[From Max] I slept through the afternoon.  Ten hours straight.  The sleeping pills keep me down despite the helos that whip overhead all day, every day.  I took my first shot of caffeine as soon as I woke.  I rolled into the Operations Center, groggy and squinting, and fumbled with the...

[From Max] I spent a week in limbo.  The transient tent was a windowless time warp cluttered with metal bunks and duffle bags.  The other occupants were a motley group; there was a line squad, a couple of interpreters, and a team of Guardsmen from rural Alabama. The night I arrived we were...

[From Max]  I kicked rocks around the FOB for a few days.  I had no job.  No hard times to meet.  I was an Army of One.  I didn’t quite know what to do with myself. I decided to do nothing. I went to chow.  I went to the gym.  It was a makeshift little building stuffed with ropes...

[From Max]  It was freezing when I stepped off the back of the chopper.  There was no snow, but mountains loomed in every direction.  If it was cold when we left, an few thousand more feet weren’t helping. It took two trips to move my gear through an ancient looking gate in a...

[From Max] The Chinooks staged on the hammerhead in a staggered pair.  My guys piled their gear to one side as we waited to manifest.  People scurried in every direction.  Air crew.  Ground crew.  Soldiers. I checked my kit one last time and counted off my guys by touching each of them on...

[From Max] I’m still at the airfield.  I’m never going to leave this fucking dump. My timeline gets pushed right every other day.  The captain in charge of scheduling the movement mentions it casually, in passing, and shrugs at me. “Oh, you’re leaving on the . ....

[From Max] The last two weeks have dragged by.  I spent most of it working, hoofing it back and forth across KAF.  This place is short on charm. The wind picks up for days at a time and the air is thick with dust.  It has the texture of talcum powder.  We are not authorized to wear scarves...

[From Max] Message from the JDOC: There will be a controlled detonation to the southeast of KAF in five minutes . . . I say again . . . Five minutes . . . End of message. The big voice echoes through the compound.  It happens periodically – followed by a  distant TH-WUMP!  Yesterday...

[Dispatch from Max.] It was dark when we stepped off the C-17.  Everything was covered in dust. The pilot pulled us right up to the terminal, an old hajji building made of mud and brick.  The walls inside were riddled with bullet holes.  After a bit of admin finger-fuck, we collected our...

[First in a series of dispatches from Max, who is currently on a "long backpacking excursion." ]   I stepped off for Afghanistan on the first.  Getting out the door turned into a frantic nightmare.  I got a last-minute phone call the night before, informing me that I needed to report...