An estimated 500 people signed up for the 9.11-mile memorial ruck, beating a record set in 2017 when 264 participants signed up and completed a slightly different route.

Many of the participants were mere toddlers on the morning of 9/11, more concerned with putting one foot in front of the other without falling over than shouldering a pack and moving out.

Pfc. Alison Malmborg, a supply specialist for the Eighth Army Wightman NCO Academy, was 2 years old when those tragic events unfolded.

“There are a few sergeants and people we work with that were in the military during 9/11, so it means a lot to spend this time with them and show that we are dedicated,” she said. “Even though I was only 2, I am here today serving alongside them.”

On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers linked to al-Qaida took control of four U.S. jetliners. They crashed two into the World Trade Center in New York City and one into the Pentagon. Passengers aboard the fourth airliner rushed the hijackers, who crashed the plane into a field in Pennsylvania rather than continue onto their intended target in Washington, D.C. Thousands of innocent men, women and children lost their lives.

On Oct. 7, 2001, U.S. and British war planes bombed targets in Afghanistan, where the ruling Taliban had afforded al-Qaida safe haven. The bombings marked the beginning of Operation Enduring Freedom and counterterrorism operations still underway today.

“We are here to honor those 2,977 lives claimed by the brutal attacks of Sept. 11, 2001,” said Col. Michael Tremblay, Camp Humphreys’ garrison commander and the keynote speaker, during opening remarks. “Patriots from all backgrounds and all walks of life responded with speed, courage and compassion. In the aftermath of the attack, our servicemembers and nation rallied together as one.”

Starting and finishing at the Collier Community Fitness Center, ruckers tackled the course carrying a minimum of 35 pounds on their backs around the airfield and into areas of the ongoing $10.7 billion base expansion and relocation project.

“This was probably a relatively small event here on Camp Humphreys when it first started nine years ago,” said Capt. Anthony Friday, commander of Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 304th Expeditionary Signal Battalion. “As Camp Humphreys has continued to grow and become the largest overseas post in the world, the event has just continued to grow exponentially with it.”

“A lot of people, especially our senior NCOs and officers, may have known someone that lost their life on 9/11,” Friday said. “It’s just one of those significant events that happen in people’s lives when you still remember exactly where you were.”

Eighteen years after the 9/11 attacks, teenagers are now joining military service knowing they may be called upon someday to sacrifice everything for a cause that took place before their own lives began.

“I have a lot of troops that are brand new, initial term soldiers, so many of them at this time weren’t around for 9/11,” said 1st Sgt. Shaun Molver, of F Company, 3rd General Support Aviation Battalion, 2nd Combat Aviation Brigade.

“When I was growing up in the Army, we said the Army only did two things, train to fight and fight to win,” Molver told Stars and Stripes. “Having my troops come out here today, hopefully they remember where we came from, what happened and why it is important to train.”

Awards for the event were donated by the local Veterans of Foreign Wars and the Buffalo Soldiers Motorcycle Club of Korea. Medals were awarded to the top three individual male and female participants, while streamers were awarded to the first three units to complete the course with 10 members.

keeler.matthew@stripes.com
Twitter: @MattKeeler1231
 

Poland has grown in strategic importance as Russia’s military strength has increased, potentially posing a threat to nearby NATO member states in the Baltic. The theme of military preparedness is likely to be repeated this weekend in Warsaw when the Poles host an international gathering to mark the 80-year anniversary of the outbreak of World War II.

While dignitaries including Vice President Mike Pence attend the ceremonies in Warsaw, U.S. troops at Powidz, a base about 160 miles to the west, will be living in a tent city with spotty internet service, water coming out of faucets at a trickle and a chow hall that serves ample field rations.

In summer, soldiers at Powidz, a logistics and aviation hub for American military personnel training in Eastern Europe, say they’d rather be in the air-conditioned tents than the hot barracks building, which doubles as work space.

“In terms of living and working, it feels a lot like an immature deployment,” said Army 1st Sgt. Sean Jones, the first sergeant for 1st Squadron, 6th Cavalry Regiment, an Apache unit out of Fort Riley, Kan., which is at Powidz for a nine-month rotation.

“Of course, we are prepared to go to an austere environment and fight the enemy and train or whatever else,” he said. “But this is a rotation, not a deployment.”

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Improvements to the areas temporarily hosting U.S. troops in Poland are slowly coming, soldiers said.

At Poznan, American troops are hosted at a small base in the historic city, with a metro area of over 1 million and a large population of college students who speak English well. Air conditioning is being installed on base for some 80 soldiers who live and work in an old concrete building.

“We all have between two-to-three roommates,” said Sgt. Jennie Banks, 25, a human intelligence collector with the 1st Armored Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division at Fort Riley.

Buildings are being renovated to house soldiers and provide them with places “to do our jobs and protect forces in the area,” said Maj. Jon Allen, a spokesman for the Mission Command Element, a headquarters based in Poznan that oversees rotational forces in Europe.

But before major infrastructure projects begin, “we need to know how many people are going to be in which places on a permanent basis,” Allen said.

Planning through uncertainty

It’s still uncertain if the Pentagon will establish a division headquarters at Poznan or elsewhere in Poland.

The U.S. mission already includes a rotational Army armored brigade, a U.S.-led multinational NATO battle group positioned near the Russian military exclave of Kaliningrad and an Air Force detachment at Lask. A small contingent of sailors are at Redzikowo, a northern Polish town near the Baltic coast, where work on a missile defense site continues.

Experts say the presence of U.S. forces in Poland can deter Russia, which countries in Eastern Europe and the Baltic region have eyed warily since it seized Crimea from Ukraine in 2014.

“The U.S. would be in position to introduce its forces into a crisis area and then Russia would have to make the choice of killing American soldiers if it wanted to go to war, and that would have huge political consequences,” Michael Kofman, a Wilson Center fellow, said in a phone interview.

Where an additional 1,000 troops that the U.S. will deploy to Poland will come from, a decision announced in June, is also up in the air.

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U.S. diplomats and officials have suggested they may come from Germany. The U.S. ambassador to Germany and others have criticized Berlin for not meeting a NATO target calling for each alliance member to spend 2% of gross domestic product on defense by 2024.

Pulling troops from Germany and placing them in Poland “would be a real mistake,” said retired Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, the former commander of U.S. Army Europe.

“Germany is our most important ally in Europe,” Hodges said by phone. Bases provided to the U.S. in Germany allow the American military to forward deploy from halfway around the world, he said.

“To be able to replicate the quality of training facilities, maintenance facilities … plus, by the way, our dependence on civilian employees ... working in Europe, you can’t just pick them up and move them,” Hodges said.

Hodges added that he does support rotating noncombat troops into Poland and he has long advocated for infrastructure improvements in Eastern Europe to aid allied military movements.

Big plans and a big lake

For now, many of the projects in Poland are designed to support military operations, not quality of life.

Outside Powidz, one of the largest airfields in Europe, a swath of forest has been cleared to make way for a NATO-funded $260 million storage site for tanks and other U.S. combat vehicles.

A munitions bunker and railhead improvements are also in the works, said Maj. Ian Hepburn, executive officer for the Maine National Guard’s 286th Combat Sustainment Support Battalion, part of the current task force at Powidz.

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A diagram in Hepburn’s office details the plans, including moving the logistics operations area, “where everyone lives, eats, sleeps, does maintenance,” closer to the airfield with new facilities.

“I think there’s a commitment to it but no actual funds yet,” he said.

Army Capt. Dustin Martin, the 286th Combat Support Sustainment Battalion headquarters company commander and Powidz base mayor, said plenty of projects are underway, from improvements to the motor pool area to the front entry control point. “But nothing to improve the necessities,” he said.

Despite the challenges on post, servicemembers say they welcome the opportunity to experience a country that feels safe and seems to appreciate having Americans there.

The natural attractions and local food are also a draw.

Spc. Dominic Pisco, 25, civil affairs specialist with the Army Reserve 407th Civil Affairs Battalion, said the sailboat-dotted lake near the base in Powidz reminds him of home in Minnesota. He’s enjoyed trying pierogies and Zurek, a Polish rye soup with sausage and eggs.

He’s even managed to squeeze in a trip to Italy on a long weekend.

For Hepburn, who said he grew up as the Cold War was nearing an end, “It’s fascinating to be over here … in an area once behind the Iron Curtain. “It’s almost like history is repeating itself.”

svan.jennifer@stripes.com
Twitter: @stripesktown

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The scandal over cheating on diesel emission tests dampened the mood at the Internationale Automobil Ausstellung, or IAA, as it’s called in German, the last time it was held in 2017.

This year, the show was under multiple clouds before it even started.

First, the emissions scandal is still hanging over the car industry, and anti-automotive groups, who say not enough is being done to lower pollution from fossil fuel engines, plan to stage protests near the show over the weekend.

Next, after four pedestrians were killed by an out-of-control SUV in Berlin last week, some groups in Germany are calling for the popular vehicles to be banned in cities.

And lastly, many car manufacturers, including crowd-pleasers like Ferrari, Aston Martin and Rolls Royce, have decided not to participate in the show this year. The French are also missing, and Honda is the only Japanese manufacturer present.

Despite all the backfires, people attending the show will have plenty to see, starting with this year’s ubiquitous offering — electric cars.

Every manufacturer at the show seems to have a car that is either full-electric or hybrid.

These aren’t necessarily your typical family car. Porsche’s Taycan Turbo S features an electric motor on each axel that powers the car to 60 mph in 3.2 seconds. Cost: about $205,000.

Mercedes-Benz’s 469-horsepower Vision EQS concept car, which is powered by two electric motors, is making its debut at the show. A production model of the car is expected, although Mercedes was unable to say exactly when.

Smaller, less powerful cars are also going electric or planning to.

Smart, the company that makes ultra-compact two-seaters, will offer an all-electric fleet next year. Honda plans to do the same by 2025.

One of the world’s biggest car makers, Germany’s Volkswagen — the company at the heart of the diesel emissions scandal — is also planning on going all-electric, possibly to get a jump on tougher EU emission standards, which will start being phased in next year.

VW’s new ID.3 drew large crowds on Tuesday, when international media got a sneak peek at the show’s offerings. A compact four-door, the ID.3 is expected to be available next year for around 30,000 euros ($33,200).

While Ford had “go electric” signs on display, they were only showing hybrid cars, albeit a full range of sizes and styles.

Jaguar featured a new, all-electric I-Pace, while their Land Rover division revived an icon of off-road travel, the Defender. Still powered by a traditional engine, the Defender will be available as a hybrid in the near future.

The future was on BMW’s mind, too. They showed a selection of concept cars including the sporty Vision M NEXT and the Concept 4, which will be available as hybrids or full-electric vehicles. The company’s Mini division also displayed an electric car.

Visitors who tire of hybrids and electrics can visit hall 4.0, where vintage cars are on display. And in another hall, the new Lamborghini Sian, with its 6.5-liter, 785-horsepower engine, will delight those who love fast, gas-guzzling super sports cars, and favor speed over the environment.

The IAA is open to the general public from 9.00 a.m. to 7.00 p.m., Saturday, Sept. 14 to Sunday, Sept. 22. Admission is 13 euros on weekdays and 15 euros on weekends if tickets are bought online, two euros more at the box office. A family ticket for two adults and up to three children under the age of 14 costs 35 euros but can only be bought at the box office. Children under seven get in free. The IAA website is www.iaa.de/en/cars.

abrams.mike@stripes.com
Twitter: @stripes_photog
 

It was just a simulation in a room staged to look like a market somewhere in the Middle East, but for members of III Marine Expeditionary Force it served as a chance to test their combat lifesaving skills.

“This is to give them more comfort in medical interventions, so if there is a mass casualty and a corpsman is unavailable, they can start medical procedures to take care of an individual,” said Seaman Phillip Decoma, a Tactical Combat Casualty Care instructor with 3rd Medical Battalion.

Marines and sailors in occupational specialties most likely to find themselves in a firefight or other life-threatening situations are required by the Defense Department to take the role-based training every year.

Navy corpsmen and civilian instructors hold the three-day course at the Medical Skills Training Center and at scenario-based locations at Camp Hansen and Camp Foster. Up to 25 students meet weekly in classrooms and take part in simulations to expand their ability to administer care while under fire.

Although Marines are taught basic first-aid in boot camp, the Marine Corps does not have medical professionals of its own. The Corps relies instead on Navy hospital corpsmen who embed with the Marines and tend to injuries, big and small, sustained on the battlefield.

However, a corpsman is not always immediately available.

“This course is a training safety net if there are any environments that we have to go into military actions,” Decoma said. “It’s the medical providing that allows every member to go out with some safety, and that safety is what enables us to move comfortably out there.”

Throughout the course, students learn to use tourniquets, make airways through the nose and place chest seals on gunshot wounds on simulated casualty dummies that can speak, groan and bleed on the command of an instructor using a tablet.

In the market-themed simulation room, the students collectively searched for dummies scattered throughout three sections. The students treated the simulated casualties using a systematic approach embodied in the acronym MARCH: respond to major hemorrhaging, assess airways, respiratory observation, circulation checks and a head-to-toe assessment of the patient.

“This course is more intensive and thorough,” said Lance Cpl. Abigail Kessler, a student assigned to the 3rd Marine Division. “I now have a greater understanding of the human body; we are taught to deal with saving another person’s life in a stressful situation and it truly breaks down a good process of what is going to save your life, and helping them after that.”

In the final scenario, students breach and clear the smoke-filled simulation room with props scattered throughout — loud music blaring and bright lights flickering — to find the simulated casualties and perform the life-saving techniques they learned under stress.

Kessler said that going through the course and receiving the knowledge passed down by the corpsmen made her feel more effective as a Marine.

“No matter what situation you find yourself in, be willing to take action on it,” she said, “don’t freeze up, don’t panic, just go and do absolutely what you can,”

vazquez.carlos@stripes.com
Twitter: @StripesCarlos

Following musical performances by the United States Marine Band and a parade, Neller presented Berger with the Marine Corps colors, officially handing over the command. Afterwards, acting Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, Neller and Berger spoke to the audience.

Neller talked about the path forward for the Marine Corps, which he said has already made great improvements since he joined in 1975.

“We’ve got to get ready for the next fight, which is going to be very, very different,” he said. “It’s going to be against someone who is certainly, in many ways, as capable if not more capable than us. Our course of action is not hope, it’s to be prepared.”

Neller recounted some of the questions he’s been asked over the past several days in anticipation of his retirement.

“The last question they ask me is what are you most proud of, and that’s tough,” Neller said. “I’m proud of having served for, when they read it last night — 45 years — I almost fell out of my chair. It doesn’t seem like 45 years.”

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Berger thanked Neller and the mentors he’s had throughout the years, noting that he is still “coachable.”

Family and friends came up many times during the remarks on Tuesday, with Berger emphasizing the help that Neller and his wife, D’Arcy, gave to Berger’s family.

“There isn’t really a book on how to turn over command, but if there is a gold standard of how to do it, they did it,” Berger said. “That house down there, they moved out three weeks ago, early. I couldn’t tell you the hours they spent around the kitchen table with me and Donna while we asked question after question after question.” 

swislow.emma@stripes.com
Twitter: @EmSwiz

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The facility’s inauguration corresponded with a string of events to mark the holiday, including a 5-kilomoter run, basketball and table tennis competitions and even alcohol-free beer pong.

FOB Dahlke, which opened in recent years on the old grounds of Forward Operating Base Shank, has traditionally offered next to nothing for troops in terms of recreation. But soldiers with Task Force Apocalypse, currently stationed at the base, have been working to change that.

“When we first came here we didn’t have anywhere for the soldiers to do anything,” said Sgt. 1st Class Jamie Pryor, an aviation operations specialist with the task force who was deployed earlier this year.

It was Pryor who recommended setting up a USO center and after getting approval, scoured the grounds for an empty building and even helped with construction work.

The facility, which took over a month to construct, is now equipped with a movie screening area, pool table, televisions, video games and free wi-fi.

“The only thing people used to say here was ‘Dahlke doesn’t have anything, this is going to be the worst deployment,’” Pryor said. “Anyone can sit and complain, but I thought: ‘Yeah, it sucks, but guess what? I’m going to make a USO, and the soldiers are going to love it.”

On Thursday, it appeared Pryor’s goal was achieved, and just in time to mark the Fourth of July. After he cut an opening ceremony ribbon, the facility and the grounds around it were teeming with troops celebrating. At noon, the USO provided a barbeque lunch in addition to the other activities.

“I think what they did today was great, it was a great morale boost,” said Spc. Michael Millier, 33, an aviation specialist with Task Force Apocalypse. “It’s a big holiday back home, and it stinks not being with your family. I’ve got a wife and three girls, but you got to do what you got to do for your country.”

Spc. Joshua Cross, 31, also an aviation specialist with Task Force Apocalypse, said the activities helped take troops’ minds off missing their families.

“What they’re doing here today is amazing for everybody,” he said. “Things here can get stressful and it’s nice to be able to come out, have fun and spend time with people you don’t normally get to see every day. It’s a big stress reliever, and I’m happy to be a part of it.”

Despite temperatures hovering around 90 degrees Fahrenheit at lunchtime, “everyone’s pretty happy,” Spc. Joe Murray, 23, a combat medic, observed. “We celebrate our independence every year no matter where we are, whether we’re here or back home. I always take pride in my country.”

While being deployed to Afghanistan is always challenging, being deployed to a remote base like Dahlke is extra challenging, according to Pryor, who said he was happy to give the troops here temporary reprieve from the severity of combat.

“I’m just so happy the soldiers are here,” Pryor said. “At the end of all of this, I’m just glad the soldiers get to enjoy it. That’s the biggest thing.”

wellman.phillip@stripes.com
Twitter: @pwwellman

Some celebrations have already finished. On Camp Zama, home of U.S. Army Japan, for example, troops invited 10,000 of their Japanese neighbors inside the gates for an early Independence Day event on Saturday.

The celebration started with a local band marching through the base waving flags for a crowd of revelers fueled by hot dogs and hamburgers served up by a gaggle of food vendors.

At Yokota Air Base — home of U.S. Forces Japan and 5th Air Force in western Tokyo — troops and their families were invited to a “Celebrate America” event Wednesday that featured a performance by rock band American Hitmen, a magic show, dancers, motocross and martial arts demonstrations, juggling, balloons and fireworks.

Many Pacific bases will hold their celebrations on Thursday, but with the time difference between the region and the U.S. they’ll still be partying before friends and family back home get started.

Misawa Air Base — home of the 35th Fighter Wing in northeastern Japan — is planning a party on the shores of nearby Lake Ogawara. Festivities will kick off at the Base Beach from 2 p.m. and include sand castle building, volleyball, a tug of war contest and fireworks.

At Yokosuka Naval Base, home of the 7th Fleet, celebrations Thursday will include carnival games, bumper boats, a dunking booth and plenty of food and drinks. The evening will close with live music followed by fireworks.

Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni is throwing a four-hour block party at the Sakura Theater parking lot starting 2 p.m. Thursday with carnival games, rides, food and drinks. The base is screening free movies - “Spiderman: Into the Spider-verse” at noon and “Spiderman: Homecoming” at 3 p.m.

Okinawa’s festivities start late on Saturday with concerts by Jason Derulo at 8 p.m. at the “Camp Foster Festival” and Kid Ink, from 10:30 p.m. at Kadena Air Base’s Rocker Enlisted Club.

Kid Ink will perform a second concert at Camp Foster at 7.30 p.m. Sunday. A fireworks display will follow the concert.

Sasebo Naval Base, on Japan’s southern island of Kyushu, is holding a “Rockets N’ Rods Independence Day Celebration” starting at 4 p.m. Saturday at Nimitz Park and concluding with fireworks at 8:45 p.m.

The event includes carnival games, bouncy castles for kids, food and drink stands, a classic car show and live music from White Rabbits and Jared & the Mill.

Korea celebrations

In South Korea, Osan Air Base, home of the 51st Fighter Wing, plans to open its flight line from 5-9.30 p.m. Thursday for “Liberty Fest 2019,” featuring entertainment, food, drinks, children’s play areas and a 15-minute fireworks display launching at 9 p.m. Entertainment includes taekwondo and live music from The Titans, Pentasonic and electronics extreme group Rapine.

Camp Humphreys, home of the Eighth Army and 2nd Infantry Division south of Seoul, will host “Celebrate Independence 2019” at the new Downtown Plaza from 4-9 p.m. Thursday, with fireworks scheduled from 8:45 p.m.

Live entertainment includes the 8th Army Rock Band, the USO Troop Show and a performance by rapper Kid Ink. There will also be an auto show and watermelon- and pie-eating contests as well as bouncy castles, face painting, plant craft and caricature artists to entertain kids.

Daegu’s Camp Walker will hold its Independence Day event from 5 p.m. concluding with fireworks at 8:30 p.m. Servicemembers and families can expect food, games, a kid’s zone, giveaways and live entertainment.

And Yongsan Garrison, in the heart of Seoul, is holding the final July Fourth fireworks display ever at the installation starting at 9 p.m. Thursday. The base expects more than 400 local community members along with soldiers, civilians and their families at the celebration.

Other events at Yongsan include a 5K run at 7 a.m., and starting at noon at fields 5 and 7, clowns and stilt walkers, live music and DJs, pie- and watermelon-eating contests and other activities.

news@stripes.com

It was Cindy McCain’s first visit to the warship that bears her late husband’s name since the Arizona senator’s death Aug. 25 at age 81.

It was also the first time she has been aboard since the Navy added him as a namesake. The others are his father and grandfather, also named John S. McCain, who were both admirals.

The Navy added U.S. Sen. John S. McCain to the list as he lay dying of brain cancer.

“For all the wonderful tributes to John that poured in before and after his passing — all of which his family appreciates beyond description — the one that touched us the most, and perhaps meant the most to him, was the Navy’s decision the month before he died to add his name to the ship’s namesake,” Cindy McCain said.

Tuesday’s visit was also the first by members of the McCain family since the guided-missile destroyer collided with the Alnic MC, a commercial tanker, near Singapore on Aug. 21, 2017.

Confusion among watch-standers that night led to a loss of steering control and the ship crossed in front of the tanker. The Alnic slammed into a berthing area on the McCain’s port side, taking 10 sailors’ lives. It was the second of two fatal collisions involving 7th Fleet vessels that summer.

Cindy McCain was accompanied Tuesday by her sons Jimmy and Navy Lt. Jack McCain.

A new commander

They sat in the front row as Cmdr. Micah Murphy relinquished command of the USS McCain to Cmdr. Ryan Easterday, formerly the ship’s executive officer. Murphy’s next assignment will be at Afloat Training Group Western Pacific. During the ceremony, he was awarded a meritorious service medal for his efforts in returning the USS McCain “to a full mission-capable warship.”

Both men came aboard the destroyer in December 2017 when it returned to Yokosuka after the collision. They spent the next two years overseeing repairs and restoration of the ship, which suffered more than $200 million in damage.

Easterday said Murphy’s “unique skills, creativity and energy carried this ship and her crew through some very difficult times.”

“Almost two years ago, we had a great task laid before us,” he said, addressing the crew. “Thanks to your efforts, we have made more progress in bringing this ship back to life than anyone could have hoped or expected.”

Three former USS McCain commanding officers also attended the ceremony Tuesday.

In her address, Cindy McCain recalled that her late husband’s last public speech was at the Pentagon ceremony for the 10 fallen sailors.

“One of my most poignant memories of him is overhearing him as he sat at our kitchen table, days after receiving his terminal cancer diagnosis, calling each of their families and offering his condolences,” she said while choking back tears.

The ship spent 11 months in dry dock at Yokosuka undergoing repairs before it was moved to the base pier in November. The Navy has not announced when the destroyer will return to sea, but in his address Tuesday, Murphy said he would cheer on the USS McCain and its crew from the pier as they “finally get underway this fall.”

The change in commanders follows the Memorial Day visit by President Donald Trump to the USS Wasp, an amphibious assault ship that was visiting Yokosuka.

The president’s disdain for John McCain — a fellow Republican who was a prisoner of war in Vietnam for 5½ years — is well known. Controversy accompanied the president’s visit when White House staff asked that the USS McCain, docked within view of the USS Wasp, be moved or its name covered up during the president’s visit.

The ship’s name on the stern was photographed covered by a tarp May 24, but the Navy removed the covering before Trump’s arrival and the ship remained in view, according to the Washington Post. The president said he did not know of the request to hide the USS McCain.

“I was not a big fan of John McCain in any shape or form,” Trump said, according to the Washington Post. “Now, somebody did it because they thought I didn’t like him, OK? And they were well-meaning.”

No one spoke of the incident at the ceremony Tuesday. Cindy McCain was not available for an interview afterward.

‘The world I know best’

As the ceremony ended, sailors presented Cindy McCain with the commissioning pennant that flew from the McCain when it entered active service. As the ship’s sponsor, she broke a bottle of sparkling wine across the USS McCain’s bow at its commissioning 25 years ago Tuesday.

The ship originally was named for Sen. McCain’s father, John S. “Jack” McCain Jr., commander-in-chief of U.S. Pacific Command in the Vietnam War era, and grandfather, John S. “Slew” McCain, a World War II carrier task force commander.

At the ceremony, Cindy McCain and her sons unveiled a portrait of her late husband that will hang next to those of his father and grandfather in the ship’s wardroom. Sen. McCain, a Navy pilot during the Vietnam War, is depicted as a young officer in dress uniform years before he took to politics.

“Please know that this portrait that we will shortly unveil of a young naval aviator, the son and grandson of admirals who became a lifelong servant to the country he loves, hangs in a place where it belongs — a place he always wanted it to be,” she said, fighting back tears.

Cindy McCain said her late husband revered the Navy as “the world I know best and I know most,” though he spent more years in office than in uniform. She added that the late senator “was grateful to the end for the life he was able to lead in service to his country at war and at peace.”

She then quoted from his 1993 commencement address at the U.S. Naval Academy, where he was buried last fall: “I will go to my grave in gratitude to my creator for allowing me to stand witness to such courage and honor.”

“And so, he did,” she said.

doornbos.caitlin@stripes.com
Twitter: @CaitlinDoornbos

From memory, he can play music composed by Johann Sebastian Bach, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Felix Mendelssohn and Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach.

Not bad for a third-grader.

Hayden Lee recently showed off his talents for parents and students at his school, Zukeran Elementary, and Kubasaki High School, both under the Department of Defense Education Activity at Camp Foster. He received standing ovations.

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“To me, I think that the keys … are like shapes and colors,” he told Stars and Stripes on June 12.

Lee and his parents, Naomi and Stephan Lee, a civilian working for Navy Federal Credit Union, recently moved from Hawaii to Japan’s southern island prefecture. Hayden’s parents have backgrounds in math and science, but neither had any musical inclinations, they said.

Hayden’s musical journey started at age 3, when his parents enrolled him in piano lessons at the University of Hawaii. His tutelage did not last long due to his inability to stay still at such a young age, Naomi Lee said.

At 6 years old, Hayden became re-inspired to learn piano after watching an older cousin playing a keyboard, his mother said.

“He got excited and after she left he started telling me that he wanted to play piano,” Naomi Lee said. “So, we went to the piano shop, not for shopping, but to see if he’d like the real piano.”

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Hayden started to play works by Bach from memory at the store and impressed the piano shop’s assistants, she said. His parents eventually purchased an upright piano for him to play at home.

Following the steps of a pianist he saw on YouTube, Hayden began to develop the technique of visualizing shapes and colors to play songs by ear.

“My husband and I were asking each other how he did it,” Naomi Lee said. “He listened [to a composition on YouTube] every day, he memorized it and he played it.”

Hayden’s first piano teacher while in Hawaii, Akiko Sanai, taught him for about two years. She remembers him being at about the same level as other students when he started out.

“My teaching technique is not different from other teachers,” she told Stars and Stripes in an email. “My demand gets high for students who have potential to play at high standards; Hayden was one of those students.”

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Soon, Hayden was receiving invitations to perform and compete at prestigious venues around the world.

Shortly before moving to Japan, he played in Rome, where he won first place in the Grand Prize Virtuoso International Music Competition, and also performed at Teatro Studio at Parco della Musica.

Those performances led to invitations for him to play in March at Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall in New York City during the Golden Classical Music Awards International Music Competition, where he won first place.

“There is no limit,” Sanai said. “I think he will be who he wants to be and do what he wants to do with piano.”

In his two years playing piano, Hayden has won a stack of awards, including first-place showings at the Great Composers Competition, the International Internet Music Competition and The Art of Piano competition, in addition to the Golden Classical Music Awards in New York.

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Hayden says he owes much of his success to “practice makes perfect.”

“You should always practice and never get distracted,” he said. “You can’t just snap and just learn something.”

Despite all the hard work, Naomi Lee said her son is just like any other kid.

“When you see him, meet him and talk to him, he’s a regular 9-year-old boy,” she said. “But he loves music; he loves piano.”

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Twitter: @StripesCarlos

“You bleed a lot, sir. That’s the most blood I’ve ever had drop,” Werner, a combat medic with the Texas Army National Guard, told one of his patients as he treated a patient.

“It’s pretty hot outside, so we’re just doing some preventative maintenance, so nobody ends up as a heat [casualty],” Werner said, after parachuting into the area to treat both real and fake injuries as part of the multinational Swift Response exercise.

Werner was among more than 7,000 mostly airborne soldiers from eight NATO nations who “battled” through the Balkans in an exercise designed to test the U.S. Global Response Force, whose mission is to rapidly respond to unplanned crises. The nearly two-week exercise ended Tuesday.

The Global Response Force has long been an Army mission, but after 2001 it took a back seat to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. More recently, military leaders have renewed the mission’s focus.

“We’ve spent ... almost two decades training for counterinsurgency operations, but recent events have shown that there can be emergencies on the state level and region level that can happen quickly, and require a crisis response force,” said Lt. Col. Timothy Wright, whose 2nd Cavalry Regiment soldiers participated in the Romanian war games last week.

Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014 and the ongoing conflict with pro-Russian paramilitaries in eastern Ukraine “caught a lot of people by surprise,” and may have shown the world how important an emergency response force can be, he added.

To test out the Army’s ability to respond to a crisis in the Balkans, Swift Response created a scenario where NATO forces had to react to a “mixed-threat” enemy, armed with the small arms of a militia unit but also with larger vehicles and anti-aircraft guns of a regular military force, said U.S. Army Capt. Michael Lapadot, an intelligence officer with the 173rd Infantry Brigade Combat Team (Airborne).

The NATO forces parachuted into locations in Bulgaria, Croatia and Romania, beginning June 13. They fought back mock enemy attacks, often times in dense crop fields and under the watchful eyes of goats being led through the exercise area by astonished farmers.

Pfc. Eduardo Ortega, an artilleryman with the 173rd, spent most of that time firing his M777 155 mm howitzer at the “enemy,” played by U.S. and Romanian soldiers. He also pulled guard duty, hunkered down among the wheat stalks surrounding the guns.

Though he said the 90-plus degree heat definitely made life uncomfortable, he added that working in the wheat fields hasn’t been too bad.

“I love my job, and making these [howitzers] fire,” Ortega said.

Although Ortega and his crew were very busy throughout the exercise, its goal didn’t escape him.

“A war can happen at any time,” he said. “We need to be able to jump into a place, and be able to fight, whenever.”

The U.S.-led drills were even more important for the European participants, as they are more likely to be affected by a threat from outside of NATO, said German Lt. Col. Markus Hafner, commander of the multinational parachute task force during the training.

“I think it is very important to conduct exercises in Eastern Europe, both in the Black Sea Region as well as the Baltics,” Hafner said. “For the allies in these countries, it sends a strong message that the alliance is both willing and capable to fulfill its obligation and promise to each other to defend the alliance’s territory.”

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The exercise allowed the NATO partners to work together to shoot down drones flying over the Black Sea, which has become a focus of NATO attention since the Russian annexation in 2014 of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula, located just 150 miles across the sea from the Romanian missile range.

It also allowed the U.S. to showcase the Patriots — made by U.S. defense contractor Raytheon — to Romania, which is in the process of acquiring the system and plans to field it next year.

In addition to Patriots, U.S. troops fired Stingers from the Avenger missile system, while the Romanian air force launched U.S.-made Hawk missiles, as well as Soviet SA-6s and SA-8s.

Surface-to-air missile systems are vital to Romania’s defense and the defense of the Black Sea region, said Col. David Shank, the commander of the 10th Army Air Missile Defense Command.

Working with older Soviet-era missile launchers presented some technical difficulties during the exercise, which was intended to help the two allies synchronize their missile tracking, targeting and firing capabilities, he noted. “But we have the right soldiers with the right skills to integrate these systems and mitigate these challenges, so in the event that we do have to fight together, we’re prepared to do just that,” added Shank.

The live-firing exercise was part of Exercise Saber Guardian, one of several exercises taking place this summer in and around the Black Sea.

Firing the missiles “could send a message across the Black Sea that we will soon have these capabilities,” said Maj. Gen. Viorel Pana, the chief of staff for the Romanian air force. “But the way these missiles will be deployed won’t necessarily be used (in the Black Sea).”

In the event of an attack on Romania, the Patriots will increase the country’s ability to defend itself until the U.S. or other NATO allies can come to its aid, Pana said.

Patriot surface-to-air missiles have been live-fired only once previously in Europe — in February 2018 on the Greek island of Crete.

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Twitter: @Marty_Stripes

Exercise Saber Guardian was one of several planned this summer around the Black Sea, where tensions have risen in recent years after Russian naval buildup in the region and its annexation of the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine in 2014.

In the scenario set for the exercise, a heavily armed enemy force attempted to cut off NATO communications around the Black Sea, and an allied unit had to quickly move into position to defend the area and prevent the attack.

The 2nd Cavalry, known as the Dragoons, used Stryker armored vehicles to fight against the Romanian Army’s Soviet-era BTR-80 armored personnel carriers. Thanks to the Strykers’ superior firepower, the Americans neutralized the mock enemy’s home-turf advantage in the central Romanian hills – but not without a fight.

“The Romanians have been training in this area for years and know it really well,” said Capt. Doug McFarland, a troop commander with the regiment. “They used their knowledge of the area to their advantage, which made it difficult for us at times.”

With dense fog blanketing the combat zone Tuesday morning, the Romanians mounted an attack on the dug-in Dragoons, but using the Strykers, mounted with 30mm cannons and Javelin missiles, the Americans repelled each enemy assault.

“The combination of heavy firepower from the [Javelin Missiles and 30mm cannons] and sound strategies from our dismounted infantry won the day,” McFarland said. “The Romanians were unable to penetrate our defense.”

Materials like sandbags and wire were airdropped into the battlefield to allow the soldiers to set up an extensive defense.

Junior soldiers worked around the clock digging fighting holes to solidify the U.S. defensive positions.

“We’ve been digging fighting positions in shifts, continuously,” Sgt. Mark Mcalvain told Stars and Stripes as the Americans prepared for the enemy to attack.

The Romanians weren’t the only adversary the Dragoons faced. Troops on both sides also battled temperatures over 90 degrees Fahrenheit, high humidity, and voracious mosquitoes.

Mcalvain said he got at least 20 mosquito bites on his face alone, while some of his soldiers were hardly bitten at all.

“There are so many [freaking] mosquitoes here,” Mcalvain said. “Some people have a worse time of it than others.”

Over the next few days, the sunburnt and bitten soldiers will drive their vehicles through several countries back to Vilseck in Germany. Exercise Saber Guardian continues in Romania until June 24.

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Twitter: @Marty_Stripes
 

With 14 C130-J Super Hercules transport planes assigned to Yokota, along with UH-1 helicopters, CV-22 Ospreys and other aircraft, the wash rack can be a busy place.

Keeping those Super Hercules clean is a 1½-daylong job. Starting in the early morning hours, mid-shift airmen prepare the massive aircraft for its cleanup. The maintainers responsible for prepping the birds said safety is their first priority.

They lower the wing flaps, remove access panels and disconnect the batteries, among other precautions.

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“We have to deactivate certain systems to prevent shock and crush hazards to make the aircraft safe to wash,” Staff Sgt. Alexander Young said.

The wash rack is a job for beginners — one where less-experienced airmen get their feet wet.

“Actually, doing the wash is one of the worst jobs,” Young said.

It’s an unpleasant task because it means staying soaked to the bone for most of the day, he added.

At Yokota, however, local contractor Yamagashi Reform Corp. has been washing aircraft for the past four years.

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With a crew of eight working on a Super Hercules — which is more than 112 feet long and 38 feet tall with a 132-foot wingspan — wetting, soaping, scrubbing and rinsing takes about eight hours, said Yamagashi project manager Mariko Kawadai.

Sugi Yama, a 10-year Yamagashi employee, said he likes his job.

“I enjoy seeing it change in front of me,” he said, comparing what he does to washing a car. “It’s the same; one is big, and one is small, but my car doesn’t get inspected after.”

Once the contractors are done, the airmen take over again. The process concludes with an inspection, lubrication and anti-corrosion treatment.

The final details complete, the C-130 returns to the flight line, ready to get dirty again in support of the wing’s tactical airlift mission throughout the Indo-Pacific region.

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Several church services were held to mark the day Christians believe Jesus Christ rose from the dead.

Two Protestant services were held in the morning - including one at sunrise, during which a fire was lit to symbolize renewal.

“For Christians, Easter is important because it celebrates new life," said Forward Support Base Chaplain Maj. Kathy Scott, who led the later service. “We celebrate the resurrected Lord Jesus, but we also celebrate the new life in us that can take place, new attitudes, new behaviors, new ways of thinking.

“To me that’s what’s important, to give people hope as they work here, which can seem very, very dark.”

Father Giovanni Scaleses, chaplain at the Italian Embassy in Kabul, visited the base to lead a Catholic mass. He distributed communion to those in attendance, which included several nuns doing charity work in the country.

NATO’s Kabul headquarters houses servicemembers from most of the roughly 40 countries that make up the coalition, which is tasked with training and advising Afghan security forces.

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A Seder is the festive Passover meal where participants celebrate the story of the Israelites' exodus out of Egypt.

“Passover is one of the biggest holidays for the Jewish community. It’s one of those holidays where, if you don’t see some people for the rest of the year, you will at least come together and take part in Seder together,” said Maj. Andrew Shulman, a reservist chaplain who came to the garrison to conduct the Passover services.

Tower Barracks held its first Seder meal Friday with around 40 members of the Grafenwoehr Jewish community.

The dinner included traditional foods like matzah and gelfite fish, and the traditional Seder songs, prayers, and scripture passages recounting the Exodus.

“It really means a lot to the families here, that we do Seder,” Shulman said. “There aren’t a lot of synagogues in this area. Let alone one that would do Seder in English. Between us and Ramstein, we might have the only English ones between here and England.”

Shulman estimates that there are around 250 Jewish soldiers in the garrison.

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Soldiers with the Army’s 2nd Cavalry Regiment used “every weapon they have” to take out the simulated enemy forces at a live-fire exercise Tuesday, Army spokeswoman Lt. Ellen Brabo said.

The soldiers were cut off from their destination by a simulated conventional enemy threat using armor of their own. The scenario gave the “Dragoons” an opportunity to utilize their heavy weapons, like the 30mm cannons mounted atop some of the Strykers and the CROWS-J Javelin missile launchers mounted on others.

Both of these “up-gunned” versions of Strykers are relatively new additions to the regiment, coming into use last year for the Germany-based unit as solutions to increase their firepower.

After returning enemy fire, the troops got into a defensive position and engaged in a firefight, where dismounted soldiers worked on their marksmanship while the Strykers supported them on their flanks.

Targets popped up at various distances to keep the soldiers guessing where the enemy would be next. The exercise prepared the soldiers for their platoon evaluations later this year.

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In teams of six to eight men each, reconnaissance Marines, battalion support troops and Navy corpsmen formed up in the rain at 5:30 a.m. Friday.

Ahead lay 6 miles and eight stations where the teams faced tasks familiar to reconnaissance Marines: intelligence gathering, medical evacuation, weapon assembly and establishing communications, all while running and lugging their 50-pound rucksacks.

Each of the eight teams’ rucksacks bore a piece of bright, orange fabric with the name of a fallen Marine stenciled across it in bold, black letters. Some teams carried more than one name.

“The entire event that we are doing is centered around these individuals,” said Staff Sgt. Brandon Escochea, an assistant team leader, to Stars and Stripes. “So that whoever looks at us, we don’t draw the attention; the name that is on our rucksack is what’s drawing the attention.”

Marines at the challenge knew some of the fallen whose names the Warrior Challenge teams carried.

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Battalion commander Lt. Col. Sean Barnes served in Iraq with Sgt. Gary S. Johnston, who was killed in action there in 2007. Barnes still has the pamphlet from Johnston’s memorial service in his office.

“Today for me is a big deal,” Barnes said. “Days like this humble you.”

Likewise, Capt. Ryan Rullman, commander of 1st Platoon, Alpha Company, had served with Cpl. Alejandro Romero, who died last year in a parachute training accident in Coolidge, Arizona.

“It was awesome to honor him in this way,” Rullman said. “The guys are living every day for the guys who went before us.”

Staff Sgt. Daniel Mormino, the battalion communications maintenance chief, previously served with Sgt. Michael Ferschke, who died in 2008 in Iraq.

“These men gave their lives for America, so we carry their name on,” Mormino said. “Knowing that you are doing it for the fallen makes you push a little bit harder and endure the pain a little bit more.”

At one station, teams had to complete 321 repetitions of seven exercises — push-ups and sit-ups, for example. The military occupational specialty, a four-digit code, for reconnaissance Marine is 0321.

“This is an example of something we like to take a little bit above and beyond,” said Maj. Andrew A. MacDougall, battalion executive officer. “Marines don’t like to admit they are special Marines, but there’s something pretty special about recon Marines.”

At the final station, teams jumped into rubber combat raiding boats, paddled to an ocean buoy, flipped the boat over — demonstrating how to empty the craft in case of flooding — and returned to shore to finish the course.

As the teams crossed the finish line at 3rd Battalion headquarters at Camp Schwab, each team member placed a hand on a monument to Sgt. William Dibblee and Cpl. Jose Hernandez. The two Marines drowned in a deep stream on Okinawa while training with 3rd Battalion on Oct. 26, 1982.

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The challenge complete, the Marines, in utility uniforms drenched with sweat and seawater, gathered for photographs with their banners held high. The winning team members’ names are etched into a paddle that’s displayed at battalion headquarters.

“It’s important that we do these events because the guys in the battalion never forget the men who went before them,” said Rullman. “It’s nice to have this event every single year to give us a reality check and bring us back to why we do this job, who we’re doing it for and remembering those Marines for what they have done for us and for their country.”

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The forced disappearance was part of an initial bout of violence that has continued ever since, killing millions across the country. Among the dead is Dawlatshahi’s son, who died in a 2016 suicide blast and whose photo adorns a wall of a new museum designed to play a unique role in fostering a long-sought reconciliation and bringing peace to the nation of 32 million.

The Center for Memory and Dialogue opened last month amid ongoing talks between American and Taliban officials that have sparked hopes of a cease-fire in the 17-year war. But directors say in order for any peace to last, wounds from the past must be healed, which the center is helping achieve.

“This place reminds us of the memories of our loved ones, it’s more important to me than my life,” Dawlatshahi said standing next to the photo of her son. “I think it can help bring peace.”

The museum documents bloodshed that began during Afghanistan’s communist regime in the late 1970s — which was marked by disappearances and killings like that of Dawlatshahi’s husband — and goes on to cover deaths caused during the Soviet occupation of the 1980s, the subsequent civil war, the Taliban’s brief reign and the current period that started when American forces invaded to overthrow the hardline regime in 2001, beginning America’s longest war.

Glass “memory boxes” throughout the museum display victims’ personal items and biographies written by family members. One box, commemorating a young girl, holds a doll and watercolor paints. Others include jewelry, hand-written letters and various other objects.

“His death took our happiness away,” reads a biography written by the wife of Sayed Abedin, a driver killed by a suicide attack in Kabul in 2018. “I only pray to God to do justice and punish (the culprits) for their crimes.”

Organizers say the contents of the memory boxes will change regularly to feature different victims. There are plans to exhibit them at other venues throughout the country. In addition to the shifting collection of memorabilia, the center in Kabul will host regular discussions to help the public come to terms with loss.

“Ultimately, we are hoping that by providing this space for discussion and dialogue, we will overcome and go beyond this bloodshed and violence and have a peaceful Afghanistan where everybody can live in peace and in dignity,” said Hadi Marifat, executive director of the Afghanistan Human Rights and Democracy Organization, which developed the center.

Many Afghans have told the organization they’re ready to forgive upon receiving an apology, if nothing else is possible, Hadi said.

“Forgiveness is one thing, but we will not forget what happened,” Hadi said. “The issues of forgiveness and to forget are two different things.”

More than 2 million Afghan civilians are estimated to have been killed from 1978 to 2001. More than 32,000 others lost their lives since 2009, when systematic documentation began, the United Nations said in a report last month. The report named 2018 the deadliest year for Afghan civilians and expressed concerns over a growing number of casualties caused by suicide bombings and U.S. and Afghan airstrikes.

The Center for Memory and Dialogue is unique in Afghanistan. Before it opened, there was no formal policy to remember those who lost their lives during the past four decades of conflict, its directors said.

“A center like this was badly needed,” said Fatima Alavi, an associate at the center. “When we bring family members of the victims here to talk, they have pain in their hearts. They have a hatred of whatever happened, so they can come over, share their stories with others, listen to other stories and see that they are not the only victims — all Afghans are the victims of these wars.”

During a recent discussion led by three human rights experts at the center, a member of the audience asked how families of the dead would receive justice — highlighting the fact that for some, healing will depend on perpetrators being punished and not just having their slain loved ones honored at a museum.

Few efforts have been made to address past crimes and bring to justice those responsible for civilian deaths in Afghanistan’s four decades of war.

In 2017, the International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda lodged a request to investigate alleged war crimes committed by the Taliban, the Afghan government and U.S. troops and Central Intelligence Agency operatives in Afghanistan. The U.S., which never ratified the treaty establishing the ICC, has said it will not cooperate “in any way” with the investigation.

Today, the focus in Afghanistan is on talks between U.S. and Taliban negotiators taking place in Qatar, the highest-level negotiations between the two sides since concerted peace efforts began last year. If the talks are successful and a ceasefire is eventually established, the longing among Afghans for justice is unlikely to dissipate.

The evidence collected by the Center for Memory and Dialogue could help in future cases against those accused of killing Afghan civilians, said Mohammad Hussain Saramad of the Afghanistan Human Rights and Democracy Organization.

“We’ll try to get more stories and more memories as evidence about the victims,” Saramad said. “We hope that by evaluating such material, we’ll be able to bring clarity to violent incidences.”

Zubair Babakarkhail contributed to this report.

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The Maj. Gen. W.P.T. Hill Memorial Awards for Food Service Excellence were established in 1985 with the aim of improving food service operations and identifying the best expeditionary dining facility in the Marine Corps. The award winners — I MEF and II MEF cooks are also competing — are expected to be named in early April and will be able to attend a ceremony in Chicago in May.

Food specialists of the 37th Regiment presented a “build your own” meal of Okinawa taco rice to judges and patrons on Thursday. It’s an island lunchtime staple of ground beef or chicken, lettuce, cheese and tomatoes served on top of rice.

The competition involved more than a meal; the regiment also had to build a field mess tent fitted with a kitchen, serving line, seating area and physical security.

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The team dedicated its expeditionary field kitchen, or EFK, to Pvt. Howard P. Perry, who in 1942 became the first African-American to enlist in the Marine Corps. Construction started on Feb. 28 and builders overcame strong winds and heavy rains to finish the job.

“It took about three weeks to set up the site,” the regimental mess chief, Gunnery Sgt. Julia Criquimatura, told Stars and Stripes on Thursday. “The EFK itself can feed over 800 Marines, twice a day.”

On competition day, a three-person panel – two senior food-service specialists from Headquarters Marine Corps and a civilian representative from the National Restaurant Association – judged the regiment’s presentation. Servicemembers from various commands were invited to experience the field kitchen and taste the menu items.

“I am very impressed with what I am learning about the Marines in particular with the standards they adhere to, how they evaluate their performance, how they hold everyone accountable and the teamwork where everybody is a mentor for one another, helping each other grow,” Michael Pizzuto, a judge from the National Restaurant Association, told Stars and Stripes.

Pizzuto, on his first trip to Okinawa, said being a part of the judging panel held a special meaning for him. The island was his father’s last duty station while serving in the Army during World War II.

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This year’s competitors prepared the taco rice meal to highlight their connection with Okinawa, according to Col. Scott Johnson, commander of CLR 37.

“This year they brought it,” he said. “Not only the tactical setup, with the camo-netting and concertina wire, but also the internal setup with the best chow on the menu.”

The Marines put their own spin on the menu’s side items with names like “quarterdeck quesadillas,” “fire watch nachos” and “sea bag salad bar.”

Aside from judging the food quality and taste, the judges evaluated the entire process, from site layout, management and sanitation, to food preparation, maintenance, storage and financial accounting.

Pizzuto said the MEF that comes out victorious would most likely be close in final scores, but he said he was impressed by the quality and maturity of the Marines he evaluated, compared to the chefs he speaks to in civilian kitchens.

“The military travels on its stomach,” he said. “If they are not healthy and not well fed, they are not going to perform or get the mission done. But I don’t see that happening, especially with the kind of enhancements here.”

Competitors said winning the top award means recognition for the routine, daily work done in kitchens to feed Marines.

“I really hope we win,” said food-service specialist Lance Cpl. Carolina Campuzano. “This morning we gave our best, we put our love and everything into this meal and this whole set up.”

Criquimatura said the competition brought out the best in the regiment.

“The highlight of today was everybody’s mood; everybody was just really happy to be here, the cooks, the patrons, everything was amazing,” she said. “It was hard work. It was all worth it.”

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More than 3,200 soldiers from 27 countries are testing out NATO’s new counter artillery-fire doctrine, which it previously lacked, during Exercise Dynamic Front 19.

“Counter artillery is a critical doctrine for any military,” said Col. Joe Hilbert, the commander of Operations Group for Joint Multinational Readiness Center in Hohenfels. “The ability to take out the artillery of the opposing force, removes a strategic capability that they need, and gives you an advantage.”

While the United States has had contingency plans for what to do if their own artillery gets shelled by the enemy, the NATO alliance has lacked a cohesive counter battery fire doctrine in its game plan until now, military officials said.

“The U.S. has its own counter battery fire doctrine, and individual NATO allies have their own doctrine, but NATO doesn’t have a specific doctrine in place,” said Maj. Andrew Champion, the higher command officer in charge of the exercise.

The Army took the U.S. counter artillery fire plan and applied it to the large-scale multinational artillery exercise this week, Champion said.

This year’s exercise is the first Dynamic Front to take place in multiple countries.

While U.S. troops and allies are conducting the artillery-based war games in Germany, artillery will be firing simultaneously in bases in Poland and Latvia.

Additionally, this year the exercise is making use of more than triple the amount of the long-range multiple launch rocket systems as last year, with 24 MLRS vehicles supporting 62 howitzers.

The extra rockets bring additional capabilities to the soldiers, like the ability to launch anti-tank mines as well as highly precise rocket fire up to 55 miles away, said Maj. Andreas Leischner, commander of the German artillery battery at the exercise.

“You can shoot behind a skyscraper (50 miles) away, exactly on a target, and have no collateral damage,” said Leischner. “It’s not like artillery in the former days, where whole areas are destroyed.”

The live fire portion of the exercise began March 2 and will continue until this weekend.

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“Everything went to pieces,” Brig. Gen. Abdul Raziq Safi said of the base, which the Americans dubbed Forward Operating Base Shank. “Everything fell apart.”

After more than 17 years and $80 billion to build them up, Afghan security forces still struggle to secure their country, while corruption and other challenges strain their ability to maintain equipment and facilities provided by foreign forces, largely the United States.

FOB Shank’s fate — left to rot in the hands of overwhelmed Afghans — illustrates those challenges, as the White House reportedly mulls withdrawing thousands more troops, and as diplomats hammer out a peace settlement with the Taliban that could involve pulling out all foreign forces in the coming years.

Shank, located in eastern Logar province, is one of several former coalition bases throughout the country that have fallen into a state of disrepair, officials and observers told Stars and Stripes.

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Left behind

Once a strategic hub, Shank was a bulwark against Taliban enclaves in the lawless Tangi Valley to its west. An American-built runway allowed huge cargo planes to bring in troops, weapons and equipment.

Among the largest coalition bases at one time, it once hosted a 50-shop bazaar, four beauty salons, three restaurants and an academy to train soldiers in the counterinsurgency doctrine officials had hoped would end the war. It’s now a much different sight.

“It’s hardly recognizable,” said Army veteran Adam Cote, after viewing recent photos.

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Cote led a company of engineers who demolished some of Shank as part of a large-scale “shooting withdrawal” in 2014, after the Obama administration ordered most U.S. troops out of the country by the end of that year. The “retrograde,” perhaps the largest in modern history, cost the Pentagon a reported $6 billion, though likely far more.

While still battling the Taliban, units like Cote’s rushed to tear apart over 500 bases, shuttering many and downsizing others to be given to the Afghan forces. Some $860 million in property was transferred by 2015, including four logistics hubs, 13 operating bases and hundreds of tactical outposts, the Defense Department has said. About $48 million more was destroyed or abandoned.

DOD kept tons of valuable material, hauled out in miles-long convoys that snaked at a glacial pace across eastern Afghanistan to Bagram Air Field to be redistributed elsewhere or sent home.

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On its way out of the country, gear and supplies from remote eastern bases ended up at Shank, where troops picked through some 8,000 shipping containers, destroying, scrapping or giving away anything not worth risking American lives over. They left behind generators, air conditioners, furniture, buildings and empty shipping containers, a 2014 Army statement said.

“The end result was well worth the effort,” it said. “The Afghans will assume a functional operating base to immediately continue the war against transnational terrorists.”

'Houses for demons'

Today, Shank’s perimeter walls still stand, tracing a long pill-shape with the Afghan Camp Maiwand on its northern end. About five miles away, the southern tip hosts a small U.S. Special Forces camp and an American outpost called Camp Dahlke West that’s been built up recently.

In between is a vast swath of deserted buildings and ruined tent villages that U.S. troops have dubbed “Zombieland.”

Afghan troops use a similar term: “Houses for demons.” It describes several former coalition facilities “because no one is using them,” said Atiqullah Amarkhail, a retired Afghan general.

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Roaming packs of feral dogs now bed down at what was once Shank’s busy helicopter landing pad. Crows pick over scrap heaps amid metal tent skeletons whose torn plastic skins whip in the wind. Snow blows through collapsed walls of wood huts that once housed military offices.

As more Americans have been pushed out to Dahlke to advise front line units in the past year, U.S. troops have forayed into the wasteland to reclaim abandoned equipment, such as heaters and generators.

“You drive through and it’s like the ‘Walking Dead,’” 1st Lt. Tom Kopec, 26, a soldier in the 1st Cavalry Regiment, said in December.

Shank’s dilapidation was the result of resource limitations, claimed Safi, who heads a brigade in the army’s 203rd Corps. He has been fighting in Logar province for about 10 years and was posted at Shank in its prime.

Back then, its population of U.S. and coalition troops, civilians and contractors topped 8,000. Today, Safi’s troops here number one-fifth that, he said.

“We do not have the people to maintain the base — we have almost no people here,” Safi said via translator. “The rest are out at checkpoints.”

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Even with a base full of troops, Safi couldn’t afford to maintain it, he said, claiming the facilities are too costly to run. Everything the Americans left requires power, he said, even bathroom door locks his troops have replaced with ordinary padlocks.

Despite $2 billion in U.S.-funded power projects, Afghanistan’s grid remains underdeveloped and unreliable, and bases often depend on electric generators to power lights, heaters and other equipment.

For just one of the big tents now rotting in Zombieland, the Americans would burn about 80 gallons of fuel a night, said Safi, who spent hours one January morning searching room to room in his headquarters for a working heater.

“Where are Afghans supposed to get that much fuel?” Safi asked. He said later: “The Americans, money has no value for them.”

In a tent on the nearby snow-covered U.S. camp that same weekend, the Americans cranked the heat so high that one soldier wore shorts and another offered guests cold drinks to cool off.

While DOD provides the Afghans more than a million gallons of fuel a year, Kabul often struggles with logistics challenges, as well as frequent theft of gas and other property.

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Nothing lasts

It’s doubtful U.S. troops consumed as much fuel as Safi claimed, said Richard P. Mills, a retired general who led the Marines in southern Afghanistan from 2010 to 2011. But, he and others said, the coalition didn’t do enough to ensure it left behind rudimentary bases that the Afghans could maintain.

“We were being less than truthful with ourselves that the Afghans would be able to take care of these bases,” Mills said.

Shank’s condition bodes poorly for a time when foreign militaries and their financial backing are gone, said Vanda Felbab-Brown, senior fellow at the Washington-based Brookings Institution.

U.S. Central Command knew the Kabul government was “becoming overburdened by infrastructure” during the 2014 withdrawal, and NATO officials had been developing plans to help the security forces divest excess property, a group of CENTCOM logistics officers wrote in a 2016 review of the withdrawal effort.

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The status of those plans is unclear. Officials with the U.S.-led NATO Resolute Support mission declined repeated requests to discuss Shank and other bases, saying only that “we’re always learning and adapting and changing our processes.”

Meanwhile, Safi’s troops had adapted Shank to their own needs, growing flowers in a former bus stop shelter and drying raisins on the roof of an old housing container.

For Drew Pham, a former cavalry officer who had passed through Shank while fighting in Wardak province about eight years ago, the base he saw in recent photos was a metaphor for the efforts of soldiers like him.

“Nothing we made over there seems to last,” he said.

Franz J. Marty and Zubair Babakarkhail contributed to this report.

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Twitter: @jplawrence3
 

This has become routine for Georgian soldiers being advised by U.S. troops in defensive tactics to protect the small, mountainous country that shares its northern border with Russia.

Last week, amid heightened tensions in the region, soldiers with the U.S. Army’s 1st Infantry Division began training the Georgians' part of the Georgia Defense Readiness Program, which is meant to bolster the country’s ability to defend itself against attack and modernize its military’s tactics.

“We have problems with our neighbor, Russia, and this gives our soldiers practice to increase their soldiering skills, and learn how to fight here in Georgia,” said Lt. Col. Vova Natenadze, commander of a battalion going through the training.

Several of the country’s northern provinces are still occupied by Russia, after a five-day war over the South Ossetia and Abkhazia regions in 2008. Russian troops, which had been there as peacekeepers, remain there to this day, occupying roughly one-fifth of Georgian territory.

The training comes as Russian ships have been shadowing the destroyer USS Donald Cook on two recent deployments to the Black Sea, including during a port call in Batumi, Georgia, and an exercise with its coast guard.

This month, in the hills above Tblisi, U.S. troops have been mentoring and coaching a battalion of light infantrymen conducting war games.

The Americans are working closely with their counterparts to develop the defense program, with the hopes of building lasting improvements to the country’s military, said Maj. Jon-Paul Navarro, the officer in charge of the several dozen U.S. troops here.

“We’ve giving them our best tactics, techniques and procedures to develop this combat training center,” Navarro said.

The local soldiers spend much of their time digging foxholes and camouflaging their positions in order to ambush a mock opposition force modeling Russian tactics and made up of other Georgian soldiers.

Many going through the training fought against Russia in the 2008 conflict, including the training center’s commander, Col. Roman Janjulia.

Janjulia, whose father died nearly three decades ago fighting in the South Ossetia province now occupied by Russia, believes the American-led readiness program would have been beneficial to the country in its more recent conflict.

“I think this training would have helped in 2008,” Janjulia said. “And I think this will definitely help them in the future. They will not be vulnerable to the same threats. They will know how to oppose aggression and fight their war with minimum loss of personnel or equipment. They will protect this piece of terrain.”

Over the next few years, the country plans to send each of its nine light infantry battalions though the program, which began last spring, as the military here began to shift focus from Afghanistan deployments to the rising threats at home amid signs of an emboldened Russia.

“We’re looking at threats around the world, like Ukraine, Syria and the aggression we had in 2008, and we can say that this threat could come to us,” Janjulia said. “And we, as the Georgian army, should be ready to defend our people and our nation ... and this program especially helps us train for that.”

Though the war with Russia ended more than 10 years ago, tensions remain. A group of armed, masked men crossed into Georgian territory in 2015 in an attempt to move border markers further south, to allow Russia to control a mile-long stretch of land that includes an oil pipeline.

In addition to building up infantry skills, the program allows the Georgian Defense Ministry to assess its planning by trying out tactics on a mock battlefield. The center tests the plans and provides feedback to the ministry to help create improvements, Janjulia said.

“It’s not just the individual soldiers getting better, but the actual plan of how to defend Georgia is getting better,” he said.

Georgia is not a member of NATO, and its application has been blocked by European alliance members concerned about growing tensions with Russia. Still, Georgia has contributed a large contingent of troops to the U.S.-led NATO mission in Afghanistan. Soldiers here are confident their U.S. and European allies would step in to help them if hostilities did escalate between their country and its northern neighbor.

“Georgia wouldn’t stand alone,” Janjulia said. “We were not alone in 2008. There was support of other partners, which stood in front of Russia and told them to stop.”

Support for the troops here through efforts such as the readiness program also bolster their confidence, he said.

“They see the US troops and NATO partners, who are coming and advising us,” Janjulia said. “This is something our soldiers value.”

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Twitter: @Marty_Stripes
 

Despite rain, clouds and wind throngs of costumed denizens lined the streets of this western German town to celebrate the final day of the carnival season with the 68th Westricher Fastnachtumzug, as the parade is known locally, the largest in the Westpfalz region of Rheinland-Pfalz.

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There were cowboys and Indians, clowns and witches among the spectators and members of the U.S. Air Forces in Europe Band were among the more than 1,000 participants in the parade.

The weather did delay the start of the parade by an hour and the route was shortened by half.

Local carnival groups threw candy to thousands of spectators lining the streets, as children scrambled to fill their bags with the goodies.

The Carnival celebrations came to an end in Germany before Lent begins on Wednesday.

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The soldiers were all waiting on the commanding officer to give them the “go ahead,” costing valuable time for the would-be ambushers.

This, U.S. advisers said, is a typical problem Georgian troops face during the training in the Georgian Defense Readiness Program, currently underway in the hills above Tbilisi.

“The Georgians are a little old fashioned,” said 1st Lt. Richard Klocksieben, one of the U.S. Army advisers. Like many former Soviet militaries, the Georgian noncommissioned officers frequently have fewer leadership responsibilities than their Western counterparts. “They rely too much on their senior officers for things they should be delegating to their NCOs.”

U.S. soldiers here have been advising their counterparts on when and how to use NCOs, and how to delegate more authority to the lower level soldiers.

“They have some problems, but they’re working on them,” Klocksieben said.

During the training scenario, in which Georgian soldiers defended their home country from a foreign invader, many of the soldiers have been using newer weapons the army has acquired, including Javelin anti-tank missiles and M240B machine guns — weapons the U.S. soldiers are very familiar with.

While the U.S. soldiers are not there officially to train them on the use of these weapon systems, the Americans have been offering tips and advice when they can, Navarro said.

“We let them know when we would use a Javelin or what kinds of positions we might set up (an M240B) for defense,” Navarro said. “They’ve taken to them very well.”

All nine of Georgia’s nine light infantry battalions are expected to undergo the training, aimed at modernizing the force, and will learn to use these new weapons to increase their defensive capabilities.

The Georgian army is in the process of building up its NCO corps, said Georgian Col. Roman Janjulia, commander of the training center.

Its old style of top-down leadership is a relic of the country’s past and a common problem in many of the former Soviet republics.

Unlike the other some of those other militaries, however, Georgian soldiers have been on extensive deployments to the Middle East, becoming the largest per capita contributor of soldiers to the international coalition in Afghanistan by late 2012.

That experience has led to a very effective military force, said Maj. Jon-Paul Navarro, the officer in charge of the several dozen U.S. troops here.

“Warfare is no stranger to them,” Navarro said. “The soldiers here are extremely motivated, and very experienced.”

In addition to loads of experience on the battlefield, the Georgian soldiers have another advantage — their hardiness — Klocksieben said.

“The weather here has been absolutely terrible. The winds are so cold that our guys are shivering, but the Georgian soldiers are all having a great time, joking around with smiles on their faces, like it doesn’t affect them,” he said.

The U.S. advisers say the Georgians are also especially good at mountain warfare, which comes as no surprise, as the country is at the heart of the Caucasus Mountains.

“I’ve had to hike up a few of these hills and its hard work. But we see the Georgians zipping up and down them like they’re nothing,” Klocksieben said. “They’re tough guys. They just need to work on their junior leadership.”

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Twitter: @Marty_Stripes
 

Flags from all three countries were strung along the streets and storekeepers hawked summit souvenirs that included T-shirts emblazoned with photos of the two leaders.

Trump has touted Vietnam as a model that North Korea could emulate as it’s a communist country that has achieved economic prosperity and normal ties with the United States after emerging from the devastation of two decades of war, which ended in 1975.

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“Every anniversary for D-Day is special, but this is the last that many veterans of that day may be able to attend, so we knew that this year was going to be very big,” wing commander Col. Will Marshall said Thursday. “We wanted to look at what we could do that was special for this year and both tie into the history of the 48th Fighter Wing in support for that day.”

The new paint job features a checkered pattern on the nose, black stripes down the wings and a Statue of Liberty on each tail. The fuselage also is decorated with unit insignia and, under one of the wings, the classic national star symbol, also known as an Air Force roundel.

The 48th Equipment Maintenance Squadron corrosion control section came up with 25 original paint designs and narrowed the final selection down to three for the wing commander’s approval.

Then 10 airmen from the section spent more than 640 man-hours and used $15,000 worth of paint and supplies for the first of the jets, fighter wing officials said.

Two other fighter squadrons at RAF Lakenheath also each will have one F-15 painted and returned to a normal flight schedule.

The heritage design closely matches the striking, red-and-white invasion stripes on P-47 Thunderbolts flown by the wing during World War II.

“It was the most historically accurate that we could put on the F-15,” Marshall said.

Designated then as the 48th Fighter-Bomber Group, the unit flew P-47s in Europe during WWII, including the invasion of Normandy, which began on June 6, 1944, also known as D-Day. Its crews flew about 2,000 sorties in support of the invasion, dropping more than 500 tons of bombs and firing 160,000 rounds of ammunition, the wing said.

“While we stand on the shoulders of giants of the kind of men and women who were part of that, there are great men and women projecting combat air power today,” Marshall said.

As home to the U.S. Air Forces in Europe’s only F-15 fighter wing, RAF Lakenheath provides combat airport to support operations in Europe, Africa and southeast Asia.

“This allows us to draw that straight line between the events of that day to what folks are doing here and be motivated when they see that airplane,” Marshall said.

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Africano’s ship hit a mine on Jan. 22, 1944 and sank in the rough, stormy sea, killing him and 482 other crew members.

Officials read his and two other American casualties’ stories aloud Tuesday at the Sicily-Rome American Cemetery to punctuate the great human cost of freeing Italy from fascism in World War II.

It was part of a 75th anniversary commemoration of the Allied landings at Anzio and Nettuno. The amphibious assaults began a five-month campaign that would result in the liberation of Rome, but would also take the lives of 28,000 Allied troops, including 11,000 Americans.

“As often is the case with war, the cost of freedom was high,” said Rear Adm. Matthew Zirkle, Naval Forces Europe and Africa’s chief of staff. “The bill was paid with the blood and youth of our fighting forces. We must ensure their legacy lives on. We must never forget.”

The American Battle Monuments Commission hosted the event in Nettuno.

About 7,860 U.S. soldiers are buried at the 77-acre site, and 3,095 who were missing in action are memorialized there. Most died in Sicily, Anzio and Salerno during Allied invasions of Italy.

American cemeteries like this one use a simple white cross or a Star of David as a headstone, regardless of the servicemember’s rank.

Standing amid the headstones, officials not only paid tribute to the war dead and the Allies’ victory, but the solidarity that formed between the U.S. and Italy.

Since WWII, Italy and America have shared common values such as liberty, justice and rule of law, thanks to those who fought and died to drive out fascism, Italian Gen. Enzo Vecciarelli said.

“Commemorate events like today’s anniversary … which keep alive all who died to grant us a better future,” Vecciarelli said. “It means the horror of war, oppression, repression will not come back again.”

A larger ceremony to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the D-Day invasion will be held at the Normandy American Cemetery in June, said Benjamin Cassidy, an American Battle Monuments commissioner.

The Italian landings are credited with weakening German forces enough to pave the way for the Normandy invasions, Cassidy said.

Those who died in the Italy campaign are honored with memorials, statues and ships such as the USS Anzio, Zirkle said.

“But most importantly, we honor them with a great debt of gratitude – a debt that can never truly be repaid,” he said.

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For now, the mission in the region hasn’t changed, carrier group commander Rear Adm. Mike Wettlaufer told Stars and Stripes on Tuesday aboard the Stennis.

“We are given missions to do and we fulfill those missions whether it’s delivering ordnance where the ground commander may need it or providing overwatch for folks on the ground,” Wettlaufer said. “Our presence is part of the overall joint coalition force presence here.”

The presence is a signal of the U.S. commitment to ongoing operations in the Middle East, sailors said, and even some deploying for the first time said they are ready for whatever may come.

The USS Stennis arrived in the Persian Gulf last month — the first carrier visit to the region since April — at a time of heightened tensions.

Iran has threatened to close the strategic Strait of Hormuz, where much of the world’s oil transits. The Yemeni civil war is ongoing and key U.S. allies Saudi Arabia and Qatar remain at odds.

Meanwhile, President Donald Trump’s decision last month to pull U.S. troops out of Syria has created confusion over what could come next in the battle against Islamic State fighters in Syria. But in recent days, the Trump administration has sent mixed messages about its withdrawal plans. National security adviser John Bolton indicated earlier this week that a pullout could take months.

For the sailors aboard Stennis, the direction of Syria policy in Washington has little bearing on the day-to-day mission in the Gulf. On Tuesday, about 70 fighter jets launched and returned from flights, many in support of ground forces in Syria and Iraq.

Any carrier mission in the Persian Gulf means a nearby Iranian presence. The Stennis transited the Strait of Hormuz last month shadowed by Iranian warships. Local Navy officials said that while they have recorded some interactions with Iran that they deemed unprofessional recently, none were considered unsafe.

Stennis skipper Capt. Randy Peck joked that Iran was “escorting us through the Strait” in response to the interaction.

“It doesn’t deter us from being able to do our job to gain access and entry into the Gulf,” he said. “It’s an international strait, we’re exercising our right to be there and despite the show of force, it didn’t deter us from our ability to do that.”

Combat flights are just one part of the job for the 4.5-acre, 1,092-feet-long, 24-story behemoth. The ship’s executive officer, Capt. Patrick Thompson, manages 5,100 sailors, many of whom are 18-23 years old.

Thompson said that all the roles on board – ranging from logistics to repair, food preparation to administration – are “behind that one possible pilot to get him or her airborne and to get their ordnance heading up toward Syria.”

Driving the ship, Seaman Jose Antiveros, a 26-year old helmsman on his first deployment, joked that while he does have a valid driver’s license, he is also trained to steer an aircraft carrier.

“It’s a pretty important job,” Antiveros said. “There’s 11 nuclear-powered carriers in the world and I am one of those people driving the ship right now, so I think that’s pretty good.”

The ship’s workups helped prepare first-time deployers like Petty Officer 3rd Class Javen Rogers, a navigation specialist, for the long mission at sea. She said she’s ready for any type of emergency.

“Everything we did on the underway (training) prepared me for the deployment, so nothing is unexpected.”

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Expansion at Camp Dahlke West, 60 miles south of Kabul, has been so fast that everyone on base has had to pitch in to keep up and keep fed.

The buildup is a visible result of the Trump administration’s strategy in Afghanistan, which called for a modest surge of troops into the country four years after the military spent billions closing bases there.

It also comes as the U.S. sends more newly created units that specialize in aiding Afghanistan’s security forces, which have sustained heavy casualties as the Taliban and other insurgents continue to launch offensives throughout the country.

Camp Dahlke West has been built almost from scratch during the past year. It’s just south of the former Forward Operating Base Shank, which was given to the Afghan military during the 2014 military drawdown.

An influx of troops in the spring brought soldiers from the 1st Security Force Assistance Brigade, a cavalry unit and dozens of contractors.

Since then, the base has quintupled in population.

The soldiers who first arrived found only a few buildings around an airstrip. Soldiers waited in line for shared work computers, slept 12 to a room and used gym equipment built from scrap lumber.

The base now is bustling, with new buildings, including offices, a chapel, a recreation room, a laundromat and a gym. Engineers are building enough housing for 800 soldiers, including for the 2nd Security Force Assistance Brigade, which will arrive next year.

“By the time the second SFAB arrives, they should be out of tents and into better housing,” said Lt. Col. Gerald Law, 50, an engineer with Area Support Group-Afghanistan, the command responsible for base support throughout the country. Law oversaw construction as garrison commander at Dahlke over the summer. The goal, he said, is to ensure soldiers are not working on construction and can focus on advising and assisting government troops.

Expanding the base was until recently a small part of each soldier’s duty each day.

“It just sucks when you’re trying to get a meal and you remember, ‘oh I have to fill a sandbag,’” recalled executive officer 1st Lt. Matthew Moher, 27, from Apache Troop, 2nd Squadron, 1st Cavalry Regiment.

“The alternative is to go hungry,” said 1st Lt. Tom Kopec, 26, executive officer of Eagle Troop, 2-1 Cavalry.

The base continues to be a target of insurgents, with 83 mortar and rocket attacks since April, and sandbags provide another layer of protection for the base’s bunkers, Kopec said.

The two officers spoke at a cafeteria they helped build and furnish, over a meal of beef kebab, baked salmon, asparagus spears and strawberry cheesecake.

Moher found tables and chairs for the cafeteria, and Kopec flew all over Afghanistan in search of supplies to build up the base’s defenses.

To provide a sense of the expansion’s scale, Kopec said almost $6 million has been spent just on miles of Hesco barriers — the wire frames that are filled with sand and serve as walls. Meanwhile, trucks hauled in more than 700 sections of blast wall.

Every few weeks, some soldiers would also go to the former FOB Shank on “zombie runs,” named because of the eeriness of walking through a mostly empty base.

The soldiers carried memos to Afghans operating on a small piece of the former Shank, requesting supplies owned by the Afghans that the Americans had previously turned over.

Many of the generators now at Dahlke West belonged to the Americans, then the Afghans and then the Americans again. The housing containers being shipped in, the two soldiers noted, are in ample supply across the wire.

“There’s a village like that a hundred yards north of the wall, and no one lives there, there’s stray dogs there,” Kopec said.

“There are villages of tents just rotting away,” Moher said. “You think about how hard it is to get stuff here, and you look over the fence, and everything is right there.”

The base should be “mature” in early 2019, which means major projects will be completed and the camp will look similar to other bases in Afghanistan.

Current projects include bringing in a post exchange for soldiers to shop and building tents so fire trucks on the flight line don’t sit in the open air, where their water may freeze, said Brian Wilhelm, 56, the base’s mayor with Area Support Group-Afghanistan.

“When the guys first got here, there was nothing,” Wilhelm said. “The buildup so far has been incredible.”

lawrence.jp@stripes.com

Twitter: @jplawrence3

During the training on Wednesday, Marines and Spanish soldiers used a variety of sniper rifles from both countries to conduct marksmanship drills at various ranges.

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The drills included shooting from the top of an armored vehicle, blasting targets using the M107 with .50-caliber rounds and firing Spanish G-36 assault rifles before attacking from a longer range with sniper rifles.

The training is part of an ongoing partnership between the U.S. Marines in Spain and the Spanish recon units.

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The two men peeked into various rooms, marveling at treadmills still wrapped in plastic, and banks of electric clothes washers and dryers. An array of dozens of air conditioning units are likely to become a chore to keep running in a province with 17 districts, hundreds of villages and nearly 2 million residents, but just two qualified air conditioning repairmen.

The police officers asked each other who was going to pay to keep the lights on. Whether or not they knew it, the expectation is that it will be foreign donors, particularly the U.S., who are building the facilities as well as the electrical grid to power many of them.

The challenges in sustaining the country’s police force, underscore some of Afghanistan’s deep dependencies on its foreign backers. Some analysts say it could take decades before the country’s defense and security forces can operate without substantial support from abroad.

While the U.S. hopes to reduce the country’s reliance on foreign cash, the Kabul government already struggles with tasks large and small, from keeping equipment humming to holding ground against a resurgent Taliban who control or contest half the country.

In Herat, which along with Kabul was named early this year as the first of two provinces where a four-year program of police reforms would be rolled out, that means equipment fails and training suffers.

“When the foreign mentors were involved, they had more resources and equipment for training,” Herat police chief Aminullah Amarkhi said. “They knew how to operate and use them.”

At Herat’s regional training center, local officials insisted the Afghans have maintained training quality in the years since they took over from foreign trainers six years ago. Still, some crowd control and pepper spray training has gone by the wayside, they said, and they struggle to maintain equipment provided by their Western backers.

On a recent Stars and Stripes visit to observe the center’s training, smiling police officers went through routines as a trainer directed photographers where to get the best shots of men clearing rooms or practicing arrests on each other. Groups of uniformed young men waited demonstrated a riot shield exercise. It seemed more like dress rehearsal than instruction.

Among the other training no longer possible are exercises using tear gas grenades and night vision goggles, said Col. Allah Noor Mohammadi, who oversees the center. That training is still available for specialized units elsewhere, he said.

As long as the enemy has rocket-propelled grenades and heavy machine guns, police in Afghanistan will have to fight like soldiers, instead of being like Western-style law and order investigators, Mohammadi said. “You cannot defend the districts with a baton,” he said.

While police often fight alongside the army on the front lines against the Taliban, they are “not sufficiently trained or equipped” for counterinsurgency operations, according to a Pentagon report on Afghan security. New efforts aim to remake the force into a professional law enforcement agency, but its policing capabilities have been held back by a focus on building combat skills.

Throughout the country, a lack of NATO advisors and indecision about how to use the police have stunted the force’s growth, compared to the army, a recent Pentagon report found.

The main military training center in Kabul, meanwhile, came under scrutiny after the facility delayed classes and after reports of unsatisfactory training, poor living conditions, and inadequate trainer support. A recent Pentagon report noted that trainees at the Kabul Military Training Center were becoming malnourished and arriving at their units in poor health and not trained to standard.

Coalition advisers have stepped in to assist, and efforts to build up the training institutions will also depend largely on coalition members committing trainers in the future, officials said in a Pentagon report this summer.

When the U.S.-led coalition peels away support and transfers greater responsibility to the Afghan government to help it mature, that means accepting a higher risk of failure. That’s what coalition officials told a government watchdog after it raised concerns earlier this year about the lack of contracts for maintenance on a $3 million female dorm in the Afghan capital, like the one newly built in Herat.

The U.S. is already set to pay the bulk of the country’s $6 billion annual defense budget through 2023, including around $766 million for conventional police forces. Kabul pays less than a tenth of the tab itself, mainly for the care and feeding of its troops.

Foreign funding, largely from the U.S., will be critical to prop up security forces until they can stand on their own for many more years, as “full self-sufficiency by 2024 does not appear realistic,” according to a December Pentagon report.

It could be decades before the country can foot the entire bill for its security forces, said Mark Sedra, a researcher who’s written extensively on efforts to reform the security sector, particularly in Afghanistan.

Recent reports of a possible U.S. pullout from Afghanistan have brought back memories of the days after the Soviets left among Afghan leaders.

Russian efforts to build up Afghanistan’s security forces couldn’t be sustained once Soviet forces withdrew and money stopped flowing from Moscow. In the decade that followed, Afghanistan descended into civil war, the Taliban rose to power and the country became a haven for al-Qaida to launch attacks on the United States.

The U.S. foray into the country has lasted twice as long, as a stubborn Taliban insurgency continues to launch deadly attacks throughout the country.

“The worsening security situation has only compounded this sustainability time bomb,” Sedra said.

Zubair Babakarkhail, Mohammad Aref Karimi and Ghulam Rasoul Murtazawie contributed to this report.

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More than 5,500 soldiers took part in the two-week-long mock combat portion of Combined Resolve XI, the Army’s culminating event for tank and aviation units on nine-month rotations in Europe. The soldiers from the 4th Infantry Division’s 4th Combat Aviation Brigade, based in Fort Carson, Colo., and 1st Cavalry Division’s 1st Armored Brigade Combat Team out of Fort Hood, Texas, will be wrapping up their rotations to Europe next year.

Alongside the Americans in the wet and cold were armored units from Ukraine. The exercise comes amid heightened tensions along the Ukrainian-Russian border, after Russia fired on and seized several Ukrainian ships last month in the Sea of Azov.

The U.S. began its nine-month armor deployments to Europe in response to Russia’s 2014 annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula. The rotational armored and aviation brigades are part of Operation Atlantic Resolve, the United States commitment to deter possible Russian aggression in Eastern Europe.

“The rotational deployments of armored brigade combat teams are a tangible expression of U.S. commitment to strengthening the defensive and deterrent capabilities of the NATO alliance,” the Army said in a statement on the exercise.

The rotational units faced a notional enemy made up of U.S. and Albanian troops as near-constant rains turned swaths of land into fields of sticky sludge for them to maneuver through. A brief look down confirmed that not a single soldier made it without plunging his boots into the mire.

The vehicles didn’t fare much better.

Tanks generally moved through the muck more easily, but many Humvees and smaller vehicles got stuck, making easy targets for the opposition forces launching surprise attacks.

The soldiers used drones and helicopters to scout enemy positions and minimize the effects of any ambush, while attack helicopters and tanks took out exposed enemy targets.

The rotational units are meant to provide a strong foundation for U.S. security efforts in the region.

“The forward presence of U.S. soldiers is the bedrock of our country’s ability to assure allies, deter adversaries and react in a timely manner if deterrence fails,” the Army statement said.

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As they worked, the sound of snapping flower heads filled the air — the only sound besides the occasional rumble of attack helicopters at a nearby range. Nadir Khan Alizai, 55, watched as his son, 3, mimicked his older brothers canvassing the rows of flowers. His daughter, 4, hopped a furrow and wandered off holding a blossom.

The greying village elder once grew opium poppies, but a decade ago switched to crocus, from which saffron is made.

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The most expensive spice in the world, it can sell for up to $4,000 a pound. His family operates one of 400 farms that sell part of their harvest to Rumi Spice, a million-dollar company founded by U.S. Army combat veterans. Still, this year, prices for his saffron have fallen due to factors outside his control.

“I’m just a farmer, I don’t know why the prices went down, I just know it depends on the government and the mafia,” Alizai said.

The Americans see their business as continuing a mission they started in the military, but its rise comes as trafficking from Iran, counterfeiting and other growing pains for Afghan farmers threaten to undo progress in the fledgling saffron trade here.

Made from hand-picked flower stigmas, saffron is coveted as a seasoning in teas and rice dishes, as a dye in textiles, a fragrance in perfume and in medical applications. The legal cash crop is credited with helping Herat kick its opium-growing habit and giving jobs to vulnerable women.

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But recent upheavals may force some to return to the poppies that have helped fuel the 17-year Taliban insurgency. And despite the backing of a billionaire and testimonials from award-winning chefs, Rumi Spice’s success remains tied to the conditions in a volatile country gripped by insurgency and corruption.

Still, the veterans hope commerce can win entrenched battles that combat couldn’t win on its own.

The rise of Rumi Spice

While saffron growing has a long history in Afghanistan, it fell out of favor during decades of war, until refugees returned home from Iran after the Taliban fell in 2001 and began cultivating it near Herat. The flower thrived in the dry soil and cultivation was spurred by ample government and international aid.

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Keith Alaniz got the idea to sell the aromatic red saffron threads to Americans while deployed to the country from 2011 and then again in 2013. He was inspired by a local farmer who struggled to find overseas buyers for the spice, which remains pricey because of the labor needed to harvest and process it.

While he keeps a wary eye on news of growing insecurity, Alaniz believes business investments are critical for Afghanistan’s future.

“It’s impossible to reconcile that the last 10 years of my life were dedicated to a fruitless cause,” he said. “I believe the mission will be completed through the private sector, and I believe veterans are well positioned to do that.”

A former Army engineer turned regional expert in the military’s Afghanistan-Pakistan Hands program, Alaniz teamed with two fellow Army veterans to start the business in 2014. Billed as a luxury brand, Rumi Spice saffron runs $9 per half gram jar or $170 for a one-ounce “bulk” order in a small tin.

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Last year, billionaire Mark Cuban backed the company on the show “Shark Tank.” This year, it netted more than $1 million in revenues and began selling products nationally in Whole Foods stores, said Alaniz, now its chief executive.

Some earnings get reinvested into social causes, such as creating jobs for women. Its three saffron processing centers in Herat employs some 250 women — war widows and others displaced by drought — to hand-pluck crocus stigmas.

The women earn about $2 a day, Alaniz said. That’s more than double what a study earlier this year found most Afghans live on.

Economic development remains crucial to long-term stability in Afghanistan, both to improve livelihoods and to help fill government tax coffers to fund defense and security costs, most of which U.S. taxpayers now foot.

Rumi Spice has poured some $120,000 into training and equipment here in the past two years, Alaniz said.

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It also holds suppliers to U.S. agricultural standards, such as labor laws that allow young children to work only on family farms and only outside school hours.

It’s now one of five companies with meaningful sales out of some 30 saffron companies in the province, agriculture officials in Herat said. They said the Chicago-based firm is the largest importer of the spice to the United States.

Alaniz now hopes to build a local packaging facility and expand the product line to include wild cumin growing on the country’s mountainsides, which he said could go for 10 times the domesticated variety.

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A rising underdog and a shadowy underworld

The company’s rise parallels Afghanistan’s emergence as an underdog to compete with neighboring Iran, the world’s largest supplier of the spice, which has struggled against U.S.-imposed banking and trade restrictions that barred legal exports of its vast supply of saffron to the West.

Those sanctions and a weakened currency have led Iran to flood Afghan markets with its crop to skirt the restrictions and suppress vulnerable competitors across the border, locals and experts said.

“The stagnation of Afghan saffron prices, that’s the perverse effect of blocking the saffron from Iran,” said Philippe De Vienne, a 30-year veteran spice hunter and CEO of Epices De Cru, a Montreal-based spice company that purchases from Rumi Spice. “That is a shame because good Afghan saffron is a great product.”

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Smuggled and counterfeit spice is glutting local markets and getting shipped abroad, officials in Herat said, citing data that showed saffron exports exceeded production last year, even with half the crop remaining in the country.

Industry experts blamed Iran’s interference for a sharp fall in wholesale prices, which hurts farmers who invested heavily in the crop a few years ago amid what looked to be a boom, with rising prices and talk of Chinese markets opening.

To fuel its growth, the industry has for years sought inroads into new foreign markets like the U.S., where Iranian imports have long been barred but still enter, labeled as Spanish saffron. The average consumer has no way to know the difference.

“It’s a very opaque industry,” said Alaniz, who believes Americans may have been turned off by low-quality and fake saffron, such as imitations made of horse hair, shredded paper or safflower — an unrelated red thistle flower.

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Alaniz and others have sought to compete by positioning Afghan saffron as a premium spice through ethical sourcing, rigorous quality standards and greater transparency. Rumi Spice doesn’t take secondhand saffron and processes its crocus buds in a carefully controlled environment to prevent contamination, for example.

The government has also stepped in to protect the industry by trying to ban all saffron imports, even small amounts previously allowed to be carried from Iran.

Meanwhile, Afghan saffron exports to the U.S. have jumped from one kilogram in 2008 to 845 kilograms last year, United Nations figures show.

Production has shot up in the same period, more than doubling since 2015, according to government data.

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But farmers have seen prices flatten and then fall off one-third from their peak three years ago.

Opportunities in China have not materialized, said Abdul Saboor Rahmany, Herat province’s agricultural chief, and lower prices may be the norm for a while. Growers still earn more than they would from wheat or onions, he said, but “when the price decreases, the benefits decrease.”

Some farmers say that for the trouble they face from armed saffron-runners and declining prices, they might as well be in the more lucrative illicit drug trade.

“If the situation doesn’t change, I’ll go back to cultivating poppies, even if I get killed,” said Abdul Reza, a saffron farmer. “When guns rule the land, only the farmers and the poor suffer.”

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After scrambling into their gun turrets and checking their gear, the policemen rumbled off as part of preparations to arrest a Taliban commander.

The men were part of Herat’s new National Mission Unit, a police force intended for combat missions and advised by NATO instructors. Afghanistan hopes to double the number of crack units such as this one in Herat, a city of about 400,000 and the country’s third-largest.

Some analysts warn, however, that emphasizing development of elite Afghan units to the detriment of common soldiers and police officers may repeat of mistakes made by Western forces throughout the war.

Afghanistan currently has three NMUs taking on high-risk missions, such as arresting terrorists and responding to attacks.

Paramilitary police organizations are characterized by military discipline and tasked with missions that conventional police aren’t trained to handle – and as a result suffer higher casualties, according to a recent Pentagon report.

The unit in Kabul, for example, stormed a compound this August from which nine Islamic State fighters had fired mortar rounds that landed near Afghan President Ashraf Ghani as he was making a speech.

Herat, the largest city in western Afghanistan, was one of three localities chosen to host the new National Mission Units, along with Balkh in the north and Jalalabad in the east.

“The mission of the unit is antiterrorism, counternarcotics and critical response,” said Col. Habibullah Nazari, commander of the Herat unit.

The national units are part of an organization with about 3,500 police officers. A reorganization folded another, larger Afghan police commando unit, the Afghan National Civil Order Police, into the army last year.

Nazari said his men are trained to conduct air assault missions, where they disembark from helicopters and storm an enemy position. They use night vision goggles, grenade launchers, sniper teams and logistical trucks, which conventional police normally lack. He added that a unit of Afghan Mi-17 helicopters will soon deploy in Herat to provide dedicated air support. They also have the benefit of a year of training, both in Herat and at newly furnished training sites in northern Afghanistan.

The Herat unit conducted its first mission last month, Nazari said. It involved an early morning raid to nab a militant, who managed to slip away.

The policemen have been trained by Italians at their base near Herat’s airport. But Nazari said no foreign advisers were involved in the planning of that mission, although a plane from Camp Arena provided surveillance.

Advisers from Italy and Croatia are heavily involved in the training, and U.S. defense contractors are advertising for trainers.

Throughout the 17-year war in Afghanistan, coalition forces have focused much of their training and resources on elite units. But some experts say more and better-trained regular policemen are what’s needed to secure rural areas where the Taliban have been gaining ground.

“High-end forces are easier to train, they’re more educated, they do the sexier offensive missions,” said Seth Jones, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based think tank. “But they’re not that ‘hold’ force, which are in some ways more important. Because this is where the Afghan government is struggling, to hold territory.”

High-end forces will often clear an area held by insurgents, but once they withdraw the guerrillas will gradually infiltrate back, said Jones, who also served as a plans officer for U.S. Special Operations Forces in Afghanistan.

The conventional Afghan police force is supposed to hold these areas and ensure that insurgents don’t return. But many policemen do not have the training, the equipment or the will to do so.

In Herat, they are also undermanned. Many of the city’s 15 police districts are staffed by just 70 or 80 officers, said Jailani Farhad, the governor’s spokesman. Farhad said these stations do not have enough manpower to police a city of almost 2 million, and bigger than Phoenix, which has about 4,000 police officers and is not in a war zone.

Herat’s provincial government plans to consolidate competent regular police officers into a new 300-member unit. It will be stationed near the governor’s office in a new compound and will have better equipment at its disposal.

The move will drain the best officers from Herat’s other police stations, but if the pilot program increases security and police effectiveness, Herat may be a model for other cities in focusing on the elite few over the regular many.

Mohammad Aref Karimi and Ghulam Rasoul Murtazawie contributed to this report.

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The powwow Tuesday was a chance for deployed Native American soldiers to honor their heritage and share it with others, said Capt. Warren Queton, a member of the Kiowa nation and the commander of the 1245th Transportation Company out of Oklahoma.

In August, members of Oklahoma City University’s Native American Society donated their drum to allow National Guardsmen deploying from their state to have a powwow in Kuwait.

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“Tribal people are vanishing from this earth,” Queton, 37, said. “We have to maintain our identity to preserve who we are.”

About 9,000 Native Americans serve in the armed forces. They have the highest number of servicemembers per capita compared to other ethnic groups, according to military statistics.

The powwow was a chance to show the importance of the American Indian identity, said Pfc. Tayshaun Mingo, 21, from the 114th Field Artillery Regiment. Mingo, a member of the Choctaw tribe, said he grew up attending powwows but didn’t think he’d be the drummer at one so far away from his home in Kansas.

“I didn’t expect to be doing a powwow in Kuwait,” he said.

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One of the dancers, Army Pfc. Loretta Menchaca, 21, had her white dress with streaming rainbow fringe shipped to Kuwait from her hometown of Keshena, Wis. The day of the dance, she peeked out the door of the hangar at the soldiers walking in for the ceremony. She usually doesn’t talk to people about being Native American, said Menchaca, a cook with the 395th Ordnance Company out of Wisconsin.

The prospect of telling everyone — through dance — about her heritage as a member of the Menominee nation made her nervous. Then she whirled around the drum as Queton and others beat a steady rhythm for several dances.

“I started dancing when I could walk, I’ve been dancing for about 21 years,” Menchaca said.

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Near the end of the ceremony, Menchaca invited other soldiers to join a friendship round dance, in which men and women lock their arms and shuffle in a circle in time to the beat. She led them through the steps, with the soldiers mimicking her, with varying levels of success.

She hugged her friends after the final beat of the last dance. No longer nervous, Menchaca said she was glad, because she was able to educate others about her heritage.

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Camp Red Cloud, which has been a hub for American troops deployed near the front lines since the 1950-53 Korean War, is finally shutting down as part of a frequently delayed relocation plan.

The 2nd Infantry Division officially closed its longtime headquarters building, known as Freeman Hall, at the base on Oct. 16, lowering the flags and firing a cannon for the last time as the sun set.

About three dozen soldiers and civilians also gathered Sunday in the Warrior Chapel for a ceremony to decommission the white stone building with arched, stained glass windows and a steeple.

“The Warrior Chapel served military members and their families for more than 66 years and will continue serving the 2nd Infantry Division/[South Korea-U.S.] Combined Division community from its new home on Camp Humphreys,” said Chaplain (Capt.) Steve Love.

The long-anticipated closure of Camp Red Cloud will mark a milestone for a 2004 agreement to sharply reduce the U.S. military footprint north of the Han River. Most of some 28,500 U.S. servicemembers stationed on the divided peninsula have been concentrated in Seoul and bases near the heavily fortified border with North Korea.

Camp Casey, which is farther north, will remain open as the home to the 210th Field Artillery Brigade and other residual forces.

The relocation was initially supposed to be done by 2008 but had to be postponed several times as the largely South Korean-funded expansion of Camp Humphreys was plagued by construction and quality control problems.

The garrison held an inactivation ceremony for Camp Red Cloud in June, but that was a largely administrative bid to consolidate resources.

The Indianhead Division officially moved its headquarters to Camp Humphreys, some 40 miles south of Seoul, last week, becoming the last major command to do so, after the Eighth Army and U.S. Forces Korea. The grand opening of its new headquarters building, which will also be called Freeman Hall, is scheduled for next month.

Camp Red Cloud is on the northwestern edge of Uijeongbu, which was home to the real-life unit that inspired the popular TV show “M.A.S.H.” The base was originally known as Camp Jackson but was renamed in 1957 in honor of Medal of Honor recipient Cpl. Mitchell Red Cloud Jr.

But the shuttering of facilities is only the start of a lengthy transition process, including the capping of utilities and fuel tanks, negotiations over environmental cleanup requirements and other issues related to the status of forces agreement between the two countries.

“It’s estimated that the earliest that CRC will be able to be returned to the [South Korean government] is sometime in January/February 2020 if all of that process goes through and there are no issues,” said Paul Hubbard, the garrison’s lead base-closure analyst.

Hubbard said it has taken between three and 15 years to hand over other bases that have been closed due to disagreements over obligations for environmental cleanup and other issues.

The land will be turned over to the Defense Ministry, but city officials say they’re hoping it will be developed as a security-themed park.

Meanwhile, remaining employees are feeling nostalgic as they preparing to vacate the rest of the facilities.

The only part of the base that was busy Sunday afternoon was the golf course, with several South Koreans taking advantage of a sunny day with fall foliage covering the hills in the distance.

The golf club, with annual fees ranging from $300 to $1,000, is open to active-duty servicemembers, retirees and South Koreans who work for the military or are part of outreach programs. It’s also due to close by the end of the year.

The commissary, which is now full of empty shelves, will close Monday, according to the two remaining employees. Checker Sunny Avery, who will transfer to Camp Humphreys, said business has slowed to a trickle over the past few months.

“But it’s so sad that it has to close,” she said. “It was really friendly and kind of like family; everybody knows each other.”

Lee Jong-sook, 69, has worked as a bagger earning tips at the grocery store since it opened in 2001.

“I’m looking forward to retiring, but I’m sad about leaving all these good people,” she said.

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The Fort Bliss, Texas-based 3rd Armored Brigade Combat Team, 1st Armored Division replaced the 1st Armored Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division — which will return to Fort Stewart, Ga. — during a transfer of authority ceremony in front of 2nd ID’s new headquarters at Camp Humphreys, a sprawling base 40 miles south of Seoul.

The Bulldog brigade will begin a nine-month tour as the sixth rotational armored brigade since the Indianhead division inactivated its last organic brigade combat team in 2015.

Its arrival comes as tensions have ebbed amid a diplomatic push to persuade North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons.

“This is one of the most strategically significant deployments in our recent history,” Col. Marc Cloutier, 3ABCT commander, said during the ceremony. “We live in interesting times and it’s promising to see negotiations ongoing toward a better peace.”

“We all hope this year is a breakthrough year, but we stand ready nonetheless to deliver a lethal capability to our [South Korean] partners if circumstances warrant it,” he added.

The rotation to South Korea also marks a first for the unit that spent most of its history in Europe, fighting in North Africa and Italy during World War II, then spending most of its time in Germany before moving to Texas in 2008.

2nd ID commander Maj. Gen. Scott McKean welcomed the Bulldogs, saying their tanks and troops will bring “fire, maneuver, shock effect to dominate any battlefield it encounters,” and he expects them to live up to division’s mantra of being ready to “fight tonight.”

McKean also thanked their Raider brigade predecessors, who came to South Korea last February when “the clouds of war were dark and looming.” He credited them for helping ensure peace on the peninsula.

Cloutier later told Stars and Stripes that he and his brigade, which includes fresh M1 Abrams tanks and M2 Bradley infantry fighting vehicles deployed from Fort Bliss to replace aging vehicles in South Korea, will conduct a series of training events to keep their “knives sharpened” during the deployment.

Cloutier, who is on his first assignment to the peninsula, said he’s excited to work with South Korean troops who will be integrated for the first time at the brigade and battalion level. 2nd ID already includes South Koreans in positions at the division level.

He added those posts, which include deputy commander and operations positions, will begin filling in December. 2nd ID already integrates some of its positions, including the division’s deputy commander.

Cloutier said he and his soldiers “follow the news very closely” and welcome their new role on peninsula.

“We understand that our political and elected leaders will dictate the terms of the negotiations [with North Korea],” he said. “Our job as an armored brigade combat team is to provide that lethal deterrent and, if deterrence fails, a lethal punch.”

Roughly 28,500 U.S. troops are stationed on the divided peninsula where the two Koreas are technically at war after the 1950-1953 Korean War ended with an armistice instead of peace treaty.

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Twitter: @MarcusFichtl

Nationwide, 401 polling centers were due to operate on Sunday after running into problems the day before. The Independent Election Commission said only 253 were able to, and that voters registered at the remaining 148 centers would not be able to cast their ballots in the election.

Delayed opening times, absent election officials, confusion over biometric voter registration and missing registration lists led to scenes of chaos at many of the roughly 5,000 polling centers that were supposed to be functioning on Election Day.

Militants also attempted to obstruct the vote, widely regarded as a test for the U.S.-led coalition’s 17-year effort to build a stable democracy. Nearly 200 security incidents were reported Saturday, resulting in at least 36 deaths and dozens of injuries, Deputy Interior Minister Akhtar Mohammed Ibrahimi said.

The setbacks, however, did not deter voters — many of whom see the elections as a way to improve the dire economic and security situations in the country — from returning to the polls Sunday.

“Yesterday, I was really disappointed that I couldn’t vote, but I’m very happy I was able to vote today and that they gave us the chance to exercise our right,” Kabul resident Ahmad Samir said at a polling center in the capital’s Taimani neighborhood.

The center, inside a mosque, was open Saturday. But frequent glitches with biometric machines — that arrived just a month before the elections and were aimed at stemming fraud — contributed to a backup, which meant voting had to resume Sunday.

Eight boxes filled with ballots from the first day of voting were kept in a corner overnight.

Samir said while he trusted no one tampered with the ballots, he could understand how the situation — repeated at hundreds of polling centers in all corners of Afghanistan — could raise doubts over the election’s legitimacy.

“Maybe some people will start thinking someone stuffed the ballots and that there was some fraud,” he said.

Ahmad Rasouli, an election observer, was one of a dozen men who spent the night inside the mosque and, “only slept for about one or two hours,” to ensure there was no wrongdoing.

“It’s been very good,” he said. “There’s been no fraud.”

More than three million Afghans risked militant attacks and voted Saturday, out of 8.8 million who were registered to vote, the election commission said. It said around 4 million cast their ballots over both days.

Voting was postponed in the southern provinces of Ghazni and Kandahar. Ghazni faced complications, including security concerns, according to the commission. Kandahar delayed its ballot after a deadly attack earlier in the week that killed the provincial police chief.

The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan said it was encouraged by the number of Afghans who turned out to vote.

“Millions of Afghan citizens braved security threats and, due to technical electoral management issues, waited long hours to cast their votes today for a better future,” UNAMA said in a statement Saturday evening.

“Those eligible voters who were not able to cast their vote, due to technical issues, deserve the right to vote,” the statement added.

Jahed Qayoumi, a master’s student in the capital who voted Sunday, agreed with UNAMA, but was wary about the situation.

“I believe it is my responsibility to vote, so I came today,” Qayoumi said. “But I don’t believe the government will count the votes accurately. In the past we have had bad elections. We have reason to believe it will be the same.”

Zubair Babakarkhail contributed to this report.

wellman.phillip@stripes.com

Twitter: @pwwellman

The controversial Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, battery — on a former golf course in the melon-farming area of Seongju, 190 miles south of Seoul — is manned by a unit known as Combined Task Force Defender.

The Delta Battery, 2nd Air Defense Artillery Regiment, which oversees the operation from nearby Camp Carroll, cut the ribbon Friday for its newly refurbished headquarters building.

“This ceremony today is the final step to formalize the presence of Delta-2 on the Korean Peninsula,” said the battery’s commander, Capt. Kate Theilacker.

The 29-year-old from New Richmond, Wisc., later told Stars and Stripes she was “honored” to be part of the “historic moment.”

“We’re here for the long haul to support the Korean people; we’re here as a permanent fixture in the ballistic missile defense of the peninsula,” she said.

The United States and South Korea agreed to deploy THAAD to the peninsula in 2016 to counter a growing threat from North Korea.

The transition from temporary to permanent unit began about a year ago when the unit flagged to the 35th Air Defense Artillery Brigade and its soldiers became permanently assigned rather than rotated in from the United States.

The move occurred despite opposition from locals, activists and China, which claims THAAD’s radar system poses a threat to its national defense. President Donald Trump also questioned what he said was the $1 billion cost of THAAD.

Local South Korean protesters routinely come to a head with transport vehicles entering the base. Most recently, skirmishes erupted in April when the South Korean defense ministry said it was providing material to make the base livable for the South Korean and U.S. servicemembers there.

Theilacker said the new building was a massive upgrade from their old location, which consisted of two small rooms and three computers.

“Sometimes we’d cram 40 people in to the old place” she said while giving a tour of the new headquarters, which includes offices, an armory to store small arms for the unit and space for 20 computer work stations

Work to be done

The smell of new paint and celebratory cake was a warm welcome to their new home at Camp Carroll, but Theilacker said life at Seongju needs improvement.

“The buildings we have weren’t built to house soldiers,” she said. “It’s not unlivable, but it’s not nice.”

She says the protesters not only force her troops to fly in and out every week via helicopter, but also stop U.S. vehicles from shipping in goods and supplies.

“Currently, the only way on and off of the site is by helicopter,” she said. “A week at a time at least, every single one of my soldiers is away from their barracks room, their family.”

She said if the gates weren’t blocked they wouldn’t require the extended rotations and could keep more people at Carroll, which is only a 25-minute drive away.

Spc. Josiah Welch, a THAAD operator, said conditions have improved since he started at the site in November.

“There was pretty bad mold initially,” said the 25-year old from Winter Park, Fla. “There was a week where we didn’t have running water – we had baby wipe showers.”

Now they have air conditioning and showers, he said.

The military finally began shipping fresh food three times week last month, reducing some reliance on pre-prepared field rations, Theilacker said.

The site even got a popcorn maker two weeks ago, she said, adding that toward the end of her last rotation it began tasting like the best popcorn she ever had.

Theilacker hopes they will get a functioning dining facility by the end of the year, rather than relying on the South Korean unit’s kitchen.

Welch said he appreciates the “real world application” of his job despite the rough conditions at Seongju.

“We get to see our work come to life and actually make an impact in the world,” he said.

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Twitter: @MarcusFichtl
 

More than three quarters of a century later, the bay is still home to military forces — troops from Russia, which took possession of Etorofu and three other islands north of Hokkaido at the end of World War II.

The Russian presence and the expulsion of more than 17,000 Japanese from Etorofu, Kunashiri, Shikotan and the Habomai islands — which Japan calls its Northern Territories and Russia calls the Southern Kurils — remains a source of tension and the reason the nations have yet to sign a peace treaty 73 years after the war.

Most Japanese have never even seen the islands, the closest of which is only about 4 miles from Hokkaido’s northeast coast. However, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has made them a priority, meeting regularly with Russian President Vladimir Putin and offering economic incentives at a time when his American ally has sanctioned the country over aggression in Europe.

The mountains of Kunashiri, almost 6,000 feet tall, loom over Hokkaido’s Shiretoko Peninsula. It’s a rugged area teaming with wildlife, including bears, hundreds of bird species, whales and gamefish.

From a lookout above the town of Rausu, the island looks close enough to swim to — just 15 miles away. Visitors can walk past a photograph of Abe and Putin shaking hands and spy Kunashiri through binoculars.

Kimio Waki, 77, who born on Kunashiri but expelled to Hokkaido with his family at age 7, came to the lookout on Oct. 10 to talk to reporters about his former home.

Waki has fond memories of his days on Kunashiri, although he said it was a shock when Soviet soldiers arrived to search his family home.

“I’d never seen people other than Japanese,” he said. “We had no information on the island, so we didn’t know the war started and ended.”

Waki recalled fishing in local streams, riding a horse to school to avoid bears and playing with Russian kids who arrived with the occupiers.

“We felt like we were living in a peaceful time,” he said.

After his family was sent to Hokkaido they settled in Rausu, where they could work as fishermen and see their former home, he said.

Waki has returned to Kunashiri several times in recent years under a program that allows visa-free visits by former residents. He said the area has changed.

“These islands are becoming more Russian and there are many new structures,” he said.

It’s not certain that expelled islanders would go back, even if Russia returned what was taken, Waki said.

“Their average age is 83, and it’s more comfortable for them with better infrastructure on Hokkaido,” he said. “But I would like to visit the islands freely. I would like to visit my ancestors’ cemetery.”

The former islanders want the territory restored to Japan, Waki added.

“Our demand is that all the islands should be returned together,” he said, rejecting the suggestion that Russia might only give back the two smallest islands – Shikotan and Habomai — which the Soviet Union agreed to return when it restored diplomatic relations with Japan in 1956 — but which have remained in Russian control due to the dispute over the other islands.

Local issues

Rausu mayor Minoru Minatoya said the Russian presence to the north causes many issues for locals.

Fishermen who cross a line dividing the strait between Hokkaido and Kunashiri are detained and their boats impounded. There have even been shooting incidents on the border, he said. White Japan Coast Guard ships are a common sight offshore or in local ports along Hokkaido’s northeast coast.

The divided control over the waters offshore makes it difficult for authorities to manage fisheries, since they don’t know how much Russian vessels catch on their side of the strait. In recent years, the local fishery has declined dramatically, although it’s hard to say if that’s due to overfishing, Minatoya said.

The territorial dispute also impacts cetacean researchers who come to the area to observe large pods of killer whales but can’t follow them into Russian waters, he added.

Each year, 160,000 visitors come to see Japan’s northern territories from Hokkaido, Minatoya said.

“It should be mandatory for Japanese lawmakers to come here and see the islands,” he said, noting that Japan’s other territorial disputes with China and South Korea concern remote islands that people can’t easily visit.

The only resource that the Japanese can harvest from the islands to the north is kelp, which was negotiated with the Soviets, he said.

Russians don’t eat kelp. The only time they took it from the area was when they needed iodine to treat people affected by the Chernobyl nuclear accident in 1986, he said.

Street signs in Hokkaido’s largest fishing town, Nemuro, are in Japanese, English and Cyrillic script – a courtesy to visitors from the north who’ve been coming there on ships since the last days of the Soviet Union brought new freedoms to Russians.

The areas that Russia had agreed to return comprise just 7 percent of the disputed land but 38 percent of the disputed sea territory, Nemuro mayor Masatoshi Ishigaki said.

His town, established in 1869, is like a mother city for the northern territories and home to many of their expelled residents, he said.

One of them, Hirotoshi Kawata, 84, fled Habomai with his family at age 11 after the Russians arrived. He recalled Soviet troops barging into his home and asking for sake and looking for Americans.

“We left everything behind, including our fishing boats, so we had to start from scratch,” he said. “We slept in barns and it took us 10 years to get a house.”

Another former islander living in Nemuro, Yoi Hasegawa, 87, left Etorofu at age 14. She recalled a kind of paradise where food was plentiful and “nobody got sick.” She’s been back but doesn’t like the controlled visits and limits on where she can roam.

At nearby Cape Nosappu, the shoreline is cluttered with monuments related to the islands, including the Habomais, slightly more than 4 miles offshore.

There’s a massive but weather-beaten white lookout tower – impressive steel arch, stone and wood markers bearing Japanese inscriptions extoling the return of the lost territory.

Gift shops sell kelp harvested from the Habomais, Russian nesting dolls and local seafood. There’s a visitor center with old photos and maps of the islands and a tribute to the former mayor of Nemuro, who in December 1945 petitioned Gen. Douglas MacArthur at his Tokyo headquarters asking that measures “be taken for the residents to live peacefully on these islands.”

However, the Russians, who had considered pushing as far as Hokkaido at the end of the war, remained in control.

Military factor

The presence of U.S. Forces in northern Japan, including Navy EA-18 Growlers capable of jamming enemy radar and Air Force F-16 Fighting Falcons from nearby Misawa Air Base capable of destroying radar and missile launchers, may be factors in the negotiations over the territory.

In January, the Japan Air Self-Defense Force deployed its first F-35A Lightning II stealth jets to Misawa, which has also hosted U.S. Global Hawk unmanned surveillance drones in recent years.

Last year, it was reported that Russia had deployed two types of antiship missiles to Etorofu and Kunashiri as a response to missile-defense efforts in the Western Pacific, which include plans to install Aegis Ashore batteries in Japan.

There have also been reports of Russian plans to boost ground forces on the islands, which already host machine-gun artillery units and helicopters.

In March, a pair of Su-35’s — Russia’s most advanced fighter jets — landed on Etorofu for the first time, prompting a Japanese protest.

Last summer, Putin said demilitarization of the islands should be considered in the context of reducing tension throughout the region, according to Kyodo News.

He also expressed concern that the islands could be armed by the U.S. military if they were returned, according to Japan’s Asahi newspaper.

“A U.S. missile defense system may be deployed,” Putin said, according to Asahi. “Russia cannot accept that.”

The disputed islands form a strategic barrier around the Sea of Okhotsk, considered a safe location for Russian military submarines to shelter from potential adversaries, according to James Brown, an international affairs expert at Temple University’s Japan campus.

So, the prospect of returning islands that guard entry points to the sea to a nation that hosts U.S. forces likely doesn’t sound like a smart move to Russian military planners, he said.

Locals say they don’t notice military exercises or activity associated with the area, but they’re aware of its strategic value.

Russia seemed to be taking a diplomatic approach when it excluded the disputed territory from last month’s massive Vostok 2018 military drills with China. But the Russians held live-fire training on the islands this month, prompting complaints from Japan, Brown said.

The Japanese and Russians have agreed to engage in joint economic development of the area in five areas — aquaculture, agriculture, tourism, green energy and waste management, he said.

Japan hopes this will lead to a resolution of the territorial dispute, although Brown is skeptical that Russia would ever consider returning all the territory.

At the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok on Sept. 12, Putin appealed to Abe to sign a peace treaty without prerequisites, but the Japanese didn’t take up the offer due to the island dispute.

robson.seth@stripes.com
Twitter: @SethRobson1

The new “Fresh Line” items — available at the 12th Marines Mess Hall at Camp Hansen since February — replace popular but fattening options like chili macaroni and cheese that are high in sodium and calories, said Gunnery Sgt. Maurice Clifford Toole, a food-services subsistence chief for Marine Corps Installations Pacific.

“Overall when you look at the new-age Marine, they do care more about a healthier lifestyle,” he said. “The newer Marine is more conscious about what they eat and what they put in their bodies.”

Turkey bacon is served instead of pork and brown rice is offered instead of white, which is lacking in nutrients. The menu also includes mango and fruit-punch smoothies.

“The Marine Corps actually hired a chef to create new menu items that were healthier but still had taste,” said mess hall manager Master Sgt. Jerwon Donta Stephens. “It’s easy to go healthy, but if it’s not tasty, no one is going to eat it.”

The ongoing trial period has been tracking the new line’s popularity, along with how much manpower and money will be required to keep it up and running. So far, the reviews appear to be positive.

“I prefer Fresh Line items instead of having any other processed foods,” Lance Cpl. Jacob Flores told Stars and Stripes while waiting for his food at the chow hall Friday. “I usually get wraps or chicken.”

The new line is part of the service’s “Fuel to Fight” initiative, which aims to make it easy for Marines to identify healthier food choices, the service said in a statement earlier this year. “Foods are color coded as either red, yellow or green based upon the food’s total fat and saturated fat percentage of total calories.”

Both Stephens and Toole said they hope the Fresh Line will encourage healthier choices at bases where an abundance of fast-food options can often be tempting.

“Our body is our temple,” Stephens said. “If our body is not functioning correctly, our body can’t get back to the mission.”

vazquez.carlos@stripes.com
Twitter: @StripesCarlos

The Dasht-e-Barchi neighborhood in Kabul, home to many of the Shiite Hazara minority, has seen some of the deadliest terrorist attacks in the city in recent months. But in the days preceding Saturday’s vote, signs of defiance filled the streets, which were lined with election posters and frequented by cars blasting candidates’ slogans out of loudspeakers.

“If I’m alive on election day, I will vote,” said Dil Mohammad, 60, who sells pigeons in a small shop along one of the neighborhood’s main roads. “Everyone in this area is afraid of attacks on election day, but they’re also committed to voting. We need to elect good people who can bring peace and stability here.”

The Kabul government and U.S. officials have stated hopes that relative optimism will boost voter turnout among ethnic groups like the Hazaras, lending legitimacy to the long-delayed parliamentary ballot.

Mohammad, like others in the community, accused the current parliament of corruption and nepotism, and said a failure to appoint qualified people to government posts has added to the deteriorating security situation in places like Dasht-e-Barchi.

Last month, twin suicide attacks at a wrestling club in the neighborhood left over two dozen people dead. An attack the month before targeting a building where students were preparing for university entrance exams killed about 50.

ISIS, which considers Shiite Muslims apostates deserving death, claimed responsibility for both bombings, which followed a string of attacks against the Hazara community by the terrorists.

In a report released earlier this month, the United Nations expressed concern over an increasing number of attacks using improvised explosive devices that appear to target Afghanistan’s Shiite Muslims, most of whom are Hazara.

“Aren’t we the sons of this country? Are we not Afghans? Why are we not protected?” asked Ghulam Abbas, 52, a business owner in Dasht-e-Barchi. He said almost everyone he knows plans to vote on Saturday in the hope it might bring change.

“We are very afraid,” he said of the possibility that crowded polling stations might be targeted by militants. “But we need to choose people who can help us, who can get us out of this chaos.”

In addition to the government, Abbas criticized Afghan and U.S. forces for their inability to prevent ISIS from operating in Afghanistan.

Apart from NATO’s train, advise and assist mission, U.S. forces carry out a smaller counterterrorism mission in the country that targets groups like ISIS.

In 2017, U.S. military officials said one of their main objectives was eliminating the local ISIS affiliate by the year’s end.

Since then, the number of U.S. munitions dropped over Afghanistan has reached record levels, but terrorist attacks have continued. The U.S. military now appears ready for an indefinitely long fight with the militants.

“We are sometimes suspicious that they are helping Daesh,” said Rajab Ali, 50, a mechanic in Dasht-e-Barchi, using an Arabic acronym for ISIS. “America is the world’s superpower, they should be able to defeat Daesh if they honestly wanted to,” he added, echoing a view held by some segments of Afghan society.

Government officials in Nangarhar province, ISIS’s eastern stronghold, said that Saturday’s election — which is already three years overdue — is unlikely to be held in at least five provincial districts mostly because of security threats posed by ISIS.

While American and other coalition troops are advising on security and logistics, Afghan forces are responsible for protecting the polling stations.

The Independent Election Commission recently announced that the roughly 7,350 polling centers across the country had been reduced to 5,100 due to security concerns. There have also been reports of fraudulent voter registration and interference by regional and local strongmen.

The Taliban, who wield much greater political influence in Afghanistan than ISIS and consider the election a tool to advance foreign interests, also have vowed to disrupt the vote.

On Wednesday, the group claimed responsibility for the death of an Afghan lawmaker participating in the elections in southern Helmand province, who died when a bomb was detonated under his office chair. He was the 10th candidate killed in the past two months.

Three other people died in the attack, which followed a blast at an election rally last week in northeastern Takhar province that killed 22 people.

Security fears have led to speculation from analysts that voter turnout could be low in parts of the country, and many Afghans have already said they won’t be casting ballots because the risks are too high.

But in Dasht-e-Barchi, Ahmad Shoib Taban, a campaigner for a Hazara parliamentary candidate, said many see the elections as a chance to reduce future risks.

“The only option to bring peace and security in Afghanistan from the Afghan side is to elect honest and trustworthy people to the parliament,” he said.

wellman.phillip@stripes.com
Twitter: @pwwellman
 

The two III Marine Expeditionary Force Marines drew the ire of their commanders recently for minor alcohol-related infractions while stationed on the tiny southern Japanese island prefecture of Okinawa. But leadership determined they were valuable to their units and should be given another chance rather than punished with separation from the Marines.

They were placed in the Correctional Custody Unit, a new rehabilitation program aimed at setting Marines on the straight and narrow and reintegrating them into their units. Dubbed CCU 2.0, the program began May 2 at Camp Hansen and could soon be launched at stateside Marine bases.

Cornelius and Daniels thought the program was going to be mostly manual labor and grueling punishment.

“I was watching old videos and all I saw was the hammering rocks, so I’m like, ‘We’re going to be busting rocks in jail?’ and I’m like, 'man,'” said Daniels, 28, a motor vehicle operator from Miami. “But when I first came in, it was totally different.”

The program includes mindfulness training, goal-setting and classes on a variety of topics, such as financial literacy and learning the jobs of other Marines, such as machine-gun operation.

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Cornelius said it didn’t take long for him to realize that CCU 2.0 was helping him.

“I had really bad problems with patience. I was always frustrated,” said the rifleman, 24, of Huntsville, Ala. “This program has actually allowed me to kind of like calm down, assess situations and just kind of go with the flow of things.”

Marine officials are optimistic about the program.

“The mission is to get that wayward Marine to serve their initial contract obligations,” said Gunnery Sgt. Loren Ortiz, staff noncommissioned officer in charge. “Anything after that is icing on the cake — re-enlistment, meritorious promotion … We’ve received support from the highest levels of leadership.”

Participants are called “awardees” and spend seven or 30 days under the constant watch and critique of a senior watch stander and assigned watch standers. Each awardee has an individual dorm room with a bed, sink, water fountain and toilet. The program can accommodate 32 servicemembers at a time.

When it was launched in May at the Camp Hansen brig, planners decided to scrap a controversial part of the program that saw flak jacket-clad Marines pulverizing rocks with sledge hammers in the Okinawan heat.

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Day 1

On Aug. 15, the seven-man Class 4-TAC-18 arrived in the rain outside the Hansen brig. Only the fourth class to go through the fledgling program, they stood outside with sea bags slung over their shoulders and were told to enter one at a time for in-processing.

The first Marine through the thick steel brig door didn’t make it one step before a watch stander was in his face shouting about neglecting to give the proper greeting.

“Get out,” he barked.

The Marine exited and re-entered.

“Good morning gentlemen,” he said sheepishly.

The awardee was instructed to dump his sea bag’s contents onto the deck and segregate it. His cellphone, wallet and other personal items were confiscated as contraband. He was given a foot locker and told which items should go inside. They were checked as each item was entered.

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This process was repeated for each Marine while a commanding officer met with Ortiz to go over any health concerns the awardees might have, appointments and rules for visitation.

Next, awardees stood on footprints, just like in boot camp. But these were not the kind welcoming them to the Marine Corps; these welcomed them to the portion of the brig where incarcerated inmates are housed.

They toured the in-processing center and learned about body-cavity searches and prison uniforms, the cells and the cafeteria. Everything was cold and stark.

“It is vitally important that you give everything you have to this program,” Ortiz said. “There is hope, regardless of what it feels like right now. I am telling you; there is hope.”

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Day 16

The CCU program is broken up into three weeklong periods called “conducts,” Ortiz said. Conduct 1, the first week, is the most strict. Rules are established, and battlefield communication — shouting, essentially — is used to enforce them. A board approves passage to the next phase.

“First thing I thought was everything was like boot camp all over again,” Daniels said. “Everything was stern, discipline, everything had to be done to the exact ‘T.’”

Reveille is typically at 4:30 a.m., the awardees said. They shave, brush their teeth and make their racks before physical training, which can be a hike or a run.

After, they shower and eat. Then they work on book reports and other tasks while waiting for classes to start. These run until evening, breaking only for lunch and dinner. Then they meet with senior watch standers who act as mentors.

They head for their racks for taps.

In Conduct 2, watch standers ease off and let appointed awardee squad leaders delegate and lead. Watch standers interject when necessary.

During Conduct 3 — the release phase — watch standers generally don’t need to step in.

On Aug. 31, the awardees completed a 3-mile run with cadence at 6 a.m. with the law enforcement battalion. They showered and got into their dress uniforms for inspection.

The process was rigorous.

The awardees changed out of their dress uniforms and filed into a classroom. They went over essays they had written and watched a video about goals, happiness, health and inner well-being by motivational philosopher Jay Shetty.

Some of the classes awardees take include “Thinking for Change” and “Prime for Life,” as well as a core-values refresher.

Correctional treatment specialist Michael Long asked the class about some of the things that bring short-term happiness as opposed to long-term or total happiness. They discussed goals.

They also participated in mindfulness training. Long said that’s one of the most beneficial aspects of the CCU program.

“We try to get them to be more reflective of what they’re doing; I think it’s getting them to slow down a little bit,” he said. “Making a good decision, making a bad decision, is just that brief moment; anger is a secondary emotion. So, if somebody is out drinking and they get mad, having the ability to just take a breath, think, can help you make the right decision.”

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Day 28

By Sept. 12, the Conduct 3 awardees were ready to return to their units. They donned dress uniforms and made their way by van to the Camp Hansen theater. A torii gate had been set up on the stage along with the U.S. and Marine Corps flags.

Friends and members of their units sat in the audience as a show of support.

After several speeches extolling their accomplishments, the awardees were called to the stage one by one. They received a certificate and shook hands with Ortiz and CCU 2.0 commander Chief Warrant Officer Rachel Jacobs. They walked with pride and there were no signs of shame or dishonor.

“It feels great to graduate,” Cornelius said. “I still plan on improving.”

With the right attitude, Daniels said, one can easily become a better Marine through the CCU. He said he is nervous heading back to his unit, but he has seen the improvement in himself.

“It’s like being given a second chance,” he said.

Cornelius said he didn’t have any goals when he entered the program. He was leaving with a plan to use tuition assistance to take college courses until he separates from the service. Then he plans to use his G.I. Bill to go to welding school.

“I didn’t have that planned out until I came here, so I would definitely say it’s been beneficial for me in that aspect,” he said.

burke.matt@stripes.com

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History of CCU

The first CCU program was started in 1979 to give commanders an alternative to discharging undeveloped or immature servicemembers who get into trouble for minor violations of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. It became widespread in the mid-1990s, around the time one was founded at Camp Hansen, Marine officials have said. Marine Corps hubs of Camp Lejeune in North Carolina and Camp Pendleton in California also had versions of the penal institution and program.

The units were known for strenuous physical training that resembled boot camp and were last operated in the United States and on Okinawa in 2004, when they were ended due to staffing shortages while the U.S. military was preoccupied in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In recent years, Marine leaders on Okinawa began looking to revive the program to cut down on administrative separations and help Marines finish their enlistments honorably. Headquarters Marine Corps approved the relaunch in February.

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Shouts of “oorah,” the Marine Corps' legendary battle cry, rang through the East Room and the standing-room-only crowd of Canley’s fellow Vietnam veterans and top military brass cheered the 80-year-old as President Donald Trump presented him the Medal of Honor. The Marines who fought alongside Canley in Vietnam’s brutal Battle of Hue had worked for years to see him receive the award – an upgrade of the Navy Cross that he was awarded in 1970.

Canley is the 300th Marine to receive the medal.

Trump, echoing the comments of Canley’s fellow troops, said Canley had showed throughout his entire life that he was a Marine’s Marine.

He is “a Marine warrior, who is bigger than life and beyond the reach of death. He is truly larger than life,” Trump said before turning to Canley. “There are very few people — brave, brave people — like you, John.”

On Jan. 31, 1968, Canley was suddenly called upon for a job that he never expected to have. With his company commander severely wounded as his unit made its way toward the besieged city of Hue in northern South Vietnam, then-Gunnery Sgt. Canley took control of Alpha Company, a job typically reserved for a commissioned officer.

For the next six days, Canley would lead the 1st Marines unit as it charged into the city to pry it from the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces who had captured it during the unanticipated Tet Offensive.

In the midst of one of the most ferocious fights of the Vietnam War, Canley would organize assaults on enemy positions, killing countless enemy fighters as his team retook buildings in the city, according to award citations. Twice, the noncommissioned officer braved fire to scale a wall in “full view of the enemy to pick up wounded Marines and carry them to safety.”

Trump said Wednesday that Canley had saved at least 20 Marines’ lives during that “house-to-house, very vicious, very hard combat.”

“In one instance after another, John risked his own life to save his Marines,” the president said. “He just continued to face the enemy with no regard for his own life.”

Canley of Oxnard, Calif., has credited the Marines that he served with for his receiving the award and his numerous acts of valor during that fight.

The Medal of Honor “means a lot to me,” Canley said in an interview earlier this year with USA Today. “Mostly for my Marines, because we’ve had to wait 50-plus years to get any kind of recognition. It’s not about me. It’s about the Marines who didn’t [receive] the appropriate recognition when we got home.”

Canley did not make a public statement at the White House on Wednesday.

In addition to the Medal of Honor, Canley received the Bronze Star with “V” device for valor, the Purple Heart and the Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medal with “V” device for valor for his service in Vietnam between 1964 and 1970, according to his Marine biography. He retired from the service in 1981 as a sergeant major after serving 28 years in the Marine Corps.

In a brief video produced by the Marine Corps, Canley said it was the men who fought alongside him who kept him going during the Battle of Hue from Jan. 31 to Feb. 6.

“My Marines because they believed in me, they would follow me to death,” he said in the video published Tuesday. “And I have no doubt about that.”

Canley is the seventh person to receive the Medal of Honor from Trump and the third to receive the award from him for actions during the Vietnam War.

All seven Medals of Honor that Trump has presented have been upgrades of previously awarded lower valor honors. While some of them are the result of a Pentagon-ordered review of Post-9/11 valor awards, others such as Canley have been the result of years of effort by friends and family of the recipients.

For Canley, the Medal of Honor upgrade required an act of Congress because of the amount of time that had passed since the war. Rep. Julia Brownley, D-Calif., sponsored the bill approving the upgraded award, which was passed in January.

“Sgt. Maj. Canley is a shining example of why our armed forces are the best military in the world, and his heroism and bravery showcases what being an American hero truly means,” Brownley said last month following the White House’s announcement of the award upgrade. “I look forward to Sgt. Maj. Canley finally receiving this much-deserved honor, and thank him for his unwavering dedication to our nation and his fellow servicemembers.”

dickstein.corey@stripes.com
Twitter: @CDicksteinDC

Army driver Herbert Hunn, 24, and navy telegraphist Peter Mollison, 19, were brought aboard a New Zealand Air Force jet after a repatriation ceremony at Osan Air Base’s passenger terminal. The pair were to be returned to family members Sunday at Royal New Zealand Air Base Auckland.

“These two men beside me were not killed in combat and in fact died after the armistice agreement,” New Zealand Ambassador to South Korea Philip Turner said during the ceremony. “They were part of New Zealand and the international community’s commitment to security here.”

Both Hunn, who died in a vehicle accident in 1955, and Mollison who succumbed to meningitis in 1957, had been interred at a United Nations cemetery in Busan.

“Between 1955 and 1971, a New Zealander who died while serving abroad was buried overseas unless their families paid the repatriation cost,” Turner said.

Legislation passed last year brought about a program aimed at bringing those servicemembers home. It’s called Te Auraki — Maori for “the return.”

“When it’s finished, Te Auraki will see 35 people returning to New Zealand from six countries and nine locations, Turner said. “South Korea is the final country in what has been a significant national project for New Zealand.”

Friday’s ceremony, which began with a Maori prayer, brought traditional New Zealand song and dance from the island nation to Osan, including the Haka — a traditional Maori war cry. A dozen New Zealand army and navy personnel then carried their respective servicemember’s caskets through heavy rain and onto the jet.

“We at United Nations Command salute them for their service here and we pray for their families and their countrymen to find closure in their returning home,” said Gen. Vincent Brooks, head of U.S. Forces Korea and United Nations Command.

New Zealand was one of 16 countries to serve under the U.N. flag during the 1950-53 Korean War, which ending with an armistice instead of a peace treaty. Turner said more than 6,000 of his country’s servicemembers deployed to South Korea in the 1950s.

Six New Zealand servicemembers now serve in South Korea under the UNC, according to the New Zealand Defense Force website.

This was the first major repatriation ceremony at Osan since 55 remains presumed to be U.S. servicemembers were returned from North Korea in August.

fichtl.marcus@stripes.com
Twitter: @MarcusFichtl
 

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said in August he’d seek to return the “Balangiga bells” held by the United States — two in Cheyenne, Wyo., and one at Camp Red Cloud, South Korea — to the Philippines. A Philippine government official said recently they would be handed back before Christmas.

In Balangiga, where the bells last rang in 1902, people will be happy when the bells come home, retired teacher and local historian Alicia Valdenor said late last month as she sat at the base of the tower where the bells will hang.

“It will serve as a reminder of how the first inhabitants of the place were faithful and dedicated Catholics,” she said.

U.S. troops took the bells during the Philippine-American war after a rebel ambush that killed 48 U.S. troops from the 9th Infantry Regiment, nicknamed “Manchus,” for their role quelling the Boxer Rebellion in China.

Philippine nationalists viewed the war, which lasted from 1899 to 1902, as one of independence, while the United States, which took the islands after the Spanish-American War, regarded it as an insurrection.

The bells were used “to signal the insurrectos, or rebels, who were under the command of Emilio Aguinaldo, to commence their surprise attack on the village of Balangiga and its garrison, Company C, Ninth Infantry Regiment,” according to a caption on a photograph at the 2nd Infantry Division Museum in South Korea.

The night before the attack, 300 insurrectos dressed as women entered the church with smuggled weapons, the caption says.

“They remained in the church until the following morning, when by arrangement between certain village officials and the insurrectos, the bell was rung as a signal to start the attack. In the ensuing savage fight, more than one-half of the seventy-four men of Company C, under the command of Cpt. Thomas Connell, were killed, and only four of the remaining Manchus escaped without wounds. Those Manchus fought fiercely and killed approximately 250 insurrectos by the time the battle was over and they were relieved by Company E, Ninth Infantry Regiment.”

Villagers presented the bell to the regiment when it left Balangiga on April 9, 1902, according to the caption.

The present-day people of Balangiga tell their own version of the story through a large monument beside the recently rebuilt church. The building and town were badly damaged by a super typhoon in 2013, sparking a large-scale relief effort by U.S. forces on Samar and the nearby island of Leyte supported by the USS George Washington aircraft carrier.

The monument, which lists the names of the insurrectos involved in the battle, includes a replica of the church tower and life-sized sculptures of the U.S. troops being gunned down at a breakfast table in a surprise attack.

Philippines researcher and author Bob Couttie has suggested the insurrectos were angry about a U.S. commander forcing local men to clean up the town after a typhoon.

But Valdenor tells a different version of the story based on a collection of notes on the incident compiled by her late father, who knew some of the insurrectos and spoke with them about the attack.

The fight broke out because they were angry and jealous about U.S. troops mingling with local women, she said.

“Communication was also a problem,” she added.

Road to Balangiga

Getting to Balangiga from the nearest large city of Tacloban on the neighboring island of Leyte involves crossing the 1.3-mile-long San Juanico Bridge, passing through several armed checkpoints and along an idyllic coastline bordered by lush jungle and fields grazed by water buffalo.

Out here you won’t find the American fast-food restaurants or air-conditioned malls popular in Manila and other large cities. People live in simple homes with corrugated iron or grass roofs and work on farms, fishing boats or for the local government.

One thing the towns have in common with the cities are signs letting people know they’re in a “DRUG CLEARED BARANGAY” – an area supposedly purged of amphetamine pushers as part of President Rodrigo Duterte’s drug war that has resulted in thousands of extra-judicial killings.

Duterte, who has sought closer ties with China and Russia despite opposition from his pro-America military, demanded the return of the bells in a speech last year reported by the Philippine Star newspaper.

“Those bells are reminders of the gallantry and heroism of our forebears who resisted the American colonizers and sacrificed their lives in the process,” he said.

“Give us back those Balangiga bells,” he added. “They are ours. They belong to the Philippines. They are part of our national heritage. Give them back. It’s painful for us.”

The church is the first thing people see as they arrive in Balangiga. It has an impressive bell tower, stained-glass windows, a collection of broken bells, more than its share of gaudily painted icons and an outdoor ossuary with recently unearthed bones that locals think might belong to U.S. soldiers.

Valdenor’s notes show the town was officially recognized as a Catholic parish on April 1, 1854.

“In 1863 the first church bell was made from people’s donations of pieces of gold and coins,” she said.

That bell, inscribed with the name of local priest R. San Francisco, is in Wyoming with another made in 1889 that honors Father Augustine Del Gado.

The bell in South Korea was made in 1875 and bears the emblem of the Franciscan order, according to Valdenor’s notes.

Mixed feelings

The idea of giving back the bells has an uneven reception by U.S. military veterans. In July, the Veterans of Foreign Wars approved a national resolution in favor of returning them but others have suggested that handing back battle trophies would set a precedent for countries to make similar demands for relics from other wars.

If and when the bells come back there will likely be a visit from American officials. It’s unclear whether U.S. veterans would participate, but back in Angeles City – near the former Clark Air Base on the island of Luzon – old soldiers have mixed feelings about the endeavor.

Jim Collins served with 1st Battalion, 9th Infantry Regiment in South Korea at Camp Greaves from 1976 to 1977 and at Camp Liberty Bell from 1981 to 1983 and was proudly wearing a belt buckle featuring the unit’s “Manchu” emblem on a recent Saturday.

“If the U.S. government wants to return the bells and it makes peace with the Filipino people I’m all for it,” he said. “I hope it will resolve differences between us and we would become better friends.”

But it would be disappointing if the bells became part of an “anti-American shrine,” he added.

“The Filipinos have a ceremony down there every year where they are proud of the insurrectos. It might be perceived as an apology for past colonialism, and it could be a point of contention between us and them. It could be a tourist attraction for anti-American types,” he said.

However, Sanny Elacion, a local government administrator working on a renovation of the memorial to the insurrectos, said locals would be friendly to any Americans who came there to return the bells.

“They are helping Filipinos,” he said.

Valdenor said people in Balangiga are pro-American nowadays.

“After all, America protects the Philippines,” she said. “We will be very thankful to the American people if they return the bells.”

robson.seth@stripes.com
Twitter: @SethRobson1
 

Maj. Sandra Lee Altamirano of the Army Reserve said she took military leave to help place the 5,520 U.S. flags. She recently lost three friends to suicide, two of whom were veterans.

A couple of years ago, after serving three deployments in Iraq, she contemplated suicide herself.

“Each of these flags is a name, a person. Three of them are my friends, and one could’ve been me,” said Altamirano, now a suicide prevention liaison in the Reserve. “I hope this helps people see how vast of an issue this is. It’s overwhelming. It’s a crisis.”

The flags were placed on the Mall by Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans for America, an advocacy group trying to draw awareness to the issue of veteran suicide.

On Wednesday, the scene grabbed the attention of tourists, who took photos of the small flags with the Washington Monument in the background.

A new report released last week by the Department of Veterans Affairs shows suicide among veterans and servicemembers continues to be higher than the rest of the U.S. population. Veterans accounted for 14 percent of all suicides in the United States in 2016, yet they make up 8 percent of the population.

The rate of suicide among young veterans substantially increased from 2015 to 2016. For every 100,000 veterans age 18 to 34, 45 committed suicide in 2016 – up from 40.4 for every 100,000 in 2015.

Rates have also increased among women veterans and some members of the National Guard and Reserve.

The release of the report last week coincided with a hearing of the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs. Several lawmakers questioned why there hasn’t been significant improvement, given Congress has increased the amount of money that it allots for VA mental health programs.

“I’m beyond frustrated about the numbers and data,” said Keita Franklin, executive director of the VA’s suicide prevention program. “Having worked in this field as long as I have, it’s frustrating. When I try to think about what we’re missing … we tend to do a lot of one thing at a time and do it very well, full throttle. Preventing suicide takes a bundle of 10 to 12 things done at full throttle, all the time.”

Of the approximately 20 veterans who commit suicide every day, 14 are not receiving health care from the VA. Part of the VA’s effort is getting veterans to seek help.

Stephanie Keegan traveled from New York to help plant flags Wednesday morning. Her son Daniel was a veteran of the war in Afghanistan who died of a drug overdose in 2016 while struggling with post-traumatic stress disorder. He had waited 16 months to get into a VA mental health program, Keegan said. He was supposed to be admitted Jan. 23. He died Jan. 8.

Daniel Keegan had wanted to become involved in veterans advocacy. So now, Stephanie Keegan is dedicating her life to it. She has left her son’s photo in every House lawmaker’s office, met with VA secretaries and is involved with IAVA, in addition to other advocacy efforts.

“I get to do the work that he wanted to do, and I feel like he’s sitting on my shoulder all the time,” Keegan said. “It’s been an opportunity to educate people on what a really struggling veteran looks like because he didn’t look like anything you would expect. He was healthy as could be, but he was catastrophically ill for the last two years of his life.”

To reach the Veterans Crisis Line, text 838255 or dial 1-800-273-8255 and press 1.

wentling.nikki@stripes.com
Twitter: @nikkiwentling

Many are military personnel and members of the Kaiserslautern Rod & Gun Club, where they often spend their weekends in the woods near Pulaski Barracks, honing rifle and shotgun skills.

When not shooting, they’re fixing equipment, running programs and doing hundreds of hours of volunteer work in support of a club that has been in a state of disrepair and neglect in recent years.

The 86th Force Support Squadron at Ramstein, which oversees the club through its Outdoor Recreation department, has been ambivalent about its future. About two years ago, the club stopped accepting new contracts for privately owned firearm storage, sparking rumors of closure. Officials with the 86th Airlift said at the time no decisions had been made but they’ve done little since then to promote or invest in the club.

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Base officials said this summer they were still assessing the facility’s fate, expressing concerns about costly fixes to old infrastructure and club access that depended on a German forest service road lease set to expire in 2020.

But since then, wing leadership has turned over and the new commander, Brig. Gen. Mark August, has asked for a new analysis of the issue, Ramstein officials said.

At stake is a place, volunteers say, where servicemembers can safely sport shoot while out of uniform, without the hurdle of language or cultural differences. The club also provides access to training courses required for a German hunting license and gun ownership in Germany, and a place authorized by U.S. military regulation to store personal weapons.

“We have the facilities for it. We need the support,” said Brandon Cowell, an Air Force reservist and contractor at Ramstein who serves as the hunting coordinator of KMC Outdoorsmen, an organization that’s part of the Hunting, Fishing, and Sport Shooting program in Germany and open to anyone interested in outdoor sports and conservation.

“We have paintball, archery, shotguns, rifles,” he said. “I mean, you can’t ask for a greater weekend for somebody who loves the outdoors or just enjoys sports shooting.”

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A steady decline

During the height of the Cold War, when about 500,000 U.S. military personnel were stationed across Europe, military rod and gun clubs were widespread.

At one point, there were at least 30 operating on U.S. bases, many of which have since closed as forces have drawn down.

In Germany, the Hunting, Fishing, and Sport Shooting program was integrated into and funded by base recreation departments, officials said. The Army in Europe oversees and regulates the program. At bases that don’t have their own recreational ranges, the Army maintains local agreements for use of military and host-nation ranges on a limited basis.

At Wiesbaden, for example, Outdoor Recreation arranges shooting about once a month at the U.S. military’s nearby Wackernheim training range, with the caveat that “military requests take priority.”

Baumholder has its own trap and skeet range and a pro shop. But Kaiserslautern is the only rod and gun club with its own building and ranges, separate from other Outdoor Recreation facilities.

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Better days

The Kaiserslautern gun club and its ranges are in the woods behind the Air Force’s Vogelweh area and the Army’s Pulaski Barracks.

The 1966 building looks like a hunting lodge. On the main floor, chandeliers hang from a vaulted ceiling with exposed wooden beams. Mounted antlers and animal skulls hang above the brick fireplace. Sport-shooting trophies and plaques on display hark back to busier days.

Calvin Churchill, an Air Force retiree who’s worked at the club since 1990, said that in the ‘90s, “this place was up and running like you wouldn’t believe it.”

There were just as many Germans as Americans for customers. Families turned out for events, such as Easter egg hunts, and commanders with stars on their shoulders often took turns at target practice, Churchill said this summer, while paging through club scrapbooks full of yellowing newspaper clippings and old photos.

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“Back then, you could just drive up here,” Churchill said. “There were no fences on Vogelweh. Then 9/11 hit and that just curtailed everything.”

After 9/11, the Germans couldn’t bring weapons on base. Access at the time was on a paved road through the forest via a gate on Vogelweh, near the shoppette traffic circle. Club usage also declined as military personnel deployed to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, he said.

From that point on, the story of the club’s decline gets fuzzy. Two people associated with the club for years say things went downhill after the Air Force took operations over from the Army’s Morale, Welfare and Recreation program.

But Air Force officials at Ramstein said they have no record that the Army owned or managed the club.

Under Air Force management, the club in the early ‘90s lost some of its range space to the service’s Combat Arms mission, the mandatory marksmanship training for airmen.

Fernando Rondon, a retired soldier and Vietnam veteran who’s worked as a volunteer instructor and range officer at the club since 1984, said volunteers have kept the club afloat.

“If it wasn’t for volunteers, this place would have gone to hell,” Rondon said. “The volunteers, we’re fighting to keep it for our military, because they can come on weekends to practice their fighting skills, shooting and all that stuff.”

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Volunteer labor

When winter began to thaw earlier this year in Germany, volunteers sprang into action at the Kaiserslautern Rod & Gun Club.

The five-stand range was in disrepair, and the trap and skeet ranges were only partially working because of malfunctioning equipment, said Air Force Maj. Nathan Waters, president of the KMC Outdoorsmen.

Volunteers fixed the machines and restored the ranges. They painted, pulled weeds and mowed grass. Local Boy Scouts helped repair the trail through the woods at the archery range.

“We did straight-up manual labor that a lot of us haven’t done since we left the farm,” Cowell said. The transformation was “like ‘Walking Dead’ prior and then now it’s not so ‘Walking Dead,’” he said, referring to the television drama about life in a zombie apocalypse.

To celebrate the reopening of the trap and skeet ranges, the club hosted more than 250 people at a Father’s Day event with the help of volunteers. KMC Outdoorsmen held a pig roast; the shotgun, rifle and archery ranges, as well as both paintball fields, were in use all day.

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KMC Outdoorsmen volunteers kept up the work, officially logging 1,815 hours in 2018, Waters said last month. But that number does not include most of the hours volunteers have spent on club operations since June, helping to run ranges, run the shop, do repairs and maintenance during a staffing shortage.

Waters said their efforts saved the Air Force tens of thousands of dollars in equipment and labor costs.

As one example, volunteers repaired the rifle range for the second time since 2013. The $1,000 it cost to fill the backstop with sand was well below Air Force estimates, Waters said. Volunteers shopped around for the best price, arranged delivery and spent a Saturday filling sand bags and shoveling sand into the backstop by hand.

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Making inroads

At the recent pig roast, many attendees said they didn’t know the club existed, had trouble finding it or thought it had closed in 2016.

Club access changed in 2015, when security forces stopped manning Gate 14 on Vogelweh. That decision cut off access to the club via a paved road from base.

An alternate access road was leased from the forestry department in Kaiserslautern, base officials said. The entrance to the road is now off base, on a slope near a commercial strip in Einsiedlerhof.

The Air Force says the road lease has been a sticking point in its determination of whether to continue operating the club. The lease costs 2,000 euros — more than $2,300 U.S. — a year and will expire Sept. 30, 2020.

Base officials say there’s no guarantee it will be renewed, noting that the lease road owner has expressed dissatisfaction with the way it is being used and wants customer access to go through the Vogelweh gate instead.

But Bodo Mahl from the forestry office in Kaiserslautern told Stars and Stripes that he is not aware of any problems with club members’ usage of the road.

Waters said volunteers have tried to be good stewards of the road “because it’s the way we get to the club.”

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Fresh eyes

Base officials with the 86th Airlift Wing said no final decisions have been made about the club’s future. Some solutions suggested by the previous wing leadership included moving the club’s functions elsewhere by partnering with a local German range or another nearby military range, such as Baumholder.

But under August, the issue has been getting a renewed look, base officials said this month.

“Ultimately the new wing commander has this on his radar,” said Lt. Col. Joel Harper, a wing spokesman. “Our leadership appreciates the passion of the hunting and sports shooting community and has asked for a renewed analysis of the issue in order to chart a clear course forward.”

Volunteers said the club has not accepted new contracts for privately owned firearms storage since late 2016, even though joint Army and Air Force regulations authorize rod and gun clubs to do so. That’s caused a huge problem for airmen and soldiers who live in the dorms, since they aren’t allowed to store personal firearms in their quarters, volunteers said.

Outdoorsmen like Waters and Cowell say they want a chance to help solve some of the challenges and time to turn the club around.

“We have a grassroots momentum happening here that has everybody excited about this becoming better than what it is,” Cowell said.

So far, those efforts seem to be paying off.

The club in 2017 lost about $30,000, base officials said. As of August, the club was reporting a loss of $4,976, officials said.

The Air Force considers rod and gun clubs to be revenue-generating activities, expected to be self-sustaining and “capable of funding most expenses,” according to service guidance.

The Air Force says club usage is up. Interest is also up in the hunting and fishing classes. A record 21 new anglers graduated from the fishing course in May, followed by 22 more in July, Waters said. The current hunting class of 27 students puts the program on track to graduate 59 hunters in 2018, also a record.

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Volunteers maintain it’s hard for the club to lose money, as long as it’s resourced properly. A recent hunting class netted nearly $8,000 for the club: Students paid $200 to take the volunteer-taught course, not including fees for ammunition and gun rental.

“It’s a great opportunity for any outdoorsman,” said one student, Staff Sgt. David Williams, of the chance to hunt in Germany and shoot at the club. “I’ve come over here, done a lot of traveling; been pretty bored missing the outdoors. Hunting, that’s a big part of my life.”

Cowell said the club can help servicemembers that grew up hunting or fishing feel at home.

“Maybe it’s something to do on the weekends,” he said. “They say, ‘Idle hands are the devil’s workshop.’ Well, put them out here. We’re supposed to be proficient marksmen both in the Army and Air Force.

“If you’re only requiring someone to shoot a weapon one time a year, they’re not going to be proficient,” he said. “But if you allow them a place to go without any kind of language barrier … they feel comfortable, the safety is in place, you know the rules.”

Marcus Kloeckner contributed to this story.

svan.jennifer@stripes.com
Twitter: @stripesktown

The entire 12-man force from Operational Detachment-Alpha 3336 had fought valiantly April 6, 2008, on that Nuristan province mountain where they’d been sent to kill or capture a high-value leader of the Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin insurgent group, Behr said Sunday. But Shurer not only single-handedly kept Behr alive after he was shot through the hip early in the fight known now as the Battle of Shok Valley, but he also ultimately was responsible for ensuring all of the American troops on that mountain made it out alive.

“Without Ron Shurer at my side, I would have died that day. No question,” Behr said. “His presence gave me the confidence to know I could make it. There’s a good chance if he would have been critically injured or killed on the battlefield … we all might have died out there.”

Months after the battle, 10 soldiers who fought that day were awarded the Silver Star, the nation’s third-highest honor for valor, representing the most such battlefield awards earned in a single engagement since the Vietnam War. On Monday, Shurer’s Silver Star was upgraded to the Medal of Honor when President Donald Trump presented the nation’s highest military honor to the former Green Beret during a ceremony at the White House.

Trump smiled widely as he presented the award to Shurer, tapping the former Green Beret on the shoulder of his dress blue Army Service Uniform.

Behr and eight other members of Shurer’s unit who fought in the battle with him attended the ceremony, as well as two Afghans who fought by their side. The upgraded award felt right, Behr said.

“Knowing that he was awarded the Silver Star, the same award that I got, it didn’t really seem fair,” Behr said the day before the ceremony. “So, to see him elevated and given the nation’s highest honor — there’s nobody else that could deserve it any more, and I’m extremely proud to know him.”

For Shurer, 37, who has worked as a Secret Service agent since he left the Army in 2011, the upgraded award was unexpected and the result of a Pentagon review that began in 2016 of high-level, post-9/11 combat awards.

On Sept. 4, Shurer was summoned to the West Wing. There, the president told the soldier that he would receive the Medal of Honor, Trump said during the ceremony.

“It was a moment I will never forget,” he said in the East Room of the White House before a standing-room-only audience of senior military leaders, Secret Service agents and Shurer’s family and friends. “It’s a great story … for Ron, a good man.”

Before his meeting with Trump, Shurer said he was not aware his Silver Star was under consideration for an upgrade.

“Since we got the word, I’ve felt every emotion — pride, humbled, a little embarrassed,” he said. There’s “so much to try and process and take in. It’s definitely something you grow up hearing about, but never would have considered myself in that conversation.”

Ultimately, Shurer said, the award is about recognizing the other men who fought alongside him on that mountain a decade ago.

“I want to dedicate this to the other men in ODA 3336,” he said Monday just after he was presented the award. “Without them, this Medal of Honor really never would have been possible. It was truly a team effort.”

‘Utter chaos’

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The Green Berets and some 100 Afghan commandos sent on that mission could sense something was amiss not long after their arrival. The unit was forced to drop about 10 feet from the hovering helicopters, which could not find a place to land, and needed to scale a nearly vertical, 100-foot cliff to reach the compound where their target was expected to be, according to soldiers who served on that mission.

Behr said he felt a sense of “eeriness” immediately.

Then the battle erupted — heavy fire from rifles and machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades rained down onto them from some 200 to 300 enemy fighters from positions overhead.

“It was just an onslaught of fire and explosions for a very long time,” said Behr, who was then a sergeant first class and the unit’s communications specialist. “Utter chaos.”

The operation’s ground commander Lt. Col. Kyle Walton, then a captain, split the team into several assault elements, leading the way up the cliff with Behr and several others. Below the cliff, some of the Afghan commandos were wounded. Shurer, the only medic on the operation, began tending to them.

“Blood all over the place,” Trump said, describing the details of the battle. “It was a tough, tough situation to be in.”

Before long, Walton recalled, the situation for him and the others atop the cliff became untenable.

With his team outmanned, outgunned and taking casualties, Walton was forced to call Shurer to his position.

“When I called for Ron, there was a silence over the radio for a few seconds, because everyone realized what that meant — that it was bad,” Walton said. “He had to climb a mountain under fire with a couple other guys on the team. When he showed up, nearly everybody was wounded. We were under direct fire. We were pinned down with nearly nowhere to go except down that 100-foot cliff.

The unit’s Afghan interpreter, who they knew by the nickname C.K., was mortally wounded. Behr was down and even after Air Force F-16 Fighting Falcons and A-10 Thunderbolt IIs arrived to help, soldiers kept getting hit with the mix of enemy fire and shrapnel from the “danger close” strikes, bombs that were called in close to their own position.

Shurer went to work on Behr, calmly reassuring his friend he would make it.

He checked the others' injuries. C.K. was not going to make it; the others had a chance to live if they could be evacuated. But Behr was in the worst shape, with the gnarled hip injury and another wound to his arm, Shurer recalled.

“Constantly bleeding,” the former medic said. “I got to the point where … I just resorted to using my fingers to kind of shove [a clotting agent] in and then bandaged him up as tight as I could.”

Shurer was hit twice — once in his helmet, leaving him momentarily stunned, and then again in his arm. He kept working.

Behr, in a morphine stupor, believed he would die. He said a prayer.

Then “Ron slapped me across the face and said, ‘Wake up. You’re not going to die today,’” he recounted. “I knew at that point I was going to make it.”

‘Calm, collected and cool’

After hours of fighting, the unit was still not in the clear.

Walton feared his force was on the verge of being overrun.

With the insurgents nearing his position, Walton reached for a grenade and called in a massive “danger close” strike, expecting it could take his entire team out.

They were “all prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice,” he said.

The bomb dropped. And then he saw the image he would forever remember from that fight – Shurer’s body draped over the injured men he’d been working on through the fight.

“In that moment, the strike that we had called in on our own position detonated just above us and blocked out the sun. As the dust settled, Ron Shurer was the first thing that I saw on top of his wounded teammates, protecting them even to the end when we had all fully accepted the fact that we were going to go down fighting,” the officer said. “Ron Shurer was still thinking of others.”

The bomb blast gave the team enough cover to remove the wounded.

Shurer strung together nylon tubular webbing to form a makeshift sling to lower Behr and the others off the cliff to get them to the incoming helicopters. They would survive.

Sgt. 1st Class Matthew Williams, another Green Beret who served on that mission, credited Shurer’s sure-handedness with allowing the unit to survive the battle — one of the worst Green Berets have faced in recent years, he said.

“His ability to manage an unmanageable situation and remain calm, collected and cool — always was that guy, hanging out or training or whatever,” said Williams, who is still with 3rd Special Forces Group. “It really came to light during the worst possible time and that is the reason we were all able to make it away from that position alive and as a team.”

The mission might not have been a success, but Shurer managed to ensure his fellow soldiers survived.

“We’d been in engagements before, even on that deployment,” he said. “Nothing like that before. Luckily, we’re all incredibly well trained, we trusted each other, and it all just kind of worked for us that day. On our worst day.”

Shurer said Sunday that his fellow soldiers' appreciation of his actions that day means more to him than receiving the Medal of Honor.

“That means so much more,” he said. “I know these guys’ wives, their kids. Just knowing that — it’s very humbling for them to say [he saved their lives]. Luckily, it all kind of worked for me to help those guys.”

Shurer, who last year was diagnosed with Stage 4 lung cancer, hopes his award can draw some attention to the sacrifice Green Berets have made through the years and continue to make today in places such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and in countries across Africa.

“Hopefully, [it will] remind the American public about all the servicemembers we still have out there, still doing the missions today, just quietly going about their jobs, you know, not asking for recognition,” he said. “Whatever little voice I get, I hope to just be able to direct attention that way.”

dickstein.corey@stripes.com
Twitter: @CDicksteinDC

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