The Outpost: An Untold Story of American Valor

by Jake Tapper

  No one spoke; everyone was dumbstruck. Jorgensen was supposed to get married in two months’ time, and Brooks himself two months after that. Neither would be able to make his own ceremony.

  Gooding called Combat Outpost Kamdesh and asked for First Sergeant Todd Yerger. He broke the news to him, though Yerger had already seen some emails about it. The sergeant huddled the troops together. He told them he had good news and bad news.

  “The bad news is you aren’t going home,” Yerger said. “The good news is you’ll get paid an extra thousand bucks a month.”

  The men were devastated. Some began to weep.

  Back at Naray, Jorgensen sat on his cot and let it all sink in. He pulled on his shoes and walked out toward the phones to call his fiancée, Sheena, and his parents. Turning the corner, he saw a line for the phone that would take hours. So much for that.

  He went back to the troop command post and hopped onto the computer to email Sheena and his parents:

  I really don’t how to say this, so I’m just going to come out and say it…. We’ve been extended. We’re not coming back until June now. I think the most obvious thing is that the wedding will have to be postponed. This info is about three hours old right now, so I don’t have a lot of answers. Normally I’d call for something this important, but the phone line has 150 people in it right now and it’s only getting longer. I really don’t know what to say right now, we’re all still in shock. I’ve got to go now and talk to my soldiers, a lot of them aren’t taking it well. I love you guys.

  —Erik

  Jorgensen’s captain, Brooks, was one of those soldiers not taking it so well. Right before Lieutenant Colonel Fenty’s helicopter went down, Brooks had been talking to his first sergeant about how he was convinced—had always been convinced—that his girlfriend, Meridith, was “the one.” After Fenty and the other nine men died and Brooks got off the mountain, he found the first phone he could use and called her. “I can’t tell you what’s going on, but we had a pretty bad event happen, and it’s made me realize—will you marry me?” he asked her. “Yes,” she said. They soon picked a date: June 9, 2007.

  Now Brooks was calling her again, this time to tell her that his deployment had been extended and they would have to postpone their wedding. She’d already moved to upstate New York and set up an apartment, believing he’d be there in February. She was distraught, and they both wept. “I don’t believe you,” she cried. “Why is this happening?”

  The move was a surprise and not a surprise. Speculation about an extension had been swirling for weeks, but the anxious troops of 3-71 Cav had been told not to worry. Major General Freakley had visited Forward Operating Base Naray on Christmas Day and given them a short speech: “Gentlemen, I know there are a lot of rumors out there about us getting extended,” Freakley said. “Let me be the first to tell you: we will all go home in February!”

  He was half right. Freakley himself did go home in February. The men of 3-71 Cav had to stay until June.

  The priest had been FOB hopping, flying from base to outpost, tending to the soldiers’ spiritual needs as best he could. It was hardly an ideal situation for either the clergyman or his flock, but “ideal” as a concept had been tossed out the window the first day American troops set foot in Afghanistan. Now he was here on a particularly chilly day for the renaming of this outpost in the Kamdesh Valley. It would henceforth be known as Combat Outpost Keating.

  “We ask your blessing on the dedication of this camp in the memory of First Lieutenant Benjamin D. Keating, a risen warrior of Able Seven-Three-One,” the chaplain prayed during the ceremony. Of course, the squadron wasn’t 7-31, it was 3-71, but the chaplain repeated his mistake: “Thank you for the service and sacrifice of Able Seven-Three-One,” he said.

  What would Ben Keating have made of such an error? He would likely have rolled his eyes and had a laugh at the Army’s expense. He had given his life for the Army, and the Army couldn’t even get the name of his squadron right.

  Gooding had been mired in his own misery after Keating’s death; it had taken him a month or so to snap out of it. After he did, having recognized the pit of despair in which he’d been trapped, he was thankful that his depression hadn’t come during fighting season. During the ceremony, he tried to keep his tone positive. He unveiled the wooden sign identifying the camp as Combat Outpost Keating—the wood had been cut by Billy Stalnaker, the design was by Specialist Jeremiah “Jeb” Ridgeway—and said that Keating would have been honored.

  The Kamdesh outpost was named in honor of First Lieutenant Ben Keating, promoted posthumously. (Photo courtesy of Matt Netzel)

  It was a rough winter for Captain Matt Gooding. (Photo courtesy of Matt Netzel)

  Tens of thousands of miles away, in Shapleigh, Maine, Ben Keating’s parents, Ken and Beth, were ambivalent about the dedication. They understood the desire of the men of 3-71 Cav to honor their son and, perhaps, to lift their own spirits as they faced the depths of winter at Kamdesh. However, the Keatings had no illusion that the camp would be a permanent fixture in the landscape of Nuristan. (Gooding had mulled over this issue, too.) The monument for their son would be, one way or another, short-lived. The next company would have no idea who Ben Keating had been. New leadership might decide to abandon Combat Outpost Keating altogether. And the site, because of its vulnerability, might be overrun. Indeed, it was the location of the outpost that seemed to trouble Beth Keating the most. She didn’t like the notion of her son’s memorial’s standing in such a horribly dangerous part of the world. She was touched that the men Ben had served with had felt so strongly about him, and so affectionate toward him, that they wanted to honor him, and she knew there were limits to what they could do. But it was almost as if someone had decided to rename a sinking ship after her beloved boy just as it slipped below the waves.

  CHAPTER 14

  Buddy

  The insurgents had spent the winter months regrouping. Intelligence reports suggested that they were planning a new offensive in Nuristan with fresh supplies, well-trained snipers, and new commanders. In February 2007, they announced their return with a series of kidnappings, among them that of the son of an elder from Barikot. He was a nice young man, a teenager, who often helped Able Troop at Camp Keating with small tasks—buying the men soda or cigarettes, for example. Howard told Gooding to find out more and to do it quickly. The usual process for collecting intelligence—contacting sources and then arranging for their transport to the outpost—would take too long in this instance. They needed to move now, before the kid’s corpse was found at the side of the road. Gooding disagreed with the order, but he carried it out, enlisting the help of Adam Boulio, a group of mortarmen, and 1st Platoon, led by Lieutenant Vic Johnson. This would be Able Troop’s first mission since the loss of Keating nearly three months before.

  Johnson had been watching the calendar, waiting for this day: February 19, the sixty-second anniversary of the beginning of the Battle of Iwo Jima. When he graduated from West Point, his friend and eighth-grade history teacher had given him a Japanese flag that his father had captured in the Philippines during the island-hopping campaign. Johnson wanted to return the honor, so in Bagram he’d bought an American flag for his friend, and that morning at the outpost he’d had some members of Headquarters Troop lower the post flag from the pole and raise his newly purchased Stars and Stripes. It would fly there for a day, and then he could give it to his friend.

  Now Johnson rallied his men. Afghan troops would conduct the operation to search for and rescue the boy, with 1st Platoon backing them up. Gooding had been impressed by the ANA soldiers under Master Sergeant Best’s tutelage—they were a good company, unlike the many other ANA troops he’d had dealings with before. On this mission, because Best had been called back to Bagram to take care of some bookkeeping responsibilities—turning in receipts and drawing more funds—Buddy Hughie would lead them.

  In a recent call to his grandmother, Hughie had admitted that he’d slept only an hour the nig
ht before because he and his men had been under fire. He tried to reassure her: the Afghan soldiers had placed sandbags around him for protection, they were a great team, they worked well together as a unit. She was persuaded that Buddy was going to be okay. He was with good people. They were taking care of him.

  The convoy left Combat Outpost Keating and headed east toward Naray. Barely a half mile down the road, they encountered Kareem, one of Boulio’s sources, walking toward the camp.

  Boulio had been informed by a different source that the kidnapped teenager was being held in a particular bandah—a kind of small shack, typically used for livestock and usually consisting of a crude stone shelter for the herders and pens for animals. This one was owned by a HIG fighter named Abdul. Boulio told Kareem what he’d heard about the kidnapped boy, and Kareem volunteered to lead them to the bandah, which was located amid several others on the northern side of the river. The convoy would need to travel about twenty-five minutes east, pass the hamlet of Kamu, and cross a bridge to get there. One potential problem: they would have to drive by Kareem’s village on the way, and if anyone saw him helping the Americans, he might be killed. The insurgents had made that clear.

  Some months earlier, when the outpost was first set up, 3-71 Cav had distributed Smith & Wesson 9-millimeter pistols to Afghan policemen in the area. Many of the policemen had proceeded to sell those guns, so the Americans had tried to recall the issued weapons and were on constant lookout to confiscate any found in the field. Boulio now tucked one of these confiscated pistols into Kareem’s waistband. “You’re going to have to come with me, and we’ll make it look like I’ve caught you with a gun you aren’t supposed to have,” Boulio told him. A couple of the Afghan troops restrained Kareem and put him in the back of their Ford Ranger.

  Gooding thought it would be safer for Kareem to be seen with only ANA soldiers, while Johnson and 1st Platoon hovered nearby as a quick reaction force. Gooding ordered Boulio to stay with him and the mortarmen, just outside Mirdesh; the intel specialist had completed his mission by making contact with his source and then handing that source over to Afghan control.

  “I should be going with the group to the bandahs,” Boulio argued, furious. “He’s my source, and I need to be there to make sure we get to the right place.”

  But Gooding felt that Boulio and others who worked closely with Afghans often took unnecessary risks to rally their Afghan colleagues. He respected that dedication, but whether by intuition or because he was still mourning the loss of Keating, he was not going to let Adam Boulio out of his sight that day.

  With the plan hatched, they now acted, driving to Mirdesh and putting on a show for Kareem’s neighbors. Elders met Boulio at the bridge. He asked them how Kareem, in the ANA truck, had gotten the pistol. They said they didn’t know. Kareem was a good man and not a criminal, they told him through his interpreter. “I believe you,” Boulio said. “He will probably be released soon.” He then asked for information about the location of the abducted boy, but the elders had nothing to offer.

  The ANA troops and Kareem then drove to the bandahs, with Johnson and 1st Platoon following a safe distance behind them. Gooding, Boulio, and the mortarmen stayed put. Johnson and his platoon stopped at the “Kamu turnaround,” a grassy area adjacent to the road on the southern side of the river, one of the few places on the route from Kamdesh to Barikot wide enough to let Humvees turn around if needed. Hughie, his team of trainers, and the ANA troops continued east toward the bandahs.

  Kareem led them past the first bridge after Kamu and told them to stop. Hughie and his team stayed in their Humvee; the ANA troops got out of their Ford Rangers, crossed yet another bridge, and then walked quickly toward the bandahs. They rounded up three “spotters,” HIG insurgents who were obviously on lookout duty, but it was already too late: the insurgents had been tipped off. One band of HIG fighters grabbed the boy and sped off in a Toyota Corolla; another group fled to the south, crossing a third bridge, scaling up a ridgeline, and racing on the high ground toward the Kamu turnaround, where Johnson and 1st Platoon were waiting for the ANA to return.

  Tennessee Army National Guard Lieutenant Matt Hall had formerly been part of Best’s team, but feeling that he and his colleagues had been utterly neglected by Army brass in their previous post in the Tagab Valley, north of Kabul, he’d opted to train ANA troops at Forward Operating Base Naray instead of going to Kamdesh with the master sergeant. At the less remote base at Naray, he figured he could at least try to ensure that for Best, Hughie, and their ANA troops, it wouldn’t once again be a matter of “out of sight, out of mind.”

  Hall’s previous job had been as an assistant football coach at Cumberland University, and he loved his ANA troops as he had once loved the kids he coached. He believed in them. Sure, some of the cultural differences took some getting used to—the way the men danced and napped together or held hands, for example, and their hygiene, which, in a land without running water, was certainly, well, understandable—but he came to see them as true patriots, a beautiful and friendly people. They wouldn’t get paid for months, but they’d stay out there anyway, manning their posts, freezing with no socks or gloves. And they always knew where he was, always had his back.

  Hall and his ANA troops now drove from Naray to Kamu to help find this kidnapped teenager. Just after making the turn and getting out of the dead zone where radio contact was impossible, Hall picked a spot in which to set up a checkpoint.

  There they met the uncle of the missing young man, on his way toward Forward Operating Base Naray.

  “We found him,” the uncle told one of the ANA troops. “I’m running to Barikot to go get him.”

  Hall sent out word over the radio: Good news! The boy had been found.

  Hughie stopped his patrol and returned to the Kamu turnaround. He and his fellow trainers got back in their Humvee. Johnson was sitting in his truck, facing east. He could see the ANA troops headed toward him in their Ford Rangers, still half a mile away.

  Then Johnson heard a sound—something hitting his roof.

  DINK!

  It sounded odd. He looked up at his gunner, Sergeant Justin Shelton.

  “Shit,” Johnson said. “What did you drop?”

  That the noise had in fact been made by a bullet became clear within seconds, with an eruption of small-arms fire from AK-47 assault rifles, what sounded like a PK machine gun, and RPGs. The ANA soldiers, in their Ford Rangers, were almost completely exposed. Johnson knew that he and his men had to suppress the enemy fire to protect the Afghans caught out in the open; they were supposed to treat ANA troops exactly as they would have treated American ones.

  “Return fire!” Johnson yelled. The members of 1st Platoon fired back toward the enemy while Johnson radioed Gooding and gave him the grid coordinates so the mortar team could pound the ridge. He asked for close air support as well.

  Hughie had been sitting shotgun in his Humvee with the other trainers when the attack began. While Henderson, in the gunner turret, fired at the ridgeline with his M240 machine gun, Hughie hopped out to engage the enemy from behind the vehicle. He was joined by an interpreter named Nasir and, a second later, Specialist Cameron Williams, both of whom had been sitting in the back of the truck. Williams fired a single-shot AT4 shoulder-launched rocket toward the ridgeline, then grabbed a second AT4 rocket and fired again.

  The enemy fighters opened fire on the ANA pickup trucks as the vehicles drove toward Johnson and Hughie. Best and Hughie had been trying for months to teach the ANA troops to do just the opposite in such situations, to ignore their instincts and instead move toward the fire—in this case, to hug the ridgeline, which would make it more difficult for the fighters above to aim and fire at them. Heading toward the river made them easy targets.

  Because the ANA soldiers and the Americans were on different radio frequencies, Hughie and Nasir ran toward them to point them back toward the mountain. Henderson laid down cover fire, though it was tough to say precisely where the enemy was. He k
new about the insurgents on the ridgeline to the east, but now it appeared as if some fire might be coming from the north as well.

  One thing that seemed certain was that these insurgents had a new marksman. He fired at Adel—Best’s favorite, the wonderful cook—who went down, spilling from his pickup truck onto the ground. Hughie ran toward Adel to administer first aid. He reached him and swung his rifle around so he could access his medic kit. From the ridgeline, the sniper took aim at Hughie and pulled the trigger.

  The echo of a single shot reverberated from the mountains.

  With adrenaline coursing through his veins, Johnson ran toward Hughie. Bullets rained around him like hail. He thought he was surely going to die, there was no way he wasn’t going to get hit, but he kept going. Hughie had just had a baby boy a few months before, and he was a good man who cared about these Afghan troops as few other Americans did.

  Johnson hoped that by exposing himself, he might draw the insurgents’ fire away from Hughie and his platoon. That might give Hughie a fighting chance of making it out of this one. Johnson’s plan seemed to work: an RPG exploded in front of him, slapping shrapnel into his helmet, but on he went, firing into the hills as he ran. When he reached Hughie, he found him lying on his back, his eyes rolled back into his head. The bleeding had almost stopped. There was a hole in his rifle. Johnson screamed at him, but he didn’t respond; he tried to find the wound, but it was hidden somewhere under all the body armor Hughie was wearing.

  Then Johnson heard a moan from about twenty feet away. He looked and saw a wounded ANA soldier: Adel. He’d been hit in the chest.

  Shit, thought Johnson, we have two casualties.