Tough as They Come

by Travis Mills

  Honestly, I don’t know if I ever went overseas because I was concerned about the Afghan people themselves. It’s undoubtedly that way for some soldiers, but on any deployment I went on, I wouldn’t say the care of the Afghan people was foremost in my mind. Don’t get me wrong, there’s no hatred or dislike for them on my part. But whenever I deployed, I wasn’t primarily thinking about helping them build their country or build schools or help the people win the right to vote. Even though all those things are worthy causes.

  The reason I went overseas was because of the soldier next to me. The guys in my squad. Our job was to protect America and keep the Taliban at bay. I’d trained my men. I’d taught them all I knew. It was my job to take care of them. I couldn’t imagine them deploying without me.

  —

  By February 2012, when my third deployment was scheduled to start, coalition forces had been fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan for more than eleven years, and there was talk in the media that the war in Afghanistan was dying down. But I was wary of the talk.

  Earlier, in 2010, President Obama had sent a surge of some 30,000 new additional troops into Afghanistan (who joined some 70,000 troops already there), and a lot of headway had been made in terms of capturing or killing Taliban leaders and destroying caches of their weapons. On May 2, 2011, al-Qaeda founder and leader Osama bin Laden (who’d enjoyed safe haven in Afghanistan with the Taliban for years—and from his base in Afghanistan had declared war against the United States) was killed by a team of Navy SEALs in Pakistan, where he’d eventually fled to after 9/11. Then, in June 2011, President Obama slowly began to pull troops out of Afghanistan—a plan that would take several years. Other coalition countries followed suit.

  Yet even though troops were leaving, a lot of work was still needed. (History has shown that from 2011 to 2012, the number of Taliban attacks continued at roughly the same rate—about 28,000 attacks per year.) My unit’s job on my third deployment was basically the same as it had been before—to partner with the Afghan government and help them establish security on their own. Specifically, we were headed to the Maiwand district in the south of Kandahar province, a rural and highly violent area. The new Afghan government might have been growing stronger as a whole, but its influence was not reaching outlying districts, which were still hotbeds of Taliban activity.

  Josh Buck was wary too. A week before we deployed, Josh and I sat in his garage, and we both had a strange, ominous feeling about this upcoming deployment, a feeling I’d never felt before. I looked around the garage at the shelving, the bicycles, the boxes, the lawn tools, and said starkly, “Josh, I don’t know if I’m coming back from this one.”

  “Dude, you’re going to be fine,” Josh assured me. But concern clouded his eyes, and I could see it.

  For this deployment, Josh was going to be at Camp Stone, near Kandahar, and I’d be in a strongpoint about fifteen miles west of him. He had another decision about whether to reenlist coming up soon, and Josh was talking about getting orders to go to Hawaii next and me going with him. My third deployment was considered a “filler”—only nine months long at most, and our colonel had volunteered us for this. We all knew it was going to be nine months in a viper pit.

  If you asked me, Hawaii sounded like a much better bet.

  —

  On the evening of February 23, 2012, I hugged Kelsey for the last time and gave her a long kiss. She was going to move back to Texas to stay with her folks while I was gone so they could help with the baby. Our house near the base was going to stand empty until I returned.

  “I love you, Kelsey,” I told her. “I’ll see you soon. I already miss you.”

  She was in tears. A beautiful mess. Josh was leaving on that same deployment too, but a day later than I was. So he came to see me off and support his sister. I hugged him and he hugged me back.

  Chloe was five months old and sleeping soundly in her car seat. She never even woke up when I kissed her cheek. I unstrapped my daughter, picked her up, and cradled her tightly, one last time, in my arms. She inhaled deeply, smiled, and carried on sleeping.

  Then I waved goodbye.

  Walking away from my loved ones, I had to ask myself if this third deployment felt different from the first two. I had a child to think about now. A family. I knew there would be tense days and firefights ahead, but honestly I wasn’t afraid of dying. I wouldn’t be reckless and make myself an easy target, and I didn’t want to die. But I knew that if I got hit, then I got hit. If it happened, then it was meant to be.

  As a soldier, it’s not like I talk about my emotions every day. I don’t write poetry. I don’t watch romantic comedies as a rule (just Mickey Mouse Clubhouse with Chloe). I’m trained to kill people. That’s what I do. You’ve got to be tough in the 82nd. You’ve got to be as hard as life. You don’t want to show weakness ever, particularly with any of your guys around. When you’re overseas and out in the middle of nowhere and you have twelve to twenty guys with you, you can’t take a seat and say you’re done. As a leader, I couldn’t throw my helmet down and complain that things weren’t fair. You have to make the best of it. You have to keep going. You’ve got to be as tough as they come.

  But even so, as I walked away from my wife and child and brother-in-law, the wind struck my eye, and I wiped away the wetness with the back of my sleeve.

  Me goofing off with my big sister, Sarah. I was the jokester of the family, although Dad says I never knew when to quit.

  I hoped I’d have a career in the NFL one day, but I settled for playing in community college instead. This is me in eighth grade, a proud Vassar Vulcan.

  Mom and Dad made the fourteen-hour trip from Michigan to Fort Bragg in January 2007 to see me off on my first deployment to Afghanistan. I teared up and got on the bus quickly so nobody could see me cry.

  Kelsey and me having lunch on our first date—a week-long whirlwind trip to Cozumel, Mexico, while I was on a short break during my first deployment. We had a fast, exciting romance from the start, and we haven’t slowed down since.

  Right before we were married, Kelsey and I went to Maine to meet her side of the family at her grandma’s farm. That part of the state has a lot of ticks, and Kelsey didn’t want to get any, so I told her to climb on while we walked out into a field. My role has always been the “strong man” in the relationship.

  I couldn’t believe how beautiful our newborn daughter was. Chloe was so tiny, so wonderful. I was more scared to be a new parent than I was to be in combat.

  Maintaining a sense of humor while on deployment is essential. When we took breaks, we often played baseball or Frisbee, fighting the tension by staying loose.

  Seeing my brother-in-law, Josh Buck, on our second deployment to Afghanistan was always welcomed. It felt great to have a piece of home so close by. Other soldiers didn’t get to see any family for a full year.

  This was the last picture taken of me, April 8, 2012, at our strong point while on my third deployment to Afghanistan. I’m sporting my Vassar Vulcan hat out of hometown pride. Two days later, on April 10, I’d be critically wounded.

  The evening after I was hit, my hometown of Vassar held a candlelight vigil at the high school football field to pray for me and my family. I felt deeply honored to have so much support from my community. [John Cook Photography]

  Four days after being wounded, I turned twenty-five while in the hospital. My guys sent me this picture of themselves as a way to let me know I was still in their thoughts. This is 1st Platoon, Bravo Troop, 4/73rd Cavalry Squadron, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division—the guys I lived with, ate with, fought alongside of. Brothers.

  This picture means so much to me. I was in ICU at Walter Reed, and this was the moment I saw Chloe for the first time after being wounded. I was scared to see her again, fearing how she would react. Internally, I was wondering if I could ever be a good father and husband again. Chloe just looked at me, smiled, and nestled right in. I was still the same to her.

  This was the first day
I walked. After one lap around the room, the staff said I could stop, but I kept going. I was covered in sweat and exhausted. My limbs were trembling. But I was elated and I walked three laps. I’m tearing up in this photo, telling the therapists and prosthetists how thankful I was for all their hard work.

  Kelsey and Chloe came to therapy with me and cheered me on. I wanted to get better for them.

  The service dog’s name is Deuce.

  This was a monumental day, the first day of me walking using taller prosthetic legs that have knees. I was almost my full height again. Kelsey and I are pictured with my physical therapist, Kerry, and my number one leg guy, Dave.

  With every day, week, month, I got stronger. It was a milestone for our family to be able to travel back home to North Carolina for a few days to celebrate Chloe’s first birthday at our own house.

  I practiced making my mom’s famous stuffing for a Thanksgiving celebration.

  About five months after being hit, while still in rehab, I had set a goal to walk the Tunnel to Towers 5K along with Corporal Todd Nicely. I rubbed my leg raw and it was bleeding into my liner, but I finished it. Later I fell down on stage in front of 25,000 people. It was a pretty awesome day.

  I enjoyed finding new ways to be an adrenaline junkie. Here, I’m downhill mountain biking in Crested Butte, Colorado, with Adaptive Sports Outdoors.

  Learning how to drive again while at Walter Reed was huge for me. It was my last bit of healing to regain full independence. Big thanks go to driving rehab specialist Major Tammy Phipps for all her guidance and training.

  I started the Travis Mills Foundation as a way to help other wounded servicemen and their families. This photo was taken at one of our first retreats in summer 2014, two years after I was wounded. Left to right: Drew Mullee and his son Easton; Andrew and Tory Smith; Jennifer Mullee; Kelsey, Chloe, and me; and Taylor and Danielle Morris.

  A ceremony was held for us on October 15, 2014, when Kelsey, Chloe, and I moved into our new smart home in Maine, built by the Gary Sinise Foundation, which builds adaptive homes for critically wounded service members. Kelsey and I were completely overwhelmed by the support of the foundation and our community, thankful and blessed that so many people came together to allow us to have a place to call home.

  Three years after being wounded, this is me running strong on Memorial Day 2015 at the fourth annual Miles for Mills 5K in Maine. This event has developed into a fundraiser, now held by my foundation to help other wounded veterans. [Mark & Deanna Photography]

  During Maine’s winters, I love taking Chloe for a ride out back of our property with my action track chair. Buddy, our yellow lab, enjoys coming along. I’m never going to sit back and let the world pass me by. If Chloe wants to go out and play in the snow, I’m her dad and I’m going to take her.

  It felt familiar. We took roughly the same series of flights to get over overseas as I’d taken on my last deployment. From the States we flew to Ireland, and then to Kyrgyzstan, then Kandahar. In Kandahar, there was a lot of sitting and waiting. Finally, we jumped on a Chinook helicopter with our gear and took off, headed toward our new place of residency at a triangular-shaped strongpoint in the outback of Afghanistan.

  Our strongpoint was so small it didn’t even have a name. It wasn’t big enough to have a FOB designation. The biggest FOB near us was Sarkari Karez, a couple miles away, and the biggest town near us was called Maiwand (sometimes called De Maiwand), with a population of a couple hundred people. It’s a bit confusing; the town and the district both shared the same name—Maiwand. Maybe 50,000 people total were sparsely spread throughout the district. The region was considered a hotbed of Taliban activity.

  In addition to the village of Maiwand, we had six or seven clusters of villages in the area around the strongpoint that we were responsible for. The village names all blur together in my mind now: Mahmudabad, Danday, De Maymand Chinah—I don’t remember all of them. Our platoon’s mission was to travel around to these clusters, sift out the Taliban from the civilians, and try and clear out the bad guys while protecting the good. Most of the time we’d be partnered with an Afghan platoon, trying to help them take the lead and facilitate patrols of their own.

  Everywhere I looked around the strongpoint I saw barren dirt. Looking north, I could see a big mountain pass. To our south lay a huge dried-up wadi about half a mile wide. Another five miles south of that was another mountain pass. Barren landscape isn’t safe. We knew the Taliban lurked everywhere throughout this district. We just didn’t know specifically where “everywhere” was. I thought back to my first deployment—how it was a picnic compared to what this was going to be. I wasn’t positive what the days ahead would hold, but I suspected we’d soon see blood. I never thought it would be my own.

  —

  On our first day there, we went out on patrol with the guys from the 10th Mountain, who we were replacing. Nothing happened. The rest of my guys arrived the next day. We took over from the 10th Mountain and they left.

  On the second day, we went out on patrol and talked to some of the key leaders from the villages in the area and gave the kids kites. Only one boy played with his kite, and the rest of the children all beat him up. This was another indication of the Taliban’s influence in the region, although the meetings with the elders went okay and all was quiet.

  For our patrol on the third day, our CO figured it would look good if we could flush out some Taliban. Officially, a mission such as this is called “learning our battle space,” and the idea is we’d deliberately go out and try to pick a fight. The village to the farthest south in our area of patrol was called Maiwand Karez, by far the worst village of all the ones we were responsible for. A lot of Taliban-controlled drugs ran through this region, and the intel on this particular village was that they hated Americans the most. Our lieutenant, Zac Lewis, talked with me and the other squad leaders to get our input about what we wanted to do.

  I liked Lieutenant Lewis a lot. He was a couple years older than I was, and this was his first deployment. In personality, he was a reserved guy, a college man who’d majored in finance and had worked in an investment firm for a few years before joining the military. He spoke quietly and cautiously and kept himself together almost to the point of being tightly wound. But I could tell his tight personality only sprung from the desire to lead our platoon the best way possible—and I respected him for that. It’s not easy for a brand-new officer to walk into a unit and try to lead a platoon, particularly when the NCOs under him already have combat experience. While we were back at Fort Bragg, I took it upon myself to publicly joke around with him as much as possible. I knew it would be good for him and would help loosen him up and ultimately become a better leader. He didn’t like being touched, so I’d purposely pick him up and give him a huge bear hug, or I’d swing him up and over my shoulders for fun. He’d squirm and roll his eyes and call me names and laugh it off, and the platoon could all see he was going to be an okay guy because he could take it. I knew he’d be a great leader to follow.

  We squad leaders all agreed to go to Maiwand Karez and set the tone for this deployment. Lieutenant Lewis took the message back to our CO. We wanted to come in strong, so the Taliban would know we were there and meant business. If we could get inside the village, then good, we’d do that. But if the fire was too heavy and all we could do was go down there and set eyes on the village, then that’s what we’d do to start.

  Our platoon left our strongpoint in the early morning. Maiwand Karez was only about three kilometers away, but we were hiking extremely slowly. Because of the severe IED threat, it would take us several hours to cover that distance.

  We moved over the ground in four columns. One soldier walked in front—he’s called the mine hound. He had a metal detector with him and he swept the ground for IEDs—back and forth, back and forth. The metal detector would also pick up changes in the density of the dirt, so theoretically it could find IEDs made out of glass and plastic. The mine hound was always extremely vulnerab
le to potential gunfire because he was so focused on the ground, so directly behind him walked a SAW gunner, who covered the mine hound with his machine gun. Behind the gunner walked a team leader who looked for visual indicators of IEDs—wires, some dispersed dirt maybe, anything that didn’t look like it should be there. He also marked lanes to the right and left with a can of shaving cream to indicate a clear pathway for the guys behind to walk in. Everybody else walked in a single-file line, each man five meters away from the next.

  I think most people who picture combat think that direct fire is the biggest threat to soldiers on a foot patrol. But one crazy thing about this area of Afghanistan was that we were at a far greater risk from buried IEDs than we were from direct fire. It was all connected to the Taliban’s vicious strategy for IED placement. In the movies, if guys take fire, you see them running and diving for cover. But we couldn’t do that in this area, particularly this far along into the war. The Taliban must have watched the same movies, because we’d learned that they had deliberately placed IEDs in areas that a man would run to and dive for if he was trying to take cover. So whenever we took fire, we were trained to stay exactly where we were. It sounds counterintuitive, but we’d actually have a greater chance of survival if we didn’t dive for cover. Instead, we’d take a knee or go prone and fire back from there. Under fire, if our guys broke off to flank the enemy, then we’d still move at a slow walk, because everywhere we moved was potentially a minefield.