The War I Always Wanted

by Brandon Friedman

  The hero goggles were now completely off. As Celine’s tormented character says in his novel Journey to the End of the Night, “I had grown phobically allergic to heroism . . . I was cured. Radically cured.” The medicine had worked instantaneously. At that moment, for the first time in my life, I sincerely wanted an office job. In my head I could see the bullet holes that had peppered the Apaches—except now they formed words along the fuselage that said, “Get the fuck out of here.” If someone had offered me the chance to buy my way out at that point, I would have given away all my money and everything I owned. I probably would have given away much more than that.

  I saw clearly all the things I was never going to do. I thought about Nikki. I thought about how I would never get the chance to marry her. I would never have kids and get to watch them grow up. There were so many things I’d wanted to do. I was going to take flying lessons. I wanted to backpack across Europe. Now it had all been ruined. This was it. I realized that my parents would bury their oldest son. I knew that I wouldn’t get the chance to tell them goodbye. How would they get notified? Who would call Nikki? How would my brother handle it? Goddammit.

  Stop.

  Focus.

  Desperate to carry more bullets, mortar rounds, and water, we started tossing everything we didn’t need. We ditched our hygiene kits, we ditched most of our cold weather gear, and we didn’t even take ponchos to build little shelters against the snow. Even so, as a platoon leader with a lighter than average set of equipment, mine weighed over a hundred pounds.

  As we stood out in the sun trying in vain to lighten our loads, Bumstead and the other two returned. They had been stitched up and given a clear bill of health by the medics. Bumstead carried shrapnel in his leg and a bottle of pain pills. After being offered the opportunity to stay behind due to his injury, he politely declined and said he would rather go in with his platoon. There wasn’t even any hesitation, really. I had to respect that. I’m not sure what I would’ve done if someone had offered me the same deal.

  I still respected Bumstead for what he did that day even after he went AWOL before we left for Iraq. I didn’t really know him well, but when I heard about it, I figured he probably hadn’t wanted to test his luck again. Maybe between Afghanistan and Iraq, the shrapnel worked its way from his leg and into his head. Like Nikki, I guess maybe one war was enough for him, too.

  We couldn’t get everyone on the first lift that afternoon, but another bird was going to be available twelve hours later. Okay. So how many guys can we take on the first lift? Ninety. Forty-five per bird. Has this ever been done on a Chinook before? Probably not. What if the landing zone is hot? You’ve seen Saving Private Ryan, right?

  I had nobody to blame for this except myself. Too many fucking movies as a kid; as a teenager; as an adult.

  The plan materialized slowly, emerging piece by piece from the fog. We were to set down on a landing zone somewhere on Objective Amy, the northernmost area in the operation. The company was to establish a “blocking position” in order to prevent the escape of fleeing al Qaeda fighters. The fact that we were being sent to “block” and not to “attack” worked a bit to allay my cranky mood at having to die by early evening. It was much harder to get you or your men killed in a blocking position than in an all-out assault up a hill.

  But then, as if on cue, I was warned by someone that every single LZ in the operation had been “hot” so far. A “hot” LZ is one in which you’re getting shot at as you’re coming off the bird. On D-Day in 1944, Omaha Beach would have been aptly described as “hot.” Is our LZ gonna be hot? Nobody knew.

  Loading a helicopter for an air assault mission, you can’t hear anything and nobody understands each other’s hand gestures. And it’s terribly windy under the blades. Packing forty-five combat-laden troops into the rear of the aircraft is like a cross between musical chairs and Twister. Guys get on; guys get settled; then we wouldn’t have enough room. So guys would get off; guys would get on again; guys would get settled; then we’d do it over again. For twenty minutes we made such feeble attempts. Captain K. had wanted to be the last guy on the bird so that he could be the first guy out the door when we landed. He wanted to be a hero. It was fine by me, but Sergeant Collins and Sergeant Tom Dougherty, my 1st Squad leader, talked him out of it.

  Finally settled and earplugged inside the rumbling bird, I had just started to envision what a hot LZ was going to look like in the mountains, when someone started pushing me from behind. I looked back. He pointed to the rear of the bird. Standing on the ramp, ten soldiers between us, was our executive officer. His helmet had gone sideways, his eyes were blazing, and he was screaming something. I couldn’t hear anything, but I could read his lips yelling, “Friedman!!!” Based on the emotional expression on his face and the fact that I hadn’t been able to hear anything, I determined that he had probably been yelling my name for a while now. I said, “What?”

  “Fuckin’ c’mere, goddammit!”

  So again, everybody in front had to offload.

  Captain K., Sam Edwards, and 3rd Platoon’s acting platoon leader, were already gathered around a John Deere Gator. On the Gator was the air liaison. With him, he brought the new mission. Now we were to land at Objective Amy. Then we were to “attack” south to some random grid coordinate he gave us. If we weren’t involved in heavy fighting, we were to establish an LZ for the last Chinook. It would be arriving around 4 a.m. the next morning, in about twelve hours. I was placing my notes back in my cargo pocket when, over the roar of the engines, Sam tapped me on the shoulder and yelled, “Hey man . . . the fun meter . . . It’s pegged!” He smiled sarcastically, shaking his head and then turning away.

  I got back on the bird. All of 1st Platoon’s eyes were on me. How the fuck do you give an operations order on a moving Chinook? A formal operations order is usually several pages worth of detailed instructions, but that wasn’t happening. I took out my notebook and tore off four little strips of paper. I scribbled some words on them, and then, since I was toward the middle, passed them in the direction of each corner of the aircraft. It only vaguely resembled a plan, but it was something. It looked like this:

  It wasn’t quite the way I’d learned to compose written orders in Army schools, but this was all the guys were gonna get. I figured if we got lit up as soon as we touched down, it wouldn’t matter anyhow.

  Suddenly the intensity of the bird’s vibrations picked up. It lurched forward and I could feel the ground leave us. The bird began to pick up speed and we headed south, toward the Shah-e-Kot Valley and Objective Amy.

  The two Chinooks flew in attack formation, one behind the other, not more than fifty or sixty feet off the ground. As I looked out the rear door, beyond the tail gunner, I could see the second bird fifty or sixty yards behind us. Skimming above the ground, I could see a trail of swirling dust it was leaving in its wake. I looked through the porthole windows and stared across the fast-moving Shomali Plain. On both sides, mountains stood ominously. I felt like they were waiting for us.

  We had been in the air for about twenty minutes when out of the blue the door gunners on either side of the aircraft cut loose with long bursts from their machine guns. My head jerked up, my senses sharpened, and my stomach did a somersault. I looked at one of my grenadiers, a private from Nicaragua named Roger Paguaga. His dark eyes looked like a pair of eight balls.

  I swiveled in the direction of the cockpit and the door gunners as best I could, buried under people and equipment. I started yelling frantically at the guys closest to me to get the door gunner. My arm pumped repeatedly as I signaled what I wanted, my finger aimed at the shooter. My face must have been strained. I wanted to know how close I was to actual failure. The guy closest to the right-side door gunner tapped him and pointed at me. I mouthed at him, “What the fuck was that?”

  He put both hands up to his mouth and called back to me over the roar of the engines, “Test fire . . . that was a test fire!”

  I rolled my eyes. Then I checked to see
if I’d pissed myself.

  At over one hundred miles an hour we flew past craggy rocks and snow-filled canyons. As the pilots hugged the terrain, I pondered how much someone would pay to take this trip as a tourist. In places like this, places free of industrialization, the sky is such a deep blue that it almost blackens. At lower elevations I could see green trees. There were browns and whites and blues and blacks and greens. I got tapped on the shoulder. One of my soldiers held up five fingers and mouthed, “Five minutes!” I took a breath and then made the signal for those around me to lock and load. Then I pulled the charging handle back on my own M4 before allowing it to slam forward, chambering a round.

  I stopped thinking about everything. There was nothing else in existence but the roar of the helicopter around me. Nikki no longer existed. My family no longer existed. I had no memories. I had no dreams, no plans for the future. It was all gone—as if the helicopter’s vibrations had liquefied my soul, allowing it to evaporate in the rushing wind that brought combat closer with each passing second. My mind became a pure, blank slate, capable of only repeating a single mantra: Go left, keep Taylor by your side, keep moving—no matter what. Go left, keep Taylor by your side, keep moving . . ..

  I felt the helicopter slowing, beginning its hover. It lurched and bucked before coming to rest on the side of a mountain. I still couldn’t hear anything but the whine of the engines and the whompwhomp of the rotor blades. Then the tail gunner moved out of the way and I instinctively held my breath. The ramp began to lower, and light flooded the interior of the aircraft.

  5

  Shah-e-Kot Valley,

  Afghanistan

  March 2002

  I strained to see over the soldiers in front of me. They were struggling to shuffle off the bird as quickly as they could. I dragged my ruck across the floor of the aircraft in my right hand. In my left was my M4. I stepped off the ramp and started moving, completely disoriented.

  Unexpectedly, all the air was sucked from my lungs. When we allowed for alpine elevations in the plan—about 9,500 feet—we tailored the helicopter load to the thin air and planned for freezing temperatures at the high altitude, but we hadn’t planned for hauling such cumbersome gear on our backs. The first two steps off the bird were regular speed, the third was slower, and by the fourth step I was about to collapse. My head was spinning from trying to move too quickly with such a heavy pack. There wasn’t enough oxygen in the air for me to do what I wanted to do. Keep moving. I couldn’t get a satisfactory gulp of air. Suddenly my legs gave way and I dropped to a knee. Keep moving.

  The first thought of which I became conscious was that I would live for at least a while longer. No one was shooting at me; nothing was exploding in my face. I looked around and saw that everyone else’s movements had been grounded as well.

  I scanned my surroundings on my knee, elbow resting on my ruck. We were in a bowl, surrounded by high ground on three sides. I then realized that other Rakkasans had us encircled—that they were our cover. Their uniforms were soiled and crinkled; their faces dirty and unshaven. They were part of the original group that been out there for seventy-two hours, but they looked as though they’d been out there a month. They were the most beautiful people I’d ever seen.

  Still trying to catch my breath, I took my ruck and began to haul it across the open area. By the time I got to Captain K. I was trying not to hyperventilate. When I plopped down, I looked out at the opening of the bowl. I could see a valley, and mountains on the horizon. My watch said 5:35 p.m. I gazed up at the craggy ledges looming over me, and then to the cobalt blue sky above them. I paused, struck for a moment by the sheer rugged beauty of the place. Then I turned away. On the other side of the high ground, in the distance, I could hear sounds that seemed surreal. Whoomp. Whoomp. Whoomp. Bombs, detonating to the south, sounded like the footfalls of some mythic giant striding through the mountains. I could hear the faint crackle of gunfire. This was the real deal.

  Captain K. was saying something. I wasn’t listening. I was catching my breath and still marveling at the fact the LZ had been secure. I only turned to look at him when I heard my name. He wanted my platoon to lead the company south. I nodded and stood up.

  We had no need to look at the grid coordinate for our destination. As long as we kept the thuds and pops to our front, and as long as they were getting louder, we would be headed in the right direction.

  I told Sergeant David Reid to put Pascoe up front. Sergeant Joe Pascoe was the platoon “survivalist.” A stocky ex-Marine, Pascoe was the guy who could make fire. He could capture, kill, and cook his own food and he could make his way through the woods effortlessly. Later, in Kandahar, he would design and build a trebuchet out of spare parts capable of launching six-packs of milk fifty yards. On the other hand, Pascoe could probably not help you match your drapes.

  We had been in the bowl for ten minutes. The sky was still a deep blue, almost indigo, but the sun was starting to set and shadows were getting long. I looked up into the blue. Thousands of feet above me I saw the gray outline of an American B-52 headed south. Its four distinctive contrails stretched back as far as I could see. At that altitude, it was silent. I held my gaze on the plane as it traced a path toward the distant sounds of thunder. I had spent hours as a kid watching the B-52s based near my hometown in Louisiana. They had always been there in the sky for me, as a backdrop to my youth—at baseball games, down by the riverfront, stopped at a red light. You could rarely look to the sky in Shreveport and not see one. They were huge, powerful, and could carry nuclear weapons in their bomb bays. But they had always landed in a place I wasn’t allowed to go. Perhaps that’s why they hypnotized me.

  In middle school, my classmates and I had watched them return from the first Gulf War. On that day, they had done a fly-by of Shreveport, flying low and slow over the city to the cheers of thousands. In a strange coincidence, I was now watching one of the same planes that I had seen as a kid. Only now it was on an actual attack run.

  As I stared at it flying over the nearest ridge, I knew that it was seeing them, hearing their roar as an impressionable kid, that made me reply to the recruiter. Back then I hadn’t really known the difference between the Army and the Air Force, but I knew I wanted to be a part of it. Now I could feel them leading me again, this time into a battle. Still spellbound by their power, I followed willingly.

  As the plane flew out of sight, I dropped my gaze back to the jagged surroundings. Then I heard Captain K.: “Friedman, get us out of here.”

  Weighted down to a point that nearly buckled the knees, Sergeant Pascoe picked up his heading and we started south. We crested the bowl and began walking down a slight slope. As we walked down the hill, the sun dropped behind the high ground, leaving us in shadows.

  We trudged on in the twilight, listening to the constant thud of impacting bombs. Not ten minutes later I saw all the right arms in front of me lift in the L-shaped signal for a halt.

  “1-6, this is 1-2, over.” It was Sergeant Reid. “You need to come up here and check this out.”

  I motioned to Taylor and we waddled to the front. Sergeant Pascoe stood facing south, overlooking a ravine two hundred feet across and probably fifty feet deep. Reid and Pascoe both looked at me. “Whaddya think, sir?” asked Sergeant Pascoe.

  My response was the response of any true leader in time of trouble: “Ahhh, fuck.”

  “We could go through it, but I think we can skirt it to the left on that high ground,” he said pointing. “It’d take longer, but I think it’d be easier on everybody than the going up and down would be.”

  I looked at Sergeant Reid. “What do you think?” I asked.

  “I think Sergeant Pascoe’s right, sir. I think it’s a better idea to go around. I think that walking into that hole with all this weight would be a stupid idea.”

  “Okay,” I said. “I think you’re right. Keep moving around it. Let’s go.”

  As I knew it would, the company net came to life. “Sir, they wanna know what t
he holdup is,” Taylor informed me. I knew that was coming—it was what I’d wanted to avoid by making a quick decision.

  “Tell ’em ‘no holdup.’ Tell ’em ‘we’re moving.’”

  “Roger, sir.”

  Sergeant Pascoe led the company in a slow, winding curve toward the edge of the ravine. Within minutes Captain K., known simply as “Six” on the radio, was calling on the company net. He was in the middle of the company formation, probably a hundred yards back.

  “1-6, this is Six, you’re going the wrong way. Stop moving,” came the Voice over the net.

  “This is 1-6, roger, we’re going around a large ravine. 1-2 and his team leader have a route picked out that we think’ll be quicker than going down into the low ground, over,” I explained.

  “Roger, stop moving. Your platoon is going the wrong way, over.”

  “Roger, I know. We’re moving around the ravine. Do you want us go into it?” I asked.

  “1-6, this Six, stop. You’re going the wrong way. You’re going east. We need to be headed south, over.”

  I looked from Taylor to Sergeant Reid to Sergeant Pascoe and back to Taylor. Holding the radio handset attached to Taylor’s ruck, I looked at Sergeant Reid. “Is he serious? Really, is he even listening to me?”

  “1-6, this is Six, has your platoon halted movement yet?” the Voice asked.

  “Roger, we’re stopped,” I said.

  “This is Six, roger, I want your platoon to hold its position while the formation passes on your right. 3rd Platoon will be taking the lead. I want your platoon to fall in behind 2nd Platoon in the rear. We’re headed south from here.”

  In the remaining twilight I looked at Taylor, Reid, and Pascoe. They were shaking their heads with looks of exasperation that probably mirrored my own.

  “This is 1-6, roger, I understand that we’re to follow 2nd and 3rd Platoons into the ravine.”