by Flo Groberg
No American soldier I knew would ever intentionally burn a Quran. From the start, I firmly believed that this was an unfortunate accident and took General Allen at his word that a full investigation would take place. That still didn’t change the fact that people were dying, or that my second tour in Afghanistan was starting under the same persistent, grave threat of violence that surrounded my first deployment.
“Here we go again,” I whispered after being briefed on the riots.
Most of my time between deployments had been spent training at Colorado’s Fort Carson. After being promoted from second lieutenant to first lieutenant in 2011, I was assigned to the Army’s 4th Infantry Division in Afghanistan as the 4th Infantry Brigade Combat Team’s personal security detachment commander.
I was now part of Task Force Mountain Warrior, after deploying as a member of Dagger Company the first time around in Afghanistan. Somehow, I always managed to end up in units with badass-sounding names. That is, opposed to some of the other options, which included “Golden Acorn” and “Broken Television,” which the 3rd Infantry Division was infamously nicknamed because of a shoulder patch resembling a television with a static screen.
Despite ongoing tensions over the Quran disaster, I felt much safer during my second deployment. That’s because my job—coordinating all air and ground movements for my boss, Colonel James Mingus, was much different than my first tour. Instead of near-constant mountain clashes with the Taliban, I was mostly protecting important US and Afghan officials as they traveled to and from meetings. While there were occasional moments of peril, the mission as a whole was like night and day compared to those crazy seven months at COP Honaker-Miracle.
Interestingly enough, the five provinces where we held high-level key leader engagement meetings—Northern and Southern Kunar, Nangarhar, Paktika, Nuristan, and Laghman—included the Pech River Valley in Kunar province. I visited there often, in fact, even though I was stationed at FOB Fenty in Jalalabad, a major city in Nangarhar province near the Pakistani border. That’s where our headquarters for the eastern region of Afghanistan was located.
Whenever I flew by helicopter to FOB Blessing, it stirred up quite a few emotions in me. It felt different, as if decades had passed instead of eighteen months. The sights, sounds, and smells were familiar, yet at the same time it was abundantly clear that this place wasn’t anything like what I remembered. Blessing, which Pentagon officials had decided to abandon shortly after I left Afghanistan in the spring of 2010, had been almost completely destroyed by the same Taliban fighters my previous platoon had been trying to kill.
At the time of my departure, FOB Blessing, which my COP Honaker-Miracle–based platoon had visited most frequently, was a bustling American-led facility with a nice gym, shops, housing posts, and an airfield. Less than two years later, it looked like a bomb had gone off inside, which it probably had. As soon as American forces left, enemy fighters swept in and took everything, including toilets and even tiles from the bathroom floor.
“That didn’t take long,” I said to a fellow soldier, shaking my head.
Forward Operating Base Blessing’s rapid demise underscored how much things had changed in eastern Afghanistan since my last deployment. As mentioned, officials in Washington had also decided to leave the rocky, pine-tree-filled Korengal Valley, where more than fifty brave US troops had been killed between 2004 and 2010. That decision led to the Taliban seizing firm control of the mountainous area.
North of Korengal had been COP Michigan, which my company helped to close before leaving the first time. That abandoned COP, which was smack in between Blessing and Honaker-Miracle, was now also under Taliban control after all the sacrifices platoons like mine and Saul’s had made in the area.
There were no plans to reopen COP Michigan, but a decision had been made to clean up and refurnish FOB Blessing, where a new group of US soldiers would soon be stationed. In a few short months, American troops serving in eastern Afghanistan would be tasked with winning back the same treacherous territory that so many courageous Americans had fought and bled to secure.
These orders originated from well above my rank and pay grade, so I tried not to waste any time being pissed off about them. I definitely cared, but this action wasn’t my primary mission on this deployment. I had no doubt that a good friend of mine, Captain Miller, would succeed while working under the direction of another US Army officer, Captain Ryan, to rebuild FOB Blessing so that US and Afghan soldiers wouldn’t be living in miserable conditions.
Another major event had occurred while I was back at Fort Carson: the US military had conducted a major bombing raid to kill Dairon. But instead of eliminating this constant nuisance once and for all, we managed to enrage him further when the blasts killed several members of his family, but not him. Intelligence reports indicated that while Dairon was indeed back in the Pech River Valley, his stature within Taliban ranks had diminished after my platoon’s and Saul’s hard-fought efforts in 2009 and 2010.
Dairon surviving so many attempts on his life underscored how hard it was to kill or capture one man in such a vast, primitive land. The decade-plus hunt for Osama bin Laden, who had finally been brought to justice while I was training back home for my next deployment, proved that point once and for all.
Improvised explosive devices had not been at the forefront of security threats during my first combat tour, which had initially come as a big surprise. That had all changed by the time I returned. As was true of al Qaeda in Iraq and in other parts of Afghanistan, roadside bombs had become the Taliban’s weapons of choice in the five provinces in my AO. As I’m sure you’ve seen on television and read in other books, IEDs are hidden, lethal, and extremely frustrating to worry about. Thankfully, we had a great team of EOD (explosive ordnance disposal) experts to go on patrol with us and search for these lethal homemade bombs.
Our rules of engagement also changed while I was away. By the time I landed at Bagram in 2012, it was even harder to lay fire on a mountain ridge, as we were no longer allowed to shoot the enemy unless we were fired upon. I struggled to imagine how much harder that would have made my job as a ground fighter during my first go-around in The Stan, and felt bad for the guys that would soon be stationed at remote COPs and FOBs.
We had two Black Hawk helicopters at FOB Fenty, which was named after fallen Army Lieutenant Colonel Joseph Fenty, who was killed in 2006. The small base was filled with concrete barriers and barbed wire. Compared to spending seven months surrounded by mountains and Dairon’s gang at COP Honaker-Miracle, I felt as if I were in an episode of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. I was grateful for the relative luxuries we were able to enjoy at Fenty.
Six days a week—sometimes seven in my case since I helped transport prisoners when they needed an extra body—we flew all over those five Afghan provinces for high-level meetings. Whenever the boss and Command Sergeant Major Kevin Griffin (the senior enlisted adviser to our CO) were moving, my job was to coordinate with different receiving US military units so that they knew we were coming and could track our movements. Before we visited a given area, I also had to surmise what kind of security conditions existed and what kind of military manpower was available to help me protect Colonel Mingus. At minimum, I needed fifteen soldiers from the closest base to accompany my six-man team on a given patrol. I didn’t like working with any fewer than twenty-one men during the (KLE) meetings.
If we were ever shot at or encountered an IED, my men and I would encircle our boss and the other VIPs, use our bodies as human shields, and get them the hell out of there. It was the responsibility of the other fifteen guys to engage the enemy. I guess you could say that my role was similar to that of a Secret Service agent, except I was in a war zone without the same level of protection or technology.
As you can imagine, not being able to fight back after spending seven months in Afghanistan doing just that was an extremely difficult adjustment. But this was my new job, and I was serious about doing it the right way, no matter ho
w challenging.
My biggest test came on April 15, 2012, at Jalalabad’s nearby FOB Finley-Shields, named after fallen Army Specialist James Matthew Finley and Private First Class Andrew Shields, who made the ultimate sacrifice in 2008. We had just landed at the sprawling base filled with M-ATVs and long, concrete barracks when I heard a huge crash.
The enemy had rammed a large truck into a stone wall surrounding the immense compound, where about five hundred soldiers and one thousand Defense Department civilian employees and contractors lived. A frenzied firefight began with the enemy shooting and killing a valiant Afghan soldier who was manning the base’s guard tower. Seconds later, four bad guys were firing RPGs inside our base. One of them hit a fuel tank, which resulted in another jarring, deafening explosion that set some nearby wooden structures on fire.
As FOB Finley-Shields burned, my first instinct was to grab my weapon and confront the enemy. But that was no longer my role, even as our base descended into loud, fiery chaos. Colonel Mingus and CSM Griffin were by my side, and I had to get the boss as far away from the explosions and gunfire as possible.
Both men were brilliant leaders who almost certainly sensed that I wanted to run toward the commotion instead of away from it.
“Don’t worry, L-T,” Griffin said. “I would rather be in the mix, too, but our boys will get ’em.”
Sure enough, all four insurgents were soon killed by heroic soldiers from the Missouri National Guard. As I would later find out, the counterattack was led by fearless young warriors who had just arrived in Afghanistan.
“It was one of the bravest things I ever saw in my life,” Master Sergeant Joseph Schicker told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch after the attack. “Kids, first time in the country, charged and held [the enemy] back.”
According to the paper, fourteen Missouri National Guardsmen were wounded in the firefight, which I was not initially made aware of. All of the wounded survived, and twenty-eight soldiers who fought in the battle received combat medals. The courage of these warriors not only eliminated the imminent threat posed by the four Taliban fighters, but caused many other enemy reinforcements gathered just outside the gate to retreat.
A few weeks later, FOB Finley-Shields held a ceremony honoring Alam Baik, the Afghan soldier who was killed while courageously raining down gunfire on the insurgents from the guard tower.
“I don’t know why Finley-Shields was attacked, but I do know why it was defended,” Lieutenant Colonel Jason Hancock said while memorializing his Afghan counterpart. “Alam Baik held the same values for his country as I do mine.”
The Afghan National Army soldier’s ultimate sacrifice was a stark reminder that despite all the problems I had had with the ANA during my first deployment, there were many Afghan patriots willing to lay down their lives to defeat the Taliban and al Qaeda.
Despite being on the same base on the day he died, I never got the chance to meet Alam Baik. Clearly, though, he was a hero who should be saluted by Afghans and Americans alike.
• • •
Command Sergeant Major Kevin Griffin, who had so aptly pinpointed my eagerness to fight during the Finley-Shields attack, quickly became a trusted mentor during my second deployment to Afghanistan. A former college wrestler from Wyoming, Griffin wasn’t actually that big a guy, but he had a huge presence that everyone around him felt the moment he walked into a room.
Bold and confident but far from arrogant, CSM Griffin was also open and honest with every single soldier on the FOB. I don’t think he was really concerned with whether people liked him, but he nevertheless cared about each of us. As soon as we met during a change of command ceremony upon his February arrival, I began to admire this tough, seasoned leader who wanted to help all of us, including me, become better soldiers and human beings. In addition to giving me combat tips, he also took an interest in teaching me how to properly manage money.
Griffin’s attention to detail was unparalleled. One cold day after returning from a successful mission, the CSM’s eyes were transfixed by something on the ground as our Chinook helicopter approached. As soon as we landed, I watched in astonishment as Griffin ran over to what had caught his attention: the uniform of a soldier who was walking toward FOB Fenty’s chow hall.
“Why are your sleeves rolled up?” Griffin shouted at the soldier.
“My apologies, Sergeant Major,” the soldier said. “I have no excuses, Sergeant Major.”
Before the terrified young man could stammer anything else, Griffin had rolled down his sleeves for him.
“See? That’s how it’s done,” Griffin said before giving him a pat on the back. “We have standards in our unit.”
The young soldier’s scare had ended with a sigh of relief. That’s how Griffin operated: he truly wanted to make everyone around him better. The incident also earned Griffin, who had spotted the small violation from at least a football field away, a well-deserved nickname: “The Hawk.”
During long talks in his office, which was inside Fenty’s TOC, we bonded while talking about our respective athletic careers, even though my stories from Maryland, where I ran track, were no match for his Wyoming wrestling exploits. With a big smile on his face, Griffin told me that his future wife, Pamela, had initially noticed him on the wrestling mat while they attended the same community college before transferring to the University of Wyoming. That chance encounter led to twenty-five years of marriage and two children, Dane and Kylie.
“When are you going to start a family, Flo?” Griffin would often say with a smirk, even though he knew I wasn’t married.
The command sergeant major treated me like a son, which meant a great deal when I learned that his own son, Dane, had followed in his dad’s footsteps by joining the Army and serving honorably in Iraq. Incredibly, father and son had been in Iraq at the same time for a few days in 2011, and even got the opportunity to have dinner together. Griffin’s eyes gleamed while telling me the story of breaking bread with his son in a war zone. After only a few minutes, I could tell that he was enormously proud of Dane.
Griffin was also extremely proud of his teenage daughter, who had just moved with her mother to Colorado from Washington state so they could be waiting at Fort Carson when their hero returned from Afghanistan. Like millions of military kids, Kylie grew up moving from base to base and school to school while not getting to spend a lot of time with her dad. Even though she missed him enormously, Kylie knew that her dad was a remarkable man on a vital mission. As the Griffin family’s joke went, Kylie’s father was “kind of a big deal.”
Before arriving in Afghanistan, CSM Griffin had served in Operation Desert Storm, Bosnia, and three separate combat tours during the second war in Iraq, including the initial 2003 invasion. This man—whose life I was responsible for protecting as the brigade’s personal security detachment commander—had done and seen more in service to his country than I could possibly imagine. Suddenly, my first seven months in Afghanistan seemed like a walk through Chicago’s Grant Park compared to his six combat deployments to four different war zones.
Whenever I went into Griffin’s office, he seemed to be doing research on the Afghan National Army or talking on the phone with NCOs across the five provinces in our area of operations. Afghanistan wasn’t just another deployment for Griffin: he genuinely wanted the ANA—and the country—to emerge from the darkness of terrorism and war as a beacon of hope for the rest of the world.
“We are going to leave Afghanistan eventually, Flo,” Griffin said one night in his office. “We have to make sure our time in this country isn’t wasted, and our best chance for success is to provide the ANA with the necessary training.”
When he wasn’t busy doing research, Griffin talked with his family. On more than one occasion, I was sitting in his office when he would kick me out because he wanted to call Pam. Even though I had never met his wife, I could tell that she and her husband shared an unbreakable bond. It was hard for a young guy like me to imagine two people being together for that long and
going through so much together; from graduating college to six Army deployments. Someday, I thought at the time, I would feel incredibly lucky to have a wife as loving and supportive as Pam Griffin.
Our boss, Colonel Mingus, was the best Army commander any soldier could hope for. Like Griffin, the colonel adored his family and led by example on and off the battlefield. A former “Mr. Minnesota” in weightlifting, he could also kick your ass in the gym despite being in his late forties.
Colonel Mingus’s physical stature only enhanced the respect that every single soldier serving under his command had for their leader. That’s not hyperbole, either; it would have been an honor to die while protecting Colonel Mingus or CSM Griffin. Their steady leadership and genuine care for Americans and Afghans alike represented everything that’s right about the US Army and our country as a whole.
• • •
During the first six months of leading the security detail, we were shot at a few times while landing our helicopters or patrolling to and from the meetings, but never at any point did I feel that my life—or more important, the life of my boss or the other VIPs and soldiers—was in danger.
While Dairon might have been the worst enemy on my first deployment, complacency posed the biggest threat on my second. Every night, I forced myself to stay awake a few minutes longer to think about the IED blast or enemy ambush that could occur during the next day’s mission. No matter how boring things got, I had to stay sharp, both mentally and physically, just as I did in my first deployment. The enemy was still lurking in the shadows, and could target my boss anywhere, anytime.
• • •
It was hard to believe that the summer was almost over when I got an email from the Army’s Human Resources Command on the evening of August 7, 2012. To my complete surprise, I was scheduled to be promoted to the rank of captain following the next day’s mission.