Seven more photos of Kabul

This article is the continuation of a letter home written by Lieutenant-Colonel Eric Groulx.

To return to the beginning of the article, please click here.

************************* This week has also been extremely busy.

It is fairly well documented in the media that the Kandahar prison was targeted, and most of the prisoners - including a lot of enemy forces - escaped into the area.

The Afghan army has stepped up to this security challenge in a big way, and in the past couple of days, they have moved over one thousand soldiers into the area.

I became very involved in the move.

The Afghans have a number of aircraft, and they had them all working non-stop to move their troops.

However, as the aircraft are not rated to fly at night, they had to rely upon ISAF for support in the move through the night.

A move done this fast would not be contemplated by most armies, but the Afghan army pulled it off.

I was heavily involved in a 'game' of counting the moving Afghan soldiers.

I worked closely with our air staff who told me how many seats they had on different flights, and I would communicate with the Afghan army to ensure that they had the soldiers there to fill the seats.

It went fairly well until one of the flights – for national reasons - said that they needed military escorts and interpreters, or they could not take the Afghan soldiers on their plane.

It was fairly late at night, but I scrambled myself and the required interpreters and got to the airport.

The Afghan soldiers were already lined up behind the aircraft waiting for me when I arrived.

We loaded the plane, and I was surprised to see that they only had seats for about half.

They couldn't take the Afghan soldiers without an escort, but no seats was okay.

So, I sat on the floor with the others, and off to Kandahar we went.

It was an interesting atmosphere.

It was the middle of the night and these soldiers were being quickly moved into battle.

Some of them appeared to be very young, yet others appeared to be too old to be heading into combat.

They were definitely tired, and most had a look of apprehension.

Media was filming our departure from Kabul, and our arrival in Kandahar.

I did my best to lighten the mood.

I brought along snacks to hand out for the plane ride.

I was able to get smiles and thumbs up from from most.

I ended up working through the night heading to Kandahar and back to Kabul.

Upon return to Kabul, I had to head straight into work so that I could monitor the deployment of the troops, and keep information over to the ISAF operations centre.

As the information started to come in regarding the battle in Kandahar, I could not help but wonder if I had met the soldiers that now show up as killed in action and wounded in action statistics.

I am so fortunate to be on this mission – actually working with Afghans.

So many people almost never meet the great people of this country that we are working for.

Eric

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