Not every mission was as dramatic. I accompanied the reconstruction team on a mission once where we moved schoolbooks from an old Taliban warehouse to a local school. From floor to ceiling bundles of books were stacked. They spilled out of their burlap sacks across every flat surface in giant mounds. I waded across and picked up a neatly bound hardcover. I dusted off the front and unveiled the gorgeous Arabic calligraphy of the Koran. After placing it back on the pile, I saw a school workbook written in English. It was an English primer for elementary school students. On the back of the book was a list of mottos students should memorize, including the rousing anthem “Jihad is our path.” I paged through the short glossary of a hundred words. It had far more military terms in it than one would expect for a grade school English book: bayonet, garrison, overrun, invade, capture. To explain the grammatical concept of a clause, the following example was used: “The mujahideen ran up the mountain, but he was not tired.” The reading exercises featured constructions such as “Were you trained by your commander before you started armed jihad?” In case the student was unsure what training might be necessary, the reading exercises went on to remind him: “The battle wasn’t fought before my brother oiled his gun. He could use light and heavy arms, even antiaircraft machine guns, too.” And to emphasize why such struggle was necessary for Afghans, each student would read the categorical statement: “Wherever there are Russians, there is cruelty.” I had read earlier that the Russians disguised mines as children’s toys, but until I read these children’s primers, I hadn’t really absorbed the full measure of Afghanistan’s misery. For nearly thirty years the country had been at war, and suffering was woven into the fabric of Afghan society.
The headmaster of the local school greeted us with a large smile. In a province where fewer than one in three adults could read, his work was heroic. In addition to the books, we deposited with him pencils, school backpacks, and a dozen soccer balls. I took a peek in the classroom. There were only a few seats in the room, no chalkboards, and no light except for the natural light flooding in from the oversized windows. The nattily dressed headmaster thanked us profusely and asked us to pose for a group photo. I obliged, but in the back of my head I wondered what good it was to recycle mujahideen propaganda.
The next generation of Afghans was the one we needed most for Afghanistan’s long-term stability, but it was the hardest demographic of all. Walking through town on patrol, I often felt like the Pied Piper of Gardez, trailing children behind me in anticipation of more food, water, or candy. How are you? Gimme water. How are you? Gimme food, mister. We must have looked like alien invaders with our laser sights, reflective sunglasses, and dangling antennas. They called us the “Helmeted Ones.” I thought about gesturing with three fingers and addressing them in jest: “Greetings. We are from Planet America. We are here to help you.” As I walked, the kids laughed and smiled and ran laps around the squad in hand-me-down pajamas and bare feet. Red gave one of the kids some sweets secreted away in his cargo pocket. The flock swarmed around him like a celebrity. Ten steps away stood their elders; their faces spelled indifference. I asked a few questions through my interpreter. Have you seen any bad men in the village lately? Have the police been through recently? The answer was always no, but I asked anyway, for the report I needed to fill out when I returned. What happened between ages eight and eighteen? It occurred to me that it would be the same if strange men with guns and sunglasses walked through my hometown: The strangers would be a curiosity for the young and an intrusion for the old.
Years of training had shaped the way I interpreted my environment. Every door and crooked tree was a potential ambush. I peered at shadows in expectation of trouble and searched for cover that my men and I could use to protect us. Military officers plan for the worst and hope for the best. Stay alert and stay alive.
This attitude was well suited for a battlefield or training exercise. Gardez was neither. I wasn’t prepared to walk through a village that was neither “friendly” nor “enemy.” I wanted to take kids’ pictures, not imagine them in suicide vests. This was the frustration of Gardez in microcosm: how to stay focused on protecting my men while simultaneously engaging the local population. One pundit called this “armed social work,” evoking the image of Peace Corps volunteers with pistols. The real difficulty, however, was psychological: seeing every local as indeterminate, neither friend nor foe, but potentially both, at different times, in different circumstances. Lieutenant Colonel LaCamera’s warning echoed in my head: Be polite. Be professional. Be prepared to kill everyone you meet.
23
The Rockets’ Red Glare
And the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.
FRANCIS SCOTT KEY
“THE SOUNDS OF SILENCE” WAS PLAYING WHEN A loud explosion boomed outside the gates. Neither McGurk nor I took alarm. We were watching The Graduate on DVD, anxiously anticipating Dustin Hoffman’s seduction by Mrs. Robinson. The engineers at the base were always blowing up captured munitions without notifying us. I just figured that this was another one of their controlled detonations. But then there was a second and a third explosion, and they were louder, and closer. A siren began to wail from the compound. This was no controlled detonation. We were under a rocket attack.
McGurk and I bolted from the tent. He ran to the Humvees, where soldiers were already ripping the dust covers from the machine guns and starting engines. Sergeants Huber and McGurk moved quickly, having already prepared the vehicles that morning for on-call quick-reaction missions. I ran to the Tactical Operations Center to find out more.
As I ran across the gravel, another series of whining rockets screamed by the flanks of the base and exploded a hundred yards away from the perimeter. The rockets were getting closer with each volley. In the operations center I was able to hear the radio reports from the watchtowers. The rockets were being launched from the foothills to the east.
I sprinted back to the parking lot where the vehicles were lined up, ready to roll. “Drive toward the hills—fast.” Speed was paramount if we were to have any chance of finding the rocket launchers before they escaped into the hills or blended back into the villages.
“Roger, sir.”
It was a moonless night, and everything turned a tadpole green as I flicked on my night vision. We pulled out of the base and onto the black-top airstrip. The convoy raced to the east along the road and pulled off onto a dirt track heading into the hills where we suspected the rockets had been launched. We reached the grid coordinate that the operations center relayed to us and scanned with our electronic eyes, looking for any silhouettes among the bushes and boulders.
Nothing. I arrayed the Humvees in a broad semicircle facing the mountains. We waited patiently for what seemed like hours but was actually minutes.
A number of silhouettes jogged across our horizon at two hundred yards.
“You. Stop!” yelled my interpreter. Metallic clicks on our rifles switched from safe to fire. The ghosts stopped, but only for a few seconds. Then they began to run again, straight toward the hills. Over the radio, McGurk called me.
“Permission to fire?”
“Engage.”
The night erupted in cracking reports and rapid machine-gun fire. Tracers laced across the desert like a laser light show. I was momentarily mesmerized by the firepower that leaped from my platoon’s weapons like an extension of my will. I began to work up a fire mission for the mortars at the base. I wanted each of the fleeing shadows eliminated by whatever means I had at my disposal.
As I called in the grid coordinates for a mortar strike, the executive officer in the operations center demanded a situation report. I relayed what I knew, but he wasn’t satisfied. We weren’t authorized to shoot unless we were certain those men presented an immediate threat. Since they hadn’t shot at us, we weren’t allowed to shoot them. Shit.
“Cease fire! Cease fire!” I stepped outside the vehicle and
waved my left hand in front of my face as a signal. The fire died down as abruptly as it had begun.
We sped in a wedge of vehicles toward the men we had seen. My heart was racing now. Had we killed them? Could we capture them? With my interpreter at my side, I walked from compound to compound, asking the same questions. Did you see where the rockets were fired? Do you know who fired the rockets? Did any strange men arrive in your village tonight? They had seen and heard nothing at all. Everything was normal—or so they said. In the end we had no choice but to turn around and return to base—empty-handed and exhausted.
We took stock the next morning. Fortunately, none of the seven rockets had landed inside the base. No one had been killed or wounded. Analysis of the rocket craters clearly pointed back at the village. I sat down with the squad leaders and talked through our actions. We all agreed that our marksmanship at night had been atrocious. How was it possible for us to miss a single target with all our guns blazing? This needed immediate attention. Alone later, I scrutinized my own performance. I was glad that I hadn’t panicked when the rockets began landing. On the other hand, I had been too impulsive to shoot. I should have known better. There was a strong possibility that the men running from us were just ordinary Afghans. I would probably have run, too, if American Humvees were crashing through the brush toward me.
I was uneasy with the excitement I felt about shooting. Shouldn’t I have felt remorse at aiming live rounds at other people? Where was the clinical detachment? This had been raw and unfiltered. Perhaps it was a release from the frustrations that had been mounting—the futility of our patrols, the homesickness, and the boredom. The roadside bombs that threatened our patrols left no one to retaliate against. For once we had someone in the crosshairs. Discovering this killer instinct unnerved me, challenging my sense of humanity. I could kill—and I might even like it. Only later would I realize this wasn’t entirely true. At this point I had only pulled the trigger. I was yet to see the point of impact.
THAT FIRST TASTE OF combat coincided with the arrival of a new platoon sergeant. Sergeant First Class Vern Story walked straight out of a John Wayne movie and into our platoon. His face was chiseled granite—sharp and hard. He wore a high and tight haircut like a crown on his sunburned scalp. Veins snaked along his tattooed arms, as thick as Popeye’s. I had come back from a patrol to find him chewing out one of the privates for a dirty weapon. At first I couldn’t understand a word he was bellowing. He had an untraceable accent, part southern and part Texan. When he was angry, his commands took on a cadence and color that was iconic drill sergeant.
Story’s first mission was fixing Chuck. Even after a month in Gardez, he still hadn’t taken a shower. It was like a high school biology project I had done once where I placed a piece of bread in a Petri dish and watched the mold grow. Day by day Chuck’s odor amplified. At first I asked the other sergeants to intervene, “Please make Chuck shower.” No result. Then I threatened Chuck with the Uniformed Code of Military Justice: “I’m giving you a direct order. Shower or face the consequences.” Again, no result. Worse still, Chuck never took his boots or helmet off. He lay on his cot every night in full combat gear. I began to get concerned about what might be happening inside his boots, but he wouldn’t take them off for my investigation. Chuck didn’t want to lose one second responding to a rocket or gunfight. I applauded the professional dedication but just couldn’t take the smell anymore. Neither could his soldiers. I knew the time for action had come when the interpreter told me Chuck’s body odor was repelling the local Afghans he was trying to question. I asked Story to get Chuck into the shower, fully clothed if necessary. The two shared a common Marine affinity. In low voices they talked in grunts.
“Ugg. Hooah hooah ugg shower.”
“Ugg?”
“Shower hooah hooah ugg, semper fi ugg ugg.”
Whatever Story had said, it worked. Chuck began taking regular showers, and order was restored. Story was exactly the type of platoon sergeant every lieutenant hopes for: honest, tough, and experienced. Within a week he had infused every soldier in the platoon with a new sense of urgency. He demanded high standards and enforced them with tyrannical vigilance. He was able to do so in part because he met the Gunny Oakes Ranger School standard; Story could “walk the talk.” His fifteen years of experience included combat with the Marines in Kuwait during Desert Storm. For the last three years he had graded a thousand lieutenants as a lane walker at the Army’s exercise center in Louisiana. He had every Army qualification from expert marksman to Ranger. And he could run harder and push more ground than anyone in the platoon.
I sat down with Story that first night, and we talked through my expectations of him and what he could expect from me. His professionalism was reassuring. He understood our roles and promised his loyalty and hard work if I would make the same promise to him. We shook hands. His were callused and rough—like my father’s. At that point I had little idea how much the two of us would be tested or how strong our bond would become.
24
Combat Casual
I have not been at the front, I have been in front of it.
WILFRED OWEN, I9I7
SOME NIGHTS I COULD ALMOST TASTE HOME. WITH my headphones on and eyes shut, I was driving a brand-new Corvette down a perfectly flat stretch of freeway at eighty miles an hour. Often, my fantasies were culinary flashbacks. I could just taste lobster and drawn butter from the seafood buffets I used to go to with my father at the Nordic Lodge. Then there were all those Oxford meals—venison in a juniper reduction, a late-night snack with Matt and Hayden at Hassan’s Kebabs, or the mounds of fresh pasta I ate with Meena at Gino’s by the bus station. It was possible to spend forty-five minutes dreaming just about the one-pound Ranger Burger at the Four Winds Restaurant near Fort Benning. I could barely fit my hands around it. Sipping on a nonalcoholic can of beer in Gardez, I would perform imaginary alchemy and turn it into a large frosted mug of Sam Adams.
Each of us found a way to escape from Afghanistan. Within hours of arrival at Gardez, our tents had been transformed. As I walked down the aisle, these alcoves provided me with glimpses of my soldiers’ lives back home and their dreams for the future, often side by side. Wallet photos of girlfriends were sandwiched between pinups of Maxim models and Playboy centerfolds. Pictures of expensive Harley-Davidson motorcycles were next to photos of muscle cars they had tinkered with for years. Crucifixes and Saint Christopher medals balanced the shrines to breasts and chrome. We tacked up inspirational quotes and lucky four-leaf clovers. Next to my bed I propped up a photo album of Meena, the obituary of John Hottell III that Colonel LoFaro had given me at West Point, and a bottle of mouthwash.
Sometimes the attempt to make Afghanistan more like home created bizarre juxtapositions. Satellite television beamed in sports at the wrong time of day. In October we would watch the Red Sox-Yankees playoffs at eight o’clock in the morning while downing scrambled eggs and Afghan naan bread. We also tried bringing our sports to Afghanistan. We rigged volleyball and Ping-Pong nets from military-issue nylon cord. We played football in body armor in order to build our stamina with the extra twenty pounds of weight. Running presented a particular problem because of snipers hidden in the two hills closest to the base, forcing us to run within the Hesco barriers. The laps were short enough that we had to alternate directions in order to keep our legs from developing asymmetrically. To spice up the exercise regime, I organized a volleyball tournament complete with a boom box and nonalcoholic beer. There wasn’t a beach for a thousand miles, but we conjured one out of thin air. The constant verbal communication on the court built a valuable tactical habit. In combat, bump, set, and spike became distance, direction, and rate of fire.
Although many modern conveniences were available—hot food, a “gym,” air-conditioning, satellite television—we had our share of minor privations. No one was going to mistake Gardez for Watertown, New York. Before we left Fort Drum, one comedian who had deployed to Afghanistan earlier posted instructions
on how to prepare:
1. Renovate your bathroom. Hang a green plastic sheet from the middle of the bathtub and keep 4 inches of soapy, cold water on the floor. When you take showers, wear flip-flops and keep the lights off.
2. Keep a roll of toilet paper on your nightstand and bring it to the bathroom with you. And bring a gun and a flashlight as well.
3. Cut a hole in your vacuum bag and every morning run the vacuum through your house.
4. First thing in the morning, make everyone in your family brief what he or she did yesterday. At the end of the day, make everyone brief what he or she did during the day. Do this every day—seven days a week.
5. Go to the worst crime-infested place you can find wearing a flak jacket and Kevlar helmet. Set up shop in a tent in a vacant lot. Announce to the residents that you’re there to help them.
The Unforgiving Minute: A Soldier's Education Page 26