by Jake Tapper
It was a gorgeous day, and the men were enjoying the warmth of the sun on their faces. Sometimes it was easy to get lost in those bucolic surroundings and forget the existence of the enemy—and sometimes the men needed to do just that, needed to seek refuge in a momentary lapse in memory, though generally the troops were alert, knowing that otherwise they would make a ripe target.
And make a target they did. Within minutes, an RPG exploded near the Humvees. The troops scurried behind the trucks, taking cover and returning fire. The insurgents were up the mountain next to the road. “Where the fuck is Bozman?” Sears shouted. “Where the fuck is Bozman?” As the fire-support officer for the platoon, Private First Class Nathan Bozman, then in a different Humvee, was in charge of calling in the grids to the mortar team at the Kamdesh outpost. He calculated the proper grid data to give to the mortarmen, after which they pummeled the hills with 120-millimeter mortar fire, shredding the enemy’s general location. The engagement ended, and Sears led the platoon back to the outpost.
The next day, Captain Matt Gooding was told by some of his troops that two local men who worked at the outpost hadn’t shown up that morning because their nephew, who was about eleven years old, had been killed by the U.S. mortars fired the day before. The locals said the boy had been innocently walking his cow and had no connection to the insurgents at all—he was just a blameless child, killed by the foreigners who were there purportedly to help them, to protect them.
This was the first anyone from 3-71 Cav had heard about a little boy’s having been killed in the firefight, and besides bothering Gooding on a personal, emotional level, it concerned him as a commander. Such a killing could have a huge impact on us, Gooding thought. What if tomorrow no workers show up? What if the incident turns all of Kamdesh Village against us?
Sears, Bozman, and the others involved in the firefight felt no remorse. They’d been attacked, and they’d returned fire. It was as simple as that. The bad guys were the ones responsible for the kid’s death.
It was different for Gooding. While he hadn’t personally fired the mortars, he’d approved the action. It was his first experience, albeit indirect, of killing a civilian, and while he knew that Able Troop had fully abided by the Rules of Engagement, the child’s death still upset him. Yes, it was likely that the kid had been helping the insurgents by carrying RPGs and ammo. After all, at least five minutes had passed between the initial ambush and the mortars’ being fired, and Gooding couldn’t imagine that the boy would have just continued walking with his cow in the same direction from which RPGs were being fired. That, however, was just a hunch, and either way, he felt horrible about the whole thing. Indeed, the grief he felt was as powerful as it might have been if he’d killed one of his own children’s classmates, or if he’d run over the boy himself with his car. He emailed his wife, expressing his despair.
“It’s not the same,” she emailed back. “You’re not to blame. You and your men didn’t tell the bad guys to ambush you. You had to defend yourselves.”
Higher-level officers in the field had some discretionary funds—through the Commanders’ Emergency Response Program, or CERP—and for this type of casualty, the Pentagon-approved condolence payment was approximately $3,000 U.S. per lost life. The Kamdesh elders okayed this grant to the uncles, and two days later, with the utmost solemnity, Gooding paid them that sum in the local currency.
As winter approached, Gooding assigned Netzel to supervise the buildup of the camp in preparation for what would assuredly be tough weather, made tougher for those at the PRT by the fact that in the coming months, their post would occasionally be impossible to reach by either air or road. Phones and Internet service were among the camp’s few truly modern conveniences, communication lines being a high priority, but otherwise it was a bare-bones affair. In dire need of improvement were the preexisting traditional—and uncomfortable—Nuristan buildings, as well as the dozen or so bunkers topped with lumber that were used as barracks. Netzel hired local Afghans to build new structures made of wood, concrete, cement, and rock. Locals and soldiers installed bunk beds with two-inch-thick mattresses, an outhouse with three toilets, and makeshift urinals—informally called piss-tubes—here and there throughout the site. Some problems, Netzel couldn’t do much about: the flea infestation was so bad, for example, that some of the 3-71 Cav troops took to wearing flea collars fastened around their belt loops. There were also a few improvised pleasures, though. The Landay-Sin River was outside the wire—meaning it was off limits except on patrols—but sometimes troops would ask a local laborer to go to the riverbank, fill up a water jug, and bring it back to the post, where they would then hang it from a tree. It would bask in the sun all day, and just before sunset, the men could stand under the jug and enjoy a lukewarm shower. That was what passed for luxury at the outpost.
Subterranean homesick blues: the early flea-laden bunkers for troops at Camp Kamdesh. (Photo courtesy of Ross Berkoff)
The construction and fortification of the base in Kamdesh had begun in earnest by the fall of 2006, but there was nothing troops could do about its position at the bottom of the Kamdesh Valley. In this photo, Staff Sergeant Lance Blind of 3rd Platoon, Able Troop, looks for enemy bodies after a firefight the night before. (Photograph by Jeremiah Ridgeway)
Combat Outpost Kamdesh, fall 2006. (Photo courtesy of Matthew Netzel)
Even before the weather turned dreadful, helicopter pilots were reluctant to make the journey to the Kamdesh PRT to bring supplies, spooked by the near miss involving Byers’s chopper. At Forward Operating Base Naray, therefore, Captain Pete Stambersky made other plans.
Stambersky commanded the forward support unit assigned to the area. Delta Company—attached to 3-71 Cav from the 710th Brigade’s Support Battalion—was comprised of about a hundred soldiers who worked as cooks, mechanics, welders, truck drivers, petroleum specialists, and logistics experts. To resupply the Kamdesh PRT, Stambersky and his Distribution Platoon leader, First Lieutenant David Heitner, packed five Afghan trucks and two Toyota pickups with needed items. The trucks, driven by locals and nicknamed jingle trucks for the sound made by the colorful decorative chains and pendants hanging from their bodies, were loaded with food, water, building materials, and generators. Because insurgent attacks along the road had been increasing—it seemed that virtually every convoy that passed was being assaulted—Howard told Stambersky to take along a reconnaissance platoon in trucks, which brought his total number of gun trucks from six to eleven. To Stambersky, the additional manpower and firepower were welcome, but they also felt ominous.
October 17, 2006, dawned on Nuristan with a clear sky and temperatures in the sixties. Stambersky instructed the drivers of the jingle trucks to take the rear: he didn’t trust them, and he knew that if they weren’t in back, it would be easy enough for any one of them to stop his jingle truck and block the Humvees from passing, thus setting the Americans up for an ambush. It was a decision that Michael Howard would later criticize, convinced as he was that their being in the rear made the already vulnerable jingle trucks even more so.
Slowly, steadily, the convoy moved north. Efforts to reconstruct the road notwithstanding, the terrain remained treacherous. And there was, as always, the enemy. The convoy passed through what was now being called Ambush Alley, where some MPs were already watching over the road. Just past the Gawardesh Bridge, Stambersky and his men stopped briefly to pay a local teacher for some work he had done on his school, then resumed their journey to the PRT, approaching the hamlet of Saret Koleh to their right.
Stambersky regularly carried a picture of Jesus in his front pocket; his father had been given the icon in 1948 for his First Communion. On his way to the Kamdesh27 Valley, the captain patted his chest to assure himself that he had the picture.
It wasn’t there.
In the rear seat of Stambersky’s Humvee, his forward observer, excited about his impending R&R, couldn’t contain himself: “Just nine days till leave and I’ll be getting some ass!” he ye
lled. Stambersky and his driver both told the soldier to shut up—“You’re jinxing us,” Stambersky said.
As if on cue, RPGs just then began erupting on either side of the convoy, followed by small-arms fire. The vehicles kept pushing ahead. An RPG flew by Stambersky’s right window and struck a Humvee driven by some of the Barbarians, detonating the truck’s load of ammo. The Humvee burst into flames as the troops—finance guys, carrying a bag of petty cash for Able Troop—spilled out onto the ground and ran behind a rock.
Many vehicles were destroyed in the October 17, 2006, ambush on a convoy on its way to the new outpost. (Photo courtesy of Pete Stambersky)
Stambersky looked at his gunner, whose .50-caliber machine gun was jamming. An RPG exploded to the left of them, rocking their Humvee and filling it with black plumes even as it continued driving. “Get on the SAW!” Stambersky ordered the gunner, referring to his M249 light machine gun. He then called to each surviving truck to check for casualties and damage. Everyone was okay, but since they couldn’t leave the burning truck behind, the convoy stopped, and the battle was joined. Stambersky’s forward observer informed the tactical operations center at Forward Operating Base Naray that the convoy was under attack, and the operations center then requested Apaches from Bagram, but the air support would surely take at least forty-five minutes to get there, and likely much longer. In the meantime, the jingle trucks—all in the back of the convoy, unprotected by and separate from the Americans—began exploding and catching on fire.
From the PRT, Gooding sent out a QRF—quick reaction force—to help Stambersky and his men as they returned fire. Meanwhile, Stambersky’s forward observer got on the radio and called for a B-1 bomber. B-1s were regularly dispatched from the U.S. base on the island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean; they would fly around particular regions on shifts, waiting for calls such as this one.
When the QRF approached the ambush location from the Kamdesh PRT twenty minutes later, its members relayed the enemy’s coordinates to Stambersky, who shared the ten-digit grid with his forward observer, who gave it to the B-1 pilot.
“We need your initials,” the pilot said.
“P.S.,” Pete Stambersky said into the transmitter, “drop the bomb!”
A two-thousand-pounder fell.
Then another.
Now, at last, the Apaches got there; they provided cover while Stambersky and his men removed the shell of the burnt-out Humvee from the road so others could pass. In the process, the captain noticed the remains of a Soviet vehicle in the nearby river. For a split second, the metal skeleton reminded him of a couple of different American armored trucks: the V-100 Commando, the M1117 Guardian. Another war—or not.
Passing the QRF on its way, the convoy continued on to the Kamdesh PRT.
It was funny: everyone in Stambersky’s convoy had been dreading the trip to the now notoriously hard-to-get-to PRT, but that night it was home sweet home as the troops—many of whom had never had any previous contact with the enemy—shuffled around with expressions of relief and shock on their faces. No smiles, just a muted gratitude at being safe. Better to be here than out there. It was amazing that no one in the convoy had been killed that day.
Stambersky knew that such relief was momentary and illusory. The Kamdesh PRT was small and poorly situated. If you looked up, as he did now, all you could see was mountains until your neck was craned back and you could finally see sky. Tomorrow they would assess the damage. Not one of the jingle trucks had made it to Kamdesh; all had been destroyed and would have to be pushed into the river to clear the narrow road. The next day, when men from 3-71 Cav went to remove the remnants of the burning trucks—which had been bringing them what were to have become the first hot meals that many of them had had in months—they could smell charred steaks and chicken that had cooked in the conflagration from the attack.
When the base was being set up, any officer who referred to “Camp Kamdesh” or “Combat Outpost Kamdesh” would quickly find himself on the receiving end of Howard’s ire.
“Goddang it!” he would snap in the middle of meetings. “For the last time, it’s not an outpost! It’s a goddang PRT!”
But the September 11, 2006, attack on Keating’s convoy, and others like it, made it clear to the commanders that the threat to their convoys and to “PRT Kamdesh” was too great, and too frequent, to enable the base to become a true PRT. Feagin’s PRT staff and 3-71 Cav couldn’t exactly start building wells, schools, or water-pipe systems if troops and workers were going to keep being attacked with RPGs every time they left the wire. Security was just too frail.
In fact, those up the command chain who were in charge of PRTs would insist that Kamdesh had never been a definitive location. Yet the 3-71 Cav troops were convinced that it was precisely in order to establish a PRT that they had been working so hard to set up the outpost. In any case, the PRT staff members at the Kamdesh outpost were told in October that when their rotation ended in February, they wouldn’t be replaced. Moreover, Lieutenant Colonel Feagin would be leaving in November, and his replacement would locate at a PRT in Kala Gush, in Nuristan, which would be the only PRT for the province. Whatever plans may have existed for PRT Kamdesh simply were not to be realized. Gooding and others at the base, which the troops had now started calling Camp Kamdesh instead, would still work on development projects, still focus on counterinsurgency, but they would soon be doing so on their own, without the help of the official PRT staff.
CHAPTER 12
Matthias the Macedonian and the LMTV
Many of Michael Howard’s officers resented him. They thought the lieutenant colonel was all about his own image and his own accomplishments, all about building the northernmost camp in Afghanistan because that demonstrated what a warrior he was. In October, he made a decision that turned that resentment into downright fury, though the men under him never risked charges of insubordination by expressing it directly.
Although more than a quarter million dollars’ worth of work had been poured into repairing the road from Naray to PRT Kamdesh, it remained dangerous—even without the threat of insurgents’ RPGs. A September 2006 analysis had revealed at least sixteen problems limiting, if not in fact precluding, the passage of any vehicle larger than an uparmored Humvee. A more detailed assessment by 3-71 Cav, undertaken little more than a month later, looked at just that part of the road which led from Kamdesh to Mirdesh, not even a tenth of the way to Naray. It identified twelve separate “high-risk” areas that would “greatly hinder trafficability to vehicles larger than a small jingle truck.”
And yet that same month, Howard informed his officers that he wanted to send a truck larger than that from Naray to Kamdesh. He wanted to make sure that 3-71 Cav was 100 percent self-sufficient by ground, he said.
“We’re going to drive an LMTV up there, and we’re going to get it done,” he told Captain Pete Stambersky, referring to a light medium tactical vehicle, a large truck that could carry cargo weighing more than two tons. Because enemy attacks on the road had been increasing, the lieutenant colonel suggested that they go at night. Stambersky laughed. He didn’t think his commander was serious.
“Fuck, Pete,” Howard said. “Are you with me? Are we going to get this done, or not?”
“Roger, sir,” Stambersky replied.
Jesus, Stambersky thought. He really wants to drive an LMTV up that road just to prove it can be done. It doesn’t make any sense.
Major Thomas Sutton, who had replaced Timmons as 3-71 Cav’s XO in June, shared Stambersky’s reservations, knowing that an LMTV weighed around nine tons all by itself, with just fuel and crew. And yet Sutton also understood Howard’s intentions. All of the Afghan contractors’ jingle trucks were getting shot up; the Army needed to put U.S. trucks, big military might, on the road for resupply. Indeed, it was to make such deliveries easier that Combat Outpost Kamdesh had been put near the road in the first place. Helicopters were getting fired upon, and pilots were increasingly reluctant to fly in the area. Now that
repairs had been made to the road, Howard wanted to see if an LMTV could make it up there. Sutton assumed that another part of it was “power projection,” as the military called it—flexing muscle to impress the locals.
Captain Frank Brooks of the Barbarians was directed to provide security for the LMTV convoy. Brooks agreed with Stambersky that taking the LMTV to Kamdesh was a bad idea, but he had his orders, and he meant to follow them. He and Stambersky removed the vehicle’s grab rails, bed rails, and rearview mirrors to limit the number of parts that could snag on a rock. They made the truck as light and as lean as they could. They worked out a strategy for who would drive and when, as well as how to protect the personnel and equipment. Brooks and Stambersky decided that the trip would take place during the day, so the drivers would have maximum visibility when making their way over the most treacherous and narrow sections of the road. They briefed Sutton about their plan, then Howard.
“I don’t want you driving during daylight hours,” Howard told them. He was afraid the LMTV would provide the enemy with an irresistible target.
Stambersky later approached Howard near the squadron’s operations center.
“Hello, sir,” he said. “Can I talk to you?”
“Yeah, Pete,” Howard said. “What about?”
“I would be remiss if I didn’t talk to you about the dangers involved in driving an LMTV to Kamdesh,” Stambersky said. “Especially driving at night. Driving during the day is one thing, but driving that route in the LMTV for the first time at night is going to get somebody killed.”