Wow, where to begin. I have always considered myself a "learner" and have always been curious about my surroundings. Why people do what they do? What are their roles in society are and what jobs do they do?
I served as an infantryman in Eastern Afghanistan from 2008 to 2009. I was on a pretty small outpost in a pretty bad area. Any grunt will be changed by his experiences and come back with pieces missing and pieces gained. Going on patrols everyday and living amongst, but separate, the local populations was such an eye opening experience. Especially since I was a white, suburban, upper middle-class kid. It just gave me lots of perspective. I realize how fortunate we all are and petty some of our problems are.
On this Combat Outpost , our smaller (18) platoon was responsible for guarding the main entrance, 24/7. It would be one of us Americans, and one Afghan soldier for four shifts during the day, and two at night. This would be manned in addition to other responsibilities for both, like patrols, vehicle maintenance, and the ever present random details around base. Our base was snugged by multiple little hamlets of villages on all sides, and our guard tower looked directly into a little village. I pulled enough guard there that I remember plenty of times looking at this Afghan village in the very early morning and as dawn broke. It seemed like every Afghan where I was, was involved in agriculture somehow. I would watch this Afghan village as it came to life and see how they would begin their lives like any other day. One village might only constitute only one to several families. Everyone has a role. Something that they do. Whether it be getting water, or taking goats out, or tending to fields and gardens. Every house in this one village was connected to one generator. So every day, all these random pieces of electricity, like strung up light bulbs and household appliances, would come on every day. I respected them for being simple and hardy. They went to sleep when the sun went down and got up when the sun came up. They were farmers, and did what their people had been doing for thousands of years.
I was a grunt, and in what is called a Heavy Weapons Company. That means we train more or specialize in vehicle usage a greater amount, along with the weaponry that entails such as M2/.50 cal machine guns, MK ("Mark") 19 40mm automatic grenade launchers. Despite that, we spent lots of time on foot. It was more like "drive to somewhere pretty far away then dismount with vehicles as support". So we were responsible for patrolling this Area of Operations that was absolutely fucking huge, and remote and poor even by Afghan standards. Directly on the Pakistan border. Having vehicles enabled us to really get to far nooks and crannies not possible for other units. We saw villages seldom contacted by ISAF forces. It was so huge, in fact, that they eventually decided it was worth more of our time to occupy this abandoned school** for 2-4 days at a time, along with Afghan troops and their USMC trainers, and run patrols out of there. We could cover more ground within our AO with this method. Return to base and re-equip for 1-2 days. Every day out of this abandoned school, we would basically patrol and pull guard. Often it was a day and night patrol. One night, we get back from a night patrol and it is probably 0200. Not terribly late. So myself, two other buddies of mine, and our interpreter Sean decide to have tea with a few Afghan National Army soldiers. All of us are in a barren room of this abandoned school, sitting indian style on the floor. In the middle we have a propane tank-burner lit up just a little bit as a candle of sorts to provide some light. We are just kind of awkwardly sitting there and sipping tea. Being the learner I am, begin to ask the Afghan soldiers about their lives. Where they are from, how old they are, life experiences. I mean, looking back, I got pretty deep, irrespective of any cultural norms. I asked about if they saw fighting as a child during the Soviet-Afghan War, how long they have been in the ANA. If they are worried about the safety of their family back home. If they had lost anyone in their family to fighting. Every single one of them had lost someone pretty close to them in the decades of fighting, even our interpreter. It was a totally unique and eye opening experience. That night helped me to realize eventually that to many Afghans, life is about survival. Their lives, lands and families have been wrecked by years of fighting. They are just worried about staying alive and farming their lands. And not everyone has that opportunity. I think these Afghan soldiers, really young men like me, had many parts of their lives destroyed, and were looking for a pay check. They had no other means of survival.
I am sorry, these were a random couple of memories of mine and I am in a hurry, however there are many. One of my most beautiful experiences I wrote about here: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/2n269n/serious_retired_soldiers_on_reddit_what_was/cm9uvba
**- On the school. It wasn't old. It was concrete shell. It seemed like it had been built but then never used. A good while before we ever got the idea to use it. This was located in the Kunar Province. I later read about Greg Mortenson and how he possibly made some misleading statements about schools they built. This was to include schools that were only partially built or built then given no support and never operated. And I believe this happened in the Kunar Province. I always wondered if that was one of the schools?