Front lines - Afghanistan
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Raised in the Mission Valley, Lieutenant Colonel Ted Adams serves in the United States Marine Corps. Adams is the son of Dee and C.W. Adams of Polson and is serving his second tour of Afghanistan in the 9th Engineer Support Battalion of 3rd Marine Logistics.
A 1983 graduate of Polson High School, Adams attended the University of Montana for a year before joining the Marine reserve in 1985. He earned a BA in education and accepted a commission as an officer in 1992.
Every so often Adams sends an email update to his parents. He agreed to share some of his messages over the next couple of weeks.
At this point everyone is figuring out the routine for dealing with the heat. They know if they don’t drink excessive amounts of water, they’ll get headaches or worse. …
The hand of God was at work on my convoy the other day. One of the last vehicles in our convoy reported a small explosion under their vehicle. They backed up and discovered that a remote anti-tank mine partially detonated, but the main charge failed to go off directly under the truck. All of us had already driven over the same spot.
By now I have a reputation as the engineer commander who always presses to rebuild roads. I have a quote from General Petraeus on the wall of my office which reads, "Rebuilding of schools, government buildings, roads, bridges, etc., is spitting right in the eyes of the enemy."
I completely believe that. … It is pretty simple really; I aim to grade, gravel and compact as many roads as possible.
If we can do that, I know it will:
1. make it harder for the bad guys to dig in IEDs
2. make travel for us easier
3. make travel for the locals easier
4. it demonstrates infrastructure-rebuilding capacity of the government
It doesn’t matter if it is U.S. equipment doing the building, any improvement is associated with the government; and all Afghans want better roads. They need to see improvement to believe in their government. It’s a win/win situation for us.
The first road project we did was pretty successful. We worked only at night, and nearly three weeks we graded, graveled and compacted and road and never hit a single Improvised Explosive Device and never got shot at once. During the daytime, within less than a mile of the same road, there were multiple small arms fire incidents and several IEDs. There were examples where the locals came out of their houses smiling and waving and pointing to the road and giving a thumbs up.
We constantly have meetings to discuss counter-IEDS. The problem is most of our money is spent on what to do after the IED is already in the road. We have million dollar vehicles to protect us if the IED blows up, and million dollar vehicles which are supposed to detect the IED. We even have million dollar robots for our explosive ordnance disposal technicians to use once they find an IED. Their success ratio for “finds” vs. detonations isn’t very good. The one thing that has proven most successful in dramatically reducing IEDs on roads is … pavement. It isn’t very sexy, and they won’t make a bad movie about it, but a good paving machine costs about $300,000, and each one of our Mine-Resistant Ambush-Protected vehicles cost around $800,000. It only takes one cheap homemade bomb of fertilizer to destroy one. … We have hundreds of MRAPs. Do you know how many paving machines we have? None. When I allow myself to dream big, I contemplate the things I could do with a paving machine. I know, I am warped.
The other day I had a chance to give my point of view to a guy with some stars on his collar. I guess it made sense to him, too; he told me to request a few paving machines. … I think I’ll keep requesting gravel and pray for a new paving machine for Christmas.
Christmas makes me think of gifts, and gifts make me think of the great groups out there who have been sending us packages.
During training “we stayed the night in the Captain Cook Hotel in downtown Anchorage. The staff of the hotel was great to us and didn’t let their hospitality end with our stay there. They boxed up tons of King salmon jerky and wet wipes and shipped it out to us.
Another group called Blue Star Mothers has repeatedly sent great care packages full of all kinds of stuff. Blue Star Mothers are mothers of those currently serving in time of war or those who served honorably and have been discharged.
… We’re just impressed with the level of support from hometown America. We appreciate it.
I have to run. It’s late, and I have a request for paving machines to write. As you drive to work tomorrow, don’t curse the potholes, praise the rest of the pavement and thank God for the roads you do have.
