I learned a lot on our assignment – the Afghan people are resilient and resourceful; the Afghan army and police are still struggling but they’re making progress; we need more troops on the ground; we need to better understand the role of the United States and its ISAF allies; we need to define, if possible, success in that country.

I also learned that while our troops are stretched thin in that vast, unforgiving country, they are working hard to make things better. Sometimes it’s frustrating because progress seems to come so slowly, but the troops we met just kept pushing forward. I admire that – and I appreciate their determination and dedication.

To all the men and women we had the pleasure to meet, thank you for sharing your lives and stories with us. I will keep you in my thoughts until you come home.

Godspeed.

It’s a ceremony most people will never see – but one that others will witness more times than they care to remember.

Shortly before 9:40 tonight, a fallen American service member began his journey home.

Led by a military police SUV, an open-topped Humvee bearing his flag-draped coffin drove slowly down Bagram Air Field’s Disney Drive. On each side of the coffin sat his brothers-in-arms, men who are mourning the loss of someone who, to them, was closer than a brother.

As the solemn convoy passed by, service members of all services, of all nations, who had lined Bagram’s main thoroughfare, snapped to attention, their right arms raised in a salute, a small but final sign of respect to one of the freshest casualties of this war.

Most witnesses to tonight’s ceremony did not know the fallen service member’s name, or where or how he died. But I suppose it doesn’t matter. Regardless of who it is, every casualty of this war had a family he was planning to go home to, a life he was looking forward to resuming, parents who pined every day for him.

But now, he will be counted among those who will be forever young, frozen in time in service to his nation.

Almost all the people I write about every day and the some of the colleagues I work with every day have felt the pain of losing someone in battle. It doesn’t get any easier.

But our service members drive on, because that’s what they do, and for that, I salute you all.

To the man whose Fallen Comrade ceremony I was honored to witness tonight, may you rest in peace.

This is an unforgiving place, surrounded by mountain ranges accessible only through dry, hard packed dirt roads. The villages we visited today with the Afghan police were isolated and desolate, poor and humble, primitive and yet potentially dangerous.

As we made our way to these villages, we knew we were being watched. Radio chatter proved Taliban fighters were watching our every move. It was disconcerting, for sure, but what is even more troubling is, as any soldier ever deployed here or Iraq knows, the enemy could be anywhere.

He could be the seemingly harmless villager who walks up to you with a smile. He could be the man posing as a farmer with an AK-47 hidden under his clothes. He could be the child forced by the enemy to lob a grenade at the passing convoy.

In this mission to stabilize Afghanistan without alienating the local population, the complexity of the fight can be frustrating.

I deal with and talk to soldiers every day for my job. It never gets old and it never ceases to amaze me when I watch them work.  As an unarmed observer on the battlefield, their ability to think and make life or death decisions under fire gives me comfort. A lot of comfort.

It definitely will be an improvement over what they have been using: blocks of concrete and concrete-filled cans attached to steel poles to create makeshift dumbbells and weights. The equipment looked like something out of the “Flintstones” cartoons, one of the U.S. soldiers said. It definitely did, especially as it sat, sadly unattended, next to the machines you and I are more used to seeing at the gym.

The gym isn’t quite finished, but Scott and I enjoyed the tour we got and we each took turns trying out the “Flintstones” weights, which could have been an embarrassing proposition since we couldn’t tell beforehand how heavy those weights were … But, thankfully, neither of us dropped the weights on our feet or hurt anyone else in the process.

I don’t think the Afghan soldiers, who are constantly on the move in the war for their country, need to get into shape, but I bet lifting weights and working out clears their minds and gives them a break from the everyday grind of war, and I have to say I appreciate the way they made do with what they had.

I hope they enjoy their new gym (or sports club, as the sign on the door says, right next to the pictures,  torn from glossy Western magazines, of freakishly rippled bodybuilders).

The brigade is charged with security in and around Kabul, and the soldiers from Delta Kandak were recently reassigned to the brigade from the army’s 201st Corps. These guys saw some hard fighting with the 201st Corps, and, I was told, were hand-picked by Afghan President Hamid Karzai to serve in the capital region, and I could see why.

Their commander, Lt. Col. Zalmai Nabard, served with Ahmad Shah Massoud, the revered Lion of Panjshir who played a leading role in driving the Soviet army out of Afghanistan and later became a leader in the Northern Alliance that battled the Taliban. The soldiers, who are fasting for the month of Ramadan, were already training when we arrived at the compound, which lies in the shadows of the country’s former royal palaces.

Even while fasting, the soldiers trained to assault a hill, bounding with ease as a squad up a steep, rocky mountain face. They learned how to work their radios. They practiced their first-aid and medical skills. They familiarized themselves with the kandak’s heavy weapons. And all of that training was conducted by the Afghans themselves.

The soldiers in the kandak are very squared away, said Maj. Joe Childress, the operations mentor.

“They’re battle hardened,” he said. “A lot of these guys, like the battalion commander, they’ve fought with the Northern Alliance.”

Now that they’ve been reassigned to the HSSB, the soldiers are going through a reset and training period, but they are itching to get back into the fight, I was told by Childress and the other mentors.

“These soldiers are fighters,” said Maj. Oliver Rose, another operations mentor. “They’re eager, and the one thing they all have in common is peace. They’re tired of war. But they know the only way they can stop this war is to become a better army.”

And if this kandak is any indication of the progress the Afghan army can make, folks like Childress and Rose someday could be out of a job.

“Because of units like this, we’ll get to go home,” Rose said.

Childress agreed.

“Our main goal as mentors is to get them to where they don’t need us, where we’re allies, not mentors,” he said.

As U.S. leaders call for more troops to be sent to Afghanistan, especially to serve as army and police mentors, here’s hoping they’ll get the chance to work with more soldiers like the ones in Delta Kandak.

Photographer Sheila Vemmer and I embedded with the Guam National Guard earlier this year when we were on assignment in the Horn of Africa. The soldiers were amazing – and they were amazing cooks, too – and they really made us feel at home. We were really impressed at how they took us in, cooked for us, talked to us about their families and the importance of family and friendship, and shared with us a short but memorable glimpse into their lives and their culture.

I corresponded by e-mail with a couple of the guys after we got home from Africa, but it’s been months since we’ve been in touch. The first sergeant said word gets around across the island – no kidding.

Needless to say, it was very, very cool to know that they remember me and were still looking out for me. Now if only they would cook for me again…

Lavish wedding halls tower over rickety roadside stalls selling fruit and vegetables. Neat apartment buildings that would not look out of place in suburban America sit next to small, brown flat-roofed houses that would be right at home in a Biblical story. Horse-drawn carts carrying the day’s groceries or supplies fight for road space with motorists in buses, cars and motorcycles who weave wildly around pedestrians who seem to dart in and out of traffic without regard for their safety. Driving in this city is a risky proposition.

Welcome to chaos, but welcome also to progress. Construction projects and restaurants selling pizza and burger abound in the city. Billboards advertising cell phone plans line the main roads. Busy streets imply bustling markets and people willing to brave the horrendous traffic to get somewhere.

But I’m still wary. On our way from Bagram to Kabul, the first forty minutes of the journey took us through what looked like the land that time forgot. Surely the world hadn’t moved forward while Afghanistan languished in poverty, leaving everything looking like it did centuries ago. Many, many shades of tan sand and dirt shadowed by impossibly tall and rugged mountains give that stretch of road a desolate and depressing feel. But as we got into the city, our surroundings came to life as the city folk went about their day, clogging the roads and stores. It seemed like life here, or at least in Kabul, anyway, has found some form of normalcy.

But underneath all that activity are news reports of improvised explosive devices or suicide bombings. As much as I was happily surprised by the progress that seems to have taken hold in Kabul since I last was here four years ago, I still would not want to be stuck in traffic here. Not yet.

Photographer M. Scott Mahaskey and I are finally in Afghanistan. After many hours of traveling and a three-day stop in hot, dusty Kuwait, we are now at Bagram Air Field, waiting to get to the next stop in our assignment. While we’re here, we look forward to meeting the soldiers, Marines, sailors and airmen who are serving here, here in Afghanistan, where hostilities have escalated, where more U.S. troops have died in the past few months than in Iraq, where more U.S. troops will soon be serving.

It has been almost four years since I was last here, and while Bagram has changed, it still feels and looks familiar.

As we move out from Bagram, I have to admit I’m nervous about what the next few weeks will hold, but I also have to admit that I can’t wait. There are stories to be told in this war, a war that began seven years ago, a war that until recently was forgotten and tucked behind the shadow of Iraq.

While our nation’s leaders discuss the way ahead from Capitol Hill, Scott and I are looking forward to hearing from our troops.

The blinking was the creepiest thing the dummies did. The torn off limbs and oozing blood didn’t help, but for some reason, the fact that the high-tech mannequins used at the Medical Simulation Training Center here at Camp Buehring, Kuwait, had blue eyes and blinking eyelids freaked me out the most. Maybe it made the dummies more realistic. Maybe it gave them personality, so to speak. I guess that’s the point of this place: to simulate battlefield casualties in as real and personal a way as possible.

During the training, troops undergo an hour in the classroom before they are put through simulations complete with bleeding mannequins, dimmed lights, fog and simulated sounds of war – gun fire and a whole lot of yelling. The soldiers in the class we observed did a great job, much better than I could ever do, and for that, I am thankful.

As much as I hope soldiers will never need these skills in real life, I know this is the reality of what our men and women in uniform face on the front lines.