by Jake Tapper
After reading letters from Brown, Major General Scaparrotti, and Colonel George, McChrystal decided to assign the “memorandum of reprimand” against Brown to be a local filing—meaning that it would not follow him to his next assignment. It was a black mark, but McChrystal’s move downgraded the punishment.
On April 9, 2010, McChrystal went to Forward Operating Base Fenty to present the Silver Star—the third-highest award for valor bestowed by the United States—to Andrew Bundermann, Chris Cordova, Jonathan Hill, and Thomas Rasmussen. Silver Stars would also be awarded to Eric Harder, Brad Larson, Keith Stickney, Victor De La Cruz and, posthumously, Justin Gallegos. Portis and Brown also recommended that a number of troops receive other recognitions, including a Medal of Honor for Ty Carter and a Distinguished Service Cross for Clint Romesha.
The first propaganda video posted by the Taliban, on November 18, was a complete sham. Purported to be footage of the assault on Combat Outpost Keating, the film in fact showed an attack on Combat Outpost Lowell—which closed down a few weeks after Camp Keating did—along with some old clips of Combat Outpost Lybert, which had been shut down in 2008. Nonetheless, inexplicably, on November 30, 2009, the CIA’s “Open Source Center” released the video to the public, accepting the Taliban’s claim that it depicted the attack on Camp Keating. Members of the U.S. media in turn took the CIA’s word for it. To those who had served at the actual outpost attacked on October 3—and whose fellow troops had been killed there—this was another slap in the face. One outpost, another outpost, they were all the same to those who were safe at home.
In 2010, the Taliban released a legitimate video of the October 3 attack. The footage showed insurgents preparing for the assault in the mountains, chanting “Allahu Akbar,” and firing upon Camp Keating. “The prophet Mohammed, peace be upon him, says if you throw an arrow toward the enemy, it is as good as freeing a slave for the sake of Allah,” one insurgent yells in his own language.
“God is great!” and “The Christianity center is under attack!” shout others. “If you fight for God, then you will definitely be going to Heaven!” Once the insurgents breach the wire, one cautions, “Mujahideen have entered the base—don’t fire at the base anymore.” Another screams triumphantly, “These are the American tanks!… T… his is their advanced technology! Our technology is our faith and belief in one God!”
A Taliban spokesman, calling from an undisclosed location, proclaimed to reporters that the U.S. bombing of Combat Outpost Keating and Observation Post Fritsche “means they are not coming back. This is another victory for the Taliban. We have control of another district in eastern Afghanistan. Right now Kamdesh is under our control, and the white flag of the Taliban is raised above Kamdesh.”
Black Knight Troop remained in Afghanistan, working out of Forward Operating Base Bostick. After a memorial service on October 11 featuring a twenty-one-gun salute, Taps, and “Amazing Grace,” as well as remarks eulogizing each fallen hero, the surviving soldiers came together around a bonfire. Stoney Portis tried to give them an inspirational pep talk. John Francis, Jonathan Adams, and Jeffrey Hobbs reenlisted.
Four days later, Black Knight Troop was back in action. Taliban insurgents attacked members of the Afghan Border Police and attempted to overrun Checkpoint Delta. Portis ordered White Platoon to take four Humvees out to the area, where they had never been before. Before they left, Portis bought the platoon a case of Red Bull energy drink for forty dollars.
Back to work.
Ed Faulkner, Jr., was sent to recuperate at Fort Carson, in Colorado, where his wounds were treated and he was promoted to private second class. He was initially encouraged to rejoin the Bastards at Forward Operating Base Bostick. “Don’t you want to be a real man and return to Afghanistan with your unit?” an officer asked him.
Faulkner admitted that he didn’t think he was capable of going back there. He had too much going on in his head, he said—too many voices, too many nightmares. An Army physician told him he had posttraumatic stress disorder. Already in a precarious and unstable place emotionally, he had been tipped into a chasm by the battle for Combat Outpost Keating. The loss of his friends Michael Scusa and Chris Griffin had left him racked with guilt. He, Griffin, and Hardt had been in that stand-to truck trying to save Gallegos, Mace, Martin, Larson, and Carter. Five out of the eight of them were now dead.
Faulkner’s commander at Fort Carson suspected he’d gone back to using meth, which he believed was contributing to his paranoia and manic behavior. He decided it would be better to discharge the private before he got into so much legal trouble that the Army had to court-martial him.
At Forward Operating Base Bostick, Jonathan Hill heard about what the officers at Fort Carson were pushing on Faulkner. It didn’t surprise him. Before 3-61 Cav deployed to Afghanistan, Faulkner had come to him and told him he wanted to admit himself for treatment of a drug problem. Hill respected him for it, but others thought he was playing games and just trying to avoid heading into combat. After being wounded on October 3, Hill thought, Faulkner had needed someone in his chain of command to look after him. While the injury itself might have been new, it had hit the old scar, both physically and psychologically, and reconjured old pains and ghosts. He had shown that when given attention and cared for by Salentine, Birchfield, and Hill, he was able to straighten up and become a decent soldier. “Please look after Faulkner,” Hill told a member of their Family Readiness Group back at Fort Carson. “He’s going to really struggle.” But to his commanders, including Lieutenant Colonel Brown, what mattered was the seemingly inescapable fact that Faulkner would not abide by the Army’s rules. Hill saw the young man as a falling leaf that the Army wanted to rake up and dispose of.
Faulkner was told he would need to put in for a discharge. From the perspective of the commanders of 3-61 Cav, the Army was giving him the opportunity to end his service under honorable conditions. A date was picked: April 1, 2010.
The decision incensed Faulkner’s father, Ed senior, who reached out to his congressman. Sure, his son had messed up by possessing hashish at the observation post in Afghanistan, but he had paid for his mistake, having been busted down from specialist to the lowest level of private, and forfeiting four months’ pay in the process. He needed psychological therapy, not humiliation, said his father. The congressman reached out in turn, and Lieutenant Colonel Dan Chandler responded that Private Faulkner’s “abuse of illegal drugs placed the lives of his comrades in serious danger.” Ed senior pointed out that his son had never actually been accused of being under the influence of the hashish and had performed honorably until he was injured during the attack on Combat Outpost Keating. Back at Fort Carson, he’d even been promoted. But as far as the Army was concerned, this was the end of the line for Ed Faulkner, Jr. So Ed Faulkner, Sr., boarded a plane for Colorado and accompanied his son home on the date agreed.
As soon as Faulkner got back to Burlington, North Carolina, he retreated into his own head, keeping in touch with friends mainly through his Facebook page. Faulkner was haunted. He dreamt about Iraqis’ coming to his family’s door, ringing the doorbell, and bringing him their dead babies. He lamented to his father that he could have done something to save Chris Griffin’s life as they ran from the truck. When the sun was in the sky, he would have flashbacks; when the moon was out, he was constantly being scared awake by nightmares. Michael Scusa had once comforted Faulkner by saying, “It’s all good, man. It’s all good.” But Scusa wasn’t able to say that anymore.
Later in April, Faulkner started in a carpet-cleaning job, for which he had to get up at 6:00 a.m. every day. His boss was showing him how to use the cleaning system on his van when Faulkner stepped into a bucket of scalding hot water. The blistering that resulted hurt worse than his bullet wound, he said.
The outpost never left him. Faulkner would stay up late at night watching insurgents’ videos on YouTube. He told a friend from 3-61 Cav, Brian Casey, that he heard gunfire and saw Taliban on a daily basis. His father took
him to a Greensboro Grasshoppers minor league baseball game. As they left the game, the stadium’s management started shooting off fireworks. Faulkner hit the ground as if he were under attack.
Once, in the middle of the night, Faulkner’s mother, Sharon, couldn’t find her son. He wasn’t in his bed, but his truck was still in the driveway. He didn’t answer his cell phone. She got in her car and drove around the neighborhood looking for him. He wasn’t anywhere. When she returned, as she pulled into the driveway, she saw a shadow in the bushes in front of the house. She walked over and found her son crouched down, acting as if he had a rifle and were looking through its scope at an enemy across the street. He picked up an invisible radio and started talking into it, as if in combat.
Faulkner’s mother guided him to his bed. The next morning, he remembered none of it.
At the end of July, Ed Faulkner, Jr., ran naked into the street, yelling that the end of the world was coming. He stopped cars and asked drivers if they’d been saved and accepted Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. He was picked up by local police, who called his sister, Sarah Faulkner Minor. She told them that her brother had recently been discharged from the Army and had two Purple Hearts, one earned in Iraq and the other in Afghanistan. He had shrapnel injuries and was suffering from PTSD, she said.
“I knew it,” said the police officer on the other end of the phone. “When we detained him, he was talking on the radio to fellow soldiers who weren’t there.” Both were imaginary, of course—the soldiers and the radio.
The officer said that the police didn’t want to arrest Faulkner, but they would commit him. Sarah agreed; she didn’t want him to hurt himself or anyone else. When she visited him in the psychiatric wing of Alamance Medical Center, she at first walked right past his room—with its mattress thrown to the floor and its occupant covered from head to toe by a sheet, the room clearly belonged to someone else, someone unhinged, she thought. Whoever that is, bless his heart, she said to herself before realizing it was Ed. She walked in and tried to make conversation, but it didn’t sound like his voice when he spoke. Something had taken him over. He scared her.
“I can’t sit in this nuthouse,” he told her.
The realization took the wind out of her: My brother is very mentally ill right now.
“This is the end for me,” he said. “You have no idea how I feel, I’m so stressed out, I don’t know why I did what I did, I don’t know why it happened.”
She tried to tell him to give his life over to God, that only He, not drugs, could save him, but her brother seemed beyond saving.
“There’s all this noise in my mind,” he told her. “It won’t stop. It won’t quiet down.”
Faulkner was transferred to a local veterans hospital for a couple of days, assigned a social worker, and then discharged. His parents were not impressed by the quality of care their son received, which seemed casual and oblivious, when clearly he needed serious help. “If you’re out in a storm, you seek shelter,” Ed senior would say. “He has a storm going on in his brain.” But his government, his country, provided his son with no such cover.
Faulkner met Charline89 in August. She told him she was bipolar and suffered from manic depression. For the first time in a long while, Faulkner didn’t feel alone: Charline knew how he felt. She had a young daughter, whom he helped with her homework—a normal life, or almost. He moved into Charline’s two-bedroom apartment within weeks of meeting her.
Charline was on government assistance and lived in subsidized housing provided through the Burlington Housing Authority. Prescribed assorted medications, including methadone and Xanax, she’d been investigated a few times by the local police for selling her narcotics. To his family, all of this seemed cause for alarm, but Faulkner was unyielding. “I don’t have to live in the biggest house,” he said to his sister. “I don’t need life’s finest. So what if she’s on welfare? So what if she’s in government housing? Those people are closest to God.”
Charline got on the phone. “I love your brother,” she told Sarah, in a spaced-out and rambling fashion.
“I can tell you’re on drugs,” Sarah replied. “Lock them up. My brother was addicted to pain pills—keep them out of his reach.” Charline promised she would. After all, she had a little girl and had to keep her medications out of her hands as well.
On the night of September 15, Charline found Faulkner drifting off to sleep in his parked truck. When she asked him what was wrong, he didn’t answer. She helped him stumble out of the vehicle and into her bed.
The next morning, Charline woke up and got her daughter ready for school. She took her to the bus stop. When she came back, she was surprised to see that Faulkner hadn’t moved an inch. She realized he wasn’t breathing. She called 911 and tried to revive him. The fire department arrived and took over the CPR.
The first responders noticed that there were several buckets of murky water in the hallway. It wasn’t clear whether the apartment had functioning electricity or plumbing. The mattress on which Faulkner was lying was riddled with cigarette burns. The apartment was packed with piles of clothes and trash. The bathroom was appalling.
The police and an ambulance got there at the same time. The emergency medical technicians ran in and confirmed what the firefighters had already ascertained: Faulkner was dead. They put him on a stretcher and wheeled him out, placed him in the back of the ambulance, and sped off to the emergency room. An autopsy indicated that his cause of death was acute methadone toxicity.
A few days later, a Veterans Administration office worker called Ed Faulkner, Sr. “Would you please let your son know that he’s late for his appointment?” he asked.
As word of Faulkner’s death spread, Hill—who by then had transferred out of 3-61 Cav—called Carter at Fort Carson to discuss how thoroughly the Army had turned its back on their friend.
“I kinda think he was the ninth victim of Keating,” Carter said. “And I honestly don’t think he’ll be the last.”
Epilogue
The mountains of northeastern Afghanistan are more foreboding than words can express—magisterial, with breathtaking peaks and narrow valleys. During helicopter rides, I see little villages, hamlets, single homes nestled in obscure nooks. Anyone might be living there.
I arrive at Forward Operating Base Bostick in October 2011. The officers of the 2-27 Infantry, the “Wolfhounds,” have lost nine troops by this point in their deployment. Captains Tim Blair and Matthew Schachman take me to the entrance of the lieutenant colonel’s office, where seven photos hang from the wall, troops killed mainly by IEDs on the treacherous roads. Four of them90 were in a Humvee targeted because the enemy mistakenly thought Blair was in it, he tells me.
The eighth photo, of Staff Sergeant Houston Taylor, isn’t up yet; he was killed just a few days before my visit, at a cell-phone tower several hundred meters below a brand-new observation post. They won’t be hanging a photograph of the ninth soldier who died here, Private First Class Jinsu Lee, who took his own life at Forward Operating Base Bostick on August 5, 2011.
It boggles the mind that just five years ago, Captain Aaron Swain and his team can have left this base on ATVs to scout the location for what would become Combat Outpost Keating. The Wolfhounds don’t leave the wire or walk down the road without intense preparation and full body armor; most often, they are also ensconced in enormous mine-resistant trucks. Northern Kunar Province is no less dangerous.
Kabul doesn’t seem any safer: just after my arrival on this trip, my second to Afghanistan, insurgents staged their deadliest attack yet on Americans in that city, using a car bomb to target a military convoy. I will also spend a few nights in the confines of Forward Operating Base Fenty; whereas Ben Keating once wandered freely through the markets of Jalalabad, troops must now fly in helicopters to travel just a few miles down the road, to Forward Operating Bases Hughie or Finley-Shields. The roads are too dangerous.
I’ve come here to get as close to Camp Keating as I can, but the U.S. mil
itary has all but ceded Nuristan, deciding that, as then-Colonel Donahue suggested back in 2005, there isn’t any reason for U.S. forces to be there. “Nuristan has no strategic value,” says one public-affairs officer at Forward Operating Base Fenty. “The Afghan forces run it now.” There is one remaining base in the province, at Kala Gush.
So I can’t get into Nuristan at this time—not to Urmul or Kamdesh Village or the former location of Combat Outpost Keating—because no one will take me. Schachman jokes that in the Wolfhounds’ area of operations, you can do anything once. So theoretically, we could make our way to Kamdesh to see the former site of Combat Outpost Keating. The problem would be getting back.
“I could put on my PT’s91 and jog down to Asadabad,” Schachman says with a smile. “Once.”
The hard work here in northeastern Afghanistan continues. The Wolfhounds devote much of their time and energy to maintaining the security of a section of the road from Asadabad to Naray, the same road that Lieutenant Colonel Brown and some of his men worked on securing two years ago. They try to get the village elders to assume responsibility for parts of the road. They offer assurances to villagers that they will benefit from contracts to pour the asphaltlike substance on the still-unpaved swath. They, like the other soldiers whose stories I have attempted to tell in these pages, are trying to do their very best in an impossible corner of the world, both to help the Afghan people and to eliminate the bad guys. They are paid modestly and have endured years away from those whom they love most. They are generally ignored by the American people and the American media.
