Pleasant Grove
Hello All,
Today, more photos from Aunt Bev's photo album of the early Mattsons in Spearfish, South Dakota in the mid 1970's. Aren't they the cutest?
Simply,
Victor
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Well this is my second tour in Afghanistan, the first was from April 2007 to July 2008 in Nuristan Province which is in the north eastern part of the country. This tour started in March 0f this year and we will be home before the 1st of September. It seems like this tour was almost as long as the first one but in reality it is almost a year shorter. I'm pretty sure it is because I have a family of my own now and I miss them like crazy.
Our mission during this deployment was to prepare the Afghan National Army to take over and do everything on there own instead of NATO forces running the show. We spent a little more than half of our time doing patrols with ANA to villages in the area. The rest of the time we supported a Route Clearance Package, which went up and down the main roads clearing all the IEDs. Sometimes we did this on our own which was a little scary.
Our Platoon was very fortunate not to lose any of our guys. We had a few guys get injured but all are doing fine now. We are also very successful during our time here. The ANA we worked with are a completely different group, a complete night and day difference. We also found many caches of weapons and IED material, along with about 15 IEDs on the roads.
All in all this was a good deployment. We didn't lose anybody and we were successful in our mission. Its definitely time to go home though. The guys are ready to get out of here and see there families and get back to normal life. I cant wait to see the family and the new house.
i hope that works for you Victor, I will try to send some pics later on but It might have to wait till we get home. The Internet is not so hot here.