Not a Good Day to Die

by Sean Naylor

  Senior U.S. officers also excused the decision to strip the Rakkasans of so much combat power on logistics grounds. Both Kandahar and Bagram airfields had been mined during the Afghan civil war, they noted, and the mines had to be cleared to create space for incoming units. Space at Kandahar was at a premium in the early weeks of 2002, before all the mines were cleared. In addition, the more combat soldiers there were in Kandahar, the more support soldiers would be needed to feed them, run their shower and laundry services, and handle their mail. Faced with potholed and cratered runways in Kandahar and Bagram and a strategic air bridge creaking under the weight of supporting even the relatively small deployment to Afghanistan, CENTCOM and Joint Staff officers were keen to keep the numbers as low as possible.

  They were doing so under extraordinarily close supervision by Rumsfeld, who took it upon himself to ensure that not a single soldier was deployed to Afghanistan unless the defense secretary considered that soldier’s presence there absolutely necessary. “Rumsfeld came to the table with a view that commanders are sloppy about their use of manpower,” White said. The defense secretary decided to personally vet each request for forces. To officers hanging on his decisions, this meant an agonizing wait every time a request went forward. “I’ve watched lots of deployments in my life, [and] I have never seen the pain of deployments like there was for Afghanistan,” Edwards said. It usually took two weeks, and sometimes three, for Rumsfeld to approve a request. The defense secretary’s “micromanagement” resulted in what White called a process of “nickel-and-diming” each request for troops. Task Force Rakkasan and Frank Wiercinski fell victim to this process.

  According to a senior officer in the Pentagon, Franks was not acting under orders from Rumsfeld or anyone else when he set the force cap. But the CENTCOM commander decided to minimize the number of troops in Afghanistan knowing his boss, the defense secretary, was scrutinizing each and every request for forces. The urge to keep the Rakkasan numbers down was shared by “the services,” including, presumably, some in the Army leadership, who were reluctant to pony up more forces for a war that seemed to be winding down, the senior officer said. This reluctance to a the concern in the Pentagon over the size of the Rakkasan headquarters, and CENTCOM’s obsession—based partly on the tone emanating from Rumsfeld’s office—with keeping the numbers down, all were factors in the decision to drastically limit TF Rakkasan’s combat power. “With Rakkasan there’s a little shame probably on both sides,” said the senior officer. “All of the people had fingerprints on this.” But another Pentagon official, who participated in VTCs with Rumsfeld and Franks, said the defense secretary put extreme pressure on Franks to minimize the number of conventional troops in Afghanistan. “The responsibility goes all the way up the chain,” he said.

  White was more willing than others to cut Franks a break. “Tommy did the best he could with a very hardheaded guy who walks into the room thinking he’s right before the discussion’s even started,” White said. In the Army secretary’s view, even if Franks had argued strongly for the deployment of a larger conventional force, he would have gotten nowhere with Rumsfeld.

  Since the Army’s training revolution of the early 1980s, one of the service’s rules of thumb had been “train as you fight.” Whatever the rationale behind the decision, by forcing Wiercinski to deploy with less than half his brigade combat team, CENTCOM was ripping that page from the rule book and tearing it into tiny little pieces.

  OVER the course of the first three weeks of 2002, Task Force Rakkasan’s soldiers kissed their loved ones goodbye and climbed aboard chartered airliners that flew them to Germany, where they boarded military transports for the flight to Kandahar. Behind they left a country whose wounds were still raw. The chartered flights passed over New York, and at least one pilot, after telling air traffic control that he was flying troops en route to Afghanistan, received permission to divert from his assigned flight path in order to give his passengers a chance to gaze down at the floodlit Ground Zero, where the World Trade Center had stood. It was a somber moment, reinforcing for each of the soldiers why this deployment differed from those to Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo, or the Sinai. They were being sent to Afghanistan as neither peacekeepers nor nation-builders, but as defenders of their country.

  SITUATED several miles outside the city of Kandahar on the edge of a desert, the airfield that was to be the Rakkasans’ home for the next six weeks was bitterly cold. The troops from Fort Campbell arrived to find that special operators had taken all of the prime real estate—the string of garages and compounds on the grounds of the airfield, which had served as both a military air base and civilian airport—and the Marines had taken most of what was left. But the Marines were on their way out, and the soldiers’ khaki GP (for General Purpose) Medium tents, which could sleep about a dozen troops in reasonable comfort, soon replaced the Marines’ tiny pup tents. The Rakkasans quickly assumed the perimeter security mission. The infantrymen filled hundreds of sandbags as they built bunkers and guard posts along the edge of the airfield to replace the rudimentary “hasty fighting positions” left by the Marines. A couple of Rakkasan platoons escaped the drudgery of Kandahar when they flew north to perform security for the pilot team safe house in Khowst. Others went to Zawar Khili, about twenty miles southwest of Khowst, to conduct sensitive site exploitation missions (combing through the debris left after enemy hideouts were hit from the air). But the vast majority of the Rakkasans remained at Kandahar. They repelled a few minor probing attacks of the airfield by unknown assailants but otherwise settled into a life of dreary routine. The exceptions to this rule were Wiercinski and his staff. Not only were they coordinating the steady buildup of their task force, they were also handling a new mission from Mikolashek, who had designated the Rakkasans as the quick reaction force for Task Forces K-Bar and 64 (the Australian Special Air Service). This meant the staff had to draw up a plan to reinforce or rescue the commandos every time one of the special ops forces launched on a mission, which was several times a night. The pace got so hectic in early February that the Rakkasan staff wrote seventeen plans in seventy-two hours. “The battalion and brigade staffs were literally pulling their hair out,” recalled Lieutenant Colonel Jim Larsen, Wiercinski’s executive officer. “We were dealing with a mission we’d never trained on, with people we’d never trained with, facing an ambiguous threat in a completely unknown environment. It was chaotic. We were all walking around in a state of sleep deprivation for the first month.”

  But because the Rakkasans never had to execute any of these missions, they remained transparent to Wiercinski’s increasingly frustrated junior officers and enlisted troops. Every night the infantrymen watched K-Bar’s SEALs and Special Forces operators fly off on secret missions. For the Rakkasans, eager for action after months of hard training and with a proud legacy to uphold, shivering in the sand at Kandahar watching tumbleweeds blow on the other side of the perimeter fence was less than they had bargained for.

  AS the Rakkasans adjusted to their new environment, Cody, Edwards, and others continued their efforts to beef up the task force. Wiercinski asked again for his artillery, as well as more Chinooks and Black Hawks. The generals finally persuaded Franks to allow a single company of Apaches—eight attack helicopters, only a third of a battalion—to join TF Rakkasan in Kandahar. They also got permission to deploy another three Chinooks, although a crash quickly reduced the total number in the task force to twelve. But as far as U.S. troops were concerned, that was it for TF Rakkasan. Cody never received a straight answer about who had prevented his brigade commander from taking more combat power with him into a war zone. But at CFLCC the answer was clear. Tommy Franks “had at the back of his mind, just like Rumsfeld did, that the Army was too big, too slow, too unresponsive, and wanted too many things,” Edwards said. (The reader may question why Franks, an Army general after all, and an artillery officer into the bargain, would take so many decisions that appeared to denigrate the value of the Army and of artillery. In t
his context, it is worth noting that Army leaders thought that Franks believed he owed his appointment as head of CENTCOM to the Marines, and to Marine General Anthony Zinni, his predecessor at CENTCOM, in particular. If the choice had been up to the Army’s leadership, Jack Keane probably would have become CENTCOM commander. “It did give Franks some disgruntlement with the Army way of doing business,” a general said.)

  Wiercinski’s force was also boosted by the arrival in late January and early February of a 900-strong battle group formed around the 3rd Battalion of Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry. The Canadian formation was placed under Wiercinski’s command and included three infantry companies and some reconnaissance elements. Wiercinski planned for the Canadians to take over the security mission at Kandahar, freeing the 101st troops for missions further afield. When he took the call from Bagram, Wiercinski knew Task Force Rakkasan didn’t represent anything close to its usual killing power. Nevertheless, the colonel thought he had enough forces on the ground to conduct “full-spectrum” operations. After a month manning guard posts and conducting uneventful patrols, the Rakkasans were ready for some action. As he put the phone down, his heart started to beat a little faster. He wondered what challenges lay ahead. Sounds like the pace is picking up, he thought as excitement coursed through him. It’s time to go to work.

  12.

  THE addition of Wiercinski’s force drove Mikolashek to reexamine the forthcoming operation’s command and control structure. What had started out as a plan for a fairly limited mission by Dagger and Zia’s troops under Mulholland’s command had more than doubled in size. Moreover, Mulholland and Wiercinski held the same rank—colonel—and would need someone above them to make decisions in the case of disagreement. Mikolashek realized he needed to install a tactical headquarters in Bagram to integrate the special operators and conventional forces. Mulholland had already come to the same conclusion. In early February he sat in one of Bagram’s decrepit buildings discussing the evolving plans for the Shahikot with Haas and Blaber, who was still based out of the Ariana, but making frequent trips to Gardez, Khowst, and Bagram. All three officers were dressed in civilian clothes and their conversation was similarly informal. The chat turned to who should be placed in charge of the upcoming operation. “You should,” Blaber told Mulholland, who was wearing his signature black-and-white Arab kaffiyeh headdress as a scarf. “How am I going to get the assets?” replied Mulholland, referring to the larger headquarters he believed was required to command and control such a complex operation. “Sir, you don’t need the assets,” Blaber said.

  Blaber thought Mulholland, the Dagger boss, should command the operation because he alone of the various colonels and generals in Bagram had followed the operation from its inception, he had the most experience of operations in Afghanistan and his troops along with Zia Lodin were to be the main effort. Some special ops officers were wary of allowing command and control to pass out of their hands. Up to now, Afghanistan had been their battlefield. The introduction of an infantry brigade and a higher headquarters from the conventional Army would distinctly alter the war’s character. To Blaber, the most critical part of the battle would be finding and isolating the enemy in the Shahikot. He knew the team of CIA operatives, Special Forces soldiers, and AFO operators at Gardez could accomplish that. Once battle was joined, tight coordination between allied forces would be vital. Since Mulholland’s Dagger staff had worked with all of them and understood who was doing what and why, Mulholland was the ideal choice to command the operation, Blaber said.

  Blaber welcomed an expanded role for conventional forces. But other special ops troops feared the arrival of the “Big Army” would stifle initiative and impose a rigidity from which the campaign had heretofore been refreshingly free. Mulholland understood these concerns. But as he watched the concept of operations for the Shahikot developing, the Dagger commander couldn’t help but conclude that it was growing too big for his headquarters to handle on its own. He had already been sharing intel on the Shahikot with Hagenbeck, the Mountain commander. Now he took the conversations a step further. If Franks wanted to attack the valley, Mulholland told Hagenbeck, then the size of the enemy and the way they appeared to be arrayed argued for a higher-level headquarters on the ground. “Would you be willing for me to ask General Franks for you to command and control this?” Mulholland asked the two-star. Hagenbeck’s answer was as immediate as it was predictable: “Absolutely.”

  Having secured Hagenbeck’s approval, Mulholland took his suggestion up the chain of command. It met with a positive response from CENTCOM and CFLCC. Mikolashek gave Hagenbeck an overview of the operation being planned, but without all the details, because Hagenbeck didn’t have the clearances necessary to be read in on the compartmented intel. This was not as frustrating as it might have been for Hagenbeck. He had been in the Army for thirty years and was used to not being read in on every detail of an upcoming operation immediately. What was frustrating for him and his troops was the two months spent cooling their heels at K2 while a couple of hundred miles to the south, their country was at war. “We were really chomping at the bit to do something,” Hagenbeck said. “We thought we’d gotten there at the tail end of the war in Afghanistan, and we weren’t gonna see much action. So when we heard that there was some Al Qaida there, we wanted to be a part of the fight. When [Mulholland] extended that offer, we jumped at the chance.” But Mikolashek said nothing at first to indicate any intent to send Hagenbeck’s headquarters south. The Mountain staff continued planning their return to Fort Drum. Within a few days, those plans were shelved. In a video-teleconference around February 5 Mikolashek gave Hagenbeck as direct a hint as he could that his mission was about to change: “Start thinking about how to spell ‘Bagram.’”

  JIM Larsen, in Bagram to establish a Rakkasan quick reaction force, strode briskly along the 300 meters of muddy road that separated the Rakkasan tents by the runway from Dagger’s advanced operating base in the middle of the base’s cantonment area. The AOB building looked from the outside as if it might once have been a movie theater for the Soviet troops garrisoned at the base. But the large kitchen and sleeping quarters in the rear of the building suggested it had actually been a mess hall. Now it was occupied by 5th Special Forces Group’s B Company, who had patched up the roof with some plywood to make the run-down building habitable. The work area was at the front of the building. This was the room where briefings were held, and it was full of people when Larsen climbed the steps leading up to the front door and disappeared inside.

  The Rakkasan officer walked into a scene he found hard to fathom. About twenty Dagger personnel and at least one TF Bowie representative were discussing the Shahikot Valley. Most of the Dagger troops appeared to be NCOs, but it was hard for Larsen to tell, because none of the long-haired, bearded men wore a uniform, and all called each other by their first names. But Larsen didn’t find this unusual. He’d gotten used to the sight of heavily armed commandos in ball caps and jeans. What surprised him was that Major Perry Clark, Rosengard’s deputy, was leading this scruffy group—none of whom resembled an infantryman’s version of a soldier, let alone an officer—through a textbook version of the Army’s military decision-making process. This was the meticulous—some would say needlessly detailed—process by which Army doctrine says units should plan operations. It is the sort of thing that Ranger and other light infantry staffs pride themselves on, but not something that Larsen expected from Special Forces troops. Having taught tactics for two years at the Army’s Command and General Staff College, Larsen knew good staff work when he saw it. He was seeing it now.

  The reason for the meeting was clear. Mikolashek had ordered Dagger to draw up a plan for the Shahikot that relied on Special Forces and Afghans as the main effort. Clark was leading his staff through a “receipt of mission,” in which they analyzed the task in hand, the intelligence on the enemy, the troops, the terrain, and the time available in order to arrive at an operational concept that had a good chance of
success. Once the discussion moved beyond what was known or assumed about the enemy to the topic of what troops might be available, eyes turned to Larsen: What could TF Rakkasan contribute? Almost two full infantry battalions, he replied, so long as Wiercinski was allowed to pull most of 1-187 out of Jacobabad. Larsen didn’t pick the two battalion figure just because that was all TF Rakkasan could spare. It also seemed to be the minimum needed to execute the role envisioned for the 101st troops: sealing the passes on the valley’s eastern side. Larsen reckoned it would take about a company (90 to 100 men) to close each pass completely. “When you started doing the math, it quickly became a two-battalion operation,” he said. That seemed to satisfy Clark and his colleagues. The Dagger guys hadn’t specified how they wanted the infantry forces to get to their blocking positions, but to Larsen there was only one answer—air assault, the 101st’s raison d’être. “This mission had the 101st written all over it,” he said later. He was confident that the “psychological impact” of helicopters full of troops descending suddenly out of the sky would unhinge the enemy fighters. The meeting moved on, but Larsen’s mind was already racing. Two battalions! That meant a brigade-level air assault, something that had only happened once since Vietnam. But would two battalions be enough? The intelligence on the number of enemy in the valley was vague. We’ll need a reserve, Larsen thought. During a break, he dashed across the road to a tall gray building that housed the forward command post of 10th Mountain’s 1-87 Infantry. Although most of that battalion was still at K2, in late November the battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel Paul LaCamera, had moved his C Company and a small command element to Bagram, where his troops assumed the same perimeter security and other force protection missions they had been conducting in Uzbekistan.