Free Unspoken Abandonment by Bryan Wood

other half of my squad found a piece of crap pickup truck with a tarp thrown over the bed of the truck. They found AK47s, three rocket propelled grenades, five or six rockets, and a lot of ammunition. It was n o t the mother lode of weapons we were expecting, but it was still a nice find.
    Once everything was settled, and everyone was secured and restrained, the Intel guys did their thing and made some phone calls on a portable satellite phone. We were all told to hang tight and secure the people inside. About an hour later, an Afghan National Army (A.N.A.) truck came with an A.N.A. squad.
    The A.N.A. squad met with our Intel guys for a few minutes , and they then began taking prisoners out of the safe house. It took them a few minutes to sort out who was who, but they eventually brought seven people out to the trucks and left two of the prisoners in the residence. We were told that the seven prisoners were being taken into custody by the A.N.A. and would be transported to a facility to be interviewed by them. I stayed inside, with two other troops, to watch the two remaining prisoners. After a few minutes, two A.N.A. soldiers came in and gestured for us to leave the shack.
    We walked out of the shack, leaving the two prisoners with the two A.N.A. soldiers. Within seconds of walking beyond the door and into the dusty street , I heard a single gunshot, followed by a short yell and a second gunshot which was followed by silence. A moment later, the two Afghan soldiers exited the shack, one still holstering a handgun.
    I did n o t need to go inside to c onfirm what we all knew. I did no t need to see two more bodies. That i s one thing I do n o t write about very often in this journal , but death is constantly around us. Death is a part of life in Afghanistan, and these are just two more dead bodies that I do n o t really care to see.
    I asked the Intel guy why he wanted us to take the two Al Qaeda officers alive if they were just going to be killed. He told me those were his orders and said, “We were just told to take them alive for A.N.A. Once we transfer custody, what they do is up to them,” and that was the last that was spoken about it.
    Seeing things like this in television or movies is one thing, but when it i s right in front of your face, day in and day out, it i s something completely different. The part that scares me is I feel like I a m growing numb to it all. In the beginning, my stomach used to churn when I saw a dead person, and the results of such violence seemed to haunt me. Now though , it i s different. I barely even seem to care. It is almost as if they a re not even human to me anymore , and I a m not sure where I lost that. I think it is an internal defense to dehumanize these situations to make them easier to deal with.
    As we loaded into the vehicles, we left with the sight of a ki d, maybe six or seven years old and with both legs missing, trying to hobble his way to our vehicle to get some food or water from us. The driver just drove away, blasting the cloud of dust kicked up by the vehicle towards the little boy. This place is killing me. It i s absolutely killing me.
    March 22, 2003 :
    Today marked one month in Afghanistan. The past m onth seems to have gone by fast and yet dragged by at the same time. It sounds kind of str ange, but it i s hard to explain. It seems like a milestone, until I stop and realize that I still have months and months to go. When I look at it like that, it feels like I ha ve accomplished almost nothing.
    Next door to our compound is a house that is actually quite lavish, at least by Afghan standards. It i s the home of a powerful warlord, and although it may seem like a bad neighbor to have , it actually works to our benefit. He is a very powerful person in Kabul , and he has a lot of influence over the local police, A.N.A. soldiers, and other paramilitary groups in the area. I guess it kind of keeps us a little safer knowing that some people may be less likely to attack