No time for Christmas for GIs in Afghan east

[unhappycamper]

Marine Lt. Matthew James Orr, part of the "Sheepdogs" embedded training team, patrols with soldiers of the Afghan National Army in the village of Barkanday, in the Pech river valley, Kunar province, Afghanistan on Christmas Eve.


No time for Christmas for GIs in Afghan east
By Dario Lopez - The Associated Press
Posted : Thursday Dec 24, 2009 14:08:14 EST

PECH RIVER VALLEY, Afghanistan — For Staff Sgt. Byron Krepcho, it doesn’t feel like Christmas.

Instead of celebrating Christmas Eve with his family back in Dallas, Texas, Krepcho’s unit on Thursday fired mortars at enemy positions from Command Post Michigan in the Pech River Valley in the tense Kunar province in eastern Afghanistan.

“Ah, Christmas,” Krepcho said with a laugh. “I don’t really think about it.

“I don’t think about it as a holiday because I just treat it as another day I’ve been here. I just go on as any day that I spent here ... thinking about going home,” said the member of 2nd Battalion, 12th infantry unit.

Eight years after the Sept. 11 attacks led to the U.S.-led ouster of the Taliban regime, U.S.-led coalition forces are fighting in the wild east of Afghanistan bordering Pakistan, where Taliban and al-Qaida-linked fighters and supporters of renegade warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar are proving a stubborn foe.


Rest of article at: http://www.armytimes.com/news/2009/12/ap_soldiers_afghanistan_christmas_122409/