Afghanistan, in words and sketches --- Washington Post senior graphics editor Richard Johnson traveled to Afghanistan recently to tell the story of soldiers in words and field sketches. --- FORWARD OPERATING BASE LIGHTNING, Afghanistan — My first morning in Forward Operating Base Lightning, Maj. Vance Trenkel, the Third Cavalry's public affairs officer, asked me to create a little good feeling and sketch someone wearing the Third Cav's Stetson. Of course I agreed, and ma de one plaintive request: it had to be some Clint Eastwood-looking crusty veteran of multiple conflicts. "I need to see the grit in the corners of his eyes," I said. -- Regimental Command Sgt. Maj. Roger Heinze, a proud Texan and 25-year Army man, had that deep blue-eyed calculating gaze that made me feel like he could snap my neck like a twig using no other weapon than foul language. His personality, however, was warm and friendly. I did a quick recon of his features, k-bar like nose, bulldozer chin, those prairie-windswept eye creases and decided that a profile was the way to go. -- We sat together in the still-blinding shade outside of the regimental command post. We chatted about this and that while I drew; growing up in the countryside, who was mowing our lawns while we were away, and our vastly different association for public firearm ownership (me growing up in a country where even the police didn't carry, and him growing up in a state where almost 40 percent of the citizens do). -- "We lost a man today," he said at one point. -- Suddenly the drawing seemed to be a bit of a daft thing to be doing. Heinze said there was going to be a ramp ceremony back at Bagram Airfield that night. I asked if I could accompany the delegation heading there. Forty minutes later we were aboard a pair of Blackhawks heading first for FOB Ghazni, before jumping off for BAF. - Read More, Richard Johnson, Stars and Stripes, http://www.stripes.com/news/middle-east/afghanistan-in-words-and-sketches-1.302903