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Hunter - at war with the elite: 1 - why Jaegercorps
By Thomas Rathsack
We blow away with more than 250 miles an hour five-ten feet above the Iraqi desert. I sit outside, right out of the British 101 transporthelikopters cargo bay and can clearly feel the heat from the exhaust on my left arm.
It is deep black night, but with my natbriller I have a clear view of the dark, flat landscape, where forbr�ndingsflammerne from numerous oil refineries light up like big, bright dots. I look at my seven patrol mates from Jaegercorps. The weak light from natbrillerne give their eye sockets in the black blackened faces a greenish hue, and they look as always calm and relaxed out.
I checked one last time my outfit and my arms, a C8 carbine. So loadmaster rows helicopter, which directs us in and out of the cabin, two fingers. We are two minutes away from our goal.
We are on the 'Operation Viking ", a specialoperation for Jaegercorps which aims to identify and gather information on enemy and defeat him if possible. Last night, a rocket depot blown away.
Life is the last month has been hell at Basra Air Station, which was previously a civil airport under Saddam Hussein.
It now belongs to the Western coalition forces 'Operation Iraqi Freedom' and is the headquarters for around 500 Danish soldiers in the battalion DANBAT which are subject to a British brigade of 4,000 men.
Over the winter and spring of 2007, the local Jaysh Al-Mahdi militia, called JAM, from a radius of 5-10 kilometer fired rockets at our camp 10-20 times a day.
Now you will have done something about it and find out JAM's arms depots. To this end, we have some patrols from the Danish Jager Corps, who is summoned.
This day has been another rocket attack.
16 pieces. Which one has killed a British soldier and wounded two seriously. Stack were stood on their beds in their small flat container, as a Chinese made 107 mm rocket struck the middle of the room and turned the area into a graveyard of blood, bones and scorched metal fragments.
So when one of our hunter patrols on a reconnaissance mission identifies a rocket in the desert about 20 kilometers from the camp with just one Chinese 107 mm rocket, we become very anxious. The custodian must be destroyed.
The same day our squad returned home from a six day long operation and is just beginning to recover when our platoon, 'upper arm', comes in and gives us this operation. Within an hour we study the area where the rocket depot is, elaborate procedures for any emergency from a second patrol and organizing help from an unmanned surveillance aircraft, and from about three kilometers altitude may be filming and reporting on all activity on earth before, during and after surgery.
I am also helping to gather information about the rocket, create a suitable explosive charge to it, and establish procedures for detonation.
I'm not really our patrols cracking man, but since I have been blasting man in four years and also served mine clearing in a private organization that helps me to.
Now we sit in the helicopter and is two minutes from the coordinates patrol who discovered the weapons depot, abandoned.
The area we will land in, is infected by units from the JAM, which is one of the most bellicose militias in Iraq, led by the Shiite cleric and politician shadow Muqtada al-Sadr. We wish in no way to land, so they find us.
Over our encrypted radio reports patrols are still in the area to land area is safe. There is a minute for us to land.
When I have our scout patrols, I sit outside, because I must first of. I lean forward in his seat and get ready to put the load on the mast's signal. Then it - 'go-go-go - and closely followed by my seven companions in the patrol jumps me down from the loading ramp into the Iraqi night and away from the big cloud of sand, gravel and pebbles, as the helicopter blades whipped up . We throw ourselves on the ground in a circle and provides 360 degrees around, landing zone is secure.
The helicopter immediately facilitate again and returns to standby at the camp. As a scout I blink at the second patrol with my white spot, called a passive light on the weapon which can only be seen in natbriller. Signal will be answered, and we gather with the other patrol and are pleased that the unmanned reconnaissance aircraft, Shadow, reports everything okay and no activity in the area.
We have three or four kilometers from a city from which two roads leading out to the depot. So it will certainly be using them, JAM will come in a short time if they have seen our helicopter countries. This should go quickly. While the rest of the squads are looking away from the countries of the zone and make sure hidden behind some sand berms, looking for our blasting man Rasmus and I against the depot, located approximately 50 meters from the countries of the zone. The rocket is on the ground and pointing in the direction of our camp. It lacks only be supported by one of JAM's primitive launchers in the form of home-made metal constructions or sandbags just below the top of the rocket.
We carefully place our warhead on the rocket and mourn with heavy rubber bands that the tightly just above the fire tube. It is the most vital in the launcher, it makes it to detonate.
Destroy it and the rocket is disarmed permanently.
I check everything one last time and report over the radio all ready for our patrol officer Kenneth. I get the green light by Kenneth and get ready to ignite explosive device which I designed to have two minutes late. I count down from five, and the 'teeth' set Rasmus load of time and we start our stopwatches.
I arise 'switched' over the radio, and we are looking for quiet 40 meters back from a small sandy violence, which hopefully will provide adequate protection against fragments from the rocket when it detonates. The other is a further 100 meters behind us and ensures in all directions.
I arise "1 minute" over the radio, "30 seconds", "10 seconds" and "5 seconds". So I pressed my face into the sand and protect my head with my hands.
Given the deep, hollow roar tearing night air, facilitates both Rasmussen and I am from Earth.
Squeaky metal fragments as projectiles over the heads of us. A fragment the size of a frying pan lands just behind us and drill down into the sand so that only the top sticking out. We are both shocked by the violent detonation, but we have it all right and report by radio to Kenneth that we are looking forward and doing a BDA, a battle damage assessment, where we assess the damage and make sure that the rocket is destroyed.
We are troubled on his feet and looking forward to it, there are now only a large crater svedent. The rocket is spread over several hundred meters. So we are looking back toward the others who have already called in helicopter and formed a land zone where it will land about five minutes.
This phase is most critical operation since the explosion in the degree has exposed us in the area, so it is with a combination of hectic and bated breath that we observe intensely against the roads, which JAM might occur. In the radio we hear now the British helicopter pilot announce "two minutes out ', and suddenly heard the soothing sound of blades coming closer and closer.
The same is reported that on the radio about people in our area and there are suddenly shouted at the second patrol.
If we come in contact with the enemy now, it is deeply critical. So is our country zone 'hot', the helicopter will probably not land and we have a huge problem.
"One minute out," reports the helicopter so. We turn all our small infrared lights strap, which can not be seen with the naked eye, but only in natbriller. So the pilot can see us and country zone.
We are still somewhat confused by reports of activity in the area. But since there is no positive identification, we decide to implement our pickup by helicopter.
We can now not only hear but also see it. It seems low and swiftly, and with the brakes off, turning the whole country zone to a cloud of dust and sand. The pressure from the huge rotors means that we must sit in the future so as not to topple.
At that moment, I see the two lights with an infrared lamp load from the master, which means we can run on the board. I'm the first in the formation and accelerates all the force on the helicopter ramp and jump into its belly. I throw myself down in his seat along the cabin wall, and then the other comes, facilitates the helicopter immediately with roaring turbines and makes a sharp turn homeward path towards our camp.
The operation has gone just as planned.
Rocket depot is destroyed and we were not compromised. Without compromising our own security at risk, we have stopped some of the rockets rain that makes life in camp more and more stressed and have more to spend the night in the massive protection bunkers around the camp. We have certainly not put an end to JAM and their mission to destabilize southern Iraq and seize power. But we've at least made it harder for them to continue their fight against us.
I look down through the cabin and sees a whole series of smiling teeth bright seven blurry and sweaty faces up. I smile even. I have helped to ensure greater security for our own forces, and I feel that "Operation Viking" is a mission where my life with J�gerkorpset goes up in a higher unity.
Exactly this - to complete a real war operation with my comrades in the patrol after years of training - has been my goal in all the years that I have bet targeted to come into the corps. From which I otteni-year-old ran away from home at night and in camouflage uniforms patrolled around Charlottenlund Fort, and from me as a 14-year-old trained as a wild up to my experience in the Life Guards. I am also thinking back on the arduous recording process and redemption when I got the burgundy red j�gerbaret head and 'Jae-GER' mark on the shoulder. Like I remember my disillusionment and resignation after some years in the Corps and why I am after eight years of absence, came back again.
It was because of an operation like this. 

Hunter - at war with the elite: 2 - From Indian kayak to burgundy beret
By Thomas Rathsack
My first ensure recall J�gerkorpset are the days when I was young lad in my teens Notes on a front Ekstrabladet with a picture of a dirty man with a beard, crown shaven face and a cigarette in the corner of her mouth.
The story is about a hunter soldier named Carsten Morch, who has been number one on a U.S. survival course for elite soldiers. Speechless by the fascination I study the picture and story of the atrocities, Morch has undergone in the course.
It is the 24th October 1984 and I have so far only heard sporadically on the Danish elite soldiers in J�gerkorpset I nevertheless already fascinated by the indefinable. But after reading about Carsten Morch, hunter number 172, will be my general interest replaced by a sincere desire to be a hunter soldier. I want to be a part of this elite military unit and the mystery, the unknown super men are surrounded by, and I am sure that if I can be a hunter soldier, I can walk on water, and the rest of my life will be a breeze. From then on, I burn for my goal, and the next six years of my young life, it is my entire drive. Everything else seems more or less indifferent. The dream of the burgundy red beret is the locomotive that will lead me to the goal.
I was born in 1967 and grew up in Charlottenlund north of Copenhagen. My father was a lawyer and historian and taught at the University of Copenhagen. My mother is a qualified medical secretary, but to the delight of me and my five years older brother, now a lawyer, she was most at home.
It was a safe and resourceful home. My parents put no restrictions in terms of tightening expectations or demands. They had no ambition on my behalf, but always backed up on the choices I made. I was also raised slightly conservative for the old school in terms of manners and polish, and I could get a spanking, but then I deserved it, and I have certainly not been damaged.
Overall I am happy and easy as a boy.
From my very little, I love nature and can have hours to go to play, tinker and mess of it. I am always in front of the house and look down into the gravel, so my parents are nervous about whether there is something wrong with my vision. And already since I can barely walk, I try to bypass the ants on my way. A desire to protect animals that have stopped at.
I am also very active sport. Cultivates swimming, badminton, tennis, soccer, running, orienteering, weight training and salon rifle, and already from my six years, playing my very soldier. When I was eight-nine years, I buy for my savings a Portuguese camouflage uniforms by mail order, and my friend Frederick and I begin to put the alarm clock at night when I pull into my uniform. And without my parents about it - and they do not ever - lists I get out of the house and into the woods where we are building bases and caves, and lists around and patrolling. We also have a toy kayak with Indians in which we paint camouflage green with spray paint and sailing over the moat at Charlottenlund Fort. Here we make command raids against people on the campsite. We make small homemade explosive charges of gun battles in which we extend a rat with a little powder, so it gives a delay of 10-15 seconds, so we can get away or hide behind bushes when the campers are woken up and come out and shout at us.
At school I am mediocre and missing.
I sit and think about sports, nature and soldaterliv and it will be momentous for me, as we shall experience in 8th
class in November 1980. I need one week to the Royal Guard in Copenhagen and take preparation very seriously. Several months before yesterday I started with tough strength training, running, trail running, running with a heavy backpack and obstacle course. Of a neighbor, a former Home Guard, lend me an old Home Guard uniform and a pair of worn boots, as I run around forests ii.
My friends and family remind me repeatedly that it is just experience.
But I insist that it is important for me to perform best during the week.
It is an absolutely fantastic week for me.
We have five interns and a overkonstabel of 1 degree takes us through the day and the exercises. We arrive at the shooting range and shoot with a rifle M/75 7.62 mm which is many times more powerful than anything I have tried, so it gives a greater recoil and tears well in his shoulder - a great experience.
We run the tank trail, up and down, up and down, and the constable is running behind us in military jeep and push us forward, which I love, so I can really show that I am in good shape. Every morning we also participate in the Life Guards morning workout, and I may as 13-year-old perfectly match the professional soldiers. I actually overtakes most and will always be in the best quarter.
It shows me that I am on track and turn me on even more of my soldiers continued the process.
After that I as a 17-year-old reads about Carsten Morch, it will be really focused. My dream J�gerkorpset is subsequently the only thing I focus on. I am beginning to plan my workout systematic day by day, week by week and year to year. I run hundreds of miles in boots and uniforms. Trail running and orienteering takes place also in uniform and boots, and I fill my backpack up with old bricks, books used for road maintenance and 30 kilograms heavy salt bags and jog on all the stairs, I can find.
I am dark and cold, northern Zealand roads and woods thin, day and night, summer and winter. Some times I go just 80 kilometers from Copenhagen to the North Coast and back south through forests and villages. I swim in the icy water in the Sound of my old, borrowed the Home Guard uniforms and leather boots. And I often sleep for days alone in the North Zealand forests to get used to the darkness and isolation. A The training of between four and six hours is normal, and although I am often tired, cold, hungry and wet, I continue on my bloody and worn feet, while the dream of becoming a hunter soldier becomes more and more ingrained in my consciousness.
Already, I am a young boy, I know that an ordinary and bourgeois life, with fixed and predictable framework does not appeal to me. I will see and taste the world and life as a soldier, hunter ultimate soldier, seems obvious. In addition to my workout when I'm in my last school and after school to work a little to share advertising out washing dishes at Restaurant Rytterg�rden in Klampenborg and stand in DSB kiosk at Charlottenlund Station. But it is only really work for me when I as 18-year-old be in the military.
I begin Sergeant School at S�nderborg Barracks and continue on the Reserve School in Oksb�l where I dump the final lieutenant exam in the subject tactic. I continue, however, as Sergeant at Royal Guard in Copenhagen in four years, in January and February 1990, it will be really serious when I composed a series of physical tests, as the Life Guards officer sport check and the background included in J�gerkorpset patrol course.
Nowadays, the recruitment of Vaerlose Air Base once a year, and there is also a five-day forkursus that did not exist in 1990. But now I stand where I want to be. At the first step on a long and arduous path to becoming a hunter soldier.
'J�gercorpset in Sielland' says the country's first company of elite soldiers, when the corps in 1785 will be set up with 130-160 men at Kronborg Castle in Elsinore with the motto 'front against the enemy. " As such, the Corps exists to 1860 before being resurrected again in 1864 to be closed again in 1951. The recent history of 'The Danish Hunters Corps' beginning in 1961 at Aalborg Air Base.
This is where I enter one of the world's toughest courses in 1990. Requirements have not changed since they were set as follows in 1961: "A hunter has a special trained soldier who has undergone special training, which enables him to solve a wide range of demanding tasks. There are therefore much of a hunter, with an emphasis on good skills in patrol techniques and tactics, self-discipline, self-confident and resourceful. There should be a good morale, discipline and perseverance, and a high degree of ability to work together so often under harsh conditions, both during training as the insertion of different operations. Therefore it is only soldiers who made up the initial training very convincing, as it receives clearance burgundy red beret and later hunter-label hunters characteristics. "It goes without saying that being a hunter should have no diseases and you have normal hearing and vision and must not be colorblind. Physics course must be in order. But it is equally important that you are mentally strong, have an inner peace is credible and trustworthy, has great willpower and a well developed sense of cooperation, mutual respect and always a hundred percent professional attitude to work. Many believe that one must be a macho type, and a great bread to be a hunter, but it is far from true.
There is also a need for young hunters, and we range in size from 70 to 100 pounds and size 36 to 48 in shoes. I myself am a size 90 kilograms, shoe size 44 and is 1.85 tall.
From 1961 to 2009 there were 362 trained hunters, or an average of nearly eight years, although one year was only one suitable for the permanent operation operational strength of 50-60 hunters. The task of the corps is to be inserted in both domestic and international operations, where conventional forces can not be used because they are not as hunters are specially trained, organized and equipped to carry out detecting and fighting duties during special extreme and dangerous conditions in hostile terrain.
The assumption is usually that no one discovers us. To solve problems without being recognized, as we call it, is one of hunter's noblest task, and it is easiest if you have very few male and operate in squads of six-eight men.
I begin a nine-week patrol training course on my 23 birthday, the 4th March 1990. The course aims to teach us about collaboration in small squads and introduce ourselves in basic principles such as dinghy sailing, helicopter training, building tovbroer, swimming in cold water, operate at night and infiltrate unnoticed to a goal.
We are outside almost all the time in the nine weeks in March and April and is constantly wet, tired, hungry and cold. Specifically, there is a hell of a lot of marches, but I am extremely well prepared, through serious and intensive training for nearly two years. I've even gone hiking, which is worse than what I experience here. Actually I am in too good shape at the beginning. I therefore find it hard to keep my form curve up, but as the course progresses, I become stable. I am constantly in the forefront, discover that I do not have any pronounced weakness, and there is never any point where I doubt whether I can handle it.
We have 94 hopefuls who start, and we must, as described in the admission requirements consist of 'very satisfactory' to go ahead and get the aspirant hunter course. 38 is composed, but only 25 of us with a 'very satisfactory', so we are after a week of rest is ready to start at eight weeks aspirant hunter course with ten other applicants from the year before.
Hunter Aspirant is a more individual-oriented course where you can still be assessed on its ability to cooperate, but 70 percent of the time people work for and with themselves.
Here, the purpose is to destroy the individual and see his reaction pattern under extreme physical and psychological pressure.
The eight weeks is a great test, only interrupted by individual friweekends. The worst is the uncertainty. You never know what will happen. And everything must go fast. When we buy food in the canteen, we eat is already in the queue before checkout, and all the exercises to take place in the race, also in the canteen and toilet. It looks obviously crazy out that such a constantly running hunter applicants around the flight station, but you are too tired and worn out to see the fun, I greet and say, and if you forget to run, you will be 'rewarded' with 20 push-ups . Forget it once for the 'reward' 12 kilometer around the flight station in the evening when your course colleagues time off.
Physically, the most disgusting so-called cold-water habituation, which means we virtually every morning in uniform and boots swim in 7-10 degrees of cold sea water and diving after the lead at the bottom of N�rresundby marina or open-air pool in Aalborg.
'Wet Week' with physical exercises on the flight station is also really bad. Her er det eneste form�l at stresse os aspiranter ved konstant i fem dage at holde os gennembl�dte af koldt vand. Approximately every two hours, we are ordered into a branddammene in this area and we should not change clothes.
There is also udskilningsl�b where we run up and down in a gravel pit until a number of applicants falls on the fatigue and thus deleted from the course. Those who still have so far.
Also a weekly self-esteem test of sorts. Among others, we climb a 130 meter high pylon and balancing on a 20 inch wide beams. And we must do 'death wall', which means that we in the 10-meter seesaw in the pool to fall forward and down with his hands along side countries on its head. It is often the belly landings, which make terrific pain. Confidence tests are deliberately cross so that you get aspiring to doubt, and doubters who will not and can sacrifice everything, there is no need for the hunters.
I must also admit that as the aspirant progresses course, gives me a renegade cynical satisfaction.
I am indeed still.
As aspirant competition is obviously harder, but again I become quickly convinced that I will pass the course, if I do not get injuries. After four weeks so it happens, there should be. I get a fierce tenosynovitis in both my tibias.
So much so that the fluids and swells up in bags, which hangs in the tennis ball size beyond the edges of my boots. It is so bad that I have granted two afternoons to go to the doctor and be treated with some touch pads on the legs, and I also get permission to get some painkillers. The exercises, while the others are doing, should I do in the evenings, but since I do not get rest, becomes inflamed to remain there the rest of the process, however minor. It obviously makes me slightly worried, but it is not something that can get me a single second to consider giving up. I am so mad keen and extremely focused, they can offer me anything. I've gone with this goal in all the years and there is nothing to destroy.
Of course it is prolonged wear on body and psyche a real abuse of the body.
Elite People are living harmoniously with the right amount of sleep and the right diet, they are never really cold and wet for a long time, and their bodies get massages, physiotherapy and the proper time to recover. We are sometimes not and at best, a minimum of sleep. Often we only sleep between five and ten hours from Monday to Friday subject to constant physical and mental pressure, and there is no opportunity for proper refund.
During the patrol the course runs and I am 870 kilometer. On aspirant course it will be for 1100 kilometers, and at one point, I am out of 60 kilometers with 40 kilograms equipment to be handled in less than 12 hours. At another time, two times 50 kilometer within 48 hours. In addition, I swim 45 kilometer.
I do it and are usually, like on patrolling the course, among the top five for all samples. My extremely good physical shape and an ability to adapt and fit me helps me on track. I am also good at screening out all negative thoughts and constant focus on the positive. For example, by saying to myself that 'it's just pain "," you do not die of it here' and 'on only four weeks is all over and my life will change forever. "I will ensure constant to show profits and clearly state that I am, whatever, not going to give up. At no time I hesitate, because I want to make sure that the instructors do not doubt me. At the same time I retain a certain humility as a person, for I know that the Corps of filtering out people with the grand gestures, big egos and dominant traits.
My only blunder is when one day I forget my key in my room. Nine out of ten times it will not be discovered, but I am so unfortunate that I am being asked to fetch something in my closet, and when my buddy is not in the room, I can not enter. As a 'reward' and 'gratuity' I get handed a metal key that is barely two meters long and 20 kilograms heavy. It should I carry around. The ridiculous key is substantially higher than myself, and continuously for five days dragging me around with it. On patrol, the toilet, everywhere. It irritates me most, because I now have been noticed in a negative way, but also because it is a load, as the others have not. Thus, I can not be the best.
Others will have to carry around a half times two meters high papskilt when they lose a card, and the slowest going to be issued with a yellow safety helmet from a building site and a yellow jacket. Then we can learn it. I think it's fine that punishes such. It is certainly very effective.
I've never forgotten a key page.
Since the course is over, we will conclude with a confidence test: 18 meters free fall in a lake, which is rewarded with 20 push-ups and a 'Doctors Special' mix of various booze. I made up the course as one in eight among the 35 runners, applicants, and my course leader says the magic words about my efforts, "Rathsack, it's too good to be true." I had never before in my life been so proud.
I now have handed J�gerkorpset mark hunter's horn, to put on my uniform and starting my ordinary, black kamptropbaret. The burgundy red beret must wait until after further hurdles and education. Among other things, I carry a two weeks of parachute training and three weeks of fighting swim course at Fr�mand Corps in Kongs� by Isefjord. I will not be good enough frogman, but water should not be a barrier to achieving my goal of a mission, so I will be among other hackled through the 10 kilometer swim in open seas, freedivers down to ten meters deep and exercises that bind knots and connectors under the water.
Moreover, I am the founder depth acquaintance with Mary, a log of several hundred kilograms, we students rattling runs around in the woods around Kongs�.
A warm and sunny morning in the summer of 1990 I stand so tanned after three weeks in Fr�mand Korps in my end to nomination uniformed parade with my seven medaspiranter at Aalborg Air Base. In 10 years I have been looking forward to this moment. It has been my carrot in many sour, cold and lonely hours training. And it is an absolute climax in my life when my overall puts the burgundy beret on my head for the first time. I am now busy in J�gerkorpset as hunter number 229th
The recording is only as a kind of pupil.
I'm missing a year of hunter training.
Only then I am full hunter soldier.
Only then can I bear the ultimate hunter characters, shoulder mark 'HUNTERS'. Only then can I enter in specific missions and operations for the corps.

Hunter - at war with the elite: 3 - No oxygen
By Thomas Rathsack
I feel myself flying. To be the proprietor of the burgundy red beret and now have a well through a year of training gives me almost wings.
Half the time I'm on exercises abroad and I are trained in communications equipment, sanitation service, signal service, blasting services and in the corps weapons.
All the time I come closer to being consummated hunter.
One of the Corps most key skills are parachute operations, as there is much respect around the Special Forces world.
And now it's my turn to be inaugurated in a highly specialized iltspring in the summer of 1991 in the skies over Aalborg.
At this time I love to jump in parachute. I participate in every leap, I can even come close. Besides the four or five weeks a year in J�gerkorpset I participate in the military gross national team training tours in the military events such as anniversaries, as well as in civilian parachute engagements and demonstrations to sports events, festivals and the like.
But one thing is a jump on a hot summer day with a simple screen and without heavy and cumbersome equipment. An entirely different case is a military iltspring three times higher than normal spring. Such a jump on a cold and dark winter nights with oxygen and many pounds of equipment from an unknown country zone is a journey into the unknown. It is hard work and involves significant risks.
There are two kinds iltspring, HAHO and HALO.
HAHO means 'High Altitude High Opening' and implies that jumps out from the aircraft's maximum altitude of 30,000 feet typical - 10 kilometers altitude - and a few seconds after you have missed, they pull out its screen and navigating a given compass course hovering behind enemy lines.
The advantage of HAHO-jumping is that you can paste Jaegercorps in relatively large distance from the designated target. I have the favorable wind conditions floated up to 60 kilometers in the air over North Jutland.
When one lands with the rest of the patrol, secured zone countries, after which undermines the parachute down and continues to solve the tasks to be performed behind enemy lines.
The disadvantage of HAHO is that there are relatively high risk of being detected from the ground, because it floats in the air for up to 50 minutes.
Therefore, one can instead choose to skip HALO, which stands for 'High Altitude Low Opening "where you can still jump from 10 kilometers altitude, but the knight is waiting to drag its screen to the last minute. This minimizes the risk of being detected, while in the air, taking a freefall jump from 10 kilometers altitude falls to the ground with about 400 km per hour due to the thin air, compared with small 200 km per hour at a normal parachute jump .
On the other hand we know a HALO-jump have to insert hunter soldier closer to the goal, as he did not float very long time in the air.
Whether it is HAHO or HALO requires this sort of leap an extra degree of preparation. Backpack must be packed carefully with necessary equipment such as food, water, sleeping bags, clothes, observation equipment, radio, ammunition and blasting equipment.
All in all, backpack eventually to weigh up to 70 kilograms, and it's extra important to distribute the weight properly, because any imbalance can have serious consequences during the free fall. At best, it can only mean an unstable case. At worst, you risk ending up in an uncontrollable spin, which because of the violent centrifugal forces eventually lose consciousness.
As an important part of the preparation phase always packs his parachute and equipping themselves. Compass and altimeter strapped to the front, breathing bottles mounted in a special pocket on the harness, and the weapon should obviously not be in the way of the parachute lines when it is triggered. In the hours before the jump, I have been meticulously through the pack of my parachute, my backpack and other equipment, and everything checked an extra time just before takeoff of the person responsible for the jump - jump leader.
Now I sit in a Hercules C-130 transport aircraft and feel after two previous HALO jump ready for my first HAHO-jumping. The plane is not exactly renowned for its comfort. A red nets along the sides of the cabin are called seats and a modern concept of tempering is completely unknown in this vessel. Either sweats Mon transparencies or shaking of cold during the flight.
We are connected to common aircraft oxygen equipment, and beside me sits my patrol officer, Morten, a little stocky, taciturn but friendly guy in their late twenties. With over 600 completed jump, he exaggerated, and his calm and thoughtful creature is always a reassuring factor for us in the patrol. He turns to me and although he has oxygen mask on, I can see that he smiles. His eyes lit by the well-being and satisfaction of being at home.
I admire Morten's almost natural coolness. But while it annoys me a bit because I can not be just as cool.
Actually I am a bit scared before I have to try the dangerous leap for the first time. I'm wet with sweat under the many layers of clothes and the gray, clumsy knight costume extreme, and I can taste the salty sweat on the rubber of my oxygen mask. I comfort myself, however, know that even Morten's face is as svedperlende as mine.
We will soon be jumping out in the cold and inhospitable skies 10 kilometer above the comfortable and warm, Danish summer topsoil. All are lighted, concentrated and focused on the next hour of work on this unusual site. The last few hours preparing for the jump has been exhausting.
So in spite of the dangers of this complex type of jump, I feel it is redemptive, that I for a few minutes to let me fall out in 50-degree cold, with an approximately 60 kilograms heavy backpack fastened to the body.
Exposed skin in this account will mean almost instantaneous frostbite.
I spend therefore big mitts to protect hands and a r�rhalst�rkl�de to the neck.
My head and face are protected by the helmet, goggles and my oxygen mask, which is put on the helmet with two buckles and a pair of heavy rubber bands as security.
My backpack is connected to the parachute in a so-called lower line, which means that I can release it just before landing, so the landing is safer. Backpack is clamped to the back of my legs with a scratch on top, and I have a leg through each shoulder. It ensures the most natural position for the lower body during the jump, but also leads to an equally unnatural position on the seat before the jump.
The plane is no longer rising, and it begins a slight turn to right. We have reached our jump height. The aircraft's cargo ramp opens slowly, and a soft, warm sunlight fills the hold. I notice that my four comrades from patrol simultaneously turns his head and looking respectfully towards the large cargo bay, which is now fully open.
Our projection leader, Mike, clap hands and holding six fingers up in front of us, six minutes to go. Any form of speech is excluded, since we have oxygen masks on. But even without the oxygen masks would be because of the intense engine noise in a Hercules be virtually impossible to understand speech.
Shortly after Mike makes a slow circular and upward motion with his arms, almost as if he directs an orchestra.
It is the signal for us to raise us up. We look like a bunch of old men of our handicapped and awkward movements, as we after a long time in half upright fetal position slowly coming to his feet.
We combine the common oxygen equipment and turn our own supply, so our 'oxygen-medic "can make the final check. He put himself in front of each of us and looks us deep in his eyes, after which he asks turning the thumb finger upward. We will return each of his eyes, nods and also creates thumbs up. Then Mike makes the final check of our equipment and parachute. Everything is as it should be, and he acknowledges with a cash pat on the back. The rest is up to me, my parachute and sky over Aalborg.
'Two minutes'. We turn on all facing the bay. Mike beckons us further ahead. I'm in the back row, and the four knights in front of me stand out in a clear silhouette of the intense sunlight. In a bizarre incident Reminds me most of all the four penguins with their rigid small steps.
Mike clap your hands together again and lifting a finger. 'One minute'. I feel my heart beating hard and forget about the sweat and the miserable comfort as I could for the first time may see a finely detailed maps appear under me. It is a wondrous sight. I guess the southern tip of Norway, Skagen is located to the left, a city below right on the east coast may be Randers, Aalborg lies in the center and just north of the Limfjord flight station, which is our goal.
We're moving close to each other in a row, as it is important to get off the plane very quickly after each other. The plane is in the thin air at this altitude a speed of 650 kph at around 350 in normal flight altitude.
So if the distance between our source becomes too large, it is almost impossible to locate each other and suspended as beads on a leash to a single touchdown.
"10 seconds". The last time signal is given, and front man moves completely to the edge of the ramp. The red lamp on each side of the ramp lights clearly. Mike with his hand on the man's front shoulder and observe the lamp, which in a few seconds off.
Then there is green. Mike applauding the first man hard on the shoulder. He leaves with open arms fall out over the ramp and then disappear. I fight with my small, pathetic step behind Morten.
He will be applauded by Mike, and without hesitation, but safe and familiar scene he moves out on his own little pleasure trip.
When I miss, I hit the first few seconds of speed and turbulence, and my goggles steam up, so I can hardly see anything. I will, however, a glimmer of a knight who has just withdrawn its screen. It must be Morten, and it looks very calm and calculated out. I have my arms half stretched to increase the stability of the fallen. Backpack feels fine and balanced. I find my release lever with your right hand and compensates this movement with the left arm, which I is under my head.
So I prefer the handle, stretching his arms up after and is ready to receive pressure from the parachute, which takes air to enter.
But even the most bistre admonitions about the forces, one with 650 km per hour are up against in this altitude, preparing myself to the extreme jerk, I experience the slowdown.
I am thrown forward into the harness and have no control over my movements.
The pressure pushing the air out of my lungs, and I hear myself moan loudly. I still hang in the harness and my father, looks up and finds that the parachute is folded out and all the display cells well filled with air. My screen is sustaining.
But in the same brands I have an icy cold wind whipping against my face and a tingling sensation in my lips and mouth. Just the feeling we should not feel when you hang in his parachute in 10 kilometers altitude.
I know exactly what happened: my oxygen mask, jumped up on the right side and is now dangling and only in the left lock. It is really bad. In addition to a malfunction in the parachute, this situation one of them feared most.
Without oxygen at this height, I fainted during a very short time. I know my own limitation from controlled trials on the Flight Medical Institute at Rigshospitalet and know that I only have about 30 seconds before I pass out and float lifeless around without having any influence on where I end up. At worst, it becomes the next six minutes my last one alive, and I am fully aware of the seriousness. And dilemmas.
I can take my mitts and try to put the mask back on and get the necessary oxygen. The problem is that it will give me severe frostbite on my hands in a few seconds because of the extreme cold, and frostbite I become incapacitated.
I may even lose one or both flippers in an attempt to put the mask in place, and it will probably lead to permanent frost on my hands, I saw in the worst case will not be able to use them as a soldier more. Alternatively, should I try to get oxygen masks in place with my mitts on. It is both difficult and involves the risk that I fail and slipping into unconsciousness.
Severe frostbite or unconsciousness? It is like plague or cholera, and I must make a decision here and now. I am 24 years old and hunter soldier. I'm more or less care if my body is exposed to pain. I have repeatedly pushed my tolerance level and offered my body much suffering, but I do not want to ruin my hands with severe frostbite.
So I decide to try to put the mask on with my mitts. Knowing that at worst may end fatally, at the rates I get the life-giving oxygen.
I catch the fluttering oxygen mask with one of my Luffe, which because of its size practically closes the mask. I have the front of my mouth and jaw. With the second Luffe pushing me to the place on the mask, which I believe is spread, thereby getting it into the buckle on my helmet.
I have the sun directly in my face, and the sumptuous light makes me for some reason to fight more fiercely. I do not know if I use 10 or 30 seconds to struggle with the mask, but suddenly I hear the sound of a liberating clicks from bracket with a slide unimpeded into the bracket.
I let the mask, and it fits tightly and lay over my mouth. The beautiful, cool and slightly metallic taste of oxygen flowing again into my beleaguered airway.
I get the weather and feel quite high by winning the battle against time.
I can not allow myself to spend much time thinking about victory. Now that the immediate danger is over, is the price. The wind comes from west and leads me into the northern Jutland. I loosen my steering handle and correct rate. The rest of the patrol, I can not see, but if I keep this compass direction, I know that I will land roughly in the vicinity of the proposed zone countries northwest of Aalborg Air Base.
The few but large and robust kumulusskyer appear as gigantic vattotter and forms an obstacle to my path. Basically, we always steer clear of clouds.
Inside a cloud can experience severe turbulence, and it can be difficult to orient themselves.
I find myself in seven kilometers altitude and the cloud is directly in front of me. If I spin around it, I come too far off course, and since I probably will not reach to turn anyway, I maintain rate and continues into the milky-white, dense and moist fog.
I have not flown in so close a cloud before and am surprised that it actually brings tears and so much of the screen. I get an uncomfortable feeling of not sit safely and completely settled in the harness. I prefer my steering lever halfway and therefore hamper the move. It is a standard procedure which makes it easier to steer clear of other knights.
A striking silence spreads, broken only by the flickering of cells in the screen. I look down and to my astonishment could not see my boots. I am surrounded by a thick fog and has a visibility of less than two meters.
My compass and my altimeter are my only two reference points, and the clouds feels like infinity. Again I sense uncertainty sneak up on me.
But a moment later the light becomes sharper, fortunately again. Never before have I been so happy to see again my two old and worn "Danner Boots' military boots, and suddenly unfolding horizon for me, and Vendsyssel appear again clear and green.
The needle on my altimeter passes the four kilometers, and I have a cloudless sky the rest of the road. I loosen my oxygen mask on one side, let it fall to the side and enjoy the thrill of the normal, iltm�ttede air. In my sejrsrus stretch my hands to the steering handles of breath and opened up the cells in my parachute, so I get as much power as possible down towards countries zone.
Down to my friends down to the familiar and comfortable.
About 150 meters above the ground shall I to reverse into the wind before landing, and approximately 20 meters above the ground, I braked.
I fall when I land. It is not unusual in a HAHO-jumping. After about half an hour in the air with reduced blood circulation in the legs because the parachute harness clips at the groin, are my legs and feet numb.
At the same time the weight of the large amount of equipment it's hard to keep balance.
Slowly I come to my feet, get rolled my parachute together and find the reason why the oxygen masks have gone up. An old, tenderize parachute rubber band is broken under the extreme conditions. Something as trivial as a damn rubber band could have cost me my life.
But now the day's work over, and we traveled by truck back to the flight station.
When I sit on the left of the booze truck and look down at my hands, shaking slightly. Previous evening I sat at Caf� Render-Vouz in Aalborg and drank coffee with my squad mates and spoke with excitement about the day's challenges. I was not in my wildest dreams imagined that the jump would involve a struggle for my life. But I made it, and now feels like my little trembling hands and the otherwise uncomfortable ride almost entirely pleasant.
Another time is quite uncomfortable wrong for me in a parachute, because I am in the military gross national team for training in the United Arab Emirates. I must first jump with a leap of precision parachute type developed specifically for this purpose. It is a parachute, which is somewhat different than the military displays. The larger, more sensitive and responsive when you steer it with the steering handles, because you will land so precisely. The idea is that I will land on a mattress, where one of my heel like to hit a bullet the size of a femkrone.
Skip site is in the middle of the desert, and I am well on the way, I think, since I only about ten meters above the desert another finds out that I probably will anyway be a little too far away from the mattress. It is no disaster, but I will do everything to be so close to finishing as possible, so I pull sharply down in my steering handle to get brake on the screen and have more time to master. My features are so violently that the display cells completely cleared the air, so the parachute stalls and becomes completely relax as a condom. So I fall fast and hard to the ground. Lands on the bum directly on my tailbone and takes off with his right arm.
The battle is so intense that both I and the other hunters, who see the landing, is sure that I broke my back. Fortunately it is not the case. In contrast, the sight of my right forearm completely ludicrous. It goes in almost zigzag down at the wrist.
Shortly after I downloaded directly to skip the site of a Huey helicopter, flying to a hospital and lands on the roof, where I will face my new destiny - a big, ruddy, German chief of staff, which gives me two choices. Either I can get his arm put in place by hand right here and now, which would be the best for healing. But it will be without anesthesia. Alternatively, I can get it put together later, under anesthesia, which in turn is the least good option. I choose the first course and before I even think about it, is my patrol officer Morten and a medical assistant and keeps me in the shoulder, while the German chief of staff prefer the arm and pushes it into place in the bone again.
I'm close to fainting when he stands and worms along my forearm. It seems like an eternity, and when he finally released his iron grip on my arm broken-down, sinking I relieved and exhausted in his chair. I am absolutely devastated by the pain. It makes the otherwise very thoughtful and taciturn Morten to laugh loudly at me and exclaim that he was in his training periods as sanitation man in Danish hospitals have seen many dead people - "but never one that has been so white in the face like you here in days. '.

Hunter - at war with the elite: 4 - Survival hunter and shattered dreams
By Thomas Rathsack
Combat Survival Course.
Anecdotes and awe is so much about the most demanding courses in hunter basic education. A course which aims to teach the hunter to survive on the run after a battle situation behind enemy lines. That means techniques to escape, hiding and living in and from nature, while the enemy hunter Force fighter one. And ultimately you learn what you may be exposed to during interrogation and incarceration, if you get caught.
I should really have been on this course as part of my training, but because of the Gulf War in Kuwait in 1991 suspended the British organizers course of the year, and I was only in November 1992. It is more than a year after that I am a Friday afternoon in August 1991 during an unpretentious ceremony was presented with my 'HUNTERS' shoulder mark and diploma as proof that I am now hunting soldier. But I am not quite worthy before I also passed this survival course.
The course is held by the British 22nd Special Air Service of the British elite troops, the SAS, but also other countries' elite units use the course. The first ten days, theory and exercises, before we are sent out to ten days in the Black Mountains in Wales to learn how to starve, freeze and be on the run.
We are 80 students and pre-flight, we issued some old rags, any substance, a few tires and a dozen sheep. Of the substance, we must sew clothes, car tires low shoes, and the sheep must in addition to giving us food also be a raw material for the warm clothing that we have to manufacture here in November in the windy, r�kolde and rainy mountains. Hot outfit is required, and with my dull Swiss army knife I get the dubious honor of cutting the throats of a poor sheep who are anything but quick and painless fate.
It should be anywhere else to go fast. We only have a couple of hours to sew, cut and adjust, in the evening, dark and even colder.
I have indeed made me a pair of shoes and a hat, a jacket and a pair of mittens from sheep wool.
But besides that neither is particularly successful, the woolen obnoxious because there is no time to dry skin, therefore, still damp with blood.
We flee in small groups of two to three men.
I along with two Danish fr�m�nd. And now it is important to seek unseen back to our 'own lines', which is marked on a map of the area like we have signed. We have no food or drink provided, so as sheep meat is eaten after a few days, we live only by the paucity of berries and roots in the area. Water we find in the sources, who fortunately turns out to be many.
In this flight phase, we constantly chased by a hunter force consisting of units from the British Parachute Regiment PARA pursuing us in helicopters, vehicles and patrols with night vision binoculars and dogs. So in daylight, we save ourselves, and it is a challenge beyond the ordinary, because apart from being windy and rainy is the Black Mountains as characterized by being without natural hiding places as caves, grottoes and large closed forest areas. There are only a small pine groves to seek shelter in, and we need to press us in holes in the ground and abandoned animal graves, where we try to get some sleep.
When it is night, we move under cover of darkness toward their own lines.
As we approach the ten days and has not yet been acknowledged by paramilitary forces - and the damp smell of our homemade f�ret�j was quite indescribable - we know that we will soon be caught. It is not an issue if you get caught, but when. It is the course's key credentials, so everyone should have the experience. All will be captured, and it is very cash.
We have the feeling that it is running up against when we are in a small gorge with steep sides. And suddenly overturned about 20 PARA-soldiers since also. We can not do anything and try not. We must go through the inevitable. PARA-people yelling and screaming that we're done. We are a nobody. Nothing but worthless fucks. I get blindfolded, being bagbundet and thrown into a pool of mud, where they kick me in the balls and stomach and beat me with a flat hand in the head while they face and laughs - you miserable fuck! I am now, POW, Prisoner Of War, and kept as a prisoner of war back to their base for a 36 hour long interrogation phase. In eighteen days, I continuously, except during the interrogation, be in so-called stress positions. There is one where I'm standing up against the wall at an angle of approximately 45 degrees wide legs and arms. And another where I sit-legged on the floor with arms and hands above his head, so the fingertips just touching, but not resting on his head.
My arms and legs cramps often of fatigue in the posts, but stand or sit, I do not quite correct, I will immediately made aware of it either kicks or blows.
At the same time, I have a hood over his head, so I can see nothing, and the room is large speakers with constant, harsh noise, so I can not hear otherwise. It is deeply unpleasant and painful, and when I now and then is to topple on to fatigue, kick and beat PARA-guards me. Occasionally pulls my captors me outside, dress me naked and throw me around in the icy mud while they stand and derisive laughter.
Stress hell is interrupted only by interrogation with different types of interrogators.
There is both a good guy, a bad guy and a woman who commands me to undressing in front of her, after which she mocked me for being a Danish slapsvans.
All I have to say is my name, my soldiers, my number and degree. Anything else means dull in nature and will result in immediate departure from the course. It is not like today where you as a starting point has to tell everything they know, hoping to survive - wars have been such that many no longer abide by the conventions of war, but just cut the throats of a prisoner if he not telling anything.
I know of course that interrogation is a game, but sometimes prostrate, fatigue, cold, hunger, uncertainty and humiliation, that it is difficult to distinguish between fantasy and reality. It is extremely hard, and the 36 hours seem endless. It is also during this phase, most of my medkursister drop out. I hear burly elite soldiers break down crying and crying sobbing in their native language before they are dragged out and sent home. But I manage to think ahead and forget the pain.
I think sometimes that their violence during the capture and interrogation phase is unacceptable. But while I know that it is an investment in my education, because it makes me much better prepared if one day I encounter the same thing in a war situation.
Moreover, I do not make me negative points by complaining. I think just to be able to feel like 100 percent hunter and soldier must pass it here. And I do. Nine kilograms lighter after three weeks of hardships, but well satisfied with being one of the top 20 among 80 runners who receive this special distinction in survival.
Eventually, I feel that I have been a full hunter soldier.
Despite my pride in passing Combat Survival Course brands I actually already in early 1992 - only a few months after I was full hunter soldier - an incipient disillusionment about the prospect IMIT dream.
Of course I have the honor of being part of a small, exclusive crowd. But I think that our lives are pretty empty and are becoming increasingly aware that J�gerkorpset has existed since 1961 and have never been sent to a real war effort.
We never experienced anything operatively, and in everyday life we are all up in the semi-military sport disciplines as pentathlon, triathlon, orienteering and parachute jumping. Otherwise, it stands on general physical education, training and exercises.
Special exercises abroad in Germany, England, Belgium, Holland and France is often exciting and realistic, but the Combat Survival Course yesterday it really dawned on me that we do not have a device that is particularly operatively set. I realize it especially when we are in theory preparation hear a talk by Andy McNab, who was involved in Operation Desert Storm and the first Gulf War against Saddam Hussein's Iraqi forces in Kuwait in 1990-1991 and later wrote the famous book Bravo Two Zero about his experiences.
To be operational is for me the essence of being a professional soldier. It is the essence of a professional soldier's identity and eligibility.
It is only in such situations, our craft, our mental strength and character and everything that we've practiced for years and hudl�shed may ultimately be challenged. Not before.
And I want challenges. I will be on secret missions in enemy country in foreign, exotic country. I want to make needlestick operations under cover of darkness and sneak me into an object and blow it to pieces.
I'll try the most dangerous, the most exciting and what makes the greatest demands on me.
But the prospect of it not existing. After 13 years of focused and almost daily struggle to achieve this objective is not at all what I expected and I feel cut off from the possibility of really moving the mental boundaries.
It is disappointing. Depressing. An anticlimax of rank. And it means that I totally lose my military energy and provides me that I will try other challenges in life.
I have at this point in my life never considered alternatives to J�gerkorpset, but I think neither the Foreign Legion or to switch nationality to battle challenges. I'm tired of the military and convinced that I shall never in uniform again, so I use my accrued civilian training with full military pay to go on various business diploma courses in the first half of 1993. I do not really know what to use it, and it is a severe and entirely new and unfamiliar situation for me to be missing a goal.
Therefore, I decide instead to pursue my creative desires and abilities and buy a drum kit and a camera and become an assistant to an established photographer and since independent photographer.
It goes very well with the photograph. I earn well at this, but it does not make my longing for foreign places. So in early 1995 I decided to pursue another old dream: to learn Spanish and live in South America where I am sure that temperament, environment, women and food is just something for me. And that's it. In a half years living and traveling around I primarily Argentina, Chile, Uruguay and Bolivia, where I take photographs for Elle, Euroman, Jyllands-Posten and local magazines and newspapers.
I see lots of exciting professional and personal challenges. Among other things, I become exposed to an armed robbery where they take my ladies watch, a Rolex Submariner which I had saved up through hard-work in a DSB kiosk for a year. I will also be hunted with a sharp left turret of a morbidly jealous ex-girlfriend to my boyfriend.
And I spend my last money to obtain overall a broken leg at the Santiago street dog.
In September 1997 I come home to Denmark again and are entering the IT industry. In two and a half years, I work for Mermaid Computing TopNordic, including the establishment of a distribution department, where I have responsibility for sales to dealers, among other major players such as Danish Supermarket.
It is instructive and challenging in the beginning, but I am starting to lack the nerve and tension in my daily life, and a martsdag in 2000 on his way to work in Taastrup I decide to quit. I have no alternatives, no plans, but take a quick decision, entering work, write my notice at the office, print it out, handing it to my boss and run back home.
To earn money, I work then in a period as paver in the Northern Sealand villas driveways and aprons.
But my fate is sealed, because after a few weeks dump a letter from the Danish Demining Group in the door.

Hunter - at war with the elite: 5 - war refuse collector
By Thomas Rathsack
I must be program manager for the Danish Demining Group in the Caucasus. Specifically, in Chechnya's neighboring republic of Ingushetia.
In ten weeks over the spring and summer of 2000 I, together with a number of other eksj�gersoldater attended a course at Farum Barracks, where the defense in cooperation with the Danish Demining Group, DDG, has made me an expert in explosive ordnance disposal. I know how to handle a minesweeper.
I have learned the slow and deadly dull, but very important process in order to bury the mines in the ground. I can tell the difference between all sorts of different types of anti-tank mines, anti-personnel mines, grenades, bombs, rockets and other munitions. And I can destroy it all. Everything together so I can act as a refuse collector war and help to clean up the 3rd The world's huge mine problem.
Particularly badly taken by landmines and unexploded ordnance in Afghanistan, some countries in Africa, parts of Asia and the Balkans and the Caucasus so. DDG has a Danish, humanitarian, non-governmental organization demining programs in all regions. The countries concerned have all been or are still regular war zones where mines unfortunately proves eerily effective, not only between the warring military sides, but at least as much against an innocent civilian population and against animals. The wars in these countries has left tank grenades, and mortars flybomber not exploded because of technical errors or incorrect fitting soldiers, and every year are killed or maimed tens of thousands of men, women, children and animals of these often hidden and deadly objects.
In the Caucasus, northeast of Turkey and the Black Sea, where Europe meets the Middle East and Asia, the problem is gigantic. The region has up to 50 different peoples divided into many small republics in the last 15-20 years have waged armed conflicts in the aftermath of the Soviet Union. Ethnic conflict, war crimes, mafia crime and terrorism is commonplace here, and most will remember the terrorist action against "School Number 1" in the Chechen village of Beslan on 1-3rd September 2004. On the opening day after the summer recess occupied about 30 Chechen and Islamist insurgents armed with Kalashnikovs, man portable rockets and explosives school with space for 900 students. A clumsy and chaotic hostage operation was conducted by police, soldiers and civilians, and it ended with more than 330 people died, over half children.
The Russian-Chechen conflict began when the tiny breakaway republic of Chechnya in 1991 declared itself independent after the Soviet collapse. Up for decades fought the Russian troops and Chechen independence rebels bloody battles which put the country in ruins, tens of thousands killed and wounded many more.
At the end of 2000 it is estimated that there are over one million mines in the country as a result of the war - and who live so less than one million inhabitants in the country, which is roughly twice as large as Sealand. Why no other country in the world had so many victims of landmines in Chechnya. Alone in the year 2002 it is estimated that nearly 5700 people have been killed or wounded by mines, of which almost 1,000 children. And add thereto a large number of wounded and dead animals.
It is especially anti-personnel landmines, which poses a problem because the population despite the fear of mines have to live their lives and daily use many of the fields, roads and trails that are strewn with the landmines.
Children to school or fetch firewood for family farmers and their cattle to the fields, and women are to cities and markets. The alternative is a life without basic necessities.
The optimum would be if we could begin to remove the mines, but here in 2000, it is impossible to implement proper clearance, because it is simply too dangerous because of the ongoing fighting between Chechen rebels and the Russians, who have over 100,000 soldiers stationed in the country, primarily in and around the capital Grozny. Therefore bring DDG in collaboration with DanChurchAid and with donations from the UN, EU, DANIDA and the corresponding Swedish support agency SIDA in with information about how the civilian population as much as possible to avoid the mines.
It is the program I will direct and develop the neighboring republic of Ingushetia's capital Nazran. Ingushetia is the smallest and poorest of the republics in the Caucasus.
It borders Chechnya to the west and fills only 3600 square kilometers, or roughly half of Sealand, and counts a population of less than half a million people.
In addition there are several hundreds of thousands of Chechen refugees are in camps around the country. It is primarily the ones we must make an effort with information about mines and unexploded ordnance.
My journey towards Nazran starts with a couple of nights in the giant and the cold Russian capital Moscow, where I found out that the vast majority of Muscovites certainly do not like Caucasians. They consider them to be terrorists and criminals, partly because a large part of the Russian mafia has its origins in the Caucasus. It just makes me extra excited at the coming six months challenges as program manager.
My closest colleague is also a former hunter, Peter Correl, which I was course with mine, and because of the bad security situation in Ingushetia is a requirement from the DDG, we have a security setup. Four men from the local police to be our bodyguards and ensure our safety when we go to and from work and drive around the region to refugee camps.
Particularly kidnapping is a huge problem in the area. From 19961999 is approximately 1300 people have been abducted. Many never pops up again and wound up only when the ransom is not paid, and it is estimated that around 500 are still held captive in soil holes and dark, damp basements. The risk of kidnapping is particularly pronounced for Westerners considered lucrative targets and is known as walking money. Many journalists and aid workers from the West have been kidnapped by criminal gangs and the local mafia.
One of the most talked about is Camilla Carr and her boyfriend Jon James, who in 1997 took the Chechen capital Grozny to open a rehabilitation center for children with war trauma.
Three months after the British couple's arrival, they were both kidnapped by Chechen rebels, and over the next 14 months they were both tortured and raped her numerous times by her captors before the pair were released on a ransom.
Both the British by the Russian government refuses to have paid ransoms for their release, and speculation that the London-resident Russian billionaire Boris Berezovsky has paid the Chechen kidnappers.
It is this reality, I'm on the road against, because I have a late night in October 2000 puts me into the Russian domestic flight from Moscow's Domodedovo airport to Nazran.
The airport is enveloped in a snowstorm, so the plane is held back, and when it is given free for one hour, comes the Russian captain wobbling toward the cockpit completely sprutr�d in the head and wearing a big fur hat. It confirms a worrying way my prejudices about domestic flights in this country. And it is not helped by the fact that the cabin in the little Tupolev jet rattles and roars out of the runway, while plastic bags fall out of the luggage-racks, and huge Russian wives browse in their colorful magazines.
A few days after my arrival, I already have adapted well to the job. I have decorated my small office with computer and printer and has struggled to get an internet connection up and running, so the framework is in place. Now it is making a humanitarian difference.
In the teachers' room, adjacent to my office, I teach my 15-20 local employees.
They are all Chechens, mostly women aged 20-40 years, but two men in the early twenties, and they have almost all a very traumatic background from the last ten years of fighting in their homeland.
They all live in the surrounding refugee camps, and many of their husbands, wives, children or parents have died or simply disappeared because of the war. But in spite of their situation - or perhaps because of it - they exhibit an amazing spirit and morale in their work to publicize the danger from mines in the region. The job is for local conditions very well paid and they are really in order to be equipped to teach their compatriots on the last update knowledge of this hazard in the region.
I will contact the refugee camps, schools and other public agencies to coordinate teaching. And we organize teachers in small mobile teams that we send around the region for up to one week at a time.
It is a risky work. Teachers often running around in areas where there are regular battles between Russians and Chechen rebels.
But the effort is a great success because teachers reach out to areas where there are hardly ever informed about this hazard and how they can hand out the plates and leaflets, which they themselves have fabricated and laminated to children and their families.
Because of the success we want more teachers. When we let rumors leak, we immediately bombarded with requests from women, men, and indeed even some children who all claim that they are just perfect for the job. Peter and I'm burning near my fingers, because our guards insist that their cousins and friends to have the job.
Two of them are even aggressive, shouting at me and suggests that it may go beyond my safety when I tell them that we have already found the suitable candidates. And it is not the only reason that I look a little askance at people who otherwise I would trust my life.
Because of the tense security situation and the high risk of kidnapping, it is completely impossible that I travel alone outside of our house and office, so bodyguard were making me constant companionship, and I'm not impressed. They seem dull and unjust, and I simply do not trust them.
If Peter and I had to get into trouble, they will probably only be in the way and probably be the first to abscond. But they are now even a yoke, I will have to bear.
The house we live in is an excellent villa located in a fenced neighborhood of newly built, fully equal housing, which houses the Republic's elite. We live beside the president, as every morning in high speed driving off in his armored Humvee, sharply followed by a black car with his bodyguards.
The quarter is in sharp contrast to the small capital, Nazran, where the towers of mosques worn towers over the rooftops, where few roads are unpaved and waste floating in the streets, and cattle, fowl and wild dogs roam. There are few shops, but many markets packed with fruit, vegetables, meat, flowers and other daily necessities.
We share the house with the Danish Refugee Council, which consists of a mildly diverse group of employees and residents. There is Kristof, who is Polish, but speaks fluent Danish. With his long, gray hair down the back he looks like a stubborn relic of the Woodstock generation. He is a trained architect, Danish married, mid-forties and has worked for years in this industry, where he is responsible for construction projects in refugee camps.
Despite its appearance fodformede he is very direct cash and in his conduct, both professionally and privately, and I really like him.
Then Henrique, a nice, quiet and hay lug a Frenchman who works with logistics to refugee camps.
And finally there Kharon employed by the local workforce sjakbajs. He is a small, oxides Chechen, hardworking and very ambitious and have a focused dream of going to Canada, where he will take an education and start a new life with his pretty wife and their child.
For me the worst of our restrictive life and isolation in the house that I can not fit my running. To the great irritation of the residents compensates I know every night to run up and down the stairs from the basement to the first floor. But I have them convinced that it is a necessity for me to train, and it accepts. I have also pulled money out of the budget to buy weight training equipment and a boksesands�k as I hang up in the basement.
Trips outside the house and the city is usually in refugee camps, where I assist our teachers with teaching and studying how the refugees receive our information.
The hundreds of thousands of refugees are a dispiriting collection of maimed, tortured and malnourished fates, who have lived in camps for years. Many children were born there and know no other than the camps, where tens of thousands of tents down in endless rows, separated by muddy paths and sm�veje.
Families of 6-10 people live crammed together in tents, which are not larger than 20 square feet, heated by a small gasbr�ndeovn in the middle and illuminated by a pair of hanging lamps. And they have few personal belongings in a pair of beds, tables and a few pictures of the family bears witness to a life before this.
I visit including one family where the 10-year-old son has lost both arms and an eye when he was playing in a forest near his family farm. The rest of his life, he is deeply dependent on her family and can not go to the toilet, eating or getting dressed without them. In another family, I speak with is the father who has lost both his legs when he walked in his field with his cow and came to a Russian personnel mine. Koen bled while he managed to drag himself home to his farm on the scraps that remained of his legs. Thanks to a foreign aid organization, which specializes in putting prosthetics on mine victims, he can now go and rely on crutches.
All the refugees are in general deeply dependent on assistance from the UN and foreign aid organizations as the Danish Refugee Council, which sets out the camps and distribute food. Rice, flour and dried milk in daily rations contain barely lives in the family.
And the situation outside the refugee camps are not much better. At our training process around the regions bordering on Chechnya, we find that many Chechen families have resettled in an Ingush family and friends until the day they - perhaps - to return to their homes in Chechnya. In the ramshackle houses sit these arms, sad and shabby people in the winter cold and crowding around wood stoves.
In one family I am invited inside for a cup of chai, which is called in the Caucasus. The house is teeming with children, but this family is affected by a secondary fate of the war in Chechnya. The mother sits with wet eyes and a stack of pictures in his lap, and her daughter, one of them up in front of me. It shows her brother and his girlfriend, both in their late teens. Two years earlier left the house for a breakfast together to go to work in the nearby village, but they never came home again. The family has not heard from them since, but is confident that they have been taken by the Russians and liquidated shortly thereafter.
In the schools where we hold hour-long lecture about my father, there is no heat or other basic amenities. Schools are just tr�barakker where the children sit at shared tables, and the teacher has his board and nothing else.
Even more depressing is it to visit the hospitals in the border areas. We take around with them because we have an agreement with the local UN department in Nazran, that we will establish contact between the relief organizations who can help with prosthetics to mine victims, and victims themselves.
It is an indescribable state, these hospitals are known. Old and derelict buildings, often without glass in the windows, which instead are covered with plastic. Dark times without lights. Toilets with feces on the walls.
Patients who are in their dirty beds with amputated limbs and absent look at the ceiling. And nurses and doctors who are fit and care for their patients in good faith with the modest amounts of Medicine and the primitive medical equipment, as they have these available.
How do patients survive such a place beyond me. I have Jaegercorps lived under extremely primitive and filthy conditions, and I know how easily the body's immune system is affected. Stay one of these places m�da give a deathblow, if not dead of his injuries or diseases in advance.
Since it is late winter, I choose to take a trip to Chechnya's war-torn capital of Grozny. Grozny is just the place in the whole Caucasus, which is worst contaminated by mines and unexploded ordnance. I will go and contact some of the schools, which reportedly still working to make agreements with them about teaching.
It is a big risk I run. Fighting between rebels and Russian forces are in full swing in the city, which is virtually completely bombed and shot to pieces by the extremely aggressive Russian occupiers. It is an everyday, where the Russians in the morning, running off from their bases and occupy hundreds of checkpoints on the outskirts, from where they keep the city in an iron fist to clamp down on anything that can remind just the slightest bit of insurgents. Meanwhile, insurgents hiding themselves and their snipers are a big threat to soldiers and civilians, both when they snigskyder, and when they follow up with regular attacks with rockets and machine guns.
When it becomes night, and almost all the 80,000 Russian soldiers back on their bases, steals the rebels themselves under cover of darkness into the city and placing roadside bombs and mines on the streets and alleys.
Thus the 4700 Russian soldiers killed in Chechnya in three years from 1999-2002.
Deaths of Chechens varies depending on who says it. The Russians say 45,000 over two Russian-Chechen wars since 1994, while Chechen sources, among other well-known exile leader Akhmed Zakayev, speaking about 250,000 Chechens dead and almost as many missing.
My bodyguards must of course to Grozny, but they're not much for it. I doubt that they would risk little to save me, and it suits me fine, therefore, that they themselves insist on obtaining amplification from a Russian elite unit in order to feel more secure. Thus I find myself with a protective vest in the back seat of an SUV in the company of three huge and silent Russians with machine guns, while my own bodyguards keep his distance in their car behind.
We drive a couple hours from Nazran to Grozny, and had it not been because Chechnya is a war zone, the landscape had been decidedly beautiful. Mark, streams, forests and the magnificent mountain range to the south, where Elbrus with its 5642 meters towers over them all.
But it is also bombed, and I notice small red signs with skull and fences along the fields. It does mine. On a field, I also see the carcass of a bovine animal that has been blown across the rear part of, and later I loathe the sight of two dogs that are totally ripped on the edge of a small dirt road.
Constantly on tour, we stopped by Russian checkpoints where BMP armored infantry fighting vehicles down behind concrete walls, and Russian soldiers controlling all traffic on the road.
As we approach Grozny and passing another checkpoint, a BMP suddenly opens fire with their 7.62 mm machine gun in the turret.
This is not to see what the gunner after firing. But the Russian elite soldier behind the wheel accelerator wisely up and running away from the checkpoint at high speed.
Then we are off towards the center, and it is a shocking vision which we encounter. The city looks much worse than I had imagined, and is a surreal sight of misery and destitution. Never has the term ghost has been more apt. All houses, buildings, streets and landmarks are completely devastated by the fighting and the town seems deserted. Some expressionless people moving around in the streets with shopping bags from the small markets that keeps people alive.
Even the Russian soldiers who are lying through their armored vehicles in a myriad of different uniforms, seems influenced by the site thoroughly depressing atmosphere.
They do not disciplined and tense, as one might think, since they are in the midst of a war zone. Detailed sloppy and apathetic.
"This center!" We parked at the edge of a large space, and for the first time on the trip says the Russian elite soldiers, who apparently has the highest rank, something for me. We must be in the city center now, and we get out. The other two soldiers place themselves immediately with their machine guns pointing in opposite directions, while my own bodyguards standing by their car at a distance from us and looks somewhat uneasy out. One of them dares to be up to me and asks if he should take a picture, and I let him do.
The Russian elite soldiers are worried about the situation, so we go quickly in cars through the city against the two schools, I want to visit.
Since we are a roundabout way, finally arrive at the first school, we are greeted by an elderly, gray-haired and frail woman, who apparently is a kind of schoolmaster. She is speechless about my arrival. And to begin with also suspicious. Who is this stranger, who joined by soldiers and machine guns pop up out of the blue and offered her help? Through an interpreter I have explained to her my errand, and she lights up at the thought of my teaching to small hundred pupils attending the school. I have agreements with her how my teachers can get. But I must also stress to her that it is with caution that the training being conducted at the agreed dates. How must it be in a war situation, and she is more than accustomed to, that nothing is certain, but thanks anyway again and again for my visit.
There are only a few hours until it gets dark. The three Russians silent by my side makes me realize that now is the time that we drive back to Ingushetia. We put the price out of town and passing again the many checkpoints, where Russian troops now seems almost elated. The driver of the three elite soldiers turned to me and with a big smile, revealing a gold tooth in the mouth, does he drink a motion with his hand. The soldiers are intoxicated.
When we run out of ghost town, I look back and hope I never ever going back to this depressing place.
During the early spring, we are continuing work in refugee camps, schools and other official institutions. Peter and I have a good feeling and we feel that we are making a real difference. Actually the program so good that we appoint a specially assigned officer, Elena, to move the program forward as we will shortly go home.
Before we must through yet another Caucasian credentials. Or rather, Peter must. One morning he wakes up in the DDG-house and half his face is paralyzed and insensible.
He looks more than strange, and we call the local emergency doctor who arrives in an old ambulance, which is more reminiscent of a hearse, and the red lamp on the roof is slower than the second hand on a clock. Into the room comes a little man wearing a dirty white coat and a giant tubular fur cap on his head. He has gold on all visible teeth and diagnose rapidly Peter with something I've never heard before. So he prefers a needle the size of a kitchen knife from his bag and chases it into the patient's buttock one - Peter goes out like a light.
Additional help is not to get in the Ingush health, so the day after I fly home with Peter. He is hospitalized at the National Hospital and diagnosed with Bell's palsy, which is a problem with the nerves of the face caused by a latent herpes virus. I will be glad that we acted so quickly and went home, because it proves that the correct treatment within 72 hours are crucial for the outcome of the paralysis in the longer term. Peter recovers indeed completely after a few weeks.
I even take immediately returned to Ingushetia, where some weeks I am transferring the program to Elena, who is Pope proud of his new status as a program manager. I am well pleased that I'm finished in this part of the world, and I go home and enjoy the Danish spring. My jogging in the park north of Copenhagen. Being able to move where I want when I want. And not least reunion with spring-clad Danish women and the taste of cold beer. And I even come to appear before Bubber a second hunter soldier when he invites me into his TV2 children's program "Bugs Bunny Sunday Club 'to talk about how the children in the Caucasus live forever mine.
The pleasant spring home will be short. Danish Demining Group offer me for job as responsible for their demining operations in Afghanistan. And I thank you yes.

Hunter - at war with the elite: 6 - The Middle Ages anno 2001
By Thomas Rathsack
The hot and humid night air meet me like a wall, when I in April 2001 comes out of the British Airways Boeing 777 at Islamabad International Airport in Pakistan, my first stop on the way to Afghanistan.
A long and grueling trip with noisy and cumbersome passengers has made me tired and I am delighted to come to bed. After waiting an hour for my luggage pushing myself through k�dranden of shouting taxi drivers who smell money at the sight of a Westerner. I will not use a taxi. I get picked up by DDG's chauffeur Hasheem, a small man with a round face and mustache, who kindly offered me welcome and read my luggage in the Office's new Mazda.
On the way through town to DDG's headquarters in a fashionable residential area with many embassies in the city's northern sector F-6 passes we Marriott Hotel. It is enlightened and peaceful to go and Hasheem glorifying its buffet. I also note the contours of the huge Faisal mosque against the night sky.
It seems bleak and makes me think of what awaits me a few days in Afghanistan.
I'm excited. My time in the Caucasus has been intense, but Afghanistan, which I have only read and heard about, sounds like an even more depressing and gloomy place.
Afghanistan has always been a battleground for power in Central Asia. Waging war is part of Afghan culture, whether it's against a rival clan or imperialist powers such as Persia, the United Kingdom or - not least in its modern history - the Soviet Union.
In April 1978 implements the Afghan Communist Party a bloody coup and seize power in the country, which they christen Afghanistan's Democratic Republic. Communists introduce land reforms, allows women to vote, prohibit forced marriages, and replaces the Islamic laws with secular, Marxist laws. Many Afghans consider the government's policy of being infected with western values and are furious that traditional Islamic virtues are let down. Therefore, they flee in their thousands from the cities into the mountains and joining the Islamic Resistance Movement, mujahedin, which has declared jihad, holy war, against the communist government.
The Soviet Union could not let pass, and when Soviet paratroopers landing in Kabul during Christmas 1979, they claim that they are invited by the Communist government. Their mission is to support the government in the fight against mujahedin, which across the country fighting against the government. Years followed by a brutal war in which the mujahedin were found to be an effective and tough opponent of the Soviets. Despite the Russians' use of airplanes, helicopters, tanks, napalm and chemical weapons control mujahedin in 1982 across 75 percent of Afghanistan.
Because of their resistance against the communist government supports the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and Pakistan mujahedin are both financially and materially.
Among other things Stingermissiler which becomes decisive in the fight against the Russians HINDkamphelikoptere. The Islamic Saudi Arabia is also supporting the rebels financially because of their Muslim faith, and another famous sponsor is a certain Osama bin Laden. He sends the support and help from U.S. money and weapons for his fighting Muslim brothers, and in 1988 he founds Al-Qaida to expand the fight against the Soviet Union to the whole world.
In February 1989 the Russians get enough. They pull their forces out of Afghanistan and leave the country with hundreds of thousands of deaths, millions of landmines and a growing civil war between local warlords. In 1992, like Afghanistan, Democratic Republic together, but the war continues another four years with growing success on the court at the time unknown Islamic Taliban movement which is led by veterans of the war against the Russians, Mullah Mohammed Omar. He leads a movement of pious and ascetic warriors, which are very pure in their faith and the will of the people more popular than the unruly mujahedin. Therefore, the Taliban also attracting more troops and win in the 1996 war, when they force most of the other warlords to conclude a peace agreement.
Since the Taliban seize power, they immediately introduce Islamic law in the strictest and most puritanical form. The penalty for theft is cutting off one or both hands. Infidelity triggers public stoning, and people are being hanged to speak out against the Taliban.
It is illegal to wear white socks because white is the color of the Taliban flag. Ban all forms of television, images and music.
Girls Schools closed, and women should not work and educate themselves and do not move outside the home unaccompanied by their husbands, without being dressed in a blue burqa, which covers even the face and eyes. Often women even refused hospital treatment to prevent contact with male doctors.
Furthermore, children no longer play with dragons, and it is illegal for men to have a beard of some length.
Despite all the bizarre and inhumane Taliban takeover is still perceived positively by many Afghans.
Lastly, there is someone who apparently can create law and order in war-torn country. Only in the northeast meetings Taliban local opposition from the so-called Northern Alliance. Internationally, the Taliban more squeezed. Only three countries recognize them as a legitimate government: Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates. The rest of the international community criticizes Taliban's form of government in the strongest terms, and the U.S. argue that the hosts training camps for Islamic terrorists. One of the camps run by Osama bin Laden, who the U.S. accuses of being behind the bombings against U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in August 1998 killed 224 people and injure 5000.
It is this country and these rulers, I in April 2001 to be acquainted with. I am quite alarmed at the prospect of meeting with the Taliban, which represents something that can hardly be more distant and unreal for a Dane.
With the soft democracy consensus mentality in my blood I will now adjust me a fundamentalist dictatorship, which is based on the most extreme interpretation of Islam.
But I am hopeful. Especially when I after a good night's sleep in the DDG-villa waking up to the glorious sight of a fresh deck breakfast and my good old j�gerven Johan Faerch.
Already on our first day at J�gerkorpset Patrol Course in 1990 did Johan particular notice. Partly because he was one man in a navy blue sailor uniforms among 90 soldiers in army green camouflage uniforms, partly because he knows the morning roll call answered by shouting a loud and clear nautical 'fuss'. Since I became best friends with this excellent hunter, and we were virtually inseparable for several years.
So it's both nice and reassuring that Johan will be my closest colleague, the first time in these for me so unfamiliar surroundings.
He has half a year's time was known as Technical Advisor in the DDG's demining program in Afghanistan, but when he does not want to be so much away from his wife and little son, he has chosen to stop. Now I will replace him, and he will assign me demining tasks and introduce me to our Afghan workforce.
The journey to Afghanistan, we're going to have Johan taken several times. Actually, we can fly. Although there are commercial flights because of terrorist risk, and a very rundown airport in Kabul, UN flies weekly to and from town. But the seats are scarce and expensive, and we prefer to actually get the voltage as ten-hour ride offers.
John knows that the trip requires a lot of vehicle and the man behind the wheel, and he knows how the car is packed. We fastsurrer so both tools, several spare, extra shock absorbers, the long-range HF radio, extra fuel, water, food and our baggage ashore Cruiser'en. It is only a half years old, but appears to aging and worn with scratches and dents from previous hardships on the route between Islamabad and Kabul in Afghanistan.
The trip goes to the northeast through the Pakistani city of Peshawar, which adjoins the vast lawless territory Tribal Areas. An area of mountains that runs along the Afghan border and the Pakistani government claims to control, but where smuggling, crime and copy the production of every conceivable weapon is food the way for the people.
The road to Peshawar is paved, the landscape green and lush cultivated fields.
But as we approach the Khyber Pass, the quality of the road deteriorated and the landscape more barren, and the last six hundred miles through the pass at the border town of Torkham is simply a narrow, winding gravel road, where traffic is total confusion: We are running into a right-hand drive Land Cruiser here in Pakistan, where they drive on the left.
But since much of the traffic comes from Afghanistan, where you drive on the right, there is no consensus on which side of the road has the right to drive. Cars, motorcycles, buses, trucks and the richly represented the Pakistani army runs wobbling and honking at both sides and directions of the road.
Especially the worn, overloaded and colorfully decorated, Pakistani trucks - often old, English Bedford called Jingletrucks - with death-defying drive through the pass.
When we finally come to Torkham, it is rather a frontier post than a real city, and the border crossing is only one gate on the road.
In Russia and the Caucasus, I have experienced the disorganized bureaucracy, but this place is an insane example of lack of organization, almost a comical chaos. On each side of the closed border gate stands of hundreds of cars and trucks in crooked cow surrounded by a raging crowd. Shouting and screaming all insist that they are precisely the key to get shipped over, while pushing two Pakistani policemen at the gate awards sticks blow to the most over-zealous in the crowd.
I consider the scenario of disbelief and are pleased that John has done it before. He throws the car into the edge of the road, find his passport and a fistful of dollars out of the glovebox and ask me to follow. We are pushing us through the crowd towards a small brick house beside the gate - PASSPORT OFFICE.
As the only white faces in the crowd inside, we are greeted by many curious glances. But John does not hesitate a second and move resolutely outside the queue and straight to a small wooden table where we have stamped our passports.
Behind the table sits a man who stands out from the hectic mass of people around him. He is dressed in a long black robe with a black scarf on her head and radiates a calm and self-confidence, which does not fit into the surroundings.
He sits erect with his head bent against his papers on the table when we come up to him. Johan submit our passports with dollar bills inside in front of him. Only he did not respond, but after a minute he puts his papers to one side and looks up at us. A couple of boring, expressionless and almost black eyes staring at us from a face with a big, black and well-groomed beard.
In particular, he sees long usk�ggede my face with evident suspicion and contempt. So he takes our passports in hand, studying them carefully and put dollar bills in his desk drawer, which he stamped and signed passports and put them in front of us without us worthy of a glance.
'Fucking Taliban, "John mutters on his way back towards land Cruiser'en, and again I am delighted that John has experience with this crowd. He gets into the car, hit the horn in the bottom and running completely unaffected without the cows over excited people who kicked and beat on the car until we are channeled through the gateway to Afghanistan.
Then we must first against Jalalabad, the largest city in eastern Afghanistan and a trade center for, among other paper manufacturing and agricultural products as oranges, rice and sugar. How to reach us is bad.
Only at best, something you might call a gravel road. Holes in the road is like wave valleys.
Yet we now and then overtaken by old Toyota'er with eight-ten people in the cabin and furniture, luggage and pets on the roof.
Driving here requires a high concentration of the driver, which we call the driver in military language, so this piece notes, we only needed information, and it suits me fine. I want to enjoy nature through the country the size of France. The landscape is incredibly beautiful and magnificent. We pass rushing rivers in valleys surrounded by vertical rock walls with waterfalls and running over large, flat and barren plains and through the green, fertile fields surrounding small towns.
After rodent Jalalabad way steadily upward through deep gorges on the capital Kabul, elevation 1200 meters. Johan driver deftly Country Cruiser'en outside the oncoming traffic, as we only just able to pass with cliffs on one side and the abyss on the other. Closer we come to Kabul, the more the number of Taliban Check Point.
Here sits attentive black-clad men with scarves wrapped around their heads with their standard weapon, AK-47, the carrier of Toyota pickups, which are mounted old, Russian 14.5 mm machine guns, as they point directly into the queue of waiting cars.
Many guards are young guys with thin faces and leaking down the beard.
At a checkpoint, we stopped, and as the only Westerners out of several hundred people, we are the center of all attention. It is clear that the guards entertains an ingrained hatred for us, the infidel Westerners.
We will chase out of the country Cruiser'en which they will search for possible immoral illegal activities such as music, perfume, alcohol or magazines with letp�kl�dte ladies.
An elderly, toothless Taliban, who apparently is in charge at the checkpoint, take hold of my luggage and rummage through my personal belongings with his dirty black fingers. He certainly hopes to find something he can seize and maybe keep or sell later. But there is something there. He throws our passport into the chair, and go without a word back to his people through the boom and ordering it up so we can continue the last 20 kilometers to Kabul on the flat and rocky plateau.
The road is slightly higher than the city, so we encounter a magnificent sight. Kabul appears to be larger than I had anticipated. They just over two million inhabitants and their houses up the entire height of the plateau between the mountains encircling the city. Suburbs with the small, mud houses and dreary concrete apartment blocks built by the Russians in the 1980s stretching up the hillsides. It turns out that the houses are dilapidated and without windows and doors, and they seem empty and deserted. Washing clothes on the line along the windows and a few ruffled and dirty child witnesses, however, about life.
In the center of Kabul is no sight more exhilarating.
In the 1970s the city was a relatively modern city. There were restaurants, cafes, trams, cinemas, and around the swimming pool at the then-fashionable Hotel Intercontinental licked women sun in a bikini. Now the war and the Taliban is, sadly mutilated and torn apart the city and turned back the clock for a people with an average life expectancy at measly 46 years, where only 36 percent of those over 15 years, can read and write.
Only the center is on asphalt roads, and the Taliban government buildings are roughly maintained. Otherwise, most of the roads and most buildings destroyed.
Beautiful old castles and palaces are in ruins.
The vast majority of houses and buildings have bullet holes and abandoned. And large parts of the city is completely without basic necessities such as electricity, water supply, sewerage and telephone.
There is a stench of urine, feces and rotten waste in the streets, and several times I look emaciated men squat in the gutter and literally eat waste directly from it, while cars, motorbikes and people passing close by. Children in almost no clothes sitting alone and apathetic in the central reservation on the road and begging alms.
And on the streets prefer shabby men collected wood on small cars to the local market, where anything is sold in the daily struggle for survival for them and their families.
Under the burning sun is sheep and goat heads in wheelbarrows in a maze with other meat, water melons, scrap iron, wood and used tires. Even the dogs seem more tormented and miserable than I have experienced. A simple bitch with dangling teats and all too apparent rib hopping on three legs down the street.
Not one woman is there to see on the street.
But lots of patrolling the Taliban in pickups, which the regime extended arms are ready to pounce on any irregularities.
We have been running for nearly ten hours, but I feel I have raised several centuries back in time.
The medieval anno 2,001th And as we approach a large roundabout, I get my medieval presumption confirmed. In a lamppost is a human. The dark, bloodshot eyes in the chalk-white face with a beard dunagtigt lifeless stare at me. With their hands tied behind their backs is untouchable body down from the noose, which has squeezed the life out of him. Alongside stands a group of young Taliban and laughs. They apparently consider their work. As it was a trophy after a successful hunt. Other passes corpse in lamp-post completely impassive while they babble away smiling. As if he is not there. It seems to be a fairly common sight in this city.
"Welcome to Afghanistan," says Johan.
Shortly after we arrive at the former embassy district Wasir Akbar Khan, where DDG's house is located. It is clear that the district has been the exclusive buildings in the old European style and mansions with columns, archways and park-like gardens. Many are now dilapidated and the gardens dried up, but there are also some sparkling villas with green lawns and fruit trees. That's DDG-house. A large, white brick house in three floors, surrounded by a two meter high wall, and in front of the house a terrace with fine views over the garden where a gardener is to put in custom flower beds, lawn and apple and orange trees.
DDG is represented here, because Afghanistan is one of the world's most mined countries. In the ten years the Russians have had military forces in the country, has created the battle positions, fortifications and bases around cities throughout the country. Around all these military installations are armored-personnel mines and buried.
In addition, they have left behind large quantities of grenades, rockets and flybomber who either failed to be used or not exploded as intended. The ensuing civil war has only made my problem worse, and it is - still today - a huge problem for the ordinary Afghan, and his family.
Just as I saw it in Chechnya, are men, women and children are frequently killed or maimed here. There are recorded between 250 and 300 mine accidents per month in Afghanistan, and these are all the cases are never recorded.
In 2001, about 7,000 mine clearance in Afghanistan, contributing to the huge cleanup job.
All come from voluntary organizations or the UN, as with state funds employ and train local Afghans to the hard and dangerous work. DDG has been represented in three years as part of this corps of war garbage collectors.
Immediately after our arrival Johan and I put us on the terrace beside the empty swimming pool together with our Swedish sympathetic boss, Frederick. We talk about my mission. There are only a few days, to Johan, the home of the next United Nations aircraft, and I take charge of the entire mine operation.
So we agree that I am already the next day to get up and see the minefield, we work outside the city, half hour drive from our villa.
The time is just over 19, the darkness has settled over the city, and suddenly there will be conspicuously silent. Suddenly I can not hear a single car, bus or truck on the normally busy road outside the house. And no sum from the people.
Only the faint sound of barking dogs that roam for food. How is it, after the Taliban have imposed a curfew, says Fredrik. All traffic outside the home after 19 o'clock is a serious offense and will be severely punished, they have proclaimed.
Perhaps it is this crime, poor fellow in the lamp-post has been guilty of? Despite the memory of the hanged man, I have a great appetite for food as our chef prepares Afghan, and I also drink a beer smuggled American before I am tired after the long drive throw me on the bed in my room on the first floor. Here I fall fast asleep, despite the sounds of dogs bark, the Taliban pickups that patrol the streets, and the mantra voice from the speaker on the rabid Wazir Akbar Kahn mosque half a hundred meters down the street.
The next morning on the way to the minefield we drive through Kabul's southern district. Here are virtually all buildings in ruins. The former magnificent presidential palace is pierced by tank shells and missing almost the entire roof, but two men crawling around up there with the thankless job of patching it with small tin plates.
My field is located in the hills south of Kabul, 400 meters above the city. Here the Russians had fighting positions to defend the city against attack from the south. The field spreads over an area the size of five football fields in front of manufacture is of trenches, and it consists of the fifth anti-tank mines and the rest APL.
Six mine clearing teams, totaling 150 men, working eight hours a day, six days a week. Each team of 25 Afghan mine clearing has a team leader, as with an adult and responsible mining presents his people for me. I greet the sweaty and tired faces and presents me as Johans replacement through our interpreter. Most just look curiously at their new, usk�ggede overall, but some of the youngest gets a little befippede and nervous. We are strangers seems very important to many of them, and we represent a world that they have only vague ideas about.
At least humiliating our Afghan doctor, dr. Koshan, which is always ready for my box to help in any accidents. When we come, he is lying on the stretcher in our ambulance, but sits up abruptly when John opens the door with a jerk. The strong man comes to his feet, comes with screwing up eyes out in the afternoon sun and sticking his meaty fist towards me. Some huge hands with sausage fingers like sausages surrounding my hand, and a wide mouth with abnormally many teeth bare themselves in the sunlight.
Being mine clearing is a very structured and strenuous work process, especially in the rear of the Afghan sun. And dangerous work.
Deadly.
This is done such that each team has an area of typically 50 times 50 meters, as they mark the edges with stones painted red on one half and facing toward the minefield, and white on the other half, overlooking the harmless side. Then each mine clearing assigned a runway at a meter in width, and wearing a protective suit of kevlar on the front and a helmet with a visor in front of his face, he started with a mine detector.
All reflected marked with a red wooden block.
Then stick mine clearing his long pointy knife at an angle of 30 degrees into the ground, inch by inch. When he was nearing the red bricks, he must be extra careful and use small spartellignende rakes and shovels to remove all the soil around the mine. And it must be done Gelinde.
Some mines have already activated by a weight of five kilograms as a solid handshake, and they are plenty big for mine clearing maim, even kill him if he is unlucky.
When the mine is detected, select it with a peg with a red plastic strip, mine clearing and closes its path and continues on a new trajectory. Approximately one hour before the after-work stops so all clearance work and placed all the mines directional loads, which are connected in series and blown away all at once. That's the funny part of the work and it takes the general himself, as a rule of. Today John and I together.
We prefer detonating cord between the day's catch of mines, places detonator and told everyone to seek shelter in the bunker cover, before we give the signal for the next burst and press the shutter button. A deep and hollow bang shakes the sand from the sides to cover the bunker, and Afghanistan is now a little richer in safe and passable ground.
My first burst in Afghanistan celebrate Johan and I with some hard l�bepas up and down by just over two kilometers of gravel road through the minefield in the thin air. We are both training addicts and runners are unwelcome in Kabul. Even out here in a desolate area, we must run in shirt and long pants.
To show a little midriff, and bare legs are sinful, according to Taliban and they have eyes everywhere to watch over their medieval laws are respected.

Hunter - at war with the elite: 7 - Surrounded by Taliban
By Thomas Rathsack
I'm beginning to find me right in my new job and my new surroundings in Kabul. The first few weeks are intense with the new tasks and new partners in the mine environment, which I must get to know. I also spend a lot of time writing reports for our financial sponsors - the EU, DANIDA and SIDA (Swedish counterpart to DANIDA) - and I am fitter our procedures so that they are consistent with the overall framework of the UN's demining program.
Our staff, I also become familiar with. The DDG-villa we have in addition to the gardener and cook the help of a maid, but it is man - women should not work. As managers, we have a dozen Afghans are responsible for about 250 locals who are employed holdvis as mine clearing, small mobile teams, dealing with unexploded ordnance in the area, medical teams and mechanics of our approximately 20 vehicles.
It is approaching a working day for me, and I've decided that today I will drive up to my box and let my routine of clearing procedures.
However, I am just an errand first. My boss Fredrik has morning informed me with a smirk that I need for driving in the Taliban Ministry of Transport.
I have been called to a theory test, and only then can I be declared the right fit to move in the Afghan infrastructure on their own. A bit skeptical, I meet up in the Ministry and will be referred to the office with the issuance of licenses and theory are trying to do. I knock at the door, hear no answer, but enters.
The room is dark and dusty. A small window button lights up the room. Behind a huge desk sits a little old man with a big white beard and wrinkled, crooked fingers interlaced in front of him on the table. He looks up at me with a solemn mine, and equally important tries his boyish assistant look. They welcome both to me with a nod, and the old man whispers a message into the ear of the assistant, who eagerly hurries over to one wall, which is located a plate with a very indistinct road system.
Then turn the head a touch behind the table and the board lights up, but I must still exert myself to see the details. Trot while the boy back to his boss, who whispers him another message in the ear, which he hurries back, pointing to a roundabout on the blackboard and ask the almost incomprehensible English: "What you do here?" I wonder a little about the issue, but does that if there is a traffic cop at the roundabout, I will await his instructions.
And if the roundabout is unattended, I will take into account traffic and drive up when I think it is appropriate.
The boy looks up at the ceiling as if he really reflects on my in-depth answers and then run back to bring it to the old man who looks like he is about to burst out of curiosity. They whisper a little back and forth while they were to me, after which the old expresses an appreciative smile revealing a mouth with only a solitary tooth. Then press his crooked finger solemnly at one of two large contacts he has at his table, and a bulb above the desk is green.
My answer has probably attracted satisfaction. Then the whispers again, and the boy runs back to the blackboard, where even a traffic situation presented to me, and such repeat sessions with yet another green bulb that outcome. Once again the old lit up in his nearly toothless smile, and this time he also gives a handshake congratulations.
I have passed my driving test.
After the surrealist theory test I run up to my box, equipped with my new license. When I arrive, I inform one of team leaders on my errand, so he is aware that I am running in my box on an equal footing with the Afghan mine clearing. I clothe me uncomfortable, ten kilograms heavy kevlarvest, the helmet and face shield and grabs a minesweeper. There is a vacant path in that part of my field closest to the vehicle, and I chose to start there.
After one hour mists visor, I tapdrypper of sweat, my knees are sore and my head feels as if the seething under the sun. I think of our mine clearance, which is located here eight hours a day, six days a week and can not already take a break.
I just take a sip of water and continue the slow and mentally exhausting process.
After some time my viewfinder indicates a reflection from the metal in the soil. Most likely a mine. So now there should be no sudden, uncontrolled and large movements.
I slowly scrub the hard soil away, which almost split into small hard lumps.
There it is. The brown bakelitskal at the mine can be glimpsed five centimeters below the surface.
With your fingers push me away the loose soil and remove a stone, which are adjacent to the mine.
It is a Russian PMN-personnel mine, I can see. It is round, has a diameter of 12 centimeters, a trigger pressure of 5.8 kg and contains just over 200 grams of explosives.
Enough for a child typically will die by the trigger. Wearing my kevlarvest and my visor I can be lucky that I only lose my hands or parts of my arms, if it pops under me. We can not work with gloves, as they hinder the delicate work.
I scraped the surrounding soil and rocks away, so mine is exposed. Although it has been there for years, shining brown bakelite in the sun. Mine is completely intact and ready to maim and kill. I crawl slowly backwards out of my path to find a peg with a red strip on.
At that moment I hear a deep boom followed by a loud and shrill screams. I look up from my path toward the sound and sees a cloud of sand and pebbles. At the foot of the cloud is a mine clearing half upright. He falters slowly backward, while his screams put into a wailing moaning, and he overturned on its side.
I crawl out of my path, throw my minesweeper from me, rip the visor and put in ran over to him. More brush from the nearest lanes are going to drag him into safety. His left hand is turned into a bloody heap of flesh and bone, and he is burned in the face, but otherwise it looks as though both visors and kevlarvesten have served their purpose.
Then dr. Koshan snorting with its robust body, surrounded by his assistants.
He hands out a lot of orders on Afghan and apparently what he has to do with. He will quickly stabilized the wounded mine clearing, giving him a shot of morphine and provide a liquid drop on him. Four mine clearing is commanded to put him on the stretcher and brought to bear him to our ambulance, and within a couple minutes, I see the ambulance disappear with blue flashing and siren to a hospital in Kabul, which the UN operates.
The vast majority of days are dr. Koshan just on the stretcher in the ambulance, but today he deserved his reward. He does his job well, and the unfortunate mine clearing escape relatively merciful. His hand is amputated and his right lung was pierced by a fragment of smoke into the side where kevlarvesten not protect the body. But he will post and of course get paid after the Afghan situation very hefty sum insured from the insurance, all of our mine clearing is covered. In his case it is $ 4500.
It is many years' wages for most Afghans.
Unfortunately, our good insurance too little backlash because some mine clearing wonder in obtaining the insurance, how absurd it may sound.
We have examples where it seems that brush deliberately get a hand, an arm or a leg blown away, so he can support his family several years ahead. I hear even the case in industry where mine clearing deliberately seeks death in my box to get the maximum compensation paid to the survivors, $ 20,000.
Subsequent investigations of this incident shows that the mine was a Russian PMN of the same type as the one I had just uncovered.
Our studies also show that rainfall over the many winters, the mine has been in the ground has probably meant that the mine has turned, and that mine clearance has stuck directly onto the pressure plate on the upper surface of the mine, which causes it to trigger.
After the tough experience, I am tired and want to go home in the DDG-house and enjoy a cold beer on the terrace with Fredrik. I package my equipment up and running along the small dirt road from my box down to the Taliban checkpoint, which lies just after a slight turn. Before the turn slowed we always go, so the two older Taliban in office will not be surprised.
But they do apparently still this afternoon. My side window rolled down and I heard clearly three-four characteristic overlydsknald from automatic weapons.
I hammer the brakes and throw me out the door and into the ditch beside the car.
Here I hit me a minute and then climbs up behind a rock where I can watch coverage of the hundred meters down the road towards the checkpoint. Here he meets my eyes, one of the two Taliban behind the chain, which is excited over the road. He says with a goofy grin and waving with his hand and with his AK-47 in the second as if everything is in perfect order. I know him and know that he knows who I am, because he knows my box and my Land Cruiser is easily recognizable, long antennae on the radiator. He just seemed obvious that there would be something special today.
First comedy of the 'Ministry of traffic, so debilitating mine in hot sun and a dramatic accident in my box, and finally fire.
Lortedag.
We continue undeterred our demining over the summer of 2001. Besides the minefield we take care also of all the unexploded munitions lying around in many parts of Kabul and in surrounding provinces. We have an explosive ordnance disposal service or EOD, Explosive Ordnance Disposal. It is small, mobile teams of two or three vehicles and 10-12 man running around and blow away the UXO - unexploded ordnance - often just lying around on the ground where previously there was ammunition depots and defenses.
Areas that will be used by women and children, our main focus. It's schools, villages, and where villagers fetch water. The problem is that many of the local simply do not know that the surviving grenades and rockets are dangerous. To our horror, we therefore sometimes both children and adults carry around deadly munitions that can explode when it should be.
To control EOD part is my Swedish colleague Rasmus a very competent gentleman, helped by a legend in EODmilj�et, English Peter Le Soir, which we hire as a consultant. He is at this point in the middle of the fifties and plenty millionaire in pounds, but completely indifferent to almost everything except mines and unexploded ordnance. Even the few holidays, he holds, he spends to dive after unexploded s�ammunition. One day he will also have an accident at our office.
He sits in his chair and is investigating a Chinese hand grenade when it suddenly hissing and whistling at him. He once only to throw it a few feet into the room before it explodes. Peter is struck by a large number of metal fragments throughout the body and face and is hospitalized in a local hospital.
Here goes the gangrene in nearly his entire body, so he shifted to a military hospital in Kabul, which ensures that he recovers completely.
One Sunday afternoon I'll go with Rasmussen when he the UN is asked to check a UXO-like object on the outskirts of town by the royal palace. We pack the car, drive there and inspect the area where an object sticking out of the ground with its round shape, suspiciously resembles an unexploded anti-tank mine. Soon hundreds of local flock together, so it virtually impossible to keep them at a safe distance, but we have explained to them that the object can be very dangerous, so people keep a little distance.
Wearing safety equipment we slowly uncovers the subject and are extra aware of a lurking mine is activated when we remove the large mine. In two hours we are and undermine jealously and nervously with our little buckets and get just as slowly revealed more and more. Incidentally, I look up and notice a large number of lamp posts, which obviously does not work. I see that all the poles are mounted round lamps, excluding all the above, where we dig. It dawns on us that it is a lamp, we are digging out. We dig it totally free and it shows up for the locals who seem very impressed, even though we do not really feel as large liberators this time.
We turn a Friday, the weekly day off, because Rasmussen says he has heard from a colleague in a sister organization that runs a litter around by a large, abandoned house in the northern part of town.
Since he believes that it would be nice to have a dog in the villa to make the often isolated and lonely moments more lively, he seems that we must go and investigate.
I am a bit skeptical. I see a problem if we or our colleagues at some point will have to evacuate from Afghanistan in haste. Who will then take your dog? Under no circumstances should it be left alone after having become accustomed to human care. The Taliban will probably not take loving care of it. Few people in the Muslim world have dog because of love when the dog in Islam is considered to be a dirty animal in line with pigs. Thus they live many street dogs in Kabul not only a wretched life of hunger and disease, they are also greeted by hostility from the people. To my great anger often I see children who throw stones at puppies and kicks them, and I've seen dogs that have been cut off ears or been maimed in another way.
I let myself be persuaded to run out and look for puppies. In an hour we go in vain around the abandoned house and the overgrown backyard. Only when we have given up and is about to rise into the Country Cruiser'en, Rasmus discovers a small piece of black fur under bushes in a small ditch which we are parked along. There is a puppy and gasping in the heat. After judging the size is not more than five or six weeks old. It turns her head slightly, opens her eyes slightly and then down her head down in the dirty ditch again. I lift the dirty fur clump up in hand, finds that it is a bitch and that she is very weakened and very warm.
I gently take her home to the DDG-villa, places her in the shade of a fruit-tree in the garden and serves a plate of cold milk and a second with liver pate.
She slurp a little milk in it and takes a little bit of liver p�t�. Then she looks up at me, lie down and fall asleep.
In the evening when Rasmus and I sit in the living room and keeps us informed about the world outside the Afghan bedlam through the daily news on BBC World, the puppy comes running into the room. Now with life in the eyes.
And as the largest saying she jumps up on the sofa for me down in my lap and begins to chew and lick my fingers.
Right there I realize that she is my dog. And I promise myself that I will not abandon her, regardless of the level of practical challenges it may pose future. In the following weeks watching our employees Afghans gaping for, while I Hegner into the garden and the carpenter a doghouse on the terrace.
She would of course have a name, and since it was Rasmussen who saw her first, I think she must have a Swedish games and decide for myself Selma after the Swedish author Selma Lagerl�f.
In addition to our mobile explosive ordnance disposal teams and the clearing of the field outside Kabul, we have also de-mining operations in Jalalabad and Ghazni province about a hundred kilometers southwest of Kabul. Here we have just been finished to clear a bigger minefield around an old Soviet base that was heavily surrounded by mines to defend against mujahedin are. It goes without saying that this is a great day, every time we have cleared a field completely, and it is also important to mark the clearing of solemn and formal manner. Not only can we have the local people show that they can again be safe and secure in their daily lives. Our mine clearing is also truly proud of their project, and it increases their work ethic to show them recognition in the form of a ceremony.
Preferably with a number of important guests. Even if they are Taliban, which many of our mine clearance has absolutely no sympathy for.
Our people in Ghazni has planned a major transfer ceremony for the local Taliban governor. The governor has in his generosity accepted the invitation and reported that he will come with his retinue at 15th Therefore, our driver Hasheem, our operations officer, Hayat and I even took the trip in the Land Cruiser'en little before noon, so we are sure to be there in time.
Being late to the ceremony will be a disaster and at worst could have implications for cooperation between the DDG and the Taliban.
The last five weeks I have lost my 11 kilograms as a result of a strong water diarrhea, which I suspect our chef and his lack of cleanliness and kitchen hygiene ditto to be causing. 20-30 times a day I am on the barrel, often involuntarily. I grow weaker and weaker, and finally in Pakistan I am diagnosed with am�bedysenteri as I receive large quantities of penicillin against, so it almost disappears. But I probably never entirely escape, and to this day I can still get completely unprovoked seizures related to amoeba.
On this journey to Ghazni, I am however not been reviewed yet. And during the two-hour drive on a parody of a road I have to keep multiple involuntary stop, when I stagger out of the car and put my unattractive mark on the Afghan soil. With ill-concealed amusement of my Afghan companionship.
The bumpy gravel road is the only tangible evidence of human activity in this pointless place on the planet. Otherwise the landscape is dominated by desert, open and flat plains, broken only by steep mountains. My senses detect the magnificent sight, but due to the diarrhea, I sit most of the time more apathetic in the front and has no real energy to absorb impressions.
When we cross a ridge and get a unique vision of a huge delete surrounded by mountains and intersected by the straight road, I notice a tiny little black dot on the right side of the road on the horizon a few miles away. At this distance it is impossible to see what it is, but I keep on eye on the dot, as we approach. It is too small to be a Taliban checkpoint, and it would not make sense to place such a middle of the plain.
Maybe it's an animal that has been hit and left in a ditch, but I can not get the silhouette's shape and size to resemble an animal.
Whatever does it not natural for this subject or this creature right there.
When we get sufficiently close, yesterday it suddenly dawned on me what I'm looking at. A human. A man in a wheelchair. I stare incredulously at the leaning figure, sitting alone in the 50-60 degree heat under the relentless summer sun.
System - my blurry brain disease can hardly grasp that this is a man - apparently registering our car approaching, the figure is one wheel on the wheelchair to turn against us.
Hasheem slow down, both for the person in a wheelchair, and because we all are speechless over the sight. We are approaching slowly poor fellow, and I see now that it is an old man. Or rather a human-like ruin with a pained and lined face marked by poverty and pain. He is missing both his legs and his black rags are pulled up under the two pieces that are left. On his head he carries a dusty black scarf.
As we pass him as he runs in slow motion and difficulty with his arms toward the car. He sits there simply to beg from passing vehicles. In the side mirror, I see him disappear into the cloud of dust as the car leaves, still with his arms stretched towards us, while he tries to turn the body around in the car direction.
I will never forget the slender body, it almost skull like face and the slight spark of life in both eyes, which stared expressionless at me from the bottom of the black eye sockets.
How had he come there? There were at least 10 miles to a settlement.
And how did he warm? Nobody could survive here longer.
To this day I am amazed that I did not help him. Why do not I ordered the car stopped and gave him some bottled water or a few dollars. Just a corner of the infinite wealth, I had over him. I could have made a huge difference for him.
Maybe I was paralyzed for a moment because of the surreal in the experience.
Maybe I thought that someone had placed him there for awhile and just would immediately come back to take him home to his family. I can not remember my thoughts at the moment. But for several years turned the image of the old man in a wheelchair on the desolate plain back. Just until I seven years after meeting a colleague with Pakistani background and great insight into the Afghan situation, which gives me an explanation.
He tells me that in Afghanistan are organized criminal gangs who abduct children or very young men and deliberately invalidate them, for example by amputating limbs or cutting their tongue out. Then stack formulas have no hope of a normal life. No family, no friends, no care and no education. They are totally dependent on these cynical and bestial kingpins who use them as beggars, as a source of income.
It is probably the fate that has surpassed the old man on the plain. He will also run every morning to beg alms of the few passing cars and will be downloaded again in the evening. God only knows which and in what miserable conditions. Day after day, month after month, year after year, he has probably lived in this nightmare, and he shall continue until his body gives up, or his captors no longer consider him an asset, leaving him to certain death .
My thoughts are still circling the old man when we arrive in my box and put in a small space where all our mine clearing waiting excited and proud to have made a few square kilometers of fertile land safe for their countrymen.
Ghazni province after Afghan relationship prolific, and most farmers grow their crops in the fields around the green groves, where water runs through the small, cleverly landscaped canals. These irrigation systems have for centuries been the lifeline for the Afghan farmer. But since the Soviets invaded the country, these square kilometers of their land has been transformed into minefield. Peasants and their families move into the fields anyway.
They know that it can be dangerous, but they are simply forced to it, as these crops do not have a livelihood.
In addition, they carry my box to get to Ghazni city, where they sell their products on the market. Therefore, it is not uncommon to see children, adults and animals in the area which has been crippled and have lost hands, arms, legs or eyes as a result of exploding mines.
But now the local population to move safely in the area, and the ceremony with the presentation to the provincial governor himself will take place in a shady and lush grove in the heart of the now cleared minefield. At traditional Afghan ways our people have been pretty clean in the square. In shade, they put a small low table, which in today's rise is decorated with a white tablecloth, and they have prepared tea and cookies for later.
Around the clearing, they have set pots of flowers and plants, and on one side of the table set out a series of chairs for the prominent company of the governor in the middle, flanked by his followers, our operations officer, and I humbly on the wing.
Everything is ready, and all our staff stands ready behind the table when the Governor arrives surprisingly accurate in a black Toyota pickup with a bunch of young, aggressive appearance on the Taliban left. They are all dressed in long, black, loose robes and has the characteristic black scarves wrapped around their heads.
And, of course the obligatory AK-47 as any Taliban standard weapons.
Out of the car enters a fedladen and surprisingly young governor dressed in a shiny white robe and a little white hat. A stark contrast to the rest of his entourage.
I walk toward him, watching him in his small, black eyes, who exudes anything but kindness and welcome. He bows stiffly but politely at this beardless infidel Westerner.
I have several Taliban were urged to bring a beard. But whenever I have the loud and clear English he made clear that he under no circumstances should interfere in my facial hair. And he also can run me a certain place. It tends to put a stop to further objections. But on this particular day and representing the DDG would not it be neat to answer Taliban governor so directly again, if my lack of beard becomes a conversation topic.
While guests will be shown in place, I notice that many of our mine clearance sees the governor and his gang with the utmost respect. Some look decidedly timid out. When guests are in place, it's me, via an interpreter welcome.
I'm telling cards on DDG's work and mission and expresses pride and pleasure to hand over the nyryddede parcels to the local community who can now grow their crops without endangering life and limb. So runs one of our people a solemn photo session, and are poured tea and biscuits served.
I have not the slightest desire to involve myself more with the Governor and are seated in my chair. But I note that our snake of an operation officer, Hayat, immediately stroked over to him and is more than willing to converse with the governor, now loosened up tremendously and almost giggling sit and stare curiously in my direction.
As the only beardless white man surrounded by Taliban and other Afghans, I feel quite isolated and alone and wondering about whether representatives of this xenophobic, fundamentalist regime in fact is us, the infidels, slightly grateful. For our money we finance brought clearing operations in their country, often risking their lives, and can now present the ultimate prize: a community where life is safe and significantly easier for the population.
And then mix in power in our beard growth, attire and our general conduct.
As a Dane it is incomprehensible that people can have such an outlook, and support a society that oppresses its own people, particularly women.
Much of the Taliban is very poorly educated and presumably deeply indoctrinated through their upbringing. But leaders are not ignorant. They are often well educated and well aware of western conditions. Their motivation is a fierce hatred for the West and our values, and a feeling of frustration and inferiority about not having evolved into something near the same degree as the West.
As I sit there in the mineryddede grove, I have no idea what the governor thinks about me. However, I know that other Taliban watching us from the DDG with mitigating eyes because we are mine clearing. Us consider the Taliban to relatively manly. Unlike 'meal-manager' from the other relief organizations.
I skeleton onto the babbling couple and shaking inside my head.
So I'm going to me politely welcome the Governor and strolling out into the secured grove.
Only when I'm all alone, I notice how beautiful the surroundings really are. But the world, I find myself in is so strange that it almost could be, and despite the fact that I have chosen this job, I stand and I am unspeakably to get away.
I do not know that I must get to spend much more time in Afghanistan than I have planned. 

Hunter - at war with the elite: 8 - New World Order
By Thomas Rathsack
The day stands out in advance.
DDG's Head from headquarters in Copenhagen, Bischoff, has announced his arrival to greet us and to keep abreast of our various demining operations.
Bo has a background as the sergeant in the Army, is an economist and a period working as one of the expensive boys in a large consulting firm. But as some others, however, he lacked soul and nervous in his life and took the excitement as the column driver for humanitarian shipments on the roads of the Balkans at the time in 1994-1996 when there was most unrest in the region.
He has since worked with humanitarian demining in Southeast Asia and Africa and started the DDG in the late 1990s.
Bo is a tall, charismatic and shrewd man with an unusual goat's beard, which he nulrer while incoming listening to what people have to say. He has the right rare ability that he can listen. Not just hearing what you say, but actually listen.
I can be really good like Bo and am looking forward to his visit. In the morning I prepare our update. For dinner I fetch him in Kabul airport, where he arrives with a UN flight from Islamabad. In the afternoon, we sit on the DDG-villa terrace and chat and enjoy a gin and tonic. And in the evening we eat dinner and talk further on the terrace under the full moon. We talk several times that we have not seen the BBC World all day because our satellite receiver does not work.
This day - the 11th September 2001 - is the only link in and out of our house Thrane & Thrane satellite phone.
By 23 o'clock the call in the operating room in the basement. I go down and take it.
It is our so-called desk officer in Copenhagen, which facilitated nervous in his voice asking if we have heard the news. We have, as I said no, so he introduces me quickly throughout the world agenda, as we have been happily unaware. He says that one of the strongest symbols of the American West Freedom, World Trade Center in New York, hit by two planes, and that it is probably a terrorist attack, but it has not yet been confirmed.
I'm shocked. Deeply. And it gets even more when he calls back 20 minutes later and confirms that it is a terrorist attack with a total of three planes on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon in Washington.
Immediately call us for our sister organizations and the UN headquarters and will be informed that al-Qaida and Afghanistan thus be associated with terrorist attacks.
In both the UN and the NGO environment speaks already about to evacuate from the city - it makes no sense to stay. It is at least certain that all mine is immediately suspended under these new circumstances.
Bo, Fredrik and I are discussing our options and decide to evacuate to Pakistan.
We pack quickly our operations room down, inform our local man that he should let a guard will be at the villa and jams as the most important cases for the trip ashore Cruiser'en: water, n�drationer and extra fuel.
Before we make arouse impure to 04 o'clock next morning, we receive the final update from Copenhagen. Both towers in New York have collapsed and people have died 2000-3000. I do not sleep much the night before we leave the villa at 04.30. We come through Kabul and a few Taliban checkpoints, and I'm running so quickly to which it is now possible to Khyber Pass and the border post Torkham.
I have insisted that comes with Selma, and it's Bo accepted. Fortunately, he dogs happy, because when he sits with her in the back seat, the result of her motion sickness transported down into his lap. The entire four times. It is so fortunately, the biggest incident we have before us nine hours later arrive in Islamabad and the DDG-comfortable house in the green, well maintained embassy district.
Already the same evening as air attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon swears 19 NATO countries' leaders called Musketeers for the first time in Nordatlantpagtens 52-year history. A decision on collective self-defense, which is enshrined in the Charter Article 5, which states that an armed attack against one NATO country is the same as attack on all. And then there beaten again.
On 21 September sent the first vanguard of 'Operation Enduring Freedom' - Operation Enduring Freedom - to Afghanistan. It consists of six F16s and 150 men, including soldiers from the elite U.S. Delta Force and British SAS to scan the infamous cave complex at Tora Bora Mountains along the border with Pakistan.
On 2 October presents U.S. evidence that there is direct connection between terrorist attacks on 11 September and Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida bases in Afghanistan and hence the Taliban, giving al-Qaida shelter and refuse to cooperate with the West to close down the terrorist network's training camps and hand over their leaders with Bin Laden in the lead.
On 7 October is the first attack by American and British planes and missiles.
For us in the DDG-house in Islamabad, the weeks of limbo. We have no idea what to do and have seen just such a stand. However, I have the pleasure to help when we are contacted by the U.S. military who will listen, if we hold some of them useful information.
Despite the photo ban under the Taliban, I rather take some photos, including of the military barracks, I have driven past in my time in the country.
Since we do not expect that we will resume our operation in Afghanistan, and when the mood in Pakistan even after the hand becomes tense, and it seems more and more risky to be Whiteface here, we begin to establish emergency. First we prepare to evacuate to India and we provide visa and submit plans for our escape route.
But Bischoff decides to send us on an internal course on explosive ordnance disposal in Eritrea in East Africa, where DDG also have an operation.
But I must return home and in Denmark and have Selma installed with my family.
So I purchase a cage, fill out the necessary papers and get her on the flight from the Pakistani carrier PIA. Since it is not exactly the world's most trusted airlines, especially when it comes to livestock, I insist on speaking with the captain when I come on board. First, it flatly rejected, but when I become extremely aggressive towards a Pakistani flight attendant, I get an audience and ensures me that the captain knows that there is a dog on board and that there is sufficient oxygen in the animals' cabin in the aircraft's hold . I am sure that the captain never ever seen anything like it, but he confirms, and it gives me a bit quiet, but only comes fully to me as I in Copenhagen opens Selma green cage, and she vigorously wagging accepting me .
Selma should prove to be one of the best decisions of my life. She has now been my faithful companion of eight years and is the time of writing on the floor beside me.
Granted. I love dogs. Dogs - and other animals - miserable life has always made a big impression on me and my sore point. I have had the great pleasure of helping miserable street dogs in both Chechnya, Eritrea, Afghanistan and Iraq, where I have always made sure to have some food with the emaciated dogs trissede around in dreary scenarios for food. Call me sloppy and naive. Absolutely fine with me. The room seemed at least obviously, that I was daft.
After a few days at home in October, I fly to Asmara, the capital of Eritrea. Here you have two years of war between Ethiopia and Eritrea, where 70,000 people died, among other things led to the front lines in southern Eritrea is littered with minefields and UXO, unexploded ordnance as flybomber, grenades and rockets. The idea is that we must achieve in routine blasting away of UXO. After a short briefing in the DDG headquarters in Asmara, I run the UK's best and most experienced ordnance clearing, Jorgen Sorensen, and a few other colleagues, the approximately 10 hours through the lush and beautiful highlands to the open spaces south.
DDG's camp is isolated in the middle of the savannah.
The nearest town is several hours away and consists of some old, worn mud huts, as the local mine clearing staff, chefs and our outside lives, eats and sleeps in. I've never really been to Africa before and are very impressed by the wildlife. On my first run out and away from the camp along the red dirt road under I see three snakes, gazelles and several giant birds. Less idyllic is the area itself, we train at. Ammunition and parts of weapons are scattered across the terrain, and the match abandoned positions we see repeatedly in human bones.
Our focus is first and foremost to defuse flybomber between a half and a full ton, either left or are not detonated when they hit the ground and removing personnel and anti-tank mines - as in Afghanistan. The terrain in Eritrea does, however, that we in the manual clearing of mines may begin with a so-called mine detonator, a Danish-designed vehicle using a big roll with heavy shackles mounted grinds through the earth and detonate the mines it encounters. However, there is no guarantee that the flail is all mines so that the area be cleared manually anyway, but it can be done much faster because of the flail.
Immediately prior to our arrival has an antitank mine escaped flail chains and are detonated when the wheel on the rear axle hit. Just about this shaft sits flail out in an armored cab, but mine has been so strong that he was whirled around in the cab as it was a dryer. It is the day a Dane named Jens, and he gets a broken foot and will incur other less serious injuries. Fortunately, there is no accident, while I'm in the camp, and after 14 fruitful clearing days we will come back to Asmara.
From there, the trip soon after to leave home in Denmark, where a socialist government wins the election on 20 November. And as one of his first acts will consult Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen on 5 December after the American desire for the Foreign Policy Committee on whether the Danish elite soldiers will participate in the US-led effort in Afghanistan.
The pick of me at the thought of Danish hunters in Afghanistan. It almost goes without saying that I must contribute my knowledge and experience, so I contact J�gerkorpset and tells about my interest. Shortly after I become with Rasmus sent to Kabul to oversee DDG-house.
In the city the situation is tense and uncertain.
U.S. forces in cooperation with the Northern Alliance evicted the Taliban from the city and many of the northern parts of the country.
It is the people of Kabul, apparently happy, but they are uncertain and stay indoors and make only the most necessary chores in the city. The streets are therefore more or less deserted during the frosty days and nights. It is largely only stray dogs pjosker around in their endless quest for food and warmth.
We are worried that the DDG-house has been looted. We have only had a single call - our 17-year-old manservant - to live there, and he has not posed any threat to any Taliban who wanted to steal our vehicles or furniture during their escape from the southern provinces of country. But our joy is all untouched, and we spend a week in the house to pack it further along. And train. I have now got together a decent gym in the house, but there has never been so much time to use it now.
The winding staircase from the basement through the hall and continue up on the first floor I use for interval training, and in our small gym on landing at 1st floor pulls me in weight equipment, as with a good dose of creativity is prepared using old gear and metal bars and a local blacksmith.
In those days, I note the characteristic condensation trails miles of the city from the huge American ottemotorers B52 bombers. On the deep blue sky makes the large, targeted swing southward to escape their deadly cargo over Tora Bora. And I think only that I want the same path. Fortunately there is a day of a welcome mail in my inbox. It is from J�gerkorpset, and they want me home to participate in preparations for the imminent mission in Afghanistan.
I've got what I want it, immediately terminate my contract with DDG and go home to Copenhagen and then to Aalborg.
The new world order is revolutionizing defense.
Denmark has in recent times only participated in peace keeping missions, where the warring sides - to prevent them again go to war against each other - has invited the Danish soldiers in Cyprus, Gaza Strip, Croatia, Macedonia, Caucasus, Kashmir in India , Georgia and Eritrea. From 1991 with the corvette Olfert Fischer in Kuwait for the first Gulf War to Denmark, however, a new military engagement, and from J�gerkorpset have small groups of hunters were sent on two occasions to Sarajevo in Bosnia in 1995 and Kosovo in 1999.
Now we need to hunters for the first time sent and added overall strength of the real war. We need the front line to reconnoiter and gather intelligence to create the basis for goal of the coalition presence: the fight against Taliban and al-Qaida.
Thus, I assembled with 101 combat ready counterparts J�gerkorpset and Fr�mand Corps when Anders Fogh Rasmussen send us away from Aalborg Air Base, 9 January 2002.

Hunter - at war with the elite: 9 - In the war against the Taliban and al-Qaida
By Thomas Rathsack
It is with a good dose of joy that I arrive at the flight base in Kandahar, one of the three southernmost provinces of Afghanistan. I have almost an accounting to make up. In just eight months I've lived in this country and has been considered a second-class human usk�gget of the Taliban rulers. I have been insulted, because I insisted on not having a beard, I have indeed often been spat after the street in Kabul. Now I'm back and bears uniforms and weapons.
I am a part of Task Force K-Bar. The first elite unit in the war on terror. We exist from October 2001 to June 2002 and consists of 1,300 elite soldiers from countries including U.S. U.S. Navy SEALs, Special Air Service from Australia and New Zealand, Command Special Force from Germany, the Norwegian Jegerkommando - and so J�gerkorpset and Fr�mand Corps from Denmark, which reads under the name Task Force Ferret.
Our mission: to locate and seek out Taliban and al-Qaida for destruction.
At nine months after the Task Force K-Bar 42 reconnaissance missions and an unknown number of combat missions, flying to 115 dead and 107 captured. Including prisoners of Danish hunters twice Afghans handed over to Americans.
The Taliban since 1996 have devastated their country and people with their medieval outlook. Now much of the western world nations with the Americans leading unified their military forces in Operation Enduring Freedom. And it delights me that the Taliban and al-Qaida is pressed. They are driven from all the major towns and training camps across the country and has taken flight to the southernmost provinces of Waziristan border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Especially the mountains in the southeastern part of the country is a favorite getaway for both the Taliban and al-Qaida. U.S. spy planes have seen hectic activity in the hostile provinces Paktika, Paktia, Lowgar and Nangahar, the latter better known as the caves in Tora Bora. Fighting the enemy against us, coalition units based in their safe places to escape-called safe houses in Pakistan or from small villages on the Afghan side of the border.
When we arrive at Kandahar Airfield, KAF, the airfield fresh scars after the Taliban's hasty flight a few weeks earlier. Almost none of the sand-colored buildings of this dusty and idle air base is intact. Only a few have doors or windows, and barracks content is spartan: mattresses on the floor, dirty kitchens, waiting rooms without benches or chairs, overskidne toilets and communication equipment from the Russians before time. The roads on the base are formed of gravel or sand. At best, patchy asphalt. And strewn around the base are mines and unexploded ordnance, such as engineering units in a hurry to blow away.
The database was previously used for domestic flights, and the worn-out Russian Antonov Turboprop airplanes are on the cement square in front of the terminal building and similar vingeskudte monuments from a bygone era. In stark contrast stands the Americans gleaming state of the art military hardware.
Armored vehicles with the latest weapons systems, radar systems, transport helicopters and giant C17 transport aircraft, which methodically come and go throughout the night with new supplies of equipment, food and drink to the hungry war machine - all movements on the day is at that time ruled by the Taliban believed to have a number of Stinger ground-tilluft missiles. Ironically, the same missiles as the Americans in the 1980s gave the mujahedin in their fight against the Russians.
Few weeks before the operational teams from the elite units in Task Force K-Bar has arrived, has about 800 infantrymen from the U.S. Marine Corps, U.S. Marine Corps (USMC), the intake and secure base until a few months will be replaced by regular U.S. Army units. It is very reassuring to know that the USMC is in charge of security. It is a device that I have great respect for, and knowing that 800 Marines keep watch, means that the quality of my sleep gets a god up.
Contrary to many other U.S. Marine Corps units are not so fixated technology and operates mostly under primitive field conditions with older equipment. Historically it's always the young Marines, who first inserted into bloody and intense operations across the globe, where they always demonstrate a high degree of discipline and courage. And when I talk to them, they also have a friendly attitude and show a sincere interest in who I am and where I come from. Although they are highly proud of being American marines, but a bit humble, because, as they say: 'USMC is only a small unit. `' Only 'in this case is 190,000 men.
I can not bear to tell them that the Danish army has an ambition to have 1,500 soldiers posted in missions.
KAF will serve as the main base for some of the elite units responsible for operations in high risk zones in the southern and eastern Afghanistan. Throughout the first half of 2002 is still primitive base, without the usual welfare facilities that Western soldiers today are more or less take for granted. But in subsequent years is the base transformed into an impressive pace, as only Americans have the resources. From one primitive and worn provincial airport into a modern autonomous mini-community with warm, running water, modern residential containers with satellite TV, internet, direct telephone lines to the whole world, bus routes, hospitals, Burger Kings, Pizza Huts, restaurants, shopping and fitness centers.
Today KAF Afghanistan's largest military base and occupied 16000-18000 soldiers.
In the heart of KAF is a separate fenced section for elite units. None other than us have access. We are a camp in the camp. And we Danes from Task Force Ferret has an old, oblong stone building consisting of 10-15 small rooms and an area of approximately 50 times 150 meters. A compressed camp with sleeping tents, dining tent, communications center, kitchen facilities, toilet facilities and logistics department with spare parts and equipment.
We sleep in cramped military tents without heat, and since there is often measured tens of freezing temperatures at night in January and February, skutter we are in our sleeping bags on camp beds. Others sleep in small rooms at four times three feet.
Each one square centimeter in both the tent and space are exploited. Arms hanging on hooks from the ceiling. Boots and shoes hanging on the hook. Sneaky small bookshelf systems are bolted to the bed. Personal matters are in boxes under their beds. And all the walls are plastered with maps and sketches - and of course a few 'titty posters. Toilet facilities are a demonstration udi basic carpentry skills: three wooden panels around a plastic chair with a hole in the middle of the clip and a mackintosh die.
Shower facilities are more advanced, because our creative mechanics using the hose from a vehicle's radiator has managed to develop a system that heats a barrel by just 100 liters of water. Our camps are 102 soldiers so patiently in the queue in the hope of a free bladder bag that we can fill it with lukewarm water and hang on a hook in the bath tent to enjoy a soporific beam from the bag small cock.
The dining tent is the daily dose of food exclusively from the Army standard field rations for the first few months. Gastronomic matters as k�lfrikass�, gardener pan and other dubious delights. With all the preservative containing rations, the total life expectancy Task Forces have been extended considerably.
Fresh fruits and vegetables are excluded.
Actually it is a problem for some operational hunters, when there is no proper food with proper vitamins, minerals and proteins.
A general fatigue and lack of energy arrives at some. For example, in myself. It is obviously completely unacceptable, given the extreme physical hardships, as the operational deployments require. Mads Tooth Arden will be the better end of winter, when increased supplies allow.
As the camp's assembly room and bar, we have a room with mud walls. Again, our carpentry skills tested, and with wood collected in different places at the base, we eventually created a nice and helpful bar counter, small tables, chairs, various sofas and even a covered patio in front of the bar - which of course we baptize 'K-Bar'. The problem is that we do not have beer or any alcohol in the bar the first several weeks.
Thus, water is the only lubricant when exchanging robber 'and soldiers' stories among bar's large, bearded guests.
There is a nice informal atmosphere in the camp. You see movies in soveteltene crisscrossing the organization, high and low in the hierarchy play cards in the dining tent, and there will be gossip and burnt tobacco on the square in front of the tents at night. Even governors loosens seriously. Everyone in camp understands the seriousness of our mission and are deeply serious when it comes to operational matters. So it simply is not necessary to enforce the rigid military game shape.
One morning as I have just been in a shower tent, pass me wearing panties a grizzled gentleman in shorts, wore upper body, sunglasses and a urine sloshing half-liter plastic bottle in each hand. It is really the head of J�gerkorpset, later head of the entire Danish battalion, Frank Lissner, who, like the rest of us do not want to leave his warm sleeping bag in the middle of the night and move hundreds of meters down through the darkened camp in the frosty night to one of pee holes. To meet his boss in such an outfit and the situation is obviously not an everyday occurrence. But here we exchange friendly good morning greetings, as if the circumstances are the most natural on this earth.
In the beginning I am a part of the team, made up of intelligence officers, planners and liaison to other nations and entities. It is my job to help with all my special knowledge from my years as a private mine clearing. I have sketches and drawings that show Russian minefields, and I know what areas of operation are infected by UXO after a decade of fighting between the Russians and the mujahedin are.
Moreover, the threat from mines and UXO increased after the U.S. bombing raids in late 2001. A general rule is that 5-10 percent of all fired shells and bombs for technical reasons not detonate when the crackdown, and we obviously have to deal with when we are planning operations.
It is certainly not my dream position to sit behind the desk. But I have to manage with the first game. I'm just happy to be back in J�gerkorpset again and find myself in one of the world's hotspots. But already from the first day I did not fail to give a clear reminder that I want to make operational service in a patrol and not as a part of the team.
Military operations are the core of a professional soldier's identity and eligibility, and I have Jaegercorps always found it most attractive to be operational in a patrol.
To do service there is for me the greatest privilege that can be achieved as a soldier. It is only there that you will ultimately tested in what has been practiced for years. So my heart lies with the squads and my friends there.
Not to serve in an office in a team where I can sit on my face, sipping a cup of lukewarm coffee, produce papers and sucked into the system's many-headed bureaucratic monster. Respect - and gratitude - to those who want it. But it is not where I belong. I work as too focused on getting away from the team and takes full advantage of the opportunity to leave the desk and get out on missions in the field where I can be used to help blow away the Taliban ammunition depots.
My eight years away from J�gerkorpset means I have a lot to catch up. The corps has up through the 1990s undergone a huge development in both task intervals, material and cultural. The unit I left in 1993, was not an operational mindset. Ideas behind the training and theory was not prepared operations because of the political team did not wish to allow deployment in war zones in the corps first three decades.
The defense was not in combat during the Cold War, in addition to softer UN missions such as in Cyprus and we found it completely by 1992 is unlikely that we would get to participate in international missions.
The unit I am experiencing now, they are young, strong types, which hurls about in terms of operation types and procedures that I have not heard before. So I quickly discover that a number of pundits happily have turned the Corps from being a remote opklaringsenhed to be a first class operation ready elite unit. Just as the army during its missions in the 1990s in the Balkans underwent a huge change.
Here in the first years of the 21st century will be the Corps of trained and equipped to a very challenging and elusive battlefield to face an enemy who is not acting from a solid and predictable pattern. An enemy who give a damn for all previously recognized and respected conventions of warfare. Using methods such as terrorism, sabotage and guerrilla struggle, and often difficult to distinguish from the civilian population.
Not that the corps today does not resolve the tasks of information gathering. We do certainly, and we are in all modesty, some of the best in the world for it. But today, the corps also liberate hostages evacuate downed air crews, protect VIPs, eliminate and solve key lokaliseringsog destruction operations with special vehicles.
In addition, all types of climate, we must be able to operate in: desert, jungle, arctic cold and of course the wind blew dank and Danish winter weather, which actually is some of the harshest climate, one can operate as a soldier. The desert is hot and tough, but it's okay if you have water. Arctic cold is bad, but dry. But cold, windy and humid weather we have in Denmark are the three worst conditions. Furthermore, it is dark much of the year, which may well be optimal during surgery as we hunters almost always operates in the dark, but then it is hard mentally not to get as much daylight.
With my many years outside of the Corps, I have to chalk my desert boots tremendous up and spend a lot of energy and time to catch up with colleagues and update me on new procedures, communications and weapons systems.
As a frame around the practical training we Tarnak Farms. A former Russian military base, consisting of 10-15 torn concrete huts surrounded by a high stone wall, which has remnants of an obstacle course with a camouflage-colored concrete walls.
Out of about 30 al-Qaida training camps in Afghanistan counted on to have been the third largest, surpassed only by the camps at Tora Bora in Nangarharprovinsen and Zaewara in Paktia province.
It was here in the middle of the desert, only about 20 minutes drive along a dusty and the hole gravel road southwest of Kandahar Airfield, to Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda conceived and planned to hijack four airliners and fly them into iWorld Trade Center and Pentagon. Some years before, of al-Qaida released a video recorded at Tarnak Farms with a speaking and smiling man in the company of his terrorist friends.
His name was Mohammed Atta, and he was on 11 September 2001 behind the helm of the aircraft, which turned one of the towers of the World Trade Center to the images we all know.
In November 2001, bombed American bomber terrorist camp. Unfortunately, after being deserted by their inhabitants. After comb the complex in 2002 is U.S. and Canadian units out of the Tarnak Farms not only been training camps for al-Qaida terrorists, but had also house a laboratory, which has been carried out tests of biological weapons and attempts development of lethal anthrax.
Coalition forces are now using Tarnak Farms to shoot training with our entire arsenal of weapons. Going inside the complex itself is stupid and risky. Unexploded grenades, mortars, antipersonnel mines and lurk my posts represent a hidden, deadly enemy, as there is no reason to challenge. Unfortunately, a team from the U.S. Navy SEALS not this threat seriously, as the early one morning in late March decides to practice a simulated hostage liberation action at Tarnak Farms. For within al-Qaida people have left the camp, they have prepared a Daisy Chain by one of the buildings.
A Daisy Chain multiple warheads are interrelated, and the result here is a disaster: one dead Navy SEAL and several badly injured.
When we train and test weapons at Tarnak Farms, we are therefore on the outer side of the wall to the camp, placing a few scouts in the enemy's direction and use the surrounding desert as a giant shooting gallery.
Nothing to do with the calculation of shot angles or rigid rules about shooting times and environmental concerns here. We planed simply lead in all calibres against the walls of the former terrorist camp: nozzle guns, antitank weapons, grenade launchers, finskyttev�ben, smoke grenades and hand grenades. Everything we have brought. We practice firing at the wall to test how much load must be to make holes in the type of walls, so the hunters could be passed to future tasks. We train patrol formations during combat and doing shooting competitions.
And I am very with, because I have a lot to catch up. During the first three-fi-re weeks in Afghanistan I get so fired almost as much rehearsed as many procedures and are trained in as much new material as during my first three years in the corps. I'm like a little child who rolls around in his huge sandbox, with all its new and exciting toys. And this is how I want it.
I manage a way to reduce my time on the staff office for third. And after two and a half months on the way, my enthusiasm hard to hide when a big gay Nag by a hunter called the 'muzzle' breaking his hand in an operation, and I get tjansen man who burst into his patrol. After that I spent years has lacked real nervous and soul in my life, I am now exactly what I will be: Operating hunter soldier.
As a 34-year-old, I am not the youngest among the operative. Nor is the oldest. But after the amoeba, which I have shaved for me in Afghanistan, for a while has given my body calm and able to train again targeted, I am in top form. My physical shape quickly eliminates any doubt that my age is a barrier to serve in a patrol.
I'm back in business. Hunter anno 2002nd 

Hunter - at war with the elite: 10 - Operating
By Thomas Rathsack
Not only I can finally call myself a great hunter soldier again. I am also from the first day very comfortable in my new squad, which counts five men.
Ren�, the most experienced, who has eight years of operational service in baggage, our patrol officer.
With his outgoing and sociable creature, he is also a natural focal point of the patrol. No matter how tired and the pressure he is, he always infects with a positive attitude.
Our sanitation man, a kind of advanced nursing assistant, Peter, who is an extremely competent and sharp gentleman who often pose in with intelligent, analytical considerations.
And he is also ample r�st�rk, but is not interested very little to train.
After a day to be over a few hundred meters from our camp, he passes a sign which says 'Slow Down'. It takes him very literally and returns the flux to the cool patruljerum.
Our scout, Mikkel, does little creature by itself with its quiet and subdued disposition.
He is a small, compact guy, strong as a bear and highly respected throughout the Corps for its professional expertise.
My last buddy Henry is responsible for the patrol's communications. He is a tall, athletic and likeable guy with a strong stubborn nature, which means that he is always working furiously for the optimal solution.
He is the youngest in the patrol and later becomes one of the gentlemen in the Corps, which I appreciate most, both as soldier and human being.
I even have the vacant seat on blasting man. The man with the key, the Americans call my function: to blow away any obstacles, doors, walls and walls in and around the buildings where our patrol to solve problems. Furthermore, I have responsibility for placement of grenades and warning devices around our patrol when we are in an observation base.
After a few weeks of the patrol is what I have really been waiting for. We must at surgery.
Ren� has been informed about the task and has called for the assembly of our patruljerum.
Rene and I have just over the daily ten kilometers around the base in the dusty afternoon heat, when we we enter the door to our small, shady bedroom and living room.
I'm excited and can hardly wait for Renes details, but from the other, there is a very relaxed atmosphere.
Peter, sanitation man, is in camp-bed with his arms crossed over his stomach and cluck to a section of the TV series 'Friends'. Mikkel, Scout, lies on her stomach and listening to his beloved American West Coast rock.
And communications husband Henry sits at the little table and eat and study in depth a U.S. field ration, which we are so privileged to have led to operational use.
After drinking lots of water refer to Ren� session and begin to dedicate ourselves in the details. Unmanned U.S. spy plane, MQ-1 Predator, has in the past week overflown the border areas in the mountainous provinces, about 400 kilometers northeast of Kandahar Air Field, KAF. Especially individual locations around the villages situated on the border itself, the Americans' attention.
Spy planes have sent pictures of members of the Taliban and al-Qaida, which along small paths and roads have crossed the border to Pakistan and then to return to Afghanistan and resume the fight against U.S. forces. Moreover, suppose man, that villages are used as safe havens for terrorists and their supplies.
A Predator spy plane can with its infrared, digital zoom camera identify heat signature from a person's body from three kilometers altitude, under favorable weather conditions.
But bad weather and unstable in areas here in the late winter makes it harder to use the Predators, and Task Force K-Bar has been tasked to observe the activities in that specific area. For us it means happily boots on the ground.
We listen hard to clean and he concluded the knowledge of the operation - known as QA05.
Only he has already been deployed operationally, albeit in a softer operation in the Balkans in the 1990s. Our concentrated gaze attests to the seriousness of the task which is fraught with risk and danger. Only way we shall be added to our insertion is a tactical helicopter flight at night over low hills, mountains and gorges and through areas where we know that a heavily armed enemy awaits.
The terrain is also a challenge. The mountains from which we must observe towards our goal, is for three or four kilometers altitude. Steep rock formations, deep gorges and the thin air will push our physical abilities to the utmost.
The operation is scheduled for ten days, and it sharpens the volume of equipment, food and water. In the mountainous terrain, we're going in, there is no water available, so everything must be carried on our shoulders.
Al-Qaida and the Taliban is at home and very keen to capture soldiers - trophies - from the coalition. Especially elite soldiers.
Catching, molesting, torturing and killing one of us in the most bestial and grotesque manner will lead to great recognition and respect from the hinterland.
A poor from the U.S. Navy SEAL suffered this cruel fate. He was injured when he fell during an operation out of a helicopter while it took off. He was later found by al-Qaida, was shot in the knees and crotch, was cut throat and was left with his penis in his mouth.
Therefore, we fear, of course capture.
So rather die in battle.
Despite his positive mind stands self Ren� slightly sinister, as he ends his briefings by stressing that the greatest danger in the task is to be discovered. Contact with the enemy, or just civilians, will lead to our best, be pulled out of the worst fighting between life and death.
About three days we must be ready. Since the light from the moon to a minimum and create the best conditions for the deployment.
In the preparation phase, we collect the available knowledge for the operation. Credible and detailed intelligence about the enemy is a key criterion for success in military operations. Not least for isolated operations like this. We need information on wind, light, rainfall and temperature.
About where the enemy is presumed to be located, how he is armed and organized, his morals and his ability to fight.
In addition, information on whether the local population is friendly or hostile, and where the nearest town or settlement is located. All this is very important for the decisions we make in the preparation phase.
We discovered, it is not only a matter of simply moving to a new area after any battle against the enemy. All of the region - the Taliban, al-Qaida and civilians - will soon know that there are foreign troops in the area and it will only be a matter of too short a time before a relentless pursuit of us will be deployed.
Advanced computer programs give us information on mountain height and slope, and where the best observation points towards the villages and paths, our goals are. The high mountains faces slightly toward the north, which means better opportunities to move there. It is unfortunately also true enemy.
Few points seem to be suitable as observation hives, and they are in outlying ledges and hard to reach. This is an absolutely incredible mountain terrain, and we've even previously trained in the mountains of Switzerland, for example. Here, everything to an operational deployment of ten days allowed. This means that we do not have space for climbing equipment like ropes and climbing harnesses. We must plan so that hillsides can climb without the use of climbing equipment.
Apart from studying maps and computer provides Mikkel helicopter countries zone LZ. It is a huge challenge, terrain considered. The zone countries should not lie too close to our destination, the observation base, since the giant CH47 helicopter, which we must be inserted with the noise completely crazy. At the same time zone, countries can not be too far away from the observation base, it should not take more than one night to reach from the LZ to the destination. Mikkel states also collect points if the patrol is divided because of fighting. Furthermore, preparing plans, if everything goes wrong. N�druter all the way back to KAF to be planned. And we must have rehearsed procedures for contacting their own devices.
Henry is busy preparing everything around communication. Frequencies inside the patrol must be determined and coded. Peter checks and packages all plumbing equipment and gives each of us a little emergency package, among other equipment to stop bleeding, pain relievers and medicines for acute abdominal problems. I self tests and preparing explosives - I paint, for example, all n�rsikringsgranater and wires sand colored for camouflage, and as I am aware that our backpacks, called 'tick' will be alarmingly heavy, I get as a precaution stitched reinforcements at the critical wear points.
We must bring equipment such as explosives, n�rsikringsgranater, extra ammunition, radio, GPS, binoculars for daytime, night vision, thermal imaging equipment, tripods, cameras, batteries for ten days, sleeping bag, damn bags and freeze-dried field rations.
When I finished packing my 'tick' I dragged it out at a time to consider my entire outfit, backpack, equipment and west arms. I am speechless looking at the scale: 82 kilograms.
Moreover, we must have water. Each hunter must take at least five liters of water a day under these conditions. So alone in the water, each man carry 50 liters and 250 liters throughout the patrol. We have of course not possible to have in my backpack, so we pack two extra backpacks with water, which must be transported separately beyond our backpacks.
On only eight hours, we must be ready by helicopter.
It is a calm and sunny afternoon, and we train formations and helicopter procedures on the outskirts of the camp. A sandstorm surprise us suddenly and melt horizon and sky into a gigantic cloud of dust and sand. Suddenly we are wrapped by a brownish fog that makes us look like expressionless wax dolls with their faces covered with dust.
But we are focused and oblivious of the poor.
We are so privileged that we should be inserted with the American 160th Operations Aviation Regiment, which is set in the world exclusively for solving tasks with elite units.
Better helicopter support available is simply not on the planet. They have the best pilots the best equipment and the best helicopters: the huge MH-47D Chinook with tandemrotor specially designed for elite units.
It has three 7.62 mini Gatling Guns as armament, air refueling capability, a system for fastroping and abseiling and other upgrades that distinguish it from the default display.
And the 160th flight under conditions where other helicopter crews will not or can. They land on the most difficult and inaccessible rural areas and usually always in the dark without a single light on the helicopter to help.
In coordination with the helicopter crew leaves the shipper on our trip - a talkative guy in early thirties with a marked stone face - we understand that they are about a half hour flight will be difficult and dangerous. In the almost coal-black night and in terrain where mountain slopes rising without warning, the plan is to fly with lysforst�rkende natbriller, Night Vision Goggles NVG or so close to the ground as possible.
Just 10-20 meters high. Furthermore, there is great risk of enemy fire with rockets, machine guns and handguns. And rural areas is extremely difficult because of the steep cliff sides.
We are however reassured the crew impressive calm and professionalism. They are service minded and seems clearly to understand that they will do everything they can to deliver the best possible product. We are their customers. They are there for us.
Two hours before take off, we meet in our little patruljerum and drink lots of water and get one last solid meal. Spaghetti with meat sauce.
Our feet are almost as important as our stomachs. We must have tough skin of the fillet and have them into wallpaper before we carefully laced our boots as we are not going to take the next several days.
While we share a little about everyday families, lovers and dogs. Everyone knows that it is unimportant but clay and pingpong. But there is no reason to dwell on that soon we will be in enemy country face to face with people who have nothing to lose and will do anything to kill us. And there are many open questions: Will our work procedures during the operation? Can we communicate with each other and the base station under the extreme circumstances of mountains and desert? And we can cope with us - just us five? Ih�ren is best to move usually never come out from his base in units of 30 soldiers.
One is backed by firepower from light and heavy machine guns, mortars and antitank weapons, and they often have the opportunity for rapid support from aircraft or artillery. And further amplification of its own units are ready.
Here we have five men all alone on a hillside 400 kilometer from our base at KAF. When the helicopter leaves the country zone, we have only ourselves and the available, we dragged on his back and hands. However, with the ability to draw on support from different fighters and Americans impressive flying continued: AC130 Gunship, which has a whole arsenal of weapons systems. But AC130 flies only at night. And only five men on earth can not assume that there are unemployed fighters during daylight hours when the need is there.
We sit on the large, darkened room cement some meters from the cargo bay on the big Chinook helicopter. It appears as a large lump of metal sombre against the starlit sky. Only small green dots from the chemical lysst�nger inside the cabin gives the impression of the size of the giant, which can carry up to several vehicles.
I'm ready, but we must wait for our chaplain comes and expresses some unctuous considerations. As an atheist it irritates me. I believe in my abilities as a soldier and man. Coincidences and luck. At this time, in minutes just prior to my first operational deployment, I have most wanted to be a little private. Not being foist rituals, which I fundamentally do not believe. Even though it is very well intentioned.
We boarder. And with a metallic howling makes turbines slow start. Chinook'en sets itself in motion and wheels on takeoff point, where the remaining checks are made.
Rotor speed increases, while the four wheels slowly release the pavement, and we can out of the rear contours of the many darkened tents and buildings on KAF. The price set in the east and the contours of the base disappears.
Quickly, it turns out that it was definitely not an exaggeration, since the square helicopter captain earlier in the day said that the flight would be tough. I have flown low level before the helicopter flies low and adapts to the terrain, so it is not visible in the air so long. But nothing like this. Compartment swings and dances, which were a bunch of full crews behind the rudder. Steep downward and upward turn leads me to vote against the floor with his boots and find some evidence for the hands.
I click my natbriller on the helmet off and look towards the large, open rear cabin. In the green light sits load master vigilant on her knees right out on the edge behind its rapid surplus Gatling minigun.
Suddenly I dangers together as a high, deep growl behind me drown out the noise from the engines. The entire cabin is flying and I are struggling to maintain mesh of the nets on the seat. What the hell is happening? I turn toward the sound and look the other loadmaster stand by his minigun, which is located in the side door, and it dawns on me that it is he who has delivered a volley against anything on earth. The pilot continued the tortuous, evasive turn away from the threat.
Away from the enemy. This is serious. I look over to Mikkel. His blurry, bearded face turns into a grin. I reciprocate laughed, albeit a little more strained.
I have drunk a lot of water the last couple of hours. It should be as familiar again, and since we have only flown in a little over half an hour and has at least three quarters back, I realize that I can not hold me. We have brought double plastic bags for this purpose, but I had hoped that it was not necessary. Now I have to. I stand in the row of seats with one hand and seems uncertain on his feet in the swaying cabin floor, as if to make the maneuver more difficult is covered in hydraulic oil, which often occurs in military helicopters of this type.
With the other hand brings me around my 'friend' down his pants, and get double the bag out of a giant condom.
There, 5,000 kilometers from home, the mountains of Afghanistan, I am half erect and dangling like a rodeo cowboy riding in the stomach at this big, rambunctious metaltyr and appetizers my bathroom. Had it not been for the seriousness of the situation, I had laughed at the bizarre situation. But I have instead completed my project in a hurry and find the black rubbish bag on the wall of my droppings.
A half hour later load master gives the first signal to drop-off. 10 minutes.
I turn on my GPS and memorizing infiltration route one last time. I also check whether everything is still in the pockets of my western outfit.
Although all vital equipment is secured with parachute cord, I have fittings in the West.
Among other things, my card.
There has not written anything on the card. This we never, it would reveal too much if it comes into the wrong hands.
But it will still be disastrous to lose the card. Not only because we need it to keep us on track, but more importantly because a lost card revealing our presence.
I also check my weapons, including the infrared and active light and strength of the little red dot of the Aimpoint special-purpose, which means that one can shoot with both eyes open and thus turn itself around while shooting. So I suck a little water from the hose on my camelbag backpack that can accommodate four-five liters of water. I click my natbriller down to accustom my eyes to the green light and could see my friends in the cabin.
Although it is the first operation of four of us, I feel the noise and the dark mood that I have experienced in previous situations during drills. The calm that descends when you're at the right place at the right time, in his element. The feeling I have at least even, and I'm in the best possible company - with some of the world's best soldiers. The shit safety can only get an.
While the load master gives the signal for one minute, lowering the pilots go.
I think the two straps on backpacks, so I'm ready to bring them after me down the floor and beyond the ramp. Apart from brief studies should be both our primary and alternative country zone be small plateaus on ridges. In my natbriller can I catch a glimpse of a black rock face in the background, and I'm load master cringe halfway out over the ramp to direct the pilot. Deployment most sensitive stage now where 15 tons of metal are noisy and vulnerable. A single shell from a mandb�rent rocket launchers, and everything will be over.
We are here for long. Too long.
Why not just countries? With a roar the engines for full speed and the pilot makes a sharp turn right. I am struggling not to pass.
We are recognized? Has the enemy found us already? Americans usually do not hold back in using weapons, if there is a reason for it, and are not shot from the helicopter mini-guns, then discovered we could not be. The primary zone countries are obviously not usable.
We fly for five more minutes, receive again '1 minute' signal, and this time there is no hesitation. The helicopter maneuvered slowly and softly down, we are calm. Load Master sits up on his knees, turns around and pointing with both arms in a fast moving beyond the ramp.
'Go-go-go! I dragged my two backpacks him along the floor, beyond the ramp and down to earth.
Backpack with water, let me as it is simply too heavy to drag both at once. I put all the forces in my own crab and me away from heavy metal body in an inferno of dust and pebbles, which whirled up by the huge rotor blades.
I throw myself down on the ground, and at the same time promises Chinook'en already, comes off as a large majestic bird and becomes consumed by darkness. It is the last contact with their own devices, are now disappearing. Soon we get our arms in the ready position and provides 360 degrees around. A deafening silence sets in.. Not a sound in the night.
I have been in Afghanistan for a long time, but it is the first time I experienced this silence.
No barking dogs. No breeze. Nothing.
As if we find ourselves in a vacuum.
Slowly it begins ophvirvlede dust to fall to the ground, so we can better inform us, and I look around and gape. The helicopter crew is too tough.
We have been set off at a small, flat cliff, which is not much bigger than five times five meters. They have simply backed in against a vertical mountain side until they just touched the edge of the cliff, and at no time the helicopter had wheels on the ground.
Everything directed from the loadmaster's surgically precise instructions.
Made in America. Respect.
The terrain is rocky and barren, and we are surrounded by steep rock formations as a theatrical backdrop provides a clear silhouette against the night sky. Only sporadic vegetation can be glimpsed in the surrounding plateaus.
Despite the 3,000 meters here are surprisingly warm, and I take a sip of the lukewarm water.
"We are on the radio LZ,` notify Mikkel low.
All nod yes, and there is no reason to explain why we had to choose the alternative country zone. We can calculate that there must have been a problem at the primary.
We can also figure out that it means our infiltration route towards our observatory is now longer.
'All right? "Complements clean and receives the affirmative nod without speaking. 'Fine, let's get out of here,' he continues in a whisper.
The point is to get away from the countries of the zone as quickly as possible. Chinook'en has certainly been heard in the villages, although situated some kilometers away. It also means that al-Qaida and Taliban probably know that there are elite units in the area. You know as well that infantry units are not added in such a terrain.
'Thomas, we blur the water bags, "whispers Mikkel turned toward me and I climb quietly to the water backpack, which I am responsible. I get hold of a shoulder strap, and it seems like a deafening noise as I prefer it over the cliff to a small recess, which we put the bags in and camou-more with a sand-colored sl�ringsnet. We must take hold of our personal 'ticks'. But a backpack, which weighs around 65 kilograms, slings can not just up on the shoulder. We must help each other in pairs, while the other three safe 360 degrees. Since we are all nods to Ren�, he gives with the hand signs for the march.
I am behind Mikkel, who is scouting the front man. We are moving independently 10-15 meters ahead of the rest of the patrol, depending on the terrain. Mikkel be the front man primarily focus on finding the way, while my job is to be eyes and ears against anything that stands out from the normal image. Movements in the terrain, light and sound. So I sharpen my senses to the maximum and release the safety catch my arms.
From the little cliff yesterday it slightly downward to a greater plateau. The heavy equipment makes me even now to sit the body in the future to offset the extreme weight.
After a few hundred yards when we foot of the slope and stopped to listen and observe behind a small cluster of bushes. The others are rallying behind us, and we are nods to Ren�. He understood immediately that it means that it is here, Mikkel and I put our 'ticks' to return after water bags. We are still back toward LZ, the bags, you manhandle them on the shoulders and then returned to patrol.
And then the same procedure again. Blurring of the water bags and then forward.
I'm already drenched with sweat. It will be a tough night.
Hard like hell, because now it goes up.
Sharply upward. So much that it is quite impossible to cope with ups with his legs alone.
I make sure my weapon and release it so it hangs freely in the chest at shoulder strap, and I can use my arms and hands to pull and push my backpack and probationary totaling 165 kilograms upwards. I find a foothold with a boot at a time and mobilize all our energy into every fiber in my leg. My thin pilot gloves are already frayed by the sharp cutting edges.
I look down the cliff side. Losing balance here means certain death. It is here transferred my wildest imagination. Sensory impressions from my time as aspirant hazards through my head. Pain, fear, uncertainty and blood taste in the mouths of overwork. The thin air brands I also seriously now. We have just begun and I am already at the limit of my physical abilities. Suddenly Hell which gives aspiring mind. To continue even if the body says no. When I pause a moment to drink water, sprinkle some pebbles down the cliff past me. I stand completely still and the weather. The stones have passed Mikkel, so it's not him that has prompted them.
I lean against the side of the cliff, get my arms in the ready position and try to look upward.
Is it the enemy? An animal? Nature's whims? Smoke us into an ambush here, our options are very limited. We are completely stuck on rock face. An enemy will have taken over the sovereign. I turned my head and see the rest of the patrol about ten feet below me. They have their arms upward and is quite static. I listen, but only hear my pulse beat hollow and fast. Then continue Mikkel, and I also bring up again.
One step at a time. Come on, get as your fat ass up the rocks.
Some meters later frames we see a small ledge, as we climb onto.
"It's fucking crazy it here," Mikkel gasp softly.
"Yes, we can console ourselves that we have a couple of water bags, we all must come down and have fetched up," I mumble.
The night progresses alarming pace.
We need for all the world to reach our base before it begins to lighten. To move in daylight is excluded altogether. When we are not up before the sun begins to rise, is our only opportunity to find the most humble and dark place, a hole or cave, and press us there until it gets dark again.
We reach the top of a knoll and still is good halfway now. Mikkel beckons me forward, and behind a rock we look directly at it, we will not see. Half a hundred meters ahead tones the contours of a small hut made.
Our short and intelligence indicates otherwise no signs of settlement in the immediate vicinity of our route. It is really bad news.
Housing means for humans.
I send the bad news to Ren�, who grunts angrily.
"We have explored the cabin. We are close to our observation base, and we need to know whether it is inhabited. Mikkel and Thomas, forward and explore. We ensure you away. Go. "Mikkel and I submit our liberation 'ticks' and moving in an arc around the house, so we are not in the rest of our squads shot box. The small mud hut, six-eight meters wide with a flat roof. Our weapons are afsikrede and directed towards the closed wooden door.
I move slowly on the left side behind Mikkel - I am left-handed and keep my arms in the left shoulder.
We reach the door, sees no handle, but will soon hinges, and puts us on the opposite side, so Mikkel can either push or pull the door open. Without a sound he puts his hand on the door, and we exchange an affirmative nod. He pushes the cash door and we quickly penetrates into the hut, while we turn our infrared light on the weapon.
No humans, and the room with a small window without glass on the opposite wall is nearly empty. Only a mattress on the floor with a wrinkled carpet upstairs and a small bowl and a glass beside it. It is probably a chalet by the local shepherds use to sleep and eat. How shit. We waded around in an area of shepherds, sheep and goats. We close the door gently behind us and returning to the others.
There are just under one hour, the first daylight sets in, and we are within 100 meters from our planned observation base. We are all five snorting in a small circle between some rocks and try to regain some energy in our lives infiltration.
'Okay, listen up, "whispers Ren�. "Mikkel and I go back and look at the situation. We are back within an hour. If I do not know the plan. "When they go, turning Ren� himself against me with a huge smile on his face. "Are you cool, grandfather?" Although we are almost the same age, he amuses himself with calling me grandfather.
"Shit now just by you," I hiss, grinning.
They disappear from between the rocks, and the rest of us are silent and enjoy the break. The air is completely still. Not a sound. And I notice that the sky to the east has assumed a faint light color. Henry spots me on the shoulder and I turned around. He offered me half of his Raider chocolate.
"You are doing it well. It is shown some time ago, "he says subdued.
'Eight years. My body has no idea what the hell is happening, 'I reply and happy chocolate to munch on me.
One knee in my desert uniform is torn up, and I massage my sore and bloody knees, as throughout the night have come against the sharp rocks.
After one hour, we see silhouettes of Ren� and the Hound on the way up against us. They kneel down like two sacks of potatoes and looks pained and exhausted out.
"It's something damn piss it here," whispers Ren� snorting. "We have only found one place where we can see the targets unhindered. But here we have difficulty seeing the rear of the base. However, it is the only option we have. So we do. It is a small ledge, just big enough for the observation hive and sleeps.
Questions? "We know that Mikkel and Rene have done their utmost and selected the solution in the circumstances is the best. No questions.
The break has made our muscles and joints stiff and cold, and I notice that Peter is fighting himself humming up in sitting position. His beard dripping with water, and he is bowed with folded hands and looks like an old ratty bear. I did not know better, I'd shoot him right there to be somewhere between 70 and 80 years old.
But I'm too tired to laugh, and I'm busy. The first light and the first tentative peep from a bird's deployed. We have secured our base in a hurry, and it is my job.
I must have placed the sand-colored n�rsikringsgranater around the opening to our base. I use the shells of the type Claymore with 800 small steel bullets. I put a couple of grenades and press gently fuse in place on top. To blur them, I found a couple of close twigs, as I sit in front of the shells and dig a well down. If the attic flies away in the wind shell is visible and our lives in danger.
The sand-colored cord do I care a few centimeters into a groove, I have scratches in the hard and rocky surface, after which I push the soil back and hit it close. Now just connect the trigger mechanism.
The small opening in the rocks where the shells are set up, the only way into the base.
Because of rock can design the front first grenade hit an intruder when he has moved a few meters through the opening. It is not optimal, because we want an urgent threat eliminated before.
Another problem is that we can not see on the other side of the opening. Here it goes almost straight down a couple hundred yards, after which it flattens out into a valley with clumps of houses to the north and west. To have a full view in the direction we need to have a man right out on the edge, but he could be seen. It is a weakness at the base, which makes us vulnerable.
Our goal is to the south. In effect, it goes straight down from the cliffs, we are at.
The only exception is a small crack, which follows the rock down. It is our only alternative way away.
Observationsstadet itself, from which we must take turns to keep watch against targets, is dangerous in itself. I have seen from many places - holes in the ground, shrubs, ceilings and dark pine forests - but never from an observation hive as that Mikkel has made clear.
From our base moves myself with baby steps to good five meters at the small observatory edge that is less than 30 cents wide and only just big enough that you can sit leaning up rock face. One misstep and I would filings into the abyss.
Observation site has Mikkel camouflaged with a piece of dense, blurred substance called Bow Flash, which falls perfectly into the colors of the rock, and he has the required tools ready: the strong Swarovski binoculars, cameras, tripods, log book and a sketch of the area specifying the name of all the main focus points and terrain objects.
Mikkel makes me thoroughly into the proceedings and appoint village due south a little over a mile away and all the small roads and paths, such as al-Qaida and the Taliban are using.
Mikkel take even the first observation on call, so I return to the other three in the base. There is one hour and ten minutes, I must take guard, and I should eat but are too tired. I confine myself to drink half a liter of water and roll in my sweat soaked uniform and with my arms in hand on its side on my sleeping pad and sliding into a deep sleep.
Normally I sleep very easily and respond promptly to the slightest sound. But my physical exhaustion sends me into a strange, deep sleep stage where fragments of colors, sounds, smells, faces and immediately dug out from the outer corners of the subconscious and almost explodes with glimpses of my inner eye. So I am very far away and somewhat confused, as Mikkel seizes me by the shoulder.
'Thomas, you watch. Are you awake? "I smoke up with a start and staring at him missing.
"Yes, I'm awake. Give me a minute, then I'm out there. " My voice is hoarse and snuffling, and I'm not sure that he understands me, but he turns about and crawls out on stage, so he must have done. I take my outfit on the west, my packages substrate together, check that my backpack is ready and check my weapon. So I have shaken the deep sleep of me, ready again. An hour's sleep has made a difference.
I waved Mikkel into the stage. He announces that there has been no activity in the village or on the paths. So I sit down to make the little piece of sleeping pad in the city and observed long through Swarovski binoculars.
Village under me composed of 14-15 small houses in a single plane, all built of clay and surrounded by the usual walls that almost all Afghan's home. Afghan men and fathers cherish their wives and children and do not want them to be viewed by people outside the family. A gravel road leads through the city, and an approximately five meter wide river meanders through the fields west of town. At this time of year runs a lot of melt water from the mountains and down the river, and small irrigation canals provides life to the green, cultivated land around the city.
The time is 08.30, and there are strangely still, no workers in the fields. The only signs of life are a flock of goats that are tied up along a tree at the western end of the village. South travel the mountains on the Pakistani side of the border. Dale wedges himself between them and the bottom of the valleys of the far east, parallel to the small river, is the small dirt roads, such as al-Qaida and the Taliban use the shelter of night.
I'm looking through the binoculars for anything that stands out from what they can expect to see in a primitive Afghan village. I have seen and been in many of them and have a good sense of what they should contain. For example, antennas or satellite dishes, men with satellite phones, Toyota pickups with metal racks designed for weapons in the truck, donkey with a very noticeable load on your back and groups of young armed men that move in and out of buildings.
The time just over 09 enter two men out the door from one of the larger houses in the village.
They are dressed in loose brown robes and moving slowly towards the small collection of trees, where the goats are tied. Here they put themselves in shadow resembling a tree and starts talking.
I note in the logbook. It is the only activity on this watch.
Back at base I am once again impressed with the guys in my squad. They have managed to get to the nearest base to melt into its surroundings. Sand Colored sl�ringsnet is excited in a gentle arc over the entire base and lined with branches. Moreover, they put rocks on the edge of the network, so shadows between network and ground is avoided.
Now it's time to rebuild my fighting power - a military term which means that one thinks of himself. Eat, sleep and groom themselves. I take dry and fresh socks on and put the wet and sweaty to dry on my shoulders during the T-shirt. It is an old hunter trick, and although the feeling is not nice, it's there, socks dry best. When we change socks, it is also the only time we take our boots - one at a time.
There are many safety rules in the database. At no point to standing up, and all unnecessary activity should be avoided. Like all redundant communications. Spoken only on operational matters. No equipment is lying around, so when you are finished using an object from her outfit, packs Man on down again. All waste, whether it is just the smallest piece of paper or a food leftovers, must come down in a rubbish bag, which each bears in his backpack. There tisses always in a single crack in the rock, and when one of great fun for the rest of the company should be 'the barrel' is it down in a bag and put it in another bag in my backpack.
I heat water and cook and eat my ration of freeze-dried American chicken with rice. Then I brush my teeth, swallow all the toothpaste and dries me to step in and 'm�ntindkastet' in the tail with an alcohol swab. All waste I put in a bag in your bag and close it carefully. I am fed and groomed, and there is no reason to conceal his face again, as it is daylight. Our bright faces should be masked in darkness.
I submit myself to correct my sleeping pad with the head of equipping the West and make it waterproof map is from my l�rlomme.
Once again, I look at our location and the surrounding terrain.
The four or five houses a few miles north worries me. Mostly because they are not on the map. What else is not on the map? I am recalling, once again, our assembly points, the card back into your pocket and closes his eyes in the morning sun.
It is dark, and I'm halfway through my call on the fifth or sixth night. The time has begun to flow out. Routines are long-established, and sometimes seems endless. Your body has gone to sleep after the day's lack of physical activity, so it feels heavy and every movement seems too hard. I smell indescribable, and my skin is covered with a thin layer of greasy dust.
Temperature is above 30 degrees in the shade, and the daily water ration of five liters is not enough. My urine has the dark yellow color, which is a typical sign of dehydration, and I have constant headaches. At the same time I regret bitterly that I took my hot Goretexst�vler on. When I changed socks today was both my feet heavily tarnished by the fungus because they do not have air for many days.
But at least no pain feet.
It could be much worse.
What indeed are much worse is the parlous state of security, which has quietly crept. A feeling that nothing happens. Of safety. It is a feeling that must be fought with all their might.
Relaxed on the discipline and routines constitute, a danger to themselves and patrol.
No matter how reliable the situation occurs, no matter how good you think you know the area, the proper concentration is maintained. Al-Qaida and the Taliban is just around the corner, right at the foot of the rocks in the small village just over a mile away.
I observe through my thermal binoculars, and the little ticking sound from its cooler irritates me. I think it is noisy and are worried that it can be heard from afar, even though I know that it is not possible.
I set the zoom feature on binoculars and scan the city and the paths of activity in the same horizontal pattern hundreds of times before. Raindrops affects me. I have also tried rain in Afghanistan. But I when not to dwell on it, because it stiffens the same I know what I observe in binoculars.
Along the path from one of the valleys south of the village is a group of men go to town.
I counted 12 men. All armed with Kalashnikovs. They use no light, moving slowly and stops in between. They keep their arms in a relaxed manner that characterizes the soldiers experienced. A single, one of the rear, is much higher than the others and has his arms over his shoulder.
He seems not as vigilant as the others.
I guess that he is group leader.
I take pictures with the camera and look at the clock. 02.43. They are obviously coming across the border from Pakistan and does not look like random shepherds on their way home to keep working hours.
They continue towards the village and comes from behind some of the rear buildings, where I can not keep them longer.
The rain resumed, and my uniform is soaked, but I do not care, because I am delighted for my observations. Several days of waiting gives final result. There are armed Taliban and / or al-Qaida people in the area.
It seems that we are moving towards a solution of our task.
I struggle with camera equipment, preparing images and text to Henry, he can send home.
There is no more that night. Apart from falling a scorpion out of my sleeping bag when I then going to put me in it. Since then I have always shaken my sleeping bag, my clothes and my boots before I need it.
In the days after my first telescope contact with the gunmen in the night, there is more activity in the village. We send all details to KAF by radio. Groups of armed men in the terrain at night, the traffic in and out of the houses, the work routines in the fields, the number of men, women and children, suspected thicknesses on the houses walls, the doors, houses and sketches of the village.
So we wait otherwise just the message about the fate of this village must go to session.
The lightest in the world would be to call a couple of F-16 and drop into four 1-ton bombs on it. But the solution is obviously not acceptable.
Maybe there are women, children and innocent men who have nothing with the Taliban or al-Qaida to do. A better solution would be a direct attack with several elite units from our Task Force. But it requires an extensive preparation and resources, and there are no indications that it is a solution you will choose.
It is tomorrow, and I have just eaten my favorite breakfast - oatmeal with strawberry flavor.
I am about to crawl out on guard, because it is as if my heart stops. Not even ten meters from me, lists two men with Kalashnikovs slowly toward us through the rocky opening.
It is clear that they do not really comprehend what they see. They pinch their eyes together in the morning sun. This is their territory, their backyard, and this does not look right.
One clenched his arms hard to the body as if it insists on being used.
I have my weapon ready in the shoulder. Flying in slow motion pipe up towards them, while my thumb is still security and release the safety catch. Ready to fight.
Out of the corner of the eye, I see that Rene and Henry also ready with their weapons. Had it not been for blurring the network, we had long since been discovered by the two men. They have black beard, is dressed in a dark, ragged clothes and worn leather boots, and the one bearing a black cloth on his head. Typically, the Taliban. Mikkel goes slowly off the hand after triggering mechanism for n�rsikringsgranaterne.
A more meters and the first grenade will hit the front of men. They are both cautiously another step forward.
It makes Henry also to release the safety catch her arms, and by the small metallic click stiffens the men, and in that second case in a motion around itself and passes back toward the rock opening.
'Fuck,' shouts Ren�. "After them." Mikkel and Henry pops out of blurring the network and with their weapons aimed at cutting the opening set after the men.
'Peter and Thomas, destroy. Now, "continues Ren�.
Stade and the base to be packed down, and it can only go slowly. I throw everything vital equipment from the city into a bag, fighting me back into the base where I ensure that my backpack is ready. Blur The network does not matter, we are nevertheless detected, and also consider it too much. Weight is critical on the run.
My heart hammers. I throw Mikkel's and Henry's breakfast, which they had just started, down in their backpacks and closes them.
In a minute we're ready to escape.
Rene runs out through the rocky opening, and after I put in that I can see that Peter's eyes from the village. It should under no circumstances be left out of sight, although it is in the other direction, we have problems. Mikkel and Henry is on his stomach out on the rocky edge, and Ren� throws himself down beside them.
'Where are they assholes? "He hisses.
"We have no visual on them. They must have taken it on the ass and elbows down the slope.
It is the only way. I think it was shepherds? "Asks Henry with a hoarse voice.
'Shepherds! What the hell should help with his sheep and goats up here? If they were shepherds, then my ass a seaplane, 'snapper Ren� and I can imagine a smile on his face.
"There are those," exclaims Mikkel. "They whipped against the city." What they have come down so quickly transformed my sense. But are they fully ran halfway towards a small clump of houses, located on the highest point in the valley.
I take my little Zeiss binoculars up.
The middle house is equipped with a small tower with three or four masts with colorful flags. I follow the valley through the binoculars a few miles to the west and hits another cluster houses on top of a hill lot. In a tower flies the flag of some of the same type.
"Rene, I have contacts KAF," says Henrik and sliding backwards out of his position, and crawls toward the cliff opening.
"Yes, call KAF, and announced that we are compromised.
That they must be ready to launch a QRF. "A Quick Reaction Force is a force that stands ready to help in an emergency situation such as this, and now want them Rene enabled. To be retrieved by Chinook'en before it gets dark, is not an option. It is simply too dangerous to fly in daylight. We can call the fighters in and through radio directing them in and bomb the enemy. We can also flee head over heels. But in full daylight deep in enemy country, it is almost a sure way to capture and gruesome death. We pushed too hard during firefight, we may be forced to do so.
I look at my watch. 9.54. This is bad.
Over eight hours of the evening. In daylight, our only advantage that the base is so high and that it is difficult to come up here. But it's also the end of the parts.
We have five male 400 kilometer from home with a worryingly low firepower. We all have our 5:56 mm C8 carbines and some grenades, and we've Peters 40 mm grenade launcher.
Not even a machine gun we have. And we are up against an enemy that within a few hours probably can mobilize hundreds raging warriors with machine guns and mortars.
Despite the fact that a QRF can be many hours to reach here, and it all may already be too late then, we decide to wait at the base and wait to call the QRF.
Mikkel and I observe the group of men in front of the house with the flag tower. All are armed with Kalashnikovs. The two men who fled from the base, stands in the middle of the group.
They are obviously going to describe what they saw up on the cliff. With the eager gestures pointing towards us. One of the men running into the house. A second run into the house next door and comes out several seconds later with a small object which he gives to him who should be leader.
He leads the object up in front of the mouth, and I swear to myself. It is a radio.
Clock 11:48 Henrik will signal by radio from KAF. Our QRF with 30 armed soldiers from the U.S. 10th Mountain Division is stand-in Bagram air base north of Kabul. But from the moment we acquires them, it takes at least two hours in a helicopter to fly to our area.
Ren� grunts and mutters something that probably is not very happy.
Henry has already set the frequency on the radio to the Coalition flying command center, AWACS, which is a large aircraft, directing and distributes all flyst�tte to units on the ground. Now, Rene will be that Henry does the frequency of fighters ready. Rene is the only one in the patrol, which is trained to summon low cutting fighters and directing their weapons against targets on earth.
The time 12:32 is Peter with a disturbing message. A new flag is hoisted in other colors and sizes from the master of the house flag. Shortly after the same thing happens in the house further west. How they apparently communicate between the valleys in this way because their handheld radios can not be set over the mountains.
There is still a flurry of activity down there.
I now counts 10-12 bearded men who look like soldiers preparing for. This here is sharp, and Ren� decides it's time for a greeting from the air. But first, a power demonstration, a show of force, where fighter planes passing low over the valley as the Taleban know that we have an instruction to the pilot to send them and their friends to dreamland with a precision-guided bomb tusindpunds. Ren� brings the bone and callers.
12:48 o'clock range Ren� furious radio back to Henry. Bugger core of AWACS aircraft, announces that they have no available aircraft. We can try again later. Own devices alone in the mountains, which confirm there for help, and so are the resources there. No one says anything.
The mood is depressed and the severity is painted in the faces worn and tired, bloodshot eyes.
14:10 o'clock, we have not yet asked our QRF. Ren� estimate that we have not reached the point where it is necessary. But why have the Taliban down there not long ago launched an offensive against us? Perhaps they believe that many of us up here? They may not have enough manpower and waiting for reinforcements? 14:41 o'clock we get a call from KAF, which leads us to spew all kinds of oaths, and curses.
Our own people on the KAF has got the crazy idea that we should pack up and after dark so infiltrate six kilometers to a new base to continue surveillance on the village. Have they not understood the seriousness of the situation? Someone clever staff lizard, which are guaranteed never ever been outside of his office, has devised this monster of a plane while he was on his ass too big sipper to its cool bottle of water.
Despite our reports that al-Qaida and the Taliban in all likelihood is to mobilize all resources in pursuit of us, we must infiltrate in this terrain studded with hostile activity. They are even six kilometers as the crow flies, so it will probably be ten kilometers. And having to find a new base without prior short course or preparation phase is madness. I almost do not know who I fear most - al-Qaida or the madman from my own unit? Rene flatly rejected the instruction and let the little diplomatically to know who is best placed to make the right decisions.
15:53 o'clock, we call on that still is no possibility of fighter support, but that Chinook'en will come and pick us up at 19.00. With luck and skill, we sit in the helicopter about three hours.
"Give me Swarovski," orders Peter and turns to me with a tense look.
"I can not see it properly in my Zeiss, but I think damn that their reinforcements are on their way." My heart skips a few battles over, and I find quickly the big telescope up in my backpack.
Peter informs the north east.
"Shit," he mutters.
The light is beginning to be weaker now, and it is difficult to see clearly at this distance, but it is clear that 20-25 men moving toward the house with the flags. That is to say in our direction. It sends shivers down the spine of me. That is why they have waited. They have been too few. And they also know that they are busy.
That we will not be available up here. That we will soon be downloaded or receive reinforcements.
The next hours will be crucial.
Rene takes a decision.
"We are progressing. It seems that they feel really down there now. There is a little over an hour we will be picked up. We have a half hour down to the LZ and half hours to keep the LZ under observation. Questions? "No questions.
'So let's go home and eat steaks, "he exclaims, grinning.
We blur their faces, arms and equipment checks and ensure that we are all vital to the base. Henrik grab a last call on the radio and communicate triumphantly that we have been awarded a Gunship. Five vamle teeth gleam in our black faces. Finally we get what we asked for. An AC-130 Gunship in more than one hour. The specially built C-130 Hercules is ready to support with its enormous firepower. Its 25 mm Gatling guns and his 40 mm and 105 mm gun. Everything we need to do is just to highlight our laser pointers in the direction of the enemy, and then all black for them.
On the trip down rock my backpack feels heavier than ever. I drip with sweat and is ruled out, because I have lost several kilograms muscle after all these days of inactivity. But I suddenly regains strength as the most beautiful sound affects my ears: the deep hum of the four engines on the AC-130, which quietly circling three kilometers above us. Suddenly feel more comfortable with our situation. Henry said, but excited voice confirms our position, and he notifies the crew of the aircraft that we appreciate their help.
"Our pleasure, gentlemen." A few hundred meters before the country zone, we observed, because if we are discovered in countries zone lands Chinook'en not, and so we have a huge problem. But darkness has subsided now, and with luck we are doing it.
Country Zone'm sure out, so we continue up to the middle of the hill, and put us in some bushes just over 20 meters from the top where Chinook'en will land. I look impatiently at my watch. 18:56.
'Yes, I have him on the radio. One minute. "Henry whispers so loud that we hazards together.
So it is now. I sit up in a kneeling position and clicking my natbriller down. A powerful beam lights suddenly the whole country up zone. I'm speechless. It is AC130, which helps with its powerful infrared spotlight, so helicopter pilots can see landezonens exact position.
I now hear the weak and liberating sound of Chinook'ens double set of blades. We enable our small infrared strobes on the helmet and climbs toward the top of the hill.
My stomach tighten. I'm more nervous than I have been at any other time during the operation. Something goes wrong now, it goes horribly wrong.
As out of nowhere pops Chinook'en roaring and noisy up. It comes with high speed and at almost the brakes on steep and turns hill into a huge cloud of dust and sand. The pilot swings side of the hull against the hill and back in so that cargo bay almost touching the ground.
I notice hundreds of small flashes of light from the pebbles, which sucked up and hits the rotor blades.
Then flashes loadmaster's infrared light as clear signs.
I can only glimpse the cargo ramp. Small rock flies up and sticks the needle in my face and I can hardly keep his balance in the strong turbulence from the rotor blades. I twit over a rock and landing on my knee. It grows dark before my eyes, but it is completely indifferent. Nothing can stop me now. I throw myself into the seat row with a heart that had never been hammered faster.
A weak sense of being liberated, but I feel completely safe only when we, after some time in the air are filled fuel Chinook'ens nearly empty tanks from a flying KC-130R air tanker. Since air tanker comes by and I know we have enough fuel to get home, I am filled with a relief without equal. I want to close your eyes and fall away. But I must not sleep now. We are not home yet.
Jaegercorps not sleep until you're at home. 

Hunter - at war with the elite: 11 - The mullah has left the building
By Thomas Rathsack
The last few days of our operation, we have spent on nurturing your body and regain strength. Sleeping, eating, cleaning and washing all our equipment. A little training will be also, but I've thrown five kilograms during surgery and is quite paltry during weight training. And my feet are still worn by many days in the boots outside air. They have fungus in large pillows everywhere, but I know from experience that those with lots of air and the ointment comes in a few days.
Spring is also deployed at Kandahar Air Field.
The sun is shining from a deep blue sky, the heat is on the way to the 40 degrees and we get better at getting the best out of our limited life on the base. I think breathing space between camp life tasks can quickly become monotonous with the constant daily ingredients: physical training, shooting and recurrent training on the equipment.
But as time progresses, we socialize more with other units in the camp. Almost daily, we invite guests over for dinner in our kitchen and dining tent, where the quality of the food has been improved significantly since the beginning, where we lived most of the field rations.
Now and then buy even cook our steaks, potatoes and salad with Americans, so the whole camp grills around the oil barrels cut in the space between the tents and the main building.
A load of beer will also be flown in from Denmark and brings a fabulous mood.
So our dining tent sums often of activity from Australian, American and German elite soldiers who find it nice to come into our small, well organized and outgoing Danish camp. During the visitation, we share experiences from our deployments. The extreme conditions in Afghanistan with the harsh climate and terrain and a totally unpredictable enemy is an enormous physical and mental challenge for all.
The thin air for three or four kilometers altitude imposes extra demands on the plight of the respiratory tract, and moving constantly on the borderline of what is physically possible. A Danish hunter is lost 10 kilograms in one operation. Several other people have after their infiltration was so exhausted that they collapse and must be fed liquids through a drip in his arm, and there have subsequently been long phases with bodily passivity in the database, which has led to losses in muscle mass and general fatigue.
Furthermore, the constant dehydration caused even more difficult conditions.
To live in squads of five men on a few square meters on a ledge in the 3000-4000 m altitude, sometimes up to two weeks, is not for the faint hearted. Some squads have in February solved assignments in some of the southeastern provinces where they have climbed the snow-covered mountain sides and tops wearing winter uniforms with white blur tape on their arms and white fabric bags for backpacks.
They even considered the need to carry skis and poles, but failed due to the lack of space.
Mental operations is extreme because it is indeed fatal to make mistakes on the rocks.
You fall and not just break a leg. They will fall into the abyss from certain death. It corrodes the psyche. A hunter named Hans, who some years later I come in with the patrol, told me plainly that he has never been so afraid to die, which he balanced with his 60 kilograms heavy backpack on cliff sides high in the Afghan mountains .
People also experience the intense stress of operating deep in hostile territory hundreds of miles from their own units.
A hunter from the Danish squad, who lives next to us, tell of a night operation with his partner, when it was really close to going wrong. For several days they had seen on some houses in a small village and knew that al-Qaida used the buildings. So one night they decide to look at them. They are only a few meters from the buildings when they suddenly hear footsteps behind him and quickly seek shelter in a small dollop stand at the edge of the path, and there, at a distance of three meters, crossing the gunmen from al-Qaida past and continues into in one of the houses.
One evening coming our Danish taskforce quite unexpectedly an urgent mission in the middle of dinner.
The operators of the unmanned, U.S. Predator spy plane has sent an urgent message to the headquarters at KAF: "The mullahs has left the building. He is on the move. "Spy plane has been observed that a wanted, senior Islamic scholar Taliban mullahs have left his safe house in the southeastern provinces of Afghanistan. Mullah is a former governor and minister under the Taliban government, which has been on the run since November 2001. It is the first time he has been observed after fall of the Taliban.
Immediately call our commander of the elite units of KAF, U.S. Navy SEAL Capt. Robert Harward, the key people in his staff. During the half hour scheduling an operation to capture the mullahs and to use four Danish hunter patrols.
Unfortunately, it involves not my squad, but within half an hour to 20 of my closest colleagues to do the job.
Within half an hour, they put on the helicopter site, so there is hectic activity in the tents. Bulletproof vests must be clarified.
Ammunition lysgranater, smoke grenades and explosive charges to be packed. Radios must be encoded and data entered on the handheld GPS'er.
The plan is that the spy plane follows mullahs car from the air and over the radio path directs the operation of two MH-53m Pave Low transport helicopters and one AH-64A Apache combat helicopter with his gun and his rocket is a safe and valuable support.
Already after 25 minutes are the four squads ready by the opstartede, darkened helicopters, and only 20 minutes after the landing at the humble dirt track where the Predator has appointed mullahs truck. The Apache helicopter, with its powerful searchlight brought the truck to a halt and is threatening immediately before the terrified mullahs and the other three Afghans in the truck cab. 20 hunters pass out, surround them, apprehending them and explore their truck for vital objects.
The four Afghans are fortunately only and makes no resistance, then two minutes after that my colleagues have landed, facilitates the back with mullahs and his entourage at the bottom of one MH-53 'is.
Unfortunately, it turns out that the man is not the mullahs, they assumed.
Predator was shading his truck briefly redirected to another task, which apparently was more important, and when it resumed the pursuit, it was the wrong truck.
The four detainees are supplied with water and food rations and flown back to their truck.
Of course it is cursed with such an error, but it is what is happening in an overheated war zone, and a few weeks after becoming the real Mullah captured by the Americans under intense firefight.
Predators confusion rays nor by the good work done by the hunters to get the wrong Mullah home to KAF. From the received order, until they were back with him, took less than a half hour. They can be proud of.
I am indeed not afraid to say that Danish elite soldiers are among the best in the world. The international elite soldier competitions and exercises are doing, we always excellent, and enjoys a high reputation in the world of Special Forces.
We also use a portion of their time at KAF to stimulate our konkurrencegen. Many hunters and fr�m�nd are competitive people, so we constantly challenge the other elite units.
Among others in the race, where Danish hunters or frogs often overtakes the other nation and occupy both 1st - 2nd-and 3rd-place.
Like our shooting skills are top notch, so we usually also win the competitions.
I have worked with talented elite soldiers from many countries. But my Danish colleagues always impresses me. They are intelligent, balanced and creative.
A little ironic is one of J�gerkorpset just reinforces that we are a small unit, which are resource weak compared with our American, British, Scandinavian and German sister units.
It forces the organization to think and act creatively, while the resolution power and hence empowerment increased significantly compared to more elite units.
Of course there is also an internal rivalries between J�gerkorpset and Fr�mand Corps.
There are people on both sides which is notoriously despise the other. Our courses are otherwise equally hard, and basically reminds us a lot about each other in terms of basic human qualities and values. I'm just fine with fr�m�ndene as individuals. But the maritime culture is simply different than the one experiences in army units.
Frogman corps recruit about half of their people directly from the street, which means that a significant part of the operational as the starting point is entirely without military and operational experience.
Rather than operate two small elite units in such a small military system like the Danish one should instead create a joint corps and create synergy. Today we train not work and therefore can not really use each other for anything.
In periods without internal competitions, training, training, exercises and operations at KAF I seek a little recreation useful by offering my help to the U.S. engineering units, which blow away ammunition in the desert around the base. Since they have more than enough to look to take the happy against my offer, which I designed as courses in management of mines and unexploded ordnance for our patrols. For the purpose ally myself with my friend and colleague, the country's leading experts in demining, Jorgen Sorensen, whom I know from my training in Eritrea, which I have flown in from Kabul.
Several soldiers from our task force have been maimed or killed by landmines lurk my calling and unexploded ordnance.
A Navy Seal was killed at Tarnak Farms in April 2002, and from the Australian SAS have one died and a second part of his foot when he stepped on an anti-personnel mine during an operation at some buildings, which they considered safe. My patrol had actually have been at the surgery, but the Australians took over because they still were in the area.
The many accidents does it have some very motivated hunters and frogs, which emerges from our course. The first long hot days we use to take around and empty the large Taliban ammunition stocks hidden in basements, tunnels and wells, as our task force has found. Tons of tank shells, mort�rgranater and cartridges for rifles and machine guns cargoes us to a hollow a few miles south of the KAF. Here we stack it carefully and place plastic explosives on the sides and top. A few miles away as we release some small radio transmitters, and with satisfaction, we consider the enemy's ammunition will be turned into mighty mushroom clouds over the desert.
Time in the camp also offers dark moments.
Early one morning in April I wake up in a series of deep, dark crash from outside the camp. It is not unusual to hear the bang, almost daily performing engineering units controlled explosions of unexploded ordnance, but they usually take quite precisely around 12 o'clock noon and at 17th
This is at 06.30, finds me half asleep, but I'm not thinking much about it until the entire camp a few hours later will be called together and have conveyed a very sad news. Two U.S. F-16 fighter mistakenly dropped laser-guided bombs on a Canadian infantry company, which this morning was out and shoot training at Tarnak Farms. Four dead and eight seriously injured.
It is the kind of error called friendly re-fi or blue on blue. It is one of the many incredible tragedies that war brings. To die as a result of fire from its own units should be an impossibility, but unfortunately it seems anyway. Many will probably remember that even two Danish soldiers killed in Afghanistan since British forces mistakenly bombed them in September 2007.
That sort of get the flags at half and mood in the bottom at Kandahar Air Field. These are the days you're tired of his job. It will then not long before my six years with J�gerkorpset the war is over. This time.

Hunter - at war with the elite: 12 - Stand by for Europe
By Thomas Rathsack
When one is filled with memories of Afghanistan's black-clad warriors, brown sand storms and white mountain peaks, Copenhagen seem mildly less exotic and chaotic. And very confident.
Slightly more than half a year after my return from Kandahar, I am with my squad started their final preparations for the large-scale EU summit in Copenhagen in days 12 - 13 December 2002nd About 4,000 police officers, Police Action Force, units from the Armed Forces, Fr�mand Corps and J�gerkorpset - we are responsible for the massive security job to ensure that the summit take place in peace.
Officers from across the country have in recent months trained to handle violent demonstrations, and police have been given a blank check to cover the additional costs associated with the presidency. Tracks scares from recent EU summits.
They have been marred by violent clashes between police and demonstrators. In Gothenburg the year before attempting the police themselves first with an outstretched hand and a desire for dialogue.
At the G8 Summit in Genoa, the police an iron ring around the city and rattled sharply with swords. In both cases things went wrong.
In Copenhagen, police want to create a balance between dialogue and a 'firm hand' against the demonstrators. But trouble still occurs, the police could handle large amounts of detainees, and there is purpose designed cages of wire mesh in several police stations to have enough space.
The volume of summit participants is so massive that most of Copenhagen's hotels will be used to house them, and all hotels will be guarded in varying degrees. For it is all operational hunters summoned. Our task is, among other things to make evacuation routes from the state of the head's, ministers and officials rooms for hotels and take in the event of terrorism, fire or other incidents requiring evacuation.
In the weeks leading up to the meeting we spend very many hours on the roofs of the capital.
We also train all r�gdykning and we have r�gdykkerapparater this clear, we are in a short time can put on us, so we know fire can still navigate the smoky corridors and evacuate our important guests.
On the roofs we prepare nedfiringsbaner with rope that guests can be evacuated down the street with. And we prepare harnesses, which we in seconds can be strapped to the guests and then lifting them up in helicopters. On the other hotel, we take the warheads on all the antennas, so we are in case of evacuation can quickly blow them away. Hereby frames the helicopters rotor blades are not antennae, and they can get so far down that we really only need to lift people on board. On most of the hotel rooftops as helicopters can not land because they are too heavy.
We also think of our own security on the roofs. If we come into a situation where it applies to our lives, and all other options have been exhausted, we have a joker up its sleeve.
We packed our parachutes in a special way, so the trigger much faster than normal. Then we can jump out from hotel roofs.
It is called 'base jump' no individual hunters - voluntarily - practice in their spare time.
Base Jump is incredibly risky, partly because of the hotels modest elevation, partly because of the unpredictable and often turbulent relationship between tall buildings in a city.
During the summit, are all available helicopters in defense preparedness. The old and faithful S-61 rescue helicopters, Navy Lynx helicopters and the Army's Fennec is somewhat less clear in military areas and barracks in and around Copenhagen.
And clear by those responsible hunter patrols, both as r�gdykkere and anti-terrorist soldiers can fastrope down at the hotel and added together with Police Action Force. The docks and canals patrolling Fr�mand corps of divers and fast RIB boats.
The summit followed by around 15,000 'anti-globalization activists "from around the world, but despite some minor demonstrations and riots develops, it is not dramatic. There is no need to insert J�gerkorpset or other of the involved entities, so we just spend three days on standby in hotel rooms and Copenhagen, military installations.
Pol generates Summit decision on the admission of ten new EU member states and it is alleged by people with sense of the kind that is both political and organizational success. I just know that it has been a security success.

Hunter - at war with the elite: 13 - guard in the world's hotspot
By Thomas Rathsack
The embassy now resembles more a fortress than a house. We have the last six weeks worked hard to prepare the 700-square-meter house with a new life. Until a year ago, it was just an ordinary house of a wealthy Iraqi family in one of the most affluent neighborhoods in the city. Now it's been reborn as the Danish embassy in the center of a real war zone in the world's most dangerous city, Baghdad.
We have built a three meter high wall that surrounds the entire site, and can withstand heavy strafe and rebates from mortars and rockets. We can not guard us all against a suicide bomber from the road, but the wall would certainly dampen the effect significantly. The only thing that breaks the massive masonry are two heavy metal gates and a single metal door that is the only entrances to the embassy. From metal door has built a lock, rather like an elongated cage toward the house's office department, which is used by people with official errands, visa applications and the like.
A technician is in the process of installing cameras in all corners of the embassy, so there is only one corner of the garden and why we can not monitor from inside the building at any time of day. On the wall and the roof is fitted with powerful spotlights that informs the garden, driveway and road, when darkness sets in.. A gigantic generator has been set up in the garage, so the daily blackouts from Baghdad very insecure electricity supply is not makes life miserable for us. Moreover, all the windows had glued a layer blastfilm on so they do not shatter when pressure effects of a possible bomb detonation.
And under the hot sun, we filled bags with sand and dragged them and various cement blocks up on the terrace and the flat roof, where we have arranged small battle positions with machine guns and light rockets.
We are a patrol of eight soldiers, hunters who are pioneers in service as bodyguards. It is the first time Danish soldiers solves this type of task under such difficult conditions in a war zone. Prior to the mission, we have two months carried out a comprehensive and intensive training in the corps of fire training, driving courses, n�rkampog procedure training. Not least, we have trained the mindset that bodyguards should possess.
We are like a hunter soldiers trained to seek out the enemy, identify him and possibly destroy him. But as bodyguards, we should avoid coming into contact with the enemy, and we are in a situation where we are confronted with him, we must do everything we can as soon as possible to get away from him. Defeating the enemy is not a priority, and how many enemies we kill is completely irrelevant. If we are attacked, it is not a question of defeating the invaders. It applies solely to save our Very Important Person VIP, and urgently evacuate him to a safe place.
Our VIP is the Danish ambassador Torben Gettermann. We must protect him while he was working to rebuild Iraq.
He set up both diplomatic and commercial relations between Iraq and Denmark and advising the Iraqis in building a democracy.
Torben is our top priority. Yes, this was viewed our only priority. We are attacked, his closest bodyguard act a human shield, while all other ends tightly around him.
He will then be brought into coverage, and we will, if necessary, shoot us clear of the field out to our vehicles that bring us completely away from the area.
Our only criterion for success is that Torben liver. Notwithstanding any attacks, assassinations or attacks should he survive, and he does not, we will have failed and not done our duty.
Torben Gettermann is in the early fifties, married, has three children and has previously been stationed in Saudi Arabia, Mexico, Hungary and Greece. He is an immensely likeable and sociable gentleman, as we all bodyguards respects and greatly appreciates. Both as a human, but also in his capacity as our VIP. How one can be a difficult and egocentric prima donna, costing around with his bodyguards, and are either not listening to or directly oppose safety recommendations.
But Torben is the opposite. He is intelligent and one of the least prima donna-like, I have met. He fully recognizes that we know more about his safety than he does. Therefore, he always listens to us and respect our recommendations and decisions about his whereabouts around the Baghdad ministries, official institutions and embassies.
The team of hunters, I am with on this trip, is also energetic, talented, sociable and a pleasure to be with. We are running and weight training every day together, all in very good shape and doing well in the bucket. Friaftener we spend reading, watching movies, chatting and drinking cola on the embassy roof with great views over the 1900 km long river Tigris, which flows through the city. The roof is in the evening a nice cool place in one of the world's hottest cities, the center of the Iraqi shrub steppe with 50-degree heat during the day most of the summer.
To supervise and inspect the embassy's guests, we have recruited a large number of local guards, which also guards the embassy grounds.
Many of them do not know and rear of a weapon, so we must train them from scratch to handle and shoot with a Kalashnikov.
In general, we use an inordinate amount of time at guard. We know almost nothing about them and their background, and we can not rely completely on them and have almost constantly check whether they perform their work properly. Also at night there is always one of us on guard to monitor them.
Overview of the situation in Baghdad is that we spend most time on. We have in our operations room computers, printers and numerous maps of the city and Iraq, and it is also here, we have all our secret and encrypted communication and radio equipment locked down in big boxes. It is from here that we structure the information that affects our behavior as bodyguards. Information on where and what bloody battles fought between soldiers from the coalition and hostile militias on the large number of roadside bombs and ambushes, mortar and rocket attacks that day resulting in a depressing number of dead and wounded soldiers - all these are factors influencing our decisions when we plan routes and destinations on our daily walks in the deadly streets of Baghdad's Red Zone, Red Zone, which is almost across Baghdad.
The only so-called safe area is Green Zone, the Green Zone. It is about ten square kilometers large bomb safely fenced and heavily guarded area that is home to the coalition forces' control of the country and most foreigners and journalists in the city.
Even our cars have undergone a transformation process.
The black shaded and heavily armored Toyota Land Cruiser and our Mercedes 600 with 500 horsepower - called The Beast - is equipped with so-called run-flat tires, which makes the car able to continue a significant number of kilometers on a flat tire. They are also packed with electronic equipment like GPS, satellite communications, long-range radios and electronic jammers to defend against roadside bombs.
We have also connected all the airbags, if we are to use the car as a battering ram. Many bodyguards are in the ambush were stopped by enemy cars from side roads and blocks them. We will be able to penetrate these barriers on the road without the car's airbag activated and thus risking blocking the view and breaking hands or arms on the car is running and the passenger.
We have of course also very clear rules for driving in town, and just in case we have prepared emergency and evacuation plans, both out of Baghdad and all over the country.
Just as we have arranged a special secure room in the embassy with supplies of food and drink, so we can get by for weeks without going out. Again and again we rehearsed procedures down to the smallest detail. At a nearby large seats coach we simulated attacks from roadside bombs, which we must change cars during enemy fire. We train replacement tires on the armored vehicles on time.
And in the middle of the night we hold alert exercises, so each of us still half asleep exactly know his job and his responsibility.
When the ambassador is in, and we are running in the Red Zone, I have the pleasure to The GIMP, a role which is named after the American film "Pulp Fiction" from 1994, when a leather clad madman, The Gimp, chopped down by a coffin for 'special' occasions.
Not that I'm mad or acting in leather, but the situation at the back of a Land Cruiser is just as cramped and uncomfortable in a coffin.
As gimp is my responsibility to make sure the rear while driving and defeat threats that might approach from behind, and despite the cramped space, I have been carefully decorated a small battle position with a machine gun, smoke grenades, hand grenades, man portable launchers and an arsenal of ammunition.
It is less than a year ago that dictator Saddam Hussein ruled the country with a bloody iron fist. In 24 years tortured and murdered him his subjects only on vague suspicions, or even of vindictiveness.
Saddam Hussein was the son of a widow, and he was raised by a cruel uncle, whose political role model was Adolf Hitler. It was a childhood marked by daily beatings, and so did the neighborhood of Saddam's most brutal thug. It is said that he proudly committed his first murder at age 14.
Early in his youth enrolled himself into the Baath party, an organization initially worked for panarabisme, socialism and economic modernization, and the young and ambitious man made himself useful as the party's ruthless assassin.
In 1959 he attempted the 22-year-old to kill its leader, Abdul Karim Qassim. The assassination was amateurish planned and executed, Qassim was only wounded in the arm and shoulder, and Saddam had to flee the country with a bullet in the thigh.
After four years in exile in Beirut in Lebanon and Cairo in Egypt, he returned, as in 1963 succeeded the Baath Party, apparently with American support, to kill Qassim and the first part of a government. The year after, the new Iraqi leader, Abdul Salam Arif, several Ba'ath people in jail, including Saddam, but fled in 1967 and was at the right time and place when the Baath years after the bloodless kuppede to power. Saddam was vice president under his cousin Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr.
In 1979 he became president and then became a despotic ruler and oppressor of the many areas of well-functioning and prosperous Iraq. The following year he sent hundreds of thousands of young Iraqi men across the border to Iran. It was the beginning of a war that by its end eight years later had cost one million lives. Saddam escaped, however, out of the carnage of power intact and without losing face. Not least thanks to large loans from the oil-rich miniput state to the south, Kuwait, and U.S. support, because Americans saw Saddam as a lesser evil than the theocracy in Iran. Saddam was needed to maintain a balance of power in the Middle East.
After the war against Iran was Iraq's economy on the brink, and Saddam thought he could solve this problem on 2 August 1990 to invade Kuwait. He assumed that the U.S. would support his invasion and threatened terror against countries that went against him.
But Saddam had miscalculated. Instead of support from the United States was the Americans and most of both the western and Arab world against him. In January 1991, Operation Desert Storm launched, and the first Gulf War was a reality. Here was clearly defeated Saddam's army and during the six weeks turned back to Baghdad.
Americans deposed him, however, what many today consider a strategic blunder, because, despite a decade of international sanctions, some of which forced Iraq to its knees, Saddam managed to maintain its position of power as the country's absolute first man. Together with his sons Udai and Qusai, he led a bizarre life surrounded by luxury, rape, torture and sudden death, while he rose through the 1990s angered the outside world by playing cat and mouse with the FNinspekt�rer to oversee and ensure that his WMD were destroyed as promised.
It seems that they were destroyed, but Saddam left the impression that he was in possession of WMDs, and in a fit of megalomania, he would demonstrate that he dared to challenge the world's only superpower, the United States.
On 20 March 2003 is the end. In Operation Iraqi Freedom invaded Iraq without FNmandat of 248,000 American, 45,000 British, 2,000 Australian and 194 Polish soldiers really supported by the Danish submarine seal. I coach himself for months with my fellow hunter in patrols in our newly acquired Humvee'er to participate in the operation, but in the last minute, shaking the government's hand, and our task force is unfortunately canceled.
The purpose of the invasion is to eliminate Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, to end Saddam's support for terrorist organizations and to liberate its people from a dictator who committed mass murder against his own people. It is for example proved that he in 1988 with his cousin "Chemical Ali", planned and implemented the so-called al-Anfal Campaign against the Kurds in the northern part of the country. Anfal means yield: Using chemical weapons were at least 80,000 Kurds in more than 200 villages were killed.
This the second Gulf War is over even faster than the first. Against the Americans and the British outnumbered, but morally and technologically superior forces yesterday Saddam's many h�rdivisioner completely dissolve. Not even the high profile Republican Guard proves worthwhile. Saddam last seen publicly on his way out of Baghdad in a taxi, while his information minister, 'comic Ali', on various global broadcasters in an intoxicated by narcotics declare that victory is imminent for the heroic Iraqi forces .
Coalition against Saddam soldiers get support from 36 additional countries, and Denmark later this year send a battalion of around 500 troops to Basra in the south of the country where they are subject to the British forces. Nine months after the invasion, Saddam totally humiliated when he long-bearded and ragged are pulled out of a hole in the ground by American soldiers and put in prison.
An Iraqi special court prosecutor and judge him, since the mass murder of his own people and crimes against humanity. On 30
December 2006 he will be executed by hanging, and the world is freed from a more recent time worst tyrants.
Unfortunately, the euphoria over the Coalition convincing victory in the 2003 short-lived. One year after the invasion and the ousting of Saddam Baghdad is a very dangerous place with nearly impenetrable security.
During the invasion, Iraq was a battleground between two parties, each had a visible enemy. Now we are in a completely different type of battlefield with an enemy that is often invisible, unpredictable and unscrupulous. An enemy who will use any means to thwart coalition efforts to rebuild the collapsed Iraqi state apparatus.
And an enemy on several fronts. Overall, the followers of Saddam's Ba'athists and Islamist and Shia factions, who have organized themselves into a resistance movement, but there are also a number of groups of foreign fighters, typically from al-Qaida, who are here to fight the militant Jihad, holy war.
The account is more than 900 American soldiers killed during one year after the invasion.
This must be added thousands of maimed and wounded. Alone within the first eight weeks after we arrived, is about 200 U.S. soldiers have been killed in a bloody spring, more than half in Baghdad alone. Moreover, approximately 14,000 Iraqi civilians, again over half of them in Baghdad, was killed as a result of the invasion, the subsequent fighting between the coalition and the hostile factions and criminal gangs, who see their chance to exploit the vacuum of lawlessness that there immediately after the invasion.
The last days have been extremely busy since Torben Gettermann have had a lot of meetings in the Red Zone. In contrast, the night was relatively quiet with only a single mort�rnedslag few hundred meters from the embassy. It was enough that we all tumbled out of bed and got Torben in security on the ground floor in the secure room.
Today we all train and relax in the shade in the garden. However, we have only a single drive to a checkpoint only three kilometers away, where we need to get some Iraqi craftsmen working at the embassy. They do not have access to the Green Zone, unless one of us get them into channeled through the tight security at the U.S. checkpoint.
The time is 09.55, and we shall be there at 10:00, but my damn radio will not receive my code. Each bodyguard involves a radio with a top-secret code that makes it impossible to listen and understand our radio communications, and we can not under any circumstances leave the embassy unless our radios have crypto programmed.
Finally accepting the radio code and I do a radio check with my hunter friends Kenneth and Christian, two experienced gentlemen, as I shall be very happy of the page. A few minutes late we go ashore Cruiser'en out through the embassy's heavy metal gates. Our local guards who always ensures our exit by walking out onto the road and stop all traffic well from the gate so that nobody can force entry to the embassy.
Since we only have to run a little trip inside the Green Zone, we are only us three and one vehicle, while we in the Red Zone is always at least two vehicles with two men in each. On the way we pass the parade ground with the two giant crossed swords that Saddam cigar smoking sat and watched her many thousand marching soldiers and military vehicles for the annual parades. Continue past the big pretentious houses and palaces with huge gardens, which belonged to the Iraqi elite, but now is abandoned or in use by the coalition's many administrative units.
Checkpoint is always hectic activity. Many Iraqis are employed in various jobs in the coalition government's administration and therefore every day in and out of the checkpoint, which consists of an entrance gate for guests and a zigzag-shaped gate for vehicles surrounded by high concrete blocks, called Tbones.
Security is comprehensive. All cutting searched with metal detectors and checked for valid identity papers. Vigilant and heavily equipped U.S. soldiers opens all vehicles will search them for weapons and bombs, check with mirrors underneath the engine compartment and check for suspicious objects. Concomitant with a 63 tons heavy, American M1-A2 Abrams tank and a half hundred meters down the street a very close eye on the checkpoint.
With its 120 mm gun aimed directly at the vehicle can lock it in under one second pulverize suicide bombers who try to run through. In addition, sticking a myriad of machine guns in all directions behind a massive concrete wall around the checkpoint.
Jack is running, and I sit in front of the passenger seat and is designed to make contact with Americans and get our three craftsmen into. Kenneth Parker in roadside 20-30 meters from the checkpoint, because it is too risky to park right next door. Wearing my bullet-proof vest and armed with my USP 9 mm pistol, I open the door, step out in the broiling heat and goes toward the checkpoint.
I have barely crossed the front of the Country Cruiser'en as a powerful flash and a deafening bang tearing the air, and a pressure wave pushing me back toward the car, while an orange paddehattesky shoots up towards the sky and enveloping the checkpoint in fire and smoke.
Apart from the power to judge, it must be a car bomb, and in a moment it is as if everything happening in slow motion. First, there is still surreal. And then hell breaks loose. Screams, cries and screeching women and men fleeing in all directions. I note that an older woman falling and that the contents of her bag spread out, while people jump over her fear of becoming another victim. A machine chew loose in long bursts, and the American soldiers trying to get an overview of the dead and wounded.
We are at a very dangerous place. We know that the enemy often follows up with a massive attack with automatic weapons and rockets, taking advantage of the chaos that prevails right now. We keep a regular kill-zone. I throw myself into the car and slamming the door behind me. Kenneth banging the drive in reverse, making an instant sharp 180 degree turn and continues away from the checkpoint.
My hands are shaking slightly, and I am dripping with sweat. It dawns on me how lucky I was. I look down at my radio and offers me happy that it would not receive its crypto. Had it received the code seamlessly, we had arrived two minutes earlier, and I would have been in the middle of the checkpoint when car bombs exploded.
Later we learn that fifteen people died that morning, including three U.S. soldiers. More than 50 were wounded. We also learn that our three craftsmen are not even waiting for us on the other side.
Being a bodyguard can be a tedious and monotonous work. I know from colleagues who live on it full time. Some say even that it may be the world boring job, because you probably never will be tested in what one can. Year after year, do you train for the day, the minutes, the second in which terrorists, a lunatic or a drunkard just bring your VIP's lives in danger, and you as a bolt from the sky must mobilize all of your skills and channel it into the right reflex. The action, which means life rather than death. Almost no bodyguards are ever in the situation and they know it. It therefore requires extreme discipline to never escape the focus.
Here in Baghdad, my comrades from the patrol and I the privilege never to bore us in his job as a bodyguard. Simply because we are where we are, with a threat level, which means that we can never relax. The threats are real, regardless of where we are and what we are dealing with. Whether it is at home behind the embassy walls in the Green Zone or Red Zone. We must constantly take account of mortar and rocket killing and for the high risk of ambushes, roadside and suicide bombs.
Things that occur every day or almost every hour in Baghdad.
Tomorrow we have a h�jrisikotur where Torben Gettermann be to the Iraqi Foreign Ministry to meet with the Foreign Minister.
It is extra tight because the foreign minister is Kurdish, and in Iraq has traditionally been a strained relationship with the Kurdish minority in the north, who want independence. Even have almost the entire the thousand-strong staff in the Ministry previously worked for the special kurderhadende Saddam Hussein, and most are former members of the Baath Party.
There has been a year since an attack on the minister. A bomb was placed in his office and set to explode when he would hold a meeting, but he was delayed elsewhere in Baghdad. The bomb exploded at his empty office, and Iraqi and U.S. studies concluded that the assassination was carried out by an employee of the Ministry, a guard or an officer. So even within the Ministry of walls Torben far from safe.
We never run out to any destination with him, without that we have conducted a thorough reconnaissance beforehand.
From the moment we leave the embassy until we're back home, there are dangers everywhere. Today I am with the reconnaissance team to the State Department. First, we must find the most appropriate route thither, and we must enter the ministry and see the situation.
The route we determine, from which there is less likelihood of an ambush, where there is no imminent threat of roadside or suicide bombs, and where there are fewer checkpoints, so we should not stop the vehicles.
The more we stop, the more vulnerable we are.
It is difficult to assess threats in Baghdad, which with 6.5 million inhabitants, the Arab world's second largest city after Cairo.
Up through the 1970s the city experienced a period of prosperity and growth due to the high price of oil, which is Iraq's main export source.
Was invested in new infrastructure, including sewer, water and highways. But the war in the 1980s against Iran made conditions tough for the city, when Saddam chose to spend the most money in his army. In addition, thousands of city residents were killed as a result of Iranian missile attack. The first Gulf War was also hard hit town, and the international sanctions up through the 1990s meant that hardly was rebuilt before the bombings in connection with the invasion in March 2003 led to further damage in the city. Moreover followed extensive looting of public buildings, offices, museums and presidential palaces, and the destruction of symbols of Saddam's regime.
Cityscape anno 2004, therefore, dominated by a dilapidated and congested roads, an obsolete industrial equipment, non-performing buildings, dirty and overcrowded streets and squares and large slums. In the most notorious of them, Sadr City, the Americans are fighting bloody battles with Iraqi militias.
Besides the roads are worn, they even often blocked by, and aligned traffic after police discretion. It uses both GPS and map uncertainty. In addition, there will be daily found people killed on streets, boulevards, squares and highways. So it is almost impossible to predict anything. However, we have a settled rule that the route to and from our destination may never be the same, and in addition we always reconnoiter for an alternative outward and return flight, if we run into problems at the primary. It can be ambushed, firefights between Americans and other hostile groups or even tra-fikpropper. Moreover, we never ask, and we always know where the nearest U.S. base is located, so we can quickly get in there and get safety inspected any injuries at the medical facility, the Americans have bases.
When we arrive at the State Department, we present ourselves as bodyguards for the Danish ambassador and ask for permission to inspect the building. We explain that our VIP will visit the Foreign Minister in the near future. For security reasons we do not disclose the exact date or time for our arrival with Torben.
We define the route from the point in front of the ministry, which are set by Torben and throughout the long, winding and populated times to the Foreign Minister's office where the meeting takes place. We look for the rooms or places where Torben will be the greatest safety in case of rocket attacks or mort�rnedslag. And in case of fire, suicide bombings, firefight or other conditions requiring evacuation, we determine a route where Torben quickly and safely be brought out of the building.
Radio link between the bodyguards and drivers must also be checked because the radios can not always hand through thick walls of buildings. It is no good, that suddenly we must evacuate and can not communicate with drivers. They will in a few seconds to run Country Cruiser'ne forward so that it fits exactly with the time when Torben out through the exit. He may never stand and wait in front of a building or other places to be picked up. The second, where he is between the building and collection point is the most critical because of the risk from snipers, suicide bombers and drive by shootings.
Next morning at 09.30 we leave the embassy in the two Country Cruiser'e on track to meeting the State Department. There is full concentration in the car. Small talk is anathema.
You know, Torben, and therefore he says nothing.
The last day in Baghdad has been very violent and bloody. More than 200 Iraqi civilians and 25 U.S. soldiers have been killed by suicide bombers and roadside bombs.
The route to the foreign ministry leads us through some of these troubled streets and neighborhoods, and although none say anything, there is a tense atmosphere in the car.
I have the gimp as reporting on the threats that were approaching from behind. But I assess the threat as real, I take my own initiative, with my machine gun or grenade launcher.
Nothing to firstly ask permission from our head bodyguard, Michael.
The most imminent and likely threat is suicide bombers in cars, and rear high-speed runs up beside our car and LA are blowing themselves. These cars are often driven doomsday machines full of explosives that turns everything to death within a radius of 50-100 meters. Both trunk, seats and floors are usually filled with explosives and detonate such a monster resembling our Land Cruiser, we would all be killed, although it is armored. Suicide cars you recognize that they often run risky and typically stands out from other traffic by shock absorbers are pushed completely down because of the great weight of explosives. Furthermore, there is usually only one run in the car. No need to waste two lives.
It's a busy morning in the city. We run with the highest speed, traffic permitting, and the two drivers zigzag'er among many other cars. Most understand that recognizable bodyguard vehicles will not have other drivers too close. There are still some who do not understand it, and some bodyguards takes every opportunity to open fire.
I also sit constantly with one hand ready on probationary tailgate handle, so I can quickly open it, and I have your other hand ready at the machine gun, but our fuse is longer. Often it is the open tailgate and flash a machine enough to get the most cars to block brakes.
They do not understand it, I fired a volley or two down the pavement in front of the car, and it seems still, I shoot in the engine block.
Is running so poorly, considering that he still does not understand the message and continue against us, he gets no more warnings, and there are free shots at him.
Further on a towering black cloud suddenly up, and we want to get away from the street here. There's just no side streets, so we'll have to continue and pass a couple Humvee'er and a division of American soldiers with M16 rifles, as shouting and is directing traffic outside of a burning SUV.
It looks like a bodyguard vehicle is driven on a roadside bomb.
We continue in the highest possible speed away from the spot and continue along the two-lane street from Al Sinak bridge, which leads us over the Tigris.
After 15 minutes of frantic driving we arrive at the Foreign Ministry a couple of minutes of 10th
As I point you are always the first out of the car, it goes directly to the person at the reception entrance and ensure that everything is in order. An elderly gentleman in dark suits, which I presume is the Minister's secretary, or another senior official, offered me free and let me know that the minister is ready. I report over the radio to Michael, who opens the door to Torben, who has just taken his bullet-proof vest and come quickly to me.
As a gruff breakwater yesterday I lead through the Ministry's long corridors and let people in front of us understand that there will now be a VIP, and we do not intend to give way.
Torben is always very fast, and I must constantly make sure that there is an adequate distance between me and the four other bodyguards, who are close around him. At the same time I have my eyes on anything that may resemble potential threats, primarily weapons which are in raw volumes in all Iraqi ministries and official buildings.
Suicide bombers often occurs nervously goes abnormally fast and also on an awkward way because of the suicide vest, they wear under their outer clothing.
But it also happens that retarded men, women and children being used as suicide bombers and sent against targets to be blown up with a remote trigger for the real masterminds. So there is never safe and clear indicators.
15 meters ahead of me 'clock 1' two armed guards caught my interest. On closer inspection, however, they look dull and apathetic out. No threat there. I increased the pace against the closed door ten meters ahead, which leads into a large hall with balconies all around on the first floor. I need a few extra seconds to screening room before Torben comes through the door. Balconies looks okay, nor does it appear to be weapons or suspicious persons in the hall.
So come into close Torben surrounded by the other, and we continue forward at high speed.
Sunlight through the window blinds me, and the surrounding area ahead become unclear. I quickly pushed my sunglasses down from her forehead.
A young man in baggy, white clothes comes directly from me at high speed with his hands in his pockets. He is strange.
When I point man, are my arms always release the safety catch, and I put my finger on the trigger.
He is now so close that I can see that he is strange, because he is lagging, and he jumps to the page and welcome polite and nervous when he sees that we have bodyguards.
We reach the Minister's office, and only one bodyguard follows Torben into the meeting with his gun concealed in his belt. Radio link to the two countries Cruiser'e is fine. We report that everything is okay and that the meeting is in progress.
Meeting culture in Iraq is quite different than what we in Denmark are used to. It is very common for officers, secretaries and assistants with all sorts of errands want access to the office in the middle of a meeting.
Although we have an armed bodyguard in there, we still insist that those who would enter the office, are searched. This gives rise to loud protests that we gently, but firmly rejects. Usually it will be accepted, but today refuses an older, powerful man with a black Attach� and a supposedly important errand of the Minister to be searched. So we can not let him enter, and he leaves us in a cloud of safe little flattering Arab initiate and curses.
"The meeting is over. We come out, "I report a little later on the radio for two drivers, when we are on the way back through the congested corridors. Out of the ministry's entrance uses I made five-ten seconds to observe whether there are suspicious persons or vehicles, before I leave Torben step out and stand ready at the front car to open the back door for him. A few seconds later we are on the wheel again and head of the Danish embassy with our precious cargo.
We've run a quarter of an hour, then called a cowboy team is approaching at high speed from behind.
Apart from hostile militias, terrorists and IEDs are cowboy teams some of the things we fear most. It's team of bodyguards, often American, which consists of happy amateurs who are here to earn quick money.
It is, at best, former soldiers, often without any bodyguard training.
Pumped macho types who more than happy to shoot at anything that moves. Whether the other bodyguards, local traffic or military vehicles, they are completely cold. They lack any kind of oversight and typically have a sign on the back of their cars with the words Deadly Force Authorized, as they more than happy to practice.
Many innocent Iraqis have been victims of these deadly amateurs, but fortunately have been scarce in the street because the security companies have acknowledged that their clients do not want to have them as bodyguards.
But there are so few still remain. And the left of the huge American SUV approaching, there is a huge k�dbjerg behind the machine gun. Wearing a skintight T-shirt and headbands instead of a helmet he fights with his arms on the front road, which he obviously wants away from the road. We could choose to continue at our pace and roadway, but it is simply not worth the risk with such a trigger happy hillbilly behind us.
I do not feel comfortable recommending Michael and we quickly switch to the alternative route.
It leads us to 14th July Bridge, where we stop at the U.S. checkpoint and leave the always vigilant and professional American infantrymen check us thoroughly before we drive over the bridge and the Tigris and directly into the Green Zone with the embassy a stone's throw away.
'Stop the car, "shouts Torben suddenly.
Driver blocks the brakes and we hazards together when we think something is wrong. It is not. Torben will go out and look at something he has noticed the roadside. In the Red Zone, we had under no circumstances accept it, but since we are now in the Green Zone, it is okay.
We exceed all of them out and follow him to the ditch, which proves a puppy tied to a tree with a tight wire around his neck. There are no people around, and the puppy is apparently a survivor, dehydrated, hungry and rebutted.
Torben consider puppy for a while and then takes a quick decision that it must bring home to the embassy. We cut it free, and the ambassador escorting the dirty piece of fur, which is a female into the car. While at the embassy he washes her, leads a cardboard box for her and give her the name Maggie.
Later that day we have a trip to the Iraqi Ministry of inclusion in the Red Zone, where everything back flaps, and even when we spend a couple hours in the large, cool gym at the U.S. Embassy.
A good day ends in the evening bearable temperature on the embassy roof with cold sodas and a few hunters smoker at their pipes.
The sky resembles lyssporsprojektiler from machine guns small missiles. Either they are from the operations which the Americans carry out every night everywhere in Baghdad. Or it is celebration of four Iraqi families for weddings or other festive occasions, shoots up into the air with their Kalashnikovs and not so rarely suggest people to death.
One morning, some time after Michael and I are on the roof and soaking up the sun before we have a trip in the Red Zone. The other cleaner arms after the morning shoot training, and Torben working in his office. I lie on my back and stare up into the sky always blue, when I suddenly detect two black dots parallel fly over us 40-50 meters above the ground. Michael may also have seen them, because we both jump up and realize that it is a mort�rangreb against the Green Zone.
A few seconds later two grenades hit the ground more than 50 feet away in two deafening, resounding hollow receiving windows to vibrate in the embassy.
Michael and I jump down the stairs to get Torben out of his office and out on the most secure section of the embassy's ground floor, but he is already being led out of Lars and Christian, who was in the kitchen.
Torben is usually compiled when there are attacks with rockets or mortars, but here are close, and he seems clearly nervous. In the minutes after we hear several detonations in the direction of the U.S. embassy which lies just a kilometer from the Danish and the next few hours is a long attack with rockets and mortars.
We are just sitting ducks who can do nothing apart from keeping their heads down. Every time we try to work on with our chores, falling to just a new wave of mortars and rockets against us. As long as the environment outside the embassy walls, we are fairly safe, but takes a mortar or rocket within the walls, it can be fatal.
As the hours go, we get used to a strange way to impact. We sit and play cards on the floor with Torben, while still a mortar detonates near the embassy.
I note that we badly oblivious, but sm�pludrende seems more concerned with short game than the mortal danger, we find ourselves.
The attack resembles a coordinated approach involving all the resources deployed to hit the huge U.S. embassy complex, with its several thousand employees in one of Saddam's former palaces, of course, is a coveted goal. Rebel militias who rule their firing rockets and mortars from the streets in the Red Zone, where the distance to the Green Zone fit with arms reach. In trucks or pickups have the launchers on the left, which is covered with tarpaulins, and within a minute or two, they fired their loads and disappear just as quickly as they came.
Americans have even with their sophisticated technology, no chance to reach to locate the rebels, and they avoid even the loss of today's attacks. A Nepali gurkhavagt at the embassy are killed when a fragment from a mort�rgranat pierces his helmet. And an American is killed by a pig accident when a 122 mm BM21 rocket inexplicably not detonate when it hits the ground, but proposes smut and frames the man who dies on the spot.
Every mission as bodyguard in Baghdad for two or three months, and after a few months at home in the damp and gray Danish winter, I look forward now to my third mission. I am pleased indeed to return to one of the world's bloodiest hotspots, and as usual it is the excitement and solidarity with my fellow hunter in the patrol, which draws.
I have just arrived at the embassy, and everything looks like virtually alone. Garden's flower beds and hedges appear to be even more velfriserede than previously. There are a couple of new guards, whom I welcome politely on. And we've got two brand new Country Cruiser'e to replace The Beast, which we basically do not use anymore, because it proves unsuitable for the streets of Baghdad - it can not come up over the high sidewalks and median discounts in case of evacuation.
And Maggie has increased. For obvious reasons we do not know how old she is, but it must be close to a year now, and she has been a lively and very determined lady, who is charmed by the reunion with me. During my previous missions I have been delighted by her, and here in the late winter with cool nights down to 5-10 degrees and a pleasant 30 degrees during the day we spend many hours in the garden where we play and practiced basic dog behavior.
Torben is in Copenhagen to attend a series of meetings at the Foreign Ministry, and we must get him tomorrow in Baghdad International Airport, known as BIAP.
I have the responsibility to obtain information about enemy in Baghdad before the trip.
I get them mostly from the intelligence department at the American embassy and at our daily meetings at our own embassy pass my information to the rest of the team. I am also running and uses a portion of the day to prepare for the Land Cruiser, which I am responsible for the next time trips in the Red Zone.
All major supply routes in Baghdad have been named by the Americans. Some of the biggest names as the Brewers, Tampa and Pluto, and is used daily by the endless columns of supplies for their 100,000-man war machine.
The strip of highway that runs from the Green Zone to BIAP, says Irish. It takes its name from the American football team at the University of Notre Dame - Fighting Irish - and thus follows a tradition in the U.S. military to name the main supply routes for sports teams.
Irish is not long, indeed not even seven kilometers, but in the years 2003-2006, described it unparalleled as the most dangerous stretch of road on the planet. Nothing less.
The few kilometers of motorway is the militia and terrorist groups' preferred range of attacks with roadside bombs, suicide bombers driving and ambush, as the last few years has caused hundreds of military and civilian casualties and thousands of wounded. Irish is also a lucrative business. It is not unusual to pay $ 20,000 to hire a team of bodyguards, as in a dozen minutes deliver their VIP in either the Green Zone and BIAP.
There is no way the Irish for the many diplomats, officials, journalists and other persons associated with the Green Zone, where they from and to BIAP.
American Black Hawk helicopters fly well enough on the line, but they are reserved for senior VIP's as American generals, politicians and topdiplomater. And it leaves us all back, forced to stretch in the car. Some of us many times a week and often several times a day.
Since yesterday I was drawn into BIAP by the team, I would help to succeed, we had to wait three hours. Irish Americans had closed, that within two hours had jumped three roadside bombs and two suicide bombers driving by U.S. military columns with several deaths of U.S. soldiers, contractors and Iraqi civilians to follow.
The militias and terrorist groups have started to become even more unscrupulous in carrying out their attacks. After that roadside bombs are detonated, the dead and wounded evacuated and the American soldiers who always summons a medic helicopter, which is clearly marked with red crosses. According to all the recognized war conventions, never opened fire on the aircraft or vehicles with the red cross. But no conventions governing the rebels in this war. When medichelikopteren lands, is the militias often ready with machine guns and rocket launchers and make an ambush attack on soldiers trying to evacuate their dead and wounded.
The rebels also proposing dogs and donkeys to death and then rip them up, filling them with improvised explosive device, put them on the roadside and blows them up when military guards or crossing them.
Many roadside bombs detonated by wireless transmitters such as mobile phones and small radios. Them we can, to some extent addressed by the Country Cruiser'nes jammers that disrupt these signals. The only problem is that the militias quickly find other frequencies in which our jammers are unable to capture.
And unfortunately, using the militias often just roadside bombs with wires, and so are all sophisticated countermeasures indifferent.
Our indicators of driving suicide bombers are not so sure anymore. There are several examples of suicide bombers carrying women and children, so they do not arouse suspicion when they run against their targets and blow themselves and everyone else in the car in the air.
Now we keep the last checkpoint into the Green Zone before the Irish, ready to go to BIAP and retrieve Torben, who arrives with a military plane from Kuwait. Country Cruiser'ens jammers are turned on, the radios have been checked, and both cars are loaded with weapons and ammunition.
I take a sip of water and a deep breath and makes me mentally ready for the intense minute drive to the Irish. It is like playing Russian roulette when we go out on the line, which has just been reopened after having again this morning killed two U.S. soldiers when their Humvee was hit by a roadside bomb.
We leave the checkpoint, and I accelerate to 120 kph. Not too fast, not too slow. Michael, who sits on the passenger side, and I even have time to observe.
But while we should shoot a high enough speed, so we are not too easy a target. The heavy armor makes the center of gravity of the car high, so it reacts much faster than a standard Landcruiser, and I am therefore trying constantly to anticipate driving and avoid abrupt twist and turn. The second Land Cruiser is the exact same speed a few meters behind me. No cars can come between us.
The first 500 meters we drive on a motorway bridge, which swings in a merge into the more congested part of the Irish, where the road is three-way. I keep myself as far as possible in the middle trace. It reduces the impact of roadside bombs.
200 meters ahead of us running a four-door car slowly into the middle track. In a few seconds I would have to overtake it, but I want it out in the lane to the right and blinking with the long light. No response.
I love the move, and since we are only 50 meters from him, I use both the horn and the long light. It works, and he promptly responds by tearing into the steering wheel and swing the car into the right track. He knows clearly that a bodyguard vehicle on Irish are not to be trifled with.
The first bridge across the road pop up 500 meters ahead. Bridges are always a critical point. Roadside bomb placed there under cover of darkness, and the bridges are often subjected to the drop-down bombs down.
When I see two men moving toward the center of the bridge, I report it by radio, so the whole team knows that there is a potential threat.
Immediately there is nothing to see in under the bridge. No person, no dead animals, no suspicious objects. But just before we drive under the bridge, stop the two men up. I will continue under the bridge, but quickly switches to the left track, so we do not get out in the same orbit as we entered. We come back out on the other side, without anything happening.
I when not to give the men on the bridge several ideas for 500-600 meters ahead raises a pillar of smoke over the road.
Closer we can see a Land Cruiser engulfed in flames and black smoke. An English bodyguard team hit by a roadside bomb. This is obviously just happened because there is no sign of life around the car. 50 meters ahead with the second car from the adverse team.
Wearing helmets, flak jackets and assault rifles miss two bodyguards out of the car and down into the ditch, while two others traveling with fire extinguishers in the race against the burning car.
As we drive past the car, let my eyes from the road for a moment. The cab is black smoke and flames, many meters above the car. Dead people in the car not by roadside bombs, they are certainly dead now.
Nothing survives being there. I think of the men whose lives ended abruptly and violently in a highway in a foreign country far from home. In spite of the cabin air conditioning brands that I perspire.
2000 meters to the checkpoint leading into BIAP. Bridge number two is crossed, and I remember the two big holes in the road from mort�rnedslag middle track and switching back to the left orbit. 1500 meters, and I hear Magnus' voice hiss' I open 'on the radio from another Land Cruiser. He is a gimp, and it means that he opens the tailgate. A car that makes gambling already overtaking before on the front of traffic, seems suspicious.
Magnus has fired warning salvos before and know exactly when needed.
But here it is enough to flash the machine gun. The car will stay at a distance.
As always, it is a relief to reach the heavily guarded, American checkpoint, where a large black infantryman take against us. He can look at the car that we do not look like a threat rears its head in with a redemptive, broad smile: "Hey guys - what's up?" The next time we drive to and from Torben meetings in the Red Zone almost every day.
I also every morning at the U.S. Embassy where I received intelligence and forecasts for the coming days.
I have now for the last three to four years worked closely with Americans, and they impress me. Both the man and the sun-dates. They are the friendliest, most sociable, helpful and service minded. The European sniff at American soldiers, I have never understood. The U.S. military educates the world's best soldiers. Longer is it really not. Europeans, by contrast often sluggish and half sour.
Even the once indomitable Brits seem now somewhat sullen, sometimes even soft.
Currently, one of the hottest topics in the U.S. intelligence department threat in the Green Zone. The 'safe' zone is not as safe as before. It has been within the last week found several improvised explosive device under parked cars and a garbage can inside the zone.
Americans believe that it is Iraqis who are able to smuggle the warhead are in, and it naturally gives rise to concern. Everyone who travels in the area, recommended to tighten security. This means that we control our cars, especially underneath, every time we parked.
Even in the Green Zone and outside of our own and the American Embassy.
In addition to our official errands we also frequently visit the U.S. Embassy to provide us their sumptuous buffet, morning, noon and evening at leisure for the Americans and their coalition partners in one of the huge halls of the old palace. Playful waiters dressed in white, offers all kinds of meat, salads, potatoes, lobster tails, sandwiches, fruit, cakes, ice cream and soda. A veritable wonderland as we fling ourselves into after a long, hot and intense day. There is even plenty of women at the embassy, only increases our appetite.
One evening when we were all eight of the team eat together with Torben, we put ourselves at a table with a group of young American Marines.
Torben sitting right beside them and overhear at a time their talk about operations in the Afghan mountains in 2002 out of 'the Danish hunters'. The young infantrymen are full of admiration for these huge, alien, raging Vikings, who with 150 kg heavy backpacks had asked up and down the hillsides as pure mountain goats and eaten al-Qaida terrorists for breakfast. And so Torben can not restrain himself. He strikes out with one arm against us, and approached the infantry States, he says aloud: "Gentlemen, may I present to you - The Danish Jaegercorps." Gaping young faces staring at us, but they disappointed facial expression appears to occur, we obviously less heroic here live with our solkogte face full of food.
On this my third mission as a bodyguard in Baghdad in the summer of 2004, conditions in the city virtually unchanged. The Green Zone is still almost daily attacked with mortars and rockets, and behind-dads streets are still dominated by firefights and suicide bombers.
Security is terrible, the violence is cruel, all the Iraqi social fabric is disintegrating, and the U.S. government is under pressure from heavy losses and a crumbling support for the war at home.
Torben has once served his time as ambassador and will continue in the Foreign Service. 
After an intense year of the atypical ambassador post here, he actually seems quite unaffected.
But we know he is looking forward to a less dramatic job, and not least for more time with his family.
I will always remember Torben as an excellent manager and a nice, calm and balanced person. And I will certainly never forget his obsession with grasping a broom and sweep in and outside the embassy when there was something that went on him. Particularly pronounced was the time when Ole Sippel from Danmarks Radio failed to comply with an agreement not to mention anything confidential in his commentary. As Torben saw him bleat away about it live on TV-newspaper, he went crazy jack off and swept until he was completely flushed.
With Torben parting is our job as bodyguards patrols at the Danish Embassy resolved and we have achieved great recognition and experience. Therefore, the military leadership decides that discipline in future be carried out by J�gerkorpset and today educates the corps all bodyguards, broadcast by Armed Forces.
Before going home, I have an outstanding final. Maggie looks forward to a life at the embassy with a myriad of different bodyguards, local guards, and Ambassadors, and I can feel her, she can not find peace. Of course, life on the Embassy far better than a life on the streets of Baghdad. But a hundeliv in Denmark is optimal. So I find a home for her with a colleague from the defense and prepare a plan for her return.
A super hunter named Ork takes her home with a couple of weeks after that I myself have come home. After 24 hours in a transport box via Kuwait and Cyprus, where she will be killed near the captain of the Hercules engine, which is not aware that she is with, she lands a summer day in 2004 at Aalborg Air Base. I accepted her, and after a quick fight with my Selma she embarks with her new family to the disc, where she is now a happy, round lady.
After six years at home in Aalborg packages I short notice again. The trip is really to Baghdad once again.
After three missions as a bodyguard, I feel good enough that I have spent ample time in the city and the country. But rather adventure in the big world, wherever, than to run around at home in something �velsesterr�n and freeze a limb out of his pants.
The next two months, my squad be bodyguards for the Danish Major General Agnar roko. He is head of the NATO Training Mission in order to train Iraqi officers and noncommissioned officers. The general is quickly gaining our respect. He is a man of few words and do not want superficial hogwash. He has a marked face, is athletically built and coach each night a half hours in the gym.
NATO Training Mission has its headquarters in a small area in the Green Zone, known as Little Venice. With his usual sense of style was Saddam built this housing estate with inspiration from Venice.
Headquarters offi employs 40-50 officers and noncommissioned officers from various NATO countries, among others, a handful of Danes who shall serve in the same period as roko.
We bodyguards will be accommodated at the U.S. embassy in some excellent twin residential containers with cable TV and shower. Entirely different conditions than fellow chamber at the Danish Embassy, where we lived five hunters at 25 square meters and had a shower for sharing. We also benefit from the other fine conditions at the embassy like food, fitness center and swimming pool.
And for me there is yet another attractive reason why it is good to stay here. A couple of unusual and beautiful smiling eyes affects my every time I pass an entrance at one of the inputs. I get the same result with more vigorous use just this entry and will be alternating longer and longer glances with the pretty girl in the American uniform. After a week's time I take myself together and go over to her and asks if she would like a cup of coffee. She has not. She does not like coffee. But would like to drink a cup of tea with me.
Jessica is a pretty, outgoing and intelligent girl. In an age of only 26 years, she is both a captain in the U.S. Marine Corps and has a university degree in economics behind it. Her parents are from Puerto Rico, but she grew up in the U.S.. At night she prepare intelligence briefings, each morning as she inaugurates the American generals in the embassy.
We are happy for each other, and in the coming weeks we seen so much work permit. She shares a flat container with a female colonel who work on days when Jessica's free. So we meet and chat. And then some.
General roko 'near Broad is the famous, now four-star U.S. General David Petraeus. During the invasion of Iraq in 2003, he was commander of the equally famed 101st Airborne Division, and the following year he became commander of Multi-National Security Transition Command Iraq, the department aims to rebuild the Iraqi army, police and other security forces, including infrastructure such as military bases, police stations and border guarding.
At least once a week roko participate in a meeting with the other American generals who are involved in this mammoth project.
It takes place in Petraeus' relatively humble headquarters in the Green Zone just one kilometer from the U.S. Embassy.
Here we are waiting for an evening in the office just outside the meeting room along with Petraeus' British bodyguard team, we're talking fine with.
We surprised ourselves well enough why one senior American general has a British team bodyguards. But when we ask them to be equal to the barnacle-free, it is because they are the best.
Not so many frills there.
Meeting of this evening takes an hour and then bring roko himself with his usual taciturn into Country Cruiser'en, and we go home from the embassy, where he must have his daily dose of exercise. Our stay at the embassy will be brief. A Danish staff officer from the NATO Training Mission is an urgent home when there are sudden and serious illness in his family. He must at BIAP now and we need to escort him.
That is, under normal circumstances totally excluded from running in the streets of Baghdad in the late evening hours. And not at all Irish. But back to the officer, so we get the heavy equipment up and put us in cars.
We put the Green Zone behind us in the usual formation, and running do I go about 100 mph out of it completely dark and desolate highway. In the darkness with the second Landcruiser long distance for me, for I may need to slow more abruptly than in daylight.
With the car is Henrik and Lars, two experienced rats, which have also been on several missions in both Afghanistan and Iraq. In the rear car sits, the Danish officer silently.
He is well aware of the risk he exposes himself and the whole team, and he is equally enthusiastic about the situation, as we are.
It turns out quickly that it is a really bad time to run. Suddenly banging a series lyssporsprojektiler over the car from the bridge a few hundred meters ahead.
A heart up in my throat blocks the brakes, but not trying to evade lyssporene as there are deep ditches on either side of the road.
Then skudsalven followed by a powerful floodlight which completely dazzles us.
Happily, they can only be an American patrol, who first shot warning shots and then use light. Was it an ambush, the enemy had used rocket launchers and machine guns directly at the car without warning and we had probably been dead now. Henry quickly does an orange piece of fabric in the windshield, which is a common characteristic of all vehicles belonging to the coalition. He jumps out of the car and the substance up one's hands and shouts of his lungs full force: "Coalition Force," then reads a metallic voice on a megaphone: 'Move forward and show your hands. "Henry moves with your hands over your head slowly towards the American patrol. The powerful searchlight is now off, and I have turned off the light in the car and can not see him anymore. A few minutes later he comes jog back and sits into the car.
"They were not fucking impressed us. We just came planing end this way. I told them that it is an emergency, and pacified them. We are allowed to drive through now. "I gently roll the car forward in a M113 armored personnel carrier that holds across the road. As we slowly passes, greets the group of American soldiers.
It was the heavy 12.7 mm machine gun in fighting vehicles tower, which opened fire on us, and we are relieved that they fired warning shots.
Had they shot directly at the car's armor had been of no use whatsoever. And it is reassuring that Henry also led them to advise other U.S. patrols in Irish, so they know that we drive home again within the next hour.
The following week offers some flights in Black Hawk helicopters with General roko to be at meetings and inspect Iraqi military facilities. Furthermore, they do sometimes with training and moments with Jessica.
In early spring 2005 I leave Baghdad - new duties with the corps ahead.
Baghdad I miss in any way. But I miss Jessica and luckily get some holidays with her in both Berlin and Copenhagen.
Our relationship will continue for approximately one year, but our work means that we all too rarely seen, and in all friendship we decide to stop.
For almost 20 years my work has been my life and I have not had a permanent base. It is very rootless and hard to find a girlfriend on the premises. Several times I have met a girl that I was happy and vice versa.
But it has not been reached either to develop before I was sent on a mission.
Or it is broken, while I was away. On the front, I missed a little harmony in my life.
When I travel from Iraq, there are absolutely no signs of improvement in its security.
Baghdad is still at boiling point and on the brink of civil war. Suicide bombers suggests daily in all major cities, and every week performing militant groups against the 1500 attacks against coalition and cooperating Iraqis. Since the invasion more than two years earlier, Americans alone lost more than 1,500 soldiers and 13,000 are injured. It is estimated that the Iraqi security forces have lost nearly 2,500 soldiers and police and 55,000 Iraqi civilians have mi-stet life.
In February 2007, however, something happens that gives hope. Roko 'former boss, Gen. Petraeus, takes over command of all coalition forces in Iraq.
"You can not secure the people if we do not live with them," said Petraeus and move 30,000 U.S. soldiers from armor-resistant bases and into the heart of Iraqi cities.
He himself is the main architect of this strategy, which eventually becomes a big success.
Initially his plan, however, costing many lives. Only from April to June in 2007, more than 330 American soldiers killed. This makes the quarter to Americans most formidable in the Iraq war. In July 2008 the figure dropped to 13, however, fewer than in any other month since the invasion in 2003. By the end of 2008, the number of suicide attacks and roadside bombs also dropped dramatically.
In March 2007 there were 130 suicide attacks in July 2008 "only" 40th Violence even fall by 80 percent, and streets which were deserted before, now sums of life and vibrant market places and shops. Iraqi leaders and security forces also regain faith in the future as Americans over 11 years transferring out of 18 Iraqi provinces to local military units.
And when Barack Obama as one of the first after his inauguration as U.S. president in January 2009 proclaims that the American forces begin withdrawing from Iraq 31 August 2010 and will be right out in the year 2011, it appears that yet another bloody chapter in Iraq's history is written finished.

Hunter - at war with the elite: 14 - Under Cover
By Thomas Rathsack
I do not look like an Afghan and never comes to that. My strong building my broad jaw and Scandinavian facial features seem far from the typical narrow Afghan face with the long curved nose. But now my heavy beard and my eyebrows are dyed almost black, and my face and my hands are smeared with brown skin cream. On the head I bear the traditional Afghan turban, a lungee, and your body a set of equally traditional salwar kameez, consisting of a khaki-colored, loose robe with associated baggy trousers.
During kirtle I bear a bulletproof vest, a belt with a USP 9 mm pistol, two extra magazines, a Gerber knife connector, a radio connected to my discrete, skin-colored and molded earpiece. The only readily visible, revealing that I am a soldier, Iowa is my desert boots. But something goes wrong, I could stand.
After some years away I'm back in Afghanistan, which will not relent in me. I confirm takes me along with five other soldiers from my hunter patrol in one of the major cities in the central part of the country in a more anonymous and humble role than ever.
Our operation is top secret. We have to operate undercover in the local community.
No uniforms. No visible weapons. No military vehicles.
With the car on this trip is my old hunting buddy from the Afghan mountains, Mikkel, who is obviously dressed like me.
Despite our disguise, we in the daylight soon be revealed. But we are working only at night when the city sleeps. Allied with the weak street lighting and dirty car windows at the rates we are to remain undiscovered in the old, worn-out Toyota. Around the car's cabin, we hung colorful local gadgets, and several months of lack of washing causes it to fall perfectly into the street.
The car's dilapidated outer covers over a mechanical tip-top condition. Engine, gearbox, shock absorbers, brakes and tires are more or less new, and we have pumped fluid in the tires so the car can continue for up to 20 kilometers, if we run over glass, partisans�m or just punctured by accident.
Our undercover status so that we are only in extremely stressful situations will use weapons and fight. But should the worst happen, we can despite our slender setup good beating from us.
Our C8 carbines - in CQB versions (Close Quarter Battle) with short pipe - ready concealed between the front seats of a dark scarf.
Between the seats, I have an extra gun, called a third gun, ready in a holster. In the door, discreetly behind a fabric dress, sits six magazines ready with every 28 rounds.
And under the seat are a number of hand grenades and smoke grenades. Moreover, Mikkel and I either snatchpack under the seat, which we have extra ammunition natbriller, a satellite phone batteries, $ 500, water and a n�dration. Should we be forced to leave the car in haste, it is vital that we get it.
We conduct our operations with an information collection from our partner.
A secret agent in this case is a guy in his mid-thirties, with code name Eric. It is his task to gather information that decision makers at government level in the western military coalition to use. Information of this nature is extremely sensitive and it is usually important people who hold them. Or people who move close to the important people. These are the sources, Eric must seek out and establish a trust relationship, and it does not grow so just over a cup of tea in an afternoon. Infiltration is slow and risky process, before he has the necessary confidence and validated information.
The job is often lonely and require cultural, political, linguistic, and human insight. One thing is to know his stuff technically, but he can not possess the social skills when the source has to be processed, the task did not succeed. Some sources appear to be suitably paid to sell knowledge and give a damn for the principles. But the major sources are often those who act ideologically, and they require a sophisticated approach.
Of course, hinges Eric's success that his true identity is not disclosed.
He therefore always traveling incognito with his work.
Both professionally and privately acts he and his colleagues subdued. Only very few people in their circle know what they are dealing with. In the case of Eric not even his family what he was doing.
Actually, he prefers to operate alone without us as a protective shell. The more people and bigger setup, the more signatures.
And the greater the risk of being detected.
And then both his and our safety and his entire organization's credibility at risk. Despite the assessment, he and his organization to Afghanistan now and there are so insecure that J�gerkorpset is a necessary partner.
Our mission is to protect Eric unseen and bring him to the meetings he will hold with his sources. Really quite simple. But this of us unfamiliar modus operandi makes demands on our creativity.
We usually have a number of resources we can draw on when things burn. Here we are all on their own. Something goes wrong, there's no Quick Reaction Force, nothing Gunship or a fighter, we can call into the radio.
We only have radios in order to keep the relationship between our two cars. There is no other calling. None other than our most trusted employers know that we are iomr�det. And of course it is absolutely crucial that our identity is not disclosed.
We recognize that Western soldiers, bringing not only our lives in danger. It would also be impossible to resume the task in the same area.
Home in J�gerkorpset we have trained for months for the mission here. Operating in and from a car has been the focus. It is our operational platform, and we leave it only in emergencies. Therefore, we have trained driving technique in old scrap cars. And punk came up in us when we made high-speed fast, backward 180-degree turns and braking, evasive and escape maneuvers.
On highways and in major towns of Jutland, we have trained shading. When a car is shadowed, there is less chance of being detected if we use more cars and overlap.
At the same time we are taking precautions not to become obscured. And we become what we are fleeing in headlong pace. It has left our agent-dummies wailing with white faces, while we have thrown cars around small dark road and had the glorious.
We have also repeatedly trained procedures for when a source must be collected at a particular location at a precise time.
You have to plan an alternative assembly point and establish emergency. And we have trained melee techniques into cars if our opponent turns out to be intractable and hostile.
Finally, we have learned basic words in Pashto, the most common language in Afghanistan.
And as the first Danish soldiers, we conduct a course in how to rouges, colors his eyebrows, lubricates his skin in a tan cream and attach great black beard with glue.
One is the training, something else is real. I sit behind the wheel of the old Toyota, and we are chugging out of our hangar and along a narrow dirt road that leads out to a little embarrassed gate at the far end of the base. When we do not use cars, they are parked in the old, abandoned hangar, which nobody has access. It is also where we dress on and rouges us for the night tours.
On the passenger seat sits Mikkel and discreetly serving his GPS and his map of the city in his lap. I am in good hands with Mikkel and totally confident in that he always fulfills its role perfectly. Some years ago he was also my buddy during the extremely debilitating operations in the mountains in the southeastern part of the country. Then he won my utmost respect. He is a unique companion.
After the gate swings we left toward the center. Some hundred meters behind us, out of sight, running the remaining four men from the patrol in the other car, an old Toyota Hiace minibus, which is in the same fi ne mechanical condition as our car. It's curtains for the rear window, which is quite normal in these parts. It allows us to hold meetings with some of the sources in the car while we drive.
Eric is a meeting of town and must be retrieved at a humble little side street in the center. Along small, dark and bumpy roads, often without asphalt, we drive into town. It is peaceful and quiet, and there is almost no traffic. Indeed, it would be an advantage that there were more cars to hide among. There is no mantra mullahs from mosques. No light in the houses. And we see only a few men on foot and some tired figures who enter the pedals of old, classic men's bicycles. No women or children. However, it is hundetid, and lots of street dogs strolling around in the eternal quest for sewage water to drink and food scraps in the waste.
Mikkel has plenty to look to keep us on the planned route, and I keep a comfortable pace so low that he can manage to control the map and GPS with her little flashlight. We know roughly where the Afghan government forces checkpoints lie, but sometimes they move around on them, so our map is not always consistent with the facts. This is bad because we want to avoid checkpoints. A flashlight in my face and I will almost certainly be revealed.
And while the soldier is opaque and insists on knowing who we are and what we do, it can escalate into a confrontation, even though we actually soldiers against the same enemy: the Taliban and al-Qaida.
The second car, mini bus follows a route parallel to ours. We have incorporated various code points on the map, which we refer to the radio. That way both cars, where the second location. We ride together, however, on some routes, and on both cars, we screwed the bulb in the left rear and right headlamp off, so we thus fairly safe to identify each other in the darkness. And there is probably no risk of being fined for driving without proper lights.
On Mikkel officer swings I left down a street against a major intersection.
Nearly a hundred meters down the street we see the outlines of military vehicles and chicanes on the road, forcing traffic to slow down and running zigzag. A checkpoint that is not on the card, and he swears weak. There is no option to turn off.
And the hills or turns, I will create suspicion and seriously suggest that we have nothing to hide. We have no option but to continue.
Mikkel quickly hides his card and his GPS under the seat, and I check with my right hand, my third gun is worth. The time is just over 01, and I hope that the Afghan soldiers are lethargic and tired and just waved us through. But as we approach, enter a soldier armed with an AK-47 in the middle of the road and keep a hand up. Both Mikkel and I bands. I roll the window down and drive slowly towards him.
'Salaam Alaykum, "he welcomes.
He is a young guy with a bright, clear voice.
And he has yet to show my face.
"Wa Alaykum as-Salaam," I reciprocate softly, hoping not to reveal my accent.
But he takes a torch forward. I nominate myself that this could be something bad.
He lighted the lantern and lit into the cabin.
Beam is Mikkel, but he is apparently not interested in him and the cone moves back towards me and lit me directly in the face. It rests on me for many long seconds, and I feel like a little boy who was caught in the act of stealing.
Exposed, vulnerable and aware of the punishment, which falls rapidly.
So says watch something I do not understand. Tone is friendly, and I do not feel that he is aggressive. He leans now directly toward my face and be able to see that I'm not local.
'Tha tsanga ye? "I asked with a friendly voice. 'How are you? "He nods, but says nothing. There is no doubt that he has seen through me and I will only appear even more suspect, if I continue with my meager store of Pashto-gloss.
I go with the right hand out after the little bundle of folded $ 50 notes, as I have a slot on the dashboard.
My money trouble.
I rate a leaflet hoses slowly toward him and turns into English: "Thank you." He is still silent, but the lights on the $ 50 note and look interested in it. It probably corresponds to several months wages for him. The flashlight is turned off.
He turns discreetly against the three other soldiers who are unsuspecting and sm�sludrer up a military jeep. Then he put the banknote into his pocket.
"Okay," he said quietly on a broken English.
He looks fortunately no reason to create problems when he can secure a really good personal bonus.
'Tashakkur, "I thank and puts the car in gear and continues slowly down the road.
Mikkel and I breathe out loud. Long live my trouble money.
Colleagues in the minibus, which took a different route, have reached to become uneasy for us. But we can now announce all the best over the radio and continue towards our reference point, a small street where Eric should be picked up. When we arrive, there is a small half hour for him to be ready.
Mini-bus driving down the street. Its job is to ensure that there are no potential threats in the street or on the route we must take away from the area. It may be parked cars with persons or persons moving to and fro in the streets.
On the whole, will all activity at this time real suspect, and suspect that we capture the point of being compromised or just insecure, we send a signal to Ericsson to launch our alternative plan.
Mikkel and I parked in a dark corner of a small open space. We can not see the assembly point here, but we are less than 15 seconds from it. Every five minutes, we receive an "everything okay" message from the minibus, and when the time is approaching the time of collection, reports on the radio: "Minus two minutes to capture. Everything okay. We continue, "then leave the area and runs up and waiting for us on the road that leads us back to base.
Pr�cis 30 sekunder f�r det aftalte tidspunkt starter jeg bilen, og 15 sekunder senere s�tter jeg den i gear og k�rer langsomt frem mod opsamlingsstedet. On the second Eric pops out of the darkness. Had it not been for his way of walking, I had never been able to recognize him behind the local clothing and the large, heavy beard. I stopped in front of him, he sits in the back seat, saying 'thank you' and announces that the night session has been extremely rewarding.
Eric is a shrewd kind of a bone-dry humor, which I find entertaining.
He does not participate so much in our 'r�vballesnak "and he is not accustomed to being surrounded by a bunch of energetic, restless hunters. I think it seems to him a little tiring sometimes. We are still really good out of it with each other and talk, eat and often see movies together.
I am also a part on-one hand with Eric telling me about her fascinating and unusual life. He is very well satisfied for the time, because one of his sources proves to be something of a goldmine. In fact, he believes that the source is in possession of so many valuable information that he is about to make history in its sector. Several of his international competitors have expressed great admiration and recognition for his work.
Our work intensity with Eric is very variable. In periods, we have busy with trips every evening and night, at other times there is so much to do. It depends entirely on Eric's sources. They can usually only meet at certain times, we need to equip ourselves for.
However, we have no trouble keeping focus. We know that Afghanistan is a dangerous place to live, and that all discipline must be mobilized, when we solve the tasks around town under cover of night. We must under no circumstances relax concentration or underestimate the Taliban or al-Qaida's abilities. Recently, four Canadian sun-dates who were out to prepare a reconstruction work, was killed not far from here, while talking to local children. Suicide Bomb officer came by bicycle, and several children were also killed.
While we operate under cover, it is no guarantee that the enemy can not hit us. He is out there, although he is not always visible to the naked eye. Calm conditions, suddenly turned into a bloody battlefield. Just one 'have' source can lead us into an ambush, and in our 'soft' cars and with our limited firepower, we have little chance of survival.
Last year, ran a similar team from the British Special Boat Service, SBS, in an ambush in a town not far from where we are. Out of five two men died and one was badly wounded. And in one of the larger hotels in town, where Eric will hold a portion of its meetings, and security is really good, manages a few months after our return a number of Taliban disguised as Afghan government troops to enter the hotel with Kalashnikovs and hand grenades.
One of them is wearing a suicide west filled with explosives which he brings to burst, after he has struggled to access the hotel lobby. Six-eight people are killed and a larger number wounded.
Besides preparing for the tours with Eric, we spend days at our base to sleep, eat, jog, weight train, play volleyball and keep us sharp with our arms. We drive into the mountains and make cans and other improvised goal up and a bunch of rednecks with bare upper body roars we loose with our pistols and carbines. We enjoy the lack of restrictions and regelrytteri.
Occasionally we also have the opportunity to ride into town in broad daylight in our armored Land Cruiser'e. We do this in normal civilian clothes, but of course with weapons and wearing flak jackets. The many western NGOs in their SUVs represent a large part of the street, and we therefore do not arouse special attention.
Last time I saw urban life in Afghanistan, was in Kabul during the Taliban regime with all its terror and oppression. Now I see no equal hung in lamp posts, no patrolling black-clad Taliban, and no people who get beaten with sticks. I am glad however to see dancing draws over the rooftops. I welcome the children playing, eating ice cream and smiling beardless men that buy meat grilled on skewers from the many small street stalls. I am delighted to hear music from shops and cars and to see women with children act at colorful markets are full of goods.
On the whole I feel a mood of reconciliation and hope for the future, as I under these people.
My preliminary final mission in Afghanistan is still a dog guard.
A while ago, a female American officer about an eight week old puppy at the far end of base station, when it stood at the edge of the runway covered in tar. She got it on its feet, and when she was home shortly after I offered to take over Kaja, we christen her.
It complicates a lot of practical issues for me. Especially when I decide that she be tortured to death to Denmark where I have found a home for her. First, I bribed a Greek veterinarian with the U.S. dollar, gin and vodka to vaccinate and to present the papers at her. I must, even with specialfly where it is out having her on, so six bottles of good red wine donated to a very obliging Danish soldier, who undertakes to carry her home in a home built transport box with a Turkish airliner. Finally bribed a large smiling Turkish captain with a fine bottle of Scotch whiskey and leaves her completely contrary to all regulations come aboard.
Kaja is hard to hide. Despite two strong lull pills do and howls in her box in the lap of the Danish soldier. Not a soul on board is in doubt that there is something unauthorized. But Kaja doing it to Copenhagen, where she is at the bottom of a bag smuggled through customs and quickly transported away by its new owners to his new life in Vejle.
Although I become superseded by yet another successful mission.
Eric will not be replaced interim, but continues its lonely being undercover agent in the anonymous world. 

Hunter - at war with the elite: 15 - Better safe than sorry
By Thomas Rathsack
Basra, Iraq's second largest city, 23 September 2006. A team of Danish bodyguards running on a roadside bomb on the outskirts of town. The 36�rige fly specialist Kim Wadim are killed on site, one badly wounded and seven others slightly wounded in the two armored Toyota Land Cruiser'e. The team is unable to continue, and the day after taking over my patrol.
Some days we organize ourselves in a couple of tents and establish our operations room at Camp Dannevang where 500 Danish soldiers are stationed and the subject of a British brigade in 4000-5000 husband of Shaiba Log Base 15 kilometer north of Basra. Here we are immediately inserted into the bodyguard service for two officials from the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, responsible for a number of civil reconstruction projects.
They have until the deadly roadside bomb in Basra lived, but has now moved to the military camp to be better protected.
The Iraq war has now raged for three and a half years.
The southern Basra region were the first three years calmer than bloody hot spots as Baghdad and Fallujah. But the Danish and British matches against local militia in and around Basra has become more intense through the 2006th A total of five Danish soldiers have lost their lives.
In addition to matches against local militias, mainly JAM, IEDs are the biggest threat. Not only is the number soaring, they developed more and more sofi jack. The concern of the Danish battalion.
Especially roadside bombs of the type EFP, Explosive Formed Projectile, is widespread. They are very precise and powerful, developed by the militias, probably with support from Iran. As the name suggests, the explosion forms a metal shell to a pound of heavy projectile with a speed of two kilometers per second easily penetrates even an armored vehicle.
EFP bombs triggered by mobile phones often or by small motion sensors, called PIR, which can be molded into the papier-m�ch�, which resembles a stone. When a vehicle passes the sensor triggers the EFP'ens deadly cargo. It was precisely such, Kim Wadim was killed.
None of us hunters have been the bodyguard mission in Basra region before, and it is a very different environment to operate in than we're used to from Baghdad.
Basra city itself has approximately 2.1 million inhabitants and is located off the river Shatt al-Arab, which spread over a vast network of canals throughout the region and gave the town the nickname "Venice of the Middle East '. Not that here is a hint of romantic gondola.
Some rivers and canals are large marshes and lush agricultural area where farmers keep cattle and grow corn, rice, maize and recrimination. And between the City and Camp Dannevang is a barren and desolate desert landscape from which numerous oil refineries produce a large proportion of Iraq's daily 2.4 million barrels.
Our problem at the open landscape is that two countries Cruiser'e on the long, desolate desert roads even advertises that a team of bodyguards approaching. The militias have so pre-positioned their roadside bombs and keep the road under observation with binoculars, so they can sheathe Detonators are before we pass them. For this reason we avoid wherever possible to move to the open spaces in daylight.
Tonight we take a week of many dark tours to Basra in order to collect information on militia and roadside bombs from our colleagues in the intelligence section of the British headquarters in one of Saddam's former palaces, "Basra Palace". We take special precautions during your trip.
It is too risky, even downright stupid, to run on the dark desert roads with lights on. So we run with completely darkened and natbriller vehicles.
Although the dashboard is covered with a fabric cloth, so that the light should not interfere with my vision of natbrillerne. And the pears to the brake light, we have picked out, so the rear does not run aperture in its natbriller.
The only problem is that the British around Basra and Camp Dannevang draw a lot of checkpoints on the roads, they also contain quite darkened. If we fail to detect them in time and marks that we get, they will probably open fire on us in the belief that we are running suicide bombers.
Therefore turn the front car light on the lines where we know that the British typically establish checkpoints.
On this evening we have chosen the most humble route along several kilometers long ditches.
It leads us into the city's southern outskirts, where we must go through a series of residential neighborhoods to get to the palace. I am running in the front car and have repeatedly clicking my natbriller up the forehead so as not to be dazzled by the many orange flames from burning oil refineries.
At the same time I am fighting to avoid the biggest craters in the bumpy road, pushing the heavy armored car's shock absorbers to the extreme.
'Iraqi checkpoint, 500 meters, "reports Claus, one of the two other hunters in the car over the radio from the passenger seat.
We know the way here and know that there is a small checkpoint manned by a handful of sleepy policemen, who usually do not bother to stop anyone, but just sits and hangs in chairs along the small mud hut in the side of the road.
Since I have a few hundred yards from them indeed can see that they just sit on the roadside at the hut with their hookahs, I see no reason to put the spotlight on to advise them of our arrival. We will therefore resounding out of the darkness like two black meteors in a cloud of sand and dust, and the guards are so befippede that one roll off the carrier, while the other two runs into the house.
Our cars are filled with laughter roar.
A few kilometers later when we are on the southern outskirts of Basra, and although the bell is almost 22, is bustling with activity in the small narrow streets with a jumble of shops selling food, electronics, carpets and other everyday products.
We feel in any way safer here, but we need to drive with lights on now. Iraqis are in no doubt that we are alien soldiers. Some children and young people smiling and waving to us, while others throw stones at the car.
Silent and focused, we keep a constant eye on danger signals, so-called combat indicators, for example, armed men, men who speak in hand-held radios or mobile phones while they watch us, or motorcycles and cars following us.
We have only a few miles to the goal when I turn left into yet another shopping street in the small town Abdaliyah.
"What happens here?" Exclaims Claus and I simultaneously.
As a striking contrast to all the lively streets, we just run through, this is completely deserted. No open shops, no traffic, no people. I pull over and turn off the light, and the second car ending up right behind us.
"It does not work good it here," objected Claus, and I agree with him.
Why people choose to stay away from the street? We have a really bad gut feeling, and Claus report by radio to another car that we 'omruter' is the alternative route. I make hills out of the street and continue on a parallel street toward the palace.
Here comes a boy suddenly stopped on the roadside in the car's square of light and make gestures at us and pointing forward, where the street swings after a few hundred meters. Once a combat indicator, which, although somewhat vague, forcing us to choose once again to shift the route.
Similarly, we run completely on the southern part of town, when we an hour later returned after receiving our intelligence at the Palace.
We did not hurry. And better safe than sorry.
Next morning I stick to my morning jog past the Danish battalion intelligence section to get the daily summary of overnight incidents across the Basra region.
My stomach tighten. I read that a division of British soldiers in the night in exactly the neighborhood we chose to avoid driving in a roadside bomb. In the ensuing ambush, ten seriously wounded.
The following week doing an increasing number of rocket and mort�rangreb at Camp Dannevang the nights shorter. Almost every night we spent several hours in the camp's security bunkers until the attacks stop.
And unfortunately, that is still a Danish soldier killed by hostile fire, and we participate in the sad ramp ceremony, where all the camp's British and Danish soldiers say goodbye to the only 20-year-old constable's coffin as it carried on board a Hercules and flown to Denmark.
At the turn disbanded Camp Dannevang.
The base station is transferred to the Iraqi military, and the battalion re-emerge as Camp Einherjer at Basra Air Station. That brings our mission, and after three months in the hot and dusty desert, I am actually a r�kold weeks on exercise in Jutland.

Hunter - at war with the elite: 16 - Probably the best exercise in the world
By Thomas Rathsack
A Danish ambassador has been kidnapped during a visit to a war zone.
He is being held in a remote desert area of a number of terrorists who demand that the Danish government immediately put the Danish war efforts in the region to an end. The terrorist group has a reputation for not spare the hostages, and they communicate that if the government does not meet their requirements, will the ambassador be executed. U.S. Predator spy plane has been able to track terrorists' hideout. After 24 hours decides Man to insert J�gerkorpset to liberate the hostages and eliminating terrorists.
It is a dark and wet autumn evening at Aalborg Air Base, and J�gerkorpset bear Exercise Night Hawk, which among elite units throughout NATO is reputed to contain the finest and most realistic PRACTICE set-up.
U.S. Navy SEALs, Special Force Command German, Dutch Corps Commando Troepen and Swedish S�rskilda Skydd Group participate in the exercise, which runs over five days with all the task types J�gerkorpset and other elite soldiers must be able to solve.
Among other special reconnaissance and hostage liberation actions, so-called direct action.
Tasks which implies that we must land at or near the sites where our goals are. Therefore, both F-16, Hercules AC-130 Gunship, and the British, Danish and German helicopters, some of the resources that we must fling us to liberate the Danish ambassador before tomorrow morning.
My patrol of eight men are putting the final touches to preparations for the night hardships. I'm blasting husband and preparing explosive charges, so we can blow the doors of the house where the hostage is being held. I also check my C8 carbine, my shotgun, my gun, my natbriller and particularly carefully my parachute.
We must implement a natspring from five kilometers altitude. A parachute jump at night always complicates things, and every detail on screen and other equipment must be prepared down to the smallest detail.
My patrol must jump out of West Coast country a few miles from the beach and set up a tactical zone countries, a TLZ, on the beach, where a British Hercules to land and put our two Humvee'er of. They must first be used to transport us to the house where the ambassador held hostage, and we can use the installed heavy machine guns during the attack. Next, eliminate the terrorists, hostages freed, and we return to the beach where we call into the plane and fly home to the flight station.
Night Hawk is always breathtaking workout that can not get closer to actual operations. Tonight is no exception.
We fly in tactical Hercules'en, so the cabin is dark subject. Only fluorescent green and red kn�klys break the darkness with silhouettes from hunters in the second patrol, which sits and waits in two sand-colored Humvee'er. The great war vehicles fills most of the aircraft and transport aircraft loading ramp should not open when they are with. So we usually jump from the ramp at the rear of the plane, we must now jump out the side door.
I, as another man, right on the heels of patrol scout, Claus.
The door opens and the noise is deafening from the two huge engines roaring on the wing a few meters ahead.
I look out into a big black hole. Nothing.
No light from the earth, no moon. Pitch black.
But I know that the western part of Jutland lies five kilometers under me. And I know that I am within two minutes to jump out of the black hole.
Adrenaline pumping, and I feel my heart send heavy blow out of my body. To jump out of an airplane for five kilometers into a dark oktobernat contrary to all logic. Nevertheless, I am. Everything else is locked out. None hverdagsdikkedarer and annoying things to deal with. Only it. It makes every fiber in my body to live.
I fall to the ground with almost 200 kph. It's a cold night, but I am not oblivious. A cloud affects me. I fall through it in seconds and can now glimpse the small dots of light on earth. I look after the other hunters, like I have strained green kn�klys on the feet. But I can not see them. I am also most concerned about my altimeter. It is my main instrument and displays 9,000 feet, and there are approximately another two kilometers freefall before I have to drag my screen.
Since I prefer my handles, giving it a violent jerk, and natbrillerne who sit on my helmet, hammering down on my nose.
Hot blood running down over my mouth and jaw. On the nose is broken or split, I do not know, but I also do not care. Now it is important to find out because I do not want to run out to sea.
I focus on the ground under my feet, check out my compass and keeps watch while the other hunters in the air.
There have been grim examples of the hunters have been about to fly head-on into each other. Inexperienced knights only had their eyes firmly fixed on the ground. I fly into another hunter, triggered a nightmare scenario where the screens and jump in a big lump of the filter will fall to the ground - adi�s amigos! My battle west and my carbine with the attached 40 mm grenade launcher sits to hell and have been pushed up around my neck and jaw when screen opened. So I can only see straight ahead. I can not turn their heads to brief me. Every time I look in another direction, I need to pull the steering handles to rotate the screen.
It is a very dark country area, I will land on. It can not be seen with the naked eye, but had to be lit by a few flashing, infrared light, which I am 500 meters above the ground should be able to see in my natbriller.
I can just not. There are thousands of light from the Parish of cities, houses and cars. But no light that flashes in the stands and a small lump in a field. It is a bad thing, because it is important that we land together, so we can quickly pull toward the beach and set up a TLZ for Hercules'en which must land within the next hour.
Another problem is the wind. It is much stronger than expected. So strong that I am now in the 200 meters not fly forward in the headwind, which can preferably be, but actually hills instead.
I have no idea what I'm heading for, and choose to drop the country to find the zone.
Now it is just about to come down safely.
Still bakkende I look down and see the fields. It is fine to land on a field, but I still can not see what is behind me.
It makes me uneasy, and suddenly runs a polar cold down your back on me when I hear a sound which I think I know what are.
The sound of big, deep breath and monotonous. I prefer hard in my one steering lever and turn to certainty. Shit! Quite true.
It has two giant wind turbines, and continue my path, my hills into the huge wings and are smashed on the ground. So much for renewable energy.
I rip back of the steering handles and turns the screen completely around so I can at least see the turbines. With the same brands I know that speed increases dramatically, as I now fly with the wind at their backs. I'm down for almost 100 meters altitude, is steering straight toward turbine blades and could not manage to turn away. The only option is to try to fly in between the wings and land on the other side. I am worried about the turbulence which creates wings will make my screen uncontrollable. But I can not do anything about it now.
The next moment I blow in between the wings, which fluctuates over me hair-raising close. By a miracle I will not hit and prepares me to a harsh landing in tailwind.
Fortunately, there is no frost, and soil on the ground will be soft. It just when I thought before I swoop down and completely uncontrollable roll around in somersaults and lands with his face in the ground, so my proposed spout get another roughing. I roll over on his back and is a moment with thumping heart and look back towards the two windmills. So I sit up, prepare my weapon, turn on my radio and GPS and packages display brought together in the bag. There is a patrol to find and a task to perform.
After a few kilometers quick march through the Jutland mold I localize the other from the patrol. We meet in a woodland edge and continue along the beach at high speed because time is short. We only have half an hour to get to the beach and put infrared Markeringslys, so pilots know where they will land on custom-built Hercules.
To land a large aircraft on a dark night on a beach with a strong crosswind makes great demands on the British pilots. They fly with all lights turned off, both exterior and interior, and all activity in the cockpit made with natbriller on. It's also not a random crew, and a random flight, but specially trained pilots and navigators, who specializes in operations with British Special Air Service.
We treat them very well when they are here, and usually we carry out some very wet bombing raids together in Virgo Ane Gade.
We have arrived and have placed candles on TLZ when we get out of the darkness looks black, 70 tonnes of heavy metal lumps appear. I can not hear it because of the powerful roar of the sea. But in the same second plane wheels hit the ground, facing the pilots power, proposing in reverse, and with a roar the four engines like hell.
I sit on the pitch at one of the infrared light and must be ready to jump on one of the two Humvee'er set with the plane. While I sit at the side of the runway, I feel very small and vulnerable, as awe-inspiring silhouette roars toward me and passes in an inferno of noise so close that I can set the arm and reach the outer engine on one wing.
At barely 700 meters brings pilots the plane to a halt, and a few seconds after the two Humvee'er at high speed on the way out of cargo bay to our location. While I sit up in the first Humvee, facing Hercules pilots the machine, increases engine rpm to the maximum, and the full force facilitates the plane back from the tongue and soft surfaces. In less than three minutes is the plane the country, has devoted two Humvee'er is turned around and eased again. Such! Five kilometers to the south is a house in the middle of a large, desolate moorland area. The house is built for hostage liberation operation and provides furniture and a number of terrorists and hostages, the ambassador, in the form of costumed dolls. The area is a military firing ground, and all the shooting that night is live ammunition.
The plan is rehearsed in detail at home in the corps. But one thing is preparation and rehearsal in daylight at a comfortable pace. It is quite another when a firefight rages in a dark room filled with smoke, shouting, screaming and signals in the radio. But nobody should be in doubt about anything. No one shall be 'suspect' something or 'count' that something gets done. Or as our American and British colleagues used to say: Assumptions are the mother of all fuck ups! We are 500 meters from the house and just stop. In the air over the North Sea report two Danish F-16 fighters and U.S. AC-130 Gunship that they are ready. In under half a minute, we can also run Humvee'erne forward with their heavy machine guns. But first, the marksman's turn to show that they are fully aware.
And they are. Even at 500 meters distance deliver the silencer a shot in the head at each of the two dolls in front of the house, which is supposed to be guards. They go into the ground and are destroyed.
Immediately after I hear in my earpiece signal that we must move toward the house frontd�r. Until the door is broken, everything must be quiet, and we move the last 50 meters to the door on a line with me at the back. As the man with the key, I am responsible for, the door burst up efficiently and quickly, so I have my bursting clear in one hand and my gun in the other, because I can not use my carbine with one hand.
Since the first man when the door, I'm already heading towards it to place my primer and detonator. It is difficult to see properly with natbriller on, I saw reminder of the detonator to make sure that it's stuck on detonating cord. When I roll out the cord, leading one of the others slowly backwards with one hand on my shoulder. If I stumble here, we will be heard from the house, and our element of surprise will be lost.
"Standby, standby 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 'I release the cargo, and the silence is broken by a hollow boom, which turns the door to a cloud of dust and pieces of wood.
'Go-go-go. "One moves up at a second from a silent behavior in mobilizing all the body's force and aggression. As wildlife crashes we shouting through the doorway with our white lights on their weapons on. No need for secrecy any longer. A series of rapid single shots followed by high, clear messages about "two tango down '- the first two hunters in space has defeated two terrorists.
Claus gaffe 'closed door', and I'm already on the way over to him. Propulsion and momentum is crucial. No fedtspilleri now. No additional comments or commands. Just ahead to our goals, hostages, which we call 'golf'. I catch my shotgun and planed three shots through the lock, followed by a powerful kick from my size 44th The door flies open and in we throw a flash bang, as with six deafening bang fills the room, accompanied by strong flashes of light. Then roll hunters into the room and reads a series of shots. Three more terrorists are defeated.
At the same time I hear a scream behind me and turn me on. Patrol deputy, Lars, lying on the floor and writhing in pain. Spraying blood from his thigh, and it looks like a arteriebl�dning. I guard against a closed door to a room, we are not yet ready to join. I can not help Lars, as it will mean that I should get my security.
The task count higher. But I shout at my lungs full force of our plumbing husband, John, who throws a quick glance at Lars' legs.
"Help yourself - use your tourniquet.� Jan doing the right thing. We can not slow our momentum because we have a man down.
Are we doing what we are already losing the battle.
He seems therefore Lars even use the small bl�dningsstoppende instrument tourniquet'en, as we all sat on our equipment.
Our driver, Tom, crying 'Forward', and we are ready for the last space. The door will receive the same treatment with my shotgun as the previous, and soon after we have control there. In a corner behind some furniture sits our hostage, a strong and heavy doll with handcuffs and hooded.
"Have golf - left the object," Tom reports over the radio.
January kneels by Lars, who is still on the floor and writhing. He has even stopped his bleeding with his tourniquet. January stabilize him further and make a fast liquid drop on him.
Lars had prepared his leg with a pump with the blood-like liquid and was instructed before exercise, when he was hit by terrorist bullets. We knew, of course, others nothing.
From I blew the door up until we leave the house again, have gone less than five minutes.
We have a hostage with us and move in haste against the waiting Humvee'er keeping a few hundred meters from the house behind some sand embankments.
Enemy reinforcements are on their way towards us in large numbers, we also told the radio.
Soren, our Forward Air Controller, which directs air into when we bomb targets on land, contact a few F-16, which is waiting to throw their one thousand pound bombs.
With infrared light, he marks the enemy vehicles, that is radio-controlled metal washers in natural size, which pops up in the terrain - and supplement with short and precise instructions over his radio, so fighter planes could drop their deadly cargo. Immediately after take deep resounding earth to shake beneath us, and the night sky lit up. While spewing the two heavy machine guns on top of the two Humvee'er their 12.7 mm projectiles toward goals, and the lighter machine guns makes them joined from the surrounding dunes. I even fired two man portable AT-4 rockets on some panserm�l and follow up with my carbine and defeat the enemies that constantly pop up in small groups 300-400 meters from me.
Some hundred meters ahead in the dark moor area appear more k�ret�jsm�l now up and Soren called on his radio AC-130 Gunship'et, orbiting above us in a few kilometers altitude. This version of the flying fortress is armed with a 25 mm Gatling gun, one 40 mm gun, a 105 mm gun and also has the mounted thermal imaging equipment, which makes it able to see even the slightest movement on the ground. Soren mark targets with its infrared laser light as he communicates with the aircraft, and seconds after the targets disappear from the earth's surface in an inferno of flames.
After the firefight, we hurry. Hostages to return to their own strengths and we have less than 20 minutes to us in the shelter of the dunes to keep ready to be picked up by Hercules'en.
As one Humvee-driving has sprained foot, I bid into. I have driven a Humvee in a few years and know this excellent vehicle and out. In the dark b�lgravende I run with 80-100 km per hour down a forest road nordjysk with six hunters on board.
We run tactically, so the car has no lights on. I will inform me in my dual natbriller while the hunter in the front seat beside the information on distance to next turn.
'500 meters right, 100 meters left ...' I love the boyish sense of sitting behind the wheel of the two and a half-tonne, eight-cylinder engine and blow-off through a dark forest.
We reach the beach and running into position in the shelter of the dunes. Five minutes to touchdown. Once Hercules'en landed and stopped, it will take 1015 seconds before loading ramp is completely down and have contact with the beach. When the ramp is clear, flashing load master a few times with his infrared light, and our arrival back transport machinery to be careful with that we can run up in the seconds immediately after. Timing is essential.
I look at my watch. 03.50.
"One minute out," so it crackles from the British pilot in my earpiece.
I hear again the deep roar from the engines start to back pedal and out of nowhere the plane passing us on their way down the beach. When I can see that it is about to stop, I put the full-throttle and pushing Humvee'en maximum down the beach. 300-400 meters from the plane I keep the car in a straight line behind the ramp.
There were two flashes of infrared light. Now is the ramp all the way down, so I will continue in high speed towards it until I braked hard 10-15 feet before the ramp.
Aircraft engines operate at higher revs, the noise is indescribable, and despite a partially enclosed cabin whipping sand in my face. There is little more than half a meter to the on each side because of Humvee'ens width, so it must be Gelinde, but I've never hit the side of a Hercules in slope from a TLZ and does not intend to do it night.
Seconds after the car get hold of the ramp. I accelerate into the cabin and continue right up until I see a little green kn�klys on my left side. When I have the body off it, keep Humvee'en where it should. I turn off the engine and jumps out to help the two British loadmaster, already started to make stabilizing chains on the car front and rear. The second Humvee has just stopped behind me, the ramp will be closed, and the pilots are already beginning to turn the plane to bring it in off position. I have to grab a mirror in order not to fall and jump into the driver's seat again, so we can give thumbs up to the British loadmaster who report prepared for the cockpit of their radio.
With brakes basically builds force pilots and cabin shakes as if it is about to collapse. Then release the brakes, motors release all their force, and I am pressed back in his seat while the plane accelerates down the beach. Once this gets ground plane becomes calm and rises sharply beyond the North Sea.
The whole operation proceeded as planned.
I turned around and look at the Ambassador in the back seat. He sits with a large, painted smile on his fat head doll. I reciprocated with a grin. It's been a terrific night.
After a few hours sleep we go again, and the rest of the week continues in the same way.
We are preparing for operations on the day, put them on the goals and objects at night and sleeping only a couple hours. Wonderful! In the daytime we train also one of J�gerkorpset skills: to be inserted and removed by helicopter. Here is jungle extraction most popular because it is howling funny. It is a method, as the word suggests, is often used in jungle, where dense canopy projecting 5080 feet off the ground and make it impossible for the helicopter to land when a patrol must be inserted or retrieved from an area of operations. Rather than lowering the long rope down to the hunters, which hooks in with a carabiner, after which the helicopter rises and flies out of the area.
We train on the flight station and is the subject of much open-mouthed in the cars on the congested Thisted Road when we overtake them hanging 25 feet below the helicopter in a two centimeter thick rope.
We also practice rappelling, which is suitable when the helicopter can not go far enough down the target, or if we have heavy equipment on. Then we can sit down in four thin rope from up to 50 meters.
A third type of helicopter technique we use when we included a night in a large-scale attack on Aalborg's huge power plant, Northern Power, which lies off the Limfjord. In the UK, German and Danish helicopters we fly together in formation low level over the fjord. I'm in the front and sits battle dressed halfway out of the helicopter with his boots on the Medes and can in my natbriller consider the sight of six helicopters behind me. Without the helicopters landing, we synchronously jump onto the roof, while others using fastroping fi RER down on the roof of the 15 meter rope.
On the various floors and in the vast halls of power, we are attacked by a large number of terrorists. Ammunition is color projectiles that can shoot an eye out from 25 feet away, so that during the whole process is very cash settlement, if one makes the slightest tactical error. Again, these terrorists we will be defeated, and once again the Night Hawk lived fully up to our Swedish sister entity predicate: Probably the best exercise in the world.
I'm on a great many good exercises with Jaegercorps.
We use for instance a lot of time space combat, Close Quarter Battle. The coach we shoot houses, kill houses, in Sweden, Norway and Germany, using live ammunition.
It is built with bulletproof walls and walls and offers vivid effects of stress hunters. For example, dry ice, which is pumped into the rooms, flashlight that flashes and a deafening noise of war, which makes communication almost impossible. To optimize the training room, all small cameras to film the patrol and promptly disclosing errors.
To offer daily life in hunter squads often on a cornucopia of challenging experiences. We are so privileged to have the necessary resources to train anywhere in the world with the best possible sparring partners, and the vast majority of our training takes place abroad, because we simply do not have adequate facilities or climatic conditions in Denmark.
The annual climbing courses unfolding as in Switzerland, Austria and Norway. Exhausting tactical climbs up and down the hillsides pushing physics to the extreme, and many hunters re-live the dramatic events from the Afghan mountains in glimpses of their inner eye.
We also receive training in Arctic warfare in northernmost Sweden with our Swedish sister unit, which is some of the most respected in the world in this field. In the 20-30 degrees of frost we train climbing, insertion methods on skis and snowmobiles and stay overnight in ishuler like we build. And we cut a hole in the ice and jump into the icy water in full equipment to train survival procedures.
I am also a course in Florida at the air base Hulbert Field, where the fearsome AC-130 gunship stationed. In Florida's swampy forests of the night directing me through my radio these Flying Fortresses over the forests where they with their Gatling guns pulverized enemy tanks on the ground. I am fortunate to be able to fly with one of those where I come from the air will be able to see how the crew operates in an association of sophisticated technology and hard manual labor.
The 'Gunners' stands at the back of the plane as a stoker and almost shovels grenades and ammunition into the weapon systems. Other sits barricaded behind computer monitors and operates the aircraft's many systems, including the extremely powerful infrared spotlight, which my squad and I enjoyed in the Afghan mountains in 2002.
Corps training also offers exotic environments. We train jungle warfare, both on the Indonesian island of Borneo and in Belize in Central America, where we stayed for weeks in the sticky heat and humidity of the night sleeping in hammocks among the exuberant wildlife.
A few squads have been so lucky that the U.S. Delta Force, trained in the jungle in Hawaii a few years ago. From a gigantic C-5 Galaxy, the largest transport aircraft in the U.S. Air Force, jumped patrol alongside U.S. soldiers in the elite parachute out over the jungle areas on the island.
With 524 parachute jumps in my logbook, I am an experienced jumps. But despite my experience, I have repeatedly found that free-fall with a parachute is dangerous, we coach. I know hardly a hunter who has not broken limbs or permanent injury as a result of this deployment form.
In late summer of 2006 I find myself in a twin-engine, civilian Sky Van transport five kilometers of parachute training camp La Palisse in France, where the corps trainer because of the good weather conditions. Often we take for Arizona, where the weather is even better.
The plane holds my hunter patrol and six men from the British 22nd SAS, which we train and exchange experiences.
I will skip a particular jump, where I have strained a 50 kg heavy backpack on the front of the body - usually located in the back of the legs. All equipment on the front of the body makes fallen far more unstable, and therefore be mounted on the main screen called a screen reached, a small screen at a meter in diameter, which stabilizes the fallen. But not in this case, since I am curious for the sake of curious to see the jump went outside and pass on my experience with the Corps parachute section. I miss therefore with a video photographer who occupy the full plunge.
Immediately after I exited the aircraft ramp, I have big problems to remain stable in the air. I am as big as possible with my arms and legs. But equally, it helps. The slightest movement makes me almost lose control. As long as I just lie still, I am doing it. But it is impossible to be completely quiet when you fall to the ground with almost 200 km per hour, and within the next half minute or so, I withdraw my screen and will have to change position.
I decide therefore to make a 'dummy drag ", a �vetr�k, so I can test how hard it is. My right arm has barely changed position to go after the release handle before I completely lose control of the fallen. I is accelerating so rapidly that video photographer did not follow me. I tumble, and the heavens and the earth spins around me while I was desperately trying to repair fallen up with arms and legs. Vain.
Centrifugal bring in now in earnest, pushing the blood up in my head that feels as if it should explode. I have no idea what altitude I am at.
Everything seems unclear and I am struggling not to lose consciousness. My brain, however, arguing so much that I once thought that the automatic safety trigger pull reserve screen very soon, with the speed I fall. And it must not happen. Since it is a spare monitor, triggered by extra fast, and I will probably become entangled in lines. And then it is game over.
Lying on your back in the air will succeed me everything in our power to get both hands placed on the trigger and pull the full force. I pray that the little pilot display, which draws out the rest of the screen, no wraps itself around me. And by a pig luck slipping it under me and pulls me to one side, while the parachute cells filled with air and the unfolding well beyond my stormy head.
I come to the hooking and gangs myself away. The jump could have had the highest price. It is the fourth time I have seen a jump, which could well have cost me my life. To hell with my stupid curiosity.
On the domestic front is J�gerkorpset a part of the national terrorberedskab. We therefore cooperates with the police's elite unit, AKS, police Aktionsstyrke. At least once a year a participant hunter patrol in their exercises, which often offers plenty of resources and realistic scenarios. One is that a Stena Line passenger ferry crossing from Frederikshavn to Gothenburg will be hijacked by a large number of terrorists who will have a number of requirements met, or they will begin the systematic killing of hundreds of hostages on board.
Anti-terrorist unit from countries including Sweden, Norway, Germany, Holland and Belgium participate in the exercise, which culminates in a large-scale attack on a passenger ferry early morning.
The attack includes Danish and German helicopters and a large number of fast-cutting RIBgummib�de having engines with 600-900 horsepower. Prior to the attack has fr�m�nd sneaked on board and have sent valuable information about terrorists to the waiting units on land.
With the morning sun in the back all the helicopters flying low level over the sea surface filled with heavily armed elite units against the ship. RIB boats while sailing up the side of the big ship, and soldiers and police officers climb the small metal increases, as they hook onto the railing while my squad and I fastroper us down to the upper deck. We have the responsibility to eliminate the terrorists in one of the many decks and fight us thence through restaurants, cafes, common areas and from cabin to cabin toward the enemy, who, despite armed resistance must eventually capitulate to the relentless and overwhelming power.
The many exercises have put their physical traces on my body. I have broken my nose, an arm, fingers, wrists and ribs, and I have broken teeth, split eyebrows and have chronic damage to knees, back and neck.
In the summer of 2007 is also wrong. On our supacat special vehicles, we have mounted cross KTM motorcycles, which we all must be trained on. I have the pleasure of getting enelektioner in this monster of a motorcycle by the division commander, Captain 'upper arm'. He is an exceptional officer with his past as power lifts are equipped with a pair of huge arms and a street urchin unpretentious personality, which we all love. In addition, he is almost pathologically obsessed with motorcycles.
With my extremely fragile experience of such a creature escape 'upper arm' me one day off in a gravel pit and ordering me out on a terrifying track with jumps, slopes and turns toxic. At the highest hop the hell out of me and the bike, I lose control and continues as a heksehyl to heaven.
As another Chinese circus performer, I propose an unprecedented number of somersaults and ends up landing on top of the beast.
The diagnosis of emergency room has two broken ribs and two depressed and I get handed a can of painkillers, which takes the top of my pain. The worst thing is that I have in the future can not train or participate in patrols daily program.
Mood rises markedly, however some days. In spite of my disability gives 'upper arm' me for a quote, I can not say no to. I will participate in an upcoming mission in Iraq? I did not hesitate a second to say yes.

Hunter - at war with the elite: 17 - I shit in the neck
By Thomas Rathsack
Thousand meters south-east towards the swamp.
Follow the edge of the swamp 2000 meters to the south and then due east until you hit the little road just north of the clump of houses. Continue further one thousand meters due east up the channel. Thence 2000 meters in a south-easterly direction through the palm grove to search JAM militia home with a suspected arms depot. "I find myself over southern Iraq summer 2007. There are only gone a few days ago my squads "Operation Viking" with the explosion of JAM's Chinese rocket.
We are already underway on a new operation.
There are only five minutes, the pilots bring the mighty EH 101 transport helicopter onto the surface of light sand, and almost ritually I review one last time for our infiltration route in my head.
The area is teeming with enemies, mainly JAM, but also other hostile militias and terrorist groups who know that we operate in the area. Local residents sympathize with the militias and are against our presence in the country. Therefore, it is completely excluded that move around the area for days at a patrol of only eight men.
We would not have a chance against a numerically superior enemy, if we were discovered.
Night and darkness are our best friend.
I check my weapon, turn on my GPS, set the focus on natbrillerne one last time and check that my l�rlomme with n�dkortet is closed. I'm already drenched with sweat in the 35 degree hot night. It drips from her forehead under my helmet. A little hot water from my camelbag slaked my dry throat.
Mine broke and depressed ribs after motorcykeluheldet home in Denmark for a couple weeks ago hurts to hell, but I try to ignore it. Infiltration route does not look so bad on the map and satellite images, so it'll go. Good enough is just one channel, we must swim across, and 30-35 ditches, we must cross, but they do not look so wide off the pictures. With a little luck and a good deal of skill, we can in five-six hours with our pick-up agreement with the helicopter.
Object, we must return to, is a tol�nget house in three floors, which is surrounded by a dense palm grove in a residential area on the outskirts of a major city. The area is densely developed with a web of small streams and canals that make it extremely difficult to move unseen. The house is a gathering place for JAM's top officials, while presumed to act as a custodian with rockets, grenades and other munitions.
But satellites and unmanned spy planes have not been able to gather enough information about the house, to the heads will launch a genuine attack. Moreover, the spy planes were observed women and children move into and out of the house. Then Heads choose a more cautious approach to the task. They want us in as close as possible to the house and the land it is on to collect maximum information to the basis for any subsequent destruction operation.
"One minute," reports the British loadmaster, who sits right next to me behind his 7.62 mm machine gun in the middle of loading ramp at the end of the helicopter.
Then his "go-go-go, and I skip past him down the loading ramp into the Iraqi night and away from the big cloud of sand and pebbles. Immediately after the disappearance of the helicopter as a lump of black against the starlit night sky and abates in a faint, distant hum. As always seems quiet after disembarking almost surreal after the deafening noise from the helicopter.
As if I'm in a vacuum.
It is a very vulnerable stage. The nearest houses are nothing more than a few thousand feet away, and the helicopter has certainly been heard. JAM know that they are intruders.
'Forward,' says our patrol officer Kenneth low voice in my hear snail.
I release the safety catch my arms and head south-east of the sandy plain, with my closest companion Rasmus directly behind me and the rest of the patrol additional 20-30 meters behind.
I put my patrol high. Not only for their professional ability and experience. Most of their human experience. They are all seven quiet, responsive and aware of when to use its resources better.
Jack is a first class soldier. He is red-haired, temperamental, and has been a soldier in half of his life, more than five years as published in the Balkans and in Afghanistan and Iraq. Rasmus, who is blasting husband is a wonderful physical specimen and always calm. Then Soren, who with his 26 years is the youngest man patrol. He is our Forward Air Controller. Our plumbing husband, Frederick, was wounded last year in Afghanistan by a fragment from a mort�rgranat. Typical of Frederick, he chose to spend the 25,000 dollars he received in compensation, at a celebration for the patrol. Our second sanitation man, Christian is still a red-haired, temperamental cousin, which I appreciate. John, our radio man, is a sedate Jute and a highly respected hunter. Like our marksman, Hans, an eternally happy Copenhagener boy.
We observe intense in our natbriller.
Immediately there are not many signs of life around us. A couple of barking dogs and mantra loudspeakers from mosques.
Forbr�ndingsflammerne from the numerous oil refineries lights up as large bright dots in my natbriller, and I have to turn your head away to avoid being blinded. Not a breeze stirs.
I have put the route so that we move as long as possible from the settlements. Where there are houses, there are people where there are people who are enemies, and where there are enemies, there are problems. That is why we are moving along a swamp-like lake. I follow the south at a distance where the soil is wet, so we do not leave traces. Occasionally makes Rasmus and I stopped and knelt down to observe and listen for human activity.
We want all the world to avoid getting too close to noise from vehicles, voices and glowing cigarettes, which we at long distance can see the dots in the green field of vision of our natbriller.
After the swamp area is I get to due east toward the road and the green area, where the path lies. Now we are nothing more than a few hundred meters from the nearest houses. It provides a set of me when I discover a man in one of the rooftops. I knelt slowly and put my arms firmly by the shoulder, ready to go up in shooting position. I click twice on the radio button, which is the signal that this is not just a commonly held but that there is a real reason to.
The man on the roof stands upright and observe out in the field against us. He holds his hands up in front of his face as if he has a telescope. If it is with night vision, he has probably discovered us. But it is not likely.
We know that only few members of the JAM, which have advanced telescopes.
So begins a couple of wild dogs that bark small hundred meters from us. The man is now completely quiet, as if the dogs barking has heightened his interest. He has not moved since I discovered him. It caps me. He has certainly heard the helicopter and know that we are in the area. Rasmus and I try to fill as little as possible by sitting in a fetal-like position. And then, finally, after what seems like an eternity, he takes down his arms and strolling quiet over on the other side of the roof and begin to observe the south, away from us. I get up slowly and continues at a leisurely pace on the road a few hundred meters ahead of us.
Under mutual security, we gently cross the road and are now the edge of the large green area, which leads to the house three kilometers to the east. I am looking forward to the quiet edge of the channel together with Rasmus in order to observe for enemy activity on the opposite shore, while to assess how wide and deep channel is and how strong the power is.
We have very specific procedures for how a channel is crossed. It is an extremely vulnerable stage where we are in contact with the enemy would be really bad with people in the water and a portion of our equipment wrapped in plastic.
So we do not just jump in the tub and splash onto the opposite side.
Rasmus and I are the first to swim across. My outfit West, I have wrapped in a black plastic bag in the interests of radio and other sensitive equipment. But it is also an advantage to have the floating chunk of plastic in front of me so I can support my weapons and thus be ready to shoot, although I am in the water.
Channel Brink is a nearly two meters vertically mudderv�g and I need help patrol the muscle man, Soren, who with his enormous grabs deftly helps me into the water, which is hot and stinks of rot.
I grunts of pain because my ribs courier down the mud wall.
When I get a foothold in the bottom of the canal, I discovered quickly that I should pull the boots to me. The bottom is swampy, and it seems almost as if there is a suction cup that sticks in them.
Slow swimmer Rasmus and I against the opposite bank. Even without fitting western and protective vest at present uniforms and heavy boots. But it is much worse that the current is much stronger than expected. We can not keep the path to the point I had intended on the opposite shore. Flow leads us further down the canal and worrying away from the rest of the patrol, which lies on the shore, where we climbed into.
We try wherever possible to swim against the stream and struggling with my legs all the force, while we still try to keep the width under observation through natbrillerne.
Puffing when we shore, and by pulling ourselves up in roots and vegetation on the cliff face, we are up in the tall grass and fall down quietly to observe and listen. We are silent all the equipment back on and I blink twice by the infrared light on my arms over to the other as a sign that they can send the next two over.
It takes a little over half an hour to get all over. Meanwhile, reports the unmanned spy planes Shadow on lots of activity in and around houses in the area.
We continue forward through the dense palm grove, and I click natbrillerne up the forehead and look around me. Palm Grove is emerging as a postcard. Or as a theatrical backdrop to the huge low-hanging, orange moon whose light leaves all the palm trees stand in sharp silhouettes. Sound setting has innumerable mosques mantra evening prayers and the barking dogs, which now seems to be closer to us. After a few hundred meters is closer to the palm grove of shrubs and bushes, which forces us to slow down drastically. And even worse: increasing our level of noise.
I reach the first trench and watched the worried. On the pictures so they are quite reliable, but now I stand in front of a two-meter wide trench with vertical sides, where water levels are between half and two meters below the edge, we are at. Moreover bays old, rusty rolls of barbed wire along each side of the ditch. It is apparently private plots, which the owners wish to mark clearly.
As the rest of the patrol ends up with Rasmus and me, Kenneth buzz angrily at the sight. Not only complicates our ditch infiltration, the delay also. Time begins to be a factor now. Within the next hour we would like to begin the task of observing towards our goal.
Soren is in contact with Shadow, who reports on activity in front of some houses at the edge of the palm grove 100 meters ahead. We sharpen our senses.
'Forward,' whispered Jack. "We are busy '. We are a couple of miles from our goal. I am looking forward to the wire and tries to put boots on and press it down so I can straddle against, but is about to lose balance and topple over it. Together with Rasmus, I try instead to separate the twisted arms, which is located in the wire. I swear myself away for not having taken the gloves on. I cut myself on both hands, but can not take care of it. My own damn fault.
We come through the wire and now stands on the edge of the ditch. Again, we must cooperate to get the water as quietly as possible.
If I just jump in, I start a wave and could expose us. I find instead some roots on the side of the cliff, and Rasmus lie down on her stomach and helps me down. Since he can not reach me anymore, he lowers his arms down and I can use the flask to maintain and further down. When I reach the water's edge and no longer has anything to stick, scrub my fingers in the mud wall in order not to fall too quickly.
I felt the warm water of life and glide down to the neck. An indescribable stench when my nostrils. A sweet and sour, putrid stench of feces and urine, which almost makes me throw up. It dawns on me that I swim across the community sewer. Literally in shit up to his neck.
With sewage water up to her chin I am fighting now with heavy vomiting sensations.
I have to do anything not to swallow the whole subject.
Not only will it be an uncommonly nasty experience. My equipment is also too heavy for me to swim here. I therefore choose to make of the mud wall, so hopefully I can reach two meters above, on the other side of the ditch. It succeeds and I get a foothold in a small source of water with one of my boots. With one hand I find a mess and is now stable. My second arm has always kept my arms over the water. I turn toward the opposite side and can see Rasmussen and a couple of the others observe me with concerns about mines.
I can not come up here without help, and I waved Rasmus down to me.
A minute later he hangs beside me on the mud wall and gangs just as softly, but despite the situation we exchanged a couple of white teeth in blur and our sweaty faces. It is grotesque here. But there is nothing else to do but to move forward more rapidly. Time runs.
Rasmus pushing my buttocks, everything he can, and I try to climb the two meters. I find two roots in my shoulder height and pull me out of all power. It grows dark before my eyes in pain because my ribs pressed into the outer reaches of this movement, and I hear myself moan. I climb further up and finds frustrated that also runs barbed wire here in the thick bushes along the edge.
The only thing I can get to come up is a piece of wire, which I must pull myself up with both hands. Piggene cutter, and I feel a hot thick liquid between your fingers.
When I reach over the edge, pushing my barbed wire reel apart and crawl through, while I hold your head forward and protect my face with my helmet.
When I get out on the other hand, is my natbriller dewy, so I can only guess the contours of the terrain in front of me. Not very neat, because I, as the front man to evaluate our way forward.
I help a sm�bandende Rasmus through barbed wire, and one after several frustrated face pops up over the edge. It is hard here. Really hard. But I still have energy to smile.
I check the map. 1700 meters to our goal, and according to pictures from home there ditches across our path for each approximately 100 meters. If they are all in the hole we just made up of, we get your ass something so sorely lacking in comedy. But we have ahead.
Gently through the palm grove. I gingerly put the boots away in the side of the small walk on trails, so we minimize our tracks.
Once a ditch. Almost identical to the first. Shit! I look up along the ditch and barbed wire, but there are no alternative routes. I must again through barbed wire with my torn hands down the sewer ditch and onto the other side with Rasmus and patrol after me. How to become ditches, apparently. Infiltration is transformed into a veritable hell. A hurdles in slow motion smeared with urine and feces.
And pressed to the limit of our physical abilities.
My chest pain is getting worse and worse every movement. I have the characteristic taste blood in his mouth, which occurs when some of the blood vessels in the lungs extreme ramifications under intensive load bursts. My focus as a scout and pathfinder is dangerously weak.
About 200 meters away from our goal I stand again in the stool to the chin, as Rasmus whispers that I should be completely quiet. I look up and see that Jack and Ole is quite static ready with their arms in the shoulder.
From the nearest houses 30-40 feet away flickers a white light suddenly around the palm grove.
This is a really bad place to be discovered. Especially for me who can not come quickly out of the ditch in case of fire fight.
I hear low voices and can see that the light becomes stronger. They are approaching.
Kenneth and Ole slowly down flat on his stomach and pressed into taking a small number of shrubs along the edge of the ditch. I can not see the others. Beam moves slowly along the wire and follow the bush, under which Kenneth and Ole leaning.
Beam stops. I can hear a faint murmur of male voices 1520 meters away. Beam continues down the ditch along the canal. From the angle of the men are now, they can not light on me. They must first be closer to the ditch.
So turn off the light and talking more together before they go away again. Relief at not being caught gives me strength again.
I come out of the ditch and inform me. The house should be exactly "11 o'clock", and shortly thereafter I encountered on the site, it is on. There is no ditch that separates the land from the grove, we come from. Only a barbed wire fence.
I kneel and wait for the others while I am directing my natbriller against the contours of the house, located just 40 meters from me, surrounded by palm trees and shrubs.
Palm Grove is thinner here, and running small network of paths around the garden. From the pictures I know that the house is a gravel space of approximately hundred square meters, and on the other side of the run one of the major roads into the city. To the left we have high density. To the right the 15 meter wide canal. And behind us countless ditches. We come in battle, is our ability to pull us back very little. The only escape route is backward, along the canal on a small wooden bridge that leads over to another part of the village.
We have before surgery was informed that there are probably six men and six women in the house at night. Soren now report with hand signals that Shadow can see two people in front of the house and possibly a rooftop. I notice that his face is bathed in sweat during the hot and heavy headset radio on his back.
It must have been a nightmare for him to climb ditches.
With slow, measured step, I move slowly along the little path towards the house, while I look after the guard in front.
While I fix now and then look towards the roof.
And pray that there is a dog in the garden.
Between my house and now there is only a small number of trees and shrubs among a pile of something resembling garden. I ought to be the hardest place to put your feet, so I do not put track, but here in the quiet night I choose instead the soft earth at the edge of the path, so my boots do not make noise in the gravel. The price is of course that then can be seen that we've been here, but right now it is important not to be discovered.
Since I have two meters from the trees, they stand there.
Through a small hole between the trees, I see the glow from the cigarette agree. The little dot lights up when he takes a sharpening. He stands up walls not exceeding 10 meters from me. The other sits on blow up a metal gate, which is the only visible entrance to the courtyard.
I move silently one meter further. A large part of the house comes into view.
And I see that both men have an AK-47 hanging on the shoulder.
The guard at the wall, throw the cigarette down the front and the shutters with one boot.
The second rises slowly, mumbling a few words to makkeren and disappears into the house through the front door. There are still no signs of any guard on the roof.
If Soren receives a signal from Shadow of a sudden and unexpected threat, more guards on the roof or people on the back of the house, he will key repeatedly on the radio, so we know there are problems and that we must be prepared. I am now almost entirely encouraging in a small hole between the trees and can see that the courtyard stands a few old cars and piles are some old metal.
It runs about a three meter high wall around the courtyard. Only the hand against the palm grove - to me - is open.
I move one foot a half step forward and marks where the soil is soft. A twig snaps, as I boot plants in the ground. I stiffened. The remaining guard head spins around and turns straight towards me. It is as if we stare each other in the eye. I am absolutely static and hope that the others have also recorded his reaction, so they kept quiet.
The guard now prefers his AK-47 on the front of the body and moves slowly toward the row of trees, I stand behind. It is too late to do anything now. I can not doll myself or pull me back because the sound would reveal me.
Slowly moving guard along the trees and look into it for him dark shrubbery. I know that the green light from natbrillerne faintly lit my eye sockets up and hope he does not see it.
He stops a few meters in front of me now. 
We stare each other directly in real eyes.
My heart beats so that I fear that he can actually hear it. Currently feels like an eternity, and the legs as I bent forward resting on, beginning to shake under the impact of my body weight.
So is he finally head away and turned back toward the house, where he sits down on the doorstep and pulls a pack of cigarettes out of his breast pocket, pulls one out with my teeth and get on the fire. My heart rate drops again, and I knelt slowly to get the acid out of leg.
Arms depot, which according to intelligence must be hidden somewhere on the plot is unrealistic to find. An active attempt to locate it will certainly cause so much noise that the guards hear us. So it comes to memorisere all details about the house: doors and windows placement, what material they are made of whether there is glass in the windows, murenes thickness of the material they are made of, number of floors, access roads to the house on the gate to the house is closed, the roof is flat, how much ammunition I estimate has to guard himself. Details are extremely important for a later attack on the house.
Two clicks in my earpiece interrupt me. We have no more time and be joined by Charlie. It is not now, I'll go back and pass and put everything at risk. So I will slowly find my trail back, and moves me to patrol silhouettes, which I can glimpse behind some bushes 20 feet away. We exchanged thumbs up as evidence that we have a lot of information to take home.
In the first ditch we knelt around Jack, who will brief us on our ex-filtration - the way back to the helicopter zone countries.
Same way back through the ditches are excluded, he announces. We simply do not have time because there is only one hour to pick up. We therefore choose the alternative plan. Searching along the canal down to the little wooden bridge. The disadvantage is that it leads directly into the densely populated in the outer part of the village.
But we have no choice. An hour is expected jen on the low side to reach the helicopter.
All nods, and we provide formation with me in front, closely followed by Rasmus. We did not avoid a few ditches, but it's an uplifting thought that we must climb a maximum of three. When we reach wooden bridge, is it really just a bar, and I spend a few minutes to keep it under observation before I seek only to.
The village begins 20 meters high along a small grussti. Had we not been under time pressure, we would, even in the middle of the night, never move in houses. But to our luck, the little street between the houses only two small gadelys, and there is no sign of activity from either humans or animals.
We spread ourselves on each side of the street, so we can provide each other diagonally. We reach 300 meters down the street without any problems and continuing in a westerly direction towards the helicopter zone countries on a large, flat erase about 1,500 meters away. A few hundred meters from the village I do a little maneuver called a 'loop' flying patrol around in an arc back toward the village. Here I find a suitable place where we put ourselves down and observe in order to detect any pursuers.
Fortunately there are not any.
20 minutes later we are at the land area and Soren makes contact with the helicopter.
"Two minutes out." I am looking forward, kneeling there, where I want the helicopter down, and when I hear the liberating sound of rotor blades, teeth I the infrared strobes on top of my helmet, so the pilot can see my exact position. I span my parachute muddy glasses in front of our eyes as protection against dust, sand and stones when he lands.
Roaring pop the big black chunk out of the darkness and down for a landing with nose wheel just in front of me. I've tried it countless times, and per-automatics I lean body now on my knees, because otherwise I would be blown back by the enormous turbulence from the rotor blades. Despite the intense noise and inferno of swirling sand and pebbles, this pick-up phase, the best that I know. Although we are not home yet, it's the same feeling as being picked up by father from school as a boy. Safe and secure. Here it is just the helicopter loadmaster, acting father when he steps out on the side of the cargo ramp and blinks twice with his infrared light.
I appreciate the straight away and runs down along the body of the helicopter up the loading ramp and into a seat at the bottom of the darkened cabin. Right behind me is the rest of the patrol, and a few seconds after Squeaky turbines, and the helicopter rises.
We are not home at the base yet and there is nothing to take equipment, helmets and weapons. But I can relax my aching body. My rib pain whenever I move, and only now can I catch a glimpse of where my hands are worn with deep and bloody wounds.
I look up and see the two British loadmastere stand and gesticulate with their fingers down throat. We stink. I see that Ole and Soren laugh. It does not bother me.

Hunter - at war with the elite: 18 - Invisible in the Jam's back yard
By Thomas Rathsack
After a few days of recovery and care of my hands and frayed seams ribs I prepare the route back into the JAM-country and out again. It is time for yet another surgery.
Massive rocket attacks on Basra Air Station, BAS, over the winter and spring of 2007 wears on, the Danish and British soldiers. Alone over the last 24 hours, the camp was attacked 14 times, mostly at night, when unseen enemy can fire rockets.
Therefore, no moving around in the camp without a helmet and bulletproof flak on. When the camp's radar system for missile attacks, alerts, we have between 15 and 30 seconds to find cover behind a wall or in a safety bunkers. If you drive a car, stop the man and lie beside the car. And has no coverage in the vicinity, it is just about to throw herself down on her stomach with her arms over your helmet and hope for the best.
Every time there has been a rocket attack, the people do not move around until an explosive ordnance disposal team searched the area for unexploded ordnance.
The threat and the constant vigilance makes people stressed out, and they sleep better and thus less so they do not restores properly.
Many sleep with boots and equipment at too fast to react and get coverage, and some have begun to sleep in security bunkers.
But they are red-hot, and people do not sleep well in there. Many of the young soldiers in the camp is beginning to be seriously affected by the situation, and morale was noticeably lower in recent weeks.
We are therefore two hunter squads that are called in to reconnoiter in the areas from which it appears that the rockets are fired.
And if possible prevent firing and destroy the enemy.
A large part of the enemy rockets, guns and ammunition, will probably smuggled from Iran through the desolate desert border and into Iraq - outside of our coalition forces, which since has them kicked in the head. We know the problem, but must also recognize that the coalition simply can not guard all of the hundreds of kilometers long border and prevent the Iranian supply to the JAM and other Iraqi militias.
Our task is difficult. It is not just finding the needle in the haystack. Only to find the haystack is a challenge. The area is vast and stretches across the desert, swamp, marsh and buildings. From our intelligence information we know, however roughly, what areas are most often used for firing, and when the rockets are typically located.
When they get fired, the enemy is rarely as themselves. He uses mostly timed delay devices and sit at home quietly with the family while the rocket is shot off.
The area we will first concentrate on a marsh and swamp area. It is remote and humble, and militias are using it to launch rockets, and they buried rockets, grenades, weapons and ammunition depots in the area.
Then we will move us four-five kilometers further south to a flat agricultural area, directly adjacent to a huge desert like delete. Here is the population density a challenge. Daily move peasants in the area with their cattle graze and drink water from the labyrinths of small irrigation channels.
Nearly one kilometer to the south lies a major city. Area, there are so densely populated that it is almost impossible not to be discovered.
So we can not quite get there.
The area is in general highly infected by JAM militia and a patchwork of other militias, rival Shiite clans and criminal gangs who are waging bloody and merciless power struggle against each other. And the last thing we want is that the ports on their battlefield.
But they know in fact that is exactly we are from J�gerkorpset are here. We are for the market at the most prestigious show in the Danish media in the weeks before our departure. The headlines will be proclaimed that the corps now be deployed in southern Iraq.
We are not at home and will therefore not take any chances. We can remain undiscovered for four or five days. And to maximize our firepower, we propose two squads together. 3.
patrol and mine, both operationally experienced squads and with an average age over 30 years. Initially, we will solve this task together and then split up and move to two different areas where we are in four days will observe from the places where we believe that the rockets are fired.
We pack food, water, machine guns, ammunition, grenades, natbriller, batteries, observation equipment, radios, GPS - kilos of equipment, but in contrast to operations in Afghanistan, Iraq operations shorter, so all in all, less equipment, in particular water, and a much lighter backpack.
I examine and memorizing the route one last time, taking a bath lubricates me into the strong British jungle myggecreme over most of the body, and blurs my arms, hands and face with a black blur. Checking one last time, my arms, securing my shells, my natbriller, my infrared-term resources and content in my game vest.
I'm ready.
A few hours after we have landed the helicopter in the big, open, sandy light, we are a little behind 3rd patrol and keep the exchange rate to the north toward the vast marsh area where militias operate.
I click my natbriller up in his forehead.
The nights in Iraq is fascinating. A completely stagnant landscape with the huge yellow moon and thousands of stars in a sky that always seems much higher here.
Idyll broken, because I have let myself slide into a ditch of stagnant, dirty water to examine how deeply are. As the patrol's scouts as we know it is my job to examine the obstacles we encounter. Including water.
The rot goes Plummer me to his chest, and I continue slowly towards the other shore a few meters away where I get hold of some roots and pulls me up. The others follow me, and then the whole patrol are assembled on the other side of the ditch, I hear Morten's whispering voice in my earpiece.
He is 3 scout patrols, and about 50 meters ahead of us, he observed a small house, located where a wide ditch crosses a long straight dirt road. On top of the roof, he can see a couple of armed militia in a heavy machine gun. It does not seem to have night vision binoculars. This makes our situation more favorable. But we are 16 man, and the slightest sound will expose us.
Lyddisciplin is essential in tasks like this. Every step must be taken carefully, and all equipment is fastened tightly to the match the West, so it does not rattle.
Metal against metal, a branch that breaks off, a small splash in the water, and we are revealed. And in these parts you should not expect hail or conciliatory recommendations to come forward. Their weapons are to be used. They will not hesitate to use them. Actually, they will be more than happy to break their guard boring routine with a fierce exchange of fire.
But we are not here to fight with random militias. On the contrary, we are here unseen to find the place from which rockets are fired.
Allows the circumstances so that we can do it with a rocket firing team or two, it will only be a wonderful bonus.
Morten tells that he and his partner will seek towards the house and assess the possibilities to pass it and continue into the portion of the area in which we must reconnoiter.
We send our two machine-gunners and their Heckler & Koch machine guns ahead, so they are ready to open fire on the guards on rooftops. We have other pressing us during the low stand of bushes and reeds.
Approximately ten minutes later Morten reports that it is out to pass the house without being detected from the rooftops. The two guards seem vigilant, and it would be too great a risk to leave 16 men with equipment to pass them. Therefore we decide to split up. 3. patrol takes to the dry eastern part of the area, and my patrol - of course - against the wet and swampy west.
As a scout I will now have to study my map. I think the closest brush and stomachs me so far under as possible and find my blurry mackintosh forward, forward it to me and make sure that no light can escape and switch on my little red light.
Scout in a patrol is the only exception may use the light as I do now. Every hunter has brought such. As aspirant hunter many years ago I attended poor medaspiranter who for weeks dragged around on large rocks and other heavy objects as punishment for not having complied with the basic but essential lights and lyddisciplin.
In an exercise in Belgium in early 1990 's, I was the radio man and struggling with a bad connection to the home base under my rain cape to prevent the light escaped. I had not slept in several days, and at one stage I had to pee so much that I had to interrupt my work and list out in the darkness of night to the little hole we had dug for a toilet. As I slowly lifted the rain cape, I could gaping note that the sun shone from a high sky.
When I studied the map, I am memorizing the route to the swamp area, we're going in, and I map packs and rain together. Immediately, I find it hard to imagine rocket launchers in the area.
But one small bright spot on satellite images reveal that there is a dry area with a network of paths that lead there. It is so isolated and remote that it could very well be the launch site. Then we will examine whether there are metal ramps, loop or other detritus.
We put all our backpacks in a hole, carefully mask them with reeds and palm leaves and continue forward. Behind me is Rasmus, patrol blasting man in his arms has mounted a silencer, so he can shoot barking dogs, we might encounter. We two form a vanguard 30-40 meters in front of the others.
After just 300-400 meters, we are surrounded by several meters high sivplanter on both sides of the little muddy path. And suddenly stops as the path, and I look directly down into a ten feet wide channel.
After another wet pleasure I lie on the other side and listen for any sounds that should not be here. Nothing. I turned around and flashed all okay against the other on the opposite bank. I look at my wrist compass, the northwest and follow a small path, as almost just a mud track.
My boots disappear into the boot edge at each step. And the sweat runs from my heated head under the hood, and I can taste the salty drops on my lips.
Then we come on another channel. And so it goes. Button, we crossed a canal, ditch or a small lake, before we encounter a new, as I must come down and check. Apparently the fun for others, because every time I see seven white teeth shine in the darkness behind me.
I swear and sulfur low and creeps into another pond. As I come up on the other hand, the mud track was slightly wider, and in my natbriller I feel more light into the terrain in front of me. A glade opens.
We arrived at the small open area that could be used as a launching place.
It is not more than 20 times 30 meters with a couple of paths that lead there. We comb every square meter. But unfortunately there are no signs that this has ever been a rocket. We had obviously hoped.
We could confirm a rocket ramp would begin Shadow unmanned spy planes to monitor the spot here. And a fighter or an AC-130 Gunship could handle the rest.
The time is approaching 02, and time is short.
We must reunite with 3rd patrolled by the bell 03 to continue the four or five kilometers south and set up an observation base.
At approximately 06 sets the first light into, and we must be in place.
When we meet with the 3rd patrol, exchange the two patrol officers quickly gained, and the key information is sent back to camp. At the same time we ensure other area, and I drink water and eat a Powerbar. I am drenched after having been in the water most of the night, but not the least cold. Rather, I beads of sweat. The night is 35 degrees hot.
Five minutes later we are heading south towards our area without 3rd patrol. The stand will fall quickly, and a large desert-like delete unfolds in front of me, broken only by the individual banks of earth and no-get similar ditches without water. I know that the plain stops a few miles to the right of the cultivated land, and about five kilometers ahead of us starting city.
The terrain has different requirements for how we move. We can not go into the shelter of any vegetation and are completely exposed in the open landscape. At the same time illuminates the moon so strongly that we put shadows. I try to climb the terrain so tactically useful as possible and go through every little hollows and in the shadow of earth embankments. But it is a risky process. Is the enemy in possession of a primitive night vision binoculars, and find himself in the right place, he can easily identify us. It is not normal for JAM and other militias are in possession of such equipment. But unfortunately it has become apparent that a portion of their units have either fully modern or older Russian natbriller.
As always when I go patrol, my arms release the safety catch. Half or whole seconds it takes to release the safety catch, if we smoke in an ambush, or otherwise meet the enemy, can mean the difference between life and death.
We walk into an ambush, it is me as the front man who decides what we do. Patrol officer behind me can not assess the situation.
I can choose to press ahead against the enemy and takes up the fight. So he must be numerically inferior to us, and I must really be sure in my case, it is a risky decision, and if the enemy is greater than assumed, we run death in the meeting.
Therefore, it is more likely that I choose, that we pull ourselves back under fire and movement.
That we 'boxer', as it is called. This means that the patrol split into two, one half deliver fire in ferocity, while the other runs 20-30 feet back and find a new position. In this way we overlap each other while we are moving backwards under constant flow of fire.
We have trained it countless times with live ammunition in a very realistic exercise scenario and it is not a situation where we have fat. Aggression is the key word.
Each man must simply bring the wildest, darkest and most aggressive side forward in his personality and think only to deliver the most possible fire in the enemy's direction in the shortest possible time. The times we practice it in the patrol, it is not unusual that we spend several thousand shots, 20-30 grenades, smoke grenades and grenade launchers - in the course of five or ten minutes. That we spend most of our ammunition is immaterial. It is a situation where it is to survive.
I will inform me on my wrist compass and finds that the direction is right on a small dirt road that leads up to a long and broad north-south road, which is the closest you get on a main thoroughfare in these parts. We must cross the road and then go into the agricultural area where we must create our observation base.
When we hit the gravel road, I stiffened. In my natbriller I see a car with no lights on, as quietly sneaks down the road north from our position. I can myself, slowly kneel down and make me as small as possible.
With my right hand my keys repeatedly on radio as the signal for everyone to stop immediately and seek shelter.
Rasmus and I'm in the middle of the open only about 15 meters from the road. And the car has a maximum of 100 meters from us. Running 5-10 km / h in a car without lights is not normal. They are not coming home with a hot pizza. They're out to hunt for us.
The militias have heard our helicopter over the area and have activated their network.
The car is approaching. Rasmus and I can not sit here, so we put ourselves down on his stomach, sheep nimbly backpacks and pull them off the edge of a gravel track, where it bends slightly. I lie completely still and marks my carotid artery canisters against the helmet strap.
The car stops 20-25 meters from us. If they have natbriller on, they can easily see us at the distance.
But I know that it is his case that sit inside a car and observe in the dark, both with and without natbriller.
The car with dark and motionless, and I can hear the slight hum from the engine idling. It sets itself in motion and rolls onwards, but stops right next to us, not more than 15 meters away. I avoid any movement and is not even head to see the car better, but staring out at the hook eye.
I find the trigger on my weapon. If the door opens, I am ready to empty the magazine first.
But the engine revolutions increase and the car starts running again. I turn my head and can see the silhouettes of four people in the cabin.
The car continues down the road. I take some deep breaths and get a grip on my breathing. Although it has not ended with a confrontation, it is no guarantee that they have not seen us. They may be unsure of how many and how strong we are and have therefore chosen to return more numerous later or wait for daylight, where we have much more difficult conditions.
'MC right, "whispers Rasmus, just as I need to report" progress "over the radio.
I turn my head and see a motorcycle, even without the lights on, T�ffe down the road toward us.
I pressed my way down again. He likes father-ten and do not seem to stop. When he passes us, I can see that he is armed with a Kalashnikov hanging on his back.
This is a real butts place, and we must get out of here as soon as possible. I wait another minute and report so quiet 'forwards' over the radio.
Rasmus and I get the backpacks back on and continues across the road and into the cultivated area of the patch with hundreds of small meter wide canals and ditches. 500 meters ahead, we find a small spot in stands that are suitable for the observation base.
There we can in daylight press us and be humble, while we observe on the road.
But it is in darkness, we have our justification.
There we have contact with Shadow, who monitors the area and the road. Therefore, we decide that we are in the evening will leave the base and come out near the road where we can stop suspicious vehicles or create an ambush. Furthermore, we are close to other places that may be used as firing points, and we will call the Shadow of activity, we can reach them within 15-25 minutes.
In an hour put the first light into. We do not get blurred us well before then, we discovered by peasants immediately. We put two men on guard, while others take up a hefty harvest of palm leaves from the surrounding small groves. We construct a dense fence of palm leaves all around our small base, as with her three times three feet barely big enough for eight men with backpacks.
Around us run a broad irrigation canal, and you can not come to us without having to cross it. That means hopefully that either humans or animals come too close. For safety's sake, put up Rasmus in the most dangerous directions n�rforsvarsgranater which can be triggered from inside the base.
It is now only wait and hope that we are in the right place at the right time and opportunity to take a rocket persevere. I'm not on the first call and put me on my sleeping pad up my backpack, eat a few biscuits with a thick layer of peanut butter and closes her eyes.
The next thing I senses, is that there will be shaken in my arm. His lies on her stomach, look me in the eye pin and keep a finger in front of his mouth. I look around. All lies on her stomach with their weapons ready. John points out in the field, showing two fingers up and move them as signs that the two men will go.
As they approach, we see that they are unarmed.
Most likely, farmers who are out and supervising their cattle. They constitute no direct threat, although it would be extremely critical if they discover us. Slipper they gone, they tell us about when they get home. And whether they are friends or enemies, known to us will spread like rings in water.
And we are unlucky, you may in the course of an hour as a militia force en masse on the road. But we take them prisoner, their families look for them, and so we have a problem.
We will probably have to pull us out if they discover us. So our little blurry observation base must now be tested.
Only 10-15 meters from us stop the men, and I can hear them talk. I immediately thought of our trail after we total palm leaves.
Watching the monsteraftrykket from a size 47 hunting boots, it dawns on them that are or have been coalition soldiers in the area.
All lies completely still and hit him. I can look through a hole in the palm leaves and can clearly see them. They look directly at us. But apparently no notes, and they continue to sm�sludrende a few cows at a distance from them. All draw a sigh of relief, and we can see that we have done a really good job with the blur.
Sometimes the base is deadly long. Mostly because of the heat. I have been in the heat of observation bases many times before. But it is the first time that I perceive as a relentless sun. The burns on most of my body, only a little of my boots are in shadow, and my mouth is dry as a grankogle. We have seven liters of water each day. It is not enough. Hans, our marksman, has just measured the temperature with his Suunto watch. 49.5 degrees in the shade. Too hot to sleep. I find a small branch with leaves and waving it in front of your face, like the fat lady in a hot opera performances.
Our redheads patrol officer, Kenneth, is extra included. I see him and must smile. As a dried raisin is he looking absently into the air. But Jack is a professional hunter and do not compromise with our procedures. Not something to throw boots or jacket. Are we surprised we could leave the base within a few seconds and can not spend precious time to suck up with laces and jacket.
After a nasty and exhausting hot day we wait eagerly on the evening sets in, and the temperature drops to a tolerable level. We know it is at night, we can come into action. It lifts morale.
We have during the day noticed a pickup truck which is driven back and forth on the road eight times with several people. And a tarpaulin above the carrier has heightened our awareness.
We find it so suspicious that we decide to put us off the road and stop it if it comes round again. It is a duty to stop it if it has nothing to hide, but we estimate it is worth the risk.
Finally put into darkness. I mount my natbriller on my helmet, my face mask, lubricates hands, neck and face into myggecreme and makes my arms ready to fight in the dark. It's just been dark when we all creeps us out from the base and into the road. We find a suitable place in the edge of a thicket 20-25 meters from the road and go into position on a line. From here we can quickly move onto the road and stop suspicious pickup.
The night progresses, and there appears nothing out of the darkness, no pickup trucks, no other cars, no people. Frustrated, we return to the base station again when the sky to the east will be brightening, and we never see the promised pickup again.
Observation on the road, as JAM militia used to transport ammunition and rockets. Local Iraqis are passing down to five meters over our observation hive, but sex Nora in the picture is the only one who finds us.
The following night I lie on my back on my sleeping pad and waiting for me to be on guard about an hour. I look up at the thousands of stars in the vast sky and listening to the faint sound of barking dogs and mosques. Although we have not yet been hit at someone, I feel really good. The whole thing is so easy here. So lovely black and white.
The best in colleagues and peers, a common goal and no slack daily mudslinging.
Just the job.
I close my eyes and dozed off. But a deep, hollow boom awakens me shortly after and I popped up. The sky to the south is slightly illuminated by a rocket. Again, a crash of the same strength and same lights in the sky. It can not be more than a kilometer away. I look around. All are sitting half-upright, wide awake and anxious to know whether this could develop into an exciting night.
Thrusters are typically 30-40 seconds to reach the camp. And indeed. Only one detonation rumble in the distance and shortly after the roll-on. It is certainly the camp, which has been hit.
JAM or another militia fired rockets apparently not where Shadow has been observed.
We have contact with the camp over the radio, and indeed there have been two reductions in the British part of the camp. Fortunately, there is no announcement on the dead or wounded.
We hang with mulerne. We want so damn happy to assist soldiers in the camp to get at some of the shit safety. But we must recognize that it is an extremely difficult task.
The area is too large, and we are too few. We also have a strong suspicion that the enemy is well aware that we are here. And rather than confront us, they just choose to stay away from our area and fired rockets somewhere else.
The fourth day we will once again intruders. No fewer than six times we have had peasants walking around at our base.
The one time it was the peasant not more than five or six meters away, where he stood and stared away into the air while he scratched his crotch.
Now it's a pawn with the cows come strolling past us. We are still on their toes when the peasants approaching, but we have now confident that our blur is really effective. Otherwise, the peasants just exceptionally dull. Actually occurs cows more excited than their manservant.
A thin cow, which we quickly baptizes Nora, come right up to the fence of palm leaves and stand and stare in at us with her huge brown eyes as she laboriously chewing cud. When she goes, she takes his pawn, and we can relax again.
Afternoon sun rose. My feet feel like they are about to break in boots, and even a meal cold ravioli in tomato sauce with a biscuit to be forced down. The time is almost 17 and there is only a little over 10 hours for pickup by helicopter.
23 o'clock we break up. Carefully, we collect all the palm leaves and put them under some bushes where they are not detected as easily.
We must be sure that all traces erased. We check the database for the waste and check that we have dug our shit bags down properly.
The smallest piece of paper or plastic will reveal that we've been here and make it far more risky to return. And it absolutely can not be excluded that the heads would have us out here again.
As we move towards the helicopter zone countries, ripped the silence of crackling automatic weapons, and lyssporsprojektiler jumps over the sky as red spots. So stop, machine guns and Kalashnikovs loose for a few minutes.
It is no more than a few kilometers to the south, there is trouble. But we take it very calmly. It is fairly certain that it does not have a Danish or British forces to do. We know they are not operating in the area tonight.
Pacific, we leave the cultivated area and the road crosses over the great open plains.
Country zone is situated just three kilometers to the northeast. I retain my focus. But can not help but be frustrated over the past four days. It is the devil that we do not have ram on rockets or militias.

Hunter - at war with the elite: 19 - On the heels
By Thomas Rathsack
A few hours ago two rockets exploded in a deafening crash less than 100 meters from our tent. The thick canvas flapped violently by the pressure, but we escaped with the fright, because the tent all the way around is protected by a two meter-high wire mesh filled with soil and sand.
We have to do something about those damned militias and therefore sits on feltsengene in our cramped eight man tent with lockers, weapons cases, backpacks and all sorts of military hardware around us and hear about the surgery, as our patrol officer Jack has planned. This time against a brick factory in the border area with Iran, which we suspect to be the arsenal of JAM. They pick up the rockets there and distribute them further out into smaller depots around Basra for the final firing them from our base at Basra Air Station.
One of the other hunter patrols have been in the area at the brick factory and observed, in my patrol with two other people to fly out there in the shelter of night and destroy the depot. Meanwhile, my patrol Quick Reaction Force QRF for the patrol to observe the brickworks. If they get acute need help, we can, within an hour to be with them in the helicopter.
But instead we get a new task as 'upper arm' walk in the door. Not with his usual smile in her already cheerful face, but with a strikingly serious mining.
"Forget the brick factory. MECINF are problems and we must conclude as QRF for the battalion.
Emergency 15 minutes. Prepare your gear. I will return with more info shortly. "MECINF is the acronym for the motorized infantry company from the Danish battalion, and they are apparently made in the fight against JAM and is pressed. Our equipment is ready, but this extraordinary emergency, we pack extra ammunition, some more offensive grenades, no more first aid equipment and a couple of backpacks with water, which can delay the body's dehydration few hours in the unbearable desert heat.
Normally we would never operate in daylight. It is a task for the infantrymen. We from J�gerkorpset are men of dark and always operate in much smaller units than infantry.
On the other hand, we also know that the situation is particularly bad right now, because the battalion is about to dismantle one of the compulsory leave periods of two weeks, as all soldiers are entitled to over half a year's expulsion, and there is no sun dating-enough to replace all. Thus, it is because of personnel shortages, only one of the Danish battalion of two companies, the motorized infantry company, which can perform real operations.
'This is it! The gear on. Ready for the cars of five. A Danish soldier has been shot in the chest, probably by a sniper, and the company is seriously pressed by JAM. I briefs you up down at the helicopter, 'snort' upper arm 'in the door.
We run out to the car and drive five minutes from the Danish camp at one end of BAS for helicopter countries Square. My face is already bathed in sweat during the intense formiddagssol when we arrive in great confusion at the site. We learn that the situation is extremely serious, since even 30-40 British soldiers are called up as reinforcements. This is not just a normal QRF. It is all available personnel - to a unit that must be really difficult problems.
'Sessions here,' shouts 'upper arm' through the din of the British S-61 helicopter, available with spinning blades.
'Okay, here's what I know: the group of Danish soldiers, one of whom is wounded by a sniper, have pulled into a house. They are under heavy fire from JAM. We have tried to rescue them in a PANS-court personnel carrier, but it ran on an IED, which resulted in the six-syv wounded, including at least one seriously injured. Trying again to evacuate all the wounded to a country area close then. We're going to secure this country zone, so they can come for treatment at BAS. Questions? "No questions.
"We have priority on the helicopter. Go! 'I run back to the waiting helicopter and is finally come when I, as a scout must first of. To fly by helicopter in broad daylight over hostile terrain occurs only in absolute emergencies. The helicopter is extremely vulnerable to fire with machine guns and small arms from the ground, and I note, moreover, that this old S-61 has no armament. Not exactly reassuring.
Certainly not when we only have a general idea where we will land and no idea what the situation is down there.
So it's a helicopter laden with uncertainty, which rises above the pavement in the square, turning around to the northeast and increase speed low over the Iraqi desert on the northern Basra. The flight time is 10 minutes, and while the British loadmaster gives the sign to one minute, making helicopter pilots with a few sharp tactical turn to avoid fire from the ground.
It is extra hot down there today.
In the next moment the helicopter brakes sharply, and I can see our country zone, which is an open space on a few hundred meters on each part, surrounded by green areas with scattered houses.
Helicopter wheels makes contact, load master sends a signal, shout 'go-go-go, and I ran out of rotor blade swirl of dust and sand. Followed by the rest of the patrol runs against me a land of violence, which is the nearest cover, I can see the helicopter and return immediately to the BAS to retrieve the British soldiers.
The confusion is total in the area. MECINFkompagniets armored personnel carriers and other lighter vehicles out around the square with their arms sticking out in all directions. Some hundred meters eastward rumble Company's heavy machine guns loose. That is where the infantry group is cut off.
There are shouted and screamed among the soldiers in and around vehicles, and I can hear the radio speakers in the vehicles are filled with reports about the enemy.
Kenneth communicates with the Danish officers, who apparently is the best to date. We must secure zone countries to the north and immediately places us in a halvbue behind some small tubers in the ground which is the best coverage.
The first grenade lands 50 meters away from us.
The cave will smash the ground to shake beneath us, and we hit us as flat as possible. Immediately after detonates two grenades little closer, and fragments whistling over us. There is no coverage in the direction of the reductions.
So we must get away from here.
Hans, our marksman, yelling that we can take cover behind one of the armored vehicles.
We roll around, out of our position comes on the legs and throwing us back behind personnel carriers. Additional two grenades detonate, this time even closer.
It is mort�rgranater, the power to judge the middle, and it is clear that JAM has an observer at a point where he can see mort�rerne countries. And he is now in progress to correct the deductions. It is a matter of time before it starts to rain with mortars across the country zone.
It is MECINF-Company also aware of the drivers shouting their lungs force everyone to be out of the area immediately. All runs from the nearest vehicle and jump up and drivers shouting for their people to ensure that all comes with. I even throw me into the carrier of a Mercedes Gel�ndewagen four wheel drive vehicle, known as DGs, which immediately put into service with a platform filled with infantrymen.
I sit beside a young sergeant who shouts facts about the situation in your ear at me. MECINF has earlier this morning been out to provide protection for the civilians, Danish reconstruction units would oversee an ongoing project at a school.
As they moved through the village on foot, the Danish soldier was hit in the chest by sniper, and his group pulled him into the house where they were cut off from the rest of the Company. During the attempt to come to their rescue in the armored personnel carrier was seven soldiers wounded by roadside bomb.
The seven have managed to evacuate. Now it is so for all the world to get the wounded and his group in the house for safety.
But unfortunately it does not seem that the Danish company creates the momentum needed to push JAM and could fetch them home.
We are running into a long snake of 10-12 vehicles along the road to the north and onto a desert light.
We blow a cloud of sand and dust up and shows just as clearly JAM where we're headed. After just over one kilometer ranges we go right towards some sand berms, which has probably been used as battle positions of the Iraqi army. We parked our vehicles at the edge of violence with all available weapons pointing 360 degrees out in the open terrain.
I ran to a south-facing violence, followed by Soren with a 5:56 Heckler & Koch machine gun, and the others are similar coverage. So we are ready to defeat any enemies that might approach.
At the same time helps Frederik and Christian stabilize two of the wounded soldiers from roadside bombs, drive and machine gunner.
One has gone into shock, and the other received burns. Frederik and Christian are both experienced and competent medical aid people with plenty of operational experience, and they provide a fast liquid drop on one and provide psychological first aid to another.
I note that the 'upper arm' stalk across the square as a second alfahan. Despite the seriousness of the situation, it seems as though he is in his element. He has the direction of the armored personnel carrier, with some official officers from MECINF-Company is located, and a couple of minutes later was his voice in my earpiece. With help from the Brits have managed to evacuate the Danish group from the house back to BAS. But unfortunately too late. The soldier hit by sniper, is dead. He died in the house where he and his group were cut off.
It seems that the situation is out of control.
The acquirer, which Company would like to have, unfortunately there are no signs.
Rather, they become more and more pressure on the defensive. So when intelligence tells us that JAM is to mobilize a force of 400-500 men a few miles south, decides Man to leave the area and evacuate to BAS as soon as possible.
A small reconnaissance team in a GD is being sent out from battle position to locate the best escape route, but they are just blown off the other side of the ramparts, when a band machine gun shot whips the ground in front of them. Driver must resolutely turn around and give full throttle back.
Apart from the angle appears to come from the village of shots a couple hundred yards south of us. I take my little Zeiss binoculars out and scan every square meter of the walls, windows, doors and roofs. Nothing.
How frustrating can it be? I lie here as another infantryman against an enemy that controls the battle. We have no chance to strike back. I have most of all want to give the houses an extraordinarily squally lead with Soren and his machine gun.
If nothing else, to keep their heads down on the enemy. But it is obviously not tenable. I can not identify any enemy, and it is unacceptable in pure anger to open fire on a settlement, which is probably occupied by women, children and other innocents.
One of the Company's officers shouted that everyone should hold themselves ready to leave the area.
JAM is believed to be moving in our direction.
With additional 400-500 quarrelsome enemies on top of the current enemy Company will go a gloomy night in session here. So now it's just about to go. Few minutes later we are getting beyond the sterile removal of a faint arc to the north. We hit a broad gravel road, and the Company will stop to observe the south and to see whether JAM is underway. Nothing.
Over the radio growled 'upper arm' that we must evacuate anywhere with Company.
We still have a job as a QRF for our patrol at the brickworks which had no backup since this morning when we were deployed for the company. We did what we could here communicate 'upper arm' and ordered us to the vehicles.
A bunch of gaping infantrymen see us get off and brought together in a globule, while they disappear off the gravel road. 'Upper arm' has requested a helicopter which will be here soon. It is one of the privileges of being a hunter soldier. Should we use a helicopter, calling us just after one.
Shortly after we contacted the pilot of the helicopter, which announces that he is "two minutes out '. Per automatics I run out into the open and kneeling, which I think he can best put the helicopter down, and I prepare my smoke grenades. In a clear silhouette against the orange afternoon sun pops the big British EH-101 transport helicopter is now on the horizon, and I prefer the grenade pin, so the intense smoke reveal our position.
When we get back to the BAS, we begin to clean and clarify our weapons and equipment back, so we know if we should also in action as a QRF for our hunter patrol.
It's been a tough day. Partly because we Jaegercorps not accustomed to feel helpless and passive. We are brought up to aggression when we are cornered, and we have certainly not lived up to today. We have been on his heels against a foe who led the fight on the battlefield. And it has very clearly shown us that we should only solve problems, we are educated and trained, no matter how sympathetic the reason might be to use our alternative.
Most of all days, however, has been tough because the 20-year-old constable Henry N�bbe died and another soldier lost his leg.
A few days before I had chat in front of our tent with a young constable, Jesper Hansen, whom I had noticed the serial train diligently every day despite the melting heat. A happy and friendly guy who told me that he wanted to be a hunter soldier. And would he ever, he said in a morphine fog, when Claus from patrol visited him at the British field hospital at the base. He had not yet completely understood that he had lost his leg above the knee. Soon after he became clearer and the situation went slowly up to him. Whereupon he with a fixed gaze Claus had confided that he wanted to train towards participation in the Paralympic Games.

Hunter - at war with the elite: 20 - The highest award
By Thomas Rathsack
Task Force K-Bar - where our Danish Task Force Ferret subordinate - are reaping huge recognition as a hunter soldiers in Afghanistan. To have troops on the ground, which over time can constantly monitor enemy movements, is really something that our American leadership will wake up to. Especially our operations in the mountains - in some of the toughest terrain on the planet - impresses Americans.
In the years before Afghanistan presented the world's only superpower, otherwise more and more emphasis on a technology-based war machine. But no matter how many technological wonders of the military system has at its disposal, it will still be the soldier on the ground, elite infantry soldier as well as stone, which can provide better information about the enemy. Accurate and valid information is needed to identify and ram me the right targets. The Americans by someone, and therefore puts the value our efforts.
I'll still somewhat surprised when I one day three years after my return from Afghanistan in the summer of 2005 is in a meeting room at J�gerkorpset staff time at Aalborg Air Base, and my eye caught a picture of our former commander, Lt. Col. Frank Lissner. In the picture he presses hands with U.S. President George W. Bush.
The picture is dated 7 December 2004 and bears an inscription, which apparently has something to do with an award for Task Force K-Bar, The Presidential Unit Citation Award.
It amazes me. And the web can I find out what honored provided that: "The Presidential Unit Citation is awarded to units of the Armed Forces of the United States and co-belligerent nation for extraordinary heroism in action against an armed enemy occurring on or after 7 December 1941st The unit must display such gallantry, determination, and esprit de corps in accomplishing its mission under extremely difficult and hazardous conditions as two seen it apart and above other units participating in the same campaign. "So an award for 'units from the United States and co-belligerent nations for extraordinary heroism in action against an armed enemy on or after 7 December 1941. The device may exhibit such bravery, m�lbevisthed and team spirit in carrying out its mission under extremely difficult and risky conditions, that it differs from and surpasses other entities participating in the same campaign. "I am speechless when it dawns on me what we have been honored with. In perfect obscurity.
This is the highest U.S. military unit awards, one can get. We are prominent in the company of, among other devices from D-Day, Korean War and Vietnam War, and no units have received awards since the war in Vietnam ended in 1975.
I have never gone up in medals, awards and fine uniforms. But this makes me proud, because I as elite soldier from a military Lilliputian nation has been part of a unit that has contributed in an exceptional degree. But it passed with typical Danish stooping makes me furious at the same time.
Here we have bony risking their lives thousands of miles from home, deep in the enemy country, surrounded by the Taliban and al-Qaida. And then our military commanders displayed the arrogance of not even bringing this recognition forward to us who have deserved it. Not even a note in the Corps house magazine J�gernyt, they thought.
I will be disappointed and angry and make an approach to our new commander, Lt. Col. Henrik Friis, who turns out to agree with my comments. So finally - a year later - are we to parade in the corps farm and receive a working band and are really praised by the U.S. embassy's military attach�, Lieutenant Colonel Mike Schleicher, emphasizing rarity in the awards. And even he expresses surprise at not having been invited earlier to set us the award.
I feel indeed that we have deserved honor.
Our effort is historic because it is the first and only time J�gerkorpset have been deployed to all operational hunters collected. And it has seized the no. We have collected information about the enemy, which has since been used for operations against al-Qaida and the Taliban.
And we have blown up the enemy's ammunition in the air, so it ended up in the minds of friends and allies.
My outrage at the Corps management inability to act effectively when it comes to accolades for the unique performance is even greater when I find out later that the Americans - again without any official recognition - has given The Army Commendation Medal to a hunter patrol officer, JT, for 'unusual leadership under extremely difficult conditions. "In 14 days have JT and his patrol observed from a ledge so narrow that only individual in the patrol could lie down. In the cover of darkness, they climbed down from the cliff and has crept into a nearby country town where they were as close as an arm's length from the armed al-Qaidaterrorister and sought information about the enemy.
The medal is so unusual that the then U.S. Defense Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, would hand over to the medal personally. But when his plane not to land in Kabul due to bad weather, JT received it instead of the head of elite forces in Afghanistan, U.S. Colonel Mark V. Phelan.
In August 2008, it is time for my exit.
As a 41-year-old is in my operational autumn. Physically I could well be many years end now, but I approach a future senior career in J�gerkorpset staff behind the desk with casework, sluggish bureaucracy workflows, copiers and endless trips to the coffee machine.
It is a future that I am too restless to and since I also want to achieve a career in another street ball, I choose to stop.
On a sunny and Aalborg Air rarely calm late summer do I clear my creation for all my gear, handing my arms, put a couple of crates of beer and some chips bags in patrols briefing room, he puts on his fist to those who are home from patrols, and running along with Selma out on main guard against Copenhagen.
No talking, no palettes, no comments or questions, no pat on the back after seven years of operational service in the world's hotspots. And it suits me fine. I do not care about being in the center.
My glory will always be in the squads in the corps. Whatever I have been involved with and what I am going to deal with, the time when I was a part of a small exclusive crowd, always be the biggest for me. Nothing can compare with the unpredictability, intensity, nerve and the community about the same values and goals with a bunch of first-class soldiers.
Having fought his way through the same painful hardships during the recording process.
To fall through the skies on a dark and cold night with my squad.
To be isolated with them for days on a ledge in Afghanistan, where they both sleep and trimming flush up against each other. To struggle through the drains in Iraq together.
It creates human ties and an affinity of rare character. In a world where a lot of people running alone and lonely through life, it is a precious privilege.
And on a personal level, nothing can compare with moving into unfamiliar frontier zones, where one ultimately could die. It is probably a strange kind of mild masochism.
But getting totally out there where I really feel that I live, is unique. It's about a hard explicable - and certainly difficult to understand - the need to constantly move the boundaries. It needs, I have been fully met in Jaegercorps.
Now I look forward and find some new dreams to pursue, because I am far from finished with the excitement and adventure. I want to taste more of life's opportunities, just I have not a clear goal with the rest of my life. I can further educate myself in the military system.
Or at civilians. I would also like to travel.
Perhaps again as a photographer. Take the camera under my arm and make a photo book from the world's hotspots.
My j�gertid has given me a physical and mental resources, which will hopefully give me an easier time on earth. Obviously I can not walk on water, as I thought I would get to before I went ahead with hunter education. But I've found that when I have a dream with substance and try to live it out, is the illusion of expectation and joy enough to make me feel that I can walk on water.
And if I was a restless soul already, I certainly have it in Jaegercorps.
I am always on the hunt. So it tears at me as I learned in May 2009 that J�gerkorpset send 65 hunters to Afghanistan. I call immediately and report me to the service again. This is perhaps my last chance. But the patrols are unfortunately filled up, and Hercules aircraft easier some days.
Without me.