Death in the Corn: Part I of III
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Published: 15 September 2008
Helmand Province, Afghanistan
The soldiers are living like animals at a little rat’s nest called FOB Gibraltar. They call it “Gib.” Named after the lynchpin of British naval dominance in the Mediterranean, this cluster of mud huts in the middle of hostile territory is more like Fort Apache, Afghanistan. The British soldiers from C-Company 2 Para live in ugly conditions, fight just about every day, and morale is the best I have seen probably anywhere.
The few outside visitors arrive in helicopters that are sometimes spaced days apart, so that if a visitor stays overnight, he could be stuck for a week or more. The closest Afghan dwellings are a few hundred meters away, and each is surrounded by a mud wall. The Brits and Americans call these dwellings “compounds,” because in fact they are little forts. Most Afghans here are a primitive lot who live far outside of cities, and even villages. The Brits say that locals live as their ancestors dwelled in the fourteenth century. Iraq is by comparison extremely advanced and familiar. Local homes are made of mud, straw, and poor-quality bricks that were dried in the sun, not fired in a kiln. Farmers in this area of Afghanistan keep their animals within the compounds, and so the families live in private zoos, and the Brits are in the middle of clusters of zoos that I call Jurassic Park. Though most compounds immediately around Gib are abandoned, crops grow nearly up to the concertina, tripwires, claymore mines and fortifications that form the perimeter of the base.
Jurassic Park
Helmand Province is the largest producer of opium in the world. During the poppy season, Gib is surrounded by beautiful flowers. From the guard towers, or out on patrols, the soldiers can see the full cycle. Farmers plant the poppy; it grows and blooms producing beautiful flowers like in the Wizard of Oz; the bulbs are lanced and the opium harvested. The final part of the opium cycle lasts all year, and can be seen almost every day, when the British soldiers at Gib take small-arms fire and RPG rounds paid for by the crop they watched growing just outside the wire.
The soldiers at Gib have no internet, but can call home, and they receive mail and care packages by the sackful. (Note to folks at home in the UK: Packages to British soldiers are extremely welcome and true morale boosters. The cubbards are overflowing with dry foods that require hot water, but most other items get snapped up quickly.)
Comments
The Brits are super and I hope they don't leave.
Thank you.
God Bless and Godspeed.
For those of you who missed the LIVE event last nite, please check out the archive here.
http://tinyurl.com/6s5d67
Michael Yon is a longtime friend, Pat and I are Hollywood buddies, and I was THRILLED to be able to bring them together to discuss Iraq, Afghanistan, the war on terrorism, kicking jihadi butt and hot babes!!...okay hot babes never came up...but it might have :>)
Pat Dollard embedded in Ramadi with Marines for several months while he filmed a documentary "Young Americans". For those who do not know Pat, check out his website
at www.patdollard.com. He was twice nearly killed in IED explosions. Pat was a former Hollywood agent and manager who gave that up to serve our country in his unique way.
This conversation between Mike and Pat was much anticipated, and people are still buzzing about it.
Please remember to support Michael on his mission.
God Bless.
Many thanks for your reports. Without them it would be difficult to know what are guys are doing in that far off place. My thoughts are with the para's. Take care one and all. Barry, Hampshire, England.
"Some countries such as France are clamoring to leave already." Now THAT'S a big surprise!
Stay safe.
Keep up the excellent reporting.
Doug Santo
Pasadena, CA
As always, great job! Thanks for what you do. Good luck and Godspeed. And give my best to all the troops you meet over there.
Vincent Dorsett, Tucson, AZ.
About the dead stars: some of the visible ones may have blown, but the naked eye can't actually "see" all that far back in galactic time; you are only seeing a few of the "nearby" stars, a few thousand years ago at most. A few of the fuzzy patches are more distant galaxies, but big scopes are needed to pick out individual stars there. (Try scanning the sky using your biggest camera telephoto lenses, and you'll get a bit deeper back in time, of course.) But there's plenty going on in the local stellar arena; you don't need to look deep into the past to observe wonders.
I really wish I could join you, but I'm too old, fat and slow. I'll be praying for you instead.
Vietnam USN 1969
Your reports are a blessing to those of us desiring an unvarnished look at Terryland.
There are many here in Plant City who follow your travels and trevails.
Be safe, and thank my fellow Para's for the job they are doing. Airborne!
Thank you
A big thank you for getting the word out about what its really like, now we just need a few more of your type. You're a brave guy, far braver than me.
Quick note to Ernest Lane. The lads went out and set an ambush to catch the bad guys moving around, this should dispel any myths you have about to ROE.
Please tell them we love them and cannot find words to describe our debt of gratitude. Is there an APO address for care packages? My son is in luxurious Mosul and is growing fat on too many care packages. He'll share, gladly.
To you and our Brit brothers on Gib
"...May thine Angel-guards defend us,
Slumber sweet thy mercy send us,
Holy dreams and hopes attend us,
This livelong night."
Bishop Reginald Heber
We could have used someone in 'Nam to tell the truth.
Checks in the mail.
7 Years and no progress. Another 7 years and the USKKK will be bankrupt. LMAO at the US Scum.
Great work Michael, keep it up, it is a pleasure to have individuals like you providing unbiased reporting. God Bless and Thank you
My brother was with C Coy 2Para and was killed in an explosion near FOB Gib on July 29th 2008. My family is still in touch with a few of the guys out there, all close friends of my brother. Sadly we never really had the chance to talk with Pete about conditions out there, he died 10 days before he was due home for a well deserved r&r. Michael's work (which i stumbled across last night thanks to google) has really opened my eyes to what Pete and his brothers in arms went/go through on a daily basis. The reality is very different to what i imagined. Thank you for filling some of the blanks.
I am an ex-serviceman... so I am biased :o)
Keep up the great work - telling it like it is.
Great reporting, Great book. Please tell the Brits that many of us here in America know of and appreciate there help. God Bless America and England and let us all hope that we are victorious.
Those guns look like versions of British Martini-Henry rifles from the empire period.
The old rifles are Martini-Henry. They were so accurate and powerful that individual British soldiers had them chained to them when on picket at night. The Pashtuns wanted them that bad. Please see link below for a great article on the Martini-Henry.
Jack E. Hammond, USA
Notes> Links are to scans in my photobucket account. They are way long so I used TinyURL.com to reduce the link characters.
http://tinyurl.com/3laaef
http://tinyurl.com/47st5x
http://tinyurl.com/4map75
.
Sadly the JAVELIN is the best antitank weapon in the world. One Special Forces soldier in northern Iraq with the Kurds stopped an attack by an armored battalion using the JAVELIN. But it is way to expensive for the type of warfare in Afghanistan. A better bet would have been the Israeli GILL with the fiber-optic link back to the operator. GILL rounds are 1/3 that of the JAVELIN. Also, I can not figure out why the British did not bring out their old MILAN wire guided launchers and rounds and send them to Afghanistan. They are dirt cheap.
And the cheapest option for a long range missile sniper would be what the Iranians trained the Lebanese Hezbollah to use: The old wire guided SAGGER. The Sagger is extremely inacccurate at ranges below 500 meters but beyond that a trained gunner can put one through a window. And the SAGGER missile is available on the world market dirt-dirt cheap. Like less than 5000 dollars a missile.
Jack E. Hammond, USA
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Mr. Yon, I'm 12 years old and have studied military weapons and vehicles since I was about 5. My mother saw these rifles on your website and asked me to identify them for you. I looked them up in one my books and found out it was a Martini-Henry and probably is a MK4 because of the year but could of been modified. I found this website with more information for you.
Keep up the good writing my mom is obsessed with you,lol.
Kirby Smith Ducayet V
The title is what I feel for you...imagine having all of Yon to read for the first time!
For a real treat, go back through his Dispatches series to the earliest, and read each series as a sequence before going on to the next.
It will take you more than a few hours. Which is very good!
Enjoy.
P.S.
After you've thoroughly read Yon-land, check out the other Saint Michael, MichaelTotten.com . Totten is somewhat less Iraq-centred in his coverage, but very pertinent to the entire Near and Middle East topic. Some beautiful photo-essays from the Balkans.
You might start off with his latest, in Commentary magazine ( commentarymagaz ine.com/blogs/index.php/totten/34001 ), and then start at the start on his site. Very honest, and lets his viewpoint grow and change according to what he sees.
It is the soldier, not the poet, who has given us freedom of speech.
It is the soldier, not the campus organizer, who has given us the freedom to demonstrate.
It is the soldier, not the lawyer, who has given us the right to a fair trial.
It is the soldier, who salutes the flag, who serves under the flag, and whose coffin is draped by the flag, who allows the protester to burn the flag....
By Father Dennis Edward O'Brien, USMC
This blog, your reporting, the photos, and your writing are great. I spent a year in Ramadi, and I find so many things you write about to be so accurate. Keep up the great work.
Can you spell 'criminal. waste'?
just a quick note to say that ssm Ste Mcmenamy is now a yeoman warder at the tower of london so if you are ever in the uk why dont you go and see him. take care Michael
Best Wishes
Rob Dowdle
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