Training for Afghanistan

This last Thursday I spent the day in Afghanistan. Well, not really, but let me explain.  I spent the day helping a group of chaplains train for deploying to Afghanistan.  They will be leaving in the next few months to head out for roughly a year. They were doing training for conducting field services (preaching out in the field to soldiers) and in meeting w/ religious and community leaders.  We went down to Hohenfels, which is a post that is technically a part of USAG Grafenwoehr, about an hour away. They have a big training area, where they have built up small villages that look as they do in Iraq and Afghanistan.  The training area is known as the box, which always makes me think of something like a sandbox and playing. But these are big kids, and instead of playing with toys, they play with things that go boom for real, guns and bombs. And instead of a cowboys and indians thing, it is for going to actual war.  They do a fair amount of role playing in the box, with people "playing" the role of terrorist who are hidden in towns and surrounding areas and they train how to go in and find them and what to do when they do find them. 

I was not playing the role of terrorist. Hopefully the chaplains won't get too close to any terrorists.  I was playing the role of a contractor (not hard to get into character since that is what I am to the Army) who was out in the field with soldiers, who had suffered KIA and WIA in the last few weeks (killed and wounded in action).  A group of soldiers were voluntold to help out as well and play the role of soldiers down range.  After the service (I listened to 4 different ones), I stayed back w/ the chaplain, chaplains assistant, and the chaplain in charge of training, and went over an AAR, after action report, and gave feedback to the chaplain and chaplain's assistant on what I thought went well and what could have been done differently.  The chaplain who was in charge of all the training had called me a few days before asking if I would come help out.  Growing up the son of a chaplain, I have heard my fair share of messages from chaplains, and being in ministry myself now he thought I might be able to give some good feedback to the training chaplains. 

It was definitely a different and unique experience. I enjoyed being able to help out, and to go to the box, where civilians are usually not allowed.  before we entered the box, we were being given instructions, and told a number of times in no uncertain terms that we must follow the direct path to the town to remain safe. The other towns were being used for NATO training purposes (well, that is what I gathered from different soldiers I saw), and there would be serious issues if we were to randomly show up in one of their towns. So different, and a good experience overall.