BANGOR – Back in late June, as I awaited my helicopter ride out of a remote military encampment hard by Afghanistan’s rugged border with Pakistan, Maine Army National Guard Capt. Paul Bosse and I had what was for the time being a very off-the-record, very sobering conversation.
It was about the many dangers still facing the 148 members of Bravo Company, 3rd Battalion, 172nd Mountain Infantry at Combat Outpost Dand wa Patan – right smack in the middle of a region where the Taliban and other insurgents can be here, there and everywhere yet simultaneously nowhere to be seen.
Less than halfway through its nine-month deployment, Bravo Company had yet to lose a single soldier. But summer was now upon them – and with it, a widely expected uptick in insurgent activity.
“Think your luck will hold out?” I asked Bosse.
“I hope so,” he replied. “But there’s no way I’d guarantee it.”
Thursday afternoon, as the last planeload of Bravo Company’s soldiers disappeared into a wave of wives, children and other well-wishers at the Armed Forces Reserve Center, I sat down with Bosse in a quiet side room and, first and foremost, congratulated the 37-year old company commander on getting every last one of his men home.
Click for the rest of the column by Bill Nemitz in the Maine Sunday Telegram.
My name is Keith Michaud and this is “Letters From Away,” a blog written by a Mainer living outside the comfortable and sane confines of New England. The blog is intended for Mainers, whether they live in the Pine Tree State or beyond, and for anyone who has loved ’em, been baffled by ’em or both. Ayuh, I am “from away.” Worse still, I live on the Left Coast – in California. Enjoy! Or not. Your choice.
Letters From Away 