by Sandra Lee
US engineers had built a line of offices with demountable walls lengthways down both sides of the hangar, and the yawning belly of the edifice was given over to sleeping accommodation for some of the US soldiers. Parts of the hangar looked like an old-fashioned dormitory with bunk after bunk lined up in neat rows, and footlockers and rucksacks tucked at the end of the beds.
A chow line was set up across the narrow end at the back of the hangar. Later, the base was lined with rows of tents to accommodate the growing number of soldiers who arrived in the country, and while some blokes had stretched modesty screens around their personal patch, they were useless when it came to blocking out the noise and stench of grown men snoring, belching and farting.
The Americans’ Task Force Dagger had hooked their own tent at one end of the hangar about a dozen metres away from the Aussie SAS Regiment, who had in the meantime arrived, and their Regimental Aid Post, which would eventually house the regiment’s doctors and medical equipment. A US intelligence tent was tacked on to the 10th Mountain’s HQ, and all were interconnected with a series of flapping canvas doors. The Australian tent paled in comparison to the air-conditioned tents employed by the Americans, who eventually took pity on their antipodean compatriots and lent some supplies. To Jock the US tents were flash, but there were some things he was not willing to compromise over, not even in a war and not even when it was bloody freezing outside.
‘They were swish until you realise that none of the smell comes out,’ Jock says now, laughing at the memory. ‘I refused to sleep in them — I’d sleep outside and have fresh air. I found the cold weather clothing was sufficient to keep me warm; even still I’d rather be a couple of degrees colder than live in that stench. It reeked.’
Towards the end of February, Lieutenant Colonel Tink dispatched Jock and Clint to the 10th Mountain Division’s headquarters. They were tasked as the SAS’s liaison officers with Lieutenant Colonel LaCamera’s 1-87 in Operation Anaconda, and would be bunking in with them, getting to know the way they did business.
‘We were introduced to everyone there,’ Jock recalls. ‘They made us welcome. [They were] running around doing their battle plans and battle preps and we were going to all their briefings et cetera, between theirs and [Colonel] Wiercinski’s HQ. The next couple of days involved a lot of briefings and liaison with them — just keeping abreast of the situation and getting my equipment ready and making the necessary changes as they came up.’
Jock Wallace has an innate bullshit detector. He knows how to read people and, while not one to condemn a man or woman on first impressions, for Jock they do count. The 10th Mountain’s Command Sergeant Major Frank Grippe took Clint and Jock under his charge and the chook instantly sized him up. He’s a no-nonsense straight talker, Jock thought. Jock never found Grippe wanting. Not that Grippe would have cared. He was there to do a job — capture or kill al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden the knucklehead, as Grippe called him — he wasn’t interested in winning popularity contests.
‘He’s a big bastard, got the normal [GI] haircut and he’s starting to be a silverback — it’s grey and short and cropped,’ Jock says, recalling the first time he met Grippe at Bagram. ‘Pitted complexion, but also weatherbeaten. He had done some hard yards, you could see it in his eyes, you could see it in his body and the way he carried himself. He’s a big, loud man, when he speaks he’s got this booming voice.’
Grippe instantly dubbed Jock ‘Digger’ and in doing so acknowledged both the Australian tradition of handing out nicknames and the nation’s proud military history. And he clicked with Clint, who held the same rank in the Australian Army.
‘Just the fact that Grippe, the senior sergeant major, was showing us around and giving us the intros meant that we were made men,’ Jock recalls.
Jock felt confident with Grippe, and his instincts were confirmed by the way the men from Charlie Company treated their command sergeant major with genuine respect and admiration. They jumped up and gave a strong and good-natured greeting of ‘Sar-Major’ when Grippe went by on his introductory tour, chest out, head high, arms swinging purposefully.
They’re not just pissing in his pocket, Jock thought, as Grippe cut a swathe through the 10th Mountain’s HQ.
The men looked to Grippe for guidance, courage and leadership, and he never let them down when it came to that holy triumvirate.
‘I was a digger, but I was an Aussie; the American diggers had to have the compulsory respect for officers. I’d call Frank Grippe “Sir”, but I was saying that out of respect, not out of obligation. He’s the RSM [regimental sergeant major, the Australian equivalent to Grippe’s rank of command sergeant major]. He’s a real one, not a wanker one; not one who had done the courses but hadn’t really understood the ideology or the concept of the position.
‘The RSM position is all about being a soldier’s soldier. In the soldiering skills department, he is the benchmark. And if you have an RSM who is not displaying the skills or applying them in his own bearing and demeanour and approach, then it’s obvious. And it’s also obvious when you’ve got one who does, and Grippe is that one, the one who does have the skills.’
For his part, Grippe was equally pleased to have Clint and Jock working with his unit. Not only did the American have a British mother, he also had relatives living in Australia, which gave him a natural affinity for the Commonwealth and Aussies. And being a former Special Forces man himself, he appreciated the incredible skills of the Australian Special Air Service Regiment. It was, after all, among the best in the SF global community.
‘It was great having them on board, they lent a different view, and Clint’s a hoot. And young Digger? I had a good time talking to him. They are both extraordinary gentlemen,’ Grippe says now. ‘And because of my background in SOF [Special Operations Forces] I knew what they had been through, training-wise and indoctrination-wise, and so we thought alike quite a bit. And we all wanted to get in the fight and hunt down al Qaeda. They just lent another capability to my battalion to — bottom line — fight and kill al Qaeda.
‘And, of course, because of their background I just had an immediate respect and an immediate calm because I just knew that … when the chips were down, those two guys would fight.’
Jock Wallace was happy to be working with the 10th Mountain for another reason. The Americans prided themselves on their generosity and hospitality, and the American population was well behind their troops fighting terrorism in far-off lands, sending succour and support with care packages loaded with sweet offerings. Jock was bemused but at the same time pleased to be sharing in the Americans’ booty. He got to a point where he didn’t think it would be too outrageous to expect a chocolate on the pillow each night. Hell, the hard hitters from the 5th Special Forces Group had even dubbed their accommodation Motel 6.
‘They’d try and give you anything they had. The Americans were very hospitable,’ says Jock. ‘We [Jock and Clint] had our own bedroom. The Americans had heaps of lollies sent over by the American population. It wasn’t like “Homer Simpson land of chocolates”, but they had lollies. There were also walls full of care letters.
‘It was significant. And it kept your focus and kept your mind on the job. You also knew the Australian population would be backing you — with the exception of people with an ideological disagreement with it. But by and large, even those people would wish success for the Australian team, I imagine.’
No soldier who had ever been deployed on a mission — whether to a war zone or for peacekeeping purposes — could help but feel the sting of public opprobrium when, and if, it came. Soldiers don’t play politics. They follow orders and fight wars. Jock, like thousands of volunteers who had enlisted in the Australian Defence Force, remembered through gritted teeth the hell the Vietnam veterans endured when they returned home to Australia, decried and vilified in the most vicious way imaginable. The memory of that appalling treatment was like a festering sore for all the men and women willing to put their lives on the line for their country
.
‘The reason we are there is the politicians,’ Jock says. ‘Like when the Vietnam vets came home — why did people throw eggs at them? Throw them at the politicians, throw them at Parliament House, throw them at yourself because you voted them in.’
Ever since bunking in with the 10th Mountain, Jock and Clint had been working on their mission, getting to know the men they would be going into battle with. As D-Day approached, the US soldiers began focusing explicitly on the job ahead, going over their individual and collective objectives in the Shahi Kot Valley, staging the rehearsal, and checking their equipment. Jock visited his mates Ando and Simon, prepped his sigs equipment and sorted all his high-tech gear. He was as good to go as he had been at any other time in his life.
On the eve of Operation Anaconda, outside tent city not far from the huge rusting aircraft hangar in the middle of Bagram Air Base, a solid hulk of a man in battle fatigues climbed on top of a Humvee military jeep to the approving roar of several hundred soldiers. The troops formed the international operation charged with eliminating al Qaeda and the remnants of the oppressive Taliban regime hiding in the Shahi Kot Valley.
The man on the Humvee was Colonel Frank Wiercinski, the commander of the 3rd Brigade, 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) and chief of US ground forces for Operation Anaconda. The only airborne infantry division in the US Army, they were known as the Rakkasans, a term that came from World War II when the 3rd Battalion, 187th Infantry Regiment — now part of the 101st Airborne Division — parachuted into Japan. The Japanese dubbed the brave parachutists the Rakkasans which translates, literally, as ‘falling umbrellas’.
Standing taller than 180 centimetres and with a booming voice, the career officer was the type of man who instantly commanded attention. As soon as he opened his mouth, the troops fell silent.
‘It’s Friday night and everybody here has been invited to the party. Hoo-ah!’ Wiercinski roared, grinning from ear to ear as his rallying cry was met with cheers from the troops.
‘I’m gonna get serious with you for a minute. Everyone of our generation has been called to do something for his country. We are no different. We have been called on to fight the war on terrorism. You are part of that fight,’ boomed Wiercinski, his pistol strapped to his thigh over his camouflage pants, a pumped-up picture of raging testosterone and manliness.
‘Every man, every woman has some defining moments in their lives. Today is one of your defining moments. You will never forget this … You are representing your country.
‘A lot of us have two questions always going through our minds: Why? How will I do?
‘As for why, each and every one of you has to answer that for yourself. For me it’s 9/11, for those families that watched as their loved ones never came home. For those firefighters, emergency workers and policemen who charged up rather than came down. It’s for them. We do this for them.’
Jock Wallace stood to the side of the action, his fists shoved deep in his pockets, his army-issue GORE-TEX cold-weather gear protecting him against the freezing conditions, listening intently to Wiercinski. Winter should have been thawing out, at least according to the calendar, but the temperatures at Bagram still plunged way below zero. Nothing could prevent the bone-chilling cold that came with the location: Bagram was 1770 metres above sea level in the middle of the breathtaking Panjir Valley on the Shomali Plains in north central Afghanistan. Winters were brutal; summers, too.
Jock cast a look around at his fellow soldiers, their rapt attention lasered onto the commander. He’d never experienced anything quite like Wiercinski’s rallying cry or the impact it had on the soldiers who had gathered to hear it. The anticipation and excitement were palpable. The adrenaline was pumping; the atmosphere was supercharged.
Jock laughed to himself. Fuckin’ Americans, what a show.
It was not the way the Australian Defence Force did business.
‘It’s a mass psych-up. It’s a method of building your energy and getting the fervour going, but I didn’t need the fervour, I was there for a reason,’ Jock says now. ‘I didn’t need to wind myself up, I’m there cold and hot, you know what I mean? They are trying to incite passion and instil strength and resolve. You shouldn’t be there if it ain’t there. That’s just my perspective. And, in essence, if other people need that gee up, I’m glad they got it.’
Jock thought the most significant part of Wiercinski’s rallying cry was that the big boss had taken the time to address the workers. Though he found the colonel’s speech entertaining and distracting at the same time, he appreciated the symbolism.
Wiercinski, totemic on the Humvee, was on a roll, his voice rising to a crescendo as he came to the second question.
‘How will you do in combat?’ he thundered. ‘You are thinking you’ve never been in combat — “I don’t know how I will do.” You will be good in combat because of a lot of reasons. The first one is because of who you are. You volunteered. It started in here,’ Wiercinski said, tapping a closed fist to his chest over his heart.
‘That’s what makes you good in combat. You are the best in the world — you will do it for each other. And you will watch each other. We have two missions tonight. One is to defeat an enemy and [the other] is to never leave a fallen comrade.’
‘Hoo-ah!’ the soldiers chanted in agreement.
Never leave a fallen comrade was part of their code. They lived by it, swore by it and upholding it was the difference between honouring the Army and dishonouring the uniform and yourself.
‘There are two kinds of people out there,’ Wiercinski said. ‘There’s innocents who don’t want any part of this fight. And there are those out there who want nothing better than to kill an American or kill a coalition fighter. Do not be afraid to squeeze that trigger. You will know when and you will know why. Take care of one another. Take care of all of us. I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else in the world today but right here with you.
‘Today is your climb to glory. Today is another chapter in Rakkasan history. Today is our rendezvous with destiny. You all be proud of yourselves. God bless each and every one of us. See you when you come back.’
Wiercinski paused and panned the expectant faces before him — so young and vital. A career officer and veteran of the first Gulf War, Wiercinski knew what was ahead — he had all the intelligence reports and he was going in with his men in just a few hours’ time. Jock knew the colonel’s message had to matter to them.
The troops were waiting. Wiercinski rose to the occasion.
‘Remember our motto,’ he thundered. ‘Let Valor Not Fail.’
‘Hoo-ah!’ came the chorus from the troops.
‘Rakkasan!’ Wiercinski roared back.
Their credo was no-nonsense.
They were ready to move and ready to fight.
CHAPTER THREE
Jock caught sight of the two Apache AH-64s that had taken off five minutes before the Chinooks and were escorting them in.
THE MEN FROM THE 1-87’S Charlie Company were all bombed up, gunned up and ready to roar. They’d been sitting in the dark in their chalk positions for more than an hour, and were waiting for the three Chinook pilots to finish their ear-splitting tests on the new 714 engines that lifted the massive airframes. The flight was scheduled to take off around 5am local time. Three more Chinooks would fly in the 100-plus soldiers from the 101st Airborne.
An NCO held the flight manifest for the six choppers and the roll call of volunteer soldiers began in flight order. As each soldier’s name was bellowed over the increasing din of the rotor-blades, he grabbed his pack and weapons and walked silently through the darkness to the back of the waiting helos. Jock, Clint and another 40 troops from the 1-87 were on Chalk One, as the helicopter was called, for the flight in. Jock was happy to see Sergeant Major Frank Grippe and the sar-major’s boss, Lieutenant Colonel Paul LaCamera, on their helo.
The bellies of Chalks Two and Three would also each have about 35 troops crammed in, sitting shoulder to shoulder, some wit
h their backs to the wall and their legs around their loaded weapons, properly positioned with barrel pointing down, as per the safety drills that had been drummed into the soldiers in the unlikely event of accidental discharge. A handful of unlucky bastards, including some of the men from Sergeant Peterson’s mortar platoon, sat on the floor in the middle, tucked around the 120mm mortar and SKEDCOs on which the ordnance was packed in wooden boxes. No seat offered a first-class ride, but in the middle with nothing to rest your back against, it was particularly rough.
Jock was one of the first up. His in-flight position landed him a few metres behind the pilots. He would have preferred to be at the rear of the helo for one good reason — last on, first off. Helicopters with a full load of combat-ready troops heading to a war zone instantly become HVTs — and the longer a soldier is on one, the longer he’s a target.
The only advantage of being up the front was that some soldiers had a view of the FLIR screen. The nose of the chopper is fitted with a forward-looking infrared camera, a piece of high-tech equipment that senses heat emissions and sends the data to a video screen between the two pilots where it is converted into a moving map. Heat-emitting objects such as engines, recently fired weapons, small homes with heating, villagers and enemy combatants are easily detected by the highly effective and powerful infrared camera. Nothing escapes.
The FLIR was a crucial piece of technology and more so this morning, given the extensive cloud coverage and low visibility. Other than possibly watching a few of the younger and more nervous battle-green troops hurling last night’s dinner into their helmets with each pitch and roll as the Chinook tore through the darkness like a roller coaster, there was no in-flight entertainment. A bit like flying in a Third World country’s ancient plane, Jock thought with a chuckle. No entertainment, no food, cramped conditions.