In our effort to provide original content from wherever the U.S. military goes, we reached out to Geoffrey Ingersoll, a prior U.S. Marine and combat correspondent who got out of the Corps, picked up a Master's from NYU and now has returned to Afghanistan, "back in the shit" as he says, to embed with Marine units working alongside local forces.

From FOB Delaram II, Geoffrey is sending us his first-hand storytelling for our upcoming section — The Smoke Pit. We'll hear about Afghan soldiers, the troops who are training them, and what's being said on the ground. Now meet part of the cast of characters ~ E. Lee & R. Johnson.

The Afghan Doc

In Afghanistan, like many other countries which experience war, there was a "brain drain."

Most financially stable, educated citizens took their families and left the area, so a lot of the current soldiers in the Afghan Army grew up in Iran or Pakistan, later moving back to Afghanistan. Their parents originally fled the country either when the Russians started bombing, or afterward, when the Taliban reigned.