Delay in the next update

Editor's Note: Last week Patrick was "promoted" to a new Narmy position in Afghanistan. This is a new job, not a new rank... and there is no salary increase or any of the really good things that generally come with a promotion. It is a lot of additional responsibility, he is just getting up to speed with the new position. This promotion included a move from Camp Phoenix to Camp Eggers on Friday the 13th.

Camp Eggers is the home of CSTC-A (CSTC-A is the Combined Security Transition Command-Afghanistan). CSTC-A (pronounced systic-alpha) is the main command post headquarters for the entire Afghanistan Theater. It is located in Kabul located near the US Embassy and the President of Afghanistan's Palace, about 10 miles from Camp Phoenix. Originally "Kabul Compound" the camp was renamed after Capt. Daniel W. Eggers, a US soldier from the 1st Battalion, 3rd Special Forces Group (Airborne), Fort Bragg, North Carolina, who was killed by an improvised explosive device (IED) along with three other soldiers on May 29th, 2004 near Kandahar. With his new position and living quarters, Patrick can now walk from his room to his office without being "locked and loaded" in an up armored vehicle convoying "outside the wire". So it is slightly safer at Camp Eggers. That's the good news...

Here's the bad news - no more double wide. Yep, Patrick is now back to sharing a room and the accommodations are not nearly as nice as Camp Phoenix. (read that: the walls are crumbling and the only thing holding them together is the mold.) The worst part about his new living quarters is that there is NO Internet connection in his room. SO, no more web cam conversations with us at home and no more Live Messenger chats. He has a computer at his new office, but that is for official government business only and he can't load any software on that machine. And there is no cable TV connections either, so he will miss Armed Forces broadcasts of baseball and football games now. As Pat Meriwether succinctly summarized Patrick's living situation in an email to me last night, "From the penthouse to the outhouse just like that..."

As soon as he can find some spare time and an Internet cafe, he will send an update. For now, I'm adding some pictures to the older posts.

Rebecca Wade