Several positive things have happened here at Camp Phoenix over the last week worth noting. We had a USO visit that included an actor from the TV show "Heroes," a New York Giant and a New Orleans Saint football player, two Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders and the commissioner of the NFL.

My public affairs teammates went out with our Security Force team to a nearby village to help inoculate sheep and provided some medical treatment for poor children. I got the chance to go along with another part of our command and visited the Afghan presidential compound in the heart of Kabul.

I set up a phone interview with a young infantry soldier from Rochester with his hometown newspaper. He and other friends are volunteering to stay longer and be transferred to serve as security force members for Embedded Training Teams. They have been here since last September, pulling mostly guard duty. Now they want to go downrange and help the trainers and mentors. That's where the risk is. I thought the folks back in Rochester ought to know that young men like Specialist Sean Shillington, age 20, are here on the job and determined to do it.

And then I got the chance to spend a little time here at Camp Phoenix with some Soldiers who are serving down range as members of Police Mentoring Teams - the ones who are performing the most important role in our task force. More about them later.

The USO visits are just great. They are short but welcome. The guests can't spend a lot of time at any location and they don't go everywhere the troops are at, but they are genuine in their interaction with our service men and women.

Posing for individual photos is part of the fun, but in between there is real feeling being shared between those in uniform and the visitors from "back in the real world." It takes a lot to organize these visits and arrange for the transportation, security and all the necessary details. Before they left I printed out a set of my "Keeping Tabs" newsletters I send back for our New York families and gets posted on the National Guard Web site (www.dmna.state.ny.us), put them in a file folder and offered them to one of the USO support staff.

"Here is some reading material for them when they travel," I said. "It's not much, but I thought they might like to know a little more about us," I added.

"Absolutely," came the answer. "They really love stuff like this."

My comrade, Maj. Kathy Oliver, and Spec. John Smith, our videographer, went for a few hours with a team from SECFOR Delta to a Cucchi village east of Kabul and just outside the Kabul Military Training Center for the Afghan National Army. From the photos and their description, the conditions are dreadful and desparate.

The sheep are the people's livelihood. Preserving them is vital to their ability to survive. The medic did what he could for about a dozen children, but according to Maj. Oliver, they need to come to Camp Phoenix for more care. Some of the children have serious infections that are certain to be life-threatening if untreated.

Col. Andrew Hernandez from the Texas National Guard commands a team of trainers and mentors that come from all over the country. His team advises and trains the Afghan National Army's Kabul Military District. One of his subordinates, Lt. Col. Larry Houck from the Alabama National Guard, asked me to come along with them last Saturday on a convoy from Camp Phoenix that brought us inside the outer ring of the presidential compound.

They wanted me to take a group photo of all the U.S. mentors in front of a very special inner gate that leads to the compound where President Karzai stays. I was only too pleased to go along and have my horizons widened. I met at least two Afghan generals and saw the Afghan security and ceremonial Kandaks (battalions) and looked into Afghan barracks and even a troop kitchen. It was a fascinating visit, and my photos came out just fine.

Back at Camp Phoenix, two teams of police mentors came through for maintenance on their vehicles and to pick up supplies and other things to take back with them to their Forward Operating Bases downrange. There were two groups on different days.

Capt. Rich Redmond from Utica and Sgt. First Class Robert Marshall from the Watertown area came through, and I got speak to them again. Back in May, they had a very close call following an ambush but that doesn't hold them down. I have some history with these two over the last few years, and they and the rest of their team mean a lot to me. When they were getting ready to leave the base, I rushed down to the motor pool with my Nikon digital astill camera nd Sony HD video camera to film their armored convoy as they left.

And today, I must have spent three hours listening to stories from a New York National Guard sergeant from Western New York and two others -- one from Massachusetts and one from Montana - about what the last seven months have been like for them living and serving under rough conditions and frequently under fire. Staff Sgt. Fred Goldacker from Lewiston, near Niagara Falls, shared a narrative he wrote and some of his photos with me.

His description of incoming rocket fire onto their base in the middle of the night and the near misses of rocket propelled grenades that past by inches near his head were riveting. What these guys do and have been doing for months is amazing and inspiring.

It is getting late now for me, and I must stop. I have a lot of work to do tomorrow, and it will be about them and others, too. There are a lot of stories over here to be told, and I know people back home have a need to hear them. So take a look at some of the faces in the photos I am sending along here. They are everyday ordinary people who are over here delivering extraordinary dedication and courage far from home in service to our nation.