KHANASHIN, Afghanistan – The Marines pushed out here early this morning, making their way to two Afghan Border Police outposts at the edge of a desolate wasteland desert. The convoys from Combat Outpost Payne have become routine, said Capt. Alexis Miguel, assistant team leader for Border Adviser Team 2, 3rd Battalion, 8th Marines. The advisers are primarily from Camp Pendleton, Calif., and attached to 3/8 in the field this summer. The shift to having Afghan National Security Forces in the lead providing their nation’s security has changed the way the advisers do business. They used to live alongside the border…
Browsing: Embedded journalism
COMBAT OUTPOST PAYNE, Afghanistan — Once again, I’m checking in here from the House of Payne. Get it? Good. To get to this outpost from Camp Leatherneck, photographer Colin Kelly and I rose before dawn this morning to hop an MV-22 Osprey. It meant we were awake as President Barack Obama and former Massachusetts Gov. W. Mitt Romney squared off in a presidential debate back in the U.S. Helmand province is 8 1/2 hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time, creating issues whenever there are live events that many Americans watch, whether it’s a sporting event or something involving national politics.…
Living in suburbia, you forget that there are places on the planet where you can see more stars than you ever thought possible. With no street lamps or strip malls around, stars light up the night sky above Forward Operating Base Payne on Oct. 4, 2012, in Helmand Province, Afghanistan.
COMBAT OUTPOST PAYNE, Afghanistan – And just like that, we’ve reached the Marine Corps’ southern frontier in Helmand province. Photographer Colin Kelly and I traveled by MV-22 Osprey today to this desert outpost in Khanashin district, where most people live in a collection of rural villages along a bend in the Helmand River. It was first flooded with Marine forces in July 2009 during Operation Khanjar, or Strike the Sword, becoming part of the biggest aerial assault since the Vietnam War. COP Payne was established afterward and served as the battalion headquarters for the last few years for light armored…
CAMP LEATHERNECK, Afghanistan – Good evening, friends. We’re still aboard this forward operating base, conducting interviews for several stories in forthcoming issues of Marine Corps Times. In the meantime, I wanted to share a meeting I had today with the top brass in 1st Battalion, 7th Marines, out of Twentynine Palms, Calif. The unit is on its way back to the U.S. following a grueling seven-month deployment in volatile northern Helmand province. Its Marines were based primarily in Sangin at first, and then gradually spread through Kajaki, Musa Qala and Now Zad districts as the drawdown in forces across Afghanistan…
CAMP LEATHERNECK, Afghanistan – Good evening, friends. We’re still aboard this forward operating base, conducting interviews for several stories in forthcoming issues of Marine Corps Times. In the meantime, I wanted to share a meeting I had today with the top brass in 1st Battalion, 7th Marines, out of Twentynine Palms, Calif. The unit is on its way back to the U.S. following a grueling seven-month deployment in volatile northern Helmand province. Its Marines were based primarily in Sangin at first, and then gradually spread through Kajaki, Musa Qala and Now Zad districts as the drawdown in forces across Afghanistan…
CAMP LEATHERNECK, Afghanistan – The more things change, the more they stay the same. That holds true on this vast forward operating base, which photographer Colin Kelly and I arrived at this afternoon. It still serves as the main hub of Marine operations in Afghanistan, even after thousands of Marines were withdrawn from Helmand province this summer. We flew here on a British C-130, spending more than an hour in the air from Kabul International Airport. The flight included about 30 British troops and a handful of Estonians, among others. After spending all of April and part of May embedded…
KABUL, Afghanistan — Once again, it’s time to get to work. Photographer Colin Kelly and I arrived here in Afghanistan this morning on overnight flight from Istanbul, eventually making our way over to the military side of Kabul International Airport. It’s one of the main camps here for the International Security Assistance Force overseeing the war, but it also serves as a transit trip for folks like us, who are heading farther out into the war zone. This marks the third trip for both Colin and I. We had a laugh this morning discussing how nervous we both were on our…
It’s that time again: Marine Corps Times is heading back to the Sandbox. In coming days, I’ll be embedding with Marine forces in Afghanistan with Colin Kelly, a senior videographer and photographer on staff. It’ll mark the third trip for each of us to Afghanistan, and my second in Helmand province this year. It’s a key time to visit the war zone for several reasons, as pointed out in this new story I put together after interviewing several deployed general officers. In recent days, the U.S. has completed its drawdown to about 68,000 troops across Afghanistan, ending a two-plus year…
I appeared on TV last night to discuss the war in Afghanistan and my recent embed with Marines there in Helmand province. “Capital Insider” is based in Washington, D.C., on News Channel 8, and covers a variety of subjects affecting the government, including defense. The segment aired here, where I fielded questions from anchor Morris Jones. Among the subjects that came up: The use of surveillance blimps in Sangin and Kajaki districts, the ongoing drawdown of Marine forces in Helmand and the challenges still faced by the Afghan military that U.S. troops are training. [HTML1] Blog entries penned during our embed are grouped…
