Posts Tagged ‘army’

Ages and ages and ages ago, when Michel and I were in Afghanistan, I did a video about the management of, well, sh** on kamp Holland.
I finally got around to editing the video… and here it is.
And btw, no, the first two systems don’t smell… and yes, the third one does. A lot.
Have fun!

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Timo Smeehuijzen - May 24, 1987 - June 15, 2007
There are no words to fully express what the Smeehuijzen family has gone through since 2007, when their son Timo was killed in a suicide bombing in Afghanistan.
The bomb went off as a Dutch convoy headed back to base after celebrating Women’s Day in Tarin Kowt. [...]

One of the things that Michel and I kinda obsessed over while we were in Afghanistan was the idea of a job where the stakes could include death - either yours or someone else’s (a kill-or-be-killed kinda thing).
We couldn’t imagine ourselves in this situation and relentlessly questioned any soldier who’d had a life-or-death experience.
What we [...]

So the Dutch army runs into Taliban insurgents pretty often. These encounters are often violent… and sometimes the Dutch capture some of the militants.
Which got me curious… were there detainees on the base? While we were there? There must have been… but we never saw any “detainment center”… and nobody ever talked [...]

Yup, the mortuary girls.
This was my shorthand name for Corporals Kimberly and Cisca - the only two people on Kamp Holland who work in the mortuary.
It’s not the only thing they do (they also work shifts as nurses in the hospital), but they’re the only ones who do it - so when somebody dies on [...]

In Afghanistan, soldiers see a lot of stuff that they wouldn’t normally see - poverty and pain and sadness in a population already devastated by decades of war. And sometimes you don’t even have to leave the base to see it - Afghan kids hang around the outer edges of Kandahar airfield
Lieutenant Rene, one of [...]

Deep inside Kamp Holland is Echos. We’ve mentioned it before, it’s the “bar” on the base where you can get a drink (alcohol-free) or a bite to eat, play video or board games, and just generally hang out with your friends.
Annelies is one of the people working at Echos. Her story is a peculiar [...]

Life on the base is a little more relaxed on Sundays - soldiers get to sleep in, breakfast goes on a little longer (actually it’s technically brunch… and it’s pretty good!), there’s an Afghan market on the base, and there’s even a service in the chapel.
I spoke to the priest about what it’s like talking [...]

This week on Curious Orange (the radio show)…
It’s the fourth - and last - part in our Dutch in Afghanistan series: When the going gets tough.
In our last days in Afghanistan, a rocket attack killed one soldier and wounded 6 others. We’ll hear more about that from a soldier’s perspective - how they deal with [...]

In many ways, life in Afghanistan is just like life anywhere else - you get up, eat breakfast, do stuff, eat lunch, do stuff, eat dinner, do stuff, and go to bed… then you do it all over again the next day.
When you look at that list, you realize that eating is a pretty significant [...]