My Share of the Task(240)

                In what we termed the Situational Awareness Room at our Balad headquarters in July 2006. Though I had an office, I rarely used it. We had designed our office spaces to be open to make our communications quick and robust. This meant I spent nearly all my time an arm’s length from my command team—at the time, Kurt Fuller to my left, Mike Flynn to my right, and Jody Nacy to his right. The briefing on the screen is called “Defeat AQI Brief,” and according to its date was delivered six weeks after Task Force 16 killed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. That fall, we thought we felt Al Qaeda in Iraq breaking, though larger problems still loomed.





                With the hardened aircraft hanger that held our Iraq headquarters in the background, I addressed members of Task Force 16 in 2007. On sadder occasions than the one pictured, the motley members of our task force—young, old, male, female, military, civilian—gathered at the foot of this flag for memorial ceremonies.





                On June 2, 2009, I testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee as a nominee for the post of commander of NATO and U.S. forces in Afghanistan. The position meant more years away from Annie, seated behind me. She understood.





                Command Sergeant Major Mike Hall (front right) my senior enlisted adviser in Afghanistan, visiting soldiers at one of our remote combat outposts in Nuristan. This small base was home to some forty or fifty troops, half of them Afghan, and took direct and indirect fires daily. From the time I first met Mike and served with him in the Ranger Regiment a decade before his visit to this outpost, he was the finest soldier I knew.





                The Flynn brothers: Charlie (right) here at his promotion to brigadier general, and Mike. A trusted friend, Charlie was my indispensible executive officer both at the Pentagon and then Afghanistan, where he shared with me the highs and lows of command. At the same time, his older brother, Mike, was my chief intelligence officer in Afghanistan, and fulfilled the same role during my command of Task Force 714 before that. He has since been promoted to lieutenant general.





                At the Afghan National Army Hospital with a wounded Afghan soldier in December 2009. On this day, I was accompanying President Hamid Karzai. During our visits to hospitals, the president’s deep emotions for his people were evident beneath his dignified exterior. He would quietly pass envelopes of money to the wounded.





                On April 4, 2010, while in Kandahar for the first of the two shuras, or traditional consultations, held by President Karzai in advance of our efforts to secure that city. Surrounded by tribal elders from in and around Kandahar, Ambassador Mark Sedwill, the senior NATO civilian authority, and I are seated cross-legged to the president’s left. During the main meeting that week, this basement floor of the governor’s palace was filled to the brim with some 1,500 tribal leaders.





                Afghan Minister of the Interior Hanif Atmar, during a large spring 2010 review of the joint civilian-military efforts. Hardworking and soft-spoken, Minister Atmar was a close partner during my time in Afghanistan.





                Another close ally: Amrullah Saleh, head of the National Directorate of Security, Afghanistan’s intelligence service. At one time a trusted deputy to the celebrated mujahideen commander Ahmad Shah Massoud, Director Saleh brought an unmistakable fervor and powerful intellect to bear in the fight against the insurgency.





                During his May 2010 visit to the United States, I accompanied President Karzai to Arlington National Cemetery. My trusted friend, Afghan Minister of Defense Abdul Rahim Wardak, and my boss, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, are second and third from left. Here in Section 60 of Arlington, where many of the fallen from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are buried, we came across headstones of men I knew. This was one.





                In Berlin on April 21, 2010, Dr. Theodor Freiherr zu Guttenberg, the German minister of defense, and I visited the Bundeswehr memorial, where we conducted a memorial service for fallen German soldiers. During the visit, the minister presented me with fourteen Gold Crosses of Honour to give to fourteen U.S. Army aviators, still in Afghanistan, who had earlier that month flown courageous medical evacuation missions in support of German soldiers during a fierce firefight.