Maj. Johnson ~ Afghanistan Update

Here is an email received from my brother just after arriving in Kandahar, Afghanistan. Please continue to pray for his safety.


First let me apologize for a couple of things. One, for the mass email; it just seemed easier with my limited connectivity here. Two, not keeping all of you in the loop on how this whole deal went down; I'll be trying to correct that in this email. Three, for any misspellings, rants, stream of conscienceness writing, etc., as I have had very little sleep in the last five days.

To catch up those that may not know, I volunteered for an individual tasker to the lovely land of the Afghans. The job seems like it'll be kinda cool. I'm going to be the Joint Personnel Recovery Officer for southern Afghanistan. Basically I'll sit behind a desk and tell people how to run combat search and rescue missions. The nice thing is that this is only a 6 month deployment. I'll miss Christmas, but should be back in time for the kids' and Mary's birthdays.

As for the lack of sleep, I've been in transit from Ft. Benning, GA (I had to spend a week there doing individual replacement training...fun). I left there on 3 Oct bound for Kuwait to process into theater. Enroute we stopped in Maine and Germany, then on to the land that shouldn't be. Kuwait sucks (for those that don't know...many of you do). I spent 5 days there trying to get on any flight I could to get to Afghanistan. The best part was that there are a bunch of thieving bastards there, so you can't leave anything unattended. A few of us that went through Benning together rotated guarding all of our worldly deployment possessions, and didn't sleep much since the terminal never sleeps. Once I finally got a flight out, it got delayed due to maintenance issues, yet I did get out of Kuwait late last night. I arrived in Bagram at about 2am, found a tent to stay in, called Mary, then tried to sleep....no dice. Just couldn't fall asleep. So I explore the little bit of Bagram I dared and went to the USO building across the street form the passneger terminal to get a cup of coffee. Thank God I did! Just as I was explaining to a young Army Specialist that flight school wasn't as much fun as he thought it may be, I here over a loud speaker: MAJ Johnson...last call for MAJ Johnson. Surprised by this, and expecting another of my namesake running around, I went to investigate. Somehow I got put on a flight to Kandahar that I didn't even know existed. So I quickly went to my tent to pack my things and do the duffle bag drag the 500 yards or so to the terminal. Let me tell you, after living in south Bama for a couple of years, the 6000 feet altitude at Bagram about killed me carrying all that stuff.

But finally I have made it to my final stop and have a place to call my own for a few months. Well, my time is up on the MWR computer, so I must go. Please pass this on to anyone I may have missed. Take care, and I'll talk to you soon.

GEORGE M. JOHNSON
MAJ, MS
DUSTOFF!!