by Sean Parnell
We’d just come back from my first patrol since I had returned from leave. I’d felt jumpy and insecure, so I had asked Greeson to come along to keep an eye on me. I didn’t want to make any decisions that would endanger the men because I was off my game.
The taste of my stateside life had again reminded me of what was at stake here. Holding on to that had reinforced my sense of mortality and made me fearful and overly focused on my own safety, to the detriment of my leadership. That could not continue, and it was a relief to have Greeson out there making sure I didn’t mess up.
Now, as we returned for the night, I knew that I needed some time within my head to reset my emotions and recover my resolve.
Greeson waved me into his room. Closed-door session? Something was up. I waited for him to tell me the mistakes I’d made out there today.
“Sir, what I am about to tell you cannot be mentioned to anyone.”
His preface caught me off guard.
“Okay,” I said cautiously.
“It’s about one of our interpreters.”
He had my complete attention now. Quietly, he began to talk.
Unbeknown to us, some top secret national-level assets had been tracking unusual communications coming from our area. Over the past several months, they had narrowed those transmissions down to FOB Bermel.
Somebody on post had been using our sat phones to contact an Iranian bomb-making cell operating out of a madrassa just over the Pakistani border. We had an enemy mole in our midst.
On August 16, the mole had made contact with the Iranian team. In coded references, he had revealed the exact location at which Outlaw Platoon planned to establish an observation post that day. Somehow, between the time the platoon had come in from the hilltop in the morning and the time the men had returned to it, the mole had penetrated our operational security and learned exactly what we were going to do. Then he had tipped off the Iranians, who had contacted Galang’s old force. The insurgents had beat us to the hilltop and seeded it with mines. No doubt, the nearby villagers had seen them emplace the devices. When our platoon had arrived a few hours later, they wanted to see what would happen.
When that information reached Captain Dye and First Sergeant Christopher, Yusef fell under immediate suspicion. He’d been observed asking questions he shouldn’t have been asking. He had often wanted to know where we were going before we left the wire, something that had annoyed us throughout the deployment. A quiet investigation had revealed that he was the only local national on base who could have had foreknowledge of the platoon’s destination. Plus, Greeson had caught him talking on a phone, introducing himself with a different name to whoever was on the other end of the connection. When Greeson had said, “Hey, I thought your name is Yusef.” Our head ’terp had offered a wide, suspicious grin and replied, “That’s just my stage name.”
Greeson finished his story, “Captain Dye is going to take him to Orgun-E later today to arrest him. Nobody can know about this; we can’t risk spooking Yusef and causing him to bolt.”
“I want to go to Orgun-E,” I said in a furious voice.
Greeson growled, “Fuck no, sir. You’re way too close to this. So am I. Let Captain Dye handle it.”
He was right. As the news sank in, my own responsibility in this disaster became apparent. I had become complacent with the cozy nature of Yusef’s relationship with the men. He’d been too close to them for months, and every time I’d seen him around the barracks, hanging out with them, it had rankled me. Greeson had noted it too, urging me to put a stop to it, and though I’d mentioned it to the platoon in passing, I’d not done so with any conviction. When it had continued, I should have put my foot down hard and ended it. Fraternizing with a local national, no matter how much he was trusted, was an operational security breach, plain and simple.
Even more damning was his use of the satellite phones. That never should have happened. Though we had told him he couldn’t use them, he still had access to the soldiers who worked in the operations center and could get his hands on the phones whenever he wanted.
It had always seemed like a minor problem, and my plate had been so full that dealing with Yusef’s behavior had ended up on the bottom of my priority list. I had never gotten around to dealing with it. And now what Greeson had just told me revealed the consequences of that failure. It had gotten Cole killed.
No, I had gotten Cole killed.
This was not on the men. This wasn’t on Greeson. This was my cross to bear. In similar situations, I’d seen other leaders flay themselves and twist themselves into guilt over decisions they’d made that, in hindsight, had led to a soldier being in the exact wrong place at the exact wrong time to be killed by our enemy. The logical side of our brains could recognize that there was no way to know that an order would lead to that moment and ultimately snuff out an American life. But in such situations, the heart refuses to accept such logic. In that conflict, the heart almost always wins. It was a struggle that had destroyed countless leaders like me.
My brain connected the dots between my failure to act and Cole’s death. Logically, it made sense. My heart joined my head, and the unity demanded that I accept responsibility. There was no escape. I hadn’t place the mine, but I had set the conditions that got Cole killed.
How could I ever look Andrea in the eyes?
I don’t remember much of the morning after that. I know I went to my room to change out of my filthy uniform. I know I felt my strength failing me as I faced the totality of my guilt. Another part of me slipped away and died; I didn’t even have the will to fight for it this time.
The war had sucked me dry.
How much time passed? I had no idea. Finally I roused myself from my hooch and forced myself to go eat. For as long as Captain Dye and Lieutenant Colonel Toner wanted me, I was still Outlaw Platoon’s leader, and the men needed me. And that required overcoming the self-loathing I felt and staying focused on the job I had to do.
I would stay atop everything; I would give everything I had in the months we had left to ensure that I didn’t screw up again and get somebody else killed.
In the chow hall, I did not feel worthy to sit with any of my soldiers. I picked an empty table and sat down alone.
“Hey, Commander Sean, welcome back!”
Yusef smiled down at me with his used-car-salesman affectation. He held a tray full of food and sat down across from me without asking if I wanted his company.
“Thank you,” I managed. I could not screw this up and tip off Yusef that we were on to him. Getting up would have been suspicious. My plate was full of food. Not engaging would have been equally suspicious. I had no option. I was forced to break bread with our betrayer.
He took a bite of our American chow. As he chewed, he asked, “You drink beer back home?”
“A little,” I said. For an instant, we made eye contact. He looked like a puppy eager to please.
“You get wasted? Have good time?”
“Sure, I guess.”
“What about . . . you know . . .” His smile became even broader, revealing yellowed teeth. He looked like a ferret.
“What?” I asked.
“You know.” He cupped his hand to his lips, leaned forward, and whispered, “The pussy. What about the pussy? Didya get any?”
His smile grew lascivious. My stomach burned with hate. I fantasized about pulling out my pistol, racking the slide, seeing his eyes widen in fear.
When I didn’t reply, he frowned. “Come on, Commander Sean, you musta gotten some of that, no?”
Cold barrel pressed to his dark-skinned forehead. I would atone for the unforgivable sin of allowing this human filth to kill Cole.
“No?”
“No,” I said.
“That is shame, you handsome guy, Commander Sean. You shoulda gotten some of that. So where we going today?”
I could mur
der you, Yusef. I would pull that trigger and feel less remorse than if I’d just crushed a cockroach.
I had never considered myself capable of murder. Afghanistan had opened that door, and now I knew the full extent of what I’d become. I could kill without so much as a ripple on my conscience.
We locked eyes. Oblivious to my hatred, he spewed the vile patter that had succeeded in disarming us for so long: the Bermel clown, always dirty and irreverent. Now it was a threadbare costume that no longer concealed the scum beneath it.
“Sir? You’re wanted in the operations center,” said Greeson. He’d entered the chow hall and seen Yusef sitting with me. He’d come to my rescue.
I got up from the table. Yusef cheerily waved good-bye. When we got outside, my voice broke. “Thanks, man.”
“No worries, sir.”
Later that day, Captain Dye assembled a patrol drawn from part of my platoon and part of our headquarters element. Yusef was assigned to be the ’terp. He suspected nothing and climbed aboard one of the Humvees.
At Orgun-E, he was confronted with the evidence against him. At first he denied everything. But when the sat phone was mentioned, he laughingly confessed, “Yes, yes. You got me. I did it.”
His attitude earned him a face plant on the hood of a Humvee. Our men zip-cuffed him and pulled him to the battalion detention center. Later that night, he was flown to Bagram.
In any other time, in the hands of any other army, Yusef’s body would never have been found. He’d have been dispatched and dumped, his corpse left for scavengers. Nobody would have known or cared that an enemy spy had vanished.
Discipline was the only thing that saved his life. Instead of a bullet to the brain, he faced due process and a prison cell. In the days ahead, I wondered if that was a weakness or a strength. There’s a certain elegance to outlaw justice. Besides, the enemy would have afforded us no mercy if the roles had been reversed.
Americans of a different generation might not have been so disposed either. I recalled hearing stories of the original soldiers of the 10th Mountain Division killing German captives in the final stages of World War II’s Italian campaign. In Stephen Ambrose’s Band of Brothers, men from Easy Company massacre German prisoners in the wake of the casualties they’d taken during the D-Day campaign.
The army of the War on Terror holds itself to a higher standard. Our discipline and ability to choose the hard right in times like these are what make us the best army the world has ever known. And so Yusef lived.
We later discovered that Cole’s death was not the extent of Yusef’s treachery. The investigation revealed that he had arranged Abdul’s death as well. He had tipped the enemy off to Abdul’s nocturnal departure. Knowing where Abdul had been going and the road he had to use to get there, Yusef’s tip had allowed the insurgents to establish an ambush in time to catch Abdul on his way back to Bermel from his family’s house.
With Abdul dead, Yusef knew he would be promoted to head interpreter. That position gave him greater freedom of movement around the base. It also granted him access to a higher level of mission planning since he often patrolled with our company commander. Assassinating Abdul was a move of Machiavellian genius. We were so naive and trusting that we never even considered who in our midst would benefit most from Abdul’s death. Those two nested elements of our culture are what made men like Yusef so foreign to us. It is what made Major Ghul’s behavior at Bandar so inexplicable. We’d gone through our year in country, judging these Afghans through the prism of our own value systems, never fully grasping what we were up against. Well, now we knew. And we would never trust like that again.
Twenty-six
The Place Where Mettle Grows
In early September, the Taliban concluded a cease-fire with Pakistan’s president. The terms of the deal were almost farcical: Musharraf agreed to suspend attacks on Taliban hideouts in Waziristan. In return, the Taliban promised not to launch any more operations in Pakistan or cross the border to attack targets in Afghanistan.
Without PakMil operations against their safe havens, the insurgents we faced now had both hands free against us. Almost the moment the cease-fire went into effect, the enemy swarmed over the border after us. They brought with them 122mm rockets—far heavier and more destructive than the usual 107s—which they fired on Bermel to great effect. By the end of the month, we’d taken so many rocket strikes that some of the men slept in the bunkers. Others, fearing they’d be killed while going to the latrines at night, urinated into empty bottles so they didn’t have to leave the relative safety of their rooms.
While we were out on patrol, the enemy skirmished with us constantly. Those running battles had long since lost their mystique. The adrenaline rushes no longer gave us the euphoric high we had experienced in the spring. Our bodies suffered under its constant injection, the stress, and the physical demands of our daily lives.
We defeated the enemy every time they challenged us. We took to rounding up their dead after each firefight and delivering them to the local mosques. We masked this move as a gesture honoring Muslim burial rituals that required the deceased to be laid to rest within twenty-four hours of expiring, but the truth is that we were tired of the killing and were making a point: fuck with us, and your sons, brothers, and husbands will die. Their mangled bodies will be dumped like bloody trash at your houses of worship.
Our morale never recovered from Cole’s death and the Fourth of July. Chris Brown stopped dancing on my Humvee’s back deck. The joking and lighthearted banter were drained away by the daily grind. Our lives narrowed to two elemental aspects: survival and devotion. We put our heads down and simply endured.
It is easy to be a virtuous man in good times. It is easy to be judged a success when luck runs with the fortunate son. But when adversity strikes, the true measure of a man percolates to the surface. That is why combat became the great sifter—it tested our mettle. Not once but again and again until those who could not hack it were simply written out of the script.
Combat deployments make men incredibly vulnerable. Back in the States, it is all too easy to hide behind facades and defenses, pretensions and rank. But on the field of battle, the threat of death boils all of those things away. What remains is the true measure of a man’s character. Some conduct themselves with honor. Some do not. But everyone who serves knows who is who, and that establishes dividing lines that lifetimes of effort can never bridge.
Though some around us failed and would have to live with that failure for the rest of their lives, a curious dynamic developed within Outlaw Platoon. Beaten down, weary, full of unfocused anger and lasting sadness, the men grew more selfless and devoted to one another. To a man, we would have given almost anything to be stateside, but the one thing we would not give up on was each other. We would not make excuses, and we would not leave our brothers behind.
Our Vietnamese day trader, Khanh, exemplified that spirit. After he was shot in the head in a firefight in Helmand Province, we heard that he was medically evacuated to Germany, where doctors discovered blood clots in his brain. He should have gone home for treatment. His condition could have killed him. Instead, he demanded to be sent back to Bermel. It took him months to get the hospital to release him, but he finally made his way back to us.
Khanh’s dad had been captured by the North Vietnamese in the 1970s and had spent time as a prisoner of war. Somehow he’d survived and after his release had escaped to the Land of the Free. Like father, like son. Khanh’s toughness and utter devotion to the platoon inspired the rest of us to stay in the game. I know that was the case for me. My headaches had grown worse. The stuff leaching from my ears and nose continued to grow more
foul. I was told it was cerebrospinal fluid. Neurological symptoms had begun to manifest themselves while we were on patrol. My vision blurred at random intervals. My temper lay just below the surface, and my control over it slipped too many times. I’d get dizzy, and my memory loss grew worse. I knew there would be a reckoning at some point for not getting my injuries treated, but how could I leave when men like Khanh fought so hard to return?
We leaned on one another and refused to let the rain of adversity destroy our bond. The more hardship we faced, the more ennobled I saw my men become as they stood in the storm, indomitable spirits with no ability to quit. Those despairing days became the platoon’s finest hour.
Back home, the leaves turned brown; Halloween came and went. Thanksgiving approached. We were scheduled to go home in January, and it became harder not to count the days.
The first snow fell in the mountains around Bermel. Quietly, I think we all prayed that the enemy would pack it in for the winter and return to their Pakistani havens. It didn’t happen that way. Through October and early November, the rocket attacks against our base grew intolerable. Day after day, the enemy hammered us with indirect whose accuracy only increased.
Enough was enough. Lieutenant Colonel Toner coordinated a battalion-sized mission to clear the area behind Rakhah Ridge once and for all. From all over the area, reinforcements poured into Bermel, including combat engineers and more Afghan troops.
We would jump off from Bermel, move behind Rakhah Ridge, then use Route Trans Am to penetrate all the way to the Pakistan border. We rarely went down Trans Am; it was too dangerous. Prior to our arrival in country, a small unit of Special Forces soldiers had tried to do just that. They lost three men during the effort. None of us had any illusions: the enemy would fight to the last man.
We would be out for five days, covered by A-10s, Apaches, Predator drones, and an AC-130 Spectre gunship. We’d have 105mm artillery support, mortars, and three companies of Afghan infantry.