by Oliver North
Joe Gibson was returning fire as best he could when he heard a scream that made his blood run cold. It was Jared (pseudonym), a good friend in his platoon. “Joe! I’m hit, man! Help me!” he cried.
Joe thrashed his way through the chest deep grass to reach his wounded comrade. When he reached Jared, there was blood everywhere. Gibson had a medical kit, so he dropped to his knees beside his buddy and started tearing the pouch open, looking for the special hemostatic bandages that would stop the bleeding quickly. Bullets still snapped by him, cutting down stalks of grass, but Joe was totally focused on helping his friend. “I’m here, bro. Hang on. We’ll get you fixed up.”
A moment later the platoon medic arrived, and the Black Hawks were summoned to take out Jared and another injured man. Due to the ongoing firefight, however, the choppers would have to land several hundred meters away. The wounded Rangers would need to be carried to the extraction zone. Joe volunteered to help.
Rangers train in urban environment.
They put Jared on a skedko litter. Joe and the medic each took one end and began the arduous trek to the pickup zone. Even with the copious amounts of adrenaline flowing through his veins, Joe soon realized carrying the litter was going to be harder than he expected. The night was pitch black and the uneven ground was crisscrossed with deep drainage ditches. Before they’d gone half the distance to the PZ, the young specialist Gibson was more tired than he’d ever been.
In Ranger School, they’d gone for weeks with only a few hours sleep each night and about half as much food as they normally required. They’d patrolled through freezing swamps, up and down steep mountains in southern Appalachia—but nothing was as difficult as this. Concern for his fallen brother simultaneously sapped his strength and spurred him to move faster.
Once they got Jared on the medevac Bird, Gibson felt much better. He knew the hospital back at base offered an incredibly high standard of care and if they could get Jared there quickly, he’d be okay.
Now it was time to go back and find the enemy fighters who shot Jared—if Joe had anything to say about it, those men were going to pay.
He hustled to rejoin his squad. By the time he reached them, the al-Qaeda who had been shooting at them were either dead or melted away into the darkness. The only sound invading the moonless night was the swishing of Gibson’s boots as he waded through the tall grass. He picked his feet up as he walked along, placing them carefully to not fall into a ditch or trip over an unseen obstacle. Then he stepped on something soft—like mud, only his foot didn’t sink in. At first he thought nothing of it. Iraq hadn’t seen regular trash pickup for years, so there was garbage everywhere.
But if it was trash he stepped on, why were there alarm bells going off in his head? If there was anything Gibson learned in three tours in Iraq, it was to listen to those bells.
He turned back to investigate. Before he’d retraced two steps, however, a man materialized out of the ground. That’s when Gibson realized there was a ditch there, and the trash he stepped on was actually a man.
The realization came in an instant. But in that instant, the Iraqi raised a rifle and pointed it at him. Gibson was staring down the barrel of an AK-47.
Instinct took over. Gibson swatted the barrel of the AK to the side just as the enemy fighter pulled the trigger. Flame exploded from the barrel—right next to Gibson’s face. The muscular Ranger was too close to bring his own weapon to bear, so he simply tackled the guy. The two of them went down in a heap, both men clutching desperately at the rifle. The man screamed like a wounded animal, which Gibson countered by calling for reinforcements. He wrestled the man’s rifle away, but the man wouldn’t give up that easily. He grabbed Gibson’s helmet and pulled so hard it ripped the kevlar right off, nearly taking his head with it. The man then grabbed at Gibson’s own M4 assault rifle, but since it was attached to his body armor by a sling, there was no way his assailant was going to be able to shoot him with it, so Joe concentrated on hammering the guy in the face with both fists.
Rangers receive a large amount of instruction in the principles of hand-to-hand combat. It is gruelling, painful, and dangerous even in a training environment, but at the moment, Joe Gibson was glad for every minute of it. Positional control, he’d learned, was paramount in winning such a battle—and he put this into practice by rolling on top of his attacker and bearing down on him, fists still pounding the man’s temples. Then, he felt the fighter reaching for something on his waist. At first Gibson assumed the man was going for a knife, but then the man shouted one word in English that made the young Ranger’s hopes for surviving the mission diminish rapidly.
“Bomb!”
Joe Gibson was sitting on top of a suicide bomber. The man was attempting to activate his explosives-packed vest.
Gibson reached down and snatched the man’s hand away from his belt. He tried to roll himself onto the man’s other arm to keep him from reaching the activator with his other hand and killing them both. But this allowed the man to bring his knees up and use them to push Gibson’s body armor up into his chin. Lithe and amazingly strong, the man kept increasing the pressure until Gibson thought he might pass out. If that happened, it was all over but the fireworks. Gibson knew he was running out of time.
But one of these dirt bags shot Jared and hurt him bad. Jared had a pregnant wife at home. Come to think of it, Gibson had a wife, too. A fire ignited in his gut. One of them, the Ranger or the terrorist wasn’t going home tonight. And Joe Gibson decided that man wasn’t going to be him.
With every remaining ounce of strength, Gibson bore down on his opponent and sent his fist crashing into the man’s temple. The powerful blow stunned the man and he momentarily went limp. Gibson pushed off of his attacker and swung his M4 around. He pushed the barrel into the terrorist’s gut and pulled the trigger. The M4 coughed twice more and the contest was over.
Jared and Joe were both going home to see their wives.
Five months later, to the day, Joe and Jared walked onto the stage in an auditorium on the Army base at Fort Lewis, Washington. Their wives were both there to watch and cheer as Jared received a purple heart for the wounds he suffered that dark night in Iraq. After that, Specialist Joe Gibbs stood at attention, looking slightly uncomfortable as Admiral Eric Olson, the commander of Special Operations Command, pinned a Silver Star to his chest.
He would gladly have lived without the medal. But the action was just what he joined up for. Not long after that, Gibson reenlisted for another tour with the 3rd Platoon, A Company, 2nd Battalion of the 75th Ranger Regiment.
Specialist Joe Gibson
Rangers practice combatives
MARSOC FIREFIGHT
HERAT PROVINCE, AFGHANISTAN
By mid-2008 Coalition intelligence gathering capabilities were improving across Afghanistan. Everything from signals intelligence to human intelligence to unmanned aerial observation platforms blanketed the country, which made it very difficult for Taliban kingpins to move around the country without being spotted.
Spotting big game is only half the battle, though. When a Taliban kingpin is found, someone has to go in and get him. And that job is never easy. Many warlords travel with large security details who will all gladly fight to the death protecting their bosses.
Normally, that’s just fine with the warriors of the Marine Special Operations Command, known as MARSOC.
The first MARSOC units were created with veterans of the Marine Force Reconnaissance companies. In 2005 MARSOC became a part of U.S. Special Operations Command. Though new, the organization flourished, taking the same training as and working closely alongside special operators from other services. By 2008, MARSOC teams were colocated with a Special Forces A-teams, training and mentoring Afghan commandos.
In late June 2008, intelligence indicated a Taliban warlord had taken up residence and was stockpiling weapons in a remote canyon north of Herat in
western Afghanistan, not far from the Iranian border. Two teams of MARSOC operators were tasked with acting on the crucial, time-sensitive intelligence. They were ordered to capture or kill the Taliban leader before he moved elsewhere.
The MARSOC Marines formed up with a platoon of twenty-four Afghan National Army Commandos on a mission to apprehend the high-value Taliban target. They moved out well before dark in up-armored Ground Mobility Vehicles (GMVs) armed with .50 caliber machine guns and high-tech MK-47 grenade launchers; a machine gun that fires 40-mm grenades instead of bullets. They hoped to arrive on their objective before first light.
The twelve-hour drive across the desert to their target was slow and grueling, as none of the roads in that region are paved, and they avoided most of them anyway, since improvised explosive devices made what roads were passable too dangerous to use. Once they reached the mountains, the danger increased exponentially, as the team was forced to follow existing dirt paths winding through deep, sandy wadis strewn with boulders and hard-to-see washouts.
Prepping equipment
As they carefully picked their way in the darkness toward the objective, attack helicopters tracked their progress, providing cover from the air. Several kilometers from the objective, they stopped to make sure everything was ready for the final push.
Captain Dan Strelkauskas, the thirty-two-year-old team leader for the mission, had already briefed his men on the complex operation before leaving their Forward Operating Base. Now he carefully checked each of his men to ensure they were ready for action. The cave complex Intel identified as a likely weapons cache was situated in a deep, narrow wadi with only the most rudimentary dirt track leading into it. There was no other way in or out. Once they entered the wadi, even turning the GMVs around was going to be difficult.
They wound their way cautiously up the sandy ravine. Rounding a corner, the team was confronted with two abandoned vehicles in the road—a beat-up white SUV parked to one side and an old red pickup parked directly across from it. One side of the road was a sheer cliff face and the other side was a thirty-foot drop. There was no way around the vehicles. Obviously, someone didn’t want people driving any further up the valley. Beyond the vehicles, a cave entrance was visible in the side of the mountain. That was their objective, the likely hideout of the Taliban leader.
The team stopped momentarily and considered whether they should push the pickup out of the road with their powerful GMVs. But the enemy had to know that, too, and the Marines suspected the insurgents may have rigged the abandoned vehicles with explosives. So two of the MARSOC operators, SSgt Eddie Heredia and SSgt Eric Guendner dismounted and cautiously approached the vehicles to see if they were wired.
Heredia was a stocky twenty-eight-year-old gun-team leader, the son of Mexican immigrants, joined the Marines because he wanted to give back to the country that gave his family the opportunity to rise from poverty. Captain Strelkauskas and Staff Sergeant John Mosser, the unit’s acting “Gunny”—he was selected but not yet promoted to Gunnery Sergeant—got out with a few others and pulled security while Heredia and Guendner moved up to the vehicles and peered inside and underneath. As they did, several single shots rang out from somewhere overhead. Everyone ducked, but as they scanned the steep and craggy mountainside, nobody could tell from where the firing originated. Quiet returned to the canyon and everyone wondered if their presence might have scared off any insurgents in the area. The presence of attack helicopters often did that.
The vehicles were clean. Captain Strelkaukas received word from the pilots orbiting overhead that they were low on fuel and would have to return to base soon. Their sophisticated thermal optics showed no sign of life in the area. So Strelkaukas bade them farewell and sent them on their way. As the Marines and commandos pressed forward, the sun had yet to rise, but its light was already chasing the shadows into the deepest recesses of the canyon. The men no longer needed their night-vision goggles.
That’s when the firestorm began.
Guendner and Heredia were walking back from the disabled vehicles blocking the road. They had almost reached Captain Strelkauskas, Gunny Mosser, and the others in the three lead vehicles when the chatter of machine guns echoed through the canyon from a half-dozen heavily dug-in and well-camouflaged enemy positions somewhere high up the mountainside. Rounds smacked into the ground, coming in from above, ahead, and behind. Within seconds Heredia was hit in the leg, his buddies inside the vehicles watching in horror as he went down in a hail of gunfire. Rounds tore up their vehicles, snapping off antennas and starring the bulletproof-glass windshields. Immediately the turret gunners returned fire, peppering the mountain with grenades and .50 caliber tracer rounds. SSgt Guendner was returning fire when he, too, was hit and went down with a bullet in the leg.
Taliban fighters hiding out in rocky areas
The biggest problem was that the enemy positions were so well camouflaged the Marines couldn’t see where the fire was coming from. There was no room to turn around and get out of the kill zone and the disabled vehicles kept them from going forward. The only way to escape the fusillade of fire was for every vehicle in the convoy to back up the road—under fire. One false move, however, would send a vehicle crashing over the thirty-foot cliff next to the road. Gunny Mosser saw this and diregarding the bullets falling like rain, he broke cover and exposed himself to wave directions at the rest of the convoy to get them to back out of the ambush. His leadership got the convoy moving in the right direction, and several vehicles escaped the worst of the fire. Miraculously Mosser was not hit in the process.
Sgt Carlos Bolaños was driving the second GMV with his partner, Sgt Sam Shoenheit, manning the grenade launcher in the turret. Seeing his two wounded mates still on the ground in the kill zone, Sgt Bolaños jumped out and began laying down suppressive fire with his M240G machine gun while Shoenheit ran through an entire belt of 40-mm grenades, peppering the mountainside. Meanwhile, SSgt Heredia was trying to put a tourniquet on his own leg as bullets slammed into the ground all around him. He needed help.
Bolaños jumped back in the GMV and shouted, “Hold on!” He punched the accelerator and the heavy vehicle shot forward toward their fallen comrade. Standing in the turret, Shoenheit loaded a new belt in his MK-47 and was holding the trigger down, hammering the hillside in front of them with high-explosive shells. Just then, a sniper round smashed into the lip of his helmet, causing his night-vision goggles to practically explode. The bullet ricocheted off the NVG rail and entered his skull. Shoenheit crumpled back into the vehicle, unconscious.
Bolaños dove over the seat to pull his partner out of the line of fire. He was tearing open bandages and trying to stem the flow of blood from Shoenheit’s head wound when a Navy medical corpsman ran up to take over the grenade launcher. But before he could mount the vehicle and man the gun, he, too, was hit and fell between the two GMVs. Bolaños jumped out and pulled their injured Doc back to the vehicle behind his own, bandaging his wounds once he got the man inside. Then he ran back to help Shoenheit.
MARSOC Marine
Back in the kill zone, Captain Strelkauskas and his small team took the only cover they could find behind their shot-up GMV. They were completely pinned down. As Strelkauskas returned fire, bullets ricocheted off the GMV’s hood, peppering his hands and arms with fragments. When Chief Petty Officer Anthony Shattuck, the senior Corpsman assigned to the mission, was hit, Gunny Mosser stripped off the man’s gear and tried to render first aid. Though the bullet hit Shattuck in the torso, he was still conscious and actually diagnosed his own wounds. When he began having trouble breathing, he knew one of his lungs was hit and was filling up with fluid. As Mosser looked on, Shattuck produced a long needle and plunged it between his own ribs to relieve the pressure.
Enemy machine gunners and riflemen zeroed in on their position and even the slightest attempts at movement were met with a hail of deadly accurate gunfire. Knowing the rest of his team would be des
perately trying to reach them, Mosser got on his radio and ordered that no one else was to enter the kill zone. “Nobody else comes in. If anybody else comes in, you’re going to die. We are pinned and pinned bad.”
As he sent the command, Captain Strelkauskas stuck his head up momentarily and could see Heredia about sixty feet away, still fumbling with a tourniquet on his leg. He started to yell at the stocky Latino, but then Heredia was hit again and dropped like a marionette whose strings had just been cut. That was all Strelkauskas could stand. He jumped up and sprinted to Heredia’s side, ignoring the bullets snapping by only inches from his body.
The Captain grabbed his wounded Marine and dragged him back to the relative safety of their GMV. As he did, Gunny John Mosser ran out and did the same for the other wounded Marine, Ssgt Guendner. Mosser gave first aid to Guendner while Strelkauskas worked to save Heredia, who was gushing bright-red blood from a hole in his chest, just above his body armor. Despite the Captain’s best efforts, Heredia died moments later.
At the rear of the column, another medical Corpsman, Chief Petty Officer Jeremy Torrisi was standing in the bed of a GMV, listening to the chatter on the radio. When he heard all the other medical personnel forward of his position were hit, he stuck his head into the vehicle and yelled at the driver. “Let’s go! Get me up there!”