Thanksgiving in a Theater of War

Ready to run!

How do we celebrate Thanksgiving at a Forward Operating Base in Afghanistan?  Well, for starters, there was the Fallen Heroes 5K run at 0630!  This run was to honor the memory of soldiers from the 27th Engineer Battalion who have "paid the ultimate price" during this deployment.  As usual, the 909^th showed everyone how athletic they are by blowing away the competition.   

At 1000 the strongman competition started.  This unit has some SERIOUS weight lifters, and they came away with several medals.

At lunch and dinner, the senior officers and NCOs of the 10^th Mountain 4^th Brigade Combat Team served a delicious dinner with all the fixin’s.  The DFAC tent was decorated well, too!  General order #1 prohibits the consumption of any alcohol in a war zone, but we were served sparkling grape soda poured from champagne bottles!

I’ve been getting emails from friends who seem to feel sorry for us at this time of year.  Don’t!  Being deployed isn’t a bad thing.  Sure, there are certain hardships, and the separation from family and friends can be a drag, but we have much to be thankful for!  When you live and work in an austere environment such as this, it makes you realize how fortunate we are to live in such a beautiful and bountiful country, the USA!  It makes you prioritize what is important in life, and not “sweat the small stuff.”  We cared for two severely injured Afghan soldiers today, who are fighting to protect a way of life that is vastly different from anything we are used to.  These men truly are risking their lives – their friends may be Taliban tomorrow.  Aren’t you glad that we don’t have to live like that in our country?

On this Thanksgiving Day, I hope that you can truly appreciate the freedoms that we have, and the bounty that we all share as US citizens.  The war on terror is here, not at home.  Let’s keep it that way!

The views expressed in this blog are those of the author only, and not necessarily of the US Army or the US Government.  None of the information given is classified in nature.