Gordon serves with the Military Police in Afghanistan
Pfc. John Gordon?s decision to join the Army was to gain experience with the Military Police Corps and to get into the law enforcement field when his time in the service is finished. Gordon, who was deployed to Afghanistan March 1, is with a MP Team currently training Afghan police. The 2001 RCHS graduate has taken courses in criminal justice at Alpena Community College and Grand Valley State University.
?Our job as MP’s is to train the police in tactics such as handcuffing, individual searches, vehicle searches and riot control,? stated Gordon in an email Friday. ?We go on missions almost every day so we stay quite busy.? Making the job a little easier is that the locals have been fast learners. ??But you have to make it interesting, because just like in America, the police here don’t make very much money either,? stated Gordon, who is the son of Keith and Peg Gordon of Rogers City. Gordon also protects a Provincial Reconstruction Team at Bagram Airbase. The PRT has been supplying clothes, providing medical assistance, building bridges, and performing building assessments. The Advance corresponded with Gordon last week from his base 27 miles north of Kabul. The questions, and his answers, follow: .
Q. What are the conditions like there? .
Gordon: The conditions here are okay. On base here at Bagram, we have weight rooms, pool tables, video games and things of that nature. Bagram is one of the larger bases in Afghanistan so it has a lot of amenities other bases don’t. Off base is another story. The local nationals are warming up to us a lot more than when the war first started. The poverty level is still amazing. It is hard to believe that people still live like they do. They are very primitive, living in mud huts, and most of the people here are farmers. .
Q. Is there anything about life in Afghanistan that makes life any more tolerable? .
Gordon: Something that makes life tolerable here is the fact that our rooms are air conditioned. I don’t know what we would do if they were not. .
Q. What is the one creature comfort you miss the most? .
Gordon: The one comfort that I miss the most is being able to throw on a pair of civilian clothes and sit around with my friends while we watch the (NBA basketball) playoffs on TV. .
Q. What do you miss most about Rogers City? .
Gordon: Obviously not being able to see my family, but also I miss being around everything that is so familiar to me. .
Q. What is a typical day like for you? .
Gordon: It consists of waking up about two hours before we are scheduled to leave on our mission to make sure the truck has enough water and MRE’s for us and to make sure we have all of our equipment that we need to take out. We then draw our weapons from the arms room and head over to get a safety brief before we head out. We then roll out with at least one other vehicle to our destination and do whatever mission we have for that day. When we get back to base we immediately take the truck to refuel and if need be we also wash it. By then it is dinner time so we go eat at the chow hall. After that I usually go and clean my weapon for an hour or so. Then later that night we do PT and
Q. What has been your closest brush with danger? .
Gordon: That would have to be when we were out and about, pretty far away from base, and a guy came running out of a building with an AK. He seemed pretty mad so everyone that was with us went to a defensive mode. This lasted for a while. Luckily, some of his friends were able to calm him down. .
Q. If you bumped into Osama bin Laden, would you know who it was, and what would you do? .
Gordon: If I bumped into Osama, there would be no doubt in my mind who he was. There would also be no doubt in my mind of what I would do if I found him. .
Gordon?s thoughts of Memorial Day Monday were no different now that they were before he entered the service because ?I was always patriotic.?