by Ed Darack
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
PREFACE
Chapter 1 - WELCOME TO AFGHANISTAN
Chapter 2 - THE BATTALION
Chapter 3 - SYNERGY OF SUCCESS
Chapter 4 - INTO THE HINDU KUSH
Chapter 5 - RED WINGS TAKES FLIGHT
Chapter 6 - AMBUSH
Chapter 7 - STORM OF CHAOS
Chapter 8 - REDOUBLED EFFORTS
Chapter 9 - WHALERS UNLEASHED
Chapter 10 - ARMAGEDDON, DENIED
Chapter 11 - ONE RIDGE DISTANT, A WORLD APART
Chapter 12 - STAR WARS
Chapter 13 - KINETIC EXFIL
Chapter 14 - VICTORY POINT
AFTERWORD
Acknowledgements
APPENDIX I - PRIMARY WEAPON SYSTEMS
APPENDIX II - INTERVIEWEES
REFERENCES
INDEX
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Darack, Ed.
Victory point : operations Red Wings and Whalers : the Marine Corps’ battle for freedom in
Afghanistan / Ed Darack.
p. cm.
Includes index.
eISBN : 978-1-101-03248-0
1. Operation Red Wings, 2005. 2. Operation Whalers, 2005. 3. Afghan War, 2001—Commando
operations. 4. Afghan War, 2001—Search and rescue operations. 5. United States. Marine
Corps—Afghanistan. 6. United States. Navy. SEALs. I. Title.
DS371.4123.O66D37 2009
958.104’7—dc22
2008047659
http://us.penguingroup.com
To the Marines of ⅔—and the entire Fleet.
Past, present, and future.
PREFACE
Afghanistan. The name alone evokes visions of adventure and exploration in uncharted mountains, mystery and intrigue in a land traversed by history’s crossroads, and above all, war in the breathless heights. A landlocked country, Afghanistan lies in a zone of cultural transition and geographic upheaval. From empty swaths of sun-beaten desert on its southwestern border with Iran, Afghanistan’s landscape vaults into ice-hewn mountains in its northeast, encompassing a broad spectrum of climates and topographies between the two extremes.
Culturally, Afghanistan reveals itself to be a patchwork of humanity, a medley of tribes organized loosely within a variety of ethnic groups. Political boundaries are arbitrary to people in most areas of Afghanistan; what delineates regional boundaries here are ridgelines and valleys, with villages stitched together by meandering trails beaten into the sides of airy slopes.
And while most all of Afghanistan—both its people and landscapes—epitomizes the notion of ruggedness, the eastern Kunar province, that rarely visited and little-known pocket of the infamous Hindu Kush, can arguably claim the title as the most austere, the least tamed. The first bullets of the insurgency that would burgeon into the anti-Soviet resistance were fired here in the late seventies. Osama bin Laden was known to operate terrorist training camps in the Kunar and likely ordered the September 11, 2001, attacks against the United States in this province. And into the summer of 2005, the most fearsome of Islamic fundamentalist fighters operated in the Kunar.
At the core of this restive province stands a massif cloaked to the outside world by the very brutal landscape of which it is part, a mountain called Sawtalo Sar. The peak, one of the highest in this cloud-raked landscape, lies in the Pech River Valley region of the Kunar, just west of the frontier town of Asadabad. A number of valleys radiate from and around Sawtalo Sar, valleys such as the Korangal, the Shuryek, the Narang, and the Chowkay. Deeply recessed into the high landscape, the villages, pasturelands, and interconnecting ridges and zigzagging trails of these valleys would become the home of some of the most dedicated, well-trained, and fervent Islamic fighters remaining along the Afghan-Pakistan border—and, for that matter, the world.
As of the summer of 2005, the military forces of the United States had ventured little into the Korangal and Shuryek—and never into the upper reaches of the Chowkay. Regional Afghan political officers and even members of the Afghan military dared not enter these forbidding and terrifying places. Locals of these valleys—vehement and fierce adherents of their own brands of independence—have historically resisted outsiders’ gestures, which they perceived as attempts to influence and control their isolated ways of life. However, bold and fervent Islamic groups including al-Qaeda, through payoffs and by manipulating loose familial and tribal ties, infiltrated these secretive aeries. With their observers perched high on the ridges of Sawtalo Sar and surrounding mountains—watching, always watching—the fighters ambushed convoys of humanitarian aid supplies, assassinated local Afghan police officers, and wreaked havoc on the local government, destroying hopes of a wholly unified Afghanistan through their acts of terrorism.
Then the United States Marine Corps arrived. The Marines—the go-anywhere, do-any-mission cadre of modest professionals who have proven time and again to be the most effective war-fighting machine in human history—would once again leave their mark, a mark of triumph, as they had done so many times before. The United States Marine Corps are a fully integrated land-sea-air expeditionary combat force—masters of light infantry maneuver and the “combined arms” assault—and their culture itself has powered individual Marine units as small as a four-man fire team to surmount even the most overwhelming of odds—in conflicts and battlegrounds of all types and climes, throughout their more than two-centuries-old history.
The success of the Marine Corps, in so many places, throughout so many slices o
f history, can be traced to the qualities at the very core of their ethos: adaptability, tenacity, and above all else, faithfulness—to their country, to their traditions, and to one another. As maniacally as the Japanese held their ground on Iwo Jima, Marines still raised the flag over Mount Suribachi. As overwhelming a force as the Chinese may have projected at Korea’s Chosin Reservoir, the Marines still crushed their advance. And as deeply entrenched and fanatically emboldened as the radical Islamic forces surrounding two Marine Corps platoons in the Chowkay Valley may have been in August of 2005, those Marines still decimated their foe.
Victory Point chronicles Operation Red Wings and Operation Whalers, two Marine Corps missions that, in retrospect, represent not just a series of fierce battles, but a small war: a small war decidedly won by a battalion of Marines—the Second Battalion of the Third Marine Regiment.
Intent on thwarting the operations of a ruthless Islamic fundamentalist operator who had indirect ties to the highest echelons of regional and global extremist networks—including al-Qaeda and the remnants of the Taliban—the battalion struck out with their first large-scale mission soon after arriving in eastern Afghanistan: Operation Red Wings. Employing Navy SEALs and a number of other non-Marine Corps assets, Red Wings spiraled into disaster just hours after a Naval Special Operations team inserted high on the slopes of Sawtalo Sar for the opening phase of the operation and fell prey to a horrific ambush. Virtually shut out of both the planning and execution of the rescue mission to save the ill-fated team because of Special Operations Command rules, the Marines stood on the sidelines, frustrated and helpless, as an Army Special Operations Chinook helicopter, loaded with eight Navy and eight Army Special Operations personnel, sped toward Sawtalo Sar, only to be shot down by an expertly placed rocket-propelled grenade—the impact of which killed all on board as the girthy Chinook fell onto the rugged mountain, exploding in a roiling fireball. The leader of the target cell, who called himself Mullah Ismail, but who was born Ahmad Shah, immediately claimed victory over the American “infidels.” Islamic extremists throughout the globe hailed Shah, who was now responsible for the greatest one-day loss of United States Special Operations Forces personnel in the history of Special Operations Command—as well as the single greatest loss of American troops in the American war in Afghanistan.
Weeks later, after the dust had settled from Red Wings and the Marines had pored over intelligence reports and developed several blueprints for operations, the battalion unleashed Operation Whalers; this time, the ground component would consist only of Marines and attached Afghan National Army soldiers. Almost completely forgotten in the global war on terror, and virtually unrecognized by even Marine Corps historians, Whalers unfolded as a masterpiece of light infantry operations: indefatigable Marine grunts relentlessly executing a brilliant plan of action—a plan of action that would bring about the overwhelming defeat of Ahmad Shah’s small army.
Victory Point details this amazing chapter of Marine Corps history—a history clouded by incomplete and inaccurate media reports and overshadowed by the special operations tragedies. The drama that unfolded in Afghanistan’s Sawtalo Sar region in the summer of 2005 includes some of the most dramatic events in the history of warfare: the U.S. Marine Corps, undeniably the military organization best suited for this merciless environment, ensnared and ultimately destroyed a tireless and deadly enemy who was quickly rising in power and prominence. In telling this story, Victory Point also sheds light on the Marine Corps ethos and their centuries-honed approach to fighting, on the incredible difficulties of waging a war in the Hindu Kush, and on the challenges of working in a “joint” environment, where Marines must rely on assets of other branches of the U.S. military. But most of all, this book chronicles Marines doing what Marines do best: winning the fight, and winning it their way.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
The events of Operations Red Wings and Whalers represent some of the most harrowing in the history of modern warfare, exemplifying the very limits of human endurance, struggle, and the spirit of survival and triumph in one of the world’s most fearsome environments. Despite the importance of these missions in the Global War on Terror, however, details of most aspects of Red Wings and Whalers remain shrouded in misreporting and rank nonreporting. With the exception of a few citations (most notably an article in the Marine Corps Gazette in December 2006), media reports have not even referenced Operation Red Wings as a Marine Corps operation, focusing on the tragic opening phase of the mission. Furthermore, virtually no media reports have even cited the name of the operation correctly. Named in honor of the Detroit Red Wings hockey team, I have seen and heard “Operation Redwing,” “Operation Red Wing,” and even “Operation Red Dawn” printed, televised, and broadcast. But this error is just the first in a long list of details incorrectly reported or omitted outright, a list that leaves the public record with just a few small brushstrokes of accuracy while the larger canvas remains mostly blank.
Operation Whalers (named for the Hartford/New England Whalers), which had the same objective as Red Wings, succeeded. But the details of the success went unreported—as well as overlooked by military historians. Another canvas left virtually blank.
Why the glaring oversights? While a number of reasons contribute to the void of accurate information, a lack of on-site reporters ranks at the top of this list. With the exception of a Marine Corps combat correspondent (Sergeant Robert Storm, one of the best), no photojournalists accompanied forces on the ground during Red Wings or Whalers. Instead, tidbits of information were fed to reporters far in the rear, at Bagram Airfield; these reports consisted of brief summaries—with few specific details. Erroneous, hearsay-inspired “accounts”—published by outlets spanning from blogs to major magazine and newspaper publications—bloomed to feed the public’s hunger for information, creating a whirlwind of distorted facts and some blatant fiction.
I wrote this book in order to chronicle the amazing events in Afghanistan’s Kunar province during the summer of 2005. While I am not, nor have I ever been, in the Marine Corps, I have written Victory Point from a Marine perspective. The Marine Corps planned and executed these operations (with the exception of those aspects tasked to the Naval Special Operations Forces personnel for Red Wings), and the Marines undertook the execution of them. I have gone to great lengths to gather information about and interview personnel of non-USMC units who proved vital in the support of these missions, including Army and U.S. Air Force aviation units. An amazing amount of effort and bravery went into these operations by non-Marine Corps units, particularly during the search and recovery phase of Red Wings as well as the Air Ambulance and close air support provided during Operation Whalers.
I would also like to make note on the spelling of Afghan place-names. The same location, cited on five different maps, will often be spelled five different ways. For example, what I cite as the Korangal Valley, other writers and cartographers have referenced as the “Korengal Valley,” “Karangal Valley,” “Kiringal Valley,” and even the “Giringal Valley.” I chose to use spellings listed on recently published maps, published in English, but developed in Afghanistan. I also use both “standard” and metric measurements—each where most appropriate.
I should also give a quick overview of the genesis of my involvement and interest in this project. As a freelance writer/photographer, I sought to chronicle the training at a little-known Marine Corps base in the late winter of 2005, the Mountain Warfare Training Center, near Bridgeport, California. While at the MWTC, I spent time with the Marines of the Second Battalion of the Third Marine Regiment, who were training for deployment in, and would soon be departing for, Afghanistan. One evening after a training exercise at the base, I asked the battalion’s executive officer, Major Rob Scott, and the operations officer, Major Tom Wood, if I could join the battalion in Afghanistan as an embedded writer/photographer. After consulting with the battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel Andy MacMannis, Majors Scott and Wood informed me that I was welcome to com
e for as long as I wished.
And so, in late September of 2005, I journeyed to Kabul, Afghanistan, and after credentialing as a media embed, was sent to Camp Blessing, in the village of Nangalam in the country’s eastern Kunar province. Over the course of my one-month embed (exceeding my officially allotted time of just ten days by nearly three weeks), I accompanied the Marines on a number of combat operations—inserting by helicopter, convoy, and by foot throughout the area, spending days in the field with Marines moving through all types of mountainous terrain, and listening to the incredibly candid stories of combat in the heights, often at night as we stood watch for Islamic fighters intent on attacking our positions.
The Marines with whom I spent time, from privates to the battalion commanders, provided me with insight not only into Operations Red Wings and Whalers, but into the incredible Marine Corps ethos. I am one of the very few lucky civilians to have learned about U.S. Marines not through books, movies, magazines, or newspaper articles, but through the only real way to learn about them—as well as about the incredible mountainous landscape in which they accomplished so much: in the field, during combat operations. This education was the toughest in my life, but I would have it no other way. My involvement with the Second Battalion of the Third Marine Regiment has allowed me to recreate these operations with the accuracy that the general public deserves, as well as to create a work the Marines of the battalion can point to as a record of their historic time in Afghanistan.
Ed Darack
Pickel Meadow, California
