Day 420: The Hidden Pictures

One night while I was on my church mission in Argentina, my companion and I were out visiting a neighborhood. We stopped at one particular house, knocked on the door, and were met by an older man who greeted us by pointing a gun in our direction. He asked us to leave and as you can imagine we quickly complied with his request. It was the first time (and luckily the last) that someone has threatened me by pointing a gun at me.

Later that week as I sat down to write my weekly letter to my mom and dad, I was careful to omit this event from the narrative of the week’s events. After all, moms worry enough about their kids when they are away from home and the last thing they need to know is that someone just pointed a gun at their “baby”. Interestingly, I did write a friend of mine that same week and recounted the incident to them in their letter. Somehow, some of the pages of the letter to my friend ended up in the letter to my mom. The pages she accidentally received did not actually tell of the details of the incident but it did allude to something “crazy” and “scary” that happened. Isn’t it amazing that moms somehow always seem to find out about everything?

Well, similar to my mission days, I have been careful during this deployment to avoid talking or blogging about anything that might make my mom or wife nervous. Now that I am out of harms way, however, I thought it might be interesting to show a few pictures of my “brushes with danger”. Luckily, there isn’t too much to show. I pray that those returning behind me have no more to show than I do. So, here you go...


This picture shows what a rocket can do when it hits the walls that surround one of our bases. This particular one hit the FOB in Bala Baluk about 24 hours prior to a visit I made there. Luckily the night I was there, sleeping under the stars on a cot, the Taliban took the night off and no rockets were shot at us. Rockets are frequently shot at US bases. They rarely do damage or cause injuries. However, there are rare exceptions and it always makes you just a little nervous when one hits close by. The closest I ever got to one was in Kandahar as I was returning from leave. A rocket hit a few hundred yards from the barracks I was sleeping in.

The next few pictures show the effects of an IED on a vehicle. This truck is an uparmored vehicle driven by civilian contractors. It was “hit” by a suicide bomber in Herat just a few miles away from Camp Stone. Look at the damage on the outside and then amazingly how intact the inside is. No one was hurt in this blast (except for the bomber of course).



Suicide bombers in vehicles (VBIEDs as they are known) are one of the greatest risks we face in Afghanistan. In Herat we had a two month period last fall where at least weekly a VBIED would detonate on the road between Camp Stone and the Herat airport. After hearing a loud boom and feeling the buildings shake around us, a plume of smoke like the one pictured here would appear from the direction of the road. Again, we luckily had no serious Coalition injuries during this period.


This last picture shows what can happen to a cooler full of vaccine and syringes when it is exposed to the blast from an IED. I sent down this vaccine and associated supplies to one of our neighboring bases in advance of my traveling down to the location. As you can tell, it never made it down there. Luckily my trip down to this particular base was not as “interesting” as the trip was for the vaccine.