That’s when the decision was made to use five-hundred-pound laser-guided glide bombs. One of the radio operators would talk directly to the pilots, identifying the targets visually, and passing along the captain’s initials if the target was “danger close.” When the flier was certain he knew what he was supposed to hit, the radioman would turn back to Captain Self. “Sir, they’re ready to drop it. Are you ready?” Receiving an affirmative answer, the pilot would be told, “You’re cleared hot.” That’s a brevity code term meaning it’s okay to drop ordnance. Moments later the pilot would respond, “Bombs are away.”
The first bomb dropped down the hill behind the bunker. The next struck nearer to the ridge crest but still behind the bunker. The blast, which was definitely in the “danger close” zone, showered the Rangers with debris, but it still didn’t knock out the bunker. The third bomb also struck on the reverse slope—over the crest of the saddle top—while the fourth and fifth five-hundred-pounders slammed right into the top of the hill. Each time one of the jets came in on a bomb pass, the noise was deafening. Anyone who’s heard a low pass at an air show can imagine what it was like.
But the sound of the laser-guided bombs themselves was like nothing the men on the ground had ever imagined, certainly nothing like the World War II movies where a stick of bombs falling from a Flying Fortress generate the classic descending whistling noise. These bombs sounded like they had their own jet engines. While the noise alone kept the Al Qaeda in their holes, none of the bombs took out the bunker.
That’s when Self had one of the radio operators ask if the Predator circling high overhead was armed. Both the Air Force and the CIA had modified the surveillance aircraft to launch Hellfire missiles, which were originally designed as antitank weapons to be fired from low-flying helicopters. Both organizations had Predators flying in Afghanistan. One of them—an informed guess says it was the CIA—gave Self ’s radio operator the answer he was hoping for: The unmanned aerial vehicle that was feeding live video of the battle back to Bagram and lazing targets for the CAS was also carrying the missiles. He asked that one be targeted on the bunker. Vance initially objected; they were well within the danger zone for a blast from the Hellfire. But necessity being a mother, the TACP relented and called for the shot, first asking Self to once again provide his initials for the controller to indicate he knew that the possibility of a friendly-fire incident was not remote.
The missile scored a direct hit, knocking out the bunker and, it appeared, everyone in it.
Jason Cunningham at his pararescue school graduation ceremony (Courtesy of Jackie Cunningham )
CHAPTER 11
“WE WEREN’T GETTING SHOT AT THAT BAD”
MARCH 4, 2002
As soon as the Hellfire took out the bunker, the three medics began moving the casualties back out of the downed helicopter to what they thought was a protected spot behind it. Given where they knew the enemy was located, it offered more protection than being inside the hulk, whose sides had been breached by RPGs as well as machine-gun and rifle fire. Once again they let Self know that the sooner they could evacuate the wounded, the better. Hypothermia was a risk for everyone on the hill, but the casualties who had lost a significant amount of blood were at greater risk. What the surviving aircrew members were already thinking, but not yet verbalizing, was that special-ops headquarters would probably not be willing to send in a helicopter during daylight hours, and nightfall was still about eight hours away. The nickname for their unit, the 160th Special Operations Aviation Unit (Airborne) is the Nightstalkers. Their helicopters are painted black, to help them disappear in an inky black sky. One doesn’t need to have the photographic eye of Ansel Adams to imagine how an MH-47E would look from the ground against a bright blue sky or silhouetted on a ground-hugging approach against snow-covered ridgelines.
There was no question in Captain Self ’s mind that if they were to survive until evacuation was possible, they needed help. What made their situation desperate was that the captain could see enemy forces maneuvering to their rear; the observation posts manned by combat controllers Hotaling and Fleener with the Aussie SAS were reporting by radio that Al Qaeda reinforcements were attempting to move into the area; and intel sources monitoring enemy radio transmissions were telling him that the Al Qaeda commanders were hungry for a total and complete victory.
The only help Self knew he could count on was from the remainder of his platoon that had been aboard Razor 2, and was now slowly making its way up the mountain. The men were hampered by the weight they were carrying—a minimum of eighty pounds per man; by the forty- to seventy-degree slope of the terrain that was covered in places by up to three feet of snow; by the clothing they were wearing, which wasn’t ideal for the task at hand—some had on standard-issue suede desert boots, which, despite having a Gore-Tex lining, soaked up water from the snowpack; by the thin mountain air; and last but certainly not least, by enemy mortar fire that, luckily, was sporadic and poorly aimed.
According to the official DoD summary of the battle, the other half of Self ’s QRF, ten Rangers and a Navy SEAL, were deposited at an “offset” location on the ground that was some eight hundred meters east and more than two thousand feet below the mountaintop.
What the official report fails to mention is that Razor 2, carrying the rest of Self ’s platoon, had flown to Gardez, the town that was being used as a staging area for the American offensive. According to the account in the Post, “ ‘At one point, I had a crew chief by the collar,’ said Staff Sergeant Arin Canon, the ranking Ranger on Razor 2. ‘I’m screaming at him that regardless of what happened, the first bird only had ten guys on it. That’s the bare minimum package. If something happened to them, they need us. We complete the package.’ ”
The account continues, “ ‘Then word came in that the chopper carrying Chalk 1 had gone down. Within 30 to 60 minutes—accounts vary—Chalk 2 was back in the air and heading toward the ridge top.
“The first challenge was finding a place to set down. ‘It’s the side of a mountain, so there are not a whole lot of places to land,’ said Ray, who piloted the chopper. ‘You basically hunt and peck around.’
“At about 8:30 A.M., the crew found a space just big enough to get all the wheels on the ground. The aircrew had advised the Rangers that Self ’s group would be straight ahead of them, about 250 to 300 yards away. After they got off, the Rangers learned that Chalk 1 was actually about 2,000 feet up the mountain, at an altitude of 10,200 feet. The plan had changed, but no one told the Rangers.”
The climb up the mountain was excruciatingly slow for the climbers, who at times got down on their hands and knees because it was the only way to make progress, and even slower for Self and the crash survivors. Finally the platoon leader ordered the reinforcements to start dropping some of their gear, in particular the heavy back plates in their body armor. Even with their load lightened, it still took them between two and three hours to reach the downed helicopter.
By ten-thirty in the morning, both the crash survivors and the reinforcements were completely exhausted, but still had to defeat the enemy controlling the top of the hill, which was barely fifty yards from their position. Gabe Brown called in one final air strike—a five-hundred-pound bomb that hit just over the backside of the hilltop. Vance says, “It hit at an angle where it blew everything back over the top of us so it was raining debris and metal pieces down around us. That was the only point where we were really concerned with our safety from friendly bombs.”
At least one of the pilots was not nearly as sanguine about the safety of the men on the ground. Whichever radio operator he was listening to—Self had ordered both Vance and Brown to use the latter’s call sign, Slick 01, to avoid confusion that might result in controllers thinking that two different locations were seeking CAS—the call often included the words danger close. The pilot recalled he’d been told that at one point the enemy was “two helicopter lengths,” about one hundred feet, from the Rangers’ position.
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sp; It’s possible that the training Vance had received to call in CAS had given him some sort of circumstantial immunity to fear of friendly fire, but the Ranger captain clearly had not received that inoculation. When he had a moment to himself, Self reflected on how many times he’d provided his initials to authorize calling in close air support. He knew it had to be done, but also knew that what they were asking the pilots to do was crazy. The possibility of headlines screaming about friendly-fire casualties was haunting. Nevertheless, even though the word insane kept coming to mind, it played out as the right thing to do in that situation.
After that last bomb struck behind the hilltop bunkers, the Rangers stormed the snow-covered hill, rifles at their shoulders, pausing only to throw grenades when they were within range. Throughout the assault, two machine gunners laid down suppressing fire that was surprisingly effective in keeping the Al Qaeda forces from attempting to repel the charge. During the entire fifteen-minute assault, they encountered almost no return fire, although once they reached the top of the hill they discovered additional bunkers on the reverse slope and attacked them, dispatching several more enemy fighters.
It was while he was moving his men up the hill that Self began to sense that the shrapnel wound in his right thigh was going to cause mobility problems as the day wore on. At first he had paid little attention to the wound, probably because it hadn’t bled through the multiple layers of clothing he was wearing, and he was able to keep it numb by burying his thigh in the snow. That worked for a while, but eventually the muscle seized up, causing him difficulty in walking.
Once Self was in control on top of the hill, a search turned up several other enemy bodies scattered about, probably killed by the air strikes. They also found the bodies of Navy SEAL Neil Roberts, and of combat controller John Chapman.
After roughly five hours on the mountain, the captain was finally able to move his command post, with radio operator Vance and combat controller Brown, to the top of the hill. And he gave the order to have the able-bodied men begin the arduous task of carrying the casualties from their relatively exposed position near the helicopter to the relative cover of high ground, where extraction would be easier when helicopters were finally sent in to get them. While it was difficult enough for individuals to make it up the hill, moving the wounded from the casualty collection point to the commanding ground was nightmarish. The enemy had never stopped dropping an occasional mortar round near the helicopter, which meant that the four or six relatively healthy bodies who were carrying the wounded to the top were continually exposed to the possibility that a lucky shot would bring them down. And once they made the fifty- or sixty-meter climb, they were spent, and had to take two or three minutes to catch their breath before they could even consider making another round-trip.
At the casualty collection point behind the downed Chinook, the pilot with the injured hand was taking a turn for the worse. The aircrew medic told the Post, “I hesitate to say he was close to dying. But he had a definite change in his level of consciousness. He was starting to speak to me as if he was going to die.”
Because the details of what happened next are crucial to telling the story of Air Force pararescuemen in the war on terrorism, now is the time to explain why, unlike other operations reported on in None Braver, the chapters dealing with Operation Anaconda include quotes from two lengthy articles by reporter Bradley Graham that appeared in the Washington Post. SOCOM and AFSOC didn’t want the author of this book to have access to the soldiers, sailors, and airmen who did their best under terrible circumstances and worse high-ranking leadership, so they used the power of command to muzzle them in the apparent hope that the author would be satisfied with the previously published reports as well as sanitized military puff pieces that alleged the success of Anaconda.
Repeated requests to interview participants were denied, and almost every time the reason given was that generals higher up the food chain didn’t want the people interviewed. Finally the request reached the desk of the newly appointed public affairs officer for CENTCOM and General Franks, Air Force Col. Ray Shepherd. He acknowledged that a ban on interviews about an operation almost a year old didn’t make sense, and offered to pursue it. Weeks later he came back with a response:
Sir,
After having discussed this issue with all the units and commands involved, we regrettably can not honor your request. While the individuals involved are welcome to speak as private citizens, I have been informed, most do not wish to be interviewed any further about their actions during Operation Anaconda. I am honoring their desires and will not pursue any further interview request.
However, if there is some information I can provide you from our historian’s office or some other available information that might help you in your writing, please let me know.
Ray Shepherd, Colonel, USAF
Director of Public Affairs
Seizing on the notion that Shepherd, who speaks for General Franks, said that the individuals involved were welcome to speak as private citizens, this author pursued the request again with AFSOC and with the public affairs officer for the 75th Ranger Regiment, citing Shepherd’s e-mail. The response came back from both organizations that according to Army Col. Bill Darley, the PAO for the Special Operations Command, Anaconda was off-limits for media interviews. The fact that interviews were granted to some media and denied to others is a clear violation of long-standing Department of Defense policy prohibiting exclusive interviews with military personnel—what’s available to one is supposed to be available to all.
A parallel inquiry through another channel attempted to find the reason for the prohibition. The not-for-attribution response was that immediately after the debacle with the shoot-down of the Razor helicopters, an article appeared in Newsweek that used the actual Razor call signs for the helicopters involved. Since that call sign was still being used to identify MH-47E Chinook special-ops helicopters, revealing it—and publishing it—violated communication security. One general, perhaps the commanding general of SOCOM—but that’s only an educated guess—was so irate at the breach of basic COMSEC, that he ordered that no further interviews were to be allowed with Anaconda participants.
Apparently, before the ban, the Post had received a promise from a general officer that its reporter Bradley Graham could interview those involved in Anaconda. Even though the ban had been promulgated, the general kept his word, and Graham was allowed to conduct the interviews. In addition to the Post articles, the leaking of the Vance affidavit, which SOCOM’s Colonel Darley authenticated, and off-the-record interviews with military officials were crucial to filling the holes in the official Department of Defense “Executive Summary of the Battle of Takur Ghar,” a document riddled with inaccuracies and excuses, not to mention its omissions.
The Post article picks up the story of the battle on Takur Ghar mountain, with a description of what turned out to be an enemy counterattack that began about ten minutes after the Rangers had taken the hill and Captain Self had begun moving his command post to the top.
But just as he said that, three or four enemy fighters on a knoll to the south, 300 to 400 yards behind the chopper, opened fire.
Machine-gun fire and rocket-propelled grenades started ripping into the casualty collection area. Bullets also ricocheted around the feet of Rangers and aircrew members carrying the first of the casualties up the hill—David, the flight engineer, who had been shot in the leg.
The group dropped the litter and ran for cover, leaving David on his back on the hillside. Stebner, one of the carriers, twice dashed out to try to drag David behind some rocks, only to abandon him again. “I stayed out there a good 15, 20 minutes, just watching stuff go over us,” David said.
The third time, Stebner reached David and pulled him out of harm’s way.
Down behind the chopper, Cory and an Air Force pararescueman, Senior Airman Jason Cunningham, had just inserted a fresh IV into Greg when they came under fire. Their position left them exposed.
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sp; “We realized we were just going to have to sit there and shoot it out with them,” Cory said. “Neither Jason nor I were going to leave.”
One rocket-propelled grenade came straight at them and zoomed over their heads, exploding above the helicopter. One bullet struck about three feet in front of Cory, kicking snow over him.
“We were shooting back and forth,” Cory said. “And I can remember getting down, thinking, ‘I have only two magazines left—something has to happen here pretty soon.’ ”
That’s when he and Cunningham were hit.
“I had turned over on my stomach and crawled up a hill about five feet, thinking this might do something,” Cory said. “I turned back on my back to shoot, and it was just shortly after that that Jason and I got shot at the same time. We were sitting no more than five or six feet apart.”
Two bullets hit Cory in the abdomen, but the impact was cushioned by his ammunition pouch and belt buckle.
“It took me a little while to get up enough courage to check myself out,” he said. “As a medic, you realize that a penetrating wound to the abdomen can be absolutely the worst thing. So I reached my hand down there and tried to see how much blood there was. I pulled my hand back initially and it was wet with water. That was a very reassuring sign.” The water was from his punctured canteen.
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