Checking In

By Maj Peyton
April 2006

Things are still going well over here. Temperature is really heating up and the winds can be something furious. All the Strats continue to do exceptional work and remain motivated…an amazing feat considering the amount of frustrations experienced daily.
 

We just summed up a kandak collective exercise and are getting ready to run a train the trainer program for our Afghan counterparts. Believe it or not we and the Brits are the only coalition troops on the ground on a daily basis training the ANA. The US and French for the majority run a garrison type mentoring program to teach the ANA to teach their own. Unfortunately we do not have sufficient ANA instructors, the ones we have are not yet capable of instructing, we have not managed to figure out how you can mentor training without attending training, and have not managed to settle for anything less than we are capable of providing to them. I think we may be victims of our own Canadian professionalism, but I am certain that it is of huge value to the kandaks heading down-range.

Attached is a pic of the Strats on the team fighting a windstorm at night. When somebody says that it blows here…they might just mean it.