by Sean Parnell
After the Russians withdrew, the Haqqani Network formed a loose partnership with the Taliban. In 1996, Haqqani fighters helped the Taliban throw the Northern Alliance out of Kabul, a battle that established Mullah Omar, the leader of the Taliban, as the most powerful man in Afghanistan. Jalaluddin, though a respected warlord in his own right, did not have the strength to challenge the Taliban for supreme control of Afghanistan. So they remained uneasy partners, sometimes feuding, sometimes working together if it served their own interests.
By the time my platoon arrived on the border, Jalaluddin’s sons had taken over the day-to-day operations. They were well suited for the task, as their father had groomed them for specific roles. One had become a fund-raiser in the Middle East. Another had become the military commander. A third son, Sirajuddin, had been named Jalaluddin’s successor.
Beneath the Haqqani family’s leadership, the network was managed by a core of loyalists who had fought with Jalaluddin against the Soviets and in the subsequent civil war. Below their ranks were the young Turks, rising leaders within the network who earned their reputation while fighting Americans along the border.
The network recruited its foot soldiers mainly from Pakistan, though there were plenty of Afghans in the rank and file as well. Over the years, young men inspired by their mullahs to fight infidels had become the key source of manpower for the network, and under Siraj, it had been trending toward a radical Islamic organization. Those devoted men, most barely out of their teens, had died in large numbers since 9/11, but there were always ample supplies of idealistic replacements waiting for the chance to leave their madrassas and join the jihad.
It took some time for us to understand how the foreign fighters we had killed on the mountaintop on May 8 fit into this equation. Eventually, we unraveled it. The Haqqani Network maintained a loose association with Al Qaida, which supplied it with talented jihadists from all over the globe. These experienced men, many of whom had fought in Iraq, Somalia, or Chechnya, formed the insurgents’ version of an NCO corps. They had become the backbone around which the indoctrinated, if inexperienced, sons of Pakistan coalesced. In combat, the foreigners served as small-unit leaders. When on the other side of the border, they functioned as the training cadre, preparing each new wave of jihadist canon fodder for the crucible ahead.
Thanks to our signals intelligence section, we’d come to know a little about Galang, the man who led the jihadists into battle against us. We’d established that he was one of the midlevel leaders in the Haqqani Network’s structure. He must have been in his late forties or early fifties, as we were told he had been a fierce warrior in the fight against the Soviets two decades before our arrival. His effective fighting force consisted of about three hundred well-armed fighters built around a core of veteran foreign jihadists. Those numbers came as a shock: Galang outnumbered us almost two to one.
If we had any lingering doubts as to Galang’s skill on the battlefield, they were shattered on May 17, when he and his men ambushed our Second Platoon behind Rakhah Ridge. Lieutenant Taylor was home on leave when it happened, which had left the platoon under the command of Sergeant First Class Burley, a loud, brash NCO who was not well liked within the company. He had a short temper and was quick to bully if he thought it would get him his way.
On the seventeenth, Sergeant Burley and his platoon ran straight into a sophisticated, L-shaped ambush established by Galang’s men. Using armor-piercing bullets in their machine guns, they raked Burley’s vehicles, still aiming for the turrets but also the tires. Trapped in restricted terrain, under severe direct-fire attack, Burley ordered his men to break contact and withdraw from the fight. As they fled, Galang’s men hit them again with a secondary ambush.
Second Platoon limped home with one man, Private First Class Follansbee, wounded and in need of medical evacuation. Several other men suffered shrapnel wounds. I watched them come through the gate that day. They parked on the concrete pad in front of the operations center, their rigs bullet-scarred and badly damaged. The men dismounted and began to talk about the engagement in hushed, dispirited tones. One sergeant came up to me and said, “That was fuckin’ horrible. I can’t go through anything like that again.”
I watched them and realized I’d never seen a more shaken group of U.S. soldiers. The ambush had been brutal: May 7 on steroids. I later found out that Follansbee had been shot in the ankle and foot by a bullet that had passed through the rubber weather stripping between the armored door and the frame of his Humvee. It was a fluke shot made possible only by the sheer volume of fire poured on them. After seeing Follansbee carried away by our medics, I wondered again how we had made it through our ambush without anyone getting hurt.
For all the intensity of these first two encounters with Galang’s men, it seemed to me that they were not throwing their full weight on us. In each ambush, we faced a platoon-sized force of insurgents. Where were the hundreds that Galang had available? Why ambush us while we were on the move? We dismounted all the time. Why not hit us when our men were not protected by armor plating?
Perhaps Galang was using our platoons as sort of a finishing school for his new men. After a winter of training in Pakistan, they had come into our area to gain combat experience and test their weapons, men, and tactics. If that was the case, the two engagements were little more than warm-ups for something much bigger. Exactly what that was kept me awake that night.
We needed to be ready for whatever Galang’s next move would be. That night, I replayed everything that had happened since May 7. What could I learn? What could we apply to our future operations? In my mind, I examined every incident, searching for anything that might help us in the next fight.
Second Platoon had taken a beating. We had too on May 7, but their return to the FOB was totally different from ours. Why? It was all perception. Defeat comes in many forms, both physical and psychological. Second Platoon had arrived home a defeated force. Though we hadn’t destroyed the entire enemy force on May 7 and our counterattack had hit thin air as Galang’s men broke contact with us, we had still inflicted a lot of damage on them. More important, we had stayed in the fight. That had given us a vital moral victory that Second Platoon hadn’t experienced. Breaking contact on May 17 had been the right call, given the tactical circumstances, but the psychological effect it had had on Burley’s men was all too obvious. Their morale and confidence had taken significant hits.
I could not let that happen to my guys. Ever.
To further foster our platoon’s cohesion, I wanted us to have our own unit emblem on the sides of our bullet-scarred Humvees. Just after the May 7 firefight, Emerick had finished his design at last. During a break in our patrol schedule, he painted his green skull design on each of our vehicles. As he worked, men from the platoon gathered around and watched in quiet awe of his artistic prowess. It was an important moment for all of us; it set the platoon apart and showed everyone that we had our own unique identity. I couldn’t wait to take those rigs into another fight and build our brand with the enemy. They would learn that the green skull platoon was not one to trifle with.
The next morning, I met with Greeson and my squad leaders. “Guys, listen. We’re facing an enemy that is the best light infantry in the world.”
My sergeants nodded in agreement.
“They’ve been doing this all their lives. When I was playing ice hockey in school, these guys were fieldstripping their AKs. When I was going to prom, they were laying ambushes. Our privates have been in the army for less than two years. They’ve got guys who’ve been fighting since Reaganomics.”
That didn’t sit well. We Americans hate to admit that anyone has an edge over us. But I wanted to be straight. I had to be; there were a lot of lives at stake.
“They have firepower. They don’t have the indirect assets we do, but they’ve got plenty of RPGs and machine guns. They are not weak there.”
“Where d’ya think they’re weak,
sir?” Campbell asked.
Greeson chimed in and grunted, “Grit. That’s what we’ve got and they don’t. We went toe-to-toe with them, and they broke first. They ran. We stayed. That’s a huge moral victory. Look at how it affected our platoon. The men have been on a tear ever since.”
I had been going to say the same exact thing.
Again my leaders nodded. “That’s true,” Baldwin mused, thinking it over.
I continued, “So here’s what we’re going to do. We will always stay and finish the fight. Got it? We’re never going to break contact. We will never cede the battlefield to the enemy, and we’re never going to give them a moral victory.”
I let that sink in. Everyone around me had seen Second Platoon’s return. They’d seen the splintered blast shields, shattered windows, bloody floorboards, and shredded tires.
I looked around the room and asked, “Agreed?”
Solemnly, each man agreed.
“Okay,” I said with finality, “we will stand and fight.”
Photos
Forward Operating Base (FOB) Bermel’s Hesco bag wall. FOB Bermel was our first home in Afghanistan, dominated by Rakhah Ridge to the east, which the enemy used nearly every day as a perfect launching point for rocket attacks against us. Author collection
On the border during a mounted checkpoint, I’m looking into the distance at oncoming traffic from Pakistan, a country that played a vital role for our enemies during their spring offensive in 2006. Author collection
This photo of Outlaw Platoon (officially Third Platoon) was taken during our first month in country at FOB Bermel. We trained together for nearly two years before deploying, but nothing would fully prepare us for the terrifying reality of combat in Afghanistan. Front row, left to right: Bobby Pilon, Luis Perez, Colten Wallace, Alexsandr Nosov, Mitchell Ayers, Jonathan Dugin, Dennis Leiphart, Jose Vega. Second row, left to right: Richard Haggerty, Zachary Gotass, Charles Byerly, Joseph Connor, Keith Lewis, Bennett Garvin, Philip Baldwin, Josiah Reuter. Third row, left to right: Sean Parnell, Gordon Campbell, John Saint Jean, Brian Bray, Chris Brown, Jason Sabatke, Marcel Rowley, Ryan Wheat, Tim Stalter, Robert Pinholt, Marty Belanger. Fourth row, left to right: Travis Roberts, David McLeod, Erwin Echavez, Khanh Nguyen, Mark Howard, Anthony Kienlen. (Not pictured: Greg Greeson, Jose Pantoja, Jeff Hall, Jeremiah Cole.) Author collection
At an early patrol to the Bermel bazaar, the company command group met with village elders to discuss the needs of their tribes. Left to right: First Lieutenant Dave Taylor, Captain Jason Dye, and me. Courtesy Jason Dye
Outlaw Platoon’s Green Skull insignia was designed to strike fear in the hearts of our enemies. Later in the deployment, that’s exactly what happened. Courtesy Robert Pinholt
Chris Cowan (far right) and me standing with our “allies” during a border security meeting. The other men were part of the Pakmil Frontier Corps of the Pakistani military, who routinely gave insurgents the freedom to conduct cross-border attacks on us. Later in our deployment, Pakmil Frontier troops began to attack coalition forces directly and even embedded with Haqqani Network fighters as they launched cross-border raids. Courtesy Josiah Reuter
One of the strongest enemy engagements hit us on May 7, 2006. Here, I’m moving through the kill zone to the top of the knoll. The gunner behind me was traversing to bring his weapon to bear on the enemy, who had the high ground again, to the left. At the top of the photo, one of the insurgents can be seen moving through the trees along the ridge. Courtesy Travis Roberts
In the aftermath of the May 7, 2006, battle, the expressions on the faces of the Afghan National Army soldiers say everything about what happened. Courtesy Travis Roberts
Payback is a bitch. The enemy wasn’t the only one laying ambushes, and this time Alexsandr Nosov holds the high ground. Courtesy Richard Haggerty
Ryan Wheat, obviously thrilled with his fire-building accomplishments. Courtesy Bobby Pilon
Sergeant First Class Greg Greeson being awarded his second Purple Heart by Colonel (now Major General) John W. Nicholson Jr. Like many of my men, Greeson chose to stay with the Outlaws even though his head wound was serious enough to merit evacuation. Courtesy Travis Roberts
Greeson’s first brief with Outlaw Platoon. The men wondered what kind of leader they had inherited, but he would soon put all doubts to rest. Left to right, on the trucks: me, Greeson, Campbell, and Dugin. Courtesy Travis Roberts
Back inside the wire after a battle on June 10, 2006, I stood in front of Philip Baldwin’s shot-up Humvee, mentally and physically exhausted, my head throbbing. Still, I had to try to project strength for my wounded and weary soldiers. Courtesy Josiah Reuter
“Roads? Where we’re going, we don’t need roads.” We tried to make our own way through our patrol area, and wadis were a natural avenue for us. The few actual roads were often laced with IEDs and ambushes, so we stayed off them whenever we could. Courtesy Robert Pinholt
Staff Sergeant Gordon Campbell and Specialist Richard Haggerty investigate the enemy camp we uncovered on May 8, 2006. In the bag were the personal effects of an enemy fighter, including a snapshot of him with his children. We also found prescription bottles from Pakistani hospitals and a handwritten notebook full of American telephone numbers. Courtesy Travis Roberts
Sniper Sergeant Ryan Wheat (right) and Campbell (left) burning down an enemy hide site. Whenever we could, we tried to deny the enemy any source of concealment. Courtesy Travis Roberts
During World War II, our battalion advanced into the Italian Alps, fighting America’s enemies on the snowy battlefields of Europe. Two generations later, we carried on the legacy of the 10th Mountain Division as the grandsons of the original Catamounts, fighting our own pitched battles in the Hindu Kush. Courtesy Travis Roberts
Corporal Colten Wallace lets loose with a cathartic battle cry in the wake of an ambush. After we killed or drove off the insurgents, we found this long-abandoned compound that the enemy had been using as a base of operations and burned it to the ground. Courtesy Robert Pinholt
Second Platoon’s defining moment came during Operation Catamount Blitz on November 7, 2006. Here, Staff Sergeant Jeff Hall (front) and Lieutenant Courtney Carnegie (left rear) lead the assault up the mountainside to find and rescue a dying marine. This photo was taken seconds before they charged straight into the enemy’s flank, fought their way forward, and found him. Courtesy Travis Roberts
Abdul, the best “’terp” (interpreter) we had, standing on the road to his hometown. He was the only ’terp allowed to carry a weapon, and our lives became inextricably linked as a result of the 9/11 attacks. Courtesy Josiah Reuter
Private Kyle Lewis after another enemy ambush. Had we not put the new ballistic shielding on the trucks, he would have been shot in the head . . . again. Courtesy Robert Pinholt
Brian Bray getting ready to roll. Courtesy Travis Roberts
Private First Class Jeremiah Cole retrieving a supply drop about one hundred meters outside of FOB Bermel on May 16, 2006. This photo was taken two months to the day before his first enemy engagement. Courtesy Marcel Rowley
Staff Sergeant Philip Baldwin sitting in a truck before a patrol. His tactical acumen and life experience set the tone for the platoon’s overall success in combat. CourtesyJosiah Reuter
Corporal Robert Pinholt (left) was my young, highly intelligent, opinionated driver and Sergeant Michael Emerick (right) was our platoon’s artist. Courtesy Robert Pinholt
Doc Jose Pantoja co
ntemplating the enemy’s “long, dark reach” prior to leaving the wire on a mission to aid one of our own on a terribly difficult day. Courtesy Travis Roberts
Wallace snapping out shots at the enemy in the midst of a kill zone right on the Pakistani border. The enemy had the high ground that day. Courtesy Robert Pinholt
The emaciated children of the Afghan border region. This photo was taken a few kilometers from what we came to call the Village of the Damned. Courtesy Robert Pinholt
Sergeant Keith Lewis giving the Afghan girls coloring books. We quickly learned that if we didn’t separate the boys from the girls and try to spread the gifts around, the boys would beat the girls raw and take what we’d given them after we left. Courtesy Travis Roberts
Wallace standing shocked just moments after his truck ran over an anti-tank mine. We had been betrayed by a spy in our midst, and this would become the platoon’s worst day. Courtesy Travis Roberts