The Outpost: An Untold Story of American Valor

by Jake Tapper

  If a soldier survives the initial hit of an RPG and manages to regain his bearings, only then will he notice the effects of the considerable shrapnel produced by the device. The RPG’s casing, now in the form of myriad penetrating fragments, will have been hurled in all directions. The irregular shape of these fragments can slow down their trajectory as they fly through tissue, at times making their impact more painful than that of a bullet. A leg or an arm may be turned to mash or even liquefied by shrapnel. If you’re a soldier in battle and an RPG hits a tree near you, you get down and hope that another one doesn’t land closer.

  The first thing Smitty did was look at his watch to see what time he was going to die.

  Private First Class Sean “Smitty” Smith was lying down and just putting out a cigarette—a local brand called Pine Light—when the shooting started. He and six other troops were at the northern end of the team’s position, near the treeline. The other five were Franklin Woods, Brian Bradbury, Private First Class Derek James, Specialist Matthew Chambers, and Specialist Shawn Heistand.

  Woods had heard a shuffling of feet, but before he could say anything, the shooting started, the fire coming so quickly and so ferociously that many of the troops didn’t even have time to grab their weapons.

  There were approximately fifty Afghans shooting at them from about 150 feet away to the north, and some more immediately to the west—all so close that the troops near the treeline could see their faces as they fired at the Americans with their Russian-made PKM machine guns. Those faces looked calm and collected, wearing the kind of expression that might otherwise be seen at target practice. The insurgents firing the RPGs were to the northwest.

  Smitty was scared. This was his first firefight ever. There wasn’t much for him to take cover behind, though he didn’t think the enemy fighters had noticed him yet. But sooner or later, they surely would.

  Smitty and Bradbury were the squad automatic-weapons (SAW) gunners, the designated carriers of portable light machine guns, which produce a heavy volume of fire with something approaching the accuracy of a rifle. Bradbury, lying on his stomach on the front line, used his SAW to suppress enemy fire as best he could. Heistand was firing as well, with his assault rifle.

  Smitty didn’t have his SAW with him; he’d earlier placed his gun in the spot where he was due to stand guard duty that night. On his belly, he low-crawled backward to a small clearing and snagged a different gun, a sniper rifle. Walking backward, he slowly fired a series of well-aimed shots, then turned around and ran back to the rest of the group behind the boulders.

  This attack was distressing not only for newbies such as Smitty but also for the more veteran of the men. The hell they were in represented the most intense enemy fire ever experienced by Cunningham, who was on his fourth tour in Afghanistan. The PKM machine guns the insurgents were firing could deliver up to 650 rounds per minute, and the Afghan RPGs were coming in quickly, one after another after another. Pretty much all the Americans could do was duck behind their cover, hold their weapons above their heads, shoot, and pray.

  Using his call sign, “Chaos 3-5,” Monti radioed to squadron headquarters.

  “We’re under attack by a much larger force,” he reported. “We need mortars, heavy artillery, and aircraft to drop bombs.”

  Monti paused for a minute. Remaining behind the boulder, he fired his M4 carbine rifle toward some approaching enemy fighters to the west of him. Then he threw a grenade at them. It didn’t go off, but it caused the insurgents to scatter.

  Back on the radio, he called in the two sets of coordinates, for the Americans’ position and the insurgents’, stressing that they were “danger close”—meaning that the insurgents were in such tight proximity to their prey that there was a significant risk that any mortars fired or bombs dropped might kill Americans, too. But there was no better option, since at this point it looked as though they would soon be overrun.

  Shortly thereafter, several mortars landed to the north of the American camp. A mortarman asked Monti by radio if he should adjust his fire, but the enemy bullets and RPGs were flying so furiously that Monti told him he couldn’t even raise his head to check where the mortars had hit. He’d just have to keep his fingers crossed and hope they were hitting their mark.

  Grzecki and John Garner had been sitting on the eastern part of the hilltop with their spotting scopes, observing the valley, when an RPG exploded in a tree four feet away from them. They promptly dove behind a small boulder for cover, but within moments, the fire was so intense that they couldn’t get to their weapons. Grzecki’s rifle was sitting next to him, but a flurry of bullets kept him from reaching for it. Garner grabbed his rifle, but when he stood to return fire, an enemy fighter shot it right out of his hand.

  Lybert was in front of Garner, crouching behind the small stone wall to the west. Specialist Daniel Linnihan was farther down, also behind the L-shaped wall.

  “I need a weapon!” Garner shouted to Lybert.

  “Where’s yours?” Lybert shouted back.

  “It got shot out of my hand!”

  “Stay behind cover!” Lybert told him, popping back up just far enough that only the top of his helmet, his eyes, and his rifle were exposed. He continued steadily returning fire at the enemy as the small stone wall he was behind began getting hit with machine-gun fire, chipping the rock and sending up puffs of gray dust. Lybert pulled the trigger of his gun yet again, but then, as Garner looked to him, he stopped, just stopped, and blood started to spill from his right ear. Lybert fell forward.

  “Lybert’s been hit!” Garner yelled.

  Garner fell onto his chest, getting as low to the ground as he could. He wanted to move backward, behind the boulders, but he was afraid he’d get killed if he did.

  Behind the cover of the small stone wall, Linnihan crawled over to check on his friend. Lybert was gone.

  “Throw me Lybert’s weapon!” Garner yelled to Linnihan.

  Linnihan reached under the shoulder of the dead soldier, grabbed his M4 rifle, and tossed it to Garner.

  “Cover us while we move,” Garner and Grzecki screamed to Cunningham and the others behind the boulders.

  “Move!” the team yelled back, providing suppressive fire as the two ran to join them behind the larger boulder, followed by a wave of RPGs. Grzecki did a quick check. He could see where every American was, with the exception of Bradbury. The troops at the northern end of the position, near the enemy, had been retreating; Chambers, Smitty, and Woods had made it to cover safely.

  Derek James had not. “I got hit in the wrist!” he cried as he low-crawled toward the boulders. “I got shot in the back!” Grzecki reached out and grabbed him and pulled him behind the rocks, where Chambers began treating his wound with gauze, trying to stop the bleeding, unsure whether the bullet had ripped across his back like a skipping stone or drilled in.

  The insurgents seemed to be coordinating their movements. While about a dozen of them pushed in directly from the north, others fired RPGs from the northwest, and a third, smaller group started creeping toward the Americans from the goat trail to the east. In their northern position near the woodline, Bradbury and Heistand could hardly have been more exposed: the enemy could see them clearly, and they could see the enemy.

  “We need to get to better cover,” Heistand told Bradbury. “Let’s go!”

  Heistand jumped up and retreated toward the boulders. When he arrived at the rocks, Bradbury was no longer with him.

  Cunningham had been kneeling behind a tree stump engaging with the enemy; he could feel rounds hitting the wood. Some of the insurgents were close enough that he could hear their low whispers.

  Everyone had been calling Bradbury’s name for several minutes, with no response. Cunningham loved that kid with the steely gray eyes. He was a soldier’s soldier: he did what he was told. He was smart and tough. As they were hiking to the summit of Hill 2610 just a few hours earlier, Bradbury had told Garner and Lybert that he’d had something of an epiphany: after hi
s deployment, he was going to go home, work things out with his wife—with whom he’d been having problems—and raise his three-year-old daughter, Jasmine, the right way. That conversation now seemed as if it had happened a month ago.

  Cunningham was convinced they couldn’t retreat, primarily because Bradbury was still on their front line, but also for another reason. He believed that if they were to fall back and withdraw down the steep 70-degree slope behind them, they would be repeating a mistake made by the Soviets two decades before. He had studied those battles closely, and he felt certain that if his team gave up the high ground, the insurgents would then be able to pin them down and finish them off. That was why the Russians had never been able to make any progress in the mountains of Afghanistan, Cunningham thought. The best way to fight here was to fight like the enemy, to own the high ground or meet him at the same altitude.

  “Bradbury!” Cunningham yelled. “Bradbury!”

  Quietly, Bradbury managed to say, “Yeah?” From his voice alone, it was hard to tell where he was—fifty feet away? a hundred?

  “You okay, buddy?” Cunningham asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay, buddy, we’re going to come get you.”

  Once the others realized that Bradbury was talking to Cunningham, they started cheering him on—a somewhat incongruous sound amid the heavy volume of rocket and machine-gun fire they were still taking.

  “Don’t worry, buddy, we’re going to get you!” yelled Staff Sergeant Josh Renkin.

  Cunningham and Smitty were in a decent position to low-crawl to where they thought Bradbury was and drag him back.

  “I’m going to get him,” Cunningham said.

  “No, he’s my guy,” said Monti. “I’ll get him.”

  Monti tossed Grzecki his radio. “You’re Chaos Three-Five now,” he said, transferring his call sign, then shouted to Bradbury, “You’re going to be all right! We’re coming to get you!” Monti stood and ran north, toward Bradbury and the enemy, away from the cover of the boulders, immediately prompting an eruption of machine-gun fire from the insurgents. Diving behind the small stone wall where Lybert’s corpse lay, he paused, then stood and began pushing toward Bradbury. The enemy fired upon him again. He dove back behind the wall.

  “I need cover!” Monti called to his men.

  Hawes grabbed an M203 launcher to fire grenades at the enemy. Others snatched up their rifles.

  “I’m going to go again!” Monti yelled, and once again he stood and ran toward Bradbury. Monti’s quarry was lying on his back, about sixty feet away, in a small depression in the ground that hid him from both the U.S. troops and the insurgents. Bradbury was in agony; an RPG had ripped apart his arm and shoulder.

  Now another RPG found its mark, slamming into Monti’s legs, setting off its shock wave and filling the air with shrapnel.

  The dust cleared. “My leg’s gone!” Monti screamed. “Fuck!” His leg was in fact still there, but it had been deeply cut by the shrapnel, and he was now in shock. When he tried to crawl back, he couldn’t. “Help me!” Monti cried. “Cunny, come get me,” he pleaded with Cunningham, obviously in excruciating pain. “Come get me.”

  Cunningham stood and started to move, but the fire was too intense, both from the insurgents, who were frighteningly close, and from the U.S. troops returning their fire. He would have had to run through rounds. Hawes began low-crawling toward Monti, but even on the ground, there was only so far he could go.

  For a short while, Monti’s fellow troops listened to him scream as he bled out. From a distance, they tried to keep him calm, asking him questions between rounds of returning fire.

  “What are you going to do when you get home on leave?” one asked him. “Will you drink a beer with me?”

  “Tell my mom and dad I love them,” Monti said, his voice fading.

  “You’ll tell them yourself!” yelled Hawes.

  Cunningham could hear an enemy commander shouting out orders to his men.

  “Tell them I made my peace with God,” Monti said.

  He begged for the release of death, and finally it came.

  From afar, the fire-support soldiers kept sending mortars that exploded on the ridgeline above the kill team, and as the sun set, Grzecki directed planes that began dropping five-hundred- and two-thousand-pound bombs about five hundred feet away. That was enough to abate the enemy fire.

  Cunningham moved up and provided cover, firing his M203 grenade launcher. Hawes reached Lybert and—after confirming that he was dead—gathered up his ammo and threw it back behind the boulders. Insurgents fired at him; Hawes shot back with an M16 rifle that he found near Lybert, then threw a grenade. Next he scurried over to Monti. Also dead. He took and tossed his ammo, too.

  Hawes then moved on to Bradbury, where Smitty met him. Bradbury was still alive, though the RPG blast had done serious damage to his arm. Together Hawes and Smitty carried him toward the boulders. Along the way, they passed Monti’s body.

  “Who’s that?” asked Smitty. The fire had been so loud, and the fight so all-consuming, that Smith hadn’t been aware of everything that was happening, even just a few yards away.

  “Monti,” grunted Hawes.

  They passed the stone wall.

  “Who’s that?” asked Smitty.

  “Lybert,” Hawes answered.

  Noble, the medic, immediately started working on Bradbury. His arm was so badly mangled that Noble had to wrap the tourniquet around his shoulder since there wasn’t any place left to put it on the limb itself. The medic showed Garner where to hold the special quick-clotting combat gauze on Bradbury’s wounds. The gauze burned a bit as its embedded chemical did its work, sealing the skin and flesh.

  “You get to go home now,” Garner reassured him. “You get to see your baby early.”

  More rounds came toward them, and Hawes got Garner’s attention and pointed to Bradbury’s weapon.

  “Get to it,” Hawes said.

  Garner ran back to Bradbury’s SAW and started firing. Smitty joined him. Grzecki radioed back to the base: they needed to get a medevac in there, he told them. By now, darkness had fallen upon the mountain.

  The enemy retreated, and the kill team assumed a 360-degree posture, ready to fire outward in all directions.

  Monti and Lybert lay side by side. Troops pulling guard duty could look through the thermal sights of their rifles and see the remaining heat leave the bodies of their fallen comrades. Viewed through infrared goggles, the two corpses slowly eased from a light shade of gray into the same inky black as everything else around them.

  There was nowhere for the medevac helicopter to land, so one of the birds lowered a hoist carrying a combat medic, Staff Sergeant Heathe Craig, of the 159th Medical Company. Just hours before, Craig had been on his computer, using an Internet chat service to play peekaboo with his daughter, Leona, who was just thirteen days shy of her first birthday. His wife, Judy, and their four-year-old son, Jonas, had giggled because Craig’s webcam wasn’t functioning properly—to his family, in their off-post apartment close to Wiesbaden, Germany, their husband and father appeared upside down and green.

  It was in the middle of that happy interlude that Craig had gotten the call, and now here he was, doing one of his least favorite things in the world: sitting on a Jungle Penetrator, the drill-shaped device lowered from a chopper to extract troops, balancing himself as he descended into hostile territory on the side of a mountain. He’d volunteered to be a flight medic after concluding that being a regular scout medic wasn’t enough: treating cases of athlete’s foot at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, didn’t leave him feeling as if he were really contributing. But this—well, this was terrifying.

  Craig was lowered into an opening in the trees, just above a boulder on a steep decline to the west of the mountain ridge. Garner lit a strobe light, and Cunningham, standing on the boulder, grabbed the medic, losing his wedding ring in the process. Over the din of the choppers, Craig tried to reassure everyone that the ordeal was over.
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br />   “We’re going to get you guys out of here!” Craig yelled. “Everyone’s going to be okay.”

  The plan was for the two wounded men both to be choppered to an aid station on the same helicopter. Bradbury was supposed to get in the hoist first, but he had started bleeding again and was slipping in and out of consciousness, so Derek James was first to be strapped into the seat. Craig tied himself to the Jungle Penetrator, so that he was facing James around the upright metal stem, and twirled his finger as a signal for the chopper crewman to pull them up. Upon lifting off, the Jungle Penetrator swung from the boulder over the steep decline and started spinning around. Craig controlled the oscillations as he’d been trained to do, and the two men were quickly yanked into the bird.

  Craig went right back down again for Bradbury. They got him onto the seat and strapped in, but he was going to be tougher to hoist up because of his wound. Craig twirled his finger again. The Jungle Penetrator swung out and started spinning again, and as they got closer to the helicopter, the oscillating increased in speed.

  Unable to hold himself upright, Bradbury was leaning back, making it more difficult for Craig to manage the rotation. The chopper crewman tried to pull the two men up as fast as he could, but the Jungle Penetrator suddenly began spinning out of control. As the crewman frantically worked, the hoist’s cable twisted and turned, rubbing against the sharp edge of the chopper’s floor.

  Because it was dark, Craig had fastened a small light to his gear. On Hill 2610, Matt Chambers stood and watched the light spin around until it was a blur.

  Then the cable snapped. Chambers kept watching as the light stopped spinning into a blur and instead began falling, flying down. Craig and Bradbury plummeted some one hundred feet, onto the western side of the ridge, and landed on rocks.

  Oh no, the men thought as they saw it happen. God, no.

  Cunningham ran down to where they’d fallen, as did Chambers and Noble. Craig and Bradbury were both unconscious and clearly in bad shape, drawing shallow breaths. Cunningham checked Bradbury for spinal injuries, and Chambers did the same for Craig, as the medevac flew away. Cunningham told Chambers to hand him the emergency flight radio attached to Craig’s gear. “They’re still alive!” he yelled into it. “Get that medevac back here!” There was no response, only static. Because it wasn’t his own radio, Cunningham didn’t know if it was even working, or if the chopper pilots had heard him.