Craig & Fred

by Craig Grossi

  All three of us were exhausted. With the sun barely gone behind the horizon, Josh and I doused the fire and got ready for bed. We didn’t care how early it was; we were excited about sleeping under the stars in our secluded oasis. The clear sky above showed no signs of rain, so we were able to sleep without rainflies over our tents. I crawled into my tent, and Fred followed and assumed his position curled up between my legs, his head resting on my thigh.

  The next morning, Josh and I woke up well rested but sore. Over a breakfast of oatmeal, dried fruit, and instant coffee, we decided to spend the day enjoying our campsite by the creek. We each found a spot along the water and read books. Fred hopped around the rocks and found a perfect chewing stick. He dragged it to a big, flat boulder and gnawed away in the sun. When the day got hot, I jumped into the creek to cool off, and spent the rest of the afternoon in and out of the water, relaxing and recuperating. It was perfect.

  The next morning, we packed up and said good-bye to our little corner of the Los Padres Forest. We were already pushing the limits with Josh’s leg. The three-day battery life was for normal day-to-day use. Our strenuous hike to the creek, plus another day walking over rocks, hardly constituted “normal.”

  We didn’t bother finding the trail we’d come in on—it was a ways down the creek and barely even a trail. Instead, we started heading straight up the ridge from where we were, hoping we’d connect with a path near the top. The way up was rockier than I remembered. I felt nervous about Josh’s leg, knowing he was working twice as hard as I was to scramble up the hill.

  We pushed through the thick brush and gradually made our way up the steep mountainside. As we got higher, the canopy thinned, and we began to feel that fresh ocean air. After about a mile, our trailblazing paid off when we emerged like two mountain goats from the tree line, right where we’d seen the headphone-wearing couple two days earlier. We took a break for water, and then, from the end of his leash, Fred led us all the way back to the Land Cruiser. Exhausted, Josh and I sat on the tailgate of the truck and cracked open a beer. As a group of Boy Scouts walked through the parking lot, their youthful curiosity got the better of them, and they gaped at us—two sweaty, muddy guys on the back of a truck drinking beer at noon, while an extra leg and a dog rested nearby.

  Satisfied by our adventure in the woods, we spent the rest of the week camping on the cliffs of Big Sur. Instead of hiking, we drove the Land Cruiser uphill, finding little turnoffs where we could camp and enjoy a view of the ocean from the tailgate. In the mornings, we made breakfast with the Jetboil and sipped instant coffee as we watched the sun burn off the haze on the flat, blue horizon. We spent our days driving over the mountain roads that crisscrossed the ridge. Whenever we got out to walk around, Fred would chase squirrels, and we’d look out in awe at the gorgeous view. One day, I mountain-biked while Josh walked down to the water and enjoyed the beach. At night, the sea breeze kept the bugs away, so there was no need for tents. We rolled out our sleeping mats and slept under the open sky; the bright, blinking stars were the last thing I saw each night before closing my eyes.

  After a week camping in Big Sur, I was in dire need of a shower. My filthy state made me think of a special gift I’d once received from a villager in Sangin.

  On one of my missions in Afghanistan, after Fred, I befriended a villager named Elias. Elias was a bread maker who lived in a small clay house that sat between our compound and the Green Zone.

  “Please don’t shoot into my house,” he said to me and Ali one day, fearful he’d end up in the crossfire between us and the Taliban. He was a tall, wiry man with a long nose and a slight hunch in his shoulders. His black beard was just beginning to turn white in a small patch below his lower lip. I guessed he was in his mid-thirties. Elias told us he had a wife and two children, a little boy of about five and a girl of three. He used to sell loaves of bread from his home, which was just off Highway 611. Eventually, though, the Taliban started showing up. Each day, they’d come and take everything he baked. So, like most small businesses in the village, he was forced to close his shop. Now, he occasionally sold bread but spent most of his time working in the fields.

  We assured Elias we wouldn’t make his home a target, and to give him peace of mind, I told him that if the Taliban ever took over his home, he should lay one of his rugs over the wall that faced our compound as a signal. The RECON marines who had deployed to Iraq told me they’d asked villagers to do the same if insurgents were inside. It was subtle, because it wasn’t unusual for families to hang rugs that way for cleaning purposes.

  A few days after our initial meeting, we stopped by Elias’s house on a patrol. I knocked on his door. When he saw it was us, he graciously invited Ali and me inside for chai tea. We sat on a small rug in his home and spoke for a few minutes, then continued on our way.

  I began meeting regularly with the bread maker. He was kind and welcoming, and I trusted him to give me information if he had it. His compound was close to ours, so we were like neighbors. Then we started to buy bread from him, and he’d give us big stacks of the warm, flat loaves—similar to naan—wrapped in cloth. Back at the compound, the RECON guys went nuts for it. All we had to eat were MREs, and the fresh bread was a luxury.

  Each time I met with Elias, he’d invite Ali and me inside, boil water for chai tea, and we’d sit cross-legged across from each other on the rug on the floor. As he got more comfortable with me, he’d take my hands in his during our conversations, and sometimes even interlock his legs with mine—a sign of trust and close friendship. Even though we couldn’t understand each other’s language, we looked at each other when we spoke, and Ali would sit next to us and translate. I’d try to say a few words in Pashto here and there, like “please,” and he would do the same with English words he knew. He called me “Craig-D,” which is how all the Afghans tended to pronounce my name. The bread maker always spoke quickly and animatedly and was always smiling.

  Often, I asked Elias if he’d heard anything about the Taliban, especially if we were on our way out for a patrol. Anything, even the smallest detail, that could reveal something about Taliban activity—and IED placement—was critical. Usually, though, he didn’t know much, and our brief conversations were mostly about how his day was going and how his family was doing. Whether he had information or not, my philosophy was that it was important to build a positive rapport with people in the village. And, in truth, I enjoyed meeting with Elias. His friendship was important to me.

  One night, the marines and I were headed out on a patrol. As we approached Elias’s house, I saw him come to the door and slip out. He was barefoot, in a robe that looked like it must have been his pajamas.

  “Craig-D, Craig-D!” he called, running toward me. When he reached me, he grabbed my hands.

  “Mines!” he said in an urgent whisper. The hair on my arms stood up, and I nervously scanned the horizon. Elias explained that the Taliban had been in the field that day planting IEDs. They’d figured out that we cut through the fields at night on our patrols instead of using paths. Taliban members acted like they were sowing the fields when they were actually emplacing bombs.

  Elias told me he could show us the way, and I trusted him. He took my hand and led me through the field, using a path he knew was safe. The patrol followed in a single file behind us, and slowly, in the darkness of the night, the bread maker led us through the field to safety.

  It was a stunning act of kindness and bravery. Any villagers who assisted coalition forces were putting themselves at an enormous risk. Elias hadn’t just helped us; he’d saved us.

  In one of my last meetings with Elias, as Ali and I sat with him on the rug in his home, his face suddenly lit up. His whole body became jittery with excitement, and he jumped up from the rug, then returned with something in his hands.

  “He has a gift for you,” Ali explained. I was surprised and confused—aside from buying bread and sharing chai together, we’d never exchanged anything.

  The bread maker sat acro
ss from me and held out his hands. In his palms was a crumpled white paper napkin with something small wrapped inside. Peeling back the napkin, Elias beamed as he revealed the gift: a travel-size bottle of shampoo. The label on the small green bottle was faded, but it looked like it said Pert Plus.

  “For you!” Elias said, gesturing to my hair.

  All three of us burst out laughing. I’d been living in the dirt for weeks. And with no mirror to speak of, I could only imagine how I must have looked at that point—not to mention how I must have smelled. Here was the bread maker—a man who probably had never had running water in his life—gently encouraging me to clean myself up. My guess was he’d gotten the shampoo in an aid drop, who knows how long ago.

  I thanked Elias for his gift and used it back at the compound that same day. It was a perfect example of the kind of person he was. Time and again, the villagers I met in Afghanistan offered us whatever they could: tea, bread, conversation. Information, warmth, friendship. They had little but gave freely, hoping that soon, they could return to the life they wanted—one where they could live and work and raise their families without the constant threat of oppression. And we wanted, more than anything, to make that happen.

  After coming home, I often thought about the bread maker. I’d heard from other marines that after I left the field, the intelligence collector who took my place hadn’t maintained the relationship with Elias. No one was entirely sure what happened to him, but the stories suggested that he moved away. Maybe he moved to work the fields somewhere else, I thought, but I also knew Elias wouldn’t have wanted to leave the big brick oven he owned for making his beloved bread. I worried he had received a night letter from the Taliban, threatening him for collaborating with us. Maybe he’d been forced to flee. It was crushing to think I’d never know.

  At a gas station in the small town of Orick, we found ourselves without a plan. After camping in Big Sur, we’d spent a weekend in San Francisco, where we met up with another one of my childhood friends and celebrated the Fourth of July. Now, we were headed north to the Redwood National Forest, where we hoped to do another two-night backpacking stint, but the drive was taking longer than expected, and we were quickly losing daylight. Before pulling into the gas station, Josh thought he’d seen a sign by the road that read LAST STOP FOR 100 MILES. As I pumped gas, the two of us went over our options.

  If we continued on, we would have to start our hike in the dark, a potentially dangerous situation we both wanted to avoid. We could stay put where we were, but by the looks of the town, there wasn’t much around aside from the gas station and a church across the street. Josh volunteered to go into the general store attached to the gas station to talk to someone.

  “I’m either gonna come out with a place for us to sleep or a fresh box of AAA batteries for our headlamps,” he said, walking toward the little shop.

  When the pump clicked and the Land Cruiser’s tank was full, I leashed Fred and walked him around the parking lot. After a couple minutes, I heard the screen door of the shop slap against its frame and turned to see Josh walking toward us, followed by a gray-haired man in overalls.

  “Hi there, sir,” I said, shaking the man’s hand.

  “Name’s Roger,” he said. I guessed Roger was in his sixties. With his overalls and boots, he had a cowboy look. “Josh says you two are looking for a place to hole up for the night,” he added.

  “Yes, sir. Any suggestions?” I asked.

  Roger was nodding his head before I finished my reply. “I work on the rodeo grounds right over there,” he said, pointing across the street. “You three are welcome to pull in for the night and make camp. There are fire rings and a couple of port-a-johns. It isn’t fancy, but it’s the best I can do.”

  “That’s a lot better than we could have done for ourselves,” I said. “We weren’t looking forward to hiking into the woods at night.”

  “I’d imagine not,” said Roger. “If you wanna head back this way after your camping trip, we’re having a rodeo in town this weekend. It’ll be a good show—we have some talented riders coming in.”

  “Thank you, sir. We’ll keep it in mind,” I said, shaking Roger’s hand once more. Inside the shop, we bought our provisions for the night: firewood, beef jerky, and Moon Pies.

  In the large, grassy field across the street, we found the campground. Ahead of us, a mountain range rose up on the horizon, its tall pines standing stoically in the distance. A herd of cattle walked lazily through the field adjacent to ours, making their way back to the pen for the night. While we were only a few miles inland from the coast, it felt like we were a long way from the ocean. Content with our campsite, we started a fire while Fred trotted around, sniffing the grass and air curiously.

  The next morning, we shook the dew from our sleeping bags and made coffee in the crisp air while Fred watched the cattle in the distance. On our way back to the road, Josh hopped out of the Land Cruiser and slipped a twenty-dollar bill and thank-you note under the door of a shack near the entrance. Feeling grateful, well rested, and well fed—from coffee and Moon Pies—we headed north toward the woods.

  CHAPTER 12

  Boom

  Sangin was eerily quiet. Our new compound sat on the desert side of the highway, in the dusty, moonlike terrain, perched right alongside the Green Zone. We inserted at night and waited. But when the sun came up, the attack didn’t.

  After a few days, the Taliban still hadn’t launched the kind of assault we’d seen in our first mission to Sangin. They knew where we were—there’d been a few pop shots fired at our rooftop posts, but that was it. We moved forward with our plan: to start engaging villagers and to make our presence known in the Green Zone. The first night patrol was scheduled. Instead of going out for a few hours, then returning, the new plan was to take a compound in the Green Zone and stay. For forty-eight hours, we’d hold and secure the compound, demonstrating our presence to the locals and the Taliban before returning. By aggressively encroaching on their territory, the idea was to send a clear message to the Taliban—that we were serious, prepared to confront them head-on.

  As attachments with specific roles, Justin, Ysa, and I didn’t need to go out with the patrol team. Justin and Ysa were a response team. The RECON marines had been trained in IED detection; each patrol had a designated metal detector marine who walked in front of the patrol, on point, sweeping for mines and IEDs. If they found something that they couldn’t deal with themselves, they were to radio for EOD. But Justin and Ysa weren’t the types to wait back on their heels. Their skills were unparalleled; they were IED experts. Justin and Ysa wanted to be there when they were needed, not sitting around in the dust waiting for a call.

  Ali and I felt the same way. We weren’t going to meet any villagers sitting behind these walls. The closer we got to the action, the better intelligence we could gather, whether through observation, talking with families, or interrogating a Taliban fighter. We all wanted to get out there and offer the most we could, so we requested to join the patrol. It was why we were here.

  In the dark, we lined up and filed out of the compound into the night. Earlier that day, we’d reviewed the route: a four-mile trek to a village along the river where drone reconnaissance had spotted the Taliban.

  After a few weeks off, it felt good to be back at work with the guys. We were accustomed to the challenging terrain now, and we moved swiftly through the Green Zone as a team, working our way in and out of cold canals and through dense fields of corn. Our boots groaned through the damp earth with a rhythm. This part of the Green Zone felt more compact: the plant life was thicker and lusher, and the trees grew taller. Instead of scrawny, naked branches, they reached toward the sky, thick with leaves. Everything was tight, as if the labyrinth of green were closing in on us. When we passed villages, I noticed the homes themselves were closer together, too—some even shared walls. That made me nervous, since it meant the Taliban could more easily move from one to another without being detected.

  That night,
after we fortified our target compound, Ysa, Justin, and I stayed on watch so the RECON guys could rest up for the action that would come in the morning. The new compound was small, with a courtyard and breezeway that led to a few rooms, but it also had an orchard with pomegranate trees in a separate garden area. The walls around the main compound were tall—at least eight feet high—but around the trees, the walls were only about half that height. It made for a good fighting position because we could stand up and shoot over if we needed to, using a couple of sandbags to help protect our heads.

  Under the dark sky, the guys and I leaned up against the orchard wall and whispered in the quiet. We had these fancy binoculars that operated like our night vision goggles, and we’d take turns having a look around at the dirt paths, fields, and neighboring compounds. Above us, the machine gunner waited on a rooftop post. The night was quiet, though, and we took off our helmets and relaxed a little in the cool air.

  I took the time to tell Justin and Ysa about what I’d seen in Trek Nawa and Sangin, but mostly we goofed off. Justin and I talked about Pittsburgh and I tried to bust his balls about the rivalry between the Penguins and Capitals, but he shut me down quickly by reminding me that my Capitals hadn’t won a Stanley Cup—ever.

  We swapped our stories, talking about where we’d come from and what led us here. Somehow we got started on high school. Ysa told us how he used to sneak out of the house in the middle of the night to go to his girlfriend’s. Her dad had caught him there more than once, but he went on to marry her, his high school sweetheart, and now they had three little girls.