Not a Good Day to Die

by Sean Naylor

  At 2:30 p.m. all the medevac/QRF helicopters at Texaco, which were sitting with engines running ready to launch on the mission to Takur Ghar, received the order to stand down. Plans were made for an elaborate operation to exfil Mako 30 and the Rangers starting at 7:45 p.m. (later bumped to 8:15 p.m. due to the late arrival of aircraft). The plan involved A-10 ground attack aircraft, AC-130H and U model gunships, three MH-47E Chinooks, an MH-47D Chinook and two Apaches.

  Self learned of the decision at 3:30 p.m., when he again pleaded his case for a medevac. “I need an aircraft for three urgent surgical casualties,” he told Masirah. “We understand the nature of your casualties,” a voice on the desert island replied. “The exfil will happen after dark.” The time they gave him was 8:15 p.m.

  The platoon leader understood where his bosses were coming from. They had flown three helicopters to the top of that mountain in the previous eleven hours. Two had been shot down and a third badly shot up. From the perspective of Masirah or Bagram, it probably seemed a huge risk to fly another Chinook to the top of Takur Ghar, and in broad daylight at that. But Nate Self had better situational awareness than anyone in the TF 11 or TF Blue operations centers. The three helicopters that had flown up there before had all been shot at by enemy fighters on the peak of Takur Ghar itself. Now those fighters’ corpses littered the mountaintop, which was firmly in the control of Self and his men. They were only receiving poorly aimed, ineffective fire from one direction now, and he had an LZ that was protected from that. In addition the two helicopters that had been shot down had flown to the top of the mountain with no idea of the danger. A rescue operation now would be mounted by men with a full understanding of the risks. A few bombing runs by fast movers probably could have kept enemy heads down long enough to effect a successful medevac. This wasn’t just the view of those on Takur Ghar. Juliet Team, who watched and listened to the entire battle, also reported up the TF 11 chain of command that the LZ was secure and the casualties could be medevaced. But it was not to be. At least, not until it was too late for one more brave airman.

  DOWN beneath the Rangers, Mako 30 and Hyder continued their torturous march. By now they could only drag the SEAL who had been shot in the legs by his arms. “[He] displayed incredible physical strength, determination, and sheer guts each time we asked him for his hands,” Hyder told the official Special Operations Command investigation. “He would ask how much farther, give a sigh, and grab our hands requiring all his concentration and energy. He was exhausted, near hypothermic, and falling into shock.” After six hours of movement the SEALs had traveled roughly 1,500 meters. They stopped where two draws intersected. Hyder saw day-old tracks along a trail he had intended to follow that led to the LZ. He decided to hold in place and hope that a 160th Chinook could squeeze down to pick them up. His wounded men were in a bad way. The four less badly wounded moved the casualties under cover and then settled into positions from which they could watch all avenues of approach. The draw was wooded. Hyder cut branches from the evergreen trees around them and stripped bark in order to give one or two of the SEALs a place to sit insulated from the snow and frozen ground. In less than an hour both of the men he was worried about began to regain some color in their cheeks.

  ON Takur Ghar, the shadows lengthened, the wind picked up and the temperature dropped. Soldiers stripped clothing from their buddies who’d been killed in action in order to keep the wounded warm. To supplement the clothing they went back to the helicopter in two-man teams and tore more sound-proofing and insulation from its sides to pile on top of the wounded. While there they scavenged among the rucksacks left inside looking for food and water. They also “sanitized” the aircraft, removing all the sensitive items, such as weapons and night-vision goggles. On the mountaintop they prepared the bodies of Chapman and Roberts for exfil. This involved the grim task of tying a rope around each man’s feet and pulling him to ensure the corpse wasn’t booby-trapped.

  At the casualty collection point, LaFrenz and Miller were making fifteen-minute rounds among the six wounded, changing their dressings. “Hey, guys, they’re going to come get us,” LaFrenz repeated over and over to the casualties. “We’re going to be out of here soon.” He crammed IV bags under his shirt to keep the fluid warm. As darkness settled over the valley Jason Cunningham began to slip away. Don held a pressure bandage to him for forty-five minutes, during which time Cunningham pulled Don to him and whispered a last message to pass to his wife. For thirty minutes LaFrenz and Miller did nothing but work frantically on the dying PJ, inserting a breathing tube and performing CPR. It was no use. Shedding bitter tears, LaFrenz walked over to Self at 6 p.m. “You can tell them our KIA total is seven,” he said angrily.

  A few minutes past 8 p.m., the troops at Kevin Butler’s command post in the wadi south of LZ 15 glanced skyward as helicopter after helicopter flew overhead. On the mountaintop there were cheers as the sound of rotors reached the ears of the men who’d been waiting to hear it all day. Self radioed that the LZ was secure, but that his exhausted men would need assistance moving the casualties to the helicopters. Razor 02 was the first helicopter to land. The pilot mistakenly put his nose toward the casualties. The QRF—almost all SEALs—got out and kneeled in a perimeter formation. To the Rangers’ anger no one who had just arrived made any attempt to assist them as they carried the eleven most seriously wounded men the forty meters to the helicopter. Loading the casualties aboard took nineteen minutes. When the first Chinook departed, another landed, this time facing the right way. Again the SEALs made no offer to assist as the Rangers, aviators and Air Force special operators carried their dead to the ramp and then climbed aboard themselves. A third Chinook landed and the SEAL QRF got on and flew away.

  ANOTHER Chinook flew down the draw that Mako 30 had holed up in, searching for the men. The helicopter had no radio contact with the team and moved slowly down the valley from the east. The SEALs attracted their attention using a strobe light and a laser designator. Aware the SEALs were not able to move because of their wounded, the helicopter descended straight down in a hover beside them, blades spinning just feet away from granite walls on three sides of the aircraft. Only the rear wheels touched down as the SEALs limped aboard and the helicopter ascended into the night sky.

  All the casualties were flown to Gardez, where an MC-130 Combat Talon specially equipped for in-flight surgeries waited. But the MC-130 got stuck in the dirt at the airfield, so the casualties were transferred to a pair of Chinooks, including a similarly outfitted British helicopter, and flown to Bagram, where they were delivered straight to the 274th Forward Surgical Team. There, surgeons labored all night on the most seriously wounded. Everyone who left the mountain alive survived. One member of Mako 30 had to have his leg amputated below the knee. But Cory lived to see his kids and to return to duty, and Greg not only kept his hand (albeit fused to his forearm), but by the summer of 2004 was ready to fly Chinooks again.

  WINDING DOWN

  ON March 3 TF Rakkasan commander Frank Wiercinski committed Ron Corkran’s 1-187 Infantry to the fight. Like everything else in Anaconda, this didn’t go entirely to plan. The air assault into LZ 15 was postponed due to the mortar fire Kevin Butler’s men had taken near there that day. But half the helicopters didn’t get the word to abort, so B Company, 1-87 Infantry, which had been attached to Corkran’s battalion, had to wait on the ground until the rest of the force was inserted after dark.

  Corkran’s battalion, which was Wiercinski’s reserve, received orders to attack south along the eastern ridge to Takur Ghar—a daunting prospect even after aerial pummeling had steadily ground down Al Qaida forces for the past forty-eight hours. As they moved south they noticed the same compound Preysler’s troops had landed beside on D-Day. U.S. forces had abandoned it and Corkran’s troops saw a mortar tube in there. While clearing the compound (again) they got orders to occupy Blocking Positions Cindy and Diane instead of assaulting down the eastern ridge. That night (March 4) they engaged in an intense firefight, receivin
g small arms and mortar fire from various positions, but sustaining no casualties.

  The change in orders reflected a decision in Bagram to allow “fires”—i.e., bombers, mortars, attack jets and helicopters—to shoulder the load in Anaconda. This decision was never announced or acknowledged, but it is clear from the static approach employed by TF Rakkasan after March 3. The U.S. Air Force’s premier conventional ground-attack aircraft, the A-10 Thunderbolt (more commonly known as the “Warthog”), deployed to Bagram, as did Marine AH-1 Cobra attack helicopters and the other sixteen Apaches from the 101st’s 3-101 Aviation. (The Apaches arrived from Fort Campbell just sixty-eight hours after being alerted—an interesting contrast with the gnashing of teeth at CENTCOM that accompanied the deployment of the first eight attack helicopters.)

  The demonstrated value (to allied and enemy forces) of mortars in the Shahikot was underlined when Sergeant First Class Michael Peterson’s 1-87 mortars were ordered back into the valley twenty-four hours ahead of the rest of the troops who had air assaulted into the south of the Shahikot on D-Day. The platoon spent March 3 catching their breath after their ordeal in the Halfpipe, then went straight back into the battle. No one was complaining. “Every soldier wanted to go back out,” Peterson said. “At this point it was very fucking personal.”

  Things were different this time. The platoon was working directly for the Rakkasan brigade headquarters for one thing. And for another, this time around they went out forewarned and forearmed. They took two 120mm mortars, two 81mm mortars, about sixty 120mm high explosive rounds, ten 120mm white phosphorous rounds, 150 81mm high explosive rounds, and twenty 81mm white phosphorous rounds. The mortarmen also brought along a Gator to help them carry it all.

  They landed at the Rakkasans’ LZ 1 and took over the same compound 1–87’s Bravo Company had recleared earlier that day. The infantry established security on the knolls around the compound. Peterson set his 120s up inside the walls and moved the 81s to a defilade position about 300 meters away. From the moment they screwed the tubes into the baseplates, “We were firing mortar rounds like it’s going out of style,” Peterson said. “At this point we had so many units out there, so many eyes, that we were whacking the enemy left and right…. Once mortars got inserted, we started owning the battlefield. There was nowhere they could go where we didn’t have eyes on.” (Kevin Butler’s mortar position in the wadi near LZ 15 also expanded into a “firebase” like Peterson’s at the compound.)

  Taking a page from Al Qaida’s tactics manual, Peterson’s mortarmen put the baseplates in or around the compound and registered the guns, then unscrewed the tubes and remained out of sight until they received a fire mission. Then they would run out to the plates, screw in the tubes, fire the mission, and then run back to their hiding place carrying the tubes. After each mission they would displace to a different location, although they never moved more than 300 meters from the compound. The 120s stayed in the compound, the 81s moved a little up the road, behind a hill in a defilade position.

  In the days that followed the 120 mortar proved its worth. “It’s awesome when you’re not in direct fire contact all the time, and you’re launching rounds in relative safety,” Peterson said. They fired so often that they ran short of 120 ammo and had to fall back on the 81s. “We were getting target descriptions like, ‘Two flatbed trucks with personnel loading equipment on them,’” Peterson said. “We would just hit them with HE and white phosphorous and burn that shit up.” They were firing into Marzak, Babulkhel, and Serkhankhel, which had all been declared essentially free-fire areas (Marzak had been flattened by air power.) The Rakkasans’ forward observers had reported that the mortars accounted for over thirty enemy killed and eight vehicles destroyed. They even killed a horse. “I felt bad about the horse,” Peterson admitted.

  Such was the demand for mortars that to conserve 120 ammunition, Peterson imposed a rule that the higher-caliber tubes were only to be used against targets consisting of over six personnel. Otherwise, the 81s would get the mission. As 120 rounds ran low, Peterson upped the criteria to a minimum of ten personnel or one vehicle.

  Peterson’s mortarmen had a lucky escape shortly after their return to the Shahikot. On March 5 or 6, a jet dropped a dud JDAM that landed 800 meters south of the compound and ten meters from a mortar platoon observation post. The bomb’s arming mechanism switched off automatically because it was falling in an unguided fashion, but it still raised a huge dust cloud when it hit the ground. Peterson watched it fall from the sky, thinking My God! These guys have the largest artillery piece that I’ve ever fucking seen in my life! “It just looked like a huge Volkswagen coming down,” he recalled.

  AFTER the Takur Ghar battle Trebon’s plan to have Hyder take over the recce missions launched from Gardez was put on hold while the SEAL officer returned to Bagram to take help in the postmortems of the operation. Blaber remained in command. He still had three teams in the Shahikot: Juliet, in their observation post to the east of Preysler’s command post; Mako 21, about 2,000 meters east of Juliet in the same valley; and Mako 22, which had occupied India’s observation post south of the Fishhook.

  Mako 22, despite having shown up without some essential gear, went on to impress some of AFO’s Delta troops with the work they did in the valley. “They did a fantastic job calling in air strikes and killing the enemy,” said one account. The team was credited with calling in air strikes on Surki, the Whale, and the tri-city area that killed between twenty and forty enemy personnel. Mako 21 fared less well. They also arrived unprepared, and needed an immediate resupply because they had left important gear behind. Their mission was to watch the Upper Shahikot Valley to confirm or deny whether enemy forces were using it as an escape route. The team established an observation post, but soon reported back that they could see no enemy activity, and requested extraction. But when the operators in Gardez checked Mako 21’s reported location, they found the team was 600 meters short of where they were supposed to be, and could not possibly have eyes on the portion of the Upper Shahikot it was their mission to observe. The SEAL team was resistant to all suggestions from Gardez about other possible observation posts they might occupy. After a lot of coaxing from Blaber, the team repositioned, but still failed to get their eyes on the Upper Shahikot. “It was apparent they were experiencing a difficulty but were not willing to express it,” a special ops account of the operation said. Unbeknownst to the AFO personnel in Gardez, Mako 21 was sending reports back to the Blue TOC in Bagram complaining of being cold and tired and wanting to be pulled out.

  Juliet Team left their observation post on March 5 to check out a cave and building complex compound at the eastern end of the pass they had been located in that had been hit by multiple airstrikes. They found the cave destroyed by a thermobaric bomb dropped into it the morning of D-Day, but two D-30 howitzers and several buildings were relatively unscathed, despite repeated AC-130 poundings. The next day Juliet straddled their ATVs and conducted a passage of lines with the TF Rakkasan elements near LZ 15. At dusk they rode up the ramp of a TF Brown MH-47E Chinook and flew back to Gardez, the last of Blaber’s magnificent thirteen to leave the Shahikot.

  U.S. commanders’ apparent belief that fires trumped maneuver in the Shahikot was not the only reason TF Rakkasan’s force remained so static. There remained a desire at higher headquarters to give Afghan forces pride of place in Anaconda, at least from a public relations point of view. So instead of sweeping through the villages on the valley floor, the Rakkasans stayed around the edges of the valley. There was little direct fire contact with the enemy after March 4, and no friendly casualties. “We could have taken that town [Serkhankhel] any time we wanted to, but that would not have helped in the overall purpose of legitimizing that [Afghan] military,” Lieutenant Colonel Jim Larsen, TF Rakkasan’s executive officer, said. “So that’s why we just sat there and waited, and waited.”

  Encouraged by Spider, Chris Haas, and Pete Blaber, Zia’s troops occupied the Guppy on the night of March 3, b
ut didn’t use it as a base to attack into the valley. Much of the steam seemed to have gone out of TF Hammer. However, U.S. officials were determined to put an Afghan face on the battle. So in the days following Zia’s initial retreat, Rosengard, the Task Force Dagger operations officer, mediated in delicate negotiations between Zia and Gul Haidar, a one-legged Tajik commander from Logar Province offered up by Fahim Khan, head of the Northern Alliance, and the new Afghan defense minister. Haidar brought tanks, which the Americans now thought were important, even though the valley was emptying of enemy by the third or fourth day.

  When Zia and Gul Haidar were brought together to discuss how their forces would work alongside each other in the Shahikot, it was clear that they had a history, and not a good one. “You didn’t know the specifics, but you could tell,” Rosengard said. The meeting occurred in the howling desert east of Gardez in Zia’s tent. The two warlords met with Rosengard, Haas, and a couple of assistants in the middle of the night in a big dust storm. Zia’s tent was a low-slung, rotting canvas affair with an arthritic stovepipe sticking out of the middle of it, belching smoke as Zia’s deputy threw hunks of wood in to keep it alive. “It had Afghan carpets around the side, and a couple of pillows, and we’re drinking chai and smoking cigarettes,” Rosengard recalled. “Then you bring in Gul Haidar, a previous some kind of sort of enemy to Zia, here in his tent to negotiate how these two motherfuckers, who don’t like each other, don’t trust each other, are going to [enter] this valley with some effort to coordinate armor and infantry.”