by Travis Mills
Picture BMG as a flat valley between two mountain ranges. It’s brown and rocky, not green and lush. Sprinkled through this valley are dozens of small villages and settlements. Most locals are subsistence farmers or herdsmen, or they run some sort of small business. If you’re high enough in a helicopter, you can see a patchwork of fields from the aircraft. The main road up to BMG is a two-lane track made of combined tar and gravel that runs from south to north.
If I’d heard the number correctly, some fifteen coalition combat outposts were spread thin up and down the BMG corridor. Most of the outposts were American-run, although some Italian troops were in the area too. If the locals lived near a security outpost, then they were usually safe from the Taliban. Although nothing was guaranteed.
What we knew for sure was this: if anyone—locals or American soldiers—ventured too far away from the perimeters of influence that the outposts provided, then BMG was said to be as dangerous as the blood-filled streets described in Black Hawk Down.
—
Our Chinook landed without taking any fire, and we took a truck north the rest of the way to our first security post, nicknamed Corvette. Twin mountain peaks ringed the post. Earlier units had nicknamed the mountains Jack and Daniels, and the three ridges around the post were nicknamed Bud Light, Miller Lite, and Coors Light. The nicknames had stuck, and that’s how they actually read on our maps.
The post itself was just three mud buildings surrounded by an eight-foot-tall mud wall. Conditions at Corvette were spartan. Dirt floors. No electricity. No running water. No toilets or showers. The Taliban had originally manned the post, but such as it was, it was ours now. We established security and went out almost immediately to talk to the locals. We wanted to get a feel for the place and show our presence.
The architecture in rural Afghanistan is basically the same throughout the country, repeated over and over and over again. Villages are made up of square mud huts, mud walls, dirt roads with ditches on the other side for wastewater. All windows are open. None of the buildings have electricity or running water.
Honestly, I don’t remember the name of the village nearest to Corvette—and we referred to geographical landmarks by the names we’d given them anyway, more so than the actual towns. During the day we saw Afghan men out in the open but never saw any women on the roads. If we ever saw women in the early morning or dusk, their faces were always covered and they steered clear of us. There were a bunch of kids around as we set up at Corvette, but they mostly kept to themselves. On other deployments, kids would come running up to us and shake our hands. We would give them school supplies or engage in contests to see who could throw a rock the farthest. But I’d purposely chosen not to interact with the kids much on this deployment. I’d done it more on my first deployment, but after a while, I concluded it might prove dangerous for the kids. If I was in the middle of something mission-related and a kid came running up to me for a high five, then there was no way I could guarantee his safety.
This is sad to say, but there was also no way initially to know if a local kid was hostile toward us or not. The Taliban were experts at spreading lies about us and making up all sorts of stories about how we were there to ruin Afghanistan and steal children away and crap like that. Some local kids regarded us as heroes. Others had swallowed the Taliban propaganda wholeheartedly and were convinced we were the bogeyman. Although this never happened in any of the combat action I saw, the Taliban had no problem using a kid as a shield in a firefight. They’d stoop so low as to use a kid as a suicide bomber too. You never knew.
Outside the post at Corvette, most of the local men nodded to us as they walked by. Or they’d say a cautious hello from where they sat beside the side of the road. It’s kinda weird; when resting, most of the men squat on their haunches like a baseball catcher with their butt off the ground—and they can sit like that for hours. I tried it, but it killed me after about five minutes. The local men do it from the time they’re kids, so they’re good at it. It’s basically sitting down without a chair. The men kept to themselves, but we knew they’d interact with us more at key leader meetings. Our goal was to develop partnerships with them and let them know we were there to help them out.
Right when we’d arrived in BMG, we’d learned that our post’s security perimeter ended at a four-way intersection at the far end of a nearby town. The intersection was north of us, about a quarter mile away from Corvette’s security perimeter. If we crossed over that imaginary line, the word was we’d get shot at. The town itself wasn’t much to look at: just a few businesses and houses with fields behind them. Same mud huts. Same mud walls. Locals frequented the town during the day. We made a mental note to stay clear of the line for now. But in the back of my mind I had a hunch that we’d need to cross it soon.
Our first two weeks at Corvette passed without incident. We were constantly on guard. Sure enough, we went out several times to test the security perimeter and got shot at a few times, but it wasn’t much. It felt like the Taliban were waiting for us to make the first big move—not just crossing the line but crossing it for good.
My only injury came from a fistfight. We took antenna cable, nylon rope, and engineer tape and set up a makeshift volleyball net at the compound to help kill the time between patrols. Any game I play, I play to win, and the intensity of this game was right up there with the best. I leaped up in a jump meant to spike the ball down over the net, but I pulled my hand back too fast and the knuckle of my right hand caught me in the eye socket. I plowed into my own face so hard that my world went black, I took three steps, and passed out. The fistfight was with myself!
When I came to, medics were bent over me. Everyone made fun of me for a long time for that little escapade. They called me Twinkletoes and said I had a glass jaw. I knew it wasn’t the case. It was just a hard, unlucky shot. Once in high school football, I’d taken a blow to the head but kept playing anyway and finished the game. Afterward, Mom took me to the doctor and it turned out I’d been playing with a concussion. I knew my jaw wasn’t glass.
We could only kill so much time at Corvette. The area was proving secure, so I knew the next step would be to take the fight to the insurgency. Our orders came through: move on up the road a mile for a day. The idea was to make a bigger show of moving past the imaginary line at the crossroads to test the Taliban’s resolve. I felt fine about that. We weren’t in BMG to play volleyball. We were there to kick their butts.
—
The compound up the road was nicknamed Impala. Marines had taken this post earlier, but one of their guys had been shot in the head and died, so we knew the Taliban wanted the post back. The marines had left without another coalition troop coming in to the post, so we weren’t entirely sure if the Taliban had retaken it yet or not. Our commander told us to pack for a twenty-four-hour reconnaissance mission. Our job was to go up there, see what was going on, and then come back and report.
We needed to use maximum speed and force on our side, so aside from our weapons, we packed light for the mission. For me, that meant carrying an extra undershirt and a pair of socks, two MREs, four bottles of water, my weapons, armor, and some extra ammo. No blankets or sleeping bag. I always carried my little photo album—pictures of Kelsey and my mom and dad, brother and sister. Altogether, this light load of gear still meant adding an extra fifty pounds on my person.
We took off at 2 a.m. Rain poured down from the night sky, and we were soaked before we’d hiked a hundred yards. The roadway was too heavily littered with IEDs to trust, so we headed cross country and hiked beside the river. It was going to be a cold, wet night.
Before long, we reached the compound’s exterior. All was quiet, but silence could mean anything. We approached the building in tactical formation, slipped inside, and ensured each room was clear. The post was empty, but the Taliban had been there recently—we could tell by a bunch of sleeping mats on the floor and a mess of discarded needles and spoons. Lots of enemy soldiers do their fighting while hopped up on heroin
. The Taliban were sure to come back. We set up our guns on three different rooftops, filled sandbags for extra cover, and waited for them to return.
Playing the waiting game was always ominous. We knew that shots could come from anywhere. We just didn’t know where. The region was infested with Taliban. Our intel had already confirmed that. The Taliban might fire upon us from the surrounding hillsides, from the neighboring village, from behind trees and walls, from rooftops, ditches, or culverts. They’d move quickly too, fire and run, fire and run, so it would be hard to know exactly where shots were coming from.
Back at Corvette, we knew the area behind us, south and to the east, was secured. But the area north and west of us—where we’d just moved to at Impala—was all Taliban turf. Just up the road from Impala about a thousand meters was another little unnamed village. Same mud huts. Same mud walls. Word was this village was all Taliban.
Just before dawn, the rain stopped and the wind picked up. A shadow moved in the night. It might have been from a branch that swayed in the wind. Or from a piece of garbage that blew down the road. My heart pumped steadily, although my blood pressure spiked from adrenaline. Just before first light, a single rider on a moped puttered down the road. The rider glanced our direction once, twice, three times. Then he was gone. A moped rider might be only that—a moped rider. But he might be a Taliban scout, someone doing reconnaissance work of his own.
The eastern sky grew pink through the haze. The sun was just about up. All was quiet in the compound. Then—Crack! A bullet whizzed in and thudded into the compound’s rooftop. Crack! came another. This one aimed right for us. Crack, crack, crack! More bullets blasted in. We lined up the enemy in our sights as best we could and unleashed with our rifles. Sergeant Christopher Bunnell popped the Javelin up onto his shoulder. The Javelin is a sophisticated, expensive, heat-seeking rocket launcher that gets the job done. Three Taliban fighters popped up on a rooftop, fired at us, then ducked for cover. Two more Taliban came up to join the fight. Bunnell’s missile found its target, exploded, and took out all five.
Bullets continued to crackle all around us. Fire seemed to be coming at us from every direction. We kept firing and firing, letting them have it, laying waste to their positions, holding our ground. They kept firing back, enraged, wanting us dead and gone. Bunnell shot another Javelin, and another, and another, and another. I shot my M4 rifle and took turns on the .50-caliber machine gun. We wanted to send the Taliban a message: We’re here now; this is us. If you want us dead, then just try. We fought nonstop for five hours.
—
By early afternoon the shooting was quiet. I counted, and we’d ended up shooting eleven of the Javelins. On a mission like this, the enemy was positioned far enough away that they’d come collect their own bodies, so we didn’t worry about that. Our job was to stay put. We spent the rest of the day filling sandbags and putting in fighting pits. Word came in, and our mission was now officially extended to three days total at Impala.
Before the sun set, I checked around and saw that our food and water were running low. We weren’t going to make it three days on what we had left. Someone needed to hike back to Corvette and get more supplies. It wouldn’t be easy. Given the morning’s firefight, there was no telling who’d still be out there to shoot at whoever went to do the task. I pointed to Raycroft and Sorenson and told them to follow me.
When the cover of darkness fell, the three of us headed out on the hike back to the first compound. Again, we didn’t want to walk down the main road out of fear of IEDs, so we hiked back through the trails beside the river. We tried to move as fast as we could. We hiked through farm fields and along dirt paths. We had our night-vision goggles on and didn’t see anyone around, which didn’t mean much as the Taliban could be hiding anywhere. Our destination was a four-way intersection near Corvette where Sergeant Potts was meeting us with a Humvee and supplies.
Our destination was about a kilometer away, but it seemed longer because of nightfall and the tension of the unknown. Soon enough we located the platoon sergeant at the Humvee and collected as many MREs and water bottles as we could carry. The MREs, I loaded into the rucksacks of Sorenson and Raycroft. They were thickly muscled guys but smaller in stature than I was, so I wanted them carrying the relatively lighter loads. The water, I packed into a rucksack and swung that up over my shoulders. It added another 150 pounds onto the gear I already carried.
We set off again, heading north, sticking to the trails and varying them so as not to retrace our steps exactly. I felt top-heavy and wobbly and was careful to place each foot firmly on the ground.
About halfway into the trip, we switched course and followed a trail that traversed the side of a farmer’s field. We hadn’t walked this way before. At the end of the field was a plowed berm. I stepped up over the berm but stepped too slowly and fell backward into the soft soil, landing on my rucksack. I felt like an idiot as I kicked my arms and legs like an overturned turtle on its shell, but I was too heavy from the added weight to get up. Raycroft and Sorenson grabbed my arms and yanked. I took a few steps, wobbled, and stumbled again on the tilled ground, this time falling forward. It’s harder to discern depth perception with night-vision goggles on. I hit something hard, and my goggles cracked against the bridge of my nose, making it bleed. I got up and kept going.
We made it back to Impala safely. The rest of the guys were happy to have the resupply. It was nearing midnight, and we’d been up since before 2 a.m. the night before. Security was tight, so I told my guys to get some sleep. As teams, we slept in shifts, two guys up and two guys down. Sorenson and I stayed awake for the first shift. None of us had any blankets, and the night was freezing again, although luckily not raining this time. The guys who were trying to get some sleep spooned each other, huddling together for body warmth. They were shivering hard, and before they drifted off, Sorenson and I had a good laugh about it.
“Just you wait till it’s your turn, Sergeant Mills,” PFC Russell said to me.
He was right. A couple hours later when the time came for Sorenson and me to lie down, the floor and air were so cold it felt like lying in a big dirty refrigerator. Sorenson lay down about three feet away from me because I’d told him to keep his distance. I shivered and wrapped my arms around my shoulders for warmth. This was not going to work. But I needed to think through my next move carefully before saying anything.
See, there’s something you need to know about army pants. They’re made in the traditional style to go up high and around your belly button. But none of the guys ever wear them like that because they’re not comfortable that way. Almost everybody wears them low and around their waist, and some guys wear them so low that it’s easy to rip your crotch as you’re crawling through a field or whatever. That’s what had happened to Sorenson. He’d ripped his pants during our movement to the compound. He never wore any underwear either. Almost none of the guys do, because you’re so grimy and sweaty all the time, it’s easy to chafe. Sorenson’s man junk was just lying out in the open. He didn’t care. It was a big joke to him. And this was the guy I was supposed to spoon with as we shivered?! No thanks! But after a few minutes of lying on the freezing floor, I changed my mind.
“Sorenson!” I barked. “Get over here. But I’ve got to be behind you. There’s no way I want your dick hanging out on me.”
Sorenson laughed and edged back against my body. All the guys laughed. We were still freezing, but at least we managed to get a bit of sleep.
—
The following day we didn’t get shot at very much. We worked in shifts and continued to build up the compound with sandbags, continually strengthening our fighting positions. The rest of our unit came up in Humvees—about twenty-one guys total, and my squad drove back in a Humvee to get the rest of our gear and then came back up to Impala. We turned over Corvette, the lower security post, to the ANA and let them man it.
Back at Impala, our unit worked as a team. About fifty feet in front of the compound, we drove poles
into the ground and strung up coils of concertina wire—that type of razor-sharp barbed wire you see on top of prison fences. We laid a few mines and marked their positions confidentially so they could be located and dug out later. No one was going to cross that line and come into our compound now. That night we slept in shifts, then went right back to work the next day. About midafternoon we took a few more shots from the Taliban, and we fired back a few times. When the fighting was over, we went back to digging.
We understood that Impala was now the most northern point in the series of outposts. We were deep in Taliban territory, the farthest security outpost up the road in BMG. Our mission was changed again. Specifically, it was to hold the ground around Impala and work with the ANA and the locals in the region. And our mission at Impala was now to last indefinitely. Word was we’d spend the rest of our deployment exactly where we were. We had almost six more months to go.
—
From that point on, each day included another firefight.
Each night we slept in shifts.
When we weren’t shooting, we were digging, lifting, shoveling to strengthen our position. If our orders were to stay at Impala, then we weren’t going to quit. This had become trench warfare, and we were prepared and determined to last.
We noticed how difficult it was to see to the right from where we were located in the compound and knew we needed to get to higher ground. So we sent seven of our guys to go climb the hill called Coors Light, dig in, and improve the sight line on our right flank.