Base Commander PRT Farah gives parade award ceremony 12/25/2008

We were so Popular that Admiral Mullen Came by to see us. That is me shaking his hand!! LT Brad McInnis PO1 William "Chip" Nagel PO3 John Wagner SMSgt Minister Gerald A. "Doc" Thomas MAJ David Potter MSG (Join to see) CPT Pedro Meza MAJ (Join to see)

Is that a mortar round in your pocket or were you just happy to see him Steve?
(Nice photos thank you. It is a pretty big deal to have an admiral come around.)

You mean is that a 120mm around in my pocket or you just happy to see me? I don't know, John, I just had these videos from that based from 9 years ago and I felt it was time to put them on YouTube and share them with you all y'all LOL. It shows espirit de corps and we try to do the best we could to make it home even though we were in the middle of a crap hole called Western Afghanistan. We did have a situation where the Marines brought us a wounded Taliban who had somehow survived being discovered by the Marines laying improvised explosive devices. The Marines had lit them up with a helicopter or with ground fire and had survived. 3 Marines came to our Base clinic to watch over our Taliban Survivor while they patched him up. Many of our Illinois National Guard where prior service Marines and one was a Desert Storm veteran. These infantryman relieve the Marine infantryman so they could kick back take a shower relax have some snacks and forget about the war. I found out from them that they were in a combat Outpost with really meager austere living standards compared to ours. They only got one hot meal a day. They ate MREs mostly. They didn't have latrines or heads as you would say. They had to sit and little stool and take a crap in a small bag filled with a chemical and then throw it away. They were under Fire all the time and a few had been wounded or killed. This is what I got from one of the Marines that was relaxing while our Illinois National Guard infantryman gladly took their place watching the Taliban in our Medical Center. We had it made a we were lucky that we were not the target. On our base were over 300 Italian Special Forces who did basically nothing and they had armored vehicles of 25 mm cannons. If we came under attack, I don't know how we would have coordinate with him because not very many of them spoke English. This is the part of NATO that bothers me. They have in their constitution that they can't be involved in combat yet they are there on our base. They were nice guys and they had an awesome kitchen but their government basically didn't let them fight.

As I've told petty officer chip Nagel in the past, Admiral Mullen came with his aide-de-camp and a bag of admiral challenge coins. We waited in line and got one and he was happy to get our picture with him. 60 Minutes was also in tow. Since he just became the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Admiral Mullen work because two of our three duffel bags were still stuck in Pakistan. We complain we hardly had any cold weather gear. A couple calls from his aide-de-camp and our Conex box or s e a can was there in a couple days with our missing gear.

Maybe, but the FOB is no longer open. We closed it.

We tried to have fun. Here we are with Guitar Hero being used by USAR and Italian Special Forces ISAF having fun on new years eve, 2009.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTG2kx7uu-M

Jeez, that's a good one. I was involved in a couple of those.

Thank you, Stephen! LTC (Join to see)