Hodge and the rest of the team’s trucks arrived at the field south of Bruce’s team and immediately got into a fight with Taliban soldiers heading for the compound. The situation could not have been more chaotic. SF teams held a compound, surrounded by Taliban. We now engaged the Taliban from the south, east, and north.
Suddenly, an F-18 thundered over the battlefield, prompting a brief lull in the fire. From the rooftop, Ben used the moment wisely and surveyed the terrain. To the south, he saw an escape route.
Hodge looked up just in time to see the first F-18 swoop down and roar over the compound. The jet was so low, Hodge swore he could see the pilot’s visor and patches. This guy meant business.
“Where did an F-18 come from?” he called over to Mike.
“An aircraft carrier!”
Ben and J.D. brought the F-18s on low passes over the compound as the Afghan soldiers climbed off the roof, wounded first. Ben stayed until everybody got down. J.D. was the last off. As he climbed down, an RPG hit nearby, throwing him off the ladder to the hard floor of the compound and showering the others with debris and shrapnel. Staggering to his feet, J.D. peeked through a sliver in a door. A pair of Taliban fighters were approaching the compound. With the world still spinning, he tried to focus. Looking down the scope of his rifle, he fired, hitting one of the fighters. Turning to fire at the other fighter, he found himself looking down the barrel of the Talib’s AK-47. The moment froze in J.D.’s mind. The Talib had him, but hesitated. J.D. fired, hitting the enemy in the nose and sending him sprawling to the ground.
“Why didn’t he shoot me? Was he out of ammo?” J.D. would never know.
With everybody outside the compound, they still didn’t know the best route to Hodge and the trucks. Taliban fighters headed to the compound stumbled across the trucks and opened fire. J.D. volunteered to find a route. Running out of the door on the south end of the compound, he snaked his way two kilometers through the irrigation ditches despite a serious head wound. It was his second dash to get help, but one that he wouldn’t remember.
As the minutes passed, Bruce worried that J.D. had run into a group of Taliban fighters. Ten tense minutes later, Hodge called back that J.D. had made it.
Hodge popped a smoke grenade, and Ben led the others to the trucks. F-18 fighters flew so low they could distinguish between the SF and ANA soldiers. The pilots gashed the Taliban fighters with gun runs in front of the element, clearing the way for Bruce and his men.
It was more than a reunion when they all came back to Sperwan Ghar.
A medevac helicopter came in and took J.D., who had a fractured skull, and six Afghan soldiers with gunshot and shrapnel wounds back to Kandahar.
When the helicopter landed, Bolduc and the battalion’s command sergeant major, Hedges, stood on the tarmac waiting. Both had spent the balance of the day filing reports with their superiors explaining what had happened. But it was their policy to be the first people their wounded soldiers saw when they got back to the base. Running next to J.D.’s stretcher, they followed him all the way into the hospital.
Back at his room, Bolduc finally relaxed and reflected on what had happened. Looking at CSM Hedges, he admitted what he couldn’t in the operations center.
“We were lucky. Very, very lucky.”
Chapter 22
FIREBASE SPERWAN GHAR
We are determined that before the sun sets on this terrible struggle our flag will be recognized throughout the world as a symbol of freedom on the one hand, of overwhelming power on the other.
—GENERAL GEORGE C. MARSHALL
The plum-colored phone buzzed rather than rang in the operations center. The nine a.m. call was for either Bolduc or Command Sergeant Major Hedges, and the sergeant in charge of the operations center in Kandahar knew it.
He didn’t want to answer it. The command staff in Bagram, Bolduc’s bosses, had been calling for hours. This was the third call. On the fifth ring, he finally picked up.
“Sir, I think they are in a meeting or something, but let me go find them and they will call you back.”
“Get Bolduc on the phone now,” the officer in Bagram said. The stalling tactic had played out.
A few days before, CSM Hedges had told Bolduc that “higher,” the commanders in Bagram, didn’t want him going out to Sperwan Ghar. It wasn’t an order, just a heavily emphasized suggestion. No one ever told Bolduc specifically not to go.
“We just want you to stay close to your FOB [forward operating base] a little more than in the past,” is all they said.
It was dangerous to circulate to the different firebases, and Bolduc had a reputation for finding trouble. On a previous rotation, his helicopter had gone down, and once he even had directed his helicopter to pick up ambushed paratroopers and ferry them off the battlefield.
The battle at Sperwan Ghar had become too fierce to endanger an entire command team. So, the night before Bolduc left for Sperwan Ghar, he instructed the sergeant to stall Bagram until he could get to the hill. Bolduc was smart enough not to ask permission, because he knew they’d say no. It is easier to ask for forgiveness. Plus, he knew that if the battle spread, we would need his rank out there to get assets and assistance.
“Sir, they are at Sperwan Ghar,” the sergeant finally told Bagram.
The amber sun was up before I woke on September 11, 2006. Startled, I realized that I had not been awakened for my guard shift. Had someone fallen asleep?
I rubbed the sleep from my eyes, snatched my weapon, and got up to see. It took me a second to will my swollen and stiff body off the ground. I still had a large tear in my pants, and my back, butt, knee, and shoulder throbbed relentlessly. I had had a horrible ringing in my ears since the blast. My men had not complained of their wounds, nor allowed themselves to be medevacked, and neither would I. I made a mental note to see Riley about some medication for the swelling.
Walking the short distance from my truck to the command center in the schoolhouse, I found Bolduc and CSM Hedges inside, monitoring the radio and pulling security. Jared walked into the hallway scratching his filthy red beard.
“How did you sleep?” Jared asked. “Commander and the CSM insisted that they pull guard duty the entire night.”
We had badly needed some rest. The past two weeks had been total sensory overload. A good six hours of sleep was just what the men needed, including me. It was rare indeed to have two leaders who cared so greatly for their men. Humbled, I headed back to my truck. As I left, my eyes fell on the words written in chalk on the ash-gray walls of the hallway: “From this day, until the end of the world, we in it shall be remembered. We few, we happy few, we band of brothers. For he who sheds his blood today with me shall be called my brother. —Shakespare.” I had misspelled Shakespeare.
I broke out the coffeepot and plugged it into the truck. The dusty socket sparked angrily but pushed enough power to the ten-dollar kettle. I dug deeply into my backpack for a bag of pure Kona coffee, Hawaiian gold that I saved for special occasions. If the commander and CSM were going to pull guard duty for my men all night, the least I could do was to make them a damn fine cup of coffee. I would not mind being a coffee gofer today.
Bill came up while the coffee brewed and wanted to know what had happened to the guard shift.
“Bolduc and Hedges are here and pulled them.”
“No shit?” he said. Seeing the coffee, he fished out his canteen cup. “First things first, I’m getting a cup of that right there!”
I poured the water slowly over the small yellow filter full of coffee and filled four canteen cups with the deep-almond-colored liquid. As I walked with Bill back toward the school, I held the cups close to my face, inhaling the aroma. Bill didn’t wait and took a big gulp.
When we got to the school, Jared, Bolduc, and Hedges were sitting on MRE cases and ammunition cans, talking about the last eleven days. Bill and I listened to the discussion, and its tally was impressive: we’d completed a clandestine desert crossing with an indigenous force, surv
ived a massive ambush, assaulted a known enemy fortified position, seized the key and decisive terrain feature, repelled two counterattacks and two direct assaults on our defenses, killed or wounded nearly eight hundred enemy fighters, including eight Taliban commanders, “assisted” NATO’s largest combat operation before becoming its main effort, and liberated a valley the Soviets never conquered.
“Whew,” I mumbled when Bolduc was done. “Not bad for thirty Green Berets and fifty Afghan soldiers.”
“It will be the greatest battle no one ever heard of,” Bill chuckled.
Then Bolduc delivered the news. Sperwan Ghar was now officially a firebase. We’d fought hard to get the hill, and now we’d use it to hold the valley. The Canadian task force had finally managed to seize and hold their hard-fought objective, Rugby, and established a firebase of their own at Masum Ghar. But we didn’t have time to dwell too much on our successes. We still had to cross the river and secure four more objectives. We knew the order was coming because the Canadians couldn’t do it with their mechanized vehicles.
With the coffee gone, Bill and I went back to our trucks. It was eerily silent, but I didn’t have that feeling of impending doom. Something had changed. Looking down into the fields and compounds, I didn’t see any activity. Nothing. I woke Victor and told him to scan the radio. He listened for several minutes to mostly static. Then there was a short message in Pashto. Victor’s eyes lit up. Grinning like an opossum, he held the radio in the air.
“They are leaving, they are leaving.”
The Taliban commanders were collecting the remaining fighters and leaving for Helmand Province and Pakistan. Listening to the radio calls, I could hear their humiliation. An Apache helicopter flew across the river, searching the fields and tree lines for a fight. Bill called him on the radio.
“Razor aircraft, this is Talon 31, requesting a situation report, over.”
“Talon, it looks like a ghost town. Everyone is gone. It looks like they’ve had enough.”
Bill looked at me and shrugged his shoulders. “Too bad, we were just getting a rhythm going,” he said.
I stood up straight for the first time in more than a week. I was now less worried about snipers or machine guns; I looked out over the valley. It was my first concentrated look at the massive devastation precipitated by the Taliban. This was all their doing. To say any less would be asinine and ignorant. I had to shake my head. The protected and self-righteous regularly toss knee-jerk, ill-informed accusations toward the militaries of the Western world every time civilians are killed in combat, yet they sit by quietly while the Taliban and many other terrorist organizations intentionally fight and hide behind or within innocent civilian populations. Not a damn word is said nor deed done about that.
A landscape of destroyed grape huts, impact craters from bombs, fires, and carnage unfurled before me. It looked like a monster had stomped through the valley, leaving the skeletons of compounds smoldering and the tops of trees jagged and twisted. It didn’t look like victory to me. It was all the Taliban and Al Qaeda had to offer Afghanistan. We didn’t start this battle. They had picked the fight with the wrong hombres, and in turn laid waste to others’ homes.
We walked down the hill and told Jared, Hedges, and Bolduc that we’d planned a ceremony later that morning to commemorate September 11 and to remember why we’d fought for the hill in the first place. Before the ceremony, Bill got the team together to clean weapons, check the radios, and fix up the vehicles. Dave asked me to play DJ with my iPod because he had only techno music suitable for the next assault, workout session, or rave. “Maestro, something patriotic, if you please!”
I plugged in my speakers and scrolled through the play list. “Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue” by Toby Keith kicked things off. Everyone gathered around the truck and began to bellow out the tune. For the next hour, we sang along with Toby, guzzled warm soft drinks, and ate cookies courtesy of the CSM and commander. It was a caffeine and sugar high. The guys from 3X, a few hills away, got the same resupply that had flown in with the commander—with one special addition. A case, not just a box, of tampons. Our community does have a unique sense of humor.
Bill hollered that it was time to go. The ceremony would begin in ten minutes. Hodge, Bruce, and their teams started to gather up around ten o’clock. Most of the men carried small flags that had been stuffed in their equipment pouches for the last two weeks. It was an essential military tradition. With everyone on top of the hill, we fashioned three flagpoles.
Our combined force went to the top of Sperwan Ghar and proudly planted the flags of Canada, Afghanistan, and the United States of America, together. It was the first day since the initial assault that not a shot was fired by either friend or foe. “COMPANY, attention!” the command sergeant major yelled.
The three flags were raised in unison. We then all bowed our heads in silence. It was a moment to reflect—on the tragedy five years ago, the sacrifices made and those yet to be made for the hard struggle ahead. Bolduc then fished out a letter written by General Fraser. The coalition commander for southern Afghanistan wanted to personally thank us. We gathered around Bolduc as he read parts of it to us:
I want to express my personal thanks to the soldiers and officers of United States Army Special Forces Task Force 31 for their recent efforts as part of Operation MEDUSA, perhaps the single most important and successful combat operation to be conducted in Afghanistan since 2002 … As has been made very clear to me by my superiors, it is no exaggeration to say that the future of NATO, and of Afghanistan, hung in the balance. In this time of need, when failure was not an option, the soldiers of TF 31 stood and delivered, and by their brave actions made a contribution to victory out of all proportion to their relatively small numbers.
The personal courage demonstrated time and again by the soldiers of TF 31 was remarkable, and I stand in awe of their mission focus, offensive spirit, and dedication … To the soldiers of TF 31: I am proud of your accomplishments and humbled by your warrior spirit. You are true warriors and epitomize the traits expected from the Special Forces community.
After the ceremony, I flew two American flags. The first one was for Greg. I had gotten word several days earlier that Sean had lived, but there was still no word about Greg. He had been transported from Kandahar to Germany. If he died from his wounds, I wanted to present the flag to his wife after the funeral. There I would make the same promise I had to Charlie’s wife. Six months later, I was privileged to be able to give the flag to Greg himself. He had survived by the grace of God.
The second flag I flew for someone else. After hoisting it up, Bill helped me neatly tuck it back into the box. I wanted to present it to Bolduc, to thank him for his incredible leadership.
Walking down the dust pile of a hill after the ceremony, I asked to speak with the boss. I presented the flag to Bolduc. It was the only way I could show my appreciation. He should own a piece of this history.
Bolduc grabbed my arm and looked me dead in the eye.
“Your men did a good job here. Remember that.”
We spent the rest of the day planning for the next operations across the river and the reconstruction of the area. We had to repair the damage, build dirt roads, and start establishing rapport with the people. The Soviets hadn’t been able to conquer the valley, but we now had a chance to not only control the Taliban’s backyard, but to win over their home-field support. We just had to capitalize on our victory by returning the ravaged district to its heyday as Afghanistan’s breadbasket.
Days had passed since I had called home, and I knew my wife hadn’t been well. At dusk, I went outside and called her on my satellite phone. I knew that the battle was big news, and any Green Beret’s wife who has been around more than a day knows how to put two and two together. I knew that watching the battle on the news would have made her anxious; I knew I was fine, but she did not. The sheer weight of the unknown is crippling, as I was about to learn firsthand. Pressing the hot black plastic against my e
ar, I listened for the clicking sound of connection. I could hear it finally make contact thousands of miles away. But instead of my wife on the other line, my mother answered. Startled, I asked if anything was wrong.
“She was taken to the emergency room for spinal surgery,” my mother told me. I couldn’t catch my breath.
My wife had never mentioned anything that serious when I talked to her before the first assault. A strong soldier’s wife, she did not want me to worry about her. Army wives are a special breed.
My mother was waiting for news from the hospital. “Call back when she gets out of surgery,” I said, numb.
I still had the small black Iridium phone in my hand when Bolduc came out of the building. By now the moon was full and gleaming white like a celestial flashlight. He walked over and handed me a paper. I read the first line and almost dropped the message.
FROM: The International Red Cross … Your wife … Surgery … Requests your immediate presence …
I was faced with toughest decision of my life: go to my wife and help my family or stay with my men, who were closer than family. It had been only a short time since I’d talked to my mother, but I called back anyway.
“Your wife is fine and in recovery. She is going to need a lot of help, though,” my mother said.
I turned to Bolduc, still stunned. He knew that I needed some advice, and I just listened as the words streamed out. I knew my wife needed me, but I also knew that we faced some difficult days rooting out the remaining Taliban fighters across the river. We had a firebase to build, and I didn’t want to leave my men in harm’s way without me. Seven of my twelve men had been wounded, including me. When you are so close to your men, command is much more personal and much more difficult. I needed to be with them.
Finally, I asked the question.
“Sir, what do I do? I can’t leave my men in combat,” I said.
Jerry Bradley & Kevin Maurer Page 26