Combat Pach cermony and random things

the lucky strike

getting the combat patch

in traffic, thought this was supposed to be a back road?

on the C-17

Well it has been a while since

I have written to all of you so why not write not, its 4 am and no better time than now! So a lot has happened since a last wrote and I’ll start from where I left off and bring you to the current events of today.  Well for starters in one of the pictures you will see is my commander, CPT Avery putting a combat patch on my right shoulder. It is a great honor to receive one and you can only get one if you have been deployed in a combat zone. What is special about this is that the army is the only branch that puts a patch on a soldier’s uniform to recognize him of his wartime service. The patch I am wearing now for a deployment patch is my unit patch the YD (Yankee Division) your combat patch that you wear while deployed is your unit patch so others can tell what unit you have deployed with. If your unit worked with others units above them in country the commander can petition to wear the other units patch as a combat patch, so we shall see if we get any other cool patches to wear.  So what else should I talk about? Oh yes, so everything here is a barter system, I mean everything and sometimes the locals take that too far because they will start out at outraises prices for a bootleg DVD. The other day I walked to the local afghan vender right outside the gate and all I wanted was a DVD, just one not two.  And there it was I found the one I wanted staring at me in its bootleg case. “Funny people” so I opened it to the blank DVD with child’s writing on it that said “funnie people” so I knew right there we might have a problem. I brought it to the counter where ahcmead, was standing, I have no idea how to spell his name nor pronounce it so that’s the best spelling you get, make of it what u may. First you have to make sure to ask them if it is a good copy because it shakes or is out of focus you can bring it back and switch it out, which is good because I have had to do it twice already but anyway he said it was good so then comes the next part, the $$$$$. I asked him how much he said 10 bucks and nothing less. I said to him sir I can get 4 DVDs for that price back home if I wanted to I will not pay these outrages prices here. Absouslyy not! Now don’t be like nick, he’s just a lonely afghan trying to make a buck and survive, no that is not the case, he is doing this to everyone so i know what really goes on here trust me he gets a lot of customers a day and if he is wearing jeans and nice shoes he isn’t doing too bad. So I said no I will not give you over 5 dollars for it.  He said 7, I said 5 again but this time I sweetened the deal I said 3 bucks and a 12 pack of bottled water! His eyes lightened up like he just met the prophet Mohammad himself. It was a deal! Now the water doesn’t affect me because I don’t pay taxes in a war zone, you lovey people reading this do so thank you! And at 3 dollars a water bottle it adds up! But to them bottled water is like gold and we have so much of it inside the gate where they can’t get it it’s not even funny so when they get clean water they love you, sometimes a little bit too much. Any way so I got my DVD and it was good quality so I was happy, only to find out that there was already a copy in the office. Oh well. Any way I’ll move on.  So like I said previously there is not much to do on our base so we need to find things to like chase the wild dogs or it a few golf balls into over the walls into the street below, no wonder why they don’t like us to much, but hey I’m just doing what the unit that we relieved was doing, so in a sense I am doing my civic duty. But on that point I had the opportunity to go to another base the other day, camp Phoenix and wow might I say wow. It is down town Kabul and beside the polluted air it’s not bad there. I mean I definitely still want to stay at Blackhorse because there is less people and fewer things you have to deal with, but they had a pizza hut and a green beans coffee shop I mean like wow they are living the high life over there.  Well I’m going to wrap it up because I have some highly classified above top secret things to do now so until next time, stay classy western mass.  NICK