God speed

Today I am thinking of a far off place. A place that I will probably never see and have no desire to either. A place where it's shameful to be a woman and where school aged children are trained to use machine guns.

Afghanistan is also a place where this week, my cousin, a soldier, was involved in a terrorist incident. Before I go on, he is safe but the reality of where he is really hit home this week. The details are still sketchy, but like most of the things that go on over there we probably won't know exact details. Jase keeps us updated via facebook but his updates are vague. I'd like to blame the vagueness on male emotion skills, but the reality is he can't tell us what he is doing as most of it is top secret.

What I do know is that he was in a vehicle that was hit by a bomb and was thrown 20 mts. He was air lifted to base hospital and pocked and prodded and tests this afternoon have shown a small fracture in his spine so he'll be heading back to his Australian base for a couple of weeks for a proper recovery. There is talk that once he is fully recovered he will return to his tour. 

I won't even pretend to try to understand this war or the reasons why our boys are fighting over there. It's so easy to say we should leave the Afghans to fight amongst themselves but there's so much more to it. And like Jason's status once said "We're doing it so you don't have to".

I can't wait to give my six foot plus baby cousin a big hug and maybe a hit for scaring the shit out of us. 


This year ANZAC day will have just a little bit more significance in this house.


I stole the above image from Jason's Facebook album. Here's also a news article link about the incident