Jerry Bradley & Kevin Maurer

by Lions of Kandahar: The Story of a Fight Against All Odds

  As I said, I had a Super Bowl–caliber team. Brian is the best communications specialist I have ever seen in my fifteen years in the military. He took his job and responsibility to move, shoot, and communicate to another level. He and Smitty were a deadly combination in any room takedown.

  A simple man, Brian was never distracted by the normal worldly allures of fancy cars, motorcycles, money, or women. Like most of the guys, he was a deeply devoted family man. He took his family as seriously as he did his job. It was a trait that I held in the highest regard and encouraged other team members to emulate.

  Our gypsy caravan entered the sleeping city through a section of the bazaar. During the day, all the shops were crowded with people and overflowing with everything from hanging meat and carpets to household goods. At this hour, the market was deserted, and the numerous shuttered shops were good cover for anyone watching our movements. The cars, trucks, donkey carts, and burned hulks of old Soviet military vehicles parked along the road provided easy places to hide roadside bombs.

  My night-vision goggles allowed me to peek into doorways and backstreets as I scanned for danger. Small white dots from our rifles’ laser sights traveled from alleyway to alleyway and darted along the buildings. We could see the Afghan National Police checkpoint ahead and flashed the infrared (IR) signal to them. I had no trouble making out the Afghan policeman’s broad grin under the green glow of night vision as we passed. He gave us the Hawaiian shaka, the familiar thumb and pinkie hand signal.

  We rolled into the first straightaway and as soon as the last vehicle passed the police checkpoint, Brian floored it. The support company mechanics, huge fans of NASCAR, had manipulated the governors so our trucks could accelerate and maintain incredible speed with their supercharged diesel engines. I felt safer traveling fast, especially as we approached a particularly nasty section of the city known as IED Alley.

  About 70 percent of all suicide bombers and IEDs hit along this stretch of road inside Kandahar. Just seeing it made my butt pucker. Scars from the attacks pocked the pavement. Big, deep holes that could easily shatter an axle or bust the trucks’ suspensions forced us to slow down. If we could just make it through this stretch and reach the city outskirts, we should be okay.

  As we slowed to avoid a pothole big enough to swallow our truck, the radio crackled a warning: “Motorcycle at three o’clock!”

  I spotted the bike running parallel to the convoy on a side street. Suicide bomber? Or a tail to help his buddies set up an ambush? It was two a.m., so it was unlikely he was out getting milk.

  Bill came over the radio and said the motorcycle had shot down an alleyway toward the convoy. I tightened my grip on my rifle, ready for the motorcycle to cut out into our path. A warning burst from an Afghan soldier’s AK-47 broke through the rumbling of the engines. I just caught the back of the bike as it darted down the alley away from the convoy. Maybe the rider was just a civilian who wasn’t paying attention and now had to change pants. If he had been a suicide bomber, he would have kept coming.

  We crossed under the concrete arches that reminded me of the McDonald’s logo, which marked the official entrance to the heart of the city. I finally exhaled as we reached the dark highway leading through the city and picked up speed. There are no bright streetlights lining the avenues of Afghan cities. Power lines hung in a thick crisscross above the dusty road. The squat tan buildings passed by in a blur as we raced toward the airfield. We soon saw its bright lights glowing in the distance.

  We neared the bridge where the Taliban patrol had disarmed the guards two days earlier. The convoy came to a rolling halt and I asked the ANA soldier if there had been any trouble. He shook his head no. He had his weapon and there were now two other guards joining him.

  We drove through the first Afghan security gate on the north side of the base, where the Afghan Army had a compound. The guards greeted us with smiles. The jingle trucks peeled off as we continued deeper into the airfield. The coalition gate was protected by menacing sandbagged machine-gun nests and two concrete towers bristling with machine guns. My truck slowed and I waved to the guard. No response. The gate stayed closed, which was strange. We were in clearly marked American gun trucks.

  “American. Open the gate,” I yelled to the ISAF guard.

  A voice on a muted bullhorn ordered our Afghan soldiers to surrender their weapons and move into the razor-wire containment area where Afghan workers and drivers are searched before starting work on the base. What?

  “Hey, partner, what’s the problem here? We’re Americans and they’re with us!” I was completely confused. We were American soldiers, in American uniforms, riding in American gun trucks, and we were being denied entry to the very base that the United States had seized and established. These Afghans weren’t civilians—they were Afghan government soldiers accompanying a Special Forces team. I wasn’t going to put these Afghan soldiers in a containment area like common criminals or pets to wait until we returned. I got out of my truck and walked toward the guard.

  “Hey, partner, what’s the problem here?” I repeated.

  The guard took a step back behind a small concrete barrier and moved his weapon to the low ready position.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” I growled.

  I demanded that the sergeant of the guard come out and talk with me. No one responded. Now I was really getting pissed. I could see them on the phone following their long list of protocols, trying to get their superiors on the line. Finally, the sergeant of the guard came to the window of the bunker and demanded—not asked—that I surrender my ID card.

  Fishing it out of my shirt pocket, I held it up. “Come out here and get it!”

  Not surprisingly, he didn’t budge. Fed up, I went back to my truck and called the TOC on a radio channel that every coalition unit in southern Afghanistan monitored and announced that ISAF soldiers had detained my team, including my Afghan soldiers, at the gate. Dave’s voice from the turret whispered, “Easy, Griz.” Griz was a nickname Matt from 3X had given me for moments such as this.

  The battle captain in the TOC came back a moment later. “Stand fast. We will deconflict.”

  I held my tongue. Leaning against my truck, I suddenly felt like laughing. In the last few hours, we had raced through downtown Kandahar and avoided roadside and suicide bombers, only to run up against an immovable object—this damn gate. We were about to kick off a massive combat operation with this same force. Some teammates, I thought. I hoped this wasn’t an omen of things to come.

  After five minutes, a truck arrived at the gate and broke up the staring contest. A member of our unit went into the guard shack, and when he came out, the sergeant of the guard nodded. The guard opened the gate without a word.

  As we drove past, the sergeant of the guard gave us the finger.

  Chapter 6

  OPERATION MEDUSA

  It is better to live one day as a lion than a hundred years as a sheep.

  —ITALIAN PROVERB

  On Lieutenent Colonel Bolduc’s first rotation, he built a door with a cipher lock in the wall between the Special Forces compound and the Regional Command South compound. He did it intentionally to open up communications and build rapport with ISAF, since southern Afghanistan was NATO territory. In return, he got to use a side door straight into Brigadier General David Fraser’s office. Shortly before we got back to Kandahar, he made use of that access. Passing between the compounds, Bolduc walked into Fraser’s well-furnished office. He wanted to shake hands, look the boss in the eye, and test the water.

  The Canadian general commanded all coalition troops in southern Afghanistan. The two men had met and gotten along well during Fraser’s last rotation, when Fraser, then a colonel, worked on the Canadian staff. When Bolduc came in, Fraser got up from behind his large desk and joined him in a small sitting area. Pictures of NATO troops in Afghanistan and mementos from the Canadian army made up the decor.

  An aide brought in coffee and the two men discussed what was planned to
be the largest NATO combat operation in history. Fraser explained that within days of his taking command from the Americans in early August, between three hundred and five hundred insurgents attacked a Canadian element in Panjwayi. The Canadians killed several dozen enemy and didn’t suffer any casualties, but the attack sent ripples through the command and made it clear the nature of the fight had significantly changed. The Taliban no longer attacked in small groups but in mass. That meant the counterinsurgency fight the Canadians had prepared for was out the window as long as the Taliban controlled the area. That was where Operation Medusa came in. Medusa was intended to destroy the thousands of insurgents who had gathered outside of Kandahar in Panjwayi, the Taliban’s heartland.

  “Hey, boss, I just want to lay out the groundwork and make sure I get your guidance,” Bolduc said, pulling out a packet of printed PowerPoint slides. He never brought more than ten slides to a meeting with Fraser in hope of keeping it tight. Simple.

  The plan relied on three of his teams to lead the Afghan Army on a reconnaissance mission and attract the attention of the Taliban. Make them turn on their radios so that the Canadians could track the location of the leaders in the valley they would be attacking. The teams would move into Panjwayi from the Red Desert—the Registan—and catch the Taliban off guard. Bolduc knew the Canadian army was the main element, but this got his men in the fight and got the Afghans in the lead.

  Fraser reviewed the slides and quietly listened to the Special Forces commander. Taking out his gold pen, he initialed the slides, giving Bolduc the green light. Bolduc left the meeting and called Jared.

  By the time I arrived at the special operations compound in KAF that night, my nerves were fried and my head throbbed. The ride, except for our encounter with the ISAF guards, had been a milk run, but it still rattled me. I had forgotten the peaks and valleys that your mind and body experience when you’re exposed to combat stress. Everybody remembers the cool parts and forgets the headaches, the sleeplessness, and the nerves.

  We parked the trucks at the motor pool, locked the radios and weapons in the arms room, and headed over to the chow hall for breakfast. In Kandahar, we knew we could get a good meal no matter what.

  The dining facility near the compound’s gate looked like every other stucco building in southern Afghanistan. But if Napoleon was right that armies march on their stomachs, Sergeant First Class Redd kept us going at one hundred miles an hour. The senior cook, on his fourth rotation, not only managed the special operations chow hall in Kandahar, but kept the firebases in southern Afghanistan stocked. If you didn’t have it, Redd would go and get it. Once, a shipment of steaks went missing, and Redd flew to Germany, put a knot in someone’s ass, and came back with the missing steaks, plus some.

  “What’s happening, sir?” he asked as I pushed open the door to the dining facility. It was how he greeted everybody.

  “Livin’ the dream, Redd,” I said, smiling at the smell of fresh bacon and eggs.

  I had followed my guys into the chow hall. I always ate last to make sure they got the best selection of food. Loading up with eggs, bacon, and coffee, I noticed Bolduc finishing up his breakfast. He saw me, too, and came over to my table after greeting my team.

  Lieutenant Colonel Bolduc expected his detachment commanders to come by and see him whenever they came to Kandahar Airfield. It was not negotiable, ever. He wanted to talk with the men and get their perspective on what was going on in the field. A passionate and dedicated leader, he often solicited new insights on a problem or situation or suggested a new strategy in the course of deep, detailed discussions. He let us operate as we were designed to, independently and autonomously, to achieve strategic effects on the battlefield for the United States.

  Bolduc had been part of the first Special Forces units inside Afghanistan and had dealt directly with the Afghan resistance, militias, and Al Qaeda. He prized comprehensive knowledge and experience as integral elements of leadership. As uncompromising as the cold in his native Northeast, where he grew up collecting maple syrup on his family’s small farm, it was out of the question for him to accept anything less than the real thing. He was famous for certain traits that could rub team members and staff officers alike the wrong way—a stubborn insistence on multiple rehearsals under multiple timelines, for instance—but more often than not, what were initially regarded as Bolduc’s “quirks” came to be understood as small glimpses into what “correct” looked like and were ultimately adopted as standard procedure. Point-blank, loved by some, hated by others, he was without a doubt respected by all, and, as I had personally experienced, he was a commander who would sacrifice his career to protect his men if they were in the right.

  Bolduc asked about the ride in, thankfully not about the mix-up at the gate, and welcomed me back.

  After breakfast, I walked over to the TOC. People buzzed about and there was palpable tension in the air. Radio calls burst out of the speaker system. A Special Forces team was in a hellstorm of a firefight. A soldier had been killed and several wounded. I walked over to the battle captain, who was feverishly working on getting aircraft support. Without looking up, he turned one of the computer monitors so I could see it. The computer showed the team’s location on a map overlay and the numerous enemy positions. I nodded and walked around the half-moon-shaped table to an empty seat and scanned the status board. Medevac was en route. Two sorties of attack aircraft were inbound. No resupply was scheduled. I phoned the operations sergeant down at the supply company and asked if the bundles of ammunition were prepared so they could be pushed out of a helicopter.

  Just as I sent a runner down to the company with a list of the requested supplies, Jared and Bolduc walked out of the conference room. Jared tilted his head, motioning me to come into the room. I tilted my head at the battle captain, meaning I wanted to stay and help there. Jared shook his head no, and I got up to leave. As I passed, the battle captain winked, acknowledging his appreciation. In this business, you put everything aside to help those in need.

  A number of high-ranking Australian, British, Canadian, and Dutch officers were sitting around the table in the conference room, which was meticulously laid out with nameplates for all the senior officers. I sat in a row of seats behind the massive table.

  “This is where the minions sit,” I muttered to Jared as he settled into the seat next to me.

  Bruce and Hodge, both fellow detachment commanders, sat down next to us. Hodge was older than I was, with a head of receding silver hair, and reminded me of Mr. Burns from The Simpsons. I had known Hodge from the Special Forces Qualification Course, and I liked working with him. We had served together in Hawaii when we were both just sergeants, and he knew me as well as my teammates. He and I simply wanted to serve our country with as much autonomy as possible.

  Bruce was new to the unit and on his first deployment to Afghanistan. A Georgian who spoke with a soft southern accent, he’d been an armor officer in Kosovo and Iraq, where he was wounded by a roadside bomb that had delayed his Special Forces training. A cautious and methodical commander, he was a welcome addition to the team.

  An Australian operations officer started the brief. I’ve been very fortunate to work with the Aussies throughout my entire career and on all my rotations to Afghanistan. I’d always liked and admired the way they did business. No bullshit. No politics. Get to the frigging point and get it done. This officer was no different. “Right, mates, in seven days we will be conducting the largest operation since the invasion of Afghanistan and in the history of NATO. Two mechanized Canadian battle groups will lead the assault, with an American infantry battalion securing the right northern flank. You Special boys will seal the south and block the escape,” he said.

  Code-named Medusa, after the mythological Greek female with hair of serpents, the operation focused on encircling the Panjwayi district. A frontal attack was unthinkable. The district was sandwiched between the Arghandab and Dori rivers, which run northeast by southwest through the province, and was litter
ed with irrigation ditches, bunker-like grape huts, and thick fields of grapes and marijuana. In a decade of fighting, the Soviets never conquered it.

  “The main effort will be the Canadian Mechanized Task Force conducting a clearing operation from northeast to southwest through the entire Panjwayi Valley,” the Australian officer continued. “We need you boys to infiltrate, stir up some trouble to draw enemy attention to the south, then occupy blocking positions and report all enemy intelligence to ISAF HQ. Bolduc has convinced us that you can play a vital supporting role, and we hope you can fill that gap.”

  The plan called for us to look at areas of interest and report on what we saw. We were given timelines, radio frequencies for the other units, and the areas they wanted us to watch. Big operations were the toughest, especially ones involving several different countries. There were a lot of moving parts, different operating procedures, and of course politics, which increased the chance of mistakes. And in combat, something always goes wrong.

  Bruce, Hodge, Jared, and I glanced at one another, silently working on our list of questions. On paper it looked straightforward, but we seriously doubted they were prepared for contingencies. Hodge and I began to raise our hands. Bolduc, his hand on his lower jaw, looked me right in the eye and shook his head. The message was loud and clear: This was an ISAF operations order; we were to be in receive mode only. So when our coalition partners finished, all we did was shake their hands and smile.

  Bolduc raised a finger at us and we knew to give him a moment and wait outside. Once the conference room was empty, he took us back inside and gave us the real brief.

  “All right, men, I did not intend for that to turn into a six-hour interrogation,” he said. “That’s why I stopped you. They wanted us to play a much different role in the operation, but I sold them on this. We all know this will be a significant undertaking with them trying to use mechanized forces in an underdeveloped urban environment. We will take this piece and this piece alone. Make it work.”