In this October 2012 interview, Maj Travis Ruhl, US Air Force, discusses his deployment to Afghanistan as the executive officer to the Director of the Air Component Coordination Element – Afghanistan (ACCE-A) in 2010 in support of Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF). Maj Ruhl talks about the challenges of being the Air Force liaison to the combined joint headquarters in Afghanistan. Primarily Maj Ruhl did travel planning and organizing the directing general's schedule. He describes how a flight he was on was turned back and afterward he found out that it returned to pick up General McCrystal, who was being quickly recalled to the United States. Maj Ruhl closes his interview by stating, "…if you hope to have influence and input into a planning process, commanders need to physically sit next to each other at some point in that process."

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