Full Battle Rattle

by Changiz Lahidji

When we finished, I turned to our TL and asked, “Should we go or not?”

  “Go where?”

  “Camp Phoenix.”

  One of my colleagues said, “Fuck it!”

  Our TL looked shaken up.

  “Yes or no?” I asked.

  “Uh … no.”

  We were still in training and had already experienced our first exposure to a real IED attack. Back at Bagram, we briefed the base commander, then I said a “thank you” to God, and thanked my mother for constantly praying for my safety. The evidence we had gathered was sent to an FBI lab in DC.

  A week later, we received our assignments. I was headed to FOB Salerno, located in the southeastern province of Khost, thirty miles south of Tora Bora and twelve miles west of the Pakistan border. Nicknamed “Rocket City” because of nightly Taliban rocket attacks, it had been established in 2002 and quickly grew to house nearly 5,000 US troops, civilians, and contractors.

  When I landed there and took a look around and saw the 5,000-foot runway and what appeared to be a small city, including a combat support hospital, large gymnasium, post exchange, chapel, large chow hall, aviation hangars, maintenance facilities, and billets, I thought the United States had lost its mind. Are we planning to stay here for 100 years? I asked myself.

  Given FOB Salerno’s geographic isolation with high mountains on the Afghan side and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan on the other, it seemed like a crazy waste of taxpayer money. I soon learned that most of the military contractors and support troops assigned there never left the base and never experienced combat. Instead, I’d see them lining up at one of the chow halls for freshly grilled steaks or at one of the gyms lifting weights. (Five years later on November 1, 2013, US forces withdrew from FOB Salerno and transferred control of the installation to the Afghan National Army.)

  Not only was the base highly vulnerable to insurgents who slipped across the border from Pakistan, but supplies had to be airlifted into the base when the roads became impassable. I worked with a forensic specialist from the FBI and five other IED specialists. We even had our own little lab.

  Every time there was an IED attack or IEDs had been discovered in the area, we’d go out as a team and inspect the site. Our team consisted of four men: two IED experts (also known as Weapons Intelligence Specialists), including myself; one Ammunition Technical Officer (ATO), or bomb disposal operator, whose job it was to defuse the bomb; and an Electronic Countermeasure (ECM) operator (aka the Bleep), whose job was to jam any radio signals that could detonate a radio-controlled IED. I was the only contractor. The others were Army guys assigned to Paladin.

  We always traveled with an infantry escort. If an attack had already taken place, we’d gather evidence, examine it in our lab, and file a report. If we had reason to suspect IEDs had been placed in a certain area, we’d park our APC at a distance away. While several Army snipers kept guard, we’d fire up our toaster-sized metal detectors (known as Vallons) and inspect the area.

  The ongoing debate among us was whether searching for the IEDs was more dangerous than disarming them. Both were extremely tense work.

  Almost all the IEDs we found were of the pressure-plate variety, built around two strips of metal that were held slightly apart. Simple household wires attached to each strip ran to a set of domestic batteries. The wires were also connected to a detonator placed in the main explosive charge, usually housed in a cooking container. Once the pressure of a soldier’s foot or a vehicle’s tire pressed the two plates together, a circuit would form to activate the detonator and trigger an explosion.

  Once we defused a bomb, we’d take it back to our lab and get to work analyzing its components and trying to discover the signatures of specific bomb makers. All of this went into a database that served to link members of a specific IED network that included tribal chiefs, makers, planters, and those providing source materials and financing.

  Two weeks into my stay at Salerno, our four-man Counter-IED Task Force team was sent out to clear the road for a convoy of food, fuel, and other supplies headed to FOB Super a hundred miles north in Paktika Province. We rode in two RG-31 mine-resistant vehicles that featured monocoque (single shell) armored V-hulls designed to deflect an upward-directed blast from an IED and thus increase crew survivability. They also sported run-flat tires and cost in the neighborhood of $600,000 without the optional cup holders.

  The metal beasts weighed over seven tons and could hit 60 mph, but not on the potholed, dusty roads we traveled. I sat in the lead RG next to the driver. The second RG followed, staggering to the right behind us. We did this so that if we encountered an IED buried on the road, the lead RG would take the blast and spare the seven trucks and two Humvees traveling behind.

  The dirt track wound through narrow mountain passes dotted with scrub pines and crossed verdant valleys filled with fields of poppies, which yielded opium and heroin, the sale of which helped fund the production of IEDs. At the time, 2008, poppies from Afghanistan produced 90 percent of the heroin in the world.

  A whole lot of human misery came from the magical fields of white, red, and pink flowers in valleys like the ones we were passing through now. Three hours out of Salerno, we started taking gunfire to our right. The US Army captain in charge of the convoy ordered us to stop.

  I rolled out the passenger door and under the RG, setting up behind the big front wheel and fixing my M4 to my shoulder.

  I heard the captain shout through my earbud, “Get down! Get down! Don’t fire!”

  “Why the fuck not?” I asked.

  “Because I have to call and get authorization to engage first.”

  “Are you kidding, Captain?” I asked as enemy rounds tore into the ground around me. “We’re in a fucking war zone.”

  “I said: Hold your fire!”

  I wasn’t in the mood to argue, nor did I feel like being a target. Despite the captain’s orders, I lined up the enemy in my sights and fired in short blasts. By the time I’d emptied the first mag the enemy had stopped shooting.

  The captain stared at me like he was pissed, but said nothing. Now he was insisting that we wait thirty minutes for a Black Hawk with a QRF to arrive and inspect the area. When they did they found nothing. The enemy had run off and escaped into the rocky hills. I wasn’t surprised. Usually, the Taliban didn’t engage unless they had a tactical advantage.

  We continued to FOB Super, dropped off the supplies, and returned to Salerno without further incident.

  Three weeks later I was told to deploy to Firebase Wilderness, also known as FOB Tellier, also in Paktika Province and near the Pakistani border. Wilderness had been built to provide security along the Khost–Gardez highway, a critical road link to Kabul.

  The tiny base, roughly the size of a football field, was tucked into a spectacular gorge surrounded by sharp mountains with peaks that reached over 10,000 feet. The terrain and enemy were hard and relentless. The latter attacked the firebase with rockets and mortars day and night.

  The enemy in this case was the Taliban and militants from the Haqqani Network—an insurgent group and drug trafficking gang led by warlord Maulvi Jalaluddin Haqqani and his son Sirajuddin Haqqani—who shared the Taliban’s goal of driving the US and other Westerners out of Afghanistan. Like the Taliban, they operated out of bases located in Pakistan’s Tribal Areas. Because of that, taking our fight to the enemy wasn’t really an option.

  The best we could do was defend ourselves and try to destroy them when they showed their heads, which wasn’t often. Their usual tactic was to fire rockets and mortars, then disappear into the mountains or slip across the border.

  When I was there in 2008, Wilderness was manned by about fifty soldiers from the Army’s 101st Mountain Division, five translators, fifteen members of the Afghan Counterterrorism Pursuit Teams (CTPTs), and one doctor.

  I lived in a hootch with ten other guys and slept on the top bunk. I grew my hair long and wore my beard to my chest.

  One day a sergeant major f
rom the 101st walked into our hootch while I was sitting and working on my laptop. He pointed at me and asked the other guys there, “Who’s the dude with the beard?”

  “That’s Changiz,” one of the Army guys answered.

  “What the fuck are you doing here?” he asked me.

  I smiled and said, “Sergeant Major, I’m Sergeant Major Lahidji, formerly with Special Forces and now a contractor with DOD.”

  He smiled back and said, “I thought you were bin Laden’s brother. Welcome, Sergeant Major. You come to get your slay on?”

  “You better believe it.”

  Because there was only one road that ran to the base, we had to be supplied by helicopters, which arrived three times a week. The whole setup was risky and stupid. But it was a job, and I was determined to do it to the best of my ability.

  We ran roughly two missions per day, looking for caves where militants hid bomb-making materials and weapons. When we found them, they were usually stocked with new Chinese-made RPGs, AKs, and IED components. We also cleared roads around the base of IEDs and retrieved evidence from IED attacks.

  If the IED was close, four of us would drive in a single RG-31 over rough mountain roads. If the IED attack had taken place more than an hour’s drive away, we got there by helo.

  One morning we got a report that a Humvee had been hit on the Gardez–Kabul highway and called for a Black Hawk to ferry us in. By the time we arrived the Humvee was burnt to a crisp and an Afghan policeman lay along the side of the road bleeding from a wound to his chest. Another two policemen had been blown to smithereens.

  We helped retrieve pieces of their bodies and loaded the wounded man aboard the Black Hawk. Then we went about our real work, which was to gather evidence. The culprit was another pressure-plate bomb built inside a pressure cooker probably bought in a market in Pakistan for $2.

  A week or so later, we received a report that a bomb had gone off in a nearby village. Because of the condition of the roads, it took us two hours to get there. We arrived at a little square with mud houses around it. Local policemen pointed to a two-story house on the right.

  The four of us entered with weapons ready. A big explosion went off in one of the upstairs bedrooms, tearing out part of the roof and wall and leaving pieces of a body scattered everywhere. I remember retrieving a hand and a pair of boots filled with flesh. Apparently the house had doubled as a Taliban bomb-making factory.

  After nearly two hours spent collecting evidence, local police led us to another location in town near a small stone bridge where they had found an IED. We very carefully defused it.

  Then one of the policemen pointed to another suspicious house up a hill.

  I told them in Dari: “You go first; we’ll be right behind you.”

  The house was empty. By the time we finished, the sun had set over the mountains and the sky had turned dark. An eerie feeling came over me. Knowing that we would be easy targets if we attempted to travel at night, we chose to sleep in the village.

  The four of us camped in a hut owned by the Afghan police and took turns keeping watch. I didn’t sleep a wink. The next morning, I stood outside on the street talking to a forty-five-year-old policeman I had become friendly with. The fresh mountain air fragrant with the smell of pine was invigorating. Earlier the policeman had told me about his large family and son who was studying to become an engineer. He had just handed me a cup of green tea.

  I turned to thank him, when a single shot rang out … PING! The thin sound echoed against the mountain peaks behind me. As I looked at the policeman a bullet struck him in the forehead and exploded out the back of his head.

  Before I had a chance to shout, he hit the ground and rolled past me.

  Fuck!

  The shot had come from the direction of a house across the street. I went down to my knees half in shock, and pushed the button near my collar to activate my radio. “Shots fired! Man down!”

  My voice sounded like it was coming from someone else. Two of my teammates—Anderson and Garcia—ran out of the house carrying M4s and looking alarmed.

  “Changiz, we heard a shot. What happened?”

  Before I had a chance to answer, they saw the policeman lying in the road under an expanding pool of blood.

  “Jesus Christ…” Anderson groaned.

  “Get down!” I shouted. “The shot came from that house, over there. He’s dead.”

  Two Afghan policemen wandered out to see what was going on. One of them was carrying a plate of crackers.

  “Besheen! Besheen!” (Get down! Get down!) I shouted.

  They radioed their station and two trucks filled with policemen rumbled up. We covered each other as we leapfrogged up the hill across the street to the house. I kicked the door in and entered. Near a second-floor window, I found an AK. The chamber was hot, but the shooter had escaped.

  The Afghans brought a black body bag from one of their trucks and loaded their colleague inside. Before they carried him away, I knelt with them and we all said a prayer together.

  My heart was hurting. I wondered what was going to happen to his son and the rest of his family.

  * * *

  Back at Firebase Wilderness we were getting hit by rockets and mortars several times a day. The guys from the 101st would respond with machine guns and mortars.

  I went out every day, climbing rocky peaks, looking for weapons stashes and visiting remote villages. It was ball-busting work, with guys slipping, falling, and cursing. I took a few good tumbles myself.

  The area had served as a mujahedeen hideout during the war against the Soviets. Now it was teeming with Taliban and Haqqani Network insurgents. In my backpack, I carried candles and pencils to hand out to the kids in remote hamlets.

  Often, when I asked a group of farmers about Taliban activity in the area, one of them would answer, “They come here and bother us, demanding food and other things. We don’t know what to do.”

  I also carried a special laptop, which I’d use to register people and record their fingerprints. Few of the people I met knew their date of birth. I collected over 1,000 profiles, which I emailed to DC and were added to a special database.

  One morning in early June, I sat with my gear waiting for a helicopter to ferry me to FOB Salerno. Twenty minutes later, three Black Hawks roared in from the west and landed. I loaded into one of them with an Army colonel, two majors, a guy named Andy from the FBI, and two E7s. Seven passengers total. I sat in a seat behind the pilot facing Andy and the back of the aircraft.

  The helo went up about seventy feet and swooped west, when I heard a loud bang. The pilot shouted, “We’ve been hit! We’ve been hit!” Then he turned off the engine.

  I thought to myself: This is the end.

  Smoke poured from the back of the helo and we were spiraling straight down. There was not a damn thing I could do but utter a quick prayer and hold on. Seconds later we slammed into the ground hard, jarring every bone, tooth, and muscle in my body. Then the bird flipped right, and I flew and smashed my head against the side door frame.

  Stars circled in my head. The helo lay on its side. Half-conscious, I braced myself against the seat and tried to yank the side door open, but it was stuck. Blood poured down my face. I wiped it away from my eyes, and kicked the door five or six times until it jarred free and I could pull it open.

  Andy was unconscious. I grabbed him under my left arm and pulled him out. Then I went back for the pilot. The blade and tail of the Blackhawk had been ripped off in the crash. As I crouched on the side of the helo, trying to catch my breath, I heard a weapon discharge from a group of trees about seventy feet to my left. I pointed my M4 in that direction and returned fire. I was fucking pissed.

  Blood dripped down my cheeks to my neck and chest. Rounds zinged over my head and tore into the helo beneath me. I lay on my belly and kept looking for targets and shooting. After what seemed like ten minutes, the incoming fire stopped.

  The other two Black Hawks had heard the SOS from the pilot and c
ircled back. One of them landed nearby, and soldiers jumped out with their M4s ready. My colleague Garcia was with them. He found me standing in front of the downed helo, covered with blood and with a big smile on my face.

  He said, “Changiz, you okay?”

  “Yeah. Yeah.”

  “Then why the fuck are you laughing?”

  “I’m laughing, man, because I’m still alive!”

  I don’t know if it was the rush of adrenaline or something else, but I was so happy to be alive that I could have danced a jig, even though my right knee and foot were messed up and I was bleeding from several gashes to my head. Garcia wrapped a bandage around my skull to stanch the bleeding. Then someone snapped some photos.

  The copilot and one of the majors died in the crash. One of the E7s had his ribs broken. One of the terps was badly injured. Garcia and the others loaded us into the second Black Hawk.

  Over the chop of the helo blades, I heard the pilot shouting over the radio, “Casualties coming! Casualties coming!”

  I fell back into a half-conscious haze but recall landing at Salerno, and some medics there helping me out of the helo. Sirens wailed around me.

  I stopped and said, “Wait! I need my gun.”

  “Don’t worry, sir,” one of them responded. “You’re safe here, sir. We’ll get it for you.”

  Next thing I remember was lying on a gurney and watching some medical personnel cut my uniform off. It took twelve stitches to close the gash on my head and another five for the cut to my forehead.

  Three days later in the hospital, an Army doctor came to check on me. My right knee had swollen to the size of a basketball.

  He said, “Changiz, we’re going to have to medevac you to Germany to have the knee drained and scanned.”

  “The hell with that, Doc,” I responded. “It’ll be fine in a couple days. I’ve been through worse.”

  He said, “I know you’re a tough guy, but you have to do this.”

  Two days later, I was leaning on crutches on the tarmac at Bagram with a bandage wrapped around my head about to board a C-17 to Germany when two beautiful female Air Force pilots came over and asked if they could have their pictures taken with me.