Victory Point

by Ed Darack

  With so many exhausted, battle-weary troops moving through such extreme terrain in the summer heat, the environment was destined to claim a victim. “Marine down!” one of the grunts yelled in the middle of the afternoon as a lance corporal slipped off a cliff edge and landed on his back after falling over thirty feet—his pack absorbing much of the force of the fall. With sharp jabbing pains in his spine, the Marine nevertheless continued to press on—but after an hour he couldn’t take any more. A corpsman who took a look at his condition surmised that he’d probably fractured a vertebra. The Dustoffs once again jumped into action, pulling him off to Bagram, where doctors determined that indeed, he had broken his back.

  The southward movement proved to be the most difficult yet for the Fox Marines during Whalers. By early in the evening on the seventeenth, exhaustion and heat-induced dehydration actually caused many of the grunts to begin hallucinating. Even the stalwart Crisp felt as if his feet were shredding and joints grinding during the push. And despite moving toward the opening of the Chowkay, the Marines didn’t descend in altitude much as they pushed along the high ridge. By four o’clock in the morning of the eighteenth, as an AC-130 gunship orbited overhead scanning the area for enemy activity, the grunts bedded down for a few hours.

  “We’re never gonna make it outta here, man!” Konnie overheard one of his Marines breaking down as the column moved into a steep draw above Amrey village, their conduit between the high ridge they’d traversed and their extract point. “Nobody knows where we’re goin’—no sleep in days—hot as hell itself, even at night!”

  “We’re making it out of here just fine. So shut the fuck up,” Konnie said. “We know right where we’re going.”

  “Roger . . . sir.” In fact, during the brief rest early that morning, Grissom scouted ahead, locating a direct line into Amrey and the extract point—a very direct line. Often sliding down rock slabs and clinging to tree limbs as they choked on dust and the heat of the day, the grunts walked and skidded down a steep draw, funneling them into Amrey. But as their rate of descent picked up, so did the ICOM chatter. By the time they reached the extract point—just before noon—the ICOMs were blaring constantly with enemy voices trying to coordinate yet another attack. And when the grunts stepped off the steep slope of the rocky draw onto the level ground of the village, they couldn’t find a soul: the town was deserted, an ominous sign.

  “We made it,” Grissom stated to Crisp and Konstant. “Whiskey’s highbacks and hardbacks will be here shortly.”

  “We got a lot of awards to write up,” Konnie remarked as he gazed at the completely spent grunts—too exhausted even to express relief. Out of water, they sliced off the tops of their water bottles and scooped water from muddy puddles left from recent rainfall, then collapsed against their backpacks. The sheer physical challenges posed by the Chowkay and the grip of combat would leave indelible marks on every one of them.

  “We ain’t out yet,” Crisp remarked to the resting grunts. “Stay alert. Don’t get yo’ asses killed!”

  “Sir.” Jimmy approached Konnie. “Now they’re saying that they want to organize the people of the villages below Amrey to fight you. They are going to a mosque in the lower valley to announce it to everyone.”

  “Great. Just what I wanted to hear, Jimmy.”

  Just then a convoy of Whiskey Company’s Humvees rolled up to the village. Fox-3 and half of Middendorf’s mortar team were loaded into five highbacks, with Whiskey’s command element in the lead vehicle. As the sound of engines faded, Konnie and Grissom spotted two enemy, each with an AK-47 and one with an ICOM, on a ridgeline high above them. Both officers immediately fired, causing the two to flee. Regardless of their exhaustion, the brief encounter reminded all the Marines to stay alert. As that first convoy rolled out of the village, every one of the grunts kept his eyes on the ridges above and surrounding them, and their weapons at the ready. A small caravan of Toyota Hiluxes had also arrived, and carted away the Afghan soldiers, leaving just Fox-1, with Pigeon, Middendorf, and Grissom, whom Whiskey would pick up on their next turn. High above the Chowkay, two A-10s arrived and checked in with Pigeon. Also showing up for the extract, an RQ-1 Predator UAV—rare in that area of operation—buzzed above the grunts with feed beamed via satellite to a host of commands, including CENTCOM, Task Force Devil, CJTF-76, and the JAF COC, where Rob Scott watched “from above” as the Marines coursed down the steep road to lower ground.

  Riding in the first highback directly behind the lead vehicle in the convoy, Konnie kept a sharp eye out for activity on the ridgelines as Amrey disappeared behind a bend in the road. But while the Marines had been descending to the village, some of Shah’s last surviving men had worked to collect a handful of local men in the lower Chowkay, nonfighters to whom the militants gave AK-47s and instructed them to shoot at the infidel outsiders; their intention was to inflict whatever damage they could in a final act of desperation. Staring at the black-and-white “pred feed” flickering before him, Rob Scott noticed movement about one hundred meters from the opposite side of a blind turn the convoy was about to round. “Guy’s got an RPG!” the XO yelled at the sight of one of the enemy preparing to strike at the convoy. Rob furiously tried to raise the convoy—but the lead vehicle’s radio had gone down. The XO, completely helpless to stop what he was sure would turn into a bloodbath, stared in horror as the terrorist rose from behind a rock and aimed the launcher in the direction of the blind turn.

  The fighter tracked the lead Humvee as it rounded the bend, preparing to shoot, but then the next Humvee, the highback carrying Konnie, Crisp, and eight other Fox-3 Marines, emerged, presenting a much bigger target. Put-sheeew! “MISS, YOU BASTARD!” the XO roared at the video screen. By the time the Marines in the highback heard the echoing boom of the launch, the high-explosive round—capable of penetrating almost a foot of solid steel armor with a stream of molten metal—had self-armed and was just a few tens of meters from the hardback. Konnie saw the round just before it hit his window—about eight inches from the lieutenant’s helmet—his head spinning toward it out of surprise. Then the round connected with the plate glass with a deafening clack! Rob Scott lunged toward the screen—it had hit the Humvee dead-on. “It didn’t go off. It didn’t go off!” he uttered in relief as the dud round bounced off the truck into the mountainside. Now alerted to the opening of an ambush, the Marines in the highbacks immediately locked onto the shooter, as other attackers emerged from hides above the road, and put a barrage of rounds into him, instantly killing yet another of Shah’s men.

  The ensuing ambush sounded as if hundreds of fighters had opened up on the convoy at once, every burst of gunfire echoing repeatedly throughout the canyon walls. Only a few rounds actually impacted the highbacks of the convoy; however, one of them ricocheted off the vehicle’s steel plate armor and chipped the tooth and tore the lip of one of the combat engineers, Lance Corporal Ken Boyd; in addition, a nearby RPG explosion sent shrapnel into the right shoulder of Sergeant Andres Torres, one of the scout/snipers. But the enemy, disorganized and inaccurate in their shooting skills, probably numbered no more than twenty, with actual members of Shah’s cell manning the RPGs. One of the latter had already been taken out, and another, quickly spotted by an A-10 pilot working with Pigeon, saw his career as a terrorist end in a blaze of high-explosive 30 mm rounds at the top of a nearby ridge. But before he’d taken his last breaths, his RPG knocked out a narrow, precariously built-up portion of the Amrey Road, thereby effectively sealing off Grissom, Pigeon, Middendorf, and the Marines of Fox-1 from Humvee extract.

  As the voice of one of Shah’s men boomed from a nearby mosque, attempting to incite the locals to take up arms against the Marines—and as Shah lay in a dirty, makeshift “hospital” somewhere outside of Peshawar, the once up-and-coming ‘Taliban commander’ not even able to stand on his own feet—the convoy carrying Fox-3 emerged from the Chowkay Valley into the Kunar Valley, occasionally taking sporadic AK-47 fire along the way, to which the Marines immediately
replied with a tsunami of M240 as well as M16 and SAW bursts. Meanwhile, back at Amrey, Grissom, Pigeon, Middendorf, and Fox-1 awaited their convoy. But learning of the destroyed road—impassable to Humvees—and hearing an increasing volume of ICOM chatter, the four reasoned that they should just stack their nonessential gear on the side of the road, throw thermite incendiary grenades on the pile, then sprint to the awaiting Humvees at the RPG-created roadblock—a recourse to be taken only in the most dire of situations. As they pondered their options, though, a Toyota Hilux, stuffed with fifteen men, suddenly rounded the corner before them. Reasoning that they were locals the last of Shah’s men had incited to attack the Marines, Grissom fired a warning shot their way. They immediately turned tail and ran— prompting a torrid rage of ICOM chatter, the new on-site “commander” furious that the locals didn’t proceed with an attack on the infidels.

  Isolated by a long stretch of roadway and out of food and water, the Marines realized that their only option was to hightail it down the road—for five kilometers—and meet up with Whiskey Company’s second convoy when they arrived. The situation seemed so dire, with ICOM chatter indicating that the enemy was massing, that at one point they considered resorting to hand-to-hand combat. Then four Hiluxes appeared from down valley, speeding toward the Marines.

  “Another attack?” Geise wondered aloud.

  “They’re empty—just drivers,” Middendorf responded.

  “Suicide car bombs?” Grissom speculated as he raised his M16 and prepared to fire.

  Suddenly the lead Hilux stopped, its driver hopping onto the dirt of the road, holding a piece of paper in his upraised arms. Middendorf approached the fearful man—he clearly felt the gravity of the situation—then grabbed the paper. On it was written: Sir, you can use these to carry your gear as you walk out, signed—Todd Lohstreter. The battalion’s assistant logistics officer had saved the day.

  “Forget using them to carry our gear while we walk—they’ll carry our gear and us, and get us out of here.” The Marines piled into the trucks—completely overloading them, with some grunts clinging to the vehicles’ bumpers as others, including Middendorf, locked arms with the hangers-on to keep them from flying off—which then began to move. But the second vehicle, with Lieutenant Geise in the front passenger seat, slowed to a crawl, as the driver worried about damaging the truck’s suspension.

  “Tell him to fuckin’ haul ass, Geise!” Middendorf barked over the radio.

  “He won’t move!”

  “Then you drive. Or better yet, make him think that you’re gonna shoot him if he doesn’t drive.” Geise, pointing to the upper ridges, mimicked an explosion with his hands, took a deep breath, and roared, “VROOOM!” Then he pointed to the gas pedal and slapped the side of his M16. The driver got the message and gunned the accelerator, racing down the road. After slowly navigating the very narrow strip of the road that remained after the RPG hit, the Hiluxes delivered the grunts and their gear to Whiskey’s awaiting Humvees. With every last Marine on the second convoy very well aware of the attack on the first caravan that left the Chowkay that day, they readied their weapons for an intense firefight—when a couple of shots rang out. As Whiskey’s Humvees navigated the sinuous road, an overwhelming return volley slammed into the bare ridge from where the enemy shots had split into the air. There were a few more potshots from above, then the enemy’s barrels went cold. It looked like Shah’s belatedly enlisted soldiers just didn’t have the conviction, or the hate, to carry on the fight against the Marines.

  The entire company consolidated in the village of Chowkay on the shores of the Kunar River, just outside of the valley’s opening. By night-fall, they were en route back to JAF in large 7-Tons. So utterly drained from the previous days’ intense travails, most nodded off, even if for just seconds at a time—a rare minute’s worth of actual sleep seeming like a full night along the bumpy, rutted road. Soon, however, the jolts and jars of the dirt road gave way to the smooth hum of asphalt, and the convoy was motoring onto the Jalalabad Bridge, crossing the Kunar River when . . . put-sheeew! The hiss of an incoming RPG round shocked the grunts awake. The night lit up above them with the grenade’s explosion, sending shrapnel into the large troop carrier. Crisp, his hand hit with burning metal, stood up—to have a PK machine-gun round drive into the side of his helmet, throwing him onto the floor of the 7-Ton. The Marines once again returned fire—at a small house from which the small attack had burst forth—silencing what would be the very last of their aggressors during Whalers.

  His “bell rung” from taking a round that missed punching through his Kevlar and instantly killing him by only an inch, Crisp wiped the blood from his right hand, and asked, “Anybody hit . . . besides me?” Staff Sergeant Kevin Walker had also been mildly injured on his hand by flying shrapnel. “You, too, Boyd?” Crisp glared at Lance Corporal Boyd, already hit once in the mouth by a bullet earlier in the day. “Where’d they get you this time?”

  “My mouth,” Boyd responded.

  “No. I said where’d you get hit this time. Your ass already got shot in the mouth earlier.”

  “My mouth,” Boyd replied.

  Crisp leaned into the lance corporal—and started laughing hysterically at the sight of the lance corporal’s bleeding lips. “Man, they shot you twice in the mouth in the same day!” Boyd laughed along with the staff sergeant—at a wound that would heal with little if any scarring. “I tell you what, probably did your ass some good. You kinda ugly anyway, so you should be happy you had your face rearranged!” Crisp joked.

  Earlier in the day, however, in the Korangal Valley, the remnants of Shah’s cell inflicted a harsh and unforgettable blow to the battalion. In the afternoon hours of the eighteenth, as Echo Company’s Second Platoon pushed out of the Korangal, a group of the cell’s men covertly set up positions above a transect of the valley about two kilometers south of its juncture with the Pech. Corporal Salvatore Cirencione, a fire-team leader in the platoon’s Third Squad, felt an ominous chill run down his spine as he spotted two young girls playing in the middle of the dirt road—completely by themselves; he couldn’t see anyone else. Then he noticed a freshly stacked pile of rocks on the side of the dirt road, and thought he eyed another about twenty-five meters in front of him . . .

  Justin Bradley, who was at an overwatch position with Echo-1’s First Squad on the steep terrain above the mouth of the Korangal, kept a close eye on the slopes looming over that spot, figuring that if an ambush were to occur, it would go down at dusk, when the combination of still-bright sky and shadowed valley gave the enemy the advantage of confusing lighting, a common tactic in the region. But Shah’s men, spotting Echo-2 passing directly beneath them from their perches about two kilometers to the south of Bradley and First Squad, didn’t wait for dusk. The breezy afternoon was shattered by the roar of the most intense ambush Bradley had ever heard just as Cirencione locked his eyes onto the second set of stacked rocks—they were ambush marks. At the focus of the ambush, twenty-two-year-old Lance Corporal Phillip George, from Pasadena, Texas, also a fire-team leader in the platoon’s Third Squad, immediately locked onto the points of origin of the fire—detecting the puffs of dust kicked up by muzzle blasts. Sending rounds directly back at the attackers, George immediately got his fire team’s eyes on the attackers’ positions from the side of the dirt road. Second Platoon’s 240 gunners, SAW gunners, and M16-laden riflemen immediately began laying down suppressive and point-target fire onto Shah’s men, perched hundreds of feet above them in the steep chasm.

  “George is hit! George is hit!” a Marine shouted. In the heat of the ambush, George disappeared from the side of the road, having been thrown five feet to a field below by the shattering impact of a PK round. But the fire grew so intense that none of the Marines near him could jump to his aid. Cirencione, however, hearing that his close friend—they’d known each other since George checked into the battalion two years prior—had been hit, tore through the field of fire to find the lance corporal. As he sprint
ed toward George’s last known position, he fired his M16 at the attackers above—but he could find no sign of George anywhere.

  “Bradley!” Kinser called. “Can you see the point of origin of the fire?” The lieutenant was located at the village of Kandagal, directly below the finger of rock on which Bradley and First Squad stood.

  “No, sir, I can’t. Too far into the valley. But I can see our guys’ tracers tracking to a number of points on the east side of the valley,” Bradley replied.

  “Bradley. Listen,” Kinser replied sharply—even more sharply than usual. “The next thing I want to hear out of you is a fire mission for these 120 tubes.”

  “Roger.” The corporal and Corporal Burgos dove into studying their map of the valley, deriving a grid for an initial volley within a minute. Two deafening cracks! echoed throughout the area as the rounds sped toward their targets. Whump! Whump! The corporal could feel the reverberations of the explosions in his chest—and could see that the first salvo had missed the target by about a hundred meters. After readjusting, the two tubes once again explosively hurled rounds toward the attackers, and this time they hit dead-on. The ambush ceased, the fighters turning their attention from assailing the Marines to saving their asses—they grabbed their weapons and began to egress. “Fire for effect,” Bradley transmitted.

  Over the next few minutes, the two 120 tubes hurled another thirty rounds onto the ambush position. The gun team would have sent more, but two A-10s checked in on station, screaming into the depths of the valley, and quickly identified the fleeing attackers. With multiple cleared-hot calls by Rashman, the Warthogs finished off the last of the ambush team, flying so low at times that the grunts of Second Platoon could see details on the pilots’ helmets as they roared through the Korangal. Meanwhile Cirencione, jumping down the side of the road where George had last been seen, found his friend. He and three corpsmen tried repeatedly to revive him, as Second Platoon commander, Lieutenant Chris Hagan, called for a Dustoff extract. But the lance corporal had died. Whalers drew to a close early in the morning hours of the nineteenth on an exhausted, somber note.