The Outpost: An Untold Story of American Valor

by Jake Tapper

  13 Some maps located the Kotya Valley just outside of Nuristan Province, in Kunar Province, the result of a dispute over the Ghaziabad District between the two provinces. The borders on the 2002 map drawn up by the interim Afghan government placed Kotya in Kunar, a designation that many experts considered woefully divorced from reality. Berkoff at one point told the Afghan police chief in Naray, in Kunar Province, that his forces needed to head to Gawardesh—technically in Kunar—only to be informed by the chief that the map was wrong, and Gawardesh was in Nuristan. The Nuristan expert Richard Strand would advise military officers who consulted him on the matter that such errors led to needless jurisdictional disputes and were too often seen by Nuristanis as part of a scheme to steal their land. Joshua Foust, a civilian who worked for the Human Terrain System, would advance a similar argument, maintaining that the bad map-making also caused confusion about which U.S. troops should be in charge where.

  14 On this mission to retrieve his goggles, Private First Class Daniel McClenney of Flat Creek, Tennessee, took with him Lance Corporal Juston Thacker of Princeton, West Virginia, and Lance Corporal Brian Molby of Troy, Michigan. Molby was the lone survivor.

  15 Technically, this group of infantrymen, Charlie Company, was nicknamed the Gladiators at this point and would become Cherokee only later in the deployment. But for ease and consistency, this book will refer to the unit as “Cherokee” for the duration. A “troop” and a “company” are the same thing—each comprising three to four platoons of anywhere from one hundred to two hundred soldiers—but the first term is used for Cavalry, and the second for Infantry. Thus, while 3-71 Cav was itself a Cavalry unit, Cherokee Company consisted of infantrymen.

  16 Literally, “State.”

  17 Camel spiders, like spiders, are members of the class Arachnida, but they’re of a different order, Solifugae.

  18 The Waygal Valley in Nuristan.

  19 From the acronym DShK, for “Degtyaryova Shpagina Krupnokaliberny”—named after its creators, Vasily Alekseyevich Degtyaryov and Georgi Shpagin. Krupnokaliberny translates as “large-caliber.” Dushka means “sweetie” in Russian.

  20 Some intelligence analysts read such “possibly Chechen” labels as meaning, more accurately, “light-skinned persons whose language we can’t identify.”

  21 No relation to Major Richard Timmons.

  22 A Boeing C-17 Globemaster III, a very large transport aircraft used by the military.

  23 The National Risk and Vulnerability Assessment 2005, published by the Afghan Ministry of Rural Rehabilitation and Development and the Central Statistics Office.

  24 Ibid.

  25 First developed in the USSR, AKs are gas-operated, selective-fire assault rifles, said to be the most widely used weapons in the world.

  26 Matthew Cole attended this shura and wrote about it in an influential Salon.com story entitled “Watching Afghanistan Fall” (February 2007). The dialogue here is taken from that story.

  27 The valley in which the outpost was located was actually named Nichingal, but few Americans knew that or referred to it that way. For simplicity’s sake, this book will call it the Kamdesh Valley.

  28 Steven Pressfield, The Afghan Campaign (New York: Broadway Books, 2006). Excerpt copyright 2006 Steven Pressfield, used with permission of the author.

  29 Tahkim means to “reinforce” or “strengthen,” and sulh means “peace.”

  30 PTS originally had nothing to do with the United States, but in some ways, the Americans tried to co-opt this co-opting scheme. They figured if the bad guys were reintegrated through a program in which they played some role, their intel collectors could interview them and obtain useful information. This made perfect sense to the Americans, though from the perspective of the Afghan government, it was not the way PTS was supposed to work.

  31 U.S. Combined Forces Command Afghanistan had by that point handed over all operational responsibilities to NATO/ISAF and would soon be deactivated.

  32 No relation to Master Sergeant Terry Best.

  33 A POG is a “person other than grunt.”

  34 Legion Company belonged to the 1st Battalion, 503rd Infantry, and had been “attached” to 1-91 Cav. Jacob Lowell had been a member of Legion Company.

  35 A 2011 study of aid projects in Afghanistan would conclude that though the root causes of unrest and conflict in Afghanistan were often political, international stabilization projects “tended to lay more emphasis on socio-economic rather than political drivers of conflict, and therefore primarily focused on addressing issues such as unemployment, illiteracy, lack of social services, and inadequate infrastructure such as roads. As a result, aid projects were often not addressing the main sources of conflict, and in some cases fueled conflict by distributing resources that rival groups then fought over” (Paul Fishstein and Andrew Wilder, Winning Hearts and Minds? Examining the Relationship between Aid and Security in Afghanistan, Tufts University, 2011).

  36 Pronounced “FRITCH-ee.”

  37 According to Richard Strand, the Kom have a reputation for being “wild and crazy” and often make bets involving outlandish behavior. One Kamdeshi friend of Strand’s was well known for betting he could climb up a log ladder with a heavy tripod—used to hold large stone pots over a fire—hooked over his erect penis. “He did so and insured his place in local lore forever,” Strand says.

  38 Baird had suffered nerve damage to, and a loss of mobility in, his right arm but was able to remain in the military. Sultan had lost an eye and was subsequently discharged.

  39 “Kinetic” operations are combat operations.

  40 Sebastian Junger’s excellent book WAR and documentary film Restrepo: One Platoon, One Valley, One Year, which he shot with the late Tim Hetherington, provide captivating looks at fourteen months in the Korangal with one platoon from the 173rd Airborne during this period.

  41 Specifically, Shabbaz moved east toward Bazgal. One late afternoon a few weeks later, a Predator drone detected a group of enemy fighters near the road west of the Bazgal Bridge, heading toward a cave. Kolenda gave permission to fire, and the Predator launched a missile from eighteen thousand feet. Shabbaz, severely wounded, never bothered anyone again.

  42 C. J. Chivers, “Karzai Cites Taliban Shift to Terror Attacks,” New York Times, June 20, 2007.

  43 Named after the weapon called a mace, a kind of bludgeoning club. Two other observation posts in the area were named at the same time: OP Hatchet and OP Brick.

  44 First Lieutenant Matthew Ferrara, twenty-four, of Torrance, California; Sergeant Jeffrey Mersman, twenty-three, of Parker, Kansas; Specialist Sean Langevin, twenty-three, of Walnut Creek, California; Specialist Lester Roque, twenty-three, of Torrance, California; Private First Class Joseph Lancour, twenty-one, of Swartz Creek, Michigan; and Marine Sergeant Phillip Bocks, twenty-eight, of Troy, Michigan.

  45 Actually “Want,” but this book will use the more common version of the name.

  46 Named after Sergeant Jay Blessing, an Army Ranger killed by an IED attack in 2003.

  47 Afghan media reported the casualties as follows: Dr. Nematullah, a doctor at Bella Village’s clinic; Kalam Massi, a guard at the clinic; Naeem Massi, a clinic nurse; Sonkra, a landowner near Bella; Rafiullah, Sonkra’s son; Sonkra’s wife; Noorullah, Rafiullah’s son; one of Sonkra’s grandchildren, who was eight months old; Sulaiman Klorik, a shopkeeper; Hazrat Ali, a driver; Shoaib Sondi, a shopkeeper; Kafayatullah, a driver; Tabgul, a driver; Dr. Najeebullah, a doctor at Bella’s clinic; Sanaullah, a shopkeeper; and two other civilians. Wounded were Wiaullah Muraluddin, a landowner near Bella; Dr. Zainab, a female employee at Bella’s clinic; Dr. Nematullah’s daughter Asma, eight; Abdullah, a son of Mira Jan, a shopkeeper in Bella; Rohullah, a worker in Waygal; and Ansarullah, a shopkeeper.

  48 As quoted in Greg Jaffe, “The Battle of Wanat,” Washington Post, October 4, 2009. For details about the battle of Wanat, the author is indebted to Jaffe’s reporting, the work of the U.S. Army Combat Studies Institute, and Mark Bowden’s “
Echoes from a Distant Battlefield,” which appeared in the December 2011 issue of Vanity Fair.

  49 The dead were First Lieutenant Jonathan Brostrom, twenty-four, of Honolulu, Hawaii; Sergeant Israel Garcia, twenty-four, of Long Beach, California; Corporal Jonathan R. Ayers, twenty-four, of Snellville, Georgia; Corporal Jason M. Bogar, twenty-five, of Seattle, Washington; Corporal Jason D. Hovater, twenty-four, of Clinton, Tennessee; Corporal Matthew B. Phillips, twenty-seven, of Jasper, Georgia; Corporal Pruitt A. Rainey, twenty-two, of Haw River, North Carolina; Corporal Gunnar W. Zwilling, twenty, of Florissant, Missouri; and Specialist Sergio S. Abad, twenty-one, of Morganfield, Kentucky.

  50 The first investigation into what happened at Wanat found no fault with the chain of command. A second investigation, conducted at the behest of First Lieutenant Brostrom’s father, a retired Army colonel, concluded with letters of reprimand for Preysler, Ostlund, and Myer for failing to prepare adequate defenses for the outpost. A third investigation by the U.S. Army revoked those letters of reprimand, with General Charles Campbell insisting that the officers had not been negligent. “To criminalize command decisions in a theater of complex combat operations is a grave step indeed,” he wrote. “It is also unnecessary, particularly in this case. It is possible for officers to err in judgment—and to thereby incur censure—without violating a criminal statute. This is particularly true where the errors are those of omission, where the standards come from multiple nonpunitive doctrinal publications, where there is less than complete and certain knowledge of enemy capabilities and intent, and where commanders enjoy wide discretion in their exercise of their command prerogatives and responsibilities.”

  51 Pronounced “YES-kess.”

  52 Not his real name.

  53 Not his real name.

  54 The lack of IEDs was likely due to the fact that the Kamdesh insurgency was ultimately led by local Nuristanis, who did not understand the technical side of IED construction and emplacement. They knew more about, and were more comfortable with, direct-fire ambushes—the same tactic that had been employed to oust the Soviets years earlier. Moreover, IEDs would have destroyed the only road there was, a supply route used more by insurgents—especially after Kolenda stopped ground resupply—than it was by U.S. and Afghan government forces.

  55 “Six” is how the commander is commonly referred to over the radio.

  56 After a few days’ recovery at Bagram, Briley would serve out the rest of his deployment at Forward Operating Base Bostick, replacing his commander, Lieutenant Colonel Ty Edwards. One week before Briley was wounded, Edwards himself had been shot in the head in an ambush—an injury that he, too, survived.

  57 Not his real name.

  58 Not his real name.

  59 Shir would ultimately be remanded to Afghan custody. Three years after Yllescas was targeted, according to intelligence sources, Amin Shir was still being held by the Afghan government and awaiting trial.

  60 Following events from afar, Kolenda wondered how much of 6-4’s skepticism about the Hundred-Man Shura became self-fulfilling. Many of the unit’s leaders had never seemed willing to listen and learn, he thought, and being a new unit, they had a lot of basics to sort out. “Sadly, the insurgents achieved their intended goal of driving a wedge between the people and the Americans and Afghan forces when they [targeted] Rob,” he later wrote.

  61 As first recalled by National Security Adviser Tom Donilon to David Sanger, “Charting Obama’s Journey to a Shift on Afghanistan,” New York Times, May 19, 2012.

  62 Although as a candidate, Obama had run against his predecessor’s foreign policy, he not only embraced t Bush’s military command structure, in Mullen and Petraeus, but also took the unusual step of asking Bush’s secretary of defense, Robert Gates, and White House adviser General Lute to stay on board.

  63 Governor Nuristani’s immediate replacement was Hazrat Din Noor, who died in a car crash in September 2008. Badr followed Noor in the post.

  64 The name was taken from the Pashto word baryalay, meaning “successful.”

  65 Sergeant James Pirtle of Colorado Springs, Colorado, and Specialist Ryan King of Dallas, Georgia, both of whom had spent some time at Observation Post Fritsche earlier in their deployment. William Vile was from Philadelphia; he had served in the Korangal with 1-32 Infantry a couple of years before. The Latvians killed were Sergeant Voldemārs Anševics and Private First Class Andrejs Merkuševs. They were the second and third Latvian troops to die in Afghanistan during this war.

  66 COIN was Army shorthand for “counterinsurgency.”

  67 The History of the Peloponnesian War, by Thucydides, written in 431 B.C.E., translated by Richard Crawley. The quote is from book 2, chapter 40.

  68 Captain Sean Grimes, thirty-one, of Southfield, Michigan; Sergeant First Class Donald W. Eacho, thirty-eight, of Black Creek, Wisconsin; Corporal Stephen M. McGowan, twenty-six, of Newark, Delaware; and Specialist Wade Michael Twyman, twenty-seven, of Vista, California.

  69 Scherer underwent twenty-six separate operations and had to relearn how to walk, talk, and even swallow. “Whatever hit my brain scrambled it,” he told me in a 2011 interview, after his remarkable recovery.

  70 Jacops ultimately lost seven teeth from the right side of his mouth—six on top and one on the bottom—plus part of his jawbone. He kept his eye and would eventually return to 3-61 Cav.

  71 In a June 7, 2012, Rolling Stone story by Michael Hastings, Bergdahl was revealed to have been completely disillusioned by the war, having sent his parents an email shortly before his disappearance that said, “Life is way too short to care for the damnation of others, as well as to spend it helping fools with their ideas that are wrong. I have seen their ideas and I am ashamed to even be American…. I am sorry for everything here. These people need help, yet what they get is the most conceited country in the world telling them that they are nothing and they are stupid, that they have no idea how to live.” He then walked off his base and was ultimately captured by Taliban insurgents. As of the summer of 2012, he was still missing in action, though there were reports of negotiations between ISAF and the Taliban to free him.

  72 Pronounced as “STEFF-in.”

  73 In the Army’s classification system for lunar illumination, Red Illume refers to those times when the moon is not visible at all; Amber Illume to when it’s partly showing; and Green Illume to when it’s full. By May 2009, helicopters wouldn’t fly to COP Keating during Green or Amber Illume, only during Red.

  74 Two years before, Fabrizi’s sons Jason Allen, nine, and Tyler, six, had lost their stepfather, Specialist Ryan Bell, twenty-one, of Colville, Washington, after he and five other soldiers were killed by an IED in Samarra, Iraq.

  75 This attitude and these advisers would ultimately bring about the end of McChrystal’s military career. He resigned in the summer of 2010, after Rolling Stone published “The Runaway General” by Michael Hastings, in which the general and hisadvisers were quoted making a number of disparaging comments about officials in the Obama administration, from President Obama himself to Vice President Biden to Jones and on and on. McChrystal was replaced as commander of ISAF by Petraeus.

  76 Others believe Sadiq fled to Pakistan in fear of U.S. forces in 2002. It’s possible that both theories are true, given the porous border and the frequent trips made back and forth between Afghanistan and Pakistan by declared enemies of the United States and the Afghan government.

  77 Some U.S. intelligence sources insist that there is no evidence for Amin’s son’s belief; others maintain that throughout the war with the USSR, HIG repeatedly tried to scuttle Mohammed Anvar Amin, and that Anvar’s killer was indeed backed by Sadiq.

  78 Named after Specialist James Finley, twenty-one, of Lebanon, Missouri, and Private First Class Andrew Shields, nineteen, of Battleground, Washington, both of whom were killed by an IED on May 31, 2008, in Jalalabad.

  79 Not his real name.

  80 This seemed to last until April 2010, when McChrystal and his aides made dispar
aging comments about the president and his top advisers to Rolling Stone reporter Michael Hastings, resulting in the June publication of “The Runaway General,” which cost the McChrystal his job. (See footnote on page TK.)

  81 “Target sixty” was an instruction to get on the 60-millimeter mortar tube and start firing.

  82 Some of the shorthand in these mIRC messages has been spelled out—“FRI AND KEA” becoming “FRITSCHE AND KEATING,” for instance.

  83 An “AH” is an Apache helicopter.

  84 CAS stands for “close air support.”

  85 CCA stands for “close combat attack,” or helicopters.

  86 “Stand-to” is the period during dawn and dusk when extra guards are added. At this time, Stand-To Truck 1 was parked at the southern edge of the camp, with its gun facing north.