Word: tours
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Dates: during 2010-2019
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...Until that happens, Sandhurst is overseeing a production line of officers who must expect to be plunged quickly into the complexities of modern missions. Captain Matt Woodward left Sandhurst in April 2002, and deployed to Iraq the following year. "On my first tour my squadron leader was 50 miles away from me," he says. "I was running a town of 40,000 on my own with a troop of 16 people. I went to Iraq with some armored vehicles and they said, 'Right, here's your town. There's a police force here that's largely ineffective, there...
Wale: Way too much time on the tour...
Ellis did one tour in Iraq, and that was enough - for him, but not for the Army, which stop-lossed him (the term of art for officers is involuntary re-enlistment). He seems to have stowed any anger or resentment he may have had; his devotion to the mission in Senjaray seems absolute. "We're down to the last few months of our deployment - and that's a dangerous time," Ellis told me, sitting in his office, a rude plywood cabin at Combat Outpost Senjaray. "The natural tendency is to get careless and defensive. To keep them safe, I need...
...from the ground. "Day by day, we're watching the Taliban put in IEDs, creeping up toward the town," Ellis says. "I'm losing two inches of Senjaray every day." The effect on morale has been brutal. "Maybe half the guys in Dog Company spent their last tour in Iraq, in Ramadi, in 2007," says First Sergeant Jack Robison. "That was a great tour. When we arrived, the place was a disaster. We cleaned it up. After a year, we could leave with a real sense of accomplishment." But this tour was different. They had two months left...
...asked if Rahman could give us a tour of the property. He didn't reveal the purpose of the exploration; he didn't want to give the Taliban advance warning of his intentions. But, as Ellis expected, the roof of the compound was a perfect observation post. When the tour was done, he asked Rahman why he thought the Americans were in Afghanistan. The boy said he didn't know. Ellis asked if he had heard about the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The boy said no. He asked what Rahman thought about the Americans. "I've heard that they...