The Silence of War

by Terry McGowan

  He aimed his handheld squad automatic weapon (SAW) machine gun at a Taliban machine gunner only fifty meters away and went toe-to-toe. It was a modern-day gunfight at the OK Corral—right down to the dry southwestern climate. And it was man-to-man. Instead of Colt .45 Peacemakers at high noon, the duel was fought with machine guns. Hickey won. The Taliban gunner was cut down.

  Meanwhile, as “Doc” Michael J. Foley, the squad’s Navy corpsman, tried to treat Boucher—still blasting away with his machine gun—an incoming round just missed Foley’s head and rattled around inside the Humvee. Boucher refused treatment, indicating that Foley should work on Zequeida instead. After the doc had done what he could for Zequeida, Boucher allowed Foley to work on him. The freckle-faced kid with boyish good looks manned his gun until the medevac chopper arrived to take him and Zequeida to a hospital. The round took a nasty hunk out of Boucher’s leg.

  “Michael J.”—as I always called Foley—got the Navy-Marine Corps Achievement Medal with combat “V” for his work that day. “Badass Bobby”—in addition to the Purple Heart—was awarded the Bronze Star with combat “V.” And Daniel Flynn Hickey—I always called him by his full name—well, he got the Silver Star. That’s the nation’s third-highest award for bravery, and rarely given out—in the Marine Corps, at least.

  Corporal Billington was his usual self. He had his handheld 60mm mortar with him—which he used to great effect. Once contact had been broken, Sergeant Holter called for medevac choppers for Boucher and Zequeida. But the Taliban weren’t done with the squad yet. Like mountain Apache, they started maneuvering along a high ridgeline, seeking a new firing position. Billington employed his mortar to drive them off.

  When Brewster arrived, Billington linked up with him and used his mortar as directed. In recommending him for the Bronze Star, the platoon commander wrote, it was “reported by four local nationals held hostage inside the compound, that Corporal Billington’s fires destroyed six enemy fighters, and displaced many more. They visually confirmed that one round impacted an enemy fighter directly on the head.”

  I learned that the jets were American F-18s, and they were guided on target by Staff Sergeant Justin Wells. He was responsible for blasting the enemy out of their strongholds.

  As mentioned earlier, I used to write to the folks back home—the West Side Soldiers’ Aid Society—and tell them about the platoon they were supporting. It helped them to feel connected. Sitting in the shade of the staff NCO tent, still broiling from the desert summer heat, I had returned to the T-shirt and flip-flops—casual wear—that I had so hurriedly shed when Bravo Squad was ambushed only the day before. I was back on email. It was August 3, and I had just received a list of the goodies we could expect—including the beloved pancake mix—from Bill Osborne.

  I sent them this:

  OUTSTANDING! And on 2 August we went after the Taliban. They had ambushed one of our squads. Nice op. We got off lucky. No KIAs, 2 WIAs [wounded in action]. Not critically. One was a Wisconsin young Marine (whose name I can’t release in order to give the family time to be notified) [Boucher]. But you will be pleased and proud to know that after taking a bullet through the leg he crawled back into the turret of his vehicle and continued to fire his machine gun until medevaced. A process that takes some time being out as far as we were. The other guy [Zequeida] will be medevaced back to the States, where his firstborn daughter is due to be born later this month. With any luck, he’ll be there for the occasion.

  Modern marvels—I had a reply the very next day. Bill Osborne wrote,

  Thank you so much for the updated report. You all are in our prayers for safety and success. Tell the Marines they are truly appreciated and supported 150%. It is an honor and a privilege to be able to help in any way. We just got back from the Civil War Shoot in Boscobel WI, and have enough to fill at least twelve more boxes. Tell the Gunny I got him two camping griddles made of aluminum and Teflon coated. A set of cheap plastic cooking utensils. Gotta have something to flip the pancakes. I was just asked by Terry Arliskas if you need frying pans?

  MARSOC, having arrived in the nick of time like the proverbial cavalry, disappeared again like a wisp of smoke. Life returned to normal at the FOB. Well, as normal as it could with two of our favorite personalities abruptly snatched from us—Zequeida and Boucher. It was strange watching the guys pack up their personal items to be shipped back—toothbrushes, shaving razors, and whatnot. Any Marine gear that the other guys wanted was divided up. There was a long-standing joke among Marines that whoever dies first, the others split his gear.

  It took a while to realize that we weren’t going to see them every day—and not for a long time at that. On patrol and sitting around passing the time, their faces, their voices, their individual senses of humor, were part of the tapestry of the squad and part of what made life on the edge of nowhere bearable. Not having them around took a lot of getting used to. I was thankful that they were alive, at least. Lieutenant Brewster kept us apprised of their condition. They were healing well. That was a relief. Zequeida was shipped back home pretty much immediately, and Boucher followed him after a while.

  17

  From the Alamo to Fort Apache

  About this time my “roommate,” National Guard lieutenant Kyle Slocum, got rotated out to some other godforsaken FOB far from Golestan. I have to admit I missed him. The good news is that he was replaced by another “civilian” from the same company that signed Scott’s checks. I put “civilian” in quotation marks because this guy, Dennis Francis, was one more former Marine who had it in his head that he was still a Marine and always would be.

  A former North Carolina state trooper, he was the perfect replacement for Slocum. We still had three street cops on hand, and when all three of us were in agreement, we were never wrong. Even better—in a brown, dry, hot, austere land, Dennis had an incredible sense of humor. Forget The Tonight Show with Jay Leno; if the producers of the show had spent ten minutes with Dennis, Leno would have happily left the show—laughing. For my part, Dennis touched my funny bone in a way that left me begging for him to stop—I couldn’t breathe. And he would start laughing at my laughing. We three old guys—Scott, Dennis, and I—were surely insane.

  The powers that be never intended that 1st Platoon, Golf Company, should be stuck in a place so like the Alamo—they just weren’t able to pull together the heavy equipment we needed to construct a typical Hesco FOB—and get it up to us. That changed about this time, and construction began in earnest. When the new place was completed, I dubbed it “Fort Apache.” I couldn’t quite shake the notion that we were fighting Apache in the old Southwest.

  Looking back, the analogy still seems right.

  Things were beginning to change for the better. While still back in the States I had commented to Lieutenant Colonel Hall that the reason there were no “incidents” in the area we were heading to was because there were no Americans there yet. He just looked at me with the same perceptive smile I learned was his trademark “I know” facial expression.

  But the folks from up the chain of command had it in their heads that 2/7 was on a mission to train Afghan police. As a result, we didn’t arrive in country with everything Marines usually take to war—such as our own air assets. Happily, the informative emails from Bill Osborne kept coming. He told me that Marine helicopters were en route to us from Iraq. Once they arrived, what had been a torturous thirteen-hour-plus trip would then take about fifty minutes.

  Bill also gave me some incredible information: the commandant of the Marine Corps (CMC), General James T. Conway, was coming to visit 2/7. Moreover, word had it that the CMC would visit FOB Golestan. If the appearance of a lieutenant general at FOB Delaram was news, the coming of the CMC to Golestan was regarded as earthshaking. In the Marine Corps the commandant is considered to be just below St. Peter in rank. He is to Marines what the pope is to Catholics.

  The CMC’s arrival was preceded by a deafening near-ground-level bu
zzing by a Marine helicopter gunship—a Cobra. It was the first such helicopter I had seen in Afghanistan. The pilot—flying at extreme low level—was looking to draw fire. He circled the entire FOB swiftly at very low altitude. His wingman—another gunship—remained aloft, ready to swoop down and light up any enemy forces that might have been foolish enough to engage the first chopper. Only when no ground fire was received did the commandant’s transport helicopter appear and land right outside the FOB.

  The Stars and Stripes along with my Marine Corps flag were proudly displayed on the south wall of the mud hut that Bravo Squad and I called home. Camouflage netting was set up to provide shade from the August sun. I could hardly believe my eyes when the number one Marine in the whole Corps, packing a pistol, strolled into our mud-walled, partially enclosed FOB. The man was a giant—he had to be six-foot-six at least, possibly taller. Of course with his status he could have been a midget and I’d have been impressed.

  Dennis Francis and I, two old guys who still believed that “once a Marine” meant “always a Marine,” were proud as hell. The commandant is a four-star general who sits with the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He routinely confers with the president and other Washington, D.C., movers and shakers. But he wasn’t afraid to come and see his Marines at the “tip of the spear.”

  Only slightly removed in reverence is the number one enlisted Marine in the Corps, the sergeant major of the Marine Corps. Sergeant Major Carlton W. Kent arrived with the commandant.

  Scott Brown, Dennis Francis, and I watched from the back of the pack as many Marines sat on the ground to hear what the two had to say. My old pal Lieutenant Pat Caffrey had arrived with the CMC’s party. Pat had been promoted to first lieutenant, and the general did the honors.

  I had broken out my old tricolored Marine eight-point cover to mark the occasion. Lieutenant Brewster made it a point to introduce me. The CMC took one look at my old cover and said, “Former Marine! Who were you with?” I told him my unit, and we exchanged pleasantries for a brief time. I have a picture shaking hands with him. I’m only five-foot-eight, and next to him I looked like a Hobbit.

  Soon after the CMC’s departure the new Hesco-walled FOB was ready for us to move into. The new FOB was as huge as the old one had been tiny. It was quite a change. We had no sooner moved out of the old “Alamo” when the people of Golestan began ransacking the place. They ripped mirrors off the “shithouse” bunker’s walls and grabbed anything that wasn’t nailed down.

  Like looters everywhere, they destroyed what they didn’t take. Their actions were both disgraceful and a testament to how close to the poverty line these people had been living. As was noted when I arrived at Delaram, the uncountable billions in foreign aid that had been spent on Afghanistan over the years did not trickle down to the ordinary people—at least as far as I could see.

  It was equally obvious to me that they didn’t regard us with dread—as they had the Soviets. From stories told by old mujahideen, the Soviets would have shot them all.

  Not wanting the place to be used as a staging ground for an attack on the new FOB, Lieutenant Brewster ordered it demolished. The heavy machinery the platoon had received ground our old fortress to dust. Nothing remained but the outline of the perimeter. I was almost sorry to see it go. By now the “Alamo” seemed like home to me, and I was quite comfortably ensconced in my mud quarters.

  Although located only a couple of hundred yards away, in the devilish summer heat I dreaded moving gear to the new FOB—“Fort Apache.” I sat on the “back porch” as long as I could. Finally I joined Scott and Dennis under a blue tarp up against the giant sandbag walls. We weren’t far from the lieutenant’s new command post.

  The tarp dipped down at an angle running from the Hesco wall to a point about three or three and a half feet above the ground. It was put up that way to minimize our exposure to the hellish sun. I had to duck every time I went in or out of our crude, homemade hooch. I fastened my Marine Corps flag to the lip of the tarp so it would provide all the shade I could get on my cot. We no longer had a flagpole.

  A couple of portable chairs materialized from somewhere, and that made things almost downright homey. In deference to our age, I posted a sign that read, “SHADY ACRES REST HOME.” Probably since he was also old—in his late twenties—“Grandpa” Billington set up his cot nearby. Pretty much every morning when I’d get up Billington would say, “You’re not dead yet?”

  I’d respond with, “Nope. Who’s got tomorrow in the pool?” It was a tongue-in-cheek reference to an imaginary bet as to when I’d kick off from old age.

  Moving severed our Internet connection for quite a while. The good news was Scott had a portable satellite dish provided by his “check signers.” The bad news—it was cantankerous as hell. He carefully placed the dish atop the Hesco ramparts directly over our heads and did his best to aim it at the correct place in the nearly featureless sky. It took some doing. Then, when it wasn’t too hot, or too windy, the damn thing might work. Sometimes we went for days with no connection while it did whatever it had to do to reset itself. It was maddening, but it was still something. It allowed me to keep up correspondence with the home front—albeit sporadically.

  Before we left the old mud building, I used to watch a movie at night—whenever circumstances allowed—on my laptop computer. Thanks to Lieutenant Slocum, I had quite a collection of good flicks to choose from. Naturally, any Marine who wanted to watch would just cram in and find a place from which to see the relatively small screen. We needed Lance Corporal “the Steve” Jorgensen’s help rigging up some kind of extra speakers. The laptop alone wasn’t loud enough for the back row.

  The Steve was a former 1st Platoon Marine who had gotten siphoned off to provide part of the company commander’s personal security detail (PSD). About midway through the deployment he managed to get back to us at Golestan. Steve and I buddied up while I was still rolling with the CO, and it was good to see him again.

  It wasn’t long before I realized that even as I watched Sergeant Holter’s back, the Steve was watching mine. There were no more Lone Ranger moves for me after that. Whenever I turned around, the Steve and his light machine gun (Squad Automatic Weapon or SAW) were right there. After watching the movie Appaloosa, about a pair of badass lawmen in a southwestern town, I began to refer to Steve and myself as “Cole” and “Hitch”—the names of the fictitious marshals in the film. Now I was “Doc Holliday” with “Wyatt” Holter and “Cole” with “the Steve.”

  I just couldn’t shake the notion that we were in the old Southwest.

  I continued the movie tradition at the new FOB. I called it the “base theater” and passed the word at chow what “tonight’s feature presentation” was to be. The show would start right after dark, when the screen could be seen without blinding glare from the sun—and when the temperature would drop from hellish to something almost “Earth-like.” It was the high point of my day. There wasn’t an awful lot else going on.

  During this period—mid-August to early September—it became obvious to the three former lawmen—Scott, Dennis, and me—that the Taliban had had enough of 1st Platoon. Information we received indicated they had pulled far up the Golestan valley in an effort to be out of our reach.

  That wasn’t good news for Dennis, as he was itching for a fight. So much so that when it was time to escort new ANP recruits all the way back to Delaram, he volunteered to go. Almost no convoy got through a particular pass in the mountains without taking some kind of small-arms fire, so it seemed a sure bet that Dennis would get some trigger time. I went too. There really wasn’t much else to do, and it meant a visit to Delaram and the Marines I had left behind there.

  The only seat left in the convoy was in one huge seven-ton truck that would haul many ANP in the back. It was only the driver and I in the cab, and it was much more comfortable than riding in the back of a Humvee. I unscrewed a circular hatch in the roof of the cab so in the event
of an ambush I would be able to stand up and shoot back. The windows were bulletproof and didn’t roll down. However, no ambush—down or back—materialized. As a former Marine, Dennis was disappointed.

  It was symptomatic of the change that had overtaken the Golestan valley. There would be no more fighting for the remainder of the deployment. One thirty-day period—from July 2 to August 2—had seen it all.

  The first objective in combating an insurgency is to provide security for the population. That had been accomplished in the Golestan valley. The second objective is to get the local government up and running. The subgovernor, while still sequestered in his well-protected compound, was at least talking about coming to Golestan to conduct business. That was progress.

  Flash back to a conversation with the battalion commander many months prior—police without courts aren’t police, they’re a militia. At about this time a fistfight between two pairs of Afghan brothers escalated into a knife fight. No one was seriously hurt, but what was amazing is that the ANP actually did what police are supposed to do. They conducted an investigation, made arrests, and turned the defendants over to the local prosecutor. The prosecutor hadn’t prosecuted anything in years.

  It’s not my purpose here to expound on Afghan law as I learned it through study of the Afghan Constitution; suffice it to say it would be as unrecognizable to an American as our system of jurisprudence would be to them. What was truly remarkable in my eyes, and equally noteworthy, is that the civilian system had been revived. The prosecutor invited me to witness the proceedings. With Bravo Squad as my escort, I sat at a long outdoor table in the shade of the ANP barracks and watched the law of Afghanistan in operation.

  It was a turning point in the war against the Taliban in the Golestan valley. Justice was done—the Afghan way. The fathers of both pairs of brothers were fined for allowing their sons to disturb the peace. The trial had taken two days.