Into the Fire: A Firsthand Account of the Most Extraordinary Battle in the Afghan War

by Bing West

  On some Marine advisor teams, and all Special Forces teams, everyone is on a first-name basis, regardless of rank. Having the maturity not to overstep your limits is assumed. I didn’t call Lt. Johnson by his first name, but we got along well and I rarely called him “sir.” He was the boss, and we both knew it.

  Aaron, on the other hand, kept a military distance from me. He was a by-the-book staff NCO. Because Lt. Johnson and I had trained together, he may have thought I was a teacher’s pet to Lt. Johnson, and it griped him a little.

  “We live in the same hooch, Corporal Meyer,” he said when I slipped and got too casual, “but don’t forget to address me as Staff Sergeant.”

  “Roger that, Staff Sergeant.” I didn’t mind that.

  “Soon to be Gunnery Sergeant, by the way,” he added, smiling. He was excited to make that promotion.

  Down at Joyce, Maj. Kevin Williams concentrated on staff matters. He was quiet and pleasant, different from the brusque, hands-on type of commanding officer I knew from the infantry. He let Lt. Johnson manage our team.

  Monti, like every U.S. outpost on the frontier, was following the Pentagon’s official counterinsurgency strategy. The general idea was to make friends with the villagers, provide them security, give out project money, and build relationships with the local officials. The theory was that when the tribes realized their government was guarding them and giving them things like American-funded generators, they would tell their young men not to join the Taliban. All of us advisors wanted to believe that, but both the American and Afghan soldiers warned us never to assume the villagers were on our side. The Afghans have a saying: you can rent an Afghan but you can never buy one. Meaning they are going to support whoever gives them the most “rent,” or money. That was apparent to us within the first week.

  There were about forty villages in our area, and the Americans and Afghans at Monti sent out about ten patrols a week, each one planned as carefully as a beer run and executed like one, too. We didn’t go out to search and destroy the enemy, although the Afghan soldiers knew which valleys were hostile. We didn’t make arrests or bring local police with us because the Askars and the villagers disliked them. The villagers didn’t like the Taliban either, but the math didn’t add up: ten patrols a week couldn’t protect forty villages.

  The four of us settled into a routine of patrolling five days a week. The Afghan company commander would pick out a village and we’d rehearse how to make the approach and what to do when we got there. Before leaving we’d check weapons, double-check the operations orders, and test our radio frequencies with the Dog Company op center.

  Doc Layton prepared medical supplies to give to the villagers, and Johnson and Staff Sgt. Kenefick rotated as the senior advisor to the Afghans. I manned the turret, alternating between Humvees with .50-caliber machine guns and the Mark 19s with their 40-millimeter guns. The 40-millimeter is a small automatic cannon; its explosive shell, weighing almost one pound, can take apart a cement building.

  The Askars climbed into the backs of their Ford Ranger pickups, and we’d leave through the Monti’s front gate with about four vehicles. As we drove along, sometimes we’d take potshots from a side valley, and the Askars would pay no attention. Other times, their Rangers skidded to a stop, and we’d pile out and scope the hills for targets we usually couldn’t find. On most patrols, we eventually reached a hamlet of ten to forty mud-and-timber houses perched on a hillside, looking one mudslide away from oblivion.

  We’d park the trucks and walk up steep, rocky paths where the vehicles couldn’t go. The Askars would amble along, not expecting trouble, their weapons dangling casually. We four Americans, of course, were looking everywhere, our fingers beside our triggers and our guns pointing forward—I would have a heavy-duty machine gun at my side. About half of our Afghans were Tajiks from the north who didn’t speak the language of the Pashtuns in Kunar. The others were from other tribes, including some from Kunar, though no Afghan soldier in our unit was from the local district. That would put his family at risk, as the Taliban considered Afghan soldiers to be traitors.

  Once inside the village, we’d set out sentries and sit down with the elders for a “key leader engagement” over a few cups of hot green tea.

  The ritual was predictable:

  Lt. Rhula (the Afghan company commander): “Your government wishes to protect you from the dushmen.”

  The Askars called their enemy dushmen, meaning thugs and bandits. The villagers called them Taliban, but never dushmen. No one called them mujahideen, or holy warriors.

  Gray-bearded Elder: “You say this every time you come, but you give us nothing. The last group of Americans promised us a generator. Where is it?”

  Lt. Johnson: “We are simple soldiers, like Lt. Rhula. You must speak with the PRT [provincial reconstruction team] about the generator.”

  Elder: “Americans do nothing but promise.”

  Lt. Rhula: “Have you seen any strangers?”

  Elder: “Taliban sometimes come by. They don’t tell us anything. The next village is bad, not us.”

  It was always the other village. We visited a village for a few hours; the Taliban came and went as they pleased.

  Some villages were genuinely friendly, some standoffish. You’d rarely see young men, and any woman would dash inside immediately. The villagers and Askars were polite to one another, but rarely did I see them laugh together or talk in a friendly manner. The Askars looked bored and the villagers looked resigned to casual searches of their compounds while the Afghan officer and the elders sipped tea and we advisors checked off another “key leader engagement.”

  When we walked into some hamlets, however, you could feel something was wrong. When kids threw rocks at you, you knew what the parents were telling them. Sometimes the Askars grabbed the kids’ soccer balls and sliced them apart. This didn’t win hearts and minds, but it did stop the rocks. Whenever the elders hurried through the ceremonial tea, though, I’d watch the Askars. When any soldier senses danger, he crouches down a few inches to make himself less of a target. When the Askars did that, I went on full alert.

  Hafez was our lead interpreter and, we quickly learned, our best warning system. A thirty-seven-year-old sergeant major retired from the Afghan Army, Hafez had served in Kunar for three years with advisor teams. The Afghan soldiers distrusted him because he refused to support their never-ending schemes to skim from the Americans.

  Hafez was a man without a country. His request for a visa to the States went unanswered because he lacked a high-level American sponsor. Yet his loyalty to Americans was unbounded. He taught us how to act with the elders, provided tips before meetings, and pointed out when the Askars were taking advantage of us or when the villagers were lying. Hafez became the unofficial fifth member of our team. Inside a hamlet, if he shook his head at us, we knew it was time to forget the tea and get out.

  Lt. Rhula was smart. To him and to the Askars, the war was a job. If they were rounded up or killed, their families would lose a steady paycheck. Most wouldn’t stay to fight on ground that favored the enemy.

  The dushmen weren’t idiots either. Think of it. You’re three or four Taliban living in a compound, and you see pickups bouncing over the rocks toward your village. It’s another “key leader engagement” by the infidels and the Afghan traitor soldiers.

  Unseen, you run up the hill and dig up your two AK rifles and a PKM machine gun with fifty rounds in the belt. From behind some rocks, you squint down at the helmet of an American advisor in an armored turret, slowly cranking his enormous .50-caliber gun back and forth, not knowing where you are, but knowing you are watching him.

  Usually the dushmen waited until we drove away before firing in sheer bravado. Thank you and don’t come again. I’d respond by turning the offending hillside into dust clouds. Only two or three times did I hit somebody. Usually it was just a cloud of dust downrange and the wind-chimey cascade of empty brass shells falling into the Humvee from my thumping gun. Then we’d head
back to Monti.

  The Askars with us didn’t care one way or another about our counterinsurgency theory. They were soldiers, with no attachment to the people living around Monti. For them, it was another day, another walk through a hamlet, then back to base for dinner, chats over their cell phones, some fine hash to smoke, then a few hours’ sleep in the barracks. They joked with one another and posted security, bored bit players in a drama that changed only when a friend went home or took a bullet. I learned to trust and rely on them every day. They became like family.

  Over the course of these patrols, I went through thousands of rounds, but it’s hard to hit an unseen enemy. Not that I didn’t try. Lt. Johnson gave me a long leash to determine team tactics, and sometimes I let my hunting instincts get the better of me. I kept hearing about this place called Dab Valley, where every patrol took fire. So I came up with a brilliant plan and presented it in low-key fashion to Lt. Johnson. We’d drive up toward Dab, I explained, and then stop any passing vehicles to search for weapons or ammo. I didn’t tell him that we were going to park at the exact spot where previous patrols came under fire. I was quite proud of my scheme. When we came under fire, I’d train my Askars, just as headquarters wanted, and shoot Taliban, just as I wanted.

  So we drove into this narrow gulch and stopped. When we looked up, we could see a dozen caves where the enemy could be hiding. We sat for a few minutes knowing we were sitting ducks. I happily waited to unload with my .50-caliber. Lt. Johnson, though, was taking in the bigger picture, including what would happen if an RPG blew off one of our tires and we were stuck in the shooting gallery. The more he looked around, the more he growled at me. Finally, he threw up his hands and shouted that we were leaving. In a cloud of dust, we drove out of that death trap.

  “Meyer,” he said, “why do I let you talk me into insane things?”

  Chapter 4

  ADVISING

  A few days later—early August—I had another chance to impress Lt. Johnson with my initiative. We were on our way to conduct a key leader engagement. When we stopped at this small hamlet, we were greeted with a mortar shell exploding next to us. I scanned the ridgeline and saw the dust raised by the recoil of the launching tube, about a thousand meters away.

  We took cover. There were maybe two or three guys up there. We started calling in artillery and we could have driven away, of course, but what fun would that be?

  Instead, I came up with another brilliant idea.

  “Let me climb up and flank them from the left,” I said to Johnson. He stared up at the mountain, thinking about it. To show him how confident I was, I grabbed a few Askars and started climbing before he could say no.

  It took twenty minutes for us to scramble up, with only a couple of hostile rounds cracking off the rocks near us. When we reached the top, we looked around for the mortar team.

  Suddenly, heavy slugs cracked overhead. It was friendly fire, coming from the Afghan police station position in the town on the other side of the mountain. They had spotted our silhouettes and figured we were the mortar guys. They were dialing us into the crosshairs of a Russian anti-aircraft gun, which would soon turn the ridge, and us, to dust.

  “Get it off us!” I radioed frantically.

  Lt. Johnson pulled out his cell phone and called Lt. Rhula, who immediately called the Afghan police chief.

  “If your guys fire one more burst,” Rhula yelled, “I’ll drop mortars on your head.”

  The firing stopped. We stood up, dusted off, and trudged back down the hill.

  “If you’d gotten clipped, Meyer,” Lt. Johnson said, “I’d have to spend a month with investigators.”

  “I had it under control, sir.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  A few days later, Rhula filled two Ranger trucks with Askars and sped out the gate without telling us where he was going. He said he was responding to an ambush of several jingle trucks. Most Afghan trucks are brightly painted and decorated with jingling bells, as if every vehicle had to pass through a third-grade art class. But if all your life you’ve been saving for that vehicle, you want to show it off. Trucks were routinely stopped by Taliban or other bandits and shaken down. Sometimes the Taliban torched the trucks for no obvious reason. The truck drivers continuously played Russian roulette.

  About an hour after Rhula left the gate, we got a call from a helicopter pilot.

  “Hey, Fox 6, your Afghans are shooting it out with some Afghan security guards,” the pilot said. “What do you want me to do?”

  “We have no SA,” Lt. Johnson replied. “Don’t do anything.”

  “No SA” means no situational awareness—a military phrase meaning no fucking idea what is happening. An hour later, our Askars returned with bullet holes in their trucks. Eventually we found out they had driven off the ambushers and, as payment for their services, had siphoned five gallons of gas from a jingle truck. The pissed-off drivers had shot at Rhula’s Humvees as they drove away. No one was seriously hurt, though—only a couple scratches and bruises. All good.

  “We won’t help you steal,” Lt. Johnson said.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about!” Rhula said.

  Hafez shook his head, and so did the others. We had busted them and they saw the humor in it. If one of them had been killed, though, it would have been different.

  The four of us adopted a stray mutt named Annie. She was always happy to see us barge in, peel off our armor, and open the ammo box we kept full of dog biscuits. For some of the U.S. Army guys, our small hooch was a hangout because the atmosphere was relaxed. Lt. Johnson treated everyone as an equal and kept things upbeat. I don’t mean to say it was summer camp, but it was good to get to know each other, despite the differences of rank and age and upbringing.

  Lt. Johnson was a Virginian by birth but was now Mr. Oregon. That’s where he saw his future. He was in tremendous shape and at sunset, would muster us out for a hundred push-ups, two hundred sit-ups, and ten laps around the perimeter.

  Soon-to-be Gunnery Sgt. Kenefick, a New Yorker, looked like a damn movie star—maybe Ben Affleck. He worked day and night to get the Askars shaped up organizationally. He had been a high school quarterback and had wanted to be a Marine way before 9/11.

  Hospitalman 3rd Class James “Doc” Layton, the Californian, with a younger, happier face than the rest of us, and heavy-metal music in his earbuds, was watching out for our health (according to him) and bringing health services to the villages we visited. Doc had grown up in a small town near Modesto, and as a teen he would walk the several miles into town each night to work in a pizza joint. He had planned out his life on those long walks. He was going to pursue a career in radiology while operating a little recording studio on the side.

  As for me, I didn’t think about civilian life after the war, and I wasn’t ready to settle down. I was training the Askars to use the M16 rifle and riding shotgun on our daily patrols to hold “key leader engagements.” Lt. Rhula appeared to want to do the right things, and his first sergeant was tough and demanding. But they couldn’t impose their wills on the entire company. The Askars had a high sense of individual self-worth and tolerated each other like an unruly class of tough eighth-graders. When an Afghan soldier went home without permission—what I would call deserting the unit—the others weren’t upset. We were advising an army with no established standards of group behavior.

  Sometimes we advisors felt more like parole officers. Some Askars tried, and others clung to old habits, like—what can we steal today? A standard scam was to siphon fuel from their own generator and their own trucks to sell in the local markets. So we parked the Afghan Humvees on the U.S. side of the motor pool and let their generators run out of fuel. After two days of no lights, no air conditioning, no hot water, and no rides to the market, they got the message and behaved themselves—for a while.

  They grew hash wherever they could. When a stoned Askar stumbled or staggered on patrol, the others would smile tolerantly. “Hash cigarettes are like dushman RPGs,
” Johnson warned. “If you’re high, you can’t shoot back and the RPGs will kill you.” When Lt. Johnson burned the plants growing on base, the Askars retaliated by making a hash run into the market and, stoned silly, crashed two Humvees on their way back.

  What bugged me most was the negligent discharge of guns. They would play with their new guns at night until one went off. I’d hear the crack of it, then nervous laughter. I’d storm through the camp until I smelled the cordite hanging in the air. Then I’d grab the offender and bang on the door of Lt. Rhula’s hooch. He would take it from there.

  In the hills along the Pakistani border, no Afghan, military or civilian, had much of anything. I think practically every American soldier or Marine tried to help in some way. We purchased candy and trinkets in the markets to give to the kids. I soon had two little buddies, boys about ten or eleven. They’d hang around the main gate, yelling “Meyeda! Meyeda!” (Meyer!) when they saw me. At first, I’d buy them Cokes, and then I started sharing my care packages from home—soap, candy, peanuts, gum. Maybe a decade from now, some kids would remember that some Americans were kind to them, even when their older brothers were shooting at them. Maybe not. You don’t help out because you expect something in return.

  If people like you, generally you like them. I enjoyed hanging out with the Askars. They laughed a lot at little, and once you were firm about not being Santa Claus, most stopped asking you for stuff. I ate dinner every night with them—rice, cachaloo potatoes, and gravy. Of about a hundred Askars, I memorized the names of the twenty or so who tried the hardest. I was especially close with five who were as dedicated to their job as I was. We’d sit outside in the evenings with our food and, with Hafez’s help, talk for hours. They refused to believe that my dad worked three hundred acres in his spare time, after he got home from work. How many days a week, they asked, did I rent a tractor? They were convinced I was a millionaire when I told them we had two tractors.