Mobilized in April 2005 for service in Afghanistan as a company embedded training team (ETT) leader, full-time National Guardsman Major John Bates arrived in country in July and linked up with 1st Company, 1st Kandak, 1st Brigade of the 205th Corps. During his roughly five months as an ETT leader as part of Task Force Phoenix 4.0, Bates' infantry company was operationally controlled by Task Force 31 and was assigned to Special Forces A-teams (i.e., a hunter-killer or direct-action teams) to conduct operations all over the five provinces in the Afghan southern area of responsibility. Missions included sensitive site exploitations, answering priority intelligence requirements and chasing high-value targets. As Bates described his Afghan company, "It was a very crack outfit. You heard a lot of war stories about other units, how they were lazy and didn't do anything; they'd run away from the fight, yada, yada, yada. This company had been together for three years when I got them and they were very tight, very organized, very disciplined…. They had been with SEALs, Force Recon, and now with Army SF. They understood that failure to do the small jobs meant people died the next day. I was very impressed with them," he added. In addition to his advisory work, he discusses at length the nature of his predeployment training to actually be an advisor (or, more accurately, the lack thereof) and how a very frank after-action review he wrote helped "change the way ETTs were trained." The tearing of ligaments in his arm due to too much one-handed M4 carbine usage cut short Bates' ETT duties, and so midway through his tour he briefly acted as a brigade logistics officer before serving out the remainder as the executive officer/aide-de-camp to the commanding general of Combined Security Transition Command-Afghanistan (CTSC-A), Major General Robert Durbin. Reflecting on the wide visibility he had in this position, Bates discusses poppy eradication efforts, explains why the Helmand Province "exploded" in mid-2006 and offers his many insights into Afghan culture. Returning to his ETT experiences, he also talks about his work with a Romanian element, says that 12 months is too long to be on an advisory team, and how, in spite of it all, his wife (who had to take care of their small children alone) had the more difficult time. "Being an ETT was one of the greatest, most fulfilling events I've had in my military career," Bates said in closing. "To take men you don't share a common culture or language with and become a coherent team, to feel their pain, to feel their joy, to be their leader, to be part of their successes and their failures, to just watch them grow - it was an enlightening experience as a human being."

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