So much has happened!

A whole bunch has happened since I last posted, even though it's only been about 10 days.

We were out at Sperwhen Gar for about 5 days, and I learned a LOT about incidents that occurred out there before we arrived. There was some heavy fighting in the late summer this year, and it seems the very restrictive Canadian ROE prevented coalition forces from making serious headway against the Taliban in some minor clashes. However, the Canadians made up for that by going after the Taliban with heavy armor and fighting a pretty serious battle with them over three days, which mostly broke the Taliban presence in the area.

Now that it is winter, the Taliban are not so active, because they don't have barracks, and they don't have a lot of gear to issue to their fighters, so they leave them at home, where they can be warm. Foreign Taliban fighters, of course, are still active in some areas, although we haven't made any contact with them.

Our last convoy back from SG was rather tense, because the traffic in Kandahar City was much thicker than usual. I had to bump a small truck out of the way with my Humvee, but didn't have to run anyone over, which is a blessing. We also didn't hit any IED's, which is always a good thing.

I've made close friends with Mahany, who, it turns out, has my taste in fiction (sci-fi and fantasy) and likes to read military history as well. We talked a lot about WWII and Robert Jordan and other similar topics. I learned to play Cribbage with Sgt. Billingsly, although I'm still not very good at the pegging aspect of the game, so I tend to lose a lot more than I win (about 3 to 1, I think). I also had a picture taken of me playing Cribbage and suddenly discovered just how MUCH grey hair I have, which was rather a shock.

I'll post more later, but there's a lot still to talk about.