I Am Soldier of Fortune

by Brown, Robert, Spencer, Vann

“Salaam a Leikum. Allah Akhbar. Take this rucker,” he said. The laughing Mujahideen grabbed him by each arm and dragged him along. Suddenly, we heard the sound of a Massey-Ferguson that had stopped 50 meters ahead of us. We climbed into the tractor cart, hanging on for dear life, trying to keep our balance on the oily floor as the driver charged ahead to the commo bunker. We reached the top of the hill, climbed out of the cart and walked the last 500 meters. We passed out as soon as we hit the carpet.

  In the morning, we were served our usual feast of sick sweet tea and cakes. We hadn’t finished when Musa ordered us to go to the vehicle that had just arrived. This time our limo was the tractor and cart that had brought us in there. Three Mujahideen in the cart were fingering their AKs. Mohammed helped us carry our gear to the transport and shook hands, smiling as we climbed up the cart’s sides. He stood and watched us until the driver turned the curve. We rattled up some hills and slid down some muddy trails. Rounding one of the hills, the driver came to a fork in the road. When the road branched off, we took the right fork and plunged into a bog hole.

  Fanshaw jumped down to the muddy bog side and looked carefully at the tractor’s right front tire. The Mujahideen tried to rock the Massey free nonstop for a good hour, only to dig the cart deeper into the mud. Fanshaw, lean and muscular, stripped to the waist, grabbed a shovel from the cart and started digging up the mud in front of the wheel, but that only made things worse.

  “Let’s walk,” he said, and we headed out for the next command post. It was only ten kilometers away. The Mujahideen told us the route to the Command Post was over an easy trail. Paul’s map showed a 1,000-meter increase in elevation as we marched up. We reached a valley that ran some 25 klicks to a high range of mountains. Musa led the pack. Fanshaw stopped, looked at a topographical map he carried, took out a compass and shot a bearing to the highest of the peaks across the valley. HalfWay up the hillside Musa spotted a small boy. “Wait here. I will go talk to the boy,” he said.

  “Ask him how far to the CP,” I said as I rested my back against a rock. “Bob, he’s lost,” Fanshaw said. “We should be going north, not east. Look at this.

  I glanced at the route Fanshaw pointed out. “Son of a bitch, you’re right,” I said, preparing to kill Musa.

  Musa came back from talking to the boy and said, “He is a nomad. He says we go that way.” He pointed to a road that curved down northeastward, toward the valley floor.

  “Bullshit, Musa. That’ll take all day, and we’ll be stuck on that road all night and tomorrow. Don’t forget we’re low on water and I’ve only got one canteen for the five of us.” Fanshaw tapped the canteen attached to his belt.

  “No problem. We can go that way,” Musa pointed again to the winding road. I clenched my fist at the Mujahideen. “No, Musa. We go Fanshaw’s way.”

  Musa shrugged and turned away, sucking on a blade of grass. Fanshaw took out his map and compass once again, checked the bearing to the peak and started off cross-country in determined strides. We figured we had originally gone in completely the wrong direction and were now 20 kilometers away.

  Musa joined Paul at the head of the column, marching along without a care in the world, carrying the only AK in the group. We stumbled across scrub brush and rocks and into deep ravines and back up, having to grab branches to keep us from sliding down.

  “Listen,” I said. It was the sound of jet engines. Musa shielded his eyes with his right hand, looking in the direction of the sounds. Hunter was the first to see them. He pointed and yelled. “MiGs! They’re dropping heat flares to stop the Stingers!”

  The jets were not visible, but the heat flares were easy to pick up— silvery-white smoke columns against the light blue of the Afghan sky. A few seconds passed, then a loud BOOM shook the earth. They were bombing the village. Hunter turned toward the distant peak marking the CP’s location and began to jog down the slope, shouting, “Come on! If those bastards catch us out here in the open we’ve had it!”

  We ran after him running across flat terrain, slowing to a quick walk through heavy bush, and jogging along crumbling banks of dry gullies. We heard no more bombing, only the noise of jet engines. We scrambled up a small rise and ahead of us was a crude hut built of earth and grass, with two shepherd nomads sitting on the ground watching their sheep. At our approach, one of them got up to greet us. Musa shook his hand. “These nomads are sometimes spies for Russians. Don’t speak.”

  We sat down and rested while Musa walked back. The old, wrinkled one motioned to his companion to go to the hut. He came back a while later, toting a large tin pitcher. He offered Musa and his friend a drink. They refused it and pointed towards us. He knelt in front of us and offered the jug to Fanshaw, who took a couple of swallows, then passed it to Hunter who did the same. Then it was my turn after which I handed it off to Williams. We chugged the no doubt bacteria-laden water down. Fanshaw filled our canteen, and we nervously started off again, watching our backs. We had one AK, no food, minimal water for five men and the barest of communication.

  We stumbled along down another deep ravine. I kept asking how much farther we had to go before we would reach the CP. No response. “Do you understand,” I roared at Musa. “Yes,” he nodded several times. Williams called, “Robert, can’t you see he doesn’t understand a damn thing you’re saying?”

  “Sure he does. Right Musa?”

  Musa nodded his head. “Yes. Yes. No problem.”

  I smirked at the nervous Williams.

  “OK, Brown,” he replied, “ask him if he’s an astronaut.”

  I did, and we waited for the response. “Musa, are you an astronaut?”

  “Yes.”

  “Ask him if he’s a brain surgeon,” Williams said.

  “Musa, are you a brain surgeon?”

  Again the happy smile, a nod of the head and a happy “Yes.”

  We picked up speed as the sun began to set. Fanshaw, having replaced Musa as the guide, yelled, “Come on! You’ve got to hurry. If we’re caught out here at night with no water, no food and one AK, we could be in a world of shit.”

  Musa nodded. “Yes,” he remarked.

  We ran into another nomad with a small boy and a herd of sheep. Musa stopped them and, after a brief conversation in Pashto, the shepherd pointed straight ahead in the direction we were traveling.

  “OK, not far,” Musa said, breaking into a trot.

  We saw a familiar-looking hill facing a river and the small grove of mulberry trees that marked the CP area. Fanshaw urged, “You’ve got to hurry! We can’t go into the camp after dark; the sentries will shoot us.”

  “Five minute break,” Williams begged.

  “To Hell with the break. COME ON! If we were in the Legion, I’d tie a rope around you and drag your ass!” Fanshaw roared. He started trotting ahead, glancing over his shoulder to make sure I was still moving. Musa was well ahead of us, starting down a steep incline, when a shout sounded from atop a barren hill to our immediate right. Hunter stopped short and froze, his head turned toward the summit. A Mujahideen was pointing an AK at Hunter. The click-clack of a chambering round came faintly over Musa’s answer.

  Musa and the sentry shouted at each other for a while. Hunter was still frozen in place. Fanshaw was kneeling and I wanted to spit my Skoal at the Mujahideen. Musa motioned us up the trail leading to the sentry. “No problem, everything fine. We go.”

  Fanshaw led the way behind Musa, with Hunter bringing up the rear. Our ensuing feast of chai, oranges and cakes was as good as a big hunk of prime rib and baked potato and a couple bottles of wine this time. Fanshaw cursed Musa under his breath and Williams scratched the fleas attacking his tired ass. Tahir was nowhere to be seen, so Musa was sent down the hill to the CP building to find him.

  He came back a few minutes later, smiling. “A vehicle will take us back to Quetta in the morning. INSHALLAH.”

  Fanshaw walked up to Musa and put his face six inches from the Afghan’s. “Musa. We all go to Quetta tomorrow morning! No! INSHAL- LAH! We g
o!”

  “OK, yes. No problem.”

  At daybreak, we packed our remaining gear and finished our continental breakfast of chai, bread and cake-flies. Musa, who had slept at the CP, came to the bottom of the hill and yelled to us, pointing to a Toyota parked nearby. By the time we reached the bottom there were several Mu-jahideen gathered around the truck. Ramadan had not yet ended and the driver was kneeling on his prayer rug a short distance away. His back toward us, his head toward Mecca, he was deeply involved in prayer and oblivious to everyone. Finally, the driver finished his chanting and walked around the Toyota, opened the door and crawled in behind the wheel. He glanced up at some sacred flowers he had in the car and shouted, “Allah Akhbar!”

  I got in next to the driver, Williams next to me. The driver cranked the engine and turned on the radio, and off we were to Quetta. The trip was long and dusty, but Quetta sounded like an oasis in the desert.

  Tahir sent us a note explaining the reason he wasn’t able to visit us at the fort. Shortly after we had crossed the frontier into Afghanistan he was informed that by 15 May 1988 all his arms, ammunition and supplies would have to be out of Pakistani territory and inside Afghanistan, or they would be impounded. Presumably this was the Pakistani reaction to the massive explosion of an enormous ammo dump near Islamabad just weeks before, which was suspected to have been the handiwork of the Soviet KGB.

  We made it out, swearing never to go back to that dreadful country. Until next year, that was . . .

  21

  SOF NEVER MISSES A WAR:

  MISSION TO LEBANON

  For years Lebanon, the once vibrant cultural paradise, the “Switzerland of the Middle East,” with its exotic cedars, picturesque hills and valleys and breathtaking Mediterranean coastlines, had been ravaged by a vicious civil war.

  Ruthless Sunni Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) invasions and occupation; fundamentalist Iran flexing its muscle with its Shia Party of God (Hezbollah) counterparts in Lebanon; Syrian interference, bombardments and occupation; and multiple Israeli invasions and a 17-year occupation of southern Lebanon combined to all but ruin the once-exemplary Middle eastern nation.

  For years and through at least six wars, from 1975 to 1990, the battles were fought on a dizzying number of fronts and shifting alliances. The PLO fought the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) and its allied Lebanese Phalange Christian Army as well as Hezbollah. The South Lebanon Army (SLA), which included both Christians and Muslims in turn, in bed with Israel, was fighting Syria and Hezbollah as well as the PLO.

  In 1982, I was all tied up with the POW operation in Southeast Asia, so I sent Larry Dring to Lebanon three times for months at a time to work with Major Haddad of the Christain Phalange. Dring taught the Phalange troop anti-tank warfare, small unit tactics, and advanced demolition. Larry was the perfect fit for training the Phalange. Medicaly retired from his numerous wounds in Nam, he was an icon in Special Forces. During four tours in Nam, most of it in the Central Highlands, he started as an enlisted man and came out as a Captain winning two Silver Stars, four Bronze Stars and Five Purple Hearts. One of his friends said, “Gotta love a guy whose idea of Psychological Operations to bury an enemy along a trail with one arm sticking out of the ground holding up a leaflet that says ‘Surrender of Die’.”

  While he was there Dring found small arms innovations and weaponry that were not in the U.S. technical manuals, such as Russian hand grenades that had zero-to-eight seconds before detonating. The West was unaware that Russia had zero second delays before exploding. Those who relied on the common wisdom that grenades had several seconds before detonating could indeed have a very unpleasant experience. At first, he took it to the intelligence officer of the Marine Amphibious Force then stationed near the airport in Beirut. The First Lieutenant had no concept of what he had and sent it to explosive ordnance disposal to be destroyed. Dring brought back a duffle bag full of weapons that were not in the Army technical manuals on Soviet weapons. He strolled casually through customs with his duffle bag and brought it into the SOF office.

  On another SOF training mission in 1982, when the Marines were in Beirut, Dring, along with Dale Dye, active Marine at the time and later SOF editor, met up. The Marines were forbidden to return fire targeting the SLA without express permission from the U.S. embassy. The story came out that someone was shooting back at the bad guys in the hills who were firing mortars or rockets at the Marines. Before long 4.2” mortar rounds would start falling on the enemy and they would shut down. Dring and Dye were the culprit “phantom mortar team.”

  Dumping a dozen or so in any corner he could find on my always clutered desk, he chuckles, “Look what I brought ya. Never seen before in the West. Live Russian Grenade Fuses,” he grinned.

  “Holy shit,Larry, you brought me jail time,” I roared.

  Once I had calmed down, I called the Denver based FBI agent, Russ Hashman, who, I speculated had been directed to monitor what SOF was up to ever since we got investigated for allegedly violating the Neutrality Act.

  “Russ,” I said, pretending calm. “Suppose, just suppose one of my re-porters came back from Lebanon with some active explosive devices that the U.S. Army would be interested in. Would you come up and take them off my hands. Now this is just a hypothetical,” I said.

  He chuckled, saying that he just might and I replied, “Please get up

  here ASAP.”

  He arrived in short order and took the jail time off my hands.

  “Dring, no more crazy shit like that,” I ordered him. “I am going to round up the editorial staff and we are going to the nearest bar.

  Larry passed away from his war wounds in 1983. Rest in Peace, brother.

  22

  GRENADA—ONE WE WON!

  The United States Invaded Grenada in 1983.

  “Pack up, we are going to war,” I told my then Managing Editor Jim Graves. We packed up and got on the first plane and went to find the war. Or so we thought.

  “Where’s the war?” we demanded as we charged through the streets of Grenada’s capital, St. Georges. Smiling Grenadians answered in their singsong English, “The Cubans have gone to the hills. Welcome to Grenada.” By Sunday, 30 October, 1983, the liberation of Grenada was almost complete. It was no invasion, it was simply a liberation. At least that’s the way the Grenadians saw it when former Ranger, Rod Hafemeister, Graves and I arrived on the island.

  At Point Salines Airport, we observed an 82nd Airborne artillery battery on the northeast end of the runway, some troops on the perimeter, some foot and vehicle patrols along the road, and numerous vehicle checkpoints, some abandoned. We didn’t see any invaders, a single body or any blown-up cars and trucks. Although rumor had it that significant numbers of Cubans were retreating into the hills to conduct guerrilla operations, we saw only three captured Cuban prisoners in two days. There were Cuban antiaircraft guns and several shot-up BTR-60s, but it was obvious that any real resistance had long since crumbled.

  We had arrived at the island with the first load of about 160 press people, five days after D-Day. We were enraged that we had missed the war and even more so when the smiling Grenadians asked, “Are Americans going to stay? We want them to. It’s a good thing you didn’t wait a few more days.” No lie!

  There was almost no sign of fighting in St. Georges, the Grenada capital from a press holding area at the airport in Barbados. The objectives of the 1st and 2nd Battalions, 75th Rangers, were south of town and the Marines from the 24th Marine Amphibious Unit (MAU) operated on the other side of the island, north of St. Georges.

  With the exception of forts Frederick and Rupert, which had taken a pounding from carrier-launched A-7s and C-130 Spectre gunships, the only signs of damage around St. Georges were caused by scavengers and looters.

  The Marines, who had moved into St. Georges the previous day (it had not yet been assaulted and was theoretically still in hostile hands), were as puzzled about their reception on the island as we were. The press who arrived with us on Sund
ay were just as bewildered. One young Marine approached Miami Herald reporter Don Bohning (one of seven newsmen who had slipped onto the island by boat on Tuesday, 25 October, the day of the invasion) and asked: “Can you tell us what’s going on? Is the Grena-dian Army with us or against us?”

  The 1,200-man People’s Revolutionary Army (PRA) had started laying down their weapons on the day of the invasion, stripping off their uniforms and putting on civilian clothes to join the crowd welcoming the 6,000 American liberators shortly after dawn. The sky over Point Salines was filled with C-l30s and parachuting Rangers. The ocean turned gray with the fleet’s U.S. Navy warships.

  Cuban “construction workers,” some actual laborers and some from a military engineering unit, put up stiffer-than expected resistance around Point Salines. Some PRA elements did fight back on the first and second days at Point Salines, Frequente and Fort Frederick. However, most of the PRA, like the overwhelming majority of the population, had little love for its own commanders and none whatsoever for the Cubans.

  At the time of the invasion Grenada was, in theory, under the control of General Hudson Austin and his 16-man Revolutionary Military Council. However, in fact, power was shared by Austin and Deputy Prime Minister Bernard Coard, and coordinated with the Central Committee of the New Jewel Movement (NJM). Austin and Coard, dedicated pro-Cuban Marxists, engineered the house arrest and subsequent execution of Prime Minister Maurice Bishop on 19 October, which triggered the U.S.-led assault on 25 October.

  Directing the NJM from behind the scenes were Soviet Ambassador Gennadiy I. Sachenev, a four-star general and expert in covert actions with ties to the KGB, and Cuban Ambassador Julian Enrique Tores Riza, a senior intelligence officer of the Direccion General de Inteligencia (DGI), Cuba’s KGB surrogate.

  After American forces had seized their initial objectives, they moved out into the hills to hunt down fleeing Cubans and PRA soldiers. To the GIs’ surprise, they encountered not hostile fire, but a picnic, with Grena-dians offering gifts of cold soft drinks, melons, cheers and information about the hiding places of Cubans and NJM leaders. Information from locals led USMC Captain David Karcher, on Saturday, 29 October, to a house near St. Georges where Coard, his Jamaican-born wife Phyllis (also a prime leader of the anti-Bishop forces on the Central Committee) and some other NJM leaders were hiding. Coard initially indicated he would not surrender, but changed his mind when the Marines targeted antitank weapons on the house. Captain Karcher reported that Coard came out muttering, “I’m not responsible. I’m not responsible.”