by Brandon Webb
Later, in the course of interrogating our prisoners, we learned that the HVT we were there to capture was gone by the time we arrived. We’d missed him by one day. Still, we had gotten some good intelligence and taken down a significant cache of weapons, and the raid was considered a success overall.
As we regrouped, Cassidy approached me and said, “Listen, the Germans are asking for our assistance. Can you and Osman help them out with something? I trust you guys.”
Apparently the Germans had underestimated the terrain and inserted with too much gear. Once they were on the ground, they had decided to stash their big packs as they approached the village. I shook my head. Just like our recon mission to Zhawar Kili all over again: going in too heavy. This was something we’d had to learn the hard way, and the Germans were learning it now, too.
“They’re asking if an element from our team can go with one of their guys to retrieve those bags before we exfil.”
The sun was already coming up, and we were going out into uncharted territory. I wasn’t crazy about this idea, but what could I say? Three of us—Osman, this crazy German guy, Dieter, and I—formed up and commandeered a pickup truck from one of the locals. The plan was simple: Go get everyone’s kit and bring it back, fast. We hopped into our “borrowed” truck and took off, Dieter at the wheel.
Within minutes we ran into two Afghan guys with guns. Osman and I hopped out and took them down at gunpoint, zip-tied them, threw them in back of the truck, kept going. We came up over the crest of the mountain, headed for where our KSK buddies had all stashed the gear, and—
“Oh, no,” I said.
“Scheisse,” murmured Dieter.
“Fuck!” was Osman’s comment.
There were four or five Afghans crawling all over the site, looting the Germans’ packs like Sunday afternoon yard sale scavengers. We yanked the truck to a stop, got out, and headed down the ridge toward the scene. The looters weren’t armed and didn’t seem especially dangerous, just a nuisance. We shooed them away and started loading ourselves up with gear. There was no way we’d be able to bring the truck down here into this ravine, so we’d need to haul everything up to the road, maybe 20 feet away and up a significant incline. There were at least forty packs there in the ravine. At four per person, we could carry at most a dozen packs at once between the three of us, so this was going to take a good four trips back and forth. We started hauling.
We got one load to the truck, then came back for load number two, which we hauled up, then repeated the process for load number three, then headed back into the ravine for the last load.
Suddenly we realized we were not alone.
Word had evidently spread to another nearby village that there were some Americans here. Within ten minutes there was a mob there on the road watching us. At least fifty guys, clearly pissed off. With guns. They didn’t appear to know exactly what was going on, but whatever it was, they weren’t happy about it. Why were we hauling all these packs out of this ravine? And why were two of their compatriots hog-tied in the back of our truck?
One guy who seemed he might be the elder of the group started screaming at us in Pashtun. None of us knew what the hell he was saying. We stood there in the midst of the last batch of packs, trying to figure out what our next move was. They were yards away now, encircling us, and then we were completely surrounded. A bunch of them were still up on the road, and it wasn’t hard to see that at any moment one of them would commandeer our vehicle, free the two in back, and drive the thing the hell out of there, leaving us stranded out here. That is, if they didn’t shoot us first.
I glanced at Osman, then at Dieter. Wonderful, I thought, and I could see Dieter thinking it too. Wunderbar. Not only were we outnumbered by something like twenty to one, which is not the kind of odds we like to have, but we also had the low ground. Perfect. All we had to do was get these dozen heavy packs up the ravine and into our truck and drive out of there. Through a mob of fifty or sixty angry, armed, screaming Afghan mountain men.
“Okay, guys,” I said, “I think we need to get aggressive with these dudes if we’re going to get the fuck out of here.”
Nuts, but what other choice did we have?
We started brandishing our weapons at them, shouting and gesturing at our hand grenades, yelling back at them, knowing they wouldn’t understand a word of English or German, and knowing that it didn’t matter. There is the language of words, sentences, and syntax—and then there is the communication of angry apes in the jungle grunting and bellowing at each other. We may have had an impenetrable language barrier, but they got our message very clearly. They understood very well what we wanted, and what we intended to do about it.
And they were not about to back down.
By now they were on us, screaming in our faces, physically pushing us. The charge in the air was only intensifying. We figured whoever shot off their weapons first would gain the psychological advantage. Time to start shooting.
We fired off a few rounds into the air to show we were serious. It had no effect. We targeted a few of the guys closest to us and fired directly into the ground, inches from their feet, to show that we were really serious. Somebody’s gonna get dead if you fuckers don’t back off.
That got their attention. They backed off—just a little, but enough to get our foot in the door. We grabbed those dozen packs and hauled them up into that truck faster than I would have thought humanly possible and then backed that truck out of there like a videotape on fast rewind. We nearly ran over a few of them on our way out.
We made it back to the main group, hoping we hadn’t held up the team from extracting, only to learn that the squad of helos that was coming out to get us had been delayed. We would have to wait until nightfall, still many hours away. Nightfall finally arrived, and word came that the helos were delayed some more. We continued to wait, along with our prisoners and our captured intel.
It was probably no more than four hours, but it was so unbelievably, mind-bogglingly cold there in the January snow at Prata Ghar that it felt like an eternity. We had been cold at Zhawar Kili. I’d been cold in survival and resistance training, cold in the land nav portions of BUD/S. Never in my life had I been as bone-numbingly cold as we were here. I remembered Instructor Shoulin in BUD/S saying, “Cold as you are now, trust me, you’ll be colder in the teams.” We would say, “Yeah, right, whatever.” Shit, though, he was right. I was truly freezing my nuts off.
An hour or two after sundown, everyone gradually grew silent. It was like that grueling night on the beach of San Clemente Island in BUD/S: no more bitching and complaining, just silent suffering. That’s when you know things are really bad, when nobody even talks.
And here was the great irony of it: When we got back to Kandahar the next day, there was a surprise waiting for us. Our shipment of cold-weather gear had finally arrived. We were so happy to see that big crate that we didn’t even let ourselves think about the fact that it had been sitting here unopened and unused at the very moment that we were freezing nearly to death up north the night before. So what. We would suffer no more—it was here!
We hungrily tore open the box. I reached in and grabbed at the corner of what was obviously a down sleeping bag. “Oh, man…” This was great! I yanked it out of the box, pulled it out of its case, and rolled it out on the floor—and then stared at it, trying to change what I was seeing by sheer force of will.
The thing couldn’t have been longer than three and a half feet. And no wonder. It was a sleeping bag made for a child.
I grabbed it and looked it over. Sure enough: ON SALE! There was the frigging REI company sale tag. We knew immediately what had happened: classic military bureaucratic supply thinking. FUBAR. We had submitted a detailed request list all specced with exactly what kind of gear we needed, but the people in supply had decided to save money, so they went out to REI and dug through the sale bin, doing what they could to match up everything on our list with whatever they could find there at better prices.
The whole box was filled with garbage like that. Off-size shoes, off-size gloves. It was all junk, completely useless. We were so irate we all wanted to kill somebody.
Chief Dye fired off an e-mail directly to the team’s commanding officer, Captain Adam Curtis. I don’t remember the body of the text, but I do remember that it wouldn’t have made it through the Motion Picture Association of America’s criteria for a PG-rated film, and I recall Chief Dye’s closing line:
“Thank you very fucking much, sir, Happy Fucking New Year, enjoy your fucking hot egg nog. Chief Chris Dye, Freezing in Afghanistan.”
Not long after Chris dispatched his e-mail, another shipment of cold-weather gear arrived, and this time they had spared no expense.
* * *
A few nights after we got back from the mission to Prata Ghar, we had a party to celebrate the successful collaboration of German and American forces. Since the Germans were the only ones on the base with beer, they played host.
This would be the first of a series. Over the following weeks it became commonplace to hear a bunch of SEALs leaving our compound saying, “Hey, we’ll be back, we have to go debrief with the Germans.” We had a number of parties with the Germans after that first mission, the last of which was quite memorable—although not in a happy sense.
We also went on additional joint missions with the Germans, including one that took us high up in the mountains to Ahmed Kheyl, on the Pakistan border north of Zhawar Kili, to explore another complex of caves. This place was high above the snow line, so we were going to insert by helo and trudge up there on snowshoes to check these caves out. All the intel said it was a fairly benign environment.
Once again, we flew up to Bagram the day before the op and stayed there overnight, departing early the next morning on a few Sikorsky H-53s. This is a big-ass helicopter, much louder than the CH-47, and it puts out such a large rotor wash that you can’t really use it for targeted search-and-rescue missions. Stealth was not an important element here, as we were going to be inserting at a friendly checkpoint.
They dropped us off right before sunup, and we immediately sank 3 or 4 feet into the snow. We set a quick perimeter and affixed our snowshoes. This was the first time I’d ever been on snowshoes. I loved it.
We hoofed up to our checkpoint and checked in with the commander there. This was my first sight of a blond-haired, green-eyed Afghan. Despite his traditional Afghan clothes and hat, with his cheap shades and blond beard he could have easily passed for an American. I thought it must be the Russian influence. I was wrong. In fact, I later learned, there are a lot of Caucasian, blond-haired, green- and blue-eyed Afghans that trace back to an invasion of Europeans led by Alexander the Great. These guys had been defending their turf for a long time.
We hiked up another 3,000 or 4,000 feet in elevation and confirmed the location of the entrance to the caves. It was a big complex, and we explored pretty much all of it. In retrospect, I think of this as a low-key mission, since the intel turned out to be correct and the place was more or less abandoned. But we couldn’t be sure of this going in. When you spend hours creeping through thousands of yards of dimly-lit caves and tunnels known to be host to a terrorist enclave, never knowing what you’ll find around the next corner (or what will find you), it burns an awful lot of adrenaline.
After we had cleared all the caves, we prepared to hike back down again. I stood and looked out over the valley. Perched up there on that mountain, we could see for miles and miles—a hundred at least. Everything was silent except for the constant flux of the wind wafting through the mountains and crags. It was breathtaking. The snow conditions were unbelievable. This would make a great place for a ski resort, I thought. That is, except for the part about the constant warfare.
I thought about everything I’d seen in this place. I’d been in Afghanistan now for more than two months, but this location right here seemed to exemplify the place. This was really harsh terrain, extreme altitude, incredibly steep, and incredibly rocky. The ultimate natural impregnable fortress. We were fighting an enemy in an environment where they had the advantage of having been here for generations and generations, back to Alexander the Great and doubtless beyond that. Then it hit me: You can throw all the technology you want at this place—Predator drones, B52s dropping JDAMs, even teams of the finest Special Operations troops in the world—and they’ll just laugh at you. Just ask the Brits and the Soviets. You can’t win here.
I mentioned our parties with the Germans. Two were especially worth noting, and the first of those occurred shortly after our snowshoe trek up to the Ahmed Kheyl cave complex.
The night we went over for this particular shindig, the Germans had already been hitting it pretty hard by the time we got there. As you’ve no doubt gathered by now, SEALs tend to be a pretty high-voltage, hard-partying bunch. But those KSK guys? They could drink.
We arrived to find they had set up a little tent where they were serving the beer. The stereo was turned up loud, and they were singing and marching in circles to the music. Something interesting was going on, but we weren’t sure quite what. We stood there watching them. We couldn’t understand the music’s lyrics and had no idea what the context was.
Major Mike spotted us and headed in our direction. He had heard about our showdown with the angry Afghan mob, and as a result Osman and I had sort of a special standing with these guys, Major Mike in particular. He came over next to me, put his arm around my shoulder, and said, “Hey, please do not be offended by this, I just want you guys to know what this is all about.” He proceeded to tell me that a lot of his guys had grandfathers who had served in World War II, and they were very proud of the fact that their ancestors had fought to the death. During those final war years in the mid-1940s, quite a few soldiers in the German army had “gone missing”—in other words, they had deserted and fled. Most of these KSK guys had family members who would never quit and had fought to the end, and they were proud of them.
As he was explaining this we realized what it was we were listening to. These were patriotic German songs from World War II. This was their war music.
By this time all the Americans had gathered around the two of us, listening to what Major Mike was telling me, while all these Germans went on singing and marching to their World War II songs. It was hypnotic.
“Listen,” said Major Mike, “if you find any of this in poor taste, please let us know. But we’re proud of our heritage. Please understand, we are not at all proud of the Nazi story. The atrocities, it was terrible, all of that should never have happened. Our ancestors, though, all they wanted was to be good soldiers, to fight for their country, to be men of honor—no different than other soldiers.
“In Germany today,” he went on quietly, “you can be arrested for drawing a swastika. It is quite taboo. You do not say the word ‘Nazi’ in public. We all know how horrendous it was, the same as you. But our grandfathers were our grandfathers, and we are proud of them.”
It was a bizarre scene. I didn’t have any ancestors who fought in World War II, and I don’t have any Jewish relatives. But you know, I could have had. Any one of us there could have. And if we had, how would this scene have hit us? I glanced around at my guys watching our German brothers singing and marching. These were good men, men we’d fought with side by side; none of them had even been born yet when World War II was happening.
It’s a strange thing, war: men of honor, fighting for their country. We see ourselves as the good guys, fighting for a just cause. I know I certainly believed we were the good guys there in Afghanistan, and I still do today. Then again, these guys’ grandfathers had thought they were the good guys, too. I suppose we are all heroes of our own story.
* * *
In early March we were tasked to work with the Danish Frømandskorpset (Frogman Corps), their elite Special Operations team, to stand QRF watch (quick reaction force) in support of the action that was heating up in Zurmat, a district in Paktia, the province directly west of Khost, as part of
Operation Anaconda. The largest ground offensive since the battle of Tora Bora, Operation Anaconda was a massive effort to hem in and wipe out some key HVTs along with an estimated two hundred enemy combatants. That two hundred turned out to be more like a thousand.
Standing QRF is a high-stress, get-ready-and-wait proposition. You and all your gear are prepped to go, your magazines loaded with bullets, everyone in the fighting force and the helo crew ready to take off literally at a minute’s notice—and you stand ready like that for hours, days, however long your station lasts. It’s something like being a fireman on call at the fire station.
We flew up to Bagram Air Base with the Danes and settled in. Everywhere we went, every minute of the day, we carried radios with us. No matter what we were doing, whether we were sleeping, eating, at the gym, or on the toilet, we were always completely set up and prepared to drop everything and run.
At one point I turned to Osman and said, “Hey, where’re our maps? How come we don’t have any maps of this area?” We had big country maps, but they didn’t show a lot of detail. We were QRF for a very specific region, the district of Zurmat—and we had no area maps for it. Where the hell were they?
We had each been assigned as department head for a different job. If you were assigned to diving, your job was to keep track of all the diving gear. If you were air, you were the one who packed all the air equipment for the platoon, certified it, kept it up, and took care of it constantly. Every one of us had a different specific duty. Mine was air equipment. Who was in charge of intelligence?
Turned out, it was Doug. Damn! There was already a lot of tension between Doug and me because of the taped-out lights that never got taped out at Zhawar Kili. Now I was seriously pissed off. Frankly, intelligence was a pretty easy duty. There was no equipment to be in charge of. All you had to do was make sure we had the maps we needed and that the GPSs were programmed. It was an important job, but not a difficult one by any stretch.
