Lessons for a Grandfather, Unexpectedly Deployed to Afghanistan --- “You know you won a free round-trip ticket to Afghanistan?” a perpetually busy chief master sergeant asked me one warm winter evening. We were at the gym at Robins Air Force Base in Houston County, Ga., after a day spent serving on a panel of public affairs chiefs. -- “You’re kidding,” I said. Weights clanked behind us. “I saw my name on a deployment list, but there was a question mark beside it.” All afternoon, my hopes had hung on that question mark. -- “No question sir. You made the list. You’re going to ISAF headquarters in Kabul,” he said, referring to the United States-led international force in Afghanistan. He beamed like he was handing me a winning lotto ticket. It was January 2013. I was scheduled to deploy in 15 months. -- To him, deployment amounted to the opportunity of a lifetime. At that moment, it seemed to me like some surreal theft. I’d miss another New England summer, every birthday in my immediate family and my 33rd wedding anniversary. As a 30-year Air Force Reserve veteran, I’d spent months away from home, but never deployed to a war zone. So I was a decade overdue. But while the Air Force Reserve asks for volunteers to go overseas, I had assumed they don’t involuntarily deploy 53-year-old grandfathers. -- When I called my wife, Debby, that evening to tell her the news, she said, “Aren’t you a little old for that?” -- I felt old. I took a walk around the gorgeous Georgia base, grateful to be away from the frigid New England winter, feeling alternately numb and angry to be “non-vol’d.” The crepe myrtles bloomed and the sun warmed my arms as the notion crept up my spine: I’m going to Afghanistan. -- The next day, I asked the Reserve Command director, a thoughtful colonel, “What are my options?” -- “Realistically, Jim, you can retire or you can take the deployment.” --- So I started a year of intense training holding two opposing notions in balance: “I can’t believe they’re sending me to Afghanistan,” and, “What a great opportunity.” During one week of training, I learned how to greet someone in Dari, how to kill an enemy using a chokehold and how to save a shooting victim’s life with quick-clot bandages. Ironically, the Dari greeting, “salaam alaykum,” means “peace be with you.” I read thousands of pages of material on the nuances of Afghan culture, how to spot a roadside bomb, how to evade enemy capture. There were also facts I hoped not to need: Grasshoppers, ants and worms are edible; hairy or brightly colored insects are not. I learned that Afghanistan is a “nation of minorities,” with Pashtuns, Tajiks, Hazaras and Uzbeks accounting for about 87 percent of the population, but none representing a majority. -- Read More, James G. Bishop, http://atwar.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/11/04/lessons-for-a-grandfather-unexpectedly-deployed-to-afghanistan/?_r=0