Special Report

For a year Maj. David Crenshaw, a Chinook pilot, flew helicopter missions over terrain he describes as looking like a moon bombarded by meteors.

“It looked like the moon landing every day,” he said.

“Sifty, talcum powder dust” got into everything and left a veneer on equipment, clothing and skin.

Crenshaw, 39, of Helena, flew supply missions and ferried troops to different bases in Afghanistan from 2004 to 2005.

A country stretched out below him — villages and flat windswept plains and mountains jutting out of the landscape. Crenshaw displays photos throughout his office at the armory in Birmingham. In some, the ghostly shadow of a Chinook is silhouetted in the sand below.

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The helicopters were sometimes shot at, mostly “pot shots,” that left dings, dents and holes, but did not injure any troops, Crenshaw said.

The National Guard soldiers also adopted an orphanage, taking the children supplies and gifts.

And Crenshaw missed his 7-year-old son’s first baseball season and a year’s worth of other milestones and holidays — time “you can’t get back.”

Now Afghanistan is on the “back-burner,” Crenshaw said of the country’s first front in this war. NATO has taken over the mission, contributing to “why it’s not in the forefront of everyone’s thoughts.”