Where's Rob???

My 1st cousin, Major Rob Stilwell, US National Guard, has been serving a tour in Afghanistan for quite some time now. His civilian job is a lawyer but his passion is being a soldier. We're all very proud of him. According to my Aunt Robin, Rob's unit, the 218th, is in an isolated area of Zabol province known as Mizan and it has nothing. There are only two National Guardsmen there--Rob and a young man from Brooklyn, a Puerto Rican, who is teaching him Spanish. Rob may be fluent in Spanish as well as Pashtun, an Afghanistan dialect, by the time he returns home. He is about 10 years older than anyone else around him and hot water is scarce so he lets his beard grow for about a week at a time. Since it is salt and pepper the Afghans give him a lot of respect because being in your 40's is considered old since life expectancy is so short (Rob is 41 and the children call him "BaBa" which means grandfather). There is no mess hall where Rob is so food is basically MREs or instant oatmeal/grits. Rob believes he will be helicoptered back to Qalat in about 2-3 weeks and hopes to be leaving around the first week of May. I know his family (wife Charlotte, his children Eli, Dee, Joseph and the rest of the Stilwell clan) will be so overjoyed to have him safely back home. God Bless You, Rob, for defending our freedoms and sacrificing the luxuries of western civilization to support what you believe in. Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!