Going Back to Kandy
August 25th, 2010 | Photography | Posted by Chris Maddaloni
Kelly Kennedy and I will be reporting from Kandahar and RC South all next month – more posts to follow…. For more from my last trip there, featuring scenic FOB Ramrod pictured above – start here.
Don’t Bet The Mortgage
November 14th, 2009 | Photography | Posted by Chris Maddaloni
Pfc. Israel Lupercio, Pfc. Nicholas Santos, and Spc. Kain Perkins, part of the Route Clearance Patrol – the anti-IED road sweepers, with the 4th Engineers, 576th Engineer Co., play spades while relaxing before their patrol early the next day.
Are We Not Men?
November 12th, 2009 | Photography | Posted by Chris Maddaloni
The sign posted (lower left) at one of the gyms on FOB Ramrod:
THE MANS GYM
-Open to the public
-Open 24 hrs
Rules
-No posing
-No standing around chatting while real men lift
-No whining about lack of equipment, real men make do
-Profanity highly encouraged
-Grunting and gutteral sounds of pain highly encouraged
Pack Your Bags
November 4th, 2009 | Photography | Posted by Chris Maddaloni
Soldiers move their bags in the middle of the night from storage to prepare for deployment to another FOB – as one of them put it succinctly, “They don’t tell me where! They just tell me to move.”
The Service
November 4th, 2009 | Photography | Posted by Chris Maddaloni
Members of the 2nd Battalion, 1st Infantry regiment pause at a memorial service at FOB Ramrod for Pfc. Brian Bates, 20, from Gretna, La. He was killed in Kandahar last week by an IED while driving a Stryker on patrol.