The Overwatch of an Education

I remember the schoolhouse vividly. You can see it in this picture, centered just above the barrel of this 240. I remember standing long hours of guard, looking down the sights of this machine gun while the children danced outside in the sun, their bright tunics rare spots of color in the barren waste.

About 100 meters separated our fire base from this two room schoolhouse. Our base was the biggest bullseye in the whole Shkin region, regularly bombarded by 107 mm rockets carefully aimed from Pakistan. The rockets usually missed us, sometimes by distances much greater than the 100 meters to the school. It was directly in the firing line. I had a lot of time to ponder this quandary. Children, the most precious resource of any culture, collected daily in this impact area of a school to learn to read and write, to do basic arithmetic. Why?

The answer is simple really: safety. Protection. For all the danger of constant bombardment, to build this school elsewhere would have been that much worse. The first people the Taliban killed were the educated, the teachers. Our AMF lieutenant had been a teacher. They'd killed his family, tortured him by pulling out his fingernails with pliers. Teaching was a surefire death sentence under this regime.

Nestled under the barrels of American machine guns was the only safe place for the school and its instructors. In an area still rife with Taliban influence, a school was a symbol of defiance to those who would oppress them. These children and their teachers were relatively safe next to us, where we could protect them. The rockets were a danger, but not nearly so much as isolation would have been. Tragic, painful, but reality.

This is why I pursued education when I left the military. I have seen the dreadful price which must be paid for this most basic freedom. It is not to be squandered. Education is that most precious of commodities, worth any price, any cost, and it must be defended fiercely. God help those children, and god help those of us here who do not recognize it's worth.