Sometimes their small-arms fire or a single round from B-10 recoilless rifle would be concentrated in the east; then all of a sudden, a bunch of RPGs would erupt from the Switchbacks, to the west. Each attack gave them a better understanding of our defensive capabilities on the perimeter, and helped them determine where they could put down the most effective fire when they finally decided to throw the kitchen sink at us.
• • •
DURING THE LULLS between those attacks, life at Keating was still no picnic. The two frontline platoons at the main outpost were responsible for force protection, which was a fancy term for standing guard, and they traded this duty back and forth every seven days. During the week when your platoon was on guard, you and your guys were responsible for manning all five main battle positions (the front gates and our quartet of heavily armed Humvees) for two-hour stretches, twenty-four hours a day, without any letup. When we came under attack, the number of battle positions that needed to be manned would double.
This would have been difficult enough on its own. But our security challenges were made considerably more complicated by the number of local Afghans who were inside the post.
Odd as it may sound, a kind of symbiosis had evolved between us and the local people who lived in a handful of small villages that lay within a half day’s walk of Keating, despite the fact that almost all of those villages were also supplying fighters to the Taliban. Many of the residents were sympathetic to the insurgents, even if they were not actually Taliban themselves. At the same time, they were desperately poor and we provided a much-needed source of income, which is why lots of these folks were only too happy to take on construction work and other tasks that we needed help with. This gave rise to a rather bizarre arrangement. Each morning, a parade of Afghans filed into the outpost through our broken front gate. Every night just before dusk, they filed back out again and returned to their homes.
This meant that on most days Keating’s interior played host to a colorful population of locals. Most of them hung out in what we called the Haji Shop, a closet-sized building wedged into one of the Hesco walls just a few steps from our ammunition depot. The shop was run by a thin man with a hardened look about him, whom we called John Deere because of the baseball cap he always wore. He kept the place stocked with terrible cigarettes, cheap T-shirts emblazoned with the Afghanistan flag and the words AFGHAN COMMANDO (which all the ANA soldiers wore), and Boom Booms, a knockoff energy drink that tasted like Smarties, and that a lot of my guys thought was actually pretty good. John Deere, who was also in charge of the Afghan Security Guards who manned the checkpoint at the front gate, lived inside the store, which he had accessorized with a couch and a television set.
On any given morning, the Haji Shop would draw a crowd of Afghan regulars who gathered to guzzle tea, banter, and hang out. Many of these men were distinctive enough that we assigned them nicknames like Sugar Man, the Snitch, and the Midget. There was an uncharacteristically aggressive Afghan National Army soldier who wanted to kill the Taliban so badly that sometimes he would get up and fire his rockets at night. We dubbed him RPG Guy. Another Afghan soldier preferred to park himself at the front gate, where he would laugh and chuckle all day long. He was so genuinely nice that most of my soldiers didn’t have the heart to deny him permission to sit inside our guard truck, even though his eyes were perpetually bloodshot and he reeked of cannabis, which grew all around the outpost. We called him Bong Water. And finally, there was Ron Jeremy, a short, pudgy Afghan with exceptionally hairy features who bore a remarkable resemblance to the hedgehog-like porn star. He was supposed to be our main interpreter, but we were rarely able to use him effectively because although he was fluent in Pashto, he didn’t speak a word of Nuristani.
In some ways, these characters provided a much-needed diversion from the drudgery of our routine. In other ways, they were a source of constant irritation and concern.
Jones, who often pulled guard duty in the tower that loomed above the front gate, couldn’t stand most of the Afghan Army soldiers, because they were so undisciplined and apathetic. Another thing that bothered him was the way that John Deere’s security guards, who ran their checkpoint in the shadow of his machine gun, would allow women in burkas to waltz blithely through the gate without ever bothering to question them.
“Hey, search that lady—she’s got some of the hairiest damn feet I’ve ever seen in my life!” Jones would yell down from the tower as a figure in a blue-and-black burka floated past. “Will somebody please ask that bitch a question?!”
This would draw no response whatsoever. As the guards placidly took another hit of cannabis or folded their arms and resumed their naps, Jones would throw his arms up in disgust and wave.
“Well, there goes the Taliban!” he’d call out plaintively. “See you later—thanks for dropping by!”
• • •
CEASELESS VIGILANCE in the face of such cartoonish apathy from our Afghan allies, combined with never being able to sleep for more than two hours at a time, was brutally draining on the men. Within the first month, things had gotten so bad that me and the rest of Red’s leadership quietly started breaking the rules and allowing our guys four hours of sleep during the weeks when we were pulling security. But even the seven-day breaks when we traded off with Blue or White Platoon didn’t afford much relief. If we weren’t on guard duty we were sending patrols out beyond the wire almost every day in order to perform recon and to try to spot infiltration.
During these ventures, which we referred to as “nature walks,” each man hauled more than sixty pounds of gear, plus his weapons and ammo. The physical demands of moving up and down steep terrain with that much weight were intensely unpleasant. But if nothing else, these outings did expose us to the beauty of our surroundings.
Even though Nuristan was wedged inside a country ravaged by thirty years of uninterrupted war and was home to God only knew how many millions of unexploded land mines, not to mention a traumatized population, it was about as close to paradise as any of us had ever seen. At almost every turn, we were greeted with another exquisite view. High above, the mountains with their caps of snow glistened in the sunlight against the hard, blue sky. Far below, the streams tumbled along the valley floor, laden with bluish glacial silt. And everywhere in between lay a lush, emerald-green carpet of vegetation on the east- and north-facing slopes, while the more arid south- and west-facing slopes were adorned with desert shrubs and outcroppings of muted orange rock, which, early in the morning and late in the afternoon, looked as if it had been dipped in molten gold. Not far from the mortar pit, there was even a waterfall cascading down through a section of gray stones and surrounded by a grove of ancient, twisted trees.
In a word, the place was gorgeous. Yet even as we remarked that it reminded us of Colorado’s Rocky Mountain National Park, we never forgot that we were outsiders and that this place did not welcome our presence.
In more ways than we could count, that hostility was reflected not only in the land itself but also in the things that flourished there. You couldn’t place your hand on a single surface without getting a fistful of barbs, because there were thorns everywhere. Each plant or tree seemed armed with spikes or claws—and the same was true of the wild creatures. All along the slopes of the mountains were enormous porcupines, larger than dogs with quills to match, and ill-tempered bands of monkeys that would perch on the cliffs and pelt us with rocks as we shuffled past. What was truly freaky, however, were the insects.
There was a type of black ant that that had legs like those of a spider. They could move so fast that if you sat down near a cluster of them while you were on patrol, they would swarm all over you. We couldn’t find them listed in any book, so we called them “crack ants.” As for the actual spiders, they were enormous, with yellow-gray bodies the size of hot dogs that looked big enough to kill and eat birds. We couldn’t find any references to them either, so we dubbed them “vomit spiders,�
�� and when we were bored, we would place one of them in a coffee can together with a scorpion and watch them battle each other to the death.
There were plenty of other creatures too. Snakes that had horns coming out their heads. Giant prehistoric-looking lizards with forked tongues and sharp claws. And a mysterious creature that only showed up on our surveillance system at night as it ghosted through the forest, and that Jonesie was convinced was a snow leopard, although none of us believed him.
As unnerving as all of that was, what made these nature walks most disturbing was that when we were out on patrol, we finally got a bird’s-eye view of just how vulnerable we were. You’d be shuffling along a stretch of ridgeline somewhere up by the Diving Board or the Switchbacks or the North Face, and suddenly you’d gaze down at the outpost and realize just how many places there were, right there, from which to hide and shoot. To confirm that, you’d carefully raise your weapon and look through your scope down at the base, and then whistle softly to yourself.
Damn, you’d say, they could do some real damage from here . . .
Then you’d walk a hundred yards away, or maybe just fifty feet, then stop and stare through your scope again.
Jesus, you’d murmur. This spot’s even better than the last.
But the creepiest thing of all, by far—the thing that messed with our minds more than the crack ants and the vomit spiders, more than the rock-throwing monkeys or the imaginary sniper posts—was when we’d stumble across a little patch of matted-down grass, an area that was maybe littered with one or two wrappers from Afghan candy bars, and you could tell someone had been there, looking down on us through the scope of their own weapon, drawing the same conclusions that we had, and making note of it all.
• • •
IN BETWEEN GUARD DUTY and going out on patrol, we were responsible for an endless range of chores that ran the gamut, from unloading the Chinooks and resupplying the battle positions with ammo to rounding up all the garbage in camp and hauling it to the burn pit, a shallow hole that was on the far western side of the camp.
The burn pit was continuously smoldering; its fires never seemed to go out. Sometimes, it seemed like you would go up there and look in and see the same piece of trash that had been burning for weeks. And there were several Afghan guys hanging out there all the time because that’s where they kept their stash of porn magazines. They had a bench to sit on, and they had their own umbrella. We envied those guys greatly, not just because of their quality porn and their leisure time but also because they never seemed to get shot at, which was something that happened to us pretty much every time one of us went up there.
We also got shot at when we went to get water, which we started having to do multiple times a day after Kirk took out the camp’s water-delivery system one afternoon when he tossed a hand grenade and accidentally hit the pipe about ten yards beyond the wire. From that point on, we had to send one of the junior guys like Mace or Davidson or Gregory out to the river just beyond the front gate, where he would fill up two plastic five-gallon buckets in which the fuel had been delivered, haul them back, and then return for more. The Taliban had so much fun shooting at the water guy that we had to establish two-man teams so that one guy could carry the water and the other guy could return fire. When it was hot and everybody was thirsty, they would schlep water all day long.
As unpleasant as that was, however, it couldn’t hold a candle to the most unpleasant chore of all, which was servicing the latrines.
The “shitter,” as we called it, was a small shed fashioned from cinder blocks that sat on an open stretch of ground about 150 feet from our shower trailer. Inside, there were plywood benches running along both walls, each of which featured a row of six holes with its own plastic toilet seat and a green-and-blue privacy curtain that never closed all the way except for one, which was obviously the choice stall. (The worst seat was the second one in on the right side, which had a curtain no bigger than a beach towel, which meant that you gave everyone a lookie-loo.) There was also one open hole, which was used by the Afghan security guards and laborers, who preferred to squat rather than sit.
Underneath each of the holes was an oil drum that had been cut in half with an acetylene torch, which would collect whatever fell into it. The bottom of the building was open so that the drums could be pulled out and the contents upended into a large metal barrel, a duty that fell to whichever of the lower enlisted guys happened to be pissing off me and the other sergeants the most. Once all the drums had been emptied, the boys on the burn detail would then douse the barrel with jet fuel and toss in a match.
It sounds simple enough. But if you just stood there and watched it burn, the flames would incinerate only the top layer inside the barrel. So it was necessary to get a c-wire post—a metal fence post used to support the concertina wire that we strung around the perimeter of camp—and vigorously stir the contents of the barrel while smoke from the aviation fuel and burning particles of poo wafted up into your face.
This process could easily take as long as three hours, although it was accelerated somewhat if you tossed in a couple of “charges,” which were packets of explosives that we used to increase the distance of a mortar round by giving it an extra boost. When the mortar guys were willing to part with a few chargers, the guys on the shitter detail would fling them with great satisfaction.
“We’re such badasses,” Koppes used to brag, talking about Red Platoon, “that we even bring the fight to the poo cans.”
Even with the charges, however, latrine duty was still a horrible experience. The smell alone was enough to make you want to throw up. Worse, you could spend the better part of an afternoon incinerating an entire drum of poo, only to discover that at the end of it there were still kernels of corn lurking at the bottom of the burn barrel. (Which is the reason why you never wanted to burn shit if corn had been served for dinner the night before.)
It was amazing to me that the younger guys—especially Koppes and Mace and Jones—somehow found a way to make all of that fun. They told themselves that at least they were mostly burning American feces rather than Afghan feces, and that this made all the difference. And they tried not to think about the fact that while they were standing in hundred-degree heat being coated with poo goo, the rest of the platoon was inside the barracks napping or playing Call of Duty on the Xbox.
• • •
MOST OF THE BUILDINGS at Keating were windowless, tin-roofed cubes that had been cobbled together from stacks of rocks and plywood, then reinforced with sandbags—which meant that from June through August, they basically functioned like saunas. Despite the oppressive heat, we had to spend almost all of our downtime indoors, thanks to the fact that virtually every square inch of the outpost was visible from the surrounding hills. There were no football or volleyball games, no relaxation of any kind in the open. If we stepped outside for any reason—to walk to the shed that housed the phones to call home, to use the piss tubes or the latrines—whatever respite we might have felt from the heat indoors was negated by our full “battle rattle,” almost thirty pounds of ceramic armor and Kevlar. Wearing armor was mandatory any time we were outside or on the move, so we were continuously drenched in our own sweat—which didn’t help our ongoing odor problems.
Stephan Mace bringing the fight to the poo cans
Thanks to a series of intractable glitches with the power generator and the water pump, we were lucky to get a shower once a week. Before too long, we were holding competitions to see who could build up the most impressive stink. (Ryan Willson, a private who was unmemorable in pretty much every other respect, was the undisputed champion when it came to BO.)
When we weren’t sleeping or on patrol, life during our downtime could become almost unbearably dull. To pass the hours, we played endless rounds of Hearts and Spades, and the Xbox was in constant rotation. Some of the guys also flung themselves heavily into fitness by going to the “gym,” a ten-f
oot-by-twelve-foot room located above Headquarters Platoon’s barracks that was equipped with a StairMaster, a treadmill, assorted dumbbells, and a broken Bowflex. The regular workout crew included Kirk and Gallegos, plus Daniel Rodriguez and Kevin Thomson, who were part of the gun crew in our mortar pit. (Thomson, a bear of a man who was extremely quiet and deeply fond of smoking weed, had developed a weight problem and was constantly logging time on the treadmill in an effort to shed some pounds.) Mace often showed up too, although he concentrated exclusively on doing curls in order to beef up his biceps in the hopes that his huge guns, together with the effects of the ExtenZe he was taking, would impress the ladies when he went home on leave in September.
By the middle of the summer, Kirk and Gallegos had gotten so fixated on bulking up that they were working out twice a day while pumping themselves full of bodybuilding supplements. The products they were ingesting—N.O.-Xplode, creatine powder, and whey protein—made them so gassy that they farted pretty much continuously, filling the air with noxious fumes.
Excessive flatulence might have presented a problem in the dining hall or the barracks, except for two things. Because at least one RPG had already gone through the roof of the chow hall and taken out the big-screen TV, we almost never ate or hung out there. Instead, we preferred to bring our meals over to our barracks building, which was already so disgusting that some additional cheese cutting had no impact whatsoever.
In addition to a pungent, nostril-clinging stink that featured a layered mix of corn chips, body funk, and ass, Red’s barracks was also infested with fleas. The insects had established themselves so firmly that nothing could get rid of them. Despite that we all wore flea collars around our ankles and wrists, and that we’d managed to fly in a pest-control team (they left in disgust), each of us had flea bites all over our bodies.
Red Platoon Page 8
