When you celebrate the Thanksgiving break this weekend, keep in mind that Washingtonians like Adam Clampitt are dining on turkey in Kabul.
Adam, a local political activist who briefly ran for city council, is nearing the end of his yearlong deployment in Afghanistan. He’s scheduled to return to D.C. in the middle of January.
Let’s send thanks that he’s come through in good shape so far and good wishes that he returns safe and sound.
“Every day in Afghanistan is different,” he writes in a recent e-mail to me, “because the situation here changes so quickly.”
At home in D.C., Clampitt works for a major public relations firm; a Navy reservist, he was called to active duty as a public relations officer for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force.
Working in public relations has not kept him from being in harm’s way. There was the day a bomb went off at the front gate of his base.
“I had driven through the gate just minutes before the bomb exploded,” he writes, “I couldn’t sleep for days; the moment kept repeating itself in my head.”
In Kandahar, he was shot at; on other assignments he has been in the middle of rocket attacks.
“Afghanistan is a different kind of war,” he writes. “It’s not always the troops on the front line that are at risk. Everyone here is a target for the insurgents.”
Clampitt’s friend, Master Sgt. Jose Crisostomo, was in a convoy to get water for the troops when he was killed by a car bomber. He was 59. Clampitt says: “It was devastating for all of us because he was such a prominent figure on our base.”
Such stories worry Adam’s mom, of course. Susan Clampitt has had what she calls “a more thoughtful time this year.” She tells me she will spend this holiday wishing for Adam’s “returning soon and safely,” and feeling “glad that his deployment is almost over.”
From afar, Clampitt has been reading about reports of cronyism in the D.C. government. “For all the talk of corruption in the Afghan government,” he writes, “I think we really need to look in the mirror and hold our own leaders accountable for their behavior.”
Even so, Clampitt says Washingtonians should give thanks: “I don’t mean to minimize or be unsympathetic to the horrific conditions many D.C. residents live with every day, but we live in a city and country offering opportunities not found in many parts of the world.”
Clampitt says he will miss volunteering in D.C. on Thanksgiving, but he says he’s looking forward to sharing turkey with new friends from NATO’s 42-nation coalition. “I send warm greetings to friends and family from this faraway place as you gather this Thanksgiving and feel enormous gratitude at the thought of returning to you soon.”
Not soon enough for Susan Clampitt.
“We are a very close family,” she says, “and we have always celebrated together. There will be a big empty hole there.
“But I continue to feel very proud of him.”
Me, too.
E-mail Harry Jaffe at [email protected]
