Battle Ready: Memoir of a SEAL Warrior Medic

by Mark L. Donald

  Our soldiers looked and traveled like the enemy, which was no accident. From a distance, we knew they resembled a ragged caravan of Taliban fighters or criminals, which gave us a small but critical advantage should we be observed from afar by a shepherd or farmer.

  The plan called for us to travel for two consecutive nights and lay up at preplanned hides during the days. On the third day, we would break up into squads, move into our positions by foot to gather the intel, then quietly retreat back to the vehicles and later our firebase.

  We had learned on earlier operations that helicopter insertion into those areas had its limitations, often precluding their use, especially if we wanted to get in undetected and remain there for a long period of time. It didn’t matter how many false insertions we did, the noise from the chopper blades was so distinct it always alerted the locals that coalition forces were afoot. Word of a possible American presence would eventually make its way to the Taliban, which inspired the enemy to fortify defenses and conduct widespread security searches across the area. Insertion by combat boot, or LPC (leather personnel carrier), as I jokingly referred to it, was far less obvious, but it took days or weeks to approach an objective, putting us all in danger for much longer periods of time. Our answer was a combination of vehicles and LPC. It wasn’t the preferred method, but it proved successful on similar operations in and around Orgun and Khowst, so we had good reason to believe it would be just as effective in this region as well. We also had a distinct advantage. Chief and Chris had been to the exact area we were going to, as had many of our Afghan soldiers, so we had a ground truth on which areas we needed to avoid in order to prevent early detection.

  The target was located along a main road that led into the village. There were rough trails that flanked the town on three sides, and none were used by shepherds due to the lack of foliage for their flocks. We took the longest of the three flanking trails in order to avoid the main road.

  The first two nights were uneventful. Our slow, deliberate pace allowed us to keep a watchful eye across the barren wilderness with our night-vision goggles and thermal scopes. We settled in remote areas during the day and evaded unwanted eyes by parking our vehicles in wadis or among large clusters of boulders. We placed each one in a position that would allow for immediate escape and covered them with camouflage netting, which rendered them nearly invisible from elevated positions. Half the team stood watch while the other half slept under the vehicles or in shady areas beside large rock formations. Everyone carried personal weapons, and each vehicle had a crew-served machine gun. While the terrain was flat and we could see for miles in every direction, the tension was always high.

  The nights were cold, turning the water we carried in our canteens to ice. Before settling in, I would make my rounds and check the condition of each man and remind him to stay hydrated even though the water was difficult to drink. As I bounded from truck to truck I noticed our tribesmen turned warriors had adapted naturally to their ancestral surroundings, and I was confident we’d make it to the target without being seen.

  The flat Mars-like terrain that we covered on the first two nights changed dramatically as we neared the target. Sharp, jagged rocks and sporadic trees sprang up across the hilly countryside, making it much more difficult to see an approaching vehicle or enemy ambush. To make up for the disadvantage, we pushed our reconnaissance vehicles much farther out with Ned, the Afghan leader, in charge. It wasn’t unusual to come around a sharp turn and find yourself at a Taliban checkpoint, so we needed a cool-headed decision maker leading a group of locals to get us past such situations.

  * * *

  We arrived at our last stop four hours before dawn on the third day. We pulled the vehicles into a narrow wadi sandwiched between two twenty-foot rock faces. We drove in minutes apart from one another to ensure we didn’t make a commotion as we positioned the vehicles. From there we would move out on foot, so we took extra precautions to conceal the vehicles. As I prepared my hide site, I noticed the southern cliffs in the moonlight. It looked just as Chris and Chief had described during our brief, which told me we were danger close. The village was less than half a night’s walk from our hide, and we had no new intel, which made me feel a bit uneasy. The only thing worse than no intel is old intel. You think you understand a situation when in reality everything might have changed. Our last update by any source was nearly two days old, which meant there was nothing to report or there was no longer a source left to report it. We situated our gear and began preparing the Afghan commandos for a hump to the objective, or an expeditious exit should things go bad quickly. While speaking to one of the terps I noticed Vic and Ned lying at the edge of the ridge and peering out at the southern cliff face through their binos. Several minutes later they slid down carefully and stood face-to-face, deep in conversation. Ned was gesturing toward the mountains, and Vic was taking it all in. They spoke for several intense minutes before Vic walked over to me.

  “Doc, I need to speak with you and the rest of the boys,” he said solemnly. “Meet me at my vehicle in five.”

  “Roger that,” I replied.

  Five minutes later, we were gathered around a map spread on the hood of Vic and Muscle Tom’s vehicle. Chief was pointing at something on the map and talking to Vic and Tom when I approached.

  “Doc. Chief and Tom saw movement on the peaks. Ned and I glassed it and definitely saw people up there, but impossible to tell from here who they are,” said Vic.

  “Could be goatherds, but I doubt it,” Chief said. “There’s no reason to be up there except to set up an observation post. If they’re enemy, they certainly aren’t trying to stay along the military crest.” Chief was referring to the area just below the ridgeline that allows someone to see the surrounding area without silhouetting himself to their enemy.

  “The moon definitely highlights two men. The question is, are they bad guys?” Vic asked. The distance was too far for our night vision to be any use, which left us to the mercy of the field glasses or binoculars.

  “The last time I was out here, Chris and I saw a lot of shepherds in places we never thought they’d be. It’s hard to be sure,” Chief said.

  “The fact that they’re running around on those ridges tells me those ain’t shepherds. It’s too much work to run animals over those mountains,” Tom added.

  I watched as Vic digested the information. His career was built on analyzing intel and making tactical decisions, and this was right in his wheelhouse. I had grown close to Vic over our time together and knew he had already made a decision. I also knew he would throw it to us in case he missed something. Vic had too much respect for Chief and Tom not to.

  “Let’s assume we’ve been spotted. We’ve got a couple of choices. Lay up today, hope for the best, and see what happens. Or we turn around and head home. In either case we stand a good chance of being attacked. Am I missing something?”

  We stood quiet for a moment and contemplated the situation. No one wanted to go home empty-handed, but we weren’t about to put ourselves into a position that we might not be able to get out of.

  “Are we sure we’ve been spotted?” I asked.

  “No one knows for sure, Doc. No radio chatter so far,” Tom answered. No reports of radio or phone activity. That’s a good thing, I told myself.

  “Based on the assumption we’ve either been spotted or will be come first light, we need to pull out of the area, but we can’t go out the same way we came. It’s too risky,” Chief said.

  “I can send some of my men out for intel,” Ned suggested.

  “It’s not worth it, Ned. We need to keep the team tight for now,” Vic said.

  “Look, if we push out now we’ll still have some cover of darkness. The road here is going to split,” Chief said, pointing to a fork in the road on the map. “What you don’t see is, this road, the one we’re on now, is going to bifurcate and feeds into these hills and then back onto the main road.” The original maps for this part of Afghanistan were terribly out of da
te and poor quality, so we added roads and other features each time we went out. This real-time adaptation of our computer mapping programs gave us a fairly good understanding of what to expect.

  “What does that mean?” Ned asked.

  “I think what Chief is saying is, if we’ve been spotted by the enemy, we’ll be ambushed any way we go.” Tom paused to see if Ned was following him. “But if those guys on the mountain are uncaring nomads, we may be able to push on to the target and get eyes on before having to abort and head back toward base.”

  “See, right here,” Vic said as he directed Ned’s attention to the map. “If we go this way it also puts us on the main road heading directly toward Shkin. Traveling during the day we can move much faster, and it should only take us half a day to get back.”

  “We’re not far from the target. They won’t expect us to come in from the north, through the wadi. It’s pretty rocky there. Going deeper in might just be the safest route out,” Chief said as his finger moved along the route he described.

  “What do you think, Tom?” Vic asked. “Turn around and head back, or pull out and move to the target?”

  “You’re both right—more than likely we’re going to get hit either way, but if we go this way we can approach just below this ridgeline, then move down the saddle into the wadis below, which should provide some cover,” Muscle Tom said, pointing to the map and aerial photography. “We didn’t come this far to quit.”

  Vic turned to Chief and asked, “Continue on, or turn and head home from here?”

  Without missing a beat, Chief replied, “Are you kidding me? Push on. We may have to abort before we get there, but I agree with Tom. If the enemy has spotted us, we’re fucked any way we go. The best way to avoid an ambush is to avoid the roads and trails. This route gives us some protection and more time to assess the situation when we get there.” Vic then turned to me. “Doc?”

  I just looked at him and said, “I got nothing.”

  Vic replied, his face showing stress, “Come on, Doc. I don’t have bandwidth for any bullshit. You always have something to say.” He was under serious pressure and thought I was yanking his chain.

  “What ya got, Doc?” Muscle Tom asked, knowing there was something more to my answer.

  I looked at each of them as I explained. “Truth be told, I’m the medic on this mission, which means I go wherever you go, even if you’re going through the fires of hell on a Sunday morning.” Ned looked confused but kept quiet while we worked it out. “If I say turn and go home, you may question if I have the nerve to go out and get you should the shit hit the fan. If I say push forward, you might wonder if I’ve forgotten my role as a medic. All I can tell you is you don’t have to worry. If the rounds start flying I’ll be a shooter first and a medic second, but that doesn’t mean I have to choose one or the other. Where you go, I go.” Chief looked at me and knew exactly what I was trying to say. We’d had a lot of conversations about our families and personal beliefs. He knew about my calling to medicine and accepted me for who I was from the moment we met. “None of us know the right answer, and since I go where you go all I have to say is … how long until we pull out?”

  Vic glanced at Chief and then Muscle Tom, who patted my shoulder. He then looked at me for two beats, shook his head, and smiled. “Damn, Doc.”

  “You’re one strange bird, Doc,” Chief said quietly as Vic continued on.

  “We’re going toward the target. We’ll be approaching from the northwest and navigate through the wadis. Once we get there we’ll reassess the situation. In the meantime I’ll inform Wil about the men on the ridge; hopefully he’ll be able to have a QRF standing by. Ned, I’ll need you, Chief, and Tom to brief the Afghan soldiers on the changes.”

  “Got it,” Tom said as Chief started making a terrain model on the ground to brief the rest of the crew.

  We gathered around Chief as he described what was about to take place. I kept watching Ali and the other terps to see if they understood. We counted on fast and accurate translations of orders should we come under fire. Any hesitation or mistranslation could turn a bad situation into almost certain death. Chief knew this all too well, so without hesitation he asked Vic to pull Ned from the lead vehicle and put him back with us. Chief and Tom covered the basics—convoy formation, communications, actions on ambush, specialty teams, and each vehicle’s sector of responsibility—before briefing our new route. Ned made sure he translated our plan to each vehicle commander to ensure they fully understood.

  “We’re moving out in five. Maintain the distance with the vehicle in front of you but don’t fixate on it. Remember where we are. If you see something, don’t sit on it, report it back, and we’ll sort it out.”

  We loaded up the nine vehicles and slowly exited the hide site as carefully as we entered. The first vehicle in the caravan carried four commandos and one terp. The second was all troops, and the third was Chief and me in our soft-sided Hummer with Ned and Ali. Our vehicle adaptations gave us decent protection against enemy rounds, but I certainly would have preferred an up-armored Humvee. Chief drove and served as navigator due to his familiarity with the route, and I rode shotgun as assistant driver and worked comms. Ned was behind me, and Ali, the terp, was behind Chief. Next in line were two trucks, each filled with commandos, then another Humvee carrying Vic, Muscle Tom, and their terp. Behind Vic were another four men and our mechanic, while two trucks of four trusted commandos with heavy machine guns brought up the rear. We broke camp and rolled toward the objective, eyes alert as the horizon began to glow deep purple and burned orange. We passed a few farms in the distance as we headed toward the ridgeline trail that would eventually lead us into the valley below.

  Our movement took us much longer than any of us expected, and the sun began rising in the east. The light was definitely going to expose us, but it also allowed the convoy to navigate the mountain pass. The trails were steep and plagued with potholes and sharp turns. Navigating those treacherous obstacles with NVGs would be extremely difficult for us and suicidal for the commandos to follow. As we drove along, each bump reminded me I should have rearranged my gear for the trip. Jolt after jolt forced my smoke grenades deep into my side. I reached around and pulled two of the culprits out of my harness and placed them in a pouch I had fastened to the dash in an attempt to stop the continuous kidney punches to my left flank.

  We stopped at the top of the ridgeline to scope the wadi below. The trail was dangerously narrow and forced the trucks to remain ten yards apart, which meant Vic and Tom were unable to jump forward for a look. Chief and I glassed the valley below with our weapon-mounted scopes.

  “What do you think?” Chief asked.

  “Looks like we’re going to have to widen our distance the rest of the way down.”

  “I think you’re right,” Chief answered. Before he could finish his sentence Vic came over the radio. I continued to scan the hills while listening to Chief, Vic, and Tom discuss the situation. It was clear to me why everyone wanted to use that route. It wasn’t the type of road someone would use to set an ambush. The wadi twisted and turned multiple times, preventing a clean shot by anyone at the whole convoy. Unless the ambush was set up perfectly, it would give an opportunity to the attacker to be flanked by the men they wished to destroy. If we did get hit, at least the terrain would give us a fighting chance.

  As the rest of the team continued to chatter, I told Ali to have our commandos readjust any gear that might have shifted. Rough, rocky trails have a way of rearranging everything, and that can cause problems. Before we left the hide, every piece of equipment and ammunition resupply fit tightly together like a weekend suitcase that would barely close. This made it easy to find everything we needed in a critical situation. After several hours on the goat path, everything loosened up and was sliding around. Exactly what we didn’t need. Not only would it be difficult to find critical gear if the shit hit the fan, the heavy weight shifting back and forth as a vehicle negotiated a slope would wreak havoc on
a driver.

  With the assessment done, we climbed back into the vehicle, and I handed Chief his helmet. He’d taken it off earlier when the sun rose and he no longer needed to use his NVGs.

  “I’m not wearing that,” he said, pointing to the roof with a grin. The ballistic blanketing we added for extra protection had taken up what little headroom he had, so when he wore his helmet he would have to drive with a bend in his neck.

  “You sure you don’t want to reconsider?” I jokingly asked.

  “I think I know what I want, Shorty,” he said with a wink. Ned laughed in the back as we started bouncing down the slope again. I didn’t want to argue, so I followed his example and rigged for comfort by moving my med pack from the floorboard and resting it next to his helmet, making a great armrest between the two of us.

  When we finally hit bottom it was all business. No one said a word as we listened for radio traffic from the lead vehicle. Everyone kept a close watch on the hillsides. The caravan crawled slowly over a rough path cut through the jagged foothills. Each turn presented a new set of terrain features that we’d quickly scan for movement. Chief ’s dark eyes primarily concentrated on the lead vehicles and the rocky hills ahead of them while I monitored the terrain from the ten and two o’clock positions. Ned focused on the mountainside to the west, and Ali watched the hills to our east.