Tough as They Come

by Travis Mills

  The Taliban is basically a drug cartel. Some 87 percent of the world’s heroin originates in Afghanistan and the Taliban controls the bulk of this destructive business. Back in 2000 when they were still officially ruling the country, the Taliban had publicly collaborated with the United Nations and banned poppy farming in Afghanistan for about a year, which sounded good if you believed the surface reports. But we had our doubts. See, the ban initially proved effective, and some 75 percent of the world’s heroin suddenly disappeared. But opium can be dried and stockpiled, which later reports showed the Taliban had done. Their eradication of heroin only drove the price up for them to sell their stockpiles at big profits. After that, the Taliban changed their mind about poppy growing, and drug production in Afghanistan once again boomed. The Taliban raked in the dough.

  Religious extremism and wars were key components that drove their drug business. Poppy fields lay all around the village of Khik. Already, tiny green buds dotted the soil, watered by the very karezes we took cover behind. The Taliban wants to keep the Afghan population uneducated, impoverished, and desperate. That way, they could walk up to any old Afghan farmer in Khik and say, “Hey, you’re broke. You’ve got a wife and five children to feed. We’ll give you a thousand dollars to plant your field with poppies. In six months’ time, we’ll come back and the crop will be ours. If your field isn’t ready for harvest, then we’ll kill you. How’s that sound?”

  That was Lieutenant Lewis’s theory anyway, developed from his studies and firsthand interaction with village elders, and it made sense to me.

  —

  Near the day’s end, our second squad emerged from the village and joined the rest of us behind the holes. We figured we’d get hit again soon enough, and supplies were low, so we made a decision to head back to the strongpoint that night rather than risk a night out in the open near Khik. Our men ate a few rations, then we headed out. Sure enough, another firefight erupted as we started to walk away.

  During this firefight, a sniper’s round cracked six inches from my head. I’d never flinched in a battle before, but this felt too close. Quickly I ducked and turned my head away. Then I was angry at myself for flinching. In disgust, I jumped on top of a berm with my rifle and ripped off a magazine in the direction of the sniper. My magazine was spent. I yanked it out of my rifle. Before it hit the ground, I had another magazine inserted and was firing again.

  Finally, Lieutenant Lewis yelled at me to get down and into the prone position. He was right. I was frustrated, but it wasn’t a whining frustration. It was an angry frustration. I was sick and tired of this stupid war. Sick and tired of all the evil around us. Sick and tired of a system that harmed people and removed all their opportunities to make better lives for themselves. Sick and tired of anybody shooting at my guys!

  Standing on top of a berm might have seemed rash. But I wanted my men to see my example. And I also wanted the Taliban to see. We were fearless and tough. If they wanted to fight us, then we’d get out there and beat their asses every time. I wanted to show dominance. I wanted to show I wasn’t afraid.

  When that firefight was finished, we picked up and slowly moved out again back to the strongpoint. We cleaned our weapons, went to sleep, got up the next morning, and went out on another patrol again.

  That became our pattern in my third deployment. Every day we went out. Every day we got in a firefight. Every day we came home, only to do it all over again the next day.

  How much did we shoot? I was the ammo NCO at our strongpoint, and it was my job to inventory the ammo. On an average day we went through 1,200 rounds (bullets) for each of the big machine guns. Then each rifleman would run through an additional 100 to 180 rounds on his own. The count varied a little from day to day, and we didn’t ever want to waste ammo. We just did whatever it took to keep the enemy at bay.

  Day after day after day after day.

  Spring arrived in Afghanistan and with it the rise of poppy season. The temperature rose, and as we patrolled from village to village, I noticed that crops were coming up. Although much of the district was still rocky, brown, and barren, in other sections an unusual smell of freshness filled the air and a faint color-wash of green layered the hills.

  Daily firefights continued, along with a mounting sense of frustration. Thanks to new rules of engagement put in place by the Obama administration in conjunction with Afghan president Karzai, our hands had become more and more tied in terms of what we could and couldn’t do.

  On my first deployment, if we believed our lives were endangered, then we could respond with appropriate force. But by the time my third deployment rolled around, if we were out on patrol and approached a group of known Taliban fighters, we would need to convince our commander (who was often not present with us as a ground unit) that the fighters were armed and a genuine threat before engaging.

  I respect the office of the presidency, and I’m sure these rules were put in place with good intentions. In fact, the new rules of engagement sound relatively benign on paper unless you’re actually in a combat situation and can see them lived out firsthand. It’s then that you see cracks in the armor.

  In the strongpoint, we had a security camera up on a pole about thirty feet high that fed us real-time video coverage in a 360-degree view. One night that spring, with this camera, we saw Taliban fighters placing IEDs in the ground near the villages directly around our strongpoint. But because these fighters weren’t shooting at us, we couldn’t do anything to stop them. We inquired up the chain of command if we could shoot mortars at them. The answer was no. We asked if we could go out and engage them in a firefight. The answer was no. All we could do was go out the next day and try to find and remove the IEDs, or find the Taliban who placed the IEDs, get them to shoot at us, and then shoot back. From the perspective of the soldiers on the ground, it was no way to fight a war.

  —

  For what would turn out to be my last big mission, we loaded into a Chinook about 3:30 a.m. and flew ten kilometers (about six miles) to a compound that had known Taliban fighters and weapons inside. Our mission was to take all three houses inside the compound, detain the fighters, and turn them over to the ANA.

  This mission was a follow-up to our earlier mission in Khik. Throughout that mission, we’d had various helicopters checking in on us. The Taliban don’t fire on these, because the aircraft can then see their positions on the ground and destroy them. Observers in the helicopters were repeatedly able to see two motorcycles follow the same path to and from a certain area. Any pattern like that is legitimately suspect. So over the next week, surveillance aircraft monitored these three compounds (where the motorcycles had gone) and confirmed that known Taliban fighters frequented the compounds and were bringing in and carting out caches of bomb-making equipment and small arms. I never heard if the surveillance aircraft were drones or what. These actions were done at a battalion or maybe even a division level.

  With us on this follow-up mission were two women, Sergeant Whitney Longwell and Specialist Jen Russell. The army calls them FETs (Female Engagement Team), and they’re armed soldiers, but their specialty isn’t fighting. Throughout Afghanistan, it’s considered disrespectful (and in practice is virtually impossible) for American soldiers to talk to female Afghan civilians. So our FETs had learned a smattering of the language in about three months of language school, and then while on deployment they would go out on select patrols to build relationships and see what they could learn from female civilians. They’d also search Afghan women for weapons if that was suspected, which is why the FETs were included in this mission. The main language used in our area was Pashtun, an extremely difficult language to learn, so most FETs needed to use interpreters too. Our interpreters were all male, so although the system was a great idea, it wasn’t perfect in practice.

  The compound was L-shaped, with one building positioned at each corner of the L. Our helicopter touched down some distance outside the compound. We were at least four hundred meters away, far enough away
so the helicopters wouldn’t announce our presence, and we hopped off quietly. No yelling. No voices. Using hand signals on the ground to spread out and do the mission. Even if the people inside the compound heard helicopters, they probably heard them regularly overhead in that region, so we weren’t afraid our cover would be blown. The sun was barely coming up. We ran to the compound, set up the heavy guns to cover the compound, then headed inside the first building without any resistance. I stayed on the guns outside to provide security. This is what was recounted to me later:

  Inside were two men along with their wives and some children. Everybody was still asleep. Our men woke them up. We weren’t yelling or anything, and the women covered themselves with burkas, and the children looked at us wide-eyed. I didn’t like the idea of storming a compound when there were children involved, but seeing the children didn’t change our actions. If the men involved hadn’t been making bombs, trying to kill us, then we would not have had this problem to begin with.

  In the second compound, our men found four military-age males along with six hundred pounds of homemade explosives, plus RPGs, launchers, ammo, and a number of rifles and other weapons. We also found a huge amount of opium along with Taliban recruiting videos and bagged fertilizer, the main component in making homemade explosives. One of the Taliban’s hands was burned from the kind of acid it takes to make IEDs. Another man turned out to be the owner of the compound.

  In the third compound, we didn’t find anything, but that was okay. Overall, we considered this mission a success. The secure-and-search of the three compounds happened quickly, maybe twenty minutes total. We took no casualties, seized a huge amount of weapons and drugs, and were set to turn over several detainees to the ANA. We were supposed to blow up the weapons we found, but the ANA wanted to keep those, so we planned to turn those over to them too.

  That’s when things took a turn for the worse. The Taliban doesn’t use encrypted radios, so all this time our interpreter was scanning the radio. He could hear that the enemy knew we were there. They were bringing in reinforcements. They were surrounding us.

  At first we weren’t overly concerned, because we knew we were getting picked up and flown out. So as soon as the search of the compound concluded, we used our code word to get picked up. But as luck would have it, there’d been a mistake at brigade and they’d promised the same aircraft to another unit. That meant we needed to carry all these assets, plus lead the detainees, and walk the ten kilometers back to the strongpoint. Ten kilometers doesn’t sound like far to walk, but we needed to mine-sweep the whole way—and do it while potentially under fire. So it was going to be a long, long day.

  That’s not a fun message for a platoon leader to give to his squad leaders, and it’s certainly not a fun message for a squad leader like me to relay to his teams. It’s like saying someone’s almost for sure going to get shot. Initially I was angry at the poor planning, but on the outside I played it off with a shrug and said, “All right, guys, we know what we need to do, so we might as well get walking.” The reaction from my men to the situation was a mix of anger, concern, and frustration. But we decided to make the best of it. We were 82nd Airborne, after all. We trained for desperate moments such as this, and we were used to being surrounded by the enemy.

  So we started to walk.

  The first and second squads went first along with one of my guns. The third squad came after that, and then after that came the other half of my squad, the fourth. For much of the time, I walked dead last, because I wanted to make sure everybody was covered and I didn’t want to leave anybody behind. Overall, we walked in two large groups in a sort of leapfrog movement, where one group bounded ahead while the other group covered the first. Then the second group bounded to the first while they took a turn and covered us.

  We weren’t far out of the compound when suddenly we took fire. Bullets zipped in from behind a tree line in the distance and we all took a knee and fired back. The two FET members were near me, and it was the women’s first firefight. One of them yelled, “What do we do?!”

  “Just keep shooting!” I yelled.

  They stepped up to the challenge and shot back. They weren’t scared. Or at least they didn’t show it.

  After a while the shooting died down, and we moved forward. Dangerous terrain lurked everywhere. Bullets could come from other compounds, from behind huts or foliage. A couple trucks whizzed by on a road in the distance. We could hear the Taliban on our Icom radio. They were planning movements and calling in reinforcements, more weapons and ammunition. Essentially, their plan seemed to be to shoot at us for a while, then pack up and move to a new location down the road where they’d shoot at us again, and so on and so on until we got back to our base. It didn’t take much brains to figure out that was a smart move for them. They were driving. We were walking. For us, our only plan was to keep moving, always on the lookout for our next point of cover and concealment. If you’re standing still, then you’re a sitting duck. You always want to keep moving, even under fire.

  Sure enough, not long after that, we got into our second firefight of the day. Bullets whizzed in all around us and we fired back. We fought for a while, then the fighting eventually died down, and we moved on.

  Not long after that, our third firefight of the day began. Bullets zipped everywhere. There was a lot of smoke and dust and noise. The firefight died down, and we kept moving.

  Then we got in a fourth firefight. Then a fifth. Then a sixth. My backpack was full of ammo when the day began. Gradually it grew lighter and lighter. Each fight grew more intense. The day stretched longer and longer. We became more and more tired. One of my guys’ backpack was still full and he looked like he was going to topple over. I made him take my lighter bag and I took his full one in exchange. He didn’t want to do it, but I made him. My guys would go until they fell over rather than admit they needed help.

  When a seventh firefight started, I was with another sergeant and he yelled “Fall back,” so we fell back behind a building. Mortar rounds were falling everywhere and when we fell back we were pinned down behind this building, so we opened up with our weapons to fight our way out of it. I had Neff, our gunner, with me, and I fed Neff rounds. I told another guy to shoot grenades toward the enemy until I told him to stop. The whole situation sucked, and we just shot at whoever was shooting at us until the firing died down enough for us to pick up and move out again.

  We fought the whole way back to the strongpoint. It was a grueling day. But I’d made it a point on other missions to run ahead and sing to my guys the 82nd cadence when they returned into our gates. I was exhausted, but I wasn’t going to let them down, today of all days. I ran ahead, started singing, and high-fived them all in.

  A firefight is sometimes called a TIC (pronounced tick), which stands for “Troops In Contact.” Klick is another term for a kilometer. Afterward, we named that day the “Ten-Klick-TIC.” We’d had seven firefights in six miles. Our speed was one mile per hour for six hours. None of us had been injured. All in all, it was a pretty monumental day for our platoon.

  Unfortunately, not every mission would prove so successful.

  —

  The morning of April 10, 2012, dawned bright. It was four days before my twenty-fifth birthday, and we were now six weeks into this deployment.

  The day was scheduled to be a day off for us, so I got up and had breakfast. I called Kelsey to tell her I loved her, then I lifted weights in the prison gym in the strongpoint. Then I just hung out until late afternoon when that tip from the informant came in. Another regular day. Another regular patrol.

  We suited up, locked and loaded, and headed out to hike the four hundred yards to the village.

  “Check this area” was the only order I gave.

  I called Riot up and asked him where he thought we should put up the gun. He motioned to exactly where I thought we should put it and I said, “All right, go get Neff and bring him up here.”

  That was it.

  Riot left to
go get Neff, and as he did, I set my backpack down. The backpack touching the dirt was all it took.

  Such a simple act of war.

  —

  Josh Buck was my first family member to hear that I’d been wounded by an IED. He was at Camp Stone when Sergeant Carmen, a close friend of Josh’s, called him on the phone, but Josh initially missed the call. Carmen had been Josh’s platoon sergeant for five years, then had moved up to become the brigade senior medic. All the message said was that Josh needed to call him back and that it was important.

  It was a bright sunny day at Camp Stone, and Josh had reenlistment on his mind. He was thinking about going to Hawaii soon. Josh called Sergeant Carmen back. He figured the phone call was nothing and they’d just catch up, like they often did.

  “Hey—got your message. What’s up?” Josh asked.

  There was a moment of silence. Josh wondered if the call had been dropped. Then Sergeant Carmen said, “Hey, brother, I wanted this to come from me and nobody else. One of your friends got hurt today.”

  “Who?” Josh asked, his voice intense.

  Again came a moment of silence. Sergeant Carmen cleared his throat, then said, “It was Travis.”

  A barrage of strong emotions shot through Josh. He stifled the urge to throw something and asked, “How bad is he?”

  “He’s still alive,” Sergeant Carmen said. “Right now he’s a triple amputee. I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but I figured you’d want to hear it from me first.”

  Josh bit his lip and said, “You’re right. Where’s he at?”

  “Kandahar.”

  Josh said thanks and slammed down the phone. His heart pounded. His whole body filled with fury. He knew the potential to get wounded comes with the job. It happens. But it’s still a shock when you hear of it. This was his brother-in-law. His sister’s husband. His niece’s father. His close friend.

  A ferocity and concern rose in Josh like he’d never felt before. He kicked a chair. He punched a wall. He walked into the first room he came to and flipped everybody off, then walked outside, now feeling light-headed. His legs felt weak and he tumbled down a ramp he normally walked down every day. At the bottom, he picked up rocks and started throwing them. He never broke down like this. He was usually a composed person who thrived in chaos and under stress, but that day while throwing rocks, he started crying. Screaming. Cursing at the sky. It was the only time in his life he’d been out of control with emotion. Only then did he look at his hand and realize he’d broken it when he punched a wall. He couldn’t feel the pain of it. He just felt numb.