by Travis Mills
The Taliban inside the house had surmised that we’d arrived too, and occasionally they were now shooting at us. One of our guys manned the .50-cal and shot back sporadically. But nothing was moving, and all this took time—about three hours total so far at the compound—so we decided we needed to go down to the house with our interpreter and end the standoff ourselves.
Right before we did this, four of the Afghan soldiers decided to get a jump on things. They snuck down and tried to get inside the building. The Taliban dudes inside opened up, and one of the ANA guys dropped flat in the yard. The firing stopped. For a moment, I thought he was dead. But he jumped back up and sprinted for cover. Smart man. He’d only pretended to be hurt, hoping they’d stop shooting at him long enough so he could get away. The rest of the Afghan soldiers hightailed it back to cover too.
The Taliban opened up fire again, this time at everybody and everything they could see, and we shot back toward the house too. Right then I heard a scuffle down at the compound. We stopped firing. A full-size horse jumped out of the window and ran up the hill to safety. Yep—a horse. Animals are often kept inside houses during winter nights to keep them warm. But this was surprising since the day wasn’t very cold. It was a large window, maybe four feet across. The horse made it out unharmed.
The gunner of a different team of ours was tasked with carving out the door to the house. After he blasted around the frame for a while, the door caved in as intended, and everything went silent in the house.
We took a six-man team and two of our Humvees and drove closer to the compound to clear the building. I was in the lead. Our trucks stopped about fifty meters away. Using our interpreter, we called out to them a variety of messages: “Put the guns down. You’re outnumbered. Come out, this can all be over. We’re not going to kill you if you surrender.”
With the last sentence still in the air, gunfire erupted. Bullets whizzed toward us. The Taliban fighters shot out of every possible hole in the house. We ducked for cover. My team looked at me, and I looked at them. I decided we’d had enough.
We laid down some suppressing fire, and with bullets still flying in both directions, I circled the compound on foot, approached the structure from the back where it was built into the side of a hill, and climbed up on the roof. The building’s frame was strong enough for me to stand on top. You’d be surprised what these buildings can hold—they’re stronger than you think. The Taliban below heard me, I was sure, and my adrenaline was pumping, but I wasn’t afraid I’d get hit. They fired up at me, but their bullets weren’t penetrating through the thick walls or roof. All they could do was shoot up at me through the two chimney holes. Funny—I was planning the same tactic, only the fire from me would go down the chimney, not up.
From the firing pattern below, I could tell that the Taliban were in different rooms in the house. I crouched near the first chimney and listened. The gun below me sounded like this: boom, boom, boom, boom, kechunk—and hearing that last sound was my cue. It meant the fighter below paused to reload. I pulled a pin on an M-67 grenade, counted to three, and threw it down the chimney hole. A grenade blows up on the four count. Kaboom! This one found its mark. The house shuddered from the compression of the explosion.
I ran across the roof to the next chimney, pulled out another grenade, and listened for the fighter below to pause his shooting. He did. I pulled the pin, counted to three, and dropped it in the hole. I didn’t even hear the grenade hitting the ground first before it exploded. Kaboom!
After the second explosion, no firing came from inside the building. I jumped off the roof, circled around, and ran back to our team. We enlisted the interpreter again to call out, “We’re coming in. Come out with your hands up. We can end this right now.”
This time, whatever Taliban fighters were left decided our plan sounded good. The ones who weren’t hurt must have been low on ammo by now, and the two grenades I’d thrown in had slowed the group’s enthusiasm considerably. Three men came walking out with their hands up.
Before we could make a move, the ANP and ANA charged at the three Taliban members and tore into them like an angry mob. The Afghan authorities swung at the Taliban, hitting them, ripping their clothes, pulling their hair, punching their faces. Welcome to one of those tricky ethical situations, I thought. We weren’t going to pick a fight with our allies, the ANP and ANA. So if that’s how the Afghan authorities wanted to handle the arrest of these surrendering men, then we had to just stand by. I didn’t understand what was being said through all the commotion, particularly because the shouting was in a different language, but I could guess at the general theme, that the Afghans were expressing a pile of anger. Hey Taliban—how’s this for payback?! By the way, thanks for ruining our country for so many years!
Two other Taliban members were still inside the house. Both were alive, wounded from the grenade blasts, and both needed to be carried out. According to the Geneva Convention, we’re supposed to administer medical aid on prisoners, even if moments before their weapons were silenced they had been shooting at us and wanting us to die. So our medics started working on the wounded fighters to get them stabilized. One Taliban had a big chunk gone from his head and was wheezing. He wasn’t going to last very long. The other fighter was bleeding and had some holes in him. He looked like he would make it okay.
We switched on our tactical lights, a bright white light on the end of our rifles, and combed through the building to make sure no one else was hiding inside. The interior was dusty and dark. The floors were made of dirt, and there was no furniture. We found some weapons and threw them out. A few old bedrolls. The house had been abandoned by its original owners. All of them except the horse, I guess.
The Afghan authorities loaded up the three prisoners on one of their vehicles, and the two wounded fighters on another. The wounded fighters were put on stretchers and placed in the back of the truck. Both trucks took off quickly and headed up a hill.
It sounds crazy now, but this is how it happened—as one of the trucks went up the hill, it hit a rock and bounced, and one of the wounded fighters skidded off the back of the truck and toppled onto the road.
Both trucks screeched to a halt, and a bunch of Afghan officials jumped out and argued with one another. They loaded up the wounded Taliban again, strapped him down tight, and took off in a roar of dust and exhaust.
—
The shadows were lengthening and a chill hung in the air. Evening was coming quickly. I glanced at my watch again. We loaded ourselves back into our four Humvees. Our drivers hit the ignitions for us to get out of there, but one of the Humvees wouldn’t start. We climbed out and investigated.
It turned out the vehicle had an oil leak, and as it had sat on an incline on the hill, all the oil had leaked out of the engine. We hooked a towline to this Humvee and attached it to another Humvee and pulled it up the hill and onto the road. The Humvee without oil was dead for now, which meant we’d need to tow it back to the compound.
All in all, as challenging as the day had been, the mission was a success. We’d done what was asked of us, and none of our guys had been hurt in the process. That meant a good day. Clearing the house had taken longer than expected, and now with this setback, we were going to be slowed even further. That wasn’t good. We’d now been at this operation for fourteen hours. But if all else went off without incident, I would still make it back in time to call Kelsey.
About an hour down the road, however, word came over the radio that the tow vehicle itself was driving funny, pushing dirt, basically not driving at all. We stopped and investigated again. Turned out the second vehicle had a busted tie rod. It had probably been damaged while navigating the bumpy trail down to the compound. We shut that vehicle down and looked at our options.
With the tie rod in that condition, the vehicle wasn’t going anywhere and couldn’t be pulled by another Humvee. We certainly couldn’t abandon a vehicle of that size and head back to the compound without it. So our only option was to get on the radio
and call for one of the huge six-by-six hydraulic military tow trucks to come and get it—and that would take time to reach us. Probably an additional four hours.
That meant we needed to sit tight. It would be a long wait.
Darkness fell. I knew that a roadway in Afghanistan is one of the worst places to be stranded. We were off the main highway on a road less traveled; nothing about it felt safe. We were stuck in the middle of nowhere. We pulled security and waited for the tow truck to arrive.
There wasn’t much traffic. The moon rose through a hazy black sky and we could see a little in the pale light the moon provided. Every now and then the headlights of an approaching vehicle would spotlight us and we knew the driver could see us, then the vehicle would slow down and pass by. I tensed whenever I saw an approaching vehicle. Anybody could be inside, and I was always thinking “suicide bomber” in the back of my mind. But I told myself to relax and not freak out. If anything did happen, we had a lot of firepower with us still, and if the bad guys ripped into us, then we could always shoot back. They were tough, but we were tougher.
We are trained to look for patterns on the road, but there was no rhyme or reason to the traffic or the people who passed. One truck that passed was a semi-trailer probably making a late delivery. One car looked to be filled with a family heading back from a trip. Another car contained two businessmen intent on some destination. They didn’t mess with us, and we didn’t mess with them.
Standing in the dark on a lonely open road in the middle of Afghanistan, a thought flashed at me. I mulled it over and put it out of my mind, but it returned and I mulled it over some more. Call it an epiphany, if you will. All the delays in this mission were frustrating, that was true. I could have grumbled or yelled or punched the side of a truck, like I’d done before. But none of that was going to help the situation any, so there was no point getting upset or mad. I couldn’t control a jet not arriving. I couldn’t control our truck breaking down. I couldn’t control a tie rod getting bent. I couldn’t control any of the delays we’d had. There was nothing for me to do except take a deep breath and wait. The thought came at me again, and I held it in my mind this time.
Things can always be worse.
It was a good motto to live by in Afghanistan. We could be getting shot at. It could be snowing. We could be cold and wet. We could be locked away in a Taliban prison somewhere. We could be dead.
With that new perspective, I started to laugh, right there on the side of the road. It felt like I was back in basic training, during those times when I’d been so exhausted and frustrated that I could only cry or laugh. Laughing was my default then. It would become my default again.
Things can always be worse.
—
Our tow truck arrived after midnight. We hooked up the broken Humvee and lifted the front end off the ground so it would tow, climbed into the remaining vehicles, and got our convoy on the road and going again.
We didn’t want to leave the tow truck by itself, out of our convoy, and it was slow going for him. So we all took it easy with our speed, trying to keep a sharp lookout for trouble in the dark. At 3 a.m. we arrived back at base. The mission had taken more than eighteen hours total. I grabbed some food and made a beeline for the satellite phone. Valentine’s Day was over for me, and I hadn’t yet made the one phone call that mattered so much. But there was the good news. Depending where you are in the country, Afghanistan is some eleven and a half hours ahead of America. Although it was now February 15 for me, it was still February 14 for Kelsey. I punched in the numbers and soon heard the ringing of Kelsey’s phone. She picked up and I wished my wife a happy Valentine’s Day. Earlier, I’d contacted a flower shop in her area and had a dozen roses delivered to the house.
“I love you and can’t wait to see you again,” I said. I never told her much about what was happening on our missions, and I didn’t tell her about this crazy day. She didn’t need to worry.
“I love you too, Travis,” she said. “I’m so glad I married you.”
“I’m glad I married you too,” I said.
We didn’t talk long. Just enough to communicate the important things. Sleep came quickly to me that night, and I dreamt of being back in America, back in the arms of the woman I loved.
—
The next morning I needed to discipline one of my men. This was Pender, the guy a year older than I was. This particular aspect of being a squad leader was new to me, but it came with the territory.
When we had been at that compound, he’d been ordered to stay with the truck to monitor the radio. But when the wounded Taliban fighter had been carried out of the house, Pender had jumped off our Humvee and rushed to help. That sounded noble, but for him it was actually the wrong thing to do. There were other medics present, and they could do the job. He wanted to get in on the action, and he’d left the radio unmanned during an intense situation. He’d disobeyed a direct order.
Pender was a good friend and a good soldier, and I didn’t want to take his rank away, but disobeying an order was disobeying an order. I took him aside and walked him through the situation. He was upset at me for taking him to task, but I couldn’t let it go by unnoticed. I decided to let him keep his rank, but as a punishment I told him he’d need to burn the camp’s poop for a month. He wasn’t happy about that, so I framed it another way.
“I’m doing you a favor,” I said. “This is the army, and you can’t just do your own damn thing. It’s for your own safety.”
We had a few heated words, then I realized I just needed to step up and be the leader the situation called for. I ordered him to stand at Parade Rest (this is a position of attention where your hands are interlocked behind you at the small of your back, your face and eyes are straight and looking forward). I got in his face, and ran through the situation again at full volume, shouting in his face what he needed to do.
After that, he understood what I meant.
He and I joke about that experience today. We’re still good friends, and disciplining him didn’t undermine our chance at ongoing friendship. I was doing my job, and after time went by and he cooled off, he respected me for that.
—
I wished every problem we faced in Afghanistan could be dealt with so smoothly. Our commanding officer liked how we’d handled the rooftop situation, and we’d developed a reputation as an uncompromising unit that could get things done. Word came to shut Robat down. We were being sent elsewhere.
Up in northwestern Afghanistan in the area of Bala Murghab (commonly called BMG), a bunch of our guys were having a tough time of it. The fighting was intense and they were getting hit hard nearly every day. That’s where our commanding officer planned to send us.
The enemy up at BMG was said to be well trained and well equipped. We’d be outnumbered. And we’d undoubtedly find ourselves in situations we never imagined. One thing was for certain: anybody who went up there was going to get shot at.
Okay then, I thought, that’s where we’ll go next.
As we flew up to BMG in a CH-47 Chinook military transport helicopter, I glanced at my watch and felt a surge of adrenaline. We’d nearly reached our destination.
BMG is just below the Afghan border with Turkmenistan. It’s a Taliban stronghold. I wasn’t scared. Just pumped. It felt like we were on the brink of another purposeful adventure, one that I wanted to begin now. That’s the feeling I believe most soldiers have en route to any mission. Even if the territory is hostile, like this destination was, you just think, Let’s go up and get it done.
Talking’s hard inside a helicopter because of the noise. My squad rechecked their weapons and kept watch out the window. The scenery below us varied little. The same brown mountainous high desert snaked along underneath us, and sparse foliage dotted the land. The murky, fast-flowing Murghab River wound its way through the valleys, and I caught glimpses of the river from time to time. All we could hear was the smooth and steady whup whup whup of the powerful twin-rotor blades over our heads.
I thought about that river. Earlier in November, while the unit we were set to replace was in the midst of constant firefights, they’d received an airdrop of some supplies. But the airdrop wasn’t on target, and some of the supplies splashed into the river. Two of our men from the 82nd, Sergeant Benjamin Sherman and Sergeant Brandon Islip, sprinted out to retrieve the supplies. They took fire, and the bank near the river gave way. One soldier fell into the water. He floundered due to his heavy gear. The other soldier jumped in to save him. The current was so strong that they were both swept away. A search began for the bodies, but intense fighting broke out during the first days of the search. Sergeant Sherman’s body was found six days later, and Sergeant Islip’s body was found three and a half weeks later.
I didn’t know these men personally, but I knew their names, and any soldier in the 82nd is a brother to me. I remember praying for their families. I hardly ever prayed while on deployment, and I couldn’t exactly tell you why that was the case. I kept my Bible on me. I felt safe with it on me, and I read it now and then. But prayer for specific things was more something that I left in God’s hands. He was ruling the universe. Not me. He had it figured out, and I figured it was wise to leave that to him.
If anything, the deaths of Sherman and Islip fueled my resolve. BMG was described to us as a “Taliban vacation spot” where well-trained insurgents infested the region. I resolved that would all change with us in the area.
The problem of BMG was that the bulk of the coalition forces’ efforts was focused on larger cities, so for quite a while the Taliban had felt safe and largely ignored up there. To compound problems, the ANA and ANP weren’t known for cooperating with each other in the BMG area. Drug and smuggling routes ran up and down the valley corridor, and governmental mistrust spiked high throughout the remote region. The combination of these problems meant our job was twofold: to protect the local population in BMG by holding territory already taken from the Taliban; and to take territory away from the Taliban if we saw opportunities for advancement. Neither would be easy.