Major Rich Lencz served on an embedded training team (ETT) as the advisor to the S3 and the commander of 1st Battalion, 2nd Brigade, 203rd Corps, then later 2nd Battalion, 2nd Brigade, 203rd Corps, in Paktika Province in support of Operation Enduring Freedom from January 2007 to January 2008. Lencz was paired up with the other nine members of the team and received predeployment training at Fort Riley. Once the team arrived in theater, they were paired up with the Afghan National Army at FOB Bermel. The team would conduct three to four patrols with the Afghans per week. During these patrols, they would hand out humanitarian assistance items to the villagers or they would travel to the combat outpost around the village of Shkin. During the course of the deployment, there were two missions with the 10th Mountain Division aimed at clearing al-Qaeda and Taliban forces out of the Bermel Valley: Catamount Fury and Catamount Fury Surge. Lencz talks about the operational role the ETT and the Afghan National Army played in support of these missions and assesses their effectiveness. Lencz also addresses the problem of drug use in the Afghan National Army, the often vast differences between the two different Afghan battalions he worked with, the training and mentoring he and his team provided, combat missions he was involved in, his relationship with US partner units, talks about the successes of this deployment and looking back what he could have done differently.

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