One Million Steps: A Marine Platoon at War

by West, Bing

  Two months and two governments in boxes later, the Marines were still struggling, without any competent Afghan officials, to flush out the secret Taliban cells controlling the villagers.

  McChrystal responded by flying down to Marjah to berate the Marine battalion commander for being too slow. In reaction, the Marines silently assessed the top command in Kabul as disconnected from the realities of tribal loyalties and Afghan government incompetence.

  When Nicholson finished his tour in mid-2010, the Marines had gained control of the southern portion of Helmand. Insisting that high-level staffs were giving them orders without understanding the battlefield, the Marine command successfully lobbied to take charge of most of Helmand, replacing the overstretched British. Free to design their own approach, the Marines cut down their task to one essential: fighting the enemy.

  “We [Marines] can’t fix the economy,” Marine four-star Gen. James Conway said. “We can’t fix the government. What we can do is affect the security.”

  In Marine parlance, security meant seeking out and destroying the enemy. But Secretary of Defense Robert Gates did not trust the warfighting judgment of Marines. In his memoir, he wrote that his “biggest mistake” was not swiftly resolving high-level command issues.

  “He [Conway] insisted all Marines deploy to a single area of responsibility,” Gates wrote, “with Marine air cover and logistics. Only Helmand fitted Conway’s conditions.… The Marine higher leadership put their own parochial service concerns above the requirements of the overall Afghan mission.”

  Karl Eikenberry, the American ambassador in Kabul, agreed, testily observing that, in addition to dealing with thirty-two nations, he now had to cope with “Marine-istan,” yet another tribe operating by its own rules. To many observers, Marines had the subtlety of a steamroller, rolling forward at its own inexorable pace and going wherever it chose to go.

  The Road to Sangin

  The Marines chose to go to Sangin. After eighteen months of clearing southern Helmand, the Marines turned north. The British, having lost a hundred soldiers there and having made scant headway in four years, readily agreed to hand over the effort.

  Gaining control of Sangin did have a wisp of strategic rationale. Route 611 wound sixty kilometers north from the center of Helmand to Sangin. From there, the road ran another twenty kilometers before ending at the Kajacki Dam. There, two hydroelectric turbines provided a trickle of power to a million Pashtuns. Since 2001, the Western coalition had tried to open 611 in order to transport a third turbine up to the dam. That increase in power generation would symbolize development in southern Afghanistan, but Taliban control of Sangin prevented any such demonstrations of progress.

  Security in northern Helmand, to include Sangin, was the responsibility of the 2d Marine Regiment. By dint of personality, the commander, Col. Paul Kennedy, shaped the command climate—the rituals, task priorities, and combat behavior of 6,000 Marines. He talked in a fast Boston accent, assuming his listeners had processed what he had just said while his mind hurried on to the next thought.

  Kennedy sopped up tactics. With a grunt’s eye for terrain, he viewed vistas and landscapes as angles and planes for bullets. No setting was pastoral, and no scenery was soothing. When he looked at a map, he saw geometries of fire; when he walked across a field, he thought in terms of grazing fire; when he visited farms, he wondered where arms caches were hidden.

  In 2004, Kennedy had led an 800-man battalion into the Iraqi city of Ramadi. He wanted to be friendly. The plan had been to wear no armor, walk the neighborhoods, fund projects, train the police, and leave. The insurgents mocked the Marines as shotak, a soft, sugary cake, and launched a full-scale assault to seize the city. The battle raged for a week. When the hospital and morgue overflowed, the Marines piled the bodies of rebels and former Iraqi soldiers on street corners, leaving burial to the residents.

  After the battle, Kennedy wrote to the families in the States, “Previous to yesterday the terrorists thought that we were soft enough to challenge.… It will be a cold day in Hell before we are taken for granted again.”

  In September of 2010, Kennedy visited Sangin for a briefing by the departing British battalion. Thanks to the British, the Sangin market was secure. Why not leave the farms and hinterlands alone? Let the Taliban eat corn, tax the locals, smuggle opium, and rant in the rural mosques. Sangin was good—or bad—enough just as it was. Kennedy listened as the briefer pointed on the map to the positions of twenty-two forts, referring to them as the “Forward Line of Troops.”

  “If there’s a forward line,” Kennedy said, “then we’ve lost. The enemy’s strategy is to hang in and bleed us until we decide it’s not worth it. We don’t play defense. My strategy is to smash them until they don’t want to fight us anymore. We’re going to own every ditch, path, field, and farm in this district.”

  Kennedy ordered half of the British forts closed. Many British officers disagreed.

  “It’s a hard pill to swallow,” one officer said, “that the Rifles [a British battalion] put so much sweat and blood into establishing these patrol bases, only to have them be dismantled by the Americans. They are trying a new approach, but it was tried by us in the past and gave the Taliban the chance to plant IEDs [Improvised Explosive Devices] wherever they wanted.”

  Kennedy knew that gaining control of Sangin would be bloody. His battalion in Iraq had suffered thirty-five killed, the highest number for a battalion in that war. Although his tough game face never flickered in public, I had known him for ten years and had seen him alone in his office, writing the painful letters to the families.

  But he was wary of funeral ceremonies while battle was still raging. A feeling of futility or loss can quickly crumble morale. The goal then becomes surviving for the rest of the tour. Patrols are cut short, the safer routes are repeated, and the enemy learns where he will be left alone.

  “I won’t foster a culture of victimhood,” Kennedy said. “We’re here to kill the enemy, not to mope when some of us die. If we get hit, we hit back harder.”

  When Kennedy was fighting in Ramadi in 2004, one of his companies ran into a hornet’s nest. The Marines, riding in flimsy vehicles, were riddled. Nine died along a five-mile road bordered by unfordable irrigation ditches, allowing the enemy to hit and run at will. The company was furious about their tin-can vehicles and discouraged by the terrain. The battalion held a ceremony with stone faces and no tears. The next day, the company was out clearing the road again.

  “A Marine is there to kill the other guy,” Kennedy said. “That’s how he has to think. Don’t dwell on your losses. Make the other guy lose.”

  The generals let Kennedy run his own show. He talked to his boss three times a week. He didn’t have to sit in on video teleconferences or submit PowerPoint briefs. He focused on developing Afghan leaders, deploying his battalions and insuring them air and logistics support. He encouraged Afghan officers, drank tea with the elders, sat cross-legged in meetings with mullahs, and gave farmers some seed and electric generators.

  But after his experience in Ramadi, he took a dim view of man’s kindness. To Kennedy, counterinsurgency, or COIN, was a branch of warfare, not an exercise in civics. He called his approach “Big Stick COIN,” meaning: attack the enemy. He was the poster child for the Marine slogan: “Be polite, and have a plan for killing everyone you meet.”

  In late summer of 2010, Kennedy moved the 3rd Battalion of the 7th Marine Regiment, or 3/7, up to Sangin. Due to return shortly to the States, 3/7’s task was to take over positions from the British and reconnoiter the district in preparation for the next Marine battalion.

  Max, a Pashtun interpreter who had served with coalition forces since 2005, summarized what 3/7 found.

  “IEDs were everywhere,” Max told me. “The Marines had to fire rockets just to blow a safe path out of the market. The farmers turned their backs on us. I couldn’t figure out who was a Taliban, and I’m pretty good at doing that. Man, Sangin’s a crazy place.”

&n
bsp; Crazy was an apt word. For four years, the Taliban had exported opium and imported explosives. The farmers profited and in turn supported the Taliban, who planted thousands of IEDs around the British outposts. When the Marines began clearing operations farther to the south, more Taliban fled north to Sangin. Eventually the British were isolated inside their forts, while on the other side of the minefields the Taliban were safe inside farming compounds.

  In early October of 2010, both the British troops and the Marine battalion 3/7 left. The 3rd Battalion of the 5th Marine Regiment, or 3/5, moved in. Kennedy ordered 3/5 to seize control of the farmlands. There would be no “Forward Line of Troops.” For the next six months, the Marines would patrol constantly. On average, a Marine would walk two and a half miles each day. Six thousand steps a day. One million steps.

  Table of Organization

  Regimental Combat Team 2

  6,000 Marines

  Col. Kennedy

  3/5 (3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment) at

  Forward Operating Base (FOB) Jackson

  800 Marines

  Lt. Col. Morris

  Company (Kilo) at FOB Inkerman

  140 Marines

  Capt. Johnson

  1st Platoon at FOB Inkerman

  44 Marines

  Lt. Schueman

  2d Platoon at Patrol Base Transformer

  40 Marines

  Lt. Donnelly

  Lt. Broun

  3rd Platoon at Patrol Base Fires

  50 Marines

  Lt. West

  Lt. Garcia

  Platoon Sgt.—Staff Sgt. Cartier

  3rd Platoon Squads

  1st Squad—Sgt. Esquibel

  2d Squad—Sgt. Deykeroff

  3rd Squad—Sgt. Thoman

  Sgt. McCulloch

  Sniper Section—Sgt. Abbate

  Sgt. Browning

  Mortar Section—Cpl. Moreno

  Chapter 1

  SHOCK

  Day 1. The First 6,000 Steps

  When 3/5 rolled into Sangin, its reputation had preceded it. In 2004, they had fought in Fallujah, a fierce battle sparked after four American contractors were lynched on a bridge. After the city was destroyed, a Marine scrawled on the bridge, “This is for the Americans of Blackwater that were murdered here in 2004. Semper Fidelis 3/5. P.S. Fuck you.” In Sangin, the farmers were asking Max, 3/5’s interpreter, “Why have these Marines come? They’re not welcome.”

  The battalion commander, Lt. Col. Jason Morris, was capable, earnest, and formal. His father had served as a Marine in Vietnam, and Morris had won an award for outstanding leadership. Before deploying, he wrote to the families that the goal was “to increase security and bring economic development and stability to the Afghan people.” That sounded more civic-minded than dangerous.

  The 800 Marines in 3/5 had trained together for a year. Morris and the senior officers and NCOs were on their second and third combat tours. For the 700 excited junior Marines, Sangin was their first combat tour. Prior to flying out from California, Morris had called for one final gear inspection, amid grumblings about last-minute harassment.

  “Colonel Morris looked right at me,” Cpl. Kevin Smith, a sniper, said. “He asked if I was ready. He was sizing me up, not my gear. That’s when it hit me. Holy shit, we’re going to war!”

  On October 13, 2010, an armored vehicle dropped Smith off at FOB (Forward Operating Base) Jackson, the battalion’s headquarters next to the Sangin market. When Smith hopped on top of the turret to look around, a bullet pinged off its side. As he tumbled down, a British soldier called out, “Best to sit rather than stand out here.”

  Even before reaching FOB Jackson, 3/5 had lost Lance Cpl. John Sparks, twenty-three. He was shot and killed on a rooftop. He had grown up in a Chicago public housing complex and had hoped to join the Chicago police after his tour.

  Now, an hour after arriving at Jackson, Smith had been shot at. In response, three Marines from the sniper section slipped into the nearby cornfields to conduct a quick security patrol. Moving quietly, they glanced down a row of corn and saw a man crouching with an AK, looking in the opposite direction. Two snipers dropped him with a “frame shot,” each putting a bullet in the man’s torso. Seconds later, a second man popped out of the corn and tried to drag the body away. They shot him too.

  While Smith was out on that patrol with Cpl. Jordan Laird and Cpl. Jacob Ruiz, a massive mine shattered a 35,000-pound vehicle called an MRAP (Mine Resistant Ambush Protected), killing four Marines. All were on their first combat deployment.

  By the end of the first day, Battalion 3/5 had taken five fatalities.

  Marine units are organized on a simple three-part system. Forged over hundreds of battles, the system is focused downward and decentralized. The regiment, commanded by Kennedy, had three battalions. The 3/5 battalion, commanded by Morris, had three rifle companies. Each company had three rifle platoons. Each forty-four-man platoon had three squads. Each thirteen-man squad was divided into three four-man fire teams. In the field, a platoon usually had several attachments like engineers and snipers.

  Sangin was shaped like a rectangle fifteen kilometers long and four kilometers wide. (See Map 1.) A copious flow of water fed thousands of irrigation ditches stretching from the Helmand River to Route 611. The vast expanse of well-watered fields stretching from the river to the road was called the Green Zone.

  Morris sent his third company—Kilo—two kilometers north up 611 to an outpost called Inkerman, named for a fallen British soldier. Kilo’s job was to control the Green Zone, where the Taliban were familiar with every field, ditch, compound, and back trail. They knew where they had planted IEDs and where they left open lanes.

  Capt. Nick Johnson, the commander of Kilo Company, was a big, no-nonsense man with a keen interest in warfighting. The instructors back in the States had stressed reaching out to village elders and funding projects at the hamlet level. But with five killed on Day 1, he immediately shifted his focus to small-unit jungle tactics. His task was to clear from Inkerman on 611 to the Helmand River, a three-kilometer by three-kilometer rectangle.

  Johnson initially kept two platoons at Inkerman and one at Outpost/Patrol Base Fires, an isolated fort one kilometer inside the Green Zone. Intent upon sending out several patrols daily, Johnson provided the platoons with maps that broke up the Green Zone into sectors designated by different sets of letters. This made it easier to direct reinforcements or indirect fire.

  Day 2. 12,000 Steps

  The next morning, a squad of thirteen Marines set off from Inkerman to scout to the northwest. When the squad was pinned down by two enemy machine guns, a second squad moved forward to help and was engaged from the flanks. Once linked together, the two squads threw out enough fire to prevent the Taliban from closing on them. Steady fire coming from different angles forced the squads to duck into an irrigation ditch. Unable to pull back, they radioed for help. In response, Sgt. Sean Johnson left Patrol Base Fires to flank the enemy with his squad.

  “Hey, Sean,” Sgt. Matt Abbate, the leader of a ten-man sniper section, called out, “we’ll tag along to provide covering fire.”

  Drenched in sweat, Abbate had just returned from patrol. But the offer was typical of him. Of the seventy-odd sergeants in the battalion, Abbate, twenty-six, was the best liked. One Marine joked that Abbate was “the battalion mascot.” An honor graduate from the reconnaissance swimmer’s course, he had turned down an offer to transfer to the Navy SEALs. He was the battalion’s top shot, held the endurance record, and grinned often. On battalion hikes in the High Sierras, he would fall back to carry the packs of those struggling to keep up.

  His family in northern California were dedicated bikers and he told hilarious tales about his motorcycle escapades. His son, Carson, was two, and Matt was already planning their bike trips. He was everyone’s outgoing big brother, smart, tough, carefree. On battalion movie nights, he would shout at the screen, making up wacky expressions and imitating movie actors. But once it came time
for a mission, intensity replaced the smile.

  “Outside the wire,” Matt said, “you walk by faith, because no one knows where the next IED is. But we can’t hesitate. We’re here to shoot.”

  Covered by Abbate and four of his snipers, the squad departed from Fires. They could hear shooting a thousand meters to their east. The Taliban were using two Russian-made PKM machine guns with a slow, distinct cyclic rate that sounded like someone hammering on a steel pipe. Johnson cut to the north, hoping to come up on the rear of the enemy. Abbate and his snipers occasionally scrambled onto the roofs of farmhouses, trying to find targets in their scopes.

  “I see guys in tree lines,” Abbate called to Johnson. “The fuckers move around without weapons showing. I can’t smoke them.”

  The rules of engagement required PID, or Positive Identification, which meant seeing that the man had a weapon or was talking on a radio in the middle of a firefight. In fact, Abbate was having a hard time seeing anyone. The summer corn hadn’t yet been harvested and the fields were thick with heavy green stalks taller than a man. Once they plunged into a field, the Marines couldn’t see ten feet. Each corn patch was about the size of a football field. The corn sucked the oxygen out of the air and the muddy ground oozed humidity. But to use the trails was to invite ambush.

  The Marines walked in single file, the point man sweeping a metal detector called a Vallon back and forth. You can buy a Vallon on eBay, put earphones on your kids, and let them scamper along the beach, listening for the ping! of coins in the sand. In Sangin, the point man hoped the dials would quiver if a flashlight battery was detected.

  The squad bounded by four-man fire teams across the openings between the fields, each four-man fire team covering the other. They waded across one canal in chest-deep muddy water, and then another. The enemy, knowing the Marines were trying to flank them, were chattering over their handheld radios and shifting positions. After crossing a dozen fields in the one-hundred-degree temperature, the Marines were exhausted, having sweated out more liquid than they were drinking from their CamelBaks.