One of the reporters I escorted to the PEH was beginning a 10 day embed that we had planned\/coordinated for him. PEH Afghan Air Force school was not the story he wanted to tell and he made that very obvious throughout the tour of the school. Aloof and uninterested, he didn’t participate in any of the interviews, didn’t ask questions, and spent most of the time with his nose in his phone texting his girlfriend.<\/p>\n
While it would have saved me having to make excuses and apologies to the advising team’s PAO and leadership if he had feigned an interest, I understood the disinterest. This reporter was here for very personal reasons and the polished and fairly successful Afghan Air Force Officers school, where English is the prevailing language and the interviews were obviously staged, wasn’t one of them.<\/p>\n
TM\u00a0is a Marine veteran who had served two tours in Afghanistan in 2008 and 2010, in Kandahar and Sangin respectively. The battle of Sangin in 2010 is considered the bloodiest fight of the entire 15 year Afghan campaign as US and British forces both suffered more casualties on this battleground than any other in the entire country or the duration of the war. He was part of a sniper scout team with the First Marines, Sixth Battalion; at the very tip of the spear. Several of his friends left limbs behind, he lost two of his closest friends in the battle,\u00a0and his best friend in the battle at home (motorcycle accident with an alcohol factor). He came to this embed to tell a very personal story from a very unique perspective.<\/p>\n
I got along pretty well with TM, which was somewhat surprising considering he is 10 years my junior, not married, no kids, leads a very different life in DC than mine in San Diego. Add to that that we are both very reserved, observant people that don’t say a lot. And add to that the general nature of a PAO\/reporter relationship is to hold your cards close to your chest. In total, this set the stage for many awkward silences in the 24 hours where we had only each other to talk to.<\/p>\n
But the awkwardness didn’t bother me, and I didn’t sense it bothered him either. I found him pretty fascinating; why would someone who experienced some of the worst things imaginable, the horrors of war, want to return to the location to report on what fight looks like six years later. I asked him, probably more than once, if he thought returning to the southern Afghan province that is associated with such loss, while shaping his writing career, would be cathartic or just difficult?<\/p>\n
He said he didn’t know. Hoping for cathartic but it will probably just be sad.<\/p>\n
I didn’t get the chance to follow up and see if the trip provided any closure. I’m not sure he would have told me anyway, it seemed like a very personal experience that he needed to have.<\/p>\n
He wrote three strong stories while he was here, and like any great journalist, wrote them with an objective voice where his personal experiences don’t resonate influence in the piece(s). But I hope the experience provided some restitution to a Marine we as a country asked so much of a few years ago.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/news\/checkpoint\/wp\/2016\/09\/30\/one-week-hundreds-of-dead-and-wounded-how-afghan-forces-are-struggling-with-heavy-casualties\/<\/p>\n
https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/world\/taliban-opens-offensives-in-afghanistan-before-government-appeal-to-aid-donors\/2016\/10\/03\/d42e05d0-8938-11e6-875e-2c1bfe943b66_story.html<\/p>\n
https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/news\/checkpoint\/wp\/2016\/10\/07\/not-their-job-turning-afghanistans-special-forces-into-regular-troops\/<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
One of the reporters I escorted to the PEH was beginning a 10 day embed that we had planned\/coordinated for him. PEH Afghan Air Force school was not the story he wanted to tell and he made that very obvious throughout the tour of the school. Aloof and uninterested, he didn’t participate in any of… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s9IVlY-wapo","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":65,"url":"https:\/\/chrisdonlon.com\/index.php\/2016\/10\/03\/peh\/","url_meta":{"origin":78,"position":0},"title":"PEH","date":"October 3, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Pohantoon-e-Hawayee (PEH) is the officer candidate school for the Afghan Air Force. It is a one-year program and upon graduation the candidates are commissioned as officers and then go on to specialty schools such as pilot training or maintenance engineering school. The school is on the Afghan Air Force base,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "AFG"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/chrisdonlon.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/image-300x225.jpeg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":39,"url":"https:\/\/chrisdonlon.com\/index.php\/2016\/09\/07\/pbs\/","url_meta":{"origin":78,"position":1},"title":"PBS","date":"September 7, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"There has been a lot of terrorist activity in Kabul since I arrived. My first night at RS, the team was dealing with media inquiries regarding the first American casualty from hostile fire since the beginning of the year. This didn't occur in Kabul, but it was a significant event.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "AFG"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/chrisdonlon.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/image-300x225.jpeg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":60,"url":"https:\/\/chrisdonlon.com\/index.php\/2016\/09\/17\/mod\/","url_meta":{"origin":78,"position":2},"title":"MOD","date":"September 17, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Today I got to shoot photos of an opening ceremony to kick off Rule of Law and Legal Issues training for Afghans. The photo shoot itself wasn\u2019t exciting; I generally hate taking pictures of people at a podium speaking to a group, or the grip-and-grin posed shots. But this event\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "AFG"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":120,"url":"https:\/\/chrisdonlon.com\/index.php\/2018\/03\/07\/tolo-aftab\/","url_meta":{"origin":78,"position":3},"title":"TOLO AFTAB","date":"March 7, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"I don't even know what this one stands for. But it was a combined live fire exercise led by Afghan Tactical Air Controllers (ATACs). ATACs are trained by coalition JTACs to be the eyes on the ground and call in air strikes. In this exercise, it was the first time\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "AFG"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":81,"url":"https:\/\/chrisdonlon.com\/index.php\/2016\/10\/17\/mophie\/","url_meta":{"origin":78,"position":4},"title":"Mophie","date":"October 17, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Mophie was my first. The first embed I coordinated\u00a0from the initial request through the final escort out the gate. Mophie, a nickname derived from her AOL email address, was kind of a hot mess from the beginning. Often uttered throughout the process were the words, \"fuckin mophie\". When a reporter\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "AFG"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":45,"url":"https:\/\/chrisdonlon.com\/index.php\/2016\/09\/10\/san-antonio-express-news\/","url_meta":{"origin":78,"position":5},"title":"San Antonio Express News","date":"September 10, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"I spent some time with a reporter from a decent sized Texas newspaper. He used to write for Stars and Stripes and spent a significant time here in Afghanistan in the past.\u00a0He is by far one of the most gracious and appreciative reporters I have ever worked with. Every interaction\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "AFG"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chrisdonlon.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chrisdonlon.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chrisdonlon.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chrisdonlon.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chrisdonlon.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/chrisdonlon.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":80,"href":"https:\/\/chrisdonlon.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78\/revisions\/80"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chrisdonlon.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chrisdonlon.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chrisdonlon.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}