Young Adult Novel Inspired Soldier to Write His Own

A former high school teacher of English and 34th Infantry "Red Bull" Division citizen-soldier, Trent Reedy remembers getting the "stampede" call to go to Afghanistan in 2004.

He now lives in Oregon, and writes fiction aimed at young adult audiences. The deployment changed his life, with some help from a magical book and its author. Earlier this week, he retold that story to CBS This Morning.

"I was angry about the September 11th attacks, and ... I made the terrible mistake of blaming all of the Afghan people," Reedy said in the 5-minute feature interview. During a low point, Reedy's wife sent him a copy of Katherine Patterson's "Bridge to Terabithia," a 1977 book that was also a 2007 movie.

"I learned from the Bridge to Terabithia in that war zone that art and music and books aren't extras—they're essential," Reedy said in the television interview.

Reedy was part of Task Force 168, made up of approximately 600 soldiers assigned to the Iowa National Guard's 1st Battalion, 168th Infantry Regiment (1-168th Inf.). The battalion was broken up during the 2004-2005 mission, and deployed as smaller units across Afghanistan. Reedy, along with approximately other 50 personnel, was deployed to Farah, in Western Afghanistan near the Iranian border. There, they provided security for a Provincial Reconstruction Team (P.R.T.).

Reedy writes on his website:

In a difficult time, when food rations were low and I was feeling very scared and lonely, I read this wonderful story of true friendship. It reminded me of hope and peace and beauty. That same day, I stood at my guard post, looking over the top of the wall that surrounded our tiny compound. 

Across the street, I saw a little Afghan girl in a dirty dress with no shoes. She dragged a small cardboard box with a piece of string. It was maybe her only toy. As I looked at her and remembered all the Afghan children I had seen, I thought about how much they were like the kids in Bridge to Terabithia. They seemed to be full of imagination. They wanted to have fun and friends. A chance to grow up safe.

Later, Reedy was inspired to write to the author of his lifesaver book. "Even though I drove through a strange foreign city, with body armor and an M-16 assault rifle, all I could think about was the beauty and richness of your book of your novel," he wrote. "Thank, Ms. Patterson, for bringing such joy, to this teacher-made-soldier, on this long tour, in this bleak desert country ..."

The two developed a correspondence. "He was in Afghanistan, for heaven's sake," Patterson told the CBS program. "He needed mail. He needed encouragement." Reedy would later attend the Vermont College of Fine Arts, Montpelier, Vt., where Patterson was a trustee. He earned a master of fine arts (M.F.A.) in writing for children and young adults.

During the deployment, Reedy and his fellow soldiers encountered a young Afghan girl with a cleft lip. They raised funds to get civilian transportation to bring her to their base, where medical personnel were able to correct her birth defect. She would become the basis for the main character of his first novel, "Words In The Dust." The book, which tells the story of Zulakha, an Afghan girl struggling to achieve an education, was published in 2011 and is available in paperback and audiobook. The hardcover was even selected by NBC's The Today Show's Al Roker as a monthly book pick for kids.

In 2012, Reedy published a second young adult novel, "Stealing Air," about some Iowa boys who attempt to build their own airplane. It, too, is available in paperback and Audio CD.

Finally, arriving in bookstores later this month, is Reedy's "Divided We Fall," the first book of a dystopian trilogy centered on the story of a fictional Idaho National Guard soldier.

If that character wears a particular patch on his shoulder, it could be a further connection to Reedy's Red Bull past.

The author maintains a Facebook page here.

The author's website is here.

The Constant State-by-State of War

When I started the Red Bull Rising blog in late 2009, I was preparing to deploy as a member of the Iowa Army National Guard. My buddies and I kept a digital ear out for news of Vermont's 86th Brigade Combat Team (B.C.T.), the unit we planned to replace. We sifted and scanned Vermont newspaper and television reports, U.S. Army public affairs releases from Afghanistan, and posts from mil-bloggers and Facebookers.

The 1,500-member 86th BCT had originally deployed as the command-and-control headquarters for Combined Joint Task Force Phoenix, a U.S. and coalition training mission that had been in place since 2003. (A quick review: In Army speak, the term "combined" means "U.S. plus allies." The term "joint" means one or more branches of the armed forces: Army, Air Force, Marines, Navy, Coast Guard. A "task force" is an group of disparate units organized around a specific mission.)

The CJTF Phoenix mission was to advise and assist the Afghan National Security Forces (A.N.S.F.), including various forms of Afghan police and military units. It controlled 8- or 16-person Embedded Training Teams (E.T.T.). Coalition partners call their ETT personnel "Operational Mentor Liaison Teams" (OMLT, pronounced "omelette").

An additional irony? Such Foreign Internal Defense ("FID") training missions have traditionally been considered a core mission of U.S. Special Forces. The National Guard, on the other hand, often has to battle "second-string" stereotypes when encountering active-duty soldiers in the field. Even after more than 10 years of deployments, and transformation into an operational reserve.

That U.S. National Guard soldiers tend to have civilian-acquired work experiences and skills is often touted as an advantage in the advise-and-assist context. Citizen-soldiers who are law enforcement professionals back home can be used to mentor Afghan National Police, for example. Teachers and coaches, business owners and managers can be more familiar with non-military mentorship models. With the possible exception of the National Guard’s joint Agribusiness Development Teams (A.D.T.), however, in which citizen-soldiers and -airmen are deployed based upon their civilian-acquired agricultural skills, it’s hard to move such assumptions and assertions beyond the anecdotal.

In 2009, in the middle of a foreign country, a deployment, and a war, Vermont's 86th BCT reconfigured to a mission in which they would act as "battlespace owners" for the provinces of Parwan, Panjshir, and Bamiyan Provinces. Two more U.S. National Guard brigades—each approximately 3,000 personnel each—would follow. Rather than being sliced up into smaller companies and battalions, and assigned to support active-duty brigades, the National Guard brigades were kept relatively whole.

Iowa's 2nd BCT, 34th Infantry "Red Bull" Division (2-34th BCT) deployed to Afghanistan from October 2010 to July 2011. It took over the mission in Parwan (where Bagram Airfield is located), Panjshir, and Laghman Provinces. One Red Bull battalion, the 1st Battalion, 168th Infantry Regiment (1-168th Inf.) was attached to active-duty brigade in Paktiya Province. A 400-member Nebraska Army National Guard unit with historical ties to the Red Bull, the 1st Squadron, 134th Cavalry (1-134th Cav.), deployed alongside the 2-34th BCT. Based at Camp Phoenix in Kabul, the 1-134th Cav. deployed as mentors and trainers for Afghan National Police.

Oklahoma's 45th BCT ("Thunderbird") took over the Red Bull's mission in July 2012, maintaining responsibility for Laghman Province and other areas. After the Thunderbird took over, my Red Bull buddies and I again took to the Internet, this time watching for Oklahoma newspaper and television reports, U.S. Army public affairs releases, and posts from mil-bloggers and Facebookers. As of this week, nearly all of the Thunderbird units have returned home to Oklahoma. Rather than hand-off to another U.S. National Guard unit, in February the Thunderbird transferred authority to an active-duty unit.

Watching a war through the lens of brigade-sized deployments, state by state, is an accessible way to perceive the ebb and flow of the past 10 years. In the beginning, it was team after 16-person mentor team. Occasionally, a state would get tapped for the CJTF Phoenix mission—a brigade's worth of headquarters staff, plus yet more advise-and-assist teams. Then, for a grand and glorious moment, the states were asked to muster fully trained, fully resourced fighting brigades. Newspaper reporters wrote sentences like, "the largest deployment of Iowa troops since World War II."

Now, with American resolve, purpose, and troop numbers waning in Afghanistan, U.S. political and military leaders have taken to describing a "new" mission of advising and assisting Afghan forces, and withdrawing troops by 2014. Given that the advise-and-assist mission started in 2003 and never stopped, this latest language seems like rhetorical repackaging. Meet the new mission, same as the old mission.

During mobilization in 2011, Ohio's 37th BCT ("Buckeye")—was re-configured to fulfill an advise-and-assist mission in Northern Afghanistan. It arrived Afghanistan in February 2012.

The Red Bull Rising crystal ball is currently in for servicing and recalibration, but it seems as if the moment of brigade-sized deployments might be over. Perhaps National Guard units will be more likely to deploy piecemeal as companies and battalions, or as 16-person mentor-and-trainer teams. Even the National Guard-specific Agribusiness Development Teams (A.D.T.) may be winding down. In a recent ceremony in Paktya Province, for example, the outgoing Nebraska ADT transferred its responsibilities to the co-located Provincial Reconstruction Team (P.R.T.).

During the Association of the United States Army (A.U.S.A.) annual convention and trial-balloon festival last fall, there was much talk of assigning the advise-and-assist mission to the Reserve Component. (Other, contradictory balloons: Assign to the U.S. Army National Guard and U.S. Army Reserve most or all of the heavy/armored and field artillery forces.) Proposals to create and train specific advise-and-assist capability, whether in the active- or reserve-components, seem to have stalled. The consensus seems to be that the military will continue to take such teams ad hoc and out of hide, rather than create specific organizations or structure. Every soldier wants to grow up to be Patton or Schwarzkopf; few aspire to be Lawrence of Arabia.

That's not to say that operational deployments are over, or that war isn't still a dangerous business. While 70 headquarters soldiers of the Indiana National Guard's 76th BCT ("Night Hawks") were engaged in send-off ceremonies to Afghanistan last January, the Hoosier state simultaneously learned of the loss of four Indiana combat engineers assigned to the 713th Engineer Company, Valaparaiso, Ind.

Sobering times.

War beats on.

*****

For additional insights into the history of the advise-and-assist mission, see Jeffrey Courter's "Afghan Journal" and Benjamin Tupper's "Greetings from Afghanistan" and "Dudes of War." Also, check out former U.S. Marine officer Jonathan Rue's "Build a House and Burn it Down," in which he reflects on his experiences training Iraqi soldiers. And Joseph Trevithick's insightful attempt on Tom Ricks' "Best Defense" blog to untangle the historically convoluted U.S./coalition command structures in Afghanistan.

Poetry as Diplomacy During a Hot War

Christopher Merrill, a poet, essayist, and director of the University of Iowa's International Writing Program in Iowa City, Iowa, recently published an essay recounting his impressions of two cultural diplomacy missions he made to Eastern Afghanistan. In May 2011 and again in January 2012, Merrill travelled to the Afghan capital of Kabul, as well as the city of Jalalabad in Nangahar Province. While in Afghanistan, he travelled via U.S. military convoys, as well as contracted helicopters.

Merrill's essay, "Leaving Afghanistan," was published Feb. 20 by the U.K. literary magazine Granta. In a Feb. 28 interview on Iowa Public Radio's "River to River," Merrill told IPR's Ben Kieffer that his visits, funded by the U.S. State Department, were intended to win hearts and minds by finding common ground with Afghan partners. He participated in roundtable discussions, writing workshops, and even a televised mushaira—a traditional poetry reading. Said Merrill:

There were a lot of soldiers—National Guardsmen from Massachusetts--one of whom could be heard to be saying, "We're doing a mission for poetry"?! They probably thought this was a pretty outlandish idea. But the fact is [...] the colonel riding next to me in the M-RAP and is a long-time veteran in Afghanistan—he thought this kind of thing is exactly what we now need to be doing. Trying to find ways to connect with Afghans, in ways that are important to them. To Afghans, poetry is absolutely essential. They are known as great poets. They have rich poetic traditions everywhere I went—in Kabul, and Jalalabad—I was hearing about the poetry festivals. To have a chance to connect on a level that is important not only to me, but to them, was really pretty thrilling.

Later, Merrill put the mission into larger strategic context, explaining that efforts to build sustainable governmental, economic, and cultural institutions must take place at the same time soldiers are fighting insurgents.

[A]ll cultural diplomacy missions from the outside might look a little complicated. But in fact, that cultural diplomacy is the key to every country's effort to find common ground with other people. We only do missions to places of strategic interest, to places where we hope to make a difference. Think about the missions that these [soldiers] do every day. Some times they're taking a U.S.A.I.D. official out with his or her counterpart in a ministry. They're trying to develop a crop. They're trying to get a distribution for crops. They're trying to build courthouses. All of the different parts to rebuilding a society. Cultural diplomacy plays a part in the larger diplomatic effect.

Merrill described meeting in U.S. State Department-funded "Lincoln Learning Centers", which are library rooms and computer labs administered by the Afghan Ministry of Information. "In Afghanistan, you can't call them an American space, because they'll be a target for the Taliban," said Merrill. "So they're called a Lincoln Learning Center." Some Afghans word business suits to the cultural meetings. Others wore traditional garb, including a woman who wore the blue burqa familiar in the region.

The idea was to create a space in which we could talk freely and frankly about the things that mattered to us. And what we really wanted to talk about was poetry. The interesting thing to me was that this woman in the burqa began the conversation by talking about with the oppression of women in Afghan society. She ended by reciting a poem in Pashto that was translated for me, that ended with a three-fold curse: "May you fail all your exams, may you become a slave like me, may tears run down your face like mine." It left the room just silenced.

Merrill's interview took place in the days following riots in Afghanistan, incited by the accidental burning of Korans by U.S. personnel stationed at Bagram Airfield, Afghanistan. "There are an awful lot of people working very hard [in Afghanistan], but the odds are very long," Merrill said. Later in the interview, he observed:

It reminds us how absolutely fragile the situation is, how quickly things can go south with an act of blasphemy ... even if, as it seems likely, it was done accidentally. It seems like sparks applied to tinder that was already there. The grievances that Afghan people feel that their government is corrupt, there's no work, there's no heat in a lot of places, there's so few jobs ... And there's this large occupying force that may be working on their behalf. Still it seems very difficult to them. An incident like this happens, and all bets are off.

Bringing CEXC Back to Afghanistan

FORT IRWIN, Calif., Sept. 27--Staff Sgt. Jacob Pries is a fast-talking, hard-talking man who--after talking about how much he loves his wife--loves nothing more than talking guns, talking cops, and talking about being a U.S. Army combat engineer. Most days, he's a man on a mission moving at a high rate of speed, tossing cuss words like stun grenades.

He is a veteran of Task Force 168th's 2004-2005 deployment to Afghanistan. That unit was organized around the 1st Battalion, 168th Infantry Regiment (1/168th Inf.), but the 700 troops who went on that deployment were broken up into platoons and companies across Afghanistan. They provided security for Provincial Reconstruction Teams (P.R.T.).

This time, the 2nd Brigade Combat Team (B.C.T.), 34th Infantry "Red Bull" Division is traveling in even larger numbers, and sticking together in larger herds. This time, Pries is working as part of the unit's Counter-I.E.D. Support Element (C.S.E.). Improvised Explosive Devices (IED)--roadside bombs, makeshift mines, and booby-traps--are the bad guys' most-dangerous weapon. Sometimes, they're detonated by remote-control. Other times, they're designed to go off when a vehicle or solider applies pressure to them.

Experts talk about the counter-IED fight in three components: "Attack the network. Defeat the device. Train the force." In other words: Disrupt the bomb-makers' organization. Figure out what makes their devices tick and how to stop them from going off. And, as soon as you have something concrete, tell soldiers what they need to know about the latest bad guy tools and tactics.

Part of the CSE is a Combined Explosives Exploitation Cell (CEXC)--a group of military and civilian experts who work to analyze IED attacks. Pries jokes that it's a little like working with "CSI: Fort Irwin."

The acronym, by the way, is pronounced "sexy."

Before mobilization, Pries had his days of hating headquarters life. Too much paperwork, not enough action. Now that he's in The Box and working with people like his CEXC new counterparts, however, he's back to his old self. He squeezes off insights in easy bursts of simple, practical examples.

"It's like attacking a gang," Pries says of his job. "I know how to attack a gang. That's what I do, as a cop back home." The CEXC looks for clues as to the who, what, where, when and how of bomb-making. They investigate what the bad guys are doing and using, identify who may be working with whom. Then they get the word out to troops regarding any trends they're seeing. Remember that old cop show, Adam-12? "Be on the look out for ..."

The CEXC includes civilian law enforcement professionals ("LEP," rhymes with "pep")--U.S. police who wear a modified Army uniform. "They're experts in tactical questioning," says Pries. "They go out to IED sites, look at the crowds, work with [interpreters]. I'm a cop, and that's what we do at a crime scene. We respond to the scene, and while we're working the details, we're also keeping an eye out for things that are out of place."

For example: "Everybody's wearing red, orange, and green, and that guy in the crowd is wearing black? C'mere, you! Everybody has a beard, and that guy doesn't? C'mere!"

"What I like about all this? Everything we do--every product we produce, every assumption we make, every suggestion we make, has a guy at the end of a rifle," says Pries. "Not just U.S. guys--Afghans, too."

"Say that [radio-controlled IED] are being used more against host-nation troops, because host-nation doesn't have [electronic warfare] systems. OK, put us up front," he says. "And, if they start going pressure-plate, we've got the armor. Let us take the blast."

"Operations on the objective? Kicking doors and searching houses? That needs to be Afghans--it's their country."

The Red Bull is here to help.

Red Bull, 10-23.

Advice and Assistance on Army Acronyms

There are four inter-related acronyms you need to know in order to understand U.S. strategy and tactics in Afghanistan. Each of these regards methods of advising and assisting Afghans in how to govern, administer, defend, and police their country. Notably, they also relate to some of the unique strengths and capabilities to be found in the U.S. National Guard.

The acronyms are:

• Embedded Training Team (E.T.T.)
• Provincial Reconstruction Team (P.R.T.)
• Agriculture Development Team (A.D.T.)
• Operations Coordination Centers-Provincial (O.C.C.P.)

Embedded Training Teams are 8- to 16-soldier teams tasked with mentoring Afghan military, police, border guards, and civilian counterparts. A number of Red Bull soldiers deploying with the 2nd Brigade Combat Team (B.C.T.), 34th Infantry "Red Bull" Division have previous deployment experiences as ETT members.

In Iraq, the U.S. military call such organizations “MiTTs” (pronounced like the baseball equipment), which stands for “Military Transition Teams.” You could always tell whether a U.S. soldier was talking Iraq or Afghanistan by which acronym they used.

In Afghanistan, NATO allies call their ETTs “Omelettes,” which stands for “Operational Mentor Liaison Teams (OMLT).” As a U.S. soldier, you could find yourself working as part of an OMLT or an ETT, depending on which country was in charge of the mission. Insert "It's a Small World" or "Tower of Babel" joke here.

Provincial Reconstruction Teams (P.R.T.) assist the provincial governor and his (or her) staff on building civilian infrastructure and governance. The teams range in size from 60 to more than 100 civilian and military personnel. The military members of these teams are "joint"--made up of soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen. Not all PRTs are U.S.-led. Currently in Eastern Afghanistan, for example, there are PRTs from South Korea, New Zealand, Turkey, and the Czech Republic.

In 2005-06, Task Force 1-168 comprised approximately 700 soldiers assigned to the Iowa Army National Guard's 1st Battalion, 168th Infantry Regiment (1/168 Infantry). These Red Bull soldiers provided security at PRT sites across Afghanistan.

Agriculture Development Teams (A.D.T.)-–also called “Agri-business Development Teams”—are teams of Army and Air National Guard soldiers who have civilian experiences working in agriculture and business. Partnered with U.S. Department of Agriculture (U.S.D.A.) employees, U.S. colleges and university extension experts, and Afghan agriculture authorities, these teams work in northern and eastern Afghanistan to help improve crop quality, livestock productivity, and ag-business practices.

Operations Coordination Center-Provincial (pronounced "O.C.C.P.", but spelled "OCC-P.") are teams that work with Afghan police and civil authorities regarding response to natural disasters, crime reduction, and other issues. Given their experiences supporting local and state civil authorities during natural and man-made disasters, National Guard soldiers are very familiar with this type of working relationship and mission.

Ready to put some of this together?
According to one Vermont National Guard soldier currently downrange, his ETT’s duties in Bamiyan Province include:

• Administering contracts and funds on behalf of a New Zealand-led PRT.
• Mentoring Afghan National Police (A.N.P.) personnel.
• Mentoring Bamiyan OCCP personnel.