In modern history, Ghazni’s fame derived from its role in the Anglo-Afghan wars in the nineteenth century. The impressive fortress on which we stood had blocked the British from advancing on the capital city of Kabul. Its tall ramparts and deep moat looked impregnable; a frontal assault would have been suicidal. Fortunately for the British, a captured Afghan revealed a weakly defended portal on the Kabul side of the citadel. Under cover of night, British sappers destroyed the gate with explosives, and the British fought a pitched battle inside the walls, eventually defeating the Afghan garrison. The hand-to-hand fight at night must have been a gory affair, soaking the dusty ground with blood.
After hearing about Ghazni’s fall, the ruler of Afghanistan, Dost Mohammad, asked for surrender terms and later fled into the mountains. Thereafter, the British installed a puppet whose reign was short-lived. As soon as the British troops left Kabul, he was assassinated. Other weak rulers came and went, and civil war plagued Afghanistan through much of the twentieth century. The Soviet tank I stood on was a clear symbol of the tragedy that most living Afghans had endured. It was also, however, a point of Afghan pride. Barely an outline of the Soviet red star remained. I kicked it with my boot, and a few flecks of paint chipped off and settled in the surrounding dust. An echo reverberated inside the tank, hollow and impotent.
We made one last stop, at the tomb of Sultan Mahmud. It was an unpretentious building, cool and refreshing inside. The sarcophagus was carved of a solid block of Afghan marble. The walls featured stunning calligraphy chiseled in marble panels. It was a simple, beautiful tomb for a complicated and violent man.
As we drove away from the tomb, the twelfth-century towers shrunk behind us. The pair had survived countless invasions, insurrections, and earthquakes but still stood tall. Their endurance spoke to something in the Afghan character that was different from our own. Afghans say Americans have all the watches but they have all the time.
27
Out of the Frying Pan
Front Towards Enemy.
MI8AI CLAYMORE MINE INSTRUCTIONS
I WAS EAGER FOR OUR PLANNED MOVE TO THE BATTALION headquarters at Orgun, a relatively safe location in the neighboring province. A change of scenery would be good for everyone in the platoon, including me. After dinner I made my way over to the operations center for our routine evening teleconference with Captain Worthan. With pen and paper in hand, I looked forward to more details about the move there.
In his typical Iowa deadpan, Worthan was abrupt: “Change of plans. We’re heading to Shkin. Taking over from Charlie Company.”
“When?”
“Two weeks. Practice ambushes. Work on marksmanship. Bring every bullet.”
“Roger.”
“When you get to Shkin, your platoon’s getting another soldier, Private O’Neill. He’s good.”
“Roger, sir.” O’Neill’s name was familiar. He had been one of only a handful of soldiers in the company to earn the Expert Infantryman Badge during our training that winter. I put the handset down and turned to Story.
“I guess we won’t be finishing that volleyball tournament,” he joked.
“Guess not. I had better tell the men. Get ’em together in the tent in fifteen minutes.”
“Roger, sir.” Story walked out of the room and across the gravel to the chow hall.
I found a seat in the orchard and processed the new information. Captain Worthan’s admonition to “bring every bullet” underlined the conditions at Shkin. The epicenter of insurgent violence in Afghanistan, Shkin’s reputation was infamous. Just miles from the border with Pakistan, recent clashes had prompted the American military spokesman, Rodney Davis, to declare Shkin the “evilest place in Afghanistan.”
My men crowded inside a large tent. I squeezed past Sergeant Huber’s large frame and maneuvered to the center of the tent. I envied my soldiers’ nonchalance as several skimmed three-month-old Playboy magazines. Up until now our combat activity had been restricted to chasing rocket launchers and patrolling uncertain roads. Although nerve-racking enough, we hadn’t yet had a single instance of direct fire contact. This would surely change in Shkin.
I had planned to deliver a rousing speech to embolden my men. In my mind I had stitched together inspiring lines from Shakespeare’s Henry V with gung ho slogans from Apocalypse Now. I imagined standing on an ammo crate with my arms on my hips and a cigar clamped loosely in the corner of my mouth. Instead, the inside of my mouth was like sawdust, and I panicked with the realization that somebody else’s words wouldn’t work. Where was my war face now?
“Can everyone hear?”
Nods of assent.
“Our company is going to relieve Charlie Company.”
Barely audible mumbles.
“We’re going to Shkin.”
You could have heard a grenade pin fall on the floor. In the past month two snipers had been shot and killed in Shkin. A senior platoon sergeant had lost his leg. Another scout had been wounded seriously enough to return home to Fort Drum. The operations center had burned down after an unusually accurate barrage of rockets struck a munitions bunker. We were heading into the lion’s den.
EVERYONE IN THE PLATOON digested the news differently. McGurk, my senior squad leader, approached the situation as seriously and professionally as every other mission, but with more urgency. He had friends in the New York City police and fire departments. For him this was an opportunity to do what they couldn’t do—take the fight to al-Qaeda. On the other hand, I was ready to prescribe medications for Chuck, my hygienically challenged former Marine and second squad leader. He was more frenetic than ever, pinging me with endless questions about Shkin. My challenge for him and his squad was to ration that energy so there would be reserves when the luster of combat wore off. Grenz, in addition to being a crack shot, was stoic, intelligent, and mature. I could count on him. As a team leader in McGurk’s squad, he would be on point for the platoon, at the front of our column. His sober expression belied his twenty-four years. I was sure Story would put O’Neill, the new guy, in Grenz’s fire team.
I took my cue from Story. He didn’t talk much about his experiences fighting through Kuwait with the Marines in Desert Storm, but his appetite for glory seemed tempered by whatever ghosts still followed him. After propping his boot up on the desk across from my cot and planting another plug of Redman chew in his cheek, he took the news in perfect stride, as if the forces of fate had already predetermined our move to Shkin.
“Worrying never solved nothing, sir.”
How did he know I was worried?
“What we can do, you and I, we’ve got to improve our marksmanship. We’ve got to be able to beat these fuckers on their own terrain.”
He struck the perfect balance between motivational bravado and professionalism. He was already focusing on the fine-tuning the platoon needed in the little time remaining. His composure certainly helped set an example for me as I obscured my fears behind a façade of confidence.
The younger privates had more diverse reactions. Some were genuinely excited. Red and Markam boasted about the damage they would do to al-Qaeda, talking trash as if they were heading into the state football championships rather than a hostile battlefield where soldiers their age had just been killed. Howe said nothing, focusing instead on making sure, as he did every night, that all our radios were loaded with the correct frequencies. I wondered how his new bride would react to the news. She had only just told Howe she was pregnant. Others retreated into their journals and letters, perhaps banishing their fears to paper rather than having their comrades witness their insecurity.
They were a motley crew, but they were my motley crew. Since starting with them in Fort Drum, we had spent eight months training and patrolling together. I knew my sergeants’ strengths and weaknesses. I knew who would respond to open-ended missions with ingenuity and who needed more specific guidance. I understood which soldiers were ready to step up into leadership roles and which soldiers needed more seasoning. I knew their fina
nces, their families, and their faiths. Most important, I knew how to balance those interpersonal dynamics and build a team that would, I hoped, follow me into a wall of fire without a moment’s hesitation.
My part of the contract, the responsibility that came with the privilege of leadership, was never to spend their lives cheaply. I carried the weight of that responsibility on every patrol, yet unlike a rucksack or a Kevlar helmet, I could never slip it off when we came back inside the wire. It was there when I woke up at midnight to check how they were faring in their lonely guard towers. It was there when I walked through their tent that night and when I returned to my cot for a night of restless sleep, turning every hour on a narrow cot. This was the price of a salute.
28
Hit the Ground Running
If you’re going through Hell, keep going.
WINSTON CHURCHILL
EARLY IN THE MORNING ON SEPTEMBER 26 WE BOARDED our Chinook helicopter. As its twin rotors washed hot air and dust over the platoon, we scurried across the tarmac. The rotor blades whirred yards above the tallest soldier. Nonetheless, we hunched over to avoid an imagined and entirely implausible decapitation. We labored to fit the extra ammunition that Captain Worthan had requested along with our heavy rucksacks. It had been more than two months since my last helicopter trip, and I looked forward to a similar scenic flight over eastern Afghanistan’s stunning peaks.
Instead, the pilot flew a gut-wrenching roller-coaster ride a hundred feet off the deck. The great irony of helicopters is that they are safer flying close to the ground. To an insurgent on the ground aiming a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG), the low-flying helicopter presents a faster-moving and, hence, more difficult target. Our helicopter pilot, presumably knowledgeable about the Soviet experience with Stinger-toting mujahideen, hugged the corrugated terrain as closely as aeronautically possible. The technique is called “Nap of the Earth.” It has absolutely nothing to do with sleeping.
My stomach dropped from my throat as we touched down at Shkin Firebase. Technically, Shkin was a Forward Operating Base. To the two hundred or so soldiers garrisoned there in 2003, it was a “firebase”—a term lifted from Vietnam. The word conjured up an outpost in hostile territory where soldiers returned from long, dangerous patrols and the night was punctuated with enemy artillery salvos and triggered perimeter flares. The dusty fort where we landed was definitely a firebase, as demonstrated by our evasive landing pattern and the proximity of Pakistan’s jagged peaks only a stone’s throw (or mortar’s range) away from our landing zone.
WE HIT THE GROUND and immediately began running. It would be three days before I caught my breath. Captain Worthan was by the landing zone to meet us.
“We had a rocket attack this morning. I’m sending you on patrol in two hours to find the spotter who has been calling in corrections as the rounds land.”
So much for small talk. As he escorted me around the firebase, Worthan filled me in on the current situation and the base defense plan. Intelligence indicated that the enemy’s so-called Fall Offensive had begun in earnest and would last another ten days. Attacks against the firebase had accelerated, with rocket attacks every day for the past four days. Even more chilling was Worthan’s report of an attack on the local police barracks. By the time he had arrived, all that was left were the grotesquely disfigured bodies that the Taliban had decapitated.
Major Nagl had shared only one war story with me at West Point. In the carnage of the first Gulf War, his tank platoon had discovered several dead Iraqi torture victims. Their bodies were striped in progressively darker bands of charred skin from feet to head. Each had been slowly dipped in vats of burning oil. Pure evil. That is how he had described it. He said that sight erased any residual guilt he had about destroying Iraqi tanks. Thinking of the headless corpses in the police station, I now understood what he meant.
Worthan pointed out our mortar positions and the squad there standing by for immediate reaction to incoming fire. Our flank to the south and west was a large gorge as deep as 150 feet in some places. Friendly Afghan militia stood guard along its cliffs in hardened bunkers and lookout towers. Back in his room, Captain Worthan pointed out our base’s preplanned targets. If al-Qaeda tried to assault the firebase, our mortarmen would know exactly where to hit them. My task, as Worthan repeatedly emphasized, was to internalize the targets and the perimeter contours. In Shkin, just five miles from Pakistan, I had to know the base defense plan in my gut. If attacked, I would have to react like a boxer, moving my platoon without delay in the middle of the night, under fire. This combat knowledge had to be instinctual, impervious to cognitive fallibility under stress. I observed the small map board tied around Captain Worthan’s neck and encased in Plexiglas—he didn’t trust his memory either. I jotted down a note to have Howe construct a pair for Story and me.
After walking the perimeter with the commander, I returned to the motor pool, where Story had assembled the platoon for the afternoon patrol. He had already briefed the rest of the platoon on the layout of the firebase, the enemy situation, and the operating quirks of our Humvees. Howe had programmed the radios to the appropriate frequencies, and the trucks were loaded and lined up for departure. Story had already assigned O’Neill, the newest addition to the platoon, to McGurk’s squad. He sat with the rest of the squad along the bed of the cargo Humvee, eager to start the mission.
“Welcome to Spearhead Platoon,” I said and grabbed his hand. He looked me square in the eyes. They were an unforgettable hue of ice blue, just like my brother Gary’s.
“Hooah, sir,” O’Neill responded.
“Mount up,” I shouted, and I smiled as my driver revved the engine.
“Gator Base, Gator Base. Gator 1-6 leaving the wire for probing patrol, time now.”
This was it, our first sortie from the firebase’s comforting safety out into Shkin’s treacherous backyard. We rumbled through the gate, down into the wadi on the north flank of the firebase, and crawled up onto a trail whose dust compelled us to pull out our time-tested scarves and cover our mouths. My head was on a swivel, my eyes scanning the road for potential bombs. My mouth was pasty and dry, but inside my shooting gloves, my hands were clammy with sweat. On this first patrol in Shkin, every bush hid an insurgent and every metallic click sounded to me like the initiation of an ambush. I pestered my squad leaders and the gunners to keep their ears and eyes peeled. They needed no encouragement.
“Bravo 0-1, over.” Chuck called the checkpoint precisely as he passed it. Behind us, my gunners swiveled in their rooftop perches, shouting observations down to their team leaders in the cab. The radio crackled with information passed between vehicles.
“I’ve got dead space in the wadi to my left.”
“Keep an eye on the compound on that cliff.”
By the hundredth patrol in Gardez, they had become more concerned with anticipating bumps than ambushes. Shkin sharpened our focus, maybe too much. I imagined itchy trigger fingers lighting into a goatherd with the full force of an American infantry platoon.
Fortunately, no herd emerged, and our patrol continued for another two hours before we rolled back onto the base with no new intelligence, just frayed nerves and full magazines of ammunition. The most dangerous patrols are the first and the last—the first because you are so keyed up that you’re likely to start an unprovoked fight, and the last because routine and habit have dulled your senses. For those of us who had arrived only hours before, it was a relief to have completed our virgin patrol without incident. By my estimate, we would have at least a hundred more.
MUCH LIKE OUR HOME in Gardez, the Shkin firebase centered on a traditional Afghan mud-walled compound leased from a local. Outside the compound was the airfield, the Afghan militia barracks, a few storage huts, and several guard shacks at the entry points in the wire. All included, the firebase was probably the size of five city blocks, although the central compound was only about one hundred yards across. The towers on each corner had been reinforced with sandbags, Plexiglas,
and heavy machine guns.
Soldiers reached the inner sanctum through capacious metal gates that could accommodate the extra-wide Humvees. The doors had a typically garish Afghan floral design. Inside, a signpost was planted conspicuously in the dirt. Wooden arrows pointed toward towns I had never heard of: SWARTZ CREEK, MICHIGAN—II,I76 KILOMETERS and MOULTRIE, GEORGIA—I2,373 KILOMETERS. One arrow pointed straight down: HELL—0 KILOMETERS.
I lumbered through the compound, across the packed gravel, to the operations center. The nerve center of our military operations along the border hummed with sophisticated communications gear. Icons flashed on impressive panel displays. The equipment was eight centuries more advanced than its home in a squat mud-walled room. Imagine putting the NASA mission control center inside a cave.
The Unforgiving Minute: A Soldier's Education Page 29