Not a Good Day to Die

by Sean Naylor

  As January shivered into February in Afghanistan, generals and colonels at MacDill, Camp Doha and K2 began to pepper their discussions on how to approach the challenges in Paktia with a new, oddly Japanese-sounding word: Rakkasan.

  11.

  IT was a cold, crisp night in Kandahar and the phone on the desk in Frank Wiercinski’s cramped office in the airport’s dusty terminal building was ringing insistently. The brigade commander answered. On the line was a TF Dagger officer in Bagram. His message was brief and to the point. Wiercinski’s presence was required at a meeting to be held in Bagram in a couple of days to discuss an upcoming operation. The tall, solidly built infantry colonel replaced the receiver and glanced vacantly around the sparsely decorated room. A stand by his desk held an American flag and the 187th Infantry regimental colors. On the wall hung a rug presented to him by a local Afghan commander and the 101st Airborne Division flag, which showed the head of a bald eagle, its orange beak open as if in mid-scream, against a black background. There were no maps. Wiercinski received too many visitors here who weren’t cleared to view them. All the maps were on the walls of his tactical operations center just forty feet away. An upcoming operation? he thought. Now, this is interesting.

  WIERCINSKI’S life had been a blur since he had answered another phone call in entirely different circumstances almost five months previously. He had been stepping out of the shower at home after doing physical training with his troops on the morning of September 11. When he picked up the phone, he heard the urgent voice of Bruce Meyers, a family friend. “Have you seen the TV yet?” Meyers asked. “No.” “Turn it on.” Wiercinski’s TV screen flashed to life moments before the second plane hit the World Trade Center. “No way,” the still-dripping colonel muttered under his breath as he watched the orange ball of flame burst from the skyscraper. As news filtered through of a plane hitting the Pentagon and of another that had crashed in mysterious circumstances in Pennsylvania, it quickly dawned on Wiercinski that someone had attacked his country. The United States was at war. Wiercinski hurriedly pulled his uniform on—he lived only six minutes from Fort Campbell’s main gate, and always came home to shower after PT—before jumping in his red Mazda pickup truck and racing back on post.

  As he pulled into the brigade commander’s parking slot behind the 101st Airborne Division’s 3rd Brigade headquarters, his staff was already buzzing with nervous energy. Returning salutes en route to his office, the colonel found himself looking into many familiar pairs of eyes. He had been in command for over a year, living, eating, and breathing the brigade’s business. Brigade command was an extraordinarily stressful stint of an officer’s career. Preparing several thousand men and women for the savagery of ground combat could not be otherwise. But Wiercinski had solid subordinates upon whom he could count for support. He didn’t get to select his three battalion commanders—the Army assigned its most promising lieutenant colonels to those positions—but he had handpicked each of his majors, placing trustworthy officers upon whom he knew he could rely into the crucial brigade and battalion staff jobs. He had also inherited a first-class brigade command sergeant major in Iuniasolua Savusa, an imposing slab of Samoan muscle whose professionalism set a tremendous example for the brigade’s enlisted soldiers.

  There was an extra edge to the hustle and bustle in the brigade headquarters, even accounting for the extraordinary scenes being replayed on every television in the building. The brigade was preparing to go on “black cycle,” meaning that for the next six to eight weeks, it would be the first of the division’s three infantry brigades to deploy somewhere should the Pentagon order the 101st to war.

  Wiercinski felt a surge of excitement. What a job he had. It was his dream posting. The Army had 320 infantry colonels and only twenty-five infantry brigades, so most colonels never even got to command a brigade. But Wiercinski wasn’t commanding just any brigade. He had one of the most famous brigades in the Army: the 3rd Brigade of the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault)—the Rakkasans.

  THE 101st Airborne Division began life in 1942 as a glider and parachute unit. In the general order that gave birth to the 101st, Major General William C. Lee, the division’s first commander, told his troops that although the 101st had no history, it had “a rendezvous with destiny.” The phrase became the title of the division song, but also imbued the 101st with a sense of uniqueness. “Let me call your attention to the fact that our badge is the great American eagle,” Lee said. “This is a fitting emblem for a division that will crush its enemies by falling upon them like a thunderbolt from the skies.”

  Known as “The Screaming Eagles,” the 101st’s soldiers set about creating a history for themselves. The division jumped into Normandy on June 6, 1944, and saw action across Europe, famously repelling a German siege at Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge. The 101st stood down at the end of World War II, and was not reactivated as a combat division until 1956. Twelve years later, when deployed to Vietnam, the 101st morphed from an airborne (i.e., parachute) division to an airmobile (i.e., helicopter-transported) division. In 1974 the Army changed the division’s “airmobile” designation to the more combat-oriented “air assault,” and thus it had remained—not only the Army’s sole air assault division, but unique among the world’s militaries.

  Used correctly, the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) was one of the most powerful divisions in the world. Its 72 AH-64 Apache attack helicopters and three battalions of 105mm howitzers could subject an enemy to withering firepower. But it was the 101st’s massive complement of helicopters—two brigades’ worth, or 234 aircraft, compared with the single aviation brigade of fewer than half that number in every other division—that made it unique. In addition to three Apache battalions, the division had three battalions of UH-60 Black Hawk transport helicopters, plus a CH-47 Chinook battalion for heavy lifting. This was all in addition to three superbly trained and equipped light infantry brigades. The combination of helicopters and light infantry created the air assault, capitalizing on the shock effect of helicopters appearing over the enemy’s heads and depositing hundreds of troops in a matter of moments. The division could lift an entire infantry brigade into battle at once.

  But the helicopters that gave the 101st its unique mobility were also its greatest vulnerability. The spread of sophisticated air defense weapons among America’s enemies posed an increasing threat to helicopters. Even man-portable missiles like the widely available SA-7 spelled danger for the division’s aircraft. And as the Somalis had shown in Mogadishu in 1993, a rocket-propelled grenade—among the most ubiquitous of Third World weapons—could down a Black Hawk. There was an inherent tension between these stark facts and air assault doctrine, which still clung to Lee’s sixty-year-old vision of avenging eagles swooping from the sky to crush their enemies.

  It was a quirk of the Army’s arcane system for naming its fighting formations that divisions and brigades rarely shared the same history as their component battalions. Such was the case with the 101st. Wiercinski’s brigade was composed of the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Battalions of the 187th Infantry Regiment. Those battalions had only formed the 3rd Brigade of the 101st since 1987, but their glittering history stretched back to World War II, when the 187th Infantry Regiment saw a lot of action in the Pacific theater as part of the 11th Airborne Division. Reorganized as the 187th Regimental Combat Team, it performed magnificently in the Korean War, conducting two dramatic parachute assaults. By then it had gained its unusual nickname while on occupation duty in Japan, where the natives dubbed the unit Rakkasan, which translates loosely as “falling umbrella.”

  The legacy of valor Wiercinski inherited as the Rakkasans’ commander gave him an advantage over commanders of less-storied units in fostering esprit de corps. Rakkasan veterans of earlier wars enjoyed almost unfettered access to the brigade in garrison, visiting frequently to share war stories and wisdom with their successors. “They’re always at functions, and the soldiers always hear of their tales, and of the Rakkasan legacy, whe
ther it be World War II, or Korea with the two combat jumps, or Vietnam—Hamburger Hill,” Wiercinski said. “And then of course, Desert Storm, with the great deep air assault into the Euphrates River Valley. That all plays into combat power. It just does something to soldiers to feel a part of such a tight-knit organization…. You hear boys talk about it all the time, you know, ‘We’re keeping up the Rakkasan legacy, we’ve got to uphold the standards of the Rakkasans and the 101st, the Screaming Eagles.’ All of that was such a great combat multiplier for us. We knew where we came from, we knew who we were, and we knew what we stood for.”

  The 101st’s commander, Major General Dick Cody, a cigar-chomping, tobacco-chewing Apache pilot who had led the first helicopter attack of the 1991 Gulf War, resolved to ensure that if the Pentagon called on his soldiers to participate in the war that was starting to unfold, they would not be found wanting. He put every available infantry company through a series of rigorous combat drills. Most of his 2nd Brigade was deployed in Kosovo—one of those peacekeeping missions that continued to eat away at the Army’s combat power long after most Americans had forgotten about them—and would not return until November, but the other two brigades knuckled down. No company was considered “qualified” unless it had successfully conducted a live-fire exercise at night. The training ran through October, November, and December in miserably cold and wet conditions, but the pace was unrelenting.

  In early November Wiercinski lost a third of his infantry force when 1-187 was sent to guard the air base at Jacobabad, Pakistan, where U.S. aircraft were staging for missions over Afghanistan. The battalion was lucky to have gone through the exercises at Campbell, because training opportunities were very limited in Pakistan. Political constraints prevented them from even firing their weapons on the ranges at Jacobabad.

  AS the Rakkasans braved sleet and rain to hone their skills at Campbell, the CENTCOM and CFLCC generals were discussing who should replace the Marines at Kandahal. CENTCOM initially planned to bring in another Marine task force. But Mikolashek was determined that this time the Army take the lead. “It was important to have the Army replace the Marines because we were making the transition into what the Army does, which is sustained land operations,” Mikolashek said.

  In early December the call came down from the Army Staff, via Forces Command in Fort McPherson, Georgia: Get the Rakkasans ready. (Cody had kept the Rakkasans on “black cycle” after September 11.) But for Keane, Mikolashek, and other Army leaders, the success in persuading Franks and others to deploy the brigade quickly became a case of “Be careful what you wish for.”

  WHEN a brigade was sent to war, particularly when it is deployed without its parent division, it usually went as a brigade combat team, or BCT. The brigade combat team consisted of the brigade itself—essentially the brigade’s three “maneuver” battalions (i.e., infantry or armor, depending on the brigade type) and the brigade headquarters—plus the division “slices” that habitually accompanied the brigade. These slices were division-level units that did not fall under the brigade in garrison, but which were deemed essential for the brigade commander to fight according to Army doctrine and were always pushed down to him by the division commander during training and combat. In the 101st these slices typically included a battalion each of artillery, Apaches and Black Hawks, plus a Chinook company, an air defense battery, a military police platoon, engineer, signals, and military intelligence elements. The brigade commander and his staff, the commanders and staffs of the infantry battalions, as well as those of the “slice” units all trained together and expected to fight together. With all its components a 101st brigade combat team numbered around 5,000 soldiers—a formidable organization. But Franks didn’t want a complete 101st BCT in Afghanistan, just a few of its parts. Now the “force cap” on the number of troops CENTCOM would allow on Afghan soil began to bite. Instead of asking for the 3rd Brigade Combat Team, CENTCOM gave Cody and Wiercinski a list of the pieces of the BCT they were to deploy. Missing was any mention of artillery or attack helicopters—the two most powerful weapons systems in Wiercinski’s arsenal. The troop cap for the BCT was set at about 2,200, a number to which Mikolashek had reluctantly agreed in the belief that it was his only hope of persuading CENTCOM and the Joint Staff in the Pentagon to agree to the deployment. The cap meant Wiercinski could only take one infantry battalion into Afghanistan.

  This news sat well with neither Cody nor Wiercinski, whose soldiers’ lives were at stake. The Rakkasan commander had taken most of his brigade combat team to the Joint Readiness Training Center (JRTC) in Louisiana, and then had put it through another intensive train-up at Campbell. He was intimately familiar with the strengths and weaknesses of the commanders, staff officers, and troops. The trust and bonding essential to the cohesion of a combat organization had taken place. Now Wiercinski was being asked to break that organization apart for a real war. It was the only war the United States was fighting, and his was the only brigade the Army was deploying to take part in that fight, yet he was being ordered to leave over half his force at home. This made no sense to Wiercinski, Cody, or the colonels and generals higher up the Army chain of command. “The brigade commander [and] the division commander back at the 101st clearly wanted to provide more troops,” Keane said. “At the Army Staff we were asking the same questions, because it makes sense to send the whole organization.” Wiercinski appealed. “I said how about the rest of the brigade combat team, particularly the artillery and the rest of the aviation—can we take that?” he recalled. His division commander backed him to the hilt, recommending that the entire BCT deploy. An Apache pilot, Cody was incensed that CENTCOM’s wish list didn’t include a single attack helicopter. He sent a request through Mikolashek to CENTCOM to deploy at least some Apaches. It was denied. “Dick Cody went crazy, and we agreed with him,” said Edwards, another helicopter pilot. “We all agreed we had to have attack helicopters—the Marines had attack helicopters there with them. There was no question over whether we should have them or not.” The debate was still raging when the Rakkasans deployed in January. Wiercinski left Campbell without his Apaches.

  Franks also made it clear that no requests for artillery would be entertained. Again, this ran counter to the wishes of just about every general between Wiercinski and CENTCOM. “Did Wiercinski ask for artillery in his package? Yes. Did Cody advocate sending artillery in? Yes,” Edwards said. Another advocate for including artillery in the Rakkasan BCT was Major General Hank Stratman, an artillery officer and Mikolashek’s deputy commanding general for support. “Hank very nobly said several times, ‘Edwards, we need to get artillery in,’” Edwards said. “My answer was ‘Yes, Hank, in a perfect world, we certainly do. But I can’t get there.’”

  The decision to deploy Wiercinski’s brigade combat team—Task Force Rakkasan—to a combat zone with no artillery had major implications. Since the nineteenth century the Army had committed its infantry to battle as part of a combined arms team, capitalizing on the complementary capability of direct and indirect fire, maneuver, and, when it appeared in the twentieth century, airpower, to present an enemy with an overwhelming range of lethal threats simultaneously, giving him, as soldiers liked to say, multiple ways to die. The Army rarely if ever sought to maneuver large numbers of light infantry against an enemy beyond the reach of friendly artillery. But American commanders had already bent or broken so many rules in Afghanistan without suffering a reverse that leaving the Rakkasans’ most reliable source of firepower behind didn’t seem misguided. Dagger’s unconventional war had relied upon fixedwing airpower for fire support. That approach worked to spectacular effect when air-delivered precision munitions could be guided on to targets by Special Forces soldiers wielding laser designators. (The Taliban’s military ineptitude didn’t hurt, either.) CFLCC and CENTCOM generals thought bombers could fill in for TF Rakkasan’s missing artillery. But artillery had unique qualities. Unlike aircraft, it could remain on the battlefield for more than an hour or two, and neither its availabilit
y nor its performance was affected by the weather. It might not—except in the cases of very expensive, specialized rounds—have enjoyed the precision of the Air Force’s smart bombs, but an artillery battery could keep an enemy’s head down merely by dropping lots of shells in his vicinity, even if they didn’t blow his head off. Of course, another advantage for CENTCOM of relying on airpower was that the planes dropping the bombs were all flying from air bases outside Afghanistan, thus keeping Franks’s force cap for Afghanistan low. The generals were sending mixed messages to Wiercinski. On one hand, Mikolashek was telling the brigade commander that one of his missions was to be prepared to conduct “full-spectrum operations,” everything from peacekeeping operations through combined arms warfare; on the other, CENTCOM was forbidding Wiercinski access to what has historically been the biggest killer on the battlefield: artillery. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that Franks’s and Mikolashek’s orders to Wiercinski paid lip service to the need to be prepared for “full-spectrum operations,” but did not equip him for such, and that the reason was that senior U.S. commanders thought the war was all but won, and that combined arms battles were not in the cards.

  When TF Rakkasan deployed to Kandahar in early January, it included Wiercinski’s headquarters, an infantry battalion, a signals package to enable the brigade to maintain communications in that far-flung, desolate part of the world, beefed-up engineer and military intelligence elements, ten Chinooks with their crews and maintenance troops, eight Black Hawks (including three designed for medical evacuations), and some support soldiers. Wiercinski was also given a military police battalion to run the prison camp being built at Kandahar to house Taliban and Al Qaida prisoners. The force package “was an effort to get the right amount of force for the type of missions we had envisioned,” Mikolashek said. “Our philosophy was that this was an unconventional war that we were going to introduce conventional forces into, and they were going to behave more like unconventional forces than conventional ones, because that had been successful up to that point in time…. We saw afairly depleted, defeated enemy, with some pockets that were out there.” This view emanated from the highest levels of the Defense Department. “Rumsfeld’s view was the war was basically over,” Army Secretary White said. “There was this kind of mindset that this was going to be a low-intensity conflict against an enemy that was running away.” (Rumsfeld fired White in April 2003 after they had disagreed over the Crusader howitzer program, which Rumsfeld terminated.)