We are starting to wrap things up after spending the last 3 months out in the helmand river valley…It’s the first time since we set out that we have got showers, beds, real food and of coarse internet, everyone is in considerably better spirits for the last couple missions.

As for the patches, once we started to head in country the teams within our task force all had patches made up, so i brought one of your shirts into the indian tailor shop they had on base and had them work it into the patch, something to give it a little more personality beyond last name, unit, and kill number, since then its become associated with task force heartbreaker as well as our team.

Allot has changed since we were here last year, the area we have been working in was untouched until we arrived, sort of a heart of darkness that had been avoided since the start of the war. Unlike the rest of the country this area was almost entirely farmland, and rain, mud, and irrigation ditches replaced the mountains and wadis we had to deal with last time around. Working in farmland meant we were much closer to the locals than we were use to, and given that this area was the birthplace of the Taliban more often than not the feelings were not friendly. However ieds being the indiscriminate weapon they are, most villages preferred the protection of Marines over being controlled by the taliban, as long as we stuck around. As far as a drawdown goes, its hard to speak to something on such a large scale from the ground floor. Were working in untouched areas, and the towns and valleys i remember from last year are now run by the afghan army, but its hard to say if this correlates to less americans in country. What i can say is that while most of the population is willing to go along with either side, there will always be hardliners. You see kids hardly past crawling carrying out attacks, even after seeing that a few times its still hard to watch it with anything but disbelief.

As far as qudafi and the rest of the middle east goes the running joke here has been that inevitably our departure from the floating around that part of the world was the dutch boy taking his finger out of the dike. We actually had no idea about the uprisings in the middle east, and the disaster in Japan until about two weeks ago. The ship we came from, and our sister unit that stayed behind got in on some of the operations in libya, so for all we know we may be heading back there before we head home. For now everyone is unwinding and wrapping there heads around what should be our last couple missions. I hope everything is going well for you in N.Y, im sure your busy with new collections so thanks for your time and concern.

Robert & the Gang