From February 2005 through February 2006, Major William Woodring, an Alaska National Guardsman, served on a brigade embedded training team (ETT) for the 209th Afghan National Army Corps as part of Operation Enduring Freedom and Task Force Phoenix 3.5. In this interview, he begins by discussing the less than adequate predeployment training he and his fellow ETT members received at Fort Hood, Texas, saying that it was manifestly not geared towards teaching them to advise indigenous forces. And then to compound their ill preparation, their team was broken apart and, once in country, Woodring was placed with an entirely new team. Based in Mazar-e-Sharif, Woodring personally advised the Afghan operations officer and intelligence officer in the conduct of a broad-ranging stability and support/counterinsurgency mission. He was also heavily involved in making sure national elections went off as smoothly as possible. Woodring talks about the constant problem of corruption, the difficulties he faced communicating with his Afghan counterparts, as well as the two US brigades his ETT served under: the 76th Infantry Brigade from Indiana and the 53rd Infantry Brigade from Florida. Describing his work with the Afghans, Woodring said that "they depended on us to supply them with everything. We'd pay the ANA and provide them food and everything. They became too reliant on us and they would start almost harassing us to take care of things. They thought money was the answer to all of their problems." He also talks about internal ethnic tensions in Afghan units; the fact that in his estimation the ETTs are way too small, we're doing the advisory mission on the cheap and without the right mix of personnel, equipment and logistics; the supreme importance that good personal relationships play in determining how successful an advisory team is; and his feeling that nine months, not a year, is the ideal deployment length. Woodring further insists that general officers need to spend more time with individual soldiers on the ground and less time getting briefed by colonels. He also laments the overall lack of support his ETT received: "When we were out there," he said, "I expected that while we were out there we'd be supported by the United States Army. Instead, it felt like we were 200 miles away from everybody else and pretty much on our own."

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