to meet time requirements. And, every now and then, we have a day like today where our efforts are noticed and appreciated.

Then, we reset, reorganize, and regroup for the next batch of troops arriving on station.