Capt. Brad Morgan works inside a mud-brick castle. He spends his days fighting Afghan drug runners who smuggle poppy into Turkmenistan. He tells relatives he feels like he's living on the moon.
He is half a world away — stationed in a western Afghan province that's one of the most isolated places on the globe — but there is one thing here that reminds Morgan of his home state, binding him to farmers in Franklin and little old ladies in Loup City.
It is a familiar black flag hanging in the Bravo company's headquarters. A grinning skull wearing a football helmet. Two crossbones. And, in large, block letters, the promise of serious violence.
BLACKSHIRTS.
“A fitting label,” wrote Morgan in an e-mail from Badghis Province, Afghanistan. “Defense is the name of the game for a static combat outpost deep within a Taliban-influenced area.”
Morgan, a graduate of Lincoln East High School and the company's executive officer, hung Nebraska flags in this unlikeliest of locales when the company of soldiers from the 82nd Airborne arrived in Badghis (or Badghees) Province this fall.
He also dubbed the new military installation, “Combat Outpost Husker,” a name that has stuck even though Morgan is the only Cornhusker native in the company.
Not that the 25-year-old Morgan would let his fellow soldiers change it — for the past three months, this diehard Nebraskan has risen at 3 a.m. to follow games on a shaky Internet connection. He has used precious satellite phone minutes to call home during tense fourth quarters.
And he “borrowed” a satellite dish and then whooped it up as he watched the Huskers upset the Oklahoma Sooners.
“The lengths that Husker fans will go to,” says Chuck Morgan, Brad's father and a Lincoln East history teacher. “It's just crazy, isn't it?”
The fact that there's a U.S. Army outpost in Badghis Province is a little odd itself, say Capt. Morgan and an Afghan expert.
When the company from the 82nd Airborne arrived in October, it was the first time during the war that coalition troops had taken up permanent residence in this remote area near the Afghan-Turkmenistan border.
Badghis is hundreds of miles from Kabul and even farther from military hot spots like the Afghan-Pakistan border and the Taliban stronghold of Kandahar.
Badghis is used to being overlooked, said Tom Gouttierre, director of UNO's Center for Afghanistan Studies. The area sits off Afghanistan's main ring road, which connects the country's major cities to one another. It's known primarily for pistachio production, but many of the area's trees were destroyed by three decades of war and a prolonged drought.
And for much of its history, the fiercely independent ethnic Turks, Uzbeks and Hazaras who live in the province have resisted or flat-out ignored the central government in power.
“It's really one of the most remote areas in Afghanistan, maybe the most remote,” Gouttierre said. “It was never seen as being particularly critical until it started to become a threat.”
Unchecked by coalition forces, insurgents and Taliban sympathizers have had free rein over the residents of Badghis, Morgan says. They have illegally taxed residents and stolen land. They have set up checkpoints on the roads and demanded money from drivers who pass.
And they have profited richly from the drug trade, running poppy or crudely manufactured heroin across the border into Turkmenistan and eventually into Europe.
“With very limited American forces in Afghanistan, the western portion of the country has received very little attention,” Morgan wrote. “The enemy here has had relative freedom of movement ... They've been allowed to traffic (drugs) with little coalition or Afghan ability to disrupt.”
That changed in October, when Bravo Company came to town. The soldiers have built their headquarters inside a large, castle-like structure with thick mud walls. They spend their days doing security patrols in the neighboring villages and then spend their nights cleaning the sand and dust out of their weapons.
They've fought the drug smugglers without losing a soldier, although Hunter Holt, a soldier from Colorado, was seriously wounded. He's now recovering in the United States.
In the spring, they hope to build a school.
“These troopers are definitely a different type of warrior,” Morgan writes. “They possess the toughness and tenacity to conduct an airborne operation anywhere in the world ... but they also possess the heartfelt compassion and kindness to play with local kids while on patrol.”
He admits he is also a different kind of Husker fan.
He called his dad via satellite phone during the final minute of the Virginia Tech game, just in time to experience the heart-wrenching loss in real time.
Morgan was traveling and on a coalition forces base the night of the Oklahoma game. He had a television, but no satellite. So he and another soldier climbed onto a nearby roof, switched the satellite dish to their TV, and watched the NU victory before returning the dish to the rightful owner just after dawn.
Today, he'll wake from a short nap about 3 a.m. in Badghis Province, Afghanistan. He will log onto a laptop and surf over to ESPN.com. And there, thousands of miles and 10 time zones from home, he will root for the Big Red.
He might be on the moon, but he isn't going to miss the Holiday Bowl.
“The time difference is a killer,” Morgan says. “But the payoff of seeing (things) like Nebraska beat down Oklahoma ... priceless.”
Contact the writer: 444-1064, matthew.hansen@owh.com
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