Red Platoon

by Clinton Romesha

  As I opened up a can of warm Dr Pepper and lit my first cigarette of the day, Larson and I huddled up to review what we knew about the locations of the rest of the men who were still missing.

  There was no mystery about Gallegos, who was lying on the north side of the latrines. But we weren’t so sure about Martin. Larson was pretty confident that he had been heading in the direction of the Shura Building when he disappeared, so our best guess was that he was somewhere between the latrines and the front gate.

  As for Hardt, we were stumped. We were both fairly certain he was dead, but we had no clue where his body might be. All we knew for sure was that if we didn’t figure out where he was and get to him, the Taliban would snatch his body up and neither we nor his family would ever see him again.

  With that, I called an end to the break by pointing to the three windows on the north wall of the building and explaining to Larson how the game of “grenade chicken” worked.

  “Keep chucking those grenades through the window while I link up with Bundermann,” I said as I headed for the door to make yet another run to the center of camp. “I need to figure out how we’re gonna get our guys back.”

  When I reached the command post, Bundermann pulled Hill and me together so that the three of us could take stock of where things stood.

  Keating was now split in half: almost the entire eastern side was on fire, while we had no control over our western sector. Also, we still had one pocket of soldiers who were completely cut off: John Breeding and his two gunners, Daniel Rodriguez and Janpatrick Barroga, remained trapped in the mortar pit, along with the body of Kevin Thomson.

  We agreed that we needed to tackle three things at once. While part of Blue Platoon continued to fight the fire that had all but consumed the ANA side of camp, we had to find a way for the other half of Blue Platoon and the surviving members of Red to recover our dead while simultaneously linking up with and rescuing the men in the mortar pit.

  The only way to accomplish that was to launch a second assault in which we pushed, under massive cover fire, all the way from the Shura Building up to the mortar pit, searching for and collecting bodies along the way. This called for a maneuver known as a “bounding overwatch,” in which two teams—one led by me on the right, the other by Hill on the left—would proceed uphill in separate stages so that whichever team was on the move would be protected with cover fire by the team that was stationary. To ensure that we were clear on this, Bundermann stepped over to the map on the west wall of the command post and used his finger to trace out exactly how the move needed to unfold.

  On Bundermann’s command, my squad—which would consist of five guys, including me—would leave the protection of the Shura Building and begin bounding uphill toward the first spot where we would have cover and concealment, which would probably be somewhere around the laundry trailer.

  When we were in position, I’d key my radio and announce, “Set!” Then Hill’s team—which was supposed to number six guys, including him—would make a dash from the toolshed toward the cluster of buildings around the chow hall. They’d bring a medium machine gun with them, and when they reached a place where they felt secure, Hill would call, “Set.”

  At this point, my squad would scan for Martin’s body, and then make another push—with Hill’s men providing cover fire—farther uphill toward the latrines, where we’d set up again in order to cover Hill’s men as they made a dash for the mechanics’ bay.

  We’d continue moving in this manner—first Red, then Blue, each side covering the other while everybody kept an eye peeled for Gallegos’s and Hardt’s bodies—all the way to the mortar pit.

  Given how few men we had, there was little chance that we could successfully defend and hold the pit. So when we got there, we’d grab Breeding and his crew, along with the body of Kevin Thomson, and everyone would peel back to the Shura Building.

  Thanks to Hill’s team, I’d have a solid wall of outgoing fire protecting my exposed right flank from any Taliban gunners trying to take us out from the Putting Green and the village of Urmul. Thanks to my squad, Hill would have similar coverage on his vulnerable left flank from any enemy fire sweeping down from the Switchbacks, the Waterfall area, and the Diving Board. And for an added measure of comfort, we’d all have an extra boost of suppressive fire coming from Koppes, who had already been hammering away on his Mark 19 for what seemed like eight hours, and who would continue working his gun truck’s grenade launcher like a gangster to cover our back end.

  In addition to good communication between me and Hill, one of the keys to pulling this off would be to make sure that the separate arms of the maneuver swung smoothly. So Hill and I would both put our best guys in the middle: in my case Larson, who would be on the left end of my squad; and in Hill’s case Harder, who would be on the right side of his team. As we pushed toward the mortar pit in stages, Larson and Harder would pass each other continuously, thereby serving as a kind of mobile hinge that would connect my team and Hill’s.

  In addition to all of that—which was a lot—there was one other thing I would need in order to uphold my side of the deal.

  Most of the bodies—certainly Martin and Gallegos, and perhaps Hardt too—would be lying farther toward the west, which meant that they would probably be discovered by my squad. With only five men, it would be impossible for us to fight our way uphill toward the mortar pit while simultaneously hauling those bodies back to the security of the Shura Building.

  “I’m gonna need a couple of extra guys that can carry bodies,” I said.

  Hill pointed out that HQ Platoon had several men who weren’t actively involved in the fight but were willing to help. Among these were Grissette and Private Kellen Kahn, a radio operator who suffered from a bad ankle. If Grissette and Kahn hooked up with Avalos, who was still out at the Shura Building, they could form a three-man casualty-collection team and take care of the job.

  With that decided, there wasn’t much else to say. It was a solid plan. Now the aim was to make it happen as fast as possible.

  “We have to get to our fallen guys before they get snatched,” I said. “We need to launch now.”

  “Negative,” said Bundermann, shaking his head.

  My primary concern was retrieving our dead. But Bundermann was looking at a bigger picture that involved, among many other considerations, not making a bad situation even worse. His concern—and it was legitimate—was that if anything went wrong on this assault and we got cut off or lost more guys, there would be nobody left to pull us out.

  “Get back to the Shura Building and get your team ready,” he said. “Then sit tight and wait till I give you the word.”

  I stared down at the floor in frustration, but didn’t object, because I knew that he was making the right call.

  We were gonna have to wait for the QRF.

  • • •

  A QRF, or quick-reaction force, is a team of soldiers placed on permanent standby to respond to any emergency in their battle sector. They’re equipped to provide either reinforcement or rescue, and they’re poised to deploy with extraordinary speed, often within ten minutes or less.

  Earlier that morning, shortly after six, when our superiors at Bostick had received word that Keating was in danger of being overrun, one of the first things that they’d done—in addition to scrambling all available air support—was to call for a QRF to be air assaulted into Keating to bolster our defenses. Our brigade’s quick-reaction force consisted of two rifle companies from the 1-32 Infantry that were led by Captain Justin Sax and two lieutenants, Jake Miraldi and Jake Kerr. That team, which consisted of almost 150 men, was spread between two neighboring outposts—Joyce and Fenty—when they got the call to come to our aid.

  By ten a.m., Sax’s entire force had been shuttled into Bostick on a series of Black Hawk helicopters and were waiting on the tarmac while Sax, Miraldi, and the rest of his leadership team gathered
inside the command post with Colonel Brad Brown and his staff to figure out the best way to insert the rescue group into Keating.

  Among the soldiers in that room, no one was more desperate to see the rescue get under way than Captain Stoney Portis, Keating’s commander, who had been stranded at Bostick when the Taliban’s attack kicked off. Portis had already tried to reach us by jumping aboard a medevac helicopter that had flown partway to the outpost before getting recalled because our landing zone was too hot. Now Portis was back at Bostick and eager to hitch a ride in with Sax.

  At this point, the information available to the commanders at Bostick about the situation on the ground at Keating was sketchy. They knew that we had enemy inside the wire, but there was confusion about which buildings were still under American control and which were not. That confusion was exacerbated by how rapidly things were changing as we fell back to the Alamo Position, then counterassaulted to retake the ammo supply depot and the Shura Building.

  The picture was further complicated by the fact that so much of the outpost was either on fire or obscured from above by thick clouds of smoke. As Sax and Miraldi stared at the monitors displaying the live feeds from the surveillance drones, they scratched their heads in frustration. There was too much haze for the cameras to pick up much in the way of meaningful details, although one thing was crystal clear. Keating’s landing zone was far too exposed to enemy fire to risk sending helicopters carrying the QRF directly to the outpost.

  In addition to those challenges, the planning team found itself confronting some severe weather issues. By now, heavy rain and thunderstorms were rolling through the Kunar Valley, greatly reducing visibility while encasing the mountaintops with dense cloud cover through which the helicopters would not be able to fly. Soon that storm front would be directly above Bostick. Within another half hour, it would be interfering with bomb drops and air strikes over Keating.

  Based on these factors, the commanders initially found themselves debating two possible landing zones. One option was to drop Sax and his rescue team somewhere above the Switchbacks. A second possibility was to insert everyone onto the Putting Green directly above Urmul. Everyone was coming around to the notion that the Putting Green seemed like the best option when a pair of Apache pilots walked through the door and blew that idea out of the water.

  • • •

  IT WAS RIGHT around ten thirty a.m. when Ross Lewallen and Randy Huff brought the two choppers that had been damaged by the Taliban’s dishka back to Bostick and managed to land both aircraft safely on the tarmac. Neither helicopter would be able to return to the fight until a repair team that was now on its way from Jalalabad airfield was able to wire the machines back together.

  Lewallen used this pause well. First, he borrowed a cleaning rod, the long metal dowel that infantrymen use for swabbing their rifles, located the bullet hole underneath the pilot’s seat of his Apache, inserted the rod into the hole, and then stepped back. The cleaning rod was now serving as a kind of crude arrow pointing in the direction from which the bullet had come.

  After studying the angle of the rod for a few moments and retrieving his mental notes of exactly where his aircraft had been when it was struck, Lewallen nodded to himself, satisfied that he had a fairly good idea of where that dishka was positioned. Then he caught up with Huff, and the two men headed over to the command post to see if they could offer any help in strategizing the air assault.

  When they walked through the door, the pilots took one look at the diagram that the commanders were working up and declared, in no uncertain terms, that somebody needed to come up with a better idea—unless the goal of this operation was to get everybody killed, in which case, dumping the QRF on the Putting Green would definitely be a kick-ass way to go.

  As a new plan was being put together, two additional Apaches arrived at Bostick from Bagram Airfield and proceeded directly to Keating. Within a few minutes of entering the battle space, one of those helicopters was struck by dishka fire. The damage, which was severe, forced both birds to break contact and return to Bostick for repairs, confirming Lewallen and Huff’s warning about the vulnerabilities of the Putting Green.

  • • •

  AFTER HEARING LEWALLEN and Huff’s assessment, the command team switched gears and decided that the helicopters would shuttle as many men as possible into Fritsche, where the rescue force could consolidate and then walk down to Keating. The descent would take about four hours. If necessary, they would fight their way down the entire mountain.

  That was acceptable to the pilots. Fritsche’s landing zone was large enough to enable three Black Hawks to land simultaneously. Based on the total number of soldiers they needed to insert, they calculated that it would take five separate trips, or “turns,” of three Black Hawks, with two Apaches flying in front and behind to provide gun support and hopefully prevent the heavily loaded Black Hawks from getting shot down.

  Time was not on their side. By now, the thunderstorms were directly above Bostick and the sky had grown dark. The weather radar indicated that this particular storm system would be followed by a brief window of clear weather, after which there was another line of thunderheads that might force the helicopters out of the mountains and keep them grounded for quite some time. The good news, however, was that the two-man repair team that had been dispatched from Jalalabad to patch Lewallen’s and Huff’s birds back together was just now arriving—and they had flown themselves up in a pair of undamaged Apaches.

  Dashing out to the tarmac, Lewallen and Huff approached the repair team, John Jones and Gary Wingert, before they even had a chance to shut down their engines.

  Would it be cool, asked Lewallen, if he and Huff were to borrow these two birds while Jones and Wingert worked on the choppers that had been shot up by the dishka?

  “Sure,” replied Jones.

  Next, Lewallen placed a call to his boss back in Jalalabad, Colonel Jimmy Blackmon, and ran the plan past him.

  “Okay,” said Blackmon when he heard what they had in mind. “Go get it done.”

  When Lewallen and Huff climbed into the replacement helicopters with their gunners, Chad Bardwell and Chris Wright, the blades were still turning.

  The same was true for the three Black Hawks sitting nearby, which were now fully loaded with twenty-one soldiers, including Sax, Miraldi, and Portis.

  Now all they needed was a break in the weather.

  • • •

  SHORTLY AFTER ELEVEN A.M., the sky cleared just enough that the commanders gave Huff, who would be in charge of this sortie, clearance to take off. There was still some doubt about whether the storm system would permit them to fly over Bari Kowt Pass, which they needed to clear in order to enter the Kamdesh Valley, so Huff launched first so that he could survey the weather conditions on the far side. The trio of Black Hawks followed behind him, with Lewallen’s Apache bringing up the rear.

  Minutes later when Huff punched over the pass, he could see cloud cover with lightning and rain throughout the entire valley. After he and Wright talked things over, however, they agreed that it was possible to complete the mission before the weather rendered flying completely impossible.

  With that, the five aircraft headed for Fritsche as fast as possible, ramming through high storm clouds that drenched them with snow and freezing rain. About halfway up the valley, they also started taking enemy fire—at which point the door gunners on the Black Hawks opened up and began shooting everywhere they saw muzzle flashes. Wright and Bardwell followed suit by laying down fire on those same targets with their chain guns.

  As they drew near Fritsche, Huff descended first in order to clear the landing zone. Then the first two Black Hawks touched down simultaneously inside an open area at the top of the ridge to drop their passengers off and immediately get back in the air.

  As they departed, the third Black Hawk landed briefly, then chased its sisters back in the direction of Bostick
to collect another load of soldiers, plus a resupply of ammo and water. Meanwhile, Lewallen wheeled north in the direction of Keating with Huff in tow. They had some unfinished business to take care of with the dishka team that had nearly shot them out of the sky.

  As soon as the Apaches were back in radio contact with Keating, Bundermann requested that they place a couple of Hellfire missiles into a large rectangular building just down the road on the east side of the outpost. That building normally served as a clinic, but thanks to some communications that had been intercepted by the electronic warfare boys, it was now believed to harbor some of the Taliban commanders who were coordinating the attack.

  As Lewallen and Huff shot one Hellfire apiece into the building, Lewallen kept his eyes peeled for any sign of heavy gunfire coming from the ridges to the south of Keating. One of the few benefits of the worsening weather was that the dark skies now rendered muzzle flashes far more visible. Gunfire that would have been impossible to spot from above in direct sunlight now jumped out like neon against the surrounding rocks and vegetation.

  Lewallen scrutinized the high ground between the top of the Diving Board and the Switchbacks. Sure enough, right where he suspected, he spotted a telltale orange flash from the barrel of a dishka.

  I see you, you asshole, he said to himself and immediately turned to attack.

  “We’ve got ’em,” he radioed to Huff. “Cover us!”

  Lewallen’s plan was to destroy the dishka team with a salvo of rockets, which could be fired from the backseat where he was sitting. But as he made his approach and prepared to fire to the left, where he’d spotted the gun, Bardwell, who was in the front seat, caught sight of a second muzzle flash.

  “I have another one!” Bardwell announced, and opened up with his 30-mm chain gun.

  Meanwhile their wingmen, Huff and Wright, had also opened up with their guns, but they weren’t aiming at Bardwell’s target or Lewallen’s. It was then that all four pilots realized that there was not one or even two but three separate dishkas emplaced at the top of the ridge.