Not a Good Day to Die

by Sean Naylor

  Bullets flew into the cockpit, putting holes in and then shattering what was left of the windscreen and, in a couple of cases, skidding off Greg’s helmet. The circuitbreaker panel to his right front was smoking. Chuck leaned over and slapped Greg on the shoulder. “I’m outta here!” he yelled as he grabbed his M4. Then he reached up with his left hand, grabbed the yellow and black emergency exit handle at the top of his door, rotated it down, kicked the door out, and dived out into the snow. That seemed like a smart idea, so Greg did the same, reaching up with his left arm across his head to pull the handle while holding the grip of his M4 with his right. But the instant he kicked his door out into the snow, his left arm flew backward. Confused, he tried to move his left hand to grip the stock of his M4, and missed the weapon completely. He looked down to see his left hand hanging limply at almost a 90-degree angle from his forearm, spurting arterial blood across the cockpit. He pulled his hand up and examined it. The flesh seemed to be glowing and smoking. Greg immediately realized why. There was a tracer round stuck inside his hand, burning away. He pulled it out and put it in his sleeve pocket. A good 60 percent of the circumference of his wrist was gone. A couple of tendons and stick of bone were all that attached his hand to his arm. He fired one more burst from his M4 to cover himself, but diving out of his right-hand door no longer seemed an attractive proposition. He twisted around in his seat, laid his weapon on the center console and then wriggled through the companionway toward the rear of the helicopter, taking care to keep a pressure point below his wrist to stem the flow of blood somewhat. Part of his flight gear got caught on the jump seat as he tried to squirm through. Lying on his belly, his arms stretched in front of him, he kicked with his feet trying to free himself. Straight ahead he saw Cory working on a Ranger casualty. He yelled to Cory that he was stuck. Another explosion shook the aircraft as an RPG hit the nose, and Greg felt a “thumping” in his legs as shrapnel spattered them. The aircraft’s armor-plated seats protected his torso from getting hit. By now his head was sticking into the back of the helicopter and he got his first good view of the carnage there. He looked left to see Phil Svitak crumpled on the floor. Greg kept shouting at the top of his voice, forgetting that he still had his helmet on and earplugs in. Turning his head right, he saw Dave, pale and sitting down, wrapping the lanyard from his Beretta 9mm pistol around his leg as a tourniquet. Dave looked up to see what all the yelling was about. “Take your fucking helmet off!” he shouted. Greg reached back with his good hand and yanked it off.

  Finally Cory came forward, grabbed Greg by his survival vest and, after a couple of attempts, pulled him into the back of the helicopter. There was still a “fusillade” of rounds puncturing holes in the side of the aircraft and whizzing over the heads of the men lying on the floor. The bullets made a tick, tick sound as they punctured the side of the aircraft. “It sounded like hail hitting your car,” Greg said, “but you’d see sunlight stream through the holes.” By now Greg, who spent his first six years in the Army as a medic, had his bleeding under control. “Go check on Phil, he’s not moving,” he told Cory as soon as the medic had pulled him through. “I don’t think Phil made it,” Dave said. “How are you doing?” Cory yelled to Dave. “Fine,” replied Dave. Cory and Jason Cunningham then went to work on Greg. Cory put on a tourniquet and stuffed bandages and curlix into the wound. When the medic held his arm up, it gave Greg his first opportunity to survey the damage the bullets had done. He stared at what remained of his wrist in disbelief, amazed at how much “stuff” Cory could pack into the hole in his arm. Then Cunningham applied an oximeter—a device that measures the oxygen in a patient’s blood—to Greg’s finger. It didn’t seem to be working. Frustrated, Cunningham held the device up and discovered why: A bullet had severed one of the wires, probably while it was still in his bag. “Has anybody seen Chuck?” Greg asked. He was still unaware that Chuck had been wounded before he dived into the snow. No one in the back of the helicopter knew where Chuck was. “He went out the left door,” Greg told them.

  Greg was lying on his back in the rear of the aircraft, with his feet toward the cockpit. His M4 magazines, which he carried in the rear pockets of his survival vest, were sticking into his back. Cory was kneeling between his legs, Cunningham was on his right side. Since everyone else was fighting, he told the survivors in the back to pile the PRC-112 survival radios beside him and he’d use them to try to make contact with the outside. Greg grabbed the first one and spoke into it. “This is Razor 01, down, we are taking heavy fire, engaged, numerous casualties,” he said, and gave the latitude and longitude reading for the helicopter’s position. “Enemy engaging us from the 2 o’clock and 9 o’clock positions.” He repeated that transmission on every radio, left each radio on, and turned two of them to send out a beacon signal.

  Then the pain kicked in. Fierce, excruciating pain.

  10.

  SELF rolled left off the ramp and quickly got his bearings. The helicopter had landed in a saddle with the ground rising up on both the left and right sides. An RPG gunner lay dead on the high ground fifteen meters to the helicopter’s right, killed either by Svitak’s minigun burst or Walker. Another RPG gunner occupied the rise thirty meters to the left, along with at least one other enemy fighter armed with an AK. Sixty meters ahead of the helicopter at about the 2 o’clock position guerrillas armed with a machine-gun and multiple RPGs held the same tree and bunker complex from which Mako 30 had taken so much fire. Enemy fighters there and on the high ground to the left and right were now pouring fire down on the Rangers as they came off the ramp and stumbled and slipped in the snow. Specialist Anthony Miceli’s SAW was hit in four or five places as he exited the helicopter. The gun was destroyed but Miceli was unharmed and headed up the left side of the helicopter.

  DePouli fired at the enemy fighters on the high ground to the left, dropping at least one of them. Self told Totten-Lancaster to move farther up the Chinook’s right side toward the nose. The captain’s attention was now focused on the position under the tree. He had no idea it was a bunker, he just knew that a machinegun under that tree was firing a steady stream of bullets at the helicopter. We’re going to be here all day, he thought. No one’s gonna send a helicopter in here until it gets dark. Then an RPG flew out of the same position and over Self’s head before skipping of the ramp. Another RPG exploded about ten meters off the helicopter’s right side, spraying shrapnel into the platoon leader’s leg, Totten-Lancaster’s lower left calf, and Vance’s arm. Totten-Lancaster was virtually immobilized, no longer able to walk properly. Self kept quiet about his own wound. The shrapnel had hit his thigh at a steep angle and gone through and through. The wound was bleeding, but not enough to soak through his long underwear and combat pants. He could still move, and he worried that at this critical stage of the fight, with several men dead and several others wounded, his men might lose heart if they knew their platoon leader was hit.

  But the RPG gunner was careless and allowed the top of his head to remain visible above the boulder as he reloaded. DePouli removed it with some well aimed fire. The semidecapitated gunner fell, leaving his RPG launcher on the top of the boulder. That ended the RPG threat for several hours.

  Firing as they went, Walker, Self, Vance, and Totten-Lancaster moved behind a boulder off the right side of the helicopter, from where they exchanged fire with the guerrillas under the tree. Walker ran back toward the helicopter. Brian, the left rear crew chief, picked up Commons’ M203, the only one the Rangers aboard Razor 01 had brought, and carried it to Walker under fire. When Walker returned to the boulder he gave his M4 to Totten-Lancaster and fired several 40mm grenades at the enemy position. The first rounds shot over the hilltop because he was firing uphill. It took him a while to get his aim in. Self fired three or four rounds from his M4 before his extractor broke. He tried to use his cleaning rod to ram the stuck round out, only to have the rod break off in his weapon, rendering it temporarily worthless. He, too, ran back to the aircraft to retrieve Crose’s M4. When he
looked through the optical sight to aim the weapon, trying to place the red dot on his target, he was momentarily confused. There was more than one red dot in the sight. The battle was only a few minutes old and already Walker and Self were firing weapons covered in the blood of their comrades.

  Self and his men were functioning automatically now. The long hours of training paid off. They were shooting and moving without stopping to think. They knew how to do this. “We really turned the fight around in about a minute,” Self said.

  Meanwhile, Gilliam and DePouli moved the 240 machine-gun to another boulder to the right and slightly behind Self’s position as the others laid down covering fire. When they got there they found a dead enemy fighter there. The fighter was wearing Neil Roberts’s jacket and had Roberts’s night-vision goggles around his neck. The goggles had been shot through. Gilliam, not recognizing either item, yelled down to Self that the enemy fighter had a pair of binoculars (because they weren’t the monocular type of night-vision goggle Gilliam was used to). He tossed them to the captain. Self recognized them as night-vision goggles, but didn’t make the connection to their mission. How does the enemy have NODs [night optical devices] like this? he thought, and wondered what other captured U.S. gear the enemy might be using. We must have landed in the wrong place, he thought. There’s no sign of the SEALs.

  Self wanted to flank the enemy position under the tree. He sent Miceli and DePouli back down the slope with orders to double back around the right side and try to assault the enemy position from the side or the rear. They realized quickly that the plan was not practicable because the mountain fell away in a cliff on just the other side of the rock formation that Self and the others were on. But they found two enemy sleeping positions dug into the mountain about 130 meters behind the helicopter. DePouli called up to Self on the interteam radio. “Sir, I’ve found a sleeping position, I’m going to clear it.” “No, don’t clear it,” Self said. Then he heard gunfire from that direction. Oh, no, what’s going on? the platoon leader thought. But it was just the two Rangers shooting into the positions to make sure no one was there. When they searched the hideout, they found Roberts’s rucksack. It had been ransacked, with its contents laying everywhere, including a Nalgene water bottle and an MBITR radio. They brought the radio back to Self. What is going on? he wondered. Why does the enemy have an MBITR? This makes no sense. Self, still unaware that he was on the same mountaintop where the missing U.S. serviceman had fallen out of a helicopter, began to suspect that he was the victim of an elaborate enemy trick. They knew we were coming. Somebody speaks English here and was calling us in here on this radio, he thought. We got set up.

  Then Gabe Brown, using his MBITR radio, made contact with Mako 30. “They’re down there on the right hand side,” he reported to Self. “Their batteries are low. They’ll call us back on the hour for radio checks.” At least that settled the question of where the SEALs were. But because their radio batteries were so low, and they needed to save what battery strength remained for the exfil or emergencies, the SEALs weren’t able to bring the Rangers up to speed with what had happened before Razor 01 landed on Takur Ghar.

  When Don, the air mission commander, came out of the helicopter he hit the snow and rolled left, the way he’d seen the Rangers do it. Technically he was the second-highest ranking American on the helicopter, but once on the ground and in a fight, the seasoned pilot knew it would be better for everyone if he let the Rangers take control. “What do you guys want me to do?” he asked them. “Cover the left side of the helicopter,” they answered. He rolled a few feet until he was about five feet behind the Chinook’s lower left corner, lying perpendicular to the airframe, and scanned the left flank. He knew they’d received fire from that side, but he couldn’t see any enemy fighters. He thought Dave might have wounded the guerrillas who’d been firing at them when he swept his minigun back and forth as they landed.

  The sun was rising, shining off the snow that Don was peeking over. He worried about getting snowblind. Because the flight had begun at night, he hadn’t brought any sunglasses. It wasn’t long before the cold began to bite. He was wearing a tan two-piece flight suit, a black fleece jacket, body armor with front and back plates, and a Gore-Tex jacket. He had taken his flight helmet off when he left his seat and was wearing just a black stocking cap on his head. Now the snow was soaking through his pants. Cory came back and asked how he was doing. Don told him he was doing fine. It was only then that Don noticed the tip of his gloved finger had been shot off by one of the bullets that had smashed into the cockpit. The same bullet had ripped several holes in his jacket sleeve. Cory grabbed some soundproofing and insulation from the helicopter and brought it out for Don to lie on.

  On the left side of the helicopter Chuck lay where he’d fallen in the snow. He could see blood dripping onto the snow through the drain holes in the floor of the Chinook. He yelled to one of the Rangers that he needed a tourniquet for his leg. “Can you cover the left side for us right now?” the Ranger asked. “Yes,” Chuck replied. He improvised and used the strap from his kneeboard (a board that pilots use to write calculations and examine maps while flying) as a tourniquet. He wasn’t sure if his leg was going to make it. He imagined himself living the rest of his life without it. A Ranger shouted to Don that Chuck was still lying in the snow by the cockpit. Don and Keary Miller went up to the left-hand side of the helicopter and asked him if he was okay. He said his leg was hurt. Don and Miller grabbed him by the shoulders of his survival vest and dragged him to the rear of the ramp. To Chuck’s annoyance they strapped him into a litter and put his M4 on safe. Then Miller went to work on his leg wound.

  Don and Brian were multitasking: covering the left side of the aircraft, occasionally firing when enemy fighters showed themselves, helping the medics and collecting ammo from the wounded and the dead. The two aviators piled most of the ammo by the ramp, but on several occasions they ran through the snow across the open ground ferrying belts of 7.62mm rounds from the miniguns to the Rangers, who needed it for the 240. “We tried to free up the Rangers to do other things,” Don said. He also tried to raise help using the PRC-112 survival radios, but with no success. After trying several, he threw one to the floor. “What’s the point of carrying these things if they don’t work?” he asked angrily.

  INSIDE the helicopter Cory had set up a casualty collection point, where he treated the wounded with Miller and Cunningham, the two PJs. Shawn, the right rear crew chief who hurt his knee in the hard landing, also stayed inside to help the medics. It wasn’t a perfect location to be making life-and-death medical decisions. The enemy in the bunker under the tree could see through the right door into the helicopter and would shoot anytime they noticed movement inside. But if the men inside stayed less than two feet off the floor, the armor protection provided by the bulletproof fuel tanks on either side of the Chinook meant they were safe.

  Cory, a veteran of the 1989 invasion of Panama and the 1991 Gulf War, was in his element working on the casualties. But the small fire burning had now ignited some of the rucksacks. Cory had to decide whether to stand up and risk getting shot in order to put the fire out, or just let it burn. Shawn tossed him a fire extinguisher and Cory stood up quickly and put out the fire without incident, much to his relief. He told Cunningham to start an IV on Greg, but Greg had lost so much blood that Cunningham had a hard time finding a vein. After several unsuccessful attempts, Cory took over and got it done.

  Greg and Cory discussed the tactical situation, and in particular, whether they should leave the aircraft. Greg’s first suggestion was to get out of the helicopter. Anytime anyone moved or poked their head up, a burst of fire would come in. But no one was getting hit. The self-sealing fuel tanks protected them. Greg began to feel fuzzy and get tunnel vision as he fought to stay awake. Cory decided to stay in the helicopter for now.

  The flight medic told Dave he was going to put a splint on his leg. “This is going to hurt,” he said to the crew chief. It did hurt, so much so that
Dave asked for morphine. “No, not at this altitude,” Cory told him. “It’d slow your heart rate.” After they splinted his leg Cory and Cunningham put Dave on a Skedco. By now Greg was lapsing in and out of consciousness. Cory took one of the helicopter’s portable oxygen systems and put the mask over Greg’s mouth to keep him awake. Greg went into shock several times. On each occasion Cory’s response was cool, calm, and professional. “He’s the reason Greg is alive,” Don said.

  HAVING staved off the immediate threat of the RPG gunner, Self began to worry about having his tiny force outflanked. Gilliam was focused on the tree bunker. DePouli was watching the right flank. Miceli had taken up position with Totten-Lancaster’s SAW about thirty meters behind him and was covering the entire rear area. Self, Walker, Vance, and Totten-Lancaster covered the helicopter’s frontal arc. Don and Chuck (until he was moved inside) watched the left flank. Self also was getting word from Cory and the PJs that they needed to get the casualties medevaced as soon as possible.

  After the enemy fighters on the left and right high ground had been killed in the battle’s opening minutes, the only fire the Americans were taking came from the bunker under the tree (which soon became known as “the Bonsai tree”). The Al Qaida fighters would emerge from behind the tree, fire off an AK burst or hurl a grenade, and then pop back down. The Rangers behind the boulder with Self were protected from any direct fire unless they raised their heads to shoot. The enemy hurled grenades at them, but they all landed in the snow with a pathetic poof. Some Rangers carried their own grenades, but every time they tried to throw one up the hill at the bunker, it landed short. Walker’s 203 seemed a more logical weapon in that situation, and he fired grenade after grenade up at the bunker, trying—often successfully—to detonate the grenade off the tree so that the shrapnel blew down onto the enemy position. Usually DePouli’s squad carried bazookalike AT-4s, but they’d forgotten them on this occasion. Self cursed himself for neglecting to check for them on the tarmac at Bagram, but he knew that the upward angle of fire would have made it almost impossible to employ them from their current position.