by Flo Groberg
“Congratulations, Flo,” CSM Griffin said when I walked into the TOC a few minutes later.
“Well deserved, Groberg,” Colonel Mingus said.
After expressing my gratitude for their kind words and guidance throughout the deployment, we discussed the next day’s mission, which would be to the city of Asadabad, where a high-level provincial security meeting would take place.
I had been to Kunar Province’s capital city during my first deployment and several times on the second. What struck me most about the city, which is near the border with Pakistan, is that it is located right along the merging Pech and Kunar Rivers. While walking through the bustling valley, you were surrounded by two tall, imposing Hindu Kush mountain cliffs, which looked like they were staring down at you from the heavens. It was truly something to behold.
Even though my six previous visits to Asadabad had been uneventful, the rugged terrain and large population—combined with the vicious summer heat—would present serious challenges. My unit would have to bring our A game to ensure a successful meeting for the boss, who would be joined by prominent Afghan leaders.
Next, I filled out my air movement requests (AMRs) and discussed them with Sergeant Andrew Mahoney, who was responsible for deciding who would go in which helicopter and making sure everyone was ready to leave on time. Like most commanding officers, our boss hated being late, which made Mahoney’s job even more critical.
After we finished planning the helicopter flights, I ran into Air Force Major Walter David Gray, a friendly Tactical Air Control Party (TACP) officer from Georgia who was half Korean and spoke with a thick Southern accent. The unlikely combination, which Gray knew most people noticed when he first met them, was the source of many self-deprecating jokes.
“Hey Flo, are y’all still going to Asadabad tomorrow?” Gray said with his usual grin.
“Yes, sir,” I said while shaking the major’s hand since I hadn’t seen him in a while. “Will you join us on this one?”
“Actually, that’s what I wanted to ask you,” Gray said. “I’d also like you to meet Tom Kennedy . . . he just got here a few weeks ago.
“If it’s okay with you, Tom and I would love to jump on tomorrow’s mission so we can listen and learn more about the security situation in Kunar,” Gray continued. “A bunch of Tom’s men are also on FOB Joyce, and he’d like to meet them face-to-face. Do you think you could get us two spots on the Black Hawks?”
“Absolutely, sir,” I said. “Consider it done. Please be on the flight deck by 0900.
“Nice to meet you, sir,” I said as I shook Major Kennedy’s hand and headed back inside the TOC.
“Likewise, Flo,” Kennedy said. “See you tomorrow at 0900.”
After reworking the next day’s AMRs with Sergeant Mahoney, who found two spots for Majors Gray and Kennedy, I decided to head back to my room to watch Rambo (again) before getting some sleep. Just as I was walking out of the building, I ran into Gray for a second time. Within a few seconds, we were chatting about our time in Afghanistan and our lives back home.
• • •
“Finish strong” was David Gray’s motto. Whenever things got dicey in Afghanistan, he would repeat those words.
David had first said “Finish strong” to his wife, Heather, during a 5K race they were running together, but in subsequent years, the words also motivated and inspired the soldiers he served alongside.
The major was also living proof that a human being can finish strong. That’s because seven years earlier, David almost drowned during an Air Force training accident in Texas.
After he was frantically dragged out of a Laughlin Air Force Base pool on that awful 2005 day, doctors informed Heather that he was on life support. As medical experts struggled to detect activity in David’s brain, Heather was told that a full recovery wasn’t just unlikely; it was virtually impossible.
Heather, who shared her husband’s deep faith in God, opened her husband’s Bible on the Life Flight helicopter bound for Wilford Hall Hospital at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio shortly after receiving the terrible news. Through tears, she was struck by a verse: “Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! Let your gentleness be known to all for the Lord is near” (Philippians 4:4).
How can I rejoice? Heather asked herself as her thirty-one-year-old husband lay on his deathbed with paramedics working frantically to keep him alive. Shortly after her momentary lapse of hope, Heather collected her thoughts and calmly asked God to grant her the ability always to rejoice, despite the circumstances.
At a prayer vigil later that night for family and friends who had flown in from around the country, David’s squadron commander pulled Heather aside.
“All day long there has been a prayer verse in the Bible that has been coming to my mind,” he said. “Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice!”
Heather’s knees nearly buckled. She had told no one about the Bible verse she had read a few hours earlier. Convinced that the matching verses were no coincidence, there was no doubt in her mind that God had heard her prayer.
A few days later, Heather was at David’s side when he suddenly awoke from his coma. When he eventually made the full recovery that doctors had deemed impossible, the couple was sure that they had been blessed with a miracle.
David and Heather made the most of those next seven years. They raised their daughter Nyah, then welcomed a son, Garrett, and another daughter Ava. Thanks to a startling work ethic that we would eventually witness up close in Afghanistan, David was simultaneously on his way to becoming the second-highest-ranking Tactical Air Control Party officer in the entire Air Force.
David’s role as a TACP officer was to work with Army units like ours to call in and coordinate air strikes on the front lines. Before becoming a respected Air Force officer, David had served as an enlisted airman, then attended Charleston Southern University and was commissioned as an officer in 2001. Therefore, he had no trouble relating to both officers and enlisted service members during high-pressure situations on the battlefield, which quickly endeared him to everyone in our unit.
David was also a quiet but very funny guy, starting with the aforementioned fact that he spoke with a thick Southern accent despite being half Korean. Whenever he met someone new and sensed that they were surprised by the way he talked, David would crack a joke.
“Not what you thought, huh?” he would often say with his movie star smile.
In addition to his role with our unit, David was responsible for the lives of two dozen deployed airmen. While appropriately playing the role of a boss and military leader, David would also use his modest persona to play practical jokes, like the time he sternly ordered all of his airmen to assemble for an important nighttime meeting.
Instead of lecturing the nervous airmen about something they had done wrong, David had made popcorn and set up a big screen TV so that they could relax and watch a movie. By all accounts, Major Gray was just as beloved by his Air Force unit as he was by us Army guys.
David was also in remarkable shape and challenged everyone around him to perform at the highest possible level, whether inside the gym or out on patrol. His physical training exploits became so well known that he earned the affectionate nickname of “PT Ninja.”
At the same time, David was the model warrior, husband, father, and Christian who was steadfast in his belief that he was living on borrowed time. At the end of a day, he would rush into his room to Skype or FaceTime with Heather and their three kids. After hanging up, David would close his eyes and say the same prayer he had been saying since the night before leaving for Afghanistan.
“Please help me keep my men safe tomorrow,” he asked God.
• • •
As we reached the midway point of our deployment, the leadership, humility, and humor displayed by warriors like Major David Gray, Command Sergeant Major Kevin Griffin, and Colonel James Mingus motivated everyone around them—including me—to keep working hard. With a big
mission the next day and our deployment entering its final months, we were determined to finish strong.
7 THE LAST SPRINT
I woke up at 0600 on August 8, 2012, feeling as good as any soldier deployed to Afghanistan could feel after just finding out that he was being promoted to captain. Six months into my second combat tour, it was humbling to know that my Army bosses, whom I looked up to and respected, believed that I was worthy of a higher rank.
As I got out of bed, I looked forward to officially receiving the silver captain’s bars that evening. But first I had to complete the day’s mission, which was to escort that large group of US and Afghan VIPs to the security meeting.
During the morning’s pre-combat inspections, one of my men impatiently complained that “nothing is going to happen today.”
“Complacency kills,” I muttered, to remind him of the saying that had been drilled into my head since Ranger School. It was my job as an officer to keep everyone ready, including myself. Yes, we had completed six similar missions without incident, but like betting on roulette, the wheel’s previous six spins are meaningless while trying to guess where the ball will land next.
As usual, the Kunar Province security meeting in the eastern Afghanistan city of Asadabad started at 1000, which meant our two helicopters needed to leave Jalalabad for FOB Fiaz in Asadabad at 0900. We would be escorting a heavy package of VIPs on this day, as three battalion commanders, two brigade commanders, two sergeant majors, and an Afghan National Army general would all be in attendance. The highest-ranking US military officer attending the meeting would be my boss, Colonel James Mingus, whom I was responsible for protecting at any cost.
The day started like any other: I brushed my teeth, took a shower, got dressed, and put on the same Army boots that I had worn since trudging through the mountains during Ranger School. Then I caught up on emails, grabbed some coffee, and checked in at the TOC for a weather report. Temperatures would be well over 100 degrees, I learned, but at least the skies would be clear. That meant as soon as the boss was ready to leave, which would almost certainly be right at 0900, we would be on our way to FOB Fiaz.
When I checked with Sergeant Mahoney, who was busy coordinating our helicopter movements while also preparing to play an integral role on the ground, he said that both choppers were ready to go.
Along with the senior military leaders, we would also be joined by a State Department diplomat and a forty-three-year-old USAID foreign service officer, Ragaei Abdelfattah.
A married Egyptian immigrant who grew to love our country, Ragaei was willing to risk his life in the mountains of Afghanistan without being able to carry a weapon since he was a government civilian. An architect who had worked for the United Nations in Egypt and the Maryland–National Capital Park and Planning Commission in the United States, Ragaei joined USAID in 2011 because he wanted to help the disadvantaged. He volunteered to spend a year in one of the most desperate—and dangerous—places in the world because he was a bona fide humanitarian.
For the past few months, Ragaei had been working in Nangarhar Province to bring electricity to the Afghan people. Additionally, he was helping the country’s chronically poor farming community. Ragaei was also involved in planning the construction of new schools for Afghan girls, which I particularly admired after the special Andersille All-Girls School visit during my first deployment. Anything we could do to help improve lives for Afghanistan’s desperate children had my full and unconditional support.
Even though I didn’t know Ragaei very well, I was struck by his warm, unselfish nature, He was willing to die for the United States and the people of Afghanistan, which made him every bit as brave as the American service members he walked alongside.
The two officers who volunteered to join our mission the night before—Air Force Major David Gray and Army Major Thomas Kennedy—had never flown with us before. Regarding my preparation procedures, the only thing separating August 8 from any other day was making sure that these two officers knew where to meet us.
Major Kennedy, as I learned when we met the night before, had been in Afghanistan for less than two weeks. Tom, thirty-five, had joined his unit at the midway point of its overseas tour, which presented a challenge similar to the one I faced during my first deployment. Unlike me, though, Tom was already an elite soldier with two previous deployments to Iraq under his belt, which included spending a full year in combat during the initial invasion. Without question, Tom was a proven leader who cherished the opportunity to serve.
The only thing Tom loved more than the Army was his family. As the son of an NYPD detective, Tom grew up playing hockey with his two brothers, John and George, in a New York City suburb. That eventually led him to West Point, where he excelled as a tough defenseman on Army’s hockey team. After he graduated in 2000 and was commissioned as an officer, the 9/11 terrorist attack on Tom’s city reinforced his desire to continue serving his country in uniform.
When Tom’s oldest brother got married in Atlanta, Tom met his future wife, Kami, at the wedding. After Tom and Kami wed in 2008, they were blessed with twins: a boy, Brody, and a girl, Margaret. They were two years old when Tom kissed his beloved twins goodbye and headed to war for the first time in six years.
Before he left Fort Carson, a neighbor reminded Tom that he didn’t have to volunteer for a tour in Afghanistan. Tom, who was as humble as he was polite, had a simple, poignant response.
“I’m a soldier,” he said. “This is what I do.”
Instead of staying home to play with his twins or cheer on his New York Rangers, as he could have, Tom poured himself into helping Americans and Afghans alike. As if we were his own kids, Tom devoted every ounce of energy to making us better soldiers.
With an impressive list of accomplishments that also included a master’s degree from Columbia University, “TK,” as he was nicknamed, would command the respect of everyone in the unit and, in particular, the younger guys like me. It wasn’t just because of his résumé, though. Tom, a strong, blond-haired warrior who was always smiling, genuinely cared for every single soldier, regardless of rank.
It was also his dream to work for Colonel Mingus, which meant that Tom spent every waking moment getting up to speed on his new role. When I first saw TK, I could tell how proud he was to be serving the boss and his country as part of our unit.
Before leaving home, one of the last things Tom did was give each of his twins a Build-A-Bear that they had meticulously and lovingly assembled at an in-store workshop at the local mall. After hugging their respective bears before going to sleep each night, Brody and Margaret were reminded of how much their father loved them.
“Daddy flew all the way across the ocean to do something really important,” Kami would tell her young twins. “He misses you so much.”
My sacrifices paled in comparison to those of an American warrior like Major Tom Kennedy. Nobody back home was depending on me, and if I had had a wife and two young children like Tom, I’m not sure if I would have had the guts to deploy. What Tom, Kami, Brody, and Margaret were going through as he served in Afghanistan embodied what thousands of incredible military families put on the line every day.
• • •
As I did before every helicopter mission, I waited for Colonel Mingus and walked behind him toward the second of our two choppers. I would ride with the boss, while Command Sergeant Major Griffin would be joined on the first bird by several of my men, including Sergeant Andrew Mahoney, Sergeant First Class Brian Brink, and our medic, Specialist Daniel Balderrama.
Shortly before the twenty-minute flight to FOB Fiaz, I was told that there could be a storm on the horizon. That was no surprise, and no cause for postponement, as strong thunderstorms were common on hot summer days in Afghanistan.
But my comfort level with the mission changed once we landed at FOB Fiaz. Upon disembarking, I was told that the usual fifteen-man team of soldiers assigned to guard our perimeter would not be joining us for the one-thousand-meter patrol to the govern
or’s compound, even though I had called and put in a request the night before.
This is not good. Upon receiving the bad news, I shook my head in disagreement even though I knew there was nothing I could do about a decision that had been made by a different unit.
Instead of fifteen perimeter guards, we would have just two additional US soldiers and an American contractor (whom I had never met) to engage the enemy if our patrol came under attack, as well as five ANA soldiers. This security element was absolutely critical for one reason: on this deployment, my unit was designed to protect instead of fight.
While outside the wire, we always maneuvered in a diamond-shaped patrol, with Colonel Mingus, CSM Griffin, and other VIPs in the middle. If we were attacked, our job was to collapse the diamond, swarm the VIPs, and bring them to safety while the designated perimeter team fought the bad guys. Without that team, I was like a quarterback going into a big game without an offensive line.
“I don’t like this,” SFC Brink whispered in my ear.
“Me neither,” I said. “I am going to need you to take point.”
It was time to be a good officer and take charge, because with the boss watching, I had to change our entire security plan in a matter of seconds.
At point, Brink would be at the very top of the formation, about ten feet in front of the diamond’s tip, which is where I would be standing. I also told the five ANA soldiers joining us to go with him. While I had no reason to suspect that these Afghans were anything but patriots, the threat of “green on blue” attacks by ANA soldiers on Americans was increasing in the summer of 2012, which left room for doubt in the back of my mind. It was the last thing I had time to worry about while reconfiguring the patrol, so I moved them where my soldiers and I would be able to see them.
I was usually in the patrol’s diamond, but without much of a security team to fend off the enemy, I had to move to the tip of the spear. To secure the back of the diamond, I tapped Private First Class Eric Ochart. He was the youngest member of our team, but also a well-built soldier with good instincts. If we came under attack, I knew that PFC Ochart was strong enough to do the job.