Those of us who are assigned to Camp Phoenix often refer to our task force brethren who serve at forward operating bases as being "down range."

Most of our bases in the Kabul area are large and built up and much more secure. Bases like Camp Phoenix serve as the task force headquarters and logistical and administrative support base. So going "down range" is a euphemism for getting closer to where the enemy operates from and for where the "real work" is being done.

The training and mentoring mission of Combined Joint Task Force Phoenix for the Afghan National Army and Police is rightly described as the task force's “main effort.”

Our soldiers, and on occasion other service branch members, assigned to Embedded Training Teams for the Afghan Army and Police Mentoring Teams face enormous challenges under dangerous and austere conditions. They are operating from medium and small bases all over the country and often in remote areas of Afghanistan. But these are the guys who are doing the most important work - way down where the need is greatest. And so is the threat.

In my last blog entry, I referred to a team that had stopped by and spoke with me for about three hours. I completed an article from that meeting and e-mailed the draft to the sergeant in charge. He showed it to the rest of the team. It was rewarding to get their feedback, and today, that sergeant stopped back and brought two more guys who had not come by the first time.

By simply organizing what Sgt. Frederick Goldacker from Lewiston (near Niagara Falls) and two other out-of-state soldiers had told me into a two-page article, I had earned their gratitude and respect. Words fail me in my effort to tell them how much they and what they have and continue to do mean to me.

Sgt.t Goldacker had reached out to me about 10 days ago by e-mail from his remote base (sometimes it works and often it doesn't) to ask me if people back home really knew what was happening in Afghanistan. He wondered if people knew that American servicemen and women were getting fired upon and getting hurt by IED blasts and that some were getting killed.

He asked if people knew that guys like him and his teammates usually work 16- to 20-hour days and sleep sometimes less than four hours a night. Do they know we get shelled by rockets sometimes twice a week, he asked. Do they know what it is like to scramble in the middle of the night to a bunker, having thrown on body armor and helmet, praying you will get there before another rocket lands?

I told him that some people at home are coming to realize that things in Afghanistan are more difficult, but I doubted than most people knew. I agreed with him that more Americans at home need to know. And then I told him that he could help by working with me and letting his words and that of his guys get to the hometown audience. I told him that was the best way to let them know.

I wrote an article with his help, and this afternoon, I asked Specialist Matthew Kew from Buffalo what will be his lasting memory form this deployment. These guys were mobilized last September, ahead of the rest of us from New York, so they are looking forward to going home around the end of August.

He told me "living in the district center in Alangar for five weeks, teaching the Afghan National Police beginning last December." And the others all agreed that would be the lasting memory - their first field assignment upon getting here "on the ground."

Following their training at Fort Bragg last fall, their unit deployed to Afghanistan and they were immediately split up into small security sections assigned to mentoring teams and sent "down range." District centers are like police precincts - small forts. They convoyed down in uparmored humvees and lived, ate and slept with the Afghans in the district center in Alangar, Nuristan province.

The team pulled their own 24-hour security in four-hour shifts. It was winter and they froze. They had a sandbag security position on the building's metal roof, and the temperature would often plunge into the teens and there was wind. Every five days they would convoy back to an FOB (forward operating base) to take a shower and eat more than just "heater meals." Then they drove back to the center to carry on with the mission. They came to know well the policemen they were training and the people who lived nearby.

I asked Cpl. Wesley Burgess what the Afghan Police were like, where they are operating from now in Wardak province and how are they taking to the training. He said they try hard, but they are uneducated. They are mostly like adult second-graders, he tried to explain.

"We show them things and they practice them, and then the next day they seemed to have forgotten, so we teach them again," he said. "They are good people, but we have to work to help them keep their focus."

Sgt. Goldacker reflected on one Afghan who showed them a lot.

"This guy was a real warrior," he said, describing how they saw how one Afghan policeman had charged an enemy position with nothing more than his AK-47 assault rifle following an ambush. "He got real close, like 10 feet from the enemy, just on the other side of a berm, all the while firing."

When the fighting was over, he saw how the man's comrades carried his riddled body to the back of their pickup truck to bring it to the base for burial.

"There is war here," said Goldacker. "People need to know it."

Yes they do.

To view photos that go with this entry, check out the photo gallery that accompanies this blog, "Pictures from the Front", by clicking here.