A long time ago, the Marine Corps left me (and a few frens) stranded at a police outpost in Afghanistan for ~75 days. We went native.🧵
When I say stranded, I do mean stranded. We were cutoff from any American led resupply. If we wanted anything from the PB’s, we had to talk the Afghans into driving over there and getting it for us. We ate what they ate. We drank boiled water. We bathed in the wadis.
We fished in the wadi. When we didn’t catch anything with these rods we’d shoot carp with AKs. The Afghans would crush up sleeping pills in bread and fish that way.
We were sent there to investigate corruption. Apparently a few of the cops had been paid off by the Taliban, and were letting through guns and ammunition. Why the Marine Corps thought a few 19 year olds would solve the whodunnit, IDK.
We had nothing to do all day. I stopped wearing my cammies. I got so bored I would just walk out of the station and explore the area as pictured in the first post. Just gearless and fearless. You should have seen the shopkeeper’s face when some random White dude strolled into his bazaar to buy cans of Fanta.
The cops slowly came around to us being there. We had one translator, and the guy was worked to death. We spent most of the day just trying to stay cool. This wadi helped a lot with that.
We’d sit up on the roof of the police station at night and smoke…cigarettes… and use the translator to have conversations about everything under the sun. Nuclear weapons, pussy, Afghan history, Michael Jackson.
We even got voluntold to recruit some of the cops to go on a patrol out of the station. I want to do a thread specific to this patrol later on, so I will save the specifics.
We caught contact on that patrol. Some pretty heavy stuff. It was in those moments where we formed a lasting bond with those dudes.
I still think about those days. It’s hard not to reminisce about that kind of freedom when you’re stuck at a desk working the 9-5. I wonder if any of those cops survived? Where are they now if they did? Would they remember my face in a fleeting moment somewhere else in the world?
What a pointless fucking war.
@vi_drone Also was an 11, not a 51.
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