Posts Tagged ‘The War On Terror’

It had been a good summer for him. He was a good fighter, strong. His name might have been Mirwais or Muhammad or maybe Zalmai. He wasn’t from Salavat, this small town in central Panjwai, but he was an Afghan and he’d come here to fight the foreigners; us.

Roughly one hundred metres above the Gulf of Oman: cargo door open; all senses engaged. Shadows and human silhouettes against sunlit water; vibrations still typing rhythmic pattern up spine to neck; deep muffled engine and main rotor noise in helmet overlaid with sudden invite from 423 Squadron’s Captain Adam Power: “Would you like to come up and fly for awhile?”

Legion Magazine staff writer Adam Day spent nearly a month in Afghanistan last October. These field notes serve as a prelude to a major special section on the war in Afghanistan scheduled to appear in the March/April issue—the Editor. AFGHANISTAN FIELD NOTE No. 1 In the spring and summer of 2009, it seemed that critical opinion about the war in Afghanistan was sinking towards pessimism nearly as fast as violence inside the country was rising. “We are not going to ever defeat the insurgency,” Prime Minister Stephen Harper told CNN, and a chorus of military analysts soon joined him in expressing doubt. [...]