Our C-17 cargo jet landed at midnight, March 6, 2004. It was scary when the orders came from the cockpit to saddle up. The soldiers I flew in with put on their bulletproof vests and helmets so we could land at Kabul International Airport, an old shot-up, former Soviet air base at the edge of the city. The pilots turned on red interior lights, which preserve night vision but bathe everyone and everything in a ghastly, blood-red glow.

I am a 1988 journalism graduate of the University of Oklahoma, a veteran of macroeconomics. I saw action getting my graduate degree at OU in 1997. I was armed with choice words and bad algebra. However, I had a lot to live up to. My father is a World War II veteran who fought in the Pacific, landing with the Marines at the Battle of Okinawa. My oldest brother fought with the Marines in Vietnam and was wounded. My other brother served at the tail end of Vietnam on board the aircraft carrier Coral Sea, and my sister was a 25-year Air Force wife whose husband flew nuclear-armed B-52s during the Cold War. This was my first war.

The C-17 banked left and right as we came in, some kind of evasive maneuver, popping flares to throw off any heat-seeking missiles we had sold the Afghans in the ’80s. We screamed in for a rough landing. The pilots braked hard, throwing us back and forth in our seats like the crew on the old Star Trek bridge. We rolled to a stop. The Air Force crew chief—who also had a vest and an M16—threw open the door, and we hefted our bags and filed out.

As I stepped off the plane onto the tarmac, there were no bullets, no bayonet charges from crack Al Qaeda terrorists. Instead I met Maj. Eric Bloom, the media officer for the 45th Infantry Brigade. I had worked with him back in the States on my bid to get embedded, sent him frantic and even testy emails, haranguing him to get me over sooner. He did not seem to have a trace of animosity about this.

"Ben! You’re here!" he said. "Welcome to Afghanistan! You’re gonna love it. It’s nothing like we were told."

This was all my idea. It started with the onset of the latest Iraq war when I had heard that the military was trying a new process of war reporting called “embedding." According to the Pentagon’s embed guidelines:

. . . OUR ULTIMATE STRATEGIC SUCCESS IN BRINGING PEACE AND SECURITY TO THIS REGION WILL COME IN OUR LONG-TERM COMMITMENT TO SUPPORTING OUR DEMOCRATIC IDEALS. WE NEED TO TELL THE FACTUAL STORY—GOOD OR BAD—BEFORE OTHERS SEED THE MEDIA WITH DISINFORMATION AND DISTORTIONS, AS THEY MOST CERTAINLY WILL CONTINUE TO DO.

This approach, to tell the truth before it can be distorted, was used in World War II by the British to counter broadcasts by the Nazis. The Brits called it "inoculation." By telling a story, good or bad, before that story was released by the enemy meant that the public was inoculated with the truth, preventing them from becoming "infected" with a lie.

At first I sat at home, listening, reading and watching reports from the front during the initial Baghdad operations. Many were by people I had gone to school with, reporters like Ellen Knickmeyer, now a bureau chief with the Associated Press; or Anthony Shadid, who hunkered down in Baghdad, sending out a series of reports that would later garner him the Pulitzer Prize. I had been at The Oklahoma Daily when both were there, all of us just figuring out which end of the word processor was up.

A year later, Oklahoma’s 45th was called to Afghanistan. The Thunderbirds? I knew about them. For years I had tried to wrangle an angle on a feature about this unit. During World War II, the Thunderbirds had been a division, landed at Anzio in one of bloodiest battles of the war, and later marched through France into Germany, liberating the Dachau concentration camp. The 45th now was a smaller unit, a brigade. A quick check of the records told me the unit had not deployed since Korea. It would be the first time this Oklahoma unit would see a war zone in 50 years.

I called the state public affairs officer for the Oklahoma National Guard, Col. Pat Scully. It took many weeks to get answers and approved. I also managed to get gigs writing for two Oklahoma papers, The Tulsa World and The Oklahoma Gazette. An old classmate and fellow staffer from The Daily, Wayne Greene, called from Tulsa and confirmed I would be working with him. Thus, The World became the only paper in the state to provide regular, daily coverage of the 45th in Afghanistan.

The day came for my goodbyes, then I drove to the embarkation spot in Colorado.

We filed onto an enormous green transport plane. Strapped in on the uncomfortable plastic benches they use for seating, we rocketed off for the 22-hour flight.

It took me a good week to get over the trip. Within that week, I went on my first patrol with 45th soldiers, members of the 279th Infantry Battalion. The small, daytime patrol was just around a surrounding bit of Kabul but was an eye-opener. Among the first sights I saw were children age 6 to 7 carrying bags of garbage from our dump, the bags easily as big as they were. Other children ran up to meet us, some with infected boils on their bodies. Around the camp I saw fields littered with human waste, where the Afghans grew food. I saw open cesspools we had to gingerly skirt as we wound through a nearby village compound.

Crowds of children flocked to us, trying to paw through the items we carried—one stole my pen. Two girls in shawls hid in a doorway watching us furtively and fled when we met their gaze. At one point, someone fired a shotgun, but it was too far away to hit us. We charged the compound from where we heard the shot. Locals we stopped and questioned said it was a hunter. And this was my first patrol.

In one feature I wrote for Reuters, I interviewed a British unit, the "Gurkhas," famed for more than a century as elite fighters. I met other allies working with the Okies, including French, Italian and German security force troops. There was even a contingent of Mongol soldiers teaching artillery to the Afghans. I ran into a few friends from home, and each time we marveled at how amazing it was to be a bunch of Oklahomans together in a place on other side of the world.

At one such event, a graduation ceremony for one of the trained Afghan battalions, Ellen Knickmeyer appeared. Knickmeyer becomes more legendary with each passing year. Earlier I had run into another journalist in Afghanistan who told me he had met her hitchhiking into Baghdad during the beginning of the war. Hitchhiking to the front in a war zone. A woman. In a Muslim country that does not cotton to such freewheeling initiative. After working in the AP’s Rome bureau, she took over their Western Africa bureau. She had covered wars in Bosnia and Kosovo. At the Kabul graduation, I introduced her to Brig. Gen. Thomas Mancino, the 45th’s commander. After a short conversation, we realized we were all Tulsans. It was like some kind conspiracy.

Shortly thereafter, I left Camp Phoenix on a medical convoy operation to Mazar-I-Sharif in northern Afghanistan. After a long, dangerous journey through a ruined Soviet tunnel in the mountain passes, we arrived at a British compound in that picturesque city. I learned two things there: (1) that the 45th had a contingent of peacekeepers operating in a "hot" province that had recently had an uprising, and (2) that the Brits would fly me there.

That time turned out to be a breakthrough for me in Afghanistan. I found myself with the unit’s commander, Lt. Col. Hopper Smith, for a roommate in the mud-brick shack that served as the headquarters for "Task Force Spartan." Spartan’s mission was to advise the Afghan National Army soldiers in the peacekeeping in Meymenah, the capitol of Faryab province, a wheat-growing pastoral region filled with unrest and opium.

Smith, an Oklahoma state representative from Tulsa who stepped down from his elected position to answer the call with the 45th, spent his time shepherding a unit of very individualistic, rugged Okie soldiers in an even more rugged setting. We took showers from a barrel, ate rice and beans or Army rations, and appreciated the amenities such as the two outhouses for facilities and a satellite uplink through which I was allowed to file stories. The uplink was engineered by Capt. Matt Reiten, an engineering Ph.D. student from OSU to whom I still owe a number of beers.

I spent the days with Task Force Spartan patrolling the green hills along the border with Tajikistan. A few of these patrols were fired upon but mostly were left alone by the warlords, who nonetheless resented the American presence in their sensitive drug-growing region. One field of opium grew at the end of the runway in Meymenah, just outside the concertina wire of Camp Spartan.

A religious man, Smith once helped set up a drug treatment center in Tulsa. He had also developed legislation to restrict precursor chemicals to methamphetamine production, legislation that has helped recently to curb Oklahoma’s meth problem. Smith resented the opium growers but also knew he was powerless to stop production. In fact, American forces were ordered not to undertake drug interdiction while in Afghanistan.

“That’s the part of this I really don’t like,“ Smith said. “But I like to think we are at least keeping an eye on it.“

After more than three weeks in Meymenah, the mission wound to a close. I boarded a British flight back to Kabul and rejoined the 45th main body at Camp Phoenix. I was tired and thoughtful, about ready to return to the States. However, things had opened up in Kabul. The press, which had showed up in droves for the “Bin Laden hunt,“ was gone, searching elsewhere for stories. I was free to go places that before were impossible. Maj. Bloom arranged, and got, a position for me with a firebase on the Pakistan border with the Special Forces. I took the offer.

A six-hour helicopter flight found me at Camp Pat Tillman, named for the football star who died in fighting on a nearby hill. I was familiar with the area from a previous story I had written for The World, in which 45th soldiers and their Afghan counterparts were ambushed by 60 Al Qaeda. They killed 19 before the Al Qaeda units retreated back across the Pakistan border. This was definitely what I had imagined I would see when I came to Afghanistan.

While there, I joined about a six or seven patrols led by the Special Forces soldiers in charge of the firebase. The mission there was very sensitive, as I was unable to photograph or in any way identify the Green Berets in charge of the operations there. I also agreed voluntarily to have my stories reviewed by the camp commander, a compromise to which most journalists would never agree. Nevertheless, I felt compelled to be as sure as possible I did not compromise the safety of the unit. I found that my stories rarely needed revising. The only one I felt was unfair was when I was asked to cut pictures of regular 45th soldiers because they had beards. The Army does not like regular soldiers growing beards.

I also grew a beard. Afghan locals consider Americans’ unshaven faces to be an affront. Having a beard when engaged in regular contact with Afghans made the going smoother.

During this particular trip, the base came under fire. Al Qaeda units, which operated along the border, set up rocket attacks on the base during the full moon. At 4 a.m. a volley of rockets screamed over the camp, rousing us out of our bunks. I ran out in my pajamas and took pictures in the twilight of the Afghan units returning fire. Al Qaeda’s rockets missed the base completely, a usual occurrence. Only a little later did I realize I had run out without my helmet or vest. Later attempts by the Special Forces to catch the insurgents were met with frustration each time as the rebels would just run back across the border where the Americans were not allowed.

After about two weeks at Camp Tillman, hiking through the Utah-like countryside with patrols, I returned to Phoenix. This time I felt I was about ready to return to Oklahoma. It was July, and I had accomplished as much as I could of what I had set out to do.

Then came another break. This time, 45th-trained Afghan units joined with the Marines in a large operation to the south, near Kandahar. Despite my misgivings, I seized the opportunity.

That the region was hot and dusty does not begin to convey the experience. Daytime temps soared to 120 degrees Fahrenheit. The dust had the consistency of talcum powder and lay a foot thick on the ground of the main operating base, Camp Ripley. The dust covered everything and still permeates much of the gear I took with me.

From Ripley, the Marines sent two task forces north into Taliban-held highlands. They sought out ambushes and drove purposely into them to flush out Taliban fighters, then killed them as soon as the insurgents opened fire. In one action, the Marines killed as many as 120, a large firefight by Afghan standards.

I spent 10 days with the Marines in an operation called “Thunder Road,“ completely in on the briefings and participating daily on the patrols. It was hard going. We slept each night on the rocks along a dried creek bed, awoke and got underway before dawn, and bedded down on the rocks again after nightfall. There were two firefights with the unit I had joined. In each, no Marine casualties were taken, but they killed the Taliban units who fired on them. I helicoptered out as the operation ended. I later discovered I had lost 15 pounds.

By this time, I had lingered in Afghanistan until it was nearly time for the 45th to pull out. I decided to wait two weeks and join the main body as they left, covering their departure for The Tulsa World and for Reuters. It was a poignant time, and fraught with worry. Previous units had come under fire during their time leaving Afghanistan because Al Qaeda and Taliban wanted to demoralize the international effort by killing soldiers on their way home. Luckily, though, no such attacks occurred on the 45th.

In the end, the 45th accomplished its mission of building the central corps of the Afghan National Army, readying the country to have its first-ever free elections. When those elections were held this fall, they formally selected Hamid Karzai as the country’s first president, a goal that would not have been met without the 45th’s training of the army.

My own goals were met, too. I had followed the people from my own state into the War on Terror and stayed the course with them. I had seen Oklahomans, born and bred in this state, warmed by its suns, taught in its schools and lettered in its universities, take on the task mandated by that September 11 three years earlier, and meet its measure.

And we all came home alive.

Ben Fenwick is a freelance journalist whose articles appear regularly in The Oklahoma Gazette.