In addition to the physical objects Corporal Elenhof carries on his person, he also says he brings with him a sense of hospitality. "You know, just working every day with a foreign culture," he said, "definitely that culture rubs off on you. In Afghan culture, hospitality is a huge part of it. I'm definitely going to be carrying home a lot of that."
He also has learned an affinity for chi tea and believes the United States has learned a lot from Afghanistan in terns of counter-insurgency.
This series of interviews looks into soldiers' personal experiences of serving in Afghanistan through what they carry physically and emotionally throughout the experience. The series offers a larger look at what America, as a nation, will have from its longest-running war.
This series is inspired by Tim O’Brien’s Pulitzer-nominated book, The Things They Carried.