by Mitch Weiss
So the team began discussing how to teach the commandos these key concepts. They came up with a plan. Instead of teaching everyone to drive, they designated a few drivers—the ones who seemed to have an aptitude for driving—and made them Humvee drivers. As part of the training, the team would stand in front of a Humvee and walk the vehicles into place. The drivers would follow the team as they guided them into position. After a while they could move them into position without fear of getting run over.
Sitting in his barracks, Behr smiled when he recalled the breakneck training sessions. There were incredibly long days and nights, and the few missions they had embarked on since training ended saw little or no contact. The reality was this was the 201st Commandos first real mission, and it was important. At least that’s what the commanders told them. That’s why they were given such a high-priority target: Haji Ghafour.
The publicity machine for the Afghanistan Ministry of Defense and the U.S. Army had been touting the commandos. They said the commandos were nicknamed the “Wolves,” and that they were feared by the Taliban and the HIG and Al Qaeda and every other terrorist on the planet. The touters were embellishing, of course. While the commandos were better trained and equipped than regular Afghan fighting units, Behr and others on his team knew the truth.
7
Staff Sergeant Ron Shurer
Staff Sergeant Ron Shurer packed and repacked his medical kit.
He had more than enough bandages, syringes, scissors, tourniquets, morphine, and a portable intravenous system, or IV, with lifesaving fluids to treat the wounded. While every team member carried a first-aid kit with bandages, tourniquet, and morphine-filled needles, known as syrettes, to ease the pain, it was nothing like his. As the team medic, it was Shurer’s responsibility to keep soldiers alive until a medevac arrived to whisk them away to a field hospital. It was an awesome responsibility, and as unlikely as it was where they were headed, Shurer hoped he wouldn’t have to use his skills on this operation.
Still, as he reviewed his kit, he knew he had to pare it down. Carrying his gear up a mountain would be difficult enough under normal circumstances. Whatever he didn’t absolutely need had to go. He decided against taking a Skedco—a heavy-duty fold-up stretcher—because it weighed twenty-five pounds. Instead, he took a poleless litter—a lightweight fold-up stretcher made of cloth. For a moment Shurer thought about tossing out a green tubular nylon rope. He didn’t think they would need it. But Ford required everyone to carry it. He didn’t know why. It seemed pretty useless in the field.
Shurer had requested this role. Nothing was more important—and challenging—than taking care of wounded soldiers in the field. It took more than a year of intense training to become a Special Forces medic, and medics usually had to perform their duties in desolate, dangerous areas, where medical help wasn’t readily available. It was a pressure-filled job. No doubt. But it was one that Shurer embraced.
When he enlisted in 2002, Shurer had told the recruiter he wanted to be a medic. Not just any medic, but Special Forces. He knew Special Forces teams were among the Army’s most specialized combat forces, and the medical sergeant was a critical member of the team. They were considered the finest first-response/trauma medical technicians in the military. Though their training emphasized trauma medicine, they also had to have a working knowledge of dentistry, veterinary care, public sanitation, water quality, and optometry.
When they were not in the field, their duties included maintaining medical equipment and supplies, and providing examination and care to detachment members. They also ordered, stored, cataloged, and safeguarded medical supplies.
It was a big workload and every ODA usually had two medics. But on this mission, Shurer was the only one. The other medic had been sent home a month earlier after he was injured in a truck crash. If Shurer’s team was caught in a firefight, this might pose a problem. If too many soldiers were wounded, would a single medic be able to take care of them all? And what happened if he was hit? Then who would take care of the wounded? These were more than hypothetical questions, and not unreasonable ones. In firefights, shit happens. Always does. That’s why teams prepared and planned for the worst. But in this case, it seemed that the commanders were being overly optimistic in thinking that a second medic wouldn’t be necessary.
When Shurer studied a mission, he analyzed every possible scenario to make sure he had everything covered. He learned that in the Green Berets, and it was an extension of his major in college: economics. Explore every aspect of a deal so you know what you’re getting into. One mistake could cost you your business, or an investor millions of dollars. Here, though, the stakes were higher.
He understood the way the military worked because he was a military brat. By the time he was three years old, he had lived in Alaska, Idaho, Illinois, and the state of Washington.
His parents met while they were in the Air Force. After they were married, his mother left the military to raise Shurer, who was an only child. They settled in a small community about fifteen miles south of Tacoma. His father, Ron Shurer Sr., worked in the Air Force Office of Special Investigations at McChord Air Force Base. Tacoma was Washington’s third largest city, with approximately 203,400 residents, but it seemed like everyone there had a military connection.
With no siblings, Shurer spent a lot of time by himself. He would run and cycle—he would later compete in triathlons—and spent a lot of time outdoors in the shadow of Mount Rainier. He went to Rogers High School, and when he graduated, he attended Washington State University, a school with twenty-five thousand students in nearby Pullman, Washington.
As he was getting ready to graduate, he thought about joining the Marines. He even enlisted and was accepted to officer candidate school in August 2001. But at the last minute, he was rejected when the medical board discovered that he had pancreatitis. There were only three ways to get it: trauma, diabetes, or alcoholism. He told the board it was from an injury—a car smashed into his bicycle in 1995. But in the pre-9/11 mentality, the board didn’t want to take a risk.
Disappointed, he applied and was accepted in Washington State University’s master’s program in economics. But he never stopped thinking about the military, especially after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Shurer finished one year of graduate school and, in August 2002, enlisted in the Army, a move that surprised his parents. Growing up, he had model airplanes and played war games in his backyard, but it wasn’t until later in life that he thought about the military as a career option.
His parents tried to persuade him to join the Air Force. The United States was engaged in one war in Afghanistan, and a conflict with Iraq loomed on the horizon. The Air Force was a safer choice. But Shurer wanted to be a medic, and if he was going to do that, it made sense to join the Army. Its soldiers were on the front lines in the War on Terror. He could use his skills to help save wounded soldiers. So Shurer enlisted in Spokane in 2002. He turned twenty-four while he was in basic training.
When he enlisted, a recruiter asked him if he ever thought about joining Special Forces. Shurer was the perfect candidate. He was athletic and smart. He asked if they could guarantee that he would become a medic. They said no. So he stayed in the Regular Army and trained to be a medic.
After basic training, he decided to take matters into his own hands. On his first day with his new unit, he told his sergeant he was going to try out for Special Forces because he wanted to be around a “different group of people.” Not that the soldiers in his new unit were slackers. It was just that they didn’t have the same mentality as Special Forces.
So Shurer went to Selection. It was brutal, much harder than he thought, but he became friends with Seth Howard, and they would later serve together in ODA 3336. In Selection, Shurer, like all the candidates, endured three weeks of hell. There were times when he wondered why he was doing it. But that’s when his stubbornness kicked in. He told himself over and over: I’m not going to quit. Keep going.
He did keep
going and was offered a position as a medic. And that was when Shurer’s real training started. He spent a year in the medic program, and it covered everything from treating gunshot wounds to veterinary medicine. He did an internship in an emergency room and completed a nationally accredited paramedic program.
The goal was to get the soldiers as much experience as possible and give them the confidence to treat everything from severe wounds to an Afghan villager’s cough.
It was just the kind of training Shurer was looking for. He threw himself into it and excelled. After Special Forces training, he joined ODA 3336 in June 2006. He had done everything he had set out to do in the military, but he was lonely.
His girlfriend had broken up with him when he decided to join the Army. At the time, they had been going out for a year and a half. They reunited briefly, but they kept fighting, and after Shurer had been in the Army for six months, they broke up for good.
Shurer wanted someone to share his life, but he hadn’t met anyone while he was stationed at Fort Bragg. So he turned to eHarmony, an online dating service. That’s where he met Miranda Lantz.
She was a graduate student at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia, about five hours north of Fayetteville, North Carolina. Originally from West Virginia, Miranda had graduated from the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago.
Their first date, he drove up to Harrisonburg and they went to the movies to see The Incredibles—an animated film about a family of superheroes. Shurer was quiet and shy, and had just come out of a bad relationship. Miranda was supportive. It was a long-distance relationship, but one that they both wanted to pursue.
When he found out he was being deployed to Afghanistan in August 2006, he asked her to marry him. She said yes—even though there was some apprehension about Shurer being in the military.
About six months before she and Shurer met, Miranda’s brother-in-law died in Iraq. She definitely knew what she was getting into with Shurer. Soldiers always face danger during a deployment. But Special Forces soldiers seemed to always be in the thick of things. He told her not to worry. He assured her that his job was to save lives. He wouldn’t be in danger.
And during his first tour with ODA 3336, he hardly saw action at all. His team mostly trained Afghan National Police. But it was a real eye-opening experience. He was surrounded by natural beauty. Ice-capped mountains and deep valleys and crystal-clear, clean, fast-flowing rivers and gorges. But he was shocked to see the abject poverty. The Afghans didn’t have paved roads and people lived in mud huts. No one had money. The way of life—with bartering and using donkeys for transportation—probably hadn’t changed much in hundreds of years. The only difference was the technology. Even though they had few material possessions, many people owned cell phones. And they were quick to use them to call tribal leaders to settle disputes over money, land, or with American troops. As a medic, Shurer provided health care services to the people—shots and examinations. He also was responsible for training the Afghan police medics.
At times, it could be frustrating. Shurer was a no-nonsense soldier. He expected everyone to train like him. Stay long, until you get it. No excuses. And he was patient as long as people were trying. He would stay late and explain concepts and techniques. But he found that he had no patience for the Afghans who didn’t take their training seriously. He would snap at them. By the time his deployment was over, he was glad to go home. His wife was pregnant with their first child.
His second deployment with the team was vastly different. Ford was their new team sergeant, and he was strict, a disciplinarian with an aggressive philosophy. Shurer liked Ford and his approach. He toughened up the team. No doubt about it. There were no more cliques. Everyone worked together for the benefit of the team. It was all about the unit—something that had been missing during his first deployment. It seemed that his friends during the first mission—Howard, Morales, Wurzbach, and Behr—all respected the new team sergeant. Ford worked them hard because he wanted them to be prepared for every obstacle they could possibly encounter in the field.
And so now, sitting on the helicopter headed to the Shok Valley, Shurer was confident his team was ready. There was nothing his team couldn’t handle, he thought. He just hoped he had enough supplies—and enough time to treat everyone—if the team hit a shitstorm.
8
Sergeant First Class Karl Wurzbach
Usually outspoken, Sergeant First Class Karl Wurzbach was quiet as he prepared to board the chopper. At thirty-four, he called himself the “old man” of the team. He had seen just about everything the Army could throw at him. He had become a sage, a person the younger soldiers could talk to for advice. In the Army for fifteen years, he also was the one who knew how to cut through all the bureaucratic bullshit to get things done. But with this mission, he knew something was wrong. From the time Ford had presented it to the team, he had voiced his objections. A good soldier always follows orders. But they will also speak their mind when they see bullshit, and he knew this mission—the way it was laid out—was total bullshit.
They were fighting uphill. They were landing in the daylight, far from their objective. And, if they made it up the mountain, they weren’t even sure that Haji Ghafour, their objective, would be there. Intelligence was sketchy, so why put so many men at risk?
Wurzbach expressed his concerns to Ford, who listened intently. He knew Ford was on his side. One of Ford’s roles as the lead noncommissioned officer on the team was to sell the mission, get his men pumped up before battle. But Wurzbach sensed that Ford felt the same way he did: They were headed into a goat fuck.
At the end of the conversation, Ford told him that they were going. End of conversation. Wurzbach only hoped that if they were ambushed, the commandos would exceed expectations. This was far from certain. His team had taken the commandos on a few missions and they performed well. But those operations were relatively easy. They were well planned and the soldiers didn’t encounter intense enemy fire. That was key because Wurzbach knew that not everyone behaved the same when bullets start flying. Under fire, soldiers behave differently. Some men lift their weapons and run toward the fire, while others hide.
Wurzbach knew how his team would react. They would stand and fight. But he was worried about the commandos. Would they participate or cower? It was hard to tell. No man really knows how he is going to react to war until he is placed in a life-or-death situation. And the commandos were far from battle tested.
Wurzbach had already warned his wife that he was going on a dangerous mission. Before each operation, he would phone home just to let his wife know he was going on a “camping trip.” That was his code to let her know he was about to go in the field. He made sure he talked to her and his three children. While he didn’t disclose details, he urged her to pay attention to the news. He wanted her to be prepared just in case the phone rang in the middle of the night, or if someone from the military showed up at her door. At least she would know why. Before he hung up, he told her he loved her.
This was a different kind of war for soldiers—they could keep in close contact with family members. Soldiers stayed in touch with their families and friends through the Internet, cell phones, and Skype. It made the war seem less dangerous. It was almost like the soldiers were at the base instead of ten thousand miles away in a war zone.
At that moment Wurzbach wished he was home with his family.
Born in Syracuse, New York, he grew up in Erie, Pennsylvania, a drab, gray city on the banks of Lake Erie. At one time the city had 140,000 inhabitants, but when Wurzbach was growing up, the population had declined to about 108,000. When the steel mills and other manufacturing jobs dried up, people left. The weather didn’t help either. During the winter, winds swept off the lake, and snow blanketed the city.
His father was a supervisor for Roadway Express, and his mother was a nurse. They lived in a ranch-style house in a close-knit neighborhood with houses stacked next to one another, a place with side streets and
kids riding bicycles, and parents decorated their homes in grand style for Halloween and Christmas.
But across the street was a big field with acres of land and woods and trails. And with all his restless energy, that was a good place to spend time with his friends. Wurzbach was good at soccer and played some hockey, but he was always restless. Sometimes at night, he would sneak out of his house and jog for miles. No reason. He just couldn’t sit still. He wanted to explore.
His father had been in the military and served in Vietnam, but he rarely talked about his Army experience. When Wurzbach began high school, he joined the ROTC. But by the time his senior year rolled around, he knew he wanted to leave Erie. There were no jobs. So when he graduated high school, Wurzbach enlisted in the National Guard. College was out. He knew he didn’t have the money to go “experimenting” in college before he found himself. That wasn’t for him.
He excelled in the National Guard. But even with that, his life was in a rut. Outside of his two weeks in the summer and one weekend a month with the Guard, he only worked part-time jobs in Erie. In the summer, he toiled at a lumberyard, and around Christmas he would usually land a position with Toys “R” Us. He was stuck in Erie, going nowhere. He was twenty and could barely afford to fill up his car with gas. He wanted to move out of his parents’ house, but had no money for rent or food. He was totally dependent on his parents.
So in the summer of 1992, Wurzbach decided to enlist in the Army. If he liked the National Guard, the Army would be more fun—and he would make some money and travel, he thought.