by Bing West
The briefing hadn’t addressed command and control. I assumed Maj. Williams, as the senior American, was in charge. Battalion 1-32 believed Williams was in charge. But Williams believed Maj. Talib, the operations officer of the Afghan battalion, was in command. Which is the craziest thing I’ve ever heard in my entire life. Talib, who spoke broken English, could not call in fire support. But Talib and Williams would be together, so any confusion about command could be resolved on the spot. If everything went according to plan, the trip to Ganjigal would be a pleasant morning hike on a pleasant fall day.
At one point, Maj. Williams said, “I hope we can be back at Joyce in time for lunch.”
* * *
As we left the briefing room, I didn’t get that chance to corner Capt. Swenson; 1st Sgt. Garza pulled me and Team Monti aside.
“Gunny Johnson is replacing Meyer on this op,” he said.
Gunny Johnson handled logistics on base, doing endless paperwork. He was competent, even-tempered, and obliging. If Team Monti needed gear, he found it and shipped it to us. It was not unusual to rotate men on missions where low-level shooting was likely. Hearing a few rounds crack by once during a nine-month tour wasn’t too much to ask. Every Marine wanted to qualify for the Combat Action Ribbon. It would suck to be stuck on Joyce, and never qualify for the CAR.
Plus, I wasn’t popular at ETT headquarters on Joyce. Fabayo had told me several times that “our job as advisors was not to fight.” Headquarters considered me too headstrong. Maybe so, but on this patrol, we were going into a horseshoe-shaped valley with steep mountains on every side, with no trees or undergrowth for concealment, walking uphill for over a kilometer to reach two hamlets where every house was as hardened as a Normandy pillbox.
“I should be with my team, First Sergeant,” I said.
I was Team Monti’s tactician and gunner. In the dozen-odd scrapes we’d been in, I had burned through ten thousand rounds. I could clear misfires, coax malfunctioning breeches, and quickly swap out one barrel or one gun for another. I had walked fire onto targets at ranges from two hundred to seven hundred meters. On this patrol, I wanted to walk point in front of Lt. Johnson, not babysit the trucks in the rear. The four of us were a unit now.
Staff Sgt. Kenefick and Lt. Johnson agreed with me, objecting strenuously.
“We need Meyer,” Staff Sgt. Kenefick said.
“We’re a team, First Sergeant,” Lt. Johnson said. “It makes no sense to split us up.”
“The decision’s been made,” 1st Sgt. Garza said. “End of discussion.”
I tried to keep calm. I couldn’t be mad at Garza, as he wasn’t the one who had made the decision. I told myself it was my ego that was hurt. I was just steamed because I’d miss some shooting time. It was no big deal; the insurgents never fought from inside a village. Gunny Johnson deserved to go on a patrol. Still, why jerk me off the team? The ETT head shed at Joyce had pulled me out to shove my nose into it, to make me more of a team player, that sort of thing.
The more I stewed, the more upset I became. The mission brief hadn’t been thorough. The ridges around Ganjigal bothered the hell out of me. I couldn’t shake a bad, bad feeling.
I sought out Staff Sgt. Juan Rodriguez-Chavez, our motor transport chief. I had known him for five months. He didn’t stand on rank and we’d traded stories about growing up on farms. He had grown up on a ranch in Mexico. Having a similar approach to life, Rod and I had become friends.
He was in the eighth grade when his family moved to Texas, where he learned English, played football, earned good grades, and roped cows in rodeos. Our team called him “Hot Rod.” He laughed a lot, bragged about how smart his two daughters were, and kept all our vehicles in top condition.
“Rod, this mission is fucked up. If the shit hits the fan,” I said, “we’re going in. My team’s walking point, and they’ll get cut off. We have to go in and get them out.”
“Dakota,” Rod said, “don’t put this on Gunny Johnson. I heard him and Staff Sgt. Kenefick talking. They’re both upset you’re not with them.”
“I know, Gunny’s a good guy. I’m pissed about the whole setup. If they step in shit, they’ll need heavy firepower, and we’re back here. We have to be ready to push up that wash.”
“Devil Dog,” Rod said, “say the word, and I’ll do the driving.”
Having some sort of contingency plan now, I walked back to the advisor headquarters and briefed Lt. Johnson.
“If things get hairy,” I said, “I’m coming in. Rod will drive. Radio your coordinates and get down to the wash. Fucking climb in and we’ll haul ass back to the main body.”
He stared at me for a second, smiled, and burst out laughing.
“Meyer, you’re always thinking how to get into it,” he said.
He definitely was relieved. I did the fire planning for our team and then I was suddenly gone. Now I was promising I’d figured out a way to be there. The lieutenant was too good a leader ever to speak badly about anyone. He’d joke around about personality tics, but not in a way that undercut anyone’s authority. Still, he didn’t try to talk me out of it, or tell me to coordinate with Maj. Williams or Lt. Fabayo. My deal with Rod stayed inside Team Monti, and I took that as a green light. If there was trouble, Rod and I were going in.
The lieutenant and I lay down on the two couches in the advisor’s office. I could tell he was feeling better about the patrol because he wasn’t brooding or going over his notes. Instead, we talked and laughed about silly stuff. Maybe we had made too much fuss about another KLE.
While we were chatting, Fabayo, dressed in flip-flops, shorts, and a T-shirt, walked into 1-32’s tactical operations center to drop off our roster, called an equipment density list. Before a convoy leaves a base, all Social Security numbers and blood types are handed in to the duty officer.
In the TOC, a report about Ganjigal had come in via the brigade Internet. A Special Forces team reported that thirty-two fighters were moving from Pakistan to reinforce Ganjigal. Half an hour later, the video feed from an unmanned aerial vehicle showed a man with a mortar tube on his back entering a known safe house, two kilometers north of Ganjigal village. Ten minutes later, four more men entered the same house.
Fabayo knew nothing of these movements; the TOC at Joyce had not mentioned them. Such sightings at night were frequent, and few turned out to be serious. Even so, one of the observations came with this note: “Their movement is too organized to be locals; they have a point man, security element and overwatch. Locals do not move like this. They are utilizing terrain, stopping under cover and hesitating at all open areas.”
In fact, Qari Zia Ur-Rahman, head of the Taliban in Kunar Province, had perfect intelligence a day ahead of our movement. He had thrown away his normal tactics, gathered all the forces he could muster, crossed over from Pakistan, and headed toward Ganjigal. He intended to stand and fight from inside the village. Twenty Taliban were already in the village; a fighter named Khadim had fifteen more, and Rahman had another fifteen. A leader named Faqir brought in twenty more and set up in five positions: two on the north side, two on the south side, and one in the middle. At 4:13 A.M., a group of fighters had stopped to pray on a hill two kilometers northeast of Ganjigal. They were seen by an eye in the sky, as were the movements of other men coming our way. Before dawn, they were in place in and around Ganjigal, a village so tough to attack that it had served as a major supply point in the war against the Russians.
Fabayo walked back to the advisor area. Neither Lt. Johnson nor I believed the small task force would roll on time. But we left the wire shortly after three in the morning, ten minutes late, which wasn’t bad.
On the way in, we talked about our plans for when we got back to the States. We came up with one super scheme: Lt. Johnson would volunteer to be the officer-in-charge of ROTC at a small college. Staff Sgt. Kenefick would be the senior NCO, handling personnel matters. He’d slip Doc Layton and me in as transfer students. The college might be a surf party school or a ski party
school—we went back and forth on that.
Under a bright moon and gentle wind, we rolled the two miles north to the jumping-off point. I was in the turret. Staff Sgt. Kenefick drove; Lt. Johnson sat opposite him in the commander’s seat, monitoring the radio. Doc Layton sat behind him. Hafez, sitting behind Staff Sgt. Kenefick, changed our mood.
“Ganjigal is a bad valley,” Hafez said. “Very bad valley.”
“Stop saying that, Hafez,” Staff Sgt. Kenefick said.
Everyone was irritable because the team had been broken up. It felt unlucky.
“Meyer, it’s your bad,” Johnson said. “If you learned how to kiss ass, or at least not kick people in the ass, you’d be coming with us. But no, that’s not your style. So stay behind with the trucks and sip chai. See if we care.”
“Sir, don’t bust my balls. I’ll drive in to get you if your feet get sore.”
I reminded them of my plan with Rodriguez-Chavez.
“Hot Rod drives like he’s in a rodeo,” I said. “He can get up that wash. If shit happens, be ready to move.”
We were heading toward Little Big Horn.
Chapter 8
INTO THE VALLEY
With lights off, we drove slowly a mile and a half up the dirt track into the valley—half a league, in British military parlance. From there, it would be that distance again, but on foot.
The jumping-off point was called the ORP, or the objective release point. Our convoy consisted of three passenger trucks, six Ford Ranger pickups with open backs, and four armored Humvees. The soldiers hopped out, leaving the thirteen vehicles parked in a long row on the narrow road. It would be hard to get those vehicles out of the way in a hurry, I thought, and hard to get anyone out for medical help. Not a great place to stop, considering there were plenty of wide spots in the dry riverbed.
“Lieutenant,” I said to Lt. Johnson, “if we have an emergency medevac, this will be a cluster fuck.”
He took Fabayo aside, and a few minutes later we moved the trucks off the track. While the vehicles were repositioned, Staff Sgt. Kenefick took me aside.
“Make sure you monitor the net,” he said. “I want you listening up.”
“If the shit hits the fan,” I replied, “get down to the wash. We’ll pick you up.”
The patrol formed up single file. Capt. Kaplan, the intelligence officer, took off separately with a small group to set up an observation post on the southern ridge, to our right. Higher up on the same ridge an Army scout-sniper team had already settled in. A third observation team cut left across the rocky wash to establish a post on the northern ridge, a half-mile away.
Gunny Johnson walked up to join my team. It was still dark, but we could see each other under the stars and moon. He knew how I was feeling. He was carrying our 240. Well, the machine gun wasn’t complicated to use. Besides, he’d never have to fire it.
Team Monti and our Afghan platoon—the best of them—set off in the lead. Dodd Ali scrambled by me to take point ahead of Gunny. He grinned and gave me a little wave. When Lt. Johnson walked by, he gave me a fist pump. Hafez, busy adjusting his pair of radios, ignored me.
Terrific, I thought, everyone’s excited to be going in, and I’m stuck in the rear.
Maj. Williams then joined the column with his Command Group, which included 2nd Lt. Fabayo, First Sgt. Garza, Maj. Talib, and an American reporter I hadn’t met. The tactical command party (TCP) was the mobile headquarters for the operation. In this instance, it was a few men on foot. Capt. Swenson and his SNCO, Sgt. Ken Westbrook, walked behind the Command Group. Lights in the village more than a mile uphill to the east were still twinkling from the power of the little hamlet’s diesel generator.
The Askars remaining with the trucks lit up cigarettes and drank some water. It was Ramadan, so there’d be no eating or drinking once the sun came up. Most were fairly religious, praying five times a day. The night before, I had urged them to hydrate by drinking at least five bottles of water. By noon, some would be sucking pebbles to take their minds off their thirst.
Staff Sgt. Rodriguez-Chavez and I sat on the hood of my Humvee, listening as the last gravel crunch of the column’s march faded out. A few minutes later, all the lights in the village went out at the same time. Someone had pulled the switch.
Swenson’s border police turned to Hafez when the lights went out.
“Dushmen!” they said. “We must turn back!”
I listened as Johnson sent a warning over the advisor radio net, while the platoon stopped briefly for morning prayers.
All right, I thought. Now the Command Party knows there’s no surprise. They’ll call up the gun trucks.
“Get ready to roll, Rod,” I said.
But no, the patrol proceeded toward the village, with some of the border police drifting back to the rear of the column. They weren’t trained or equipped for firefights.
A few minutes later, the advisors climbing to the northern overlook radioed that flashlights were winking on and off in the hills to their east, closer to Ganjigal.
Just before five in the morning, Rod and I heard gravel crunching on the trail: men, women, children, sheep, and goats suddenly hurried by our trucks, heading out of the valley. Pre-dawn always brought the first singsong call to prayer, followed by people scurrying about. This morning, I had heard no high-pitched mullah, and these people were not heading to market, they were running away.
I stood in the middle of the path and blocked the departure of a teenager and a tall, older man with a full beard, wearing the cleanest white man-dress I had ever seen.
“Salaam,” I said, placing my right hand over my heart in the traditional sign of respect toward an elder. “Singay?”—what’s going on?
Refusing to look at me, the man clicked away at the string of worry beads in his hands. When I tried to shake hands, he ignored me. I was surprised by the open insult. Even when they don’t like you, Afghans shake hands, just as Americans do. The teenager smirked. I stepped aside and they strode past.
“What you think, Homey?” Rod asked.
“This sucks,” I replied.
Team Monti and the lead platoon had climbed up a series of terrace walls and were entering the outskirts of South Ganjigal as dawn broke. They spread widely apart in the open terrain. Behind them came Majors Talib and Williams, 1st Sgt. Garza, and 2nd Lt. Fabayo. A bit farther back, Swenson was walking with some police, keeping within shouting distance of the others.
As Lt. Johnson approached the first row of houses, he radioed back to Garza that he and Lt. Rhula were heading toward the house of an imam, one of the village elders. Seconds later, an RPG streaked in from the east, followed by a burst from a PKM, the Russian-made machine gun that shoots a hefty 7.62-millimeter cartridge. It started tearing up the ground and the adobe walls. As the men took cover among the terrace walls, more PKM fire came from the northeast, joined by AKs at closer range.
Enemy fighters were crouched inside the houses and below the windows of the schoolhouse on the southern ridge. They were hiding in the alleyways and dug in behind the stone terrace walls to the east. They had a dozen fixed positions and were shooting downhill with the sun behind them.
* * *
I heard the shooting echoing through the valley, ragged at first and subsiding momentarily while magazines were reloaded. Then the volume increased, with mortar and RPG explosions mixed in. The advisor net crackled with voices stepping over each other. Fifteen Marines sharing one frequency were trying to radio their positions and the locations of the enemy.
Bedlam isn’t unusual in the first seconds of an attack. When dushmen open fire, they usually rip through several magazines while our guys go flat and scramble for position. Within minutes, the troops normally settle down, the senior man controls radio traffic, the forward observer calls in artillery and helicopters, and the enemy rate of fire slackens. The dushmen then scamper over the ridges and, ten minutes later, quiet descends.
Not this time. I waited for the firing to die down, but it d
idn’t. The staccato chaos of RPG explosions, PKM machine guns, AKs, and M16s increased. I heard the report of a recoilless rifle—basically, a 100-pound, shoulder- or tripod-mounted cannon and a sure sign of a planned ambush, as the dushmen don’t lug that over the hills for exercise. Then I heard the crump-crump of their mortar shells.
There was a wild babble of voices on the command radio—advisors yelling at each other to clear the net. No one was taking charge. There was no central command. I was pacing around, frustrated at being out of the fight and not being able to help.
Gunny Chad Lee Miller, approaching his observation position high on the north ridge, saw an enemy strongpoint on a plateau only three hundred meters to his east. The enemy soldiers were launching rounds from a mortar tube while others, inside a bunker there, were firing a DSHKA, a massive Russian antiaircraft gun that sounds like a jackhammer hitting a manhole cover.
Staff Sgt. Guillermo Valadez, another advisor, and six Askars were on a ledge about fifty meters below Miller. They also were facing east, looking directly at the same enemy. Soon both ridgelines were sparkling with fire, as the Askars and dushmen engaged each other with rocket-propelled grenades. Smoke and shrapnel filled the air.
Across the narrow valley on the south ridge, Capt. Ray Kaplan had trudged up to his observation position, winded by the steep climb and amazed by the stamina of Cpl. Steven Norman, a slight but tough Marine lugging a 240 machine gun and several belts of ammo.
Seconds after the ambush began, they were pinned down by PKM fire from the east. Cpl. Norman set up his gun and returned fire, killing the enemy gunner.
The first instinct of the Askars with Kaplan was to run downhill into the valley. Kaplan shouted them back into position.
It was a good thing, because a swarm of dushmen were maneuvering up the hill to overrun them.
Kaplan watched as one dushmen got to his feet to make a rush. Cpl. Norman stitched him squarely and he tumbled downhill. That knocked some enthusiasm out of the others. Kaplan seized the moment, ordering his Askars to spread out and find cover, facing northeast, the direction of the main ground assault. For the next hour, the Askars, Kaplan, and Cpl. Norman would duel with PKM and AK gunners.
