by Mitch Weiss
But Ford was clearly annoyed. Between pushing Howard’s hands away and trying to stand up, the bandage was barely secured as they climbed the rest of the way down to the wadi.
Howard could tell Ford was fighting a losing battle against the pain.
“What do you need me to do?” he asked.
“I need morphine,” Ford said.
Howard took out his syrette and handed it to his team sergeant. It would be the first of about five as Ford asked everyone he encountered for morphine. Since his radio was broken, Howard got on Ford’s and called Walton.
“Hey, Kyle, what do you need?”
Howard could tell that his team sergeant was hurt badly and out of it. That’s because Ford wasn’t yelling at him and telling him that he was doing stuff all wrong. Instead he was just standing there, letting Howard talk on his radio.
“I need you to shoot that building with the Carl Gustav,” Walton said.
“What building?”
Peering up to the top of the mountain, he could see several mud-walled houses still standing.
“Okay, do you see the power lines?” Walton asked.
“Yeah.”
“Right on the other side of the power lines, do you see that building?” Walton said.
Scanning the ridge, Howard thought he knew which building Walton wanted destroyed.
“Stay with Scott,” Howard told Wallen as he rounded up his commandos.
“I’m good, man,” Wallen said, preparing to go with Howard. “You said I was fine.”
While not as badly hurt as Ford, Wallen was still injured, and Howard didn’t want to keep putting him in harm’s way.
“I know I said you’re fine,” he said. “But I really need you to stay here because I was lying to you.”
I’m a weapons sergeant, not a medic, he thought. Don’t listen to me. I don’t know what the fuck I’m talking about. I’m just making shit up to keep you calm.
48
Walding
Mind games. That’s what they are, Walding thought.
He was getting tired because he was going into shock. He knew it. He tried to keep firing his rifle. It was the only way to stay alive. Sooner or later, they were going to be rescued. They were going to get off the mountain. That’s what he told himself. Walding was trying to stay positive. But he knew his leg was in bad shape. Being a country boy, he had blown his fair share of animals in half. So it wasn’t a shock seeing the effects that a bullet actually had on flesh. This helped him cope with the disturbing visuals.
From working on a farm, he had inherited his grandfather’s grit and steel. How many times when he was baling hay did he feel like giving up? How many times during football practices—two-a-days in the brutal August sun—did he cramp up but stay on the field? How many obstacles had he overcome in his life? His parents’ arrest? Moving in with his grandparents in a new town with a new set of rules. Walding was digging deep to deal with the misery. He had no morphine. Nothing to kill the pain. He had been lying on the ground for at least an hour with his lower leg tied to his thigh with a bootlace. And he was still functioning.
But when shock sets in, the waves consume the mind like a tsunami to the soul. He closed his eyes and whispered prayers: “Our Father, take care of my family if anything happens to me.”
It was his moment of clarity. He wasn’t thinking about himself—what would happen if he bled out. If he died on the mountain. He was thinking about his wife and children. Who would take care of them?
Then his mind drifted to his grandfather—the most important figure in his life. He’d learned so much from the old man. How to live a good moral life. How to treat people with respect. He’d learned to be mentally tough and face adversity like a man.
I’m going to come home, Papa. I promise.
49
Walton
Walton knew he couldn’t keep coordinating the entire operation, so he asked the other team leader in the wadi to take over.
“Hey, get your TOC [tactical operations center] set up and start talking to Monster 33,” Walton told the other captain.
He didn’t know how much longer they would be alive. Rhyner was directing the bombs in closer and closer. Fire was coming from three sides and fighters were right above them in a house. He could hear them speaking Arabic, but couldn’t make out what they were saying. Walton was sure he and the others were about to get overrun.
One of the last intelligence reports he’d read before the mission was that the fighters protecting Ghafour had obtained a lot of grenades. He knew all they had to do was reach out of one of the windows and start tossing grenades.
Walton rolled over and felt for one of his own grenades. For a second he considered cooking it off and tossing it into the window above. But missing would just mean the grenade would land on them. Only the air strikes could save them now. Walton decided that if Rhyner was killed or they lost their radios, he was going to order the team to roll the wounded off the cliff and jump behind them.
It was a hard decision, but it was the battlefield calculus that he was trained to perform. He had already stopped the medevacs from coming in until they were off the mountain. He knew Ford and Wallen were down there bleeding. There were several commandos wounded and at least one dead. But he knew they might only have one chance to bring in the helicopters and he couldn’t risk it. It was a hard decision because Behr, Morales, and Walding were lying in the rocks in front of him bleeding to death.
Bullets and fragments bounced off Walton’s helmet again. He turned to the Afghan terps hiding behind them.
“For Christ sake, just shoot in that direction,” he begged them.
Walton could feel things spinning out of control. The longer they had been pinned down, the more desperate the situation had become. He had been on a quick reaction force for a unit in the 82nd Airborne. Some paratroopers got in trouble in Fallujah, but the force had been able to rescue them. He had always imagined that once all the planes showed up here in the mountains, they would bomb the shit out of the insurgents, and his team would be saved. That’s because the American government has the ability to save you.
But it was very clear now that the team was on its own. Nobody could save them. It seemed that every U.S. fighting unit in Afghanistan was stopping and moving toward them. Walton could hear the traffic on the satellite radio.
But it still wasn’t enough. They wouldn’t get here in time. Shurer was running out of medical supplies. Soon he wasn’t going to be able to treat any of them.
“We’ve got to get the fuck out of here,” Shurer yelled at Walton. “They’re bleeding out.”
Walton turned to Sanders and Carter.
“Listen, you guys have to find a way to get down that mountain.”
“Down that fucking cliff?” Sanders said.
“Find a way down that cliff. I don’t care how bad it is.”
On the radio again, Walton called back to Bagram.
“Listen, we’re combat ineffective,” he said. “We have an SF element about to be overrun. We need immediate CAS. We need a B-52 or B-1 because this CAS is not having its desired effect.”
50
Carter
Carter knew it was an incredibly difficult task. But if the wounded were going to survive—if anyone was going to live through this day—he had to help Sanders find a way down the mountain. In addition, the path had to be hidden from insurgents. If it wasn’t, HIG snipers would be able to easily pick off the wounded soldiers. But Carter wondered how they were going to find it. Their position on the ledge was surrounded on three sides by cliffs with sixty-foot drops. With the insurgents’ buildings thirty to forty feet directly above them and more across the way, it was suicide.
He knew the path they had used to climb up the mountain at the beginning of the mission was the only safe way down to the wadi—as far as terrain was concerned. But that route was now too dangerous. Enemy snipers were lurking everywhere. He knew that Ford and Williams had just used that path and were l
ucky to make it to the bottom. Ford’s plan had called for positioning commandos at various points along that trail to provide cover for the wounded. But with Ford out of the picture, this option had become unfeasible. Besides, the Afghan commandos—the fighters hyped by U.S. and Afghan commanders as the Wolves—were too unreliable. While some commandos had provided fire, too many had cowered behind rocks.
The team had run out of options. For Carter, the reality began to set it: If they stayed on the mountain, they would either be killed by insurgents or by friendly fire. The bombs were danger close—and they were having little effect on the insurgents. The HIG fighters were just too entrenched in the rocks and caves and underground passageways in the compound. They were like cockroaches in a tenement apartment embedded deep in rotting wood—they just wouldn’t go away. The only chance he and his team had was to find another way down the mountain while the aerial assault slowed down enemy fire.
And that was the plan.
So here was Carter, ready to take on another assignment. He had gone from combat cameraman—someone who observes and documents missions—to active participant, firing at insurgents. He spent most of the mission as a medical assistant, tending to wounded soldiers. Now he was ready to find an escape route. Of all the assignments he’d undertaken on this miserable day, this one might be the most important.
51
Wurzbach
Wurzbach was looking for guidance. He wanted to help the assault team but knew he couldn’t leave his position without permission. So he called for Ford over the radio. He knew Ford was injured, but was still actively involved in the battle.
“Do I abandon my position?” he asked.
No response, but Wurzbach heard ODA 3312 over the radio saying they couldn’t get through to help Ford’s team because of the heavy fire. So he came to the startling conclusion: If another ODA with a platoon of commandos couldn’t get through, neither could his team.
So Wurzbach decided to stay in position. If nothing else, he could keep the bad guys from maneuvering around the back side of the village. That was his goal.
At that point, Wurzbach was pretty much resigned to the fact that no one was getting out of there. The fighters and attack helicopters were either going to kill everybody with bombs or he and his team were going to be killed by insurgents. Not good thoughts.
Hugging the rock wall with his back, Wurzbach recognized Staff Sergeant Plants heading in his direction. Plants dove behind the wall.
“Why didn’t you call me up?” he asked
“This is it, dude. There’s nothing here, as you can see.” Wurzbach replied. “I figured you were in a safe place, rocking.”
Plants glanced at the cover. “I was, and you’re right. We can’t all fit here.”
The explosions were loud and continuous. The Apaches and fighters were trying to level the village. When there was a brief lull in the bombing, Wurzbach decided to see what was going on closer to the action. To do that, though, he had to move across an open field to try to get a clear view of the assault team’s position. There was no cover. He needed his interpreter in case they ran into Afghan commandos. He told Noodles his plan.
“You ready to do it?”
Noodles agreed, but Wurzbach could see the terror in his eyes.
So Wurzbach turned and began running. He bolted across the field—it was about 150 feet long. All he had to do was reach a thicket of tree and rocks. If he got there he would be safe. He was running as fast as his legs would kick. It was all adrenaline—like he had just downed a six-pack of Red Bull. Keep going, he told himself.
He hit some cover and turned around. Noodles hadn’t moved an inch. He was frozen in his tracks.
“Come on,” Wurzbach shouted.
Noodles just stood there.
“Damn it, you can do it.”
Noodles finally mustered the courage and ran. When he reached Wurzbach, Wurzbach asked what happened. “As soon as you took off, dirt was flying at your heels,” said Noodles, trying to catch his breath. “They were shooting at you the whole way. It’s amazing they didn’t hit you.”
Wurzbach had no idea. “Damn, really?”
“Yeah,” the terp, said huffing and puffing. “I can’t believe you didn’t notice. It looked like something out of a movie.” He paused for a moment. “What about me?” Noodles asked.
“When you ran I saw a few pieces of dirt kick up, but it was behind you.”
Wurzbach now had a good vantage point. He could see fire still coming from the compound toward the assault team on the ledge—it seemed to be coming from three different directions. He could tell that the assault team hadn’t made it far up the mountain—and that their flank was horribly exposed.
Wurzbach knew it was time to consolidate and provide cover for the assault team. Maybe then, they would have a chance.
[Part 4]
ESCAPE
52
Ford
Wallen kicked open the door.
The squat house at the base of the hill was little more than a hut. It was probably a temporary home built while the Afghan farmers constructed their larger houses in the village. Made of thick dried mud, it had been converted into a goat barn. Crawling inside, Ford collapsed against the wall in the dark room. Wallen set Ford’s rifle next to him. All of a sudden the floor underneath Ford began to move. Startled, he jumped up when a baby goat shot out from under him.
Motherfucker, he thought. What’s next?
Settling back down against the wall, Ford began placing urgent calls for morphine. He had neglected to get another syrette from Howard, and now the pain was tremendous. Calling medics from the other team, he asked for anything to stanch the pain. It came in waves. Each time, he dug the heel of his boot into the dirt, until soon he had scraped a trench into the floor.
“I need your medic,” Ford called to Lodyga, who was up the valley. “We’re running down on morphine.”
ODA 3312 was already moving toward Ford. The team had packed up its support positions. But as the soldiers moved closer, they started to take fire from enemy fighters on the hills above.
“I will try and get up there, but we’re pinned down right now,” Lodyga responded over the radio.
Over and over, Ford called for morphine. Each call, he tried to stay composed. He didn’t want his voice to betray the fact that the shit was bad and he was hurting.
When the morphine he had gotten from Howard finally started to work, it hit him hard. He hadn’t experimented with drugs before the Army, so when the painkillers began to take effect, his speech became slurred. His voice seemed to roll out of the radio like syrup.
Between radio calls, he struggled to retain consciousness.
With his left arm in tatters, it was hard to get comfortable. Every time he tried to feel at ease, his left arm failed. It offered no support. One time, he closed his eyes and woke up after being bumped.
It was a goat again, its head pressing against his good arm. Using his right arm, Ford would shove the goat away only to have it return. The goat was determined to push him out of the building. As Ford struggled with the animal, he glanced around the room. Wallen had left, but he spotted an Afghan commando sitting nearby. He yelled and gestured for him to help. But the soldier just shrugged.
Shoot the damn thing or something, Ford thought, again fending off the goat with his good arm.
Finally, the commando got the message and grabbed the goat by its horns. Ford could see the animal struggling to stay put as the commando dragged it out the door.
Moments later, Wallen returned. He had been relaying messages or questions from Walton to the team sergeant.
Ford knew the others needed to get off that ledge. But they hadn’t moved yet. In his view, the problem was simple: Nobody had a sense of urgency about getting the team down. The team was getting chewed up, and they needed to head to the wadi.
“Ryan, what the fuck are they doing?”
But Wallen didn’t have an answer.
53
<
br /> Carter
There was nowhere to go but straight down. Carter and Sanders had been examining possible escape routes. But they ruled out the best ones because of heavy fire from HIG fighters. So they turned their attention to the back side of the mountain.
They quickly discovered that there was no enemy fire from that location. But the landscape was daunting. To reach the bottom, they would have to find a path on the side of a cliff that dropped nearly sixty feet to the wadi. Not an easy thing to do without carrying the wounded. An impossible task while hauling soldiers with life-threatening injuries.
Still, it was the only way.
Without gunfire, at least they had a chance. If they used the switchbacks they had taken up the mountain, the wounded soldiers would be easy targets for the HIG fighters. That’s why Walton had ordered them to find another way.
Now they had to use all their skills to find the best route. While Carter found some narrow ledges leading downhill, the drop-offs between some of those ridges were wide. In a few places, ten to twenty feet separated the two ledges. At those points, the soldiers would have to hang from one ledge and drop to the next. Their landings would have to be perfect or else they could roll off the mountain. If that happened, the fall could kill them—they could tumble down and their bodies would be smashed as they landed on the sharp, jagged rocks.
And there were other problems, too. They had to carry their guns and gear. More importantly, they had to haul several seriously wounded soldiers who were barely alive. Glancing at the possible escape routes, they wondered, How could we do it? Could the wounded soldiers survive those drops?