Poor Becker. I didn’t ask; I just got out.
I found out afterward that the gunny was with Doc Miclea in Iraq when a sniper shot the doc near his femoral artery. Doc had also gotten out of his vehicle back then. And he nearly bought the farm. The gunny didn’t want to see that happen to me. What the gunny—and others—still had to realize was that I wasn’t a VIP. I was an armed embedded member of the battalion. My life wasn’t worth any more than the young Marines around me. Their moms loved them too. Moreover, I was a former Marine officer. I could read the battle space. If the enemy thought as I did, we would have been the first in the convoy to die.
But the children were still playing there a without a care in the world.
We were stuck at that place for a long time. Eventually the second man, who didn’t smile with his eyes, said something to the older children. My perception was that he had told them to leave. One of them didn’t seem to want to go. The man changed the tone of his voice to one of authority, and they all got up. Ominously, the older kids took the little ones with them. They didn’t all jump up and leave at once. First the kids left. Then after a short time, the old man meandered away. Finally, the second man turned and walked away from us. Their manner of leaving struck me as staged.
Just prior to his turning a corner he glanced back and I saw it. The “felony look” was written all over his face. So it was universal after all.
Surprisingly, there are a lot of cell phones in Afghanistan. And the Taliban are known to use them extensively. I thought, “This guy is about to make a phone call.” If there was going to be an attack on our position, it would have come from inside the building I had checked earlier. I never took my eyes off that place.
My apprehension was growing minute by minute.
Luckily, we began to move. We were fortunate in more ways than one. We had overhead air cover provided by the 101st Army Airborne Division. Their Kiowa helicopter gunships had been our guardian angels all day. Just as we started to move, the Kiowas made contact with the enemy on the ground. I wondered if the Taliban were responding to the “felony look” guy and moving toward us when they were spotted. It’s very difficult to catch sight of people on the ground who don’t want to be seen—unless they are moving. The human eye picks up movement very quickly. I was fascinated by the sights and sounds of the Kiowas attacking their targets. Kiowa machine guns could plainly be heard as well as their rockets being launched.
The enemy wasn’t that far off.
The plan all along was for us to rest during daylight inside a small Canadian FOB astride the Ring Road and move out again after dark. The FOB was only a short distance away. After we pulled in, I was told that the Kiowas had taken hits. One had landed inside the FOB to inspect the aircraft but, deciding it was sound, the pilot took off again and rejoined the fray. I stood on the roof of a vehicle and watched. I could see the choppers going in for the kill and circling the target area. I could hear their machine guns chattering and watch their rockets swoosh toward the ground. I was told that several of the choppers had taken hits. Thankfully, there were no American casualties. The Kiowas must have done their work well, as we had no contact with the Taliban that day.
The Canadian FOB was typical of a small outpost. It was surrounded by Hesco barriers as walls. Hesco barriers were named for their inventor, I think. They were essentially huge, wide sandbags. They could stop anything the enemy might throw at them. The entire concept reminded me of the kind of temporary fortifications the Romans used to throw up whenever a legion stopped. Except the Romans did all the digging themselves, and we had machinery. The ground inside was covered with large gravel rocks. Since there were only a small number of soldiers stationed there, there were only a couple of buildings. Not nearly enough to get Golf Company out of the desert sun.
We parked our vehicles in rows inside the FOB, in baking sunlight, and there we stayed. We drank the water we had brought with us—it was all hot. And we tried to get some sleep. Forget about all that talk of heat back at KAF. The temperature there was delightful compared to what we experienced in the Canadian FOB. It was still only May but the sun was searing. The rocks radiated heat back up at us from the ground. Inside the vehicles the temperature was oven-like. Sleeping inside one of them was not an option.
Our gunny simply crawled under a vehicle and went to sleep on the gravel in the shade the truck provided. I decided that was a good idea, but with one modification. I unrolled my issue sleeping pad and lay on it. Back in my active duty days I had gotten used to napping whenever I could in the field, and I used my eight-point “soft cover” to block the light from my eyes. It also kept flies off part of my face.
The new-style cover is an improvement. The brim is slightly longer. The old one was just the right length to touch the tip of my nose as I breathed. That tickled and made it harder to sleep. The new one is perfect. The longer brim also kept flies off more of my face. I secretly made a deal with the flies. I wouldn’t swat at them as long as they stayed off my face. The rest of me was fair game. I would negotiate the same deal with many of their winged comrades in the coming months. Most of them cooperated.
As the sun began to set, its rays became horizontal and finally reached where I was sleeping under the vehicle. The heat woke me up. I don’t know how long I slept, but I awoke refreshed. I drank some more hot water and ate an MRE. I swear the gunny slept at the position of attention—rocks and all. He was a gunny. He just changed his batteries from time to time and he kept right on going.
Shortly before dark we pulled out and continued our trek toward Bastion. In the remaining daylight I looked out at Afghanistan and marveled at the utter desolation. That people would fight over this country seemed absurd. Some Afghans actually thought we were trying to conquer them and take their land. If they had ever seen so much as a picture of the United States they would have realized how ridiculous that idea was. You couldn’t pay an American to live where I was looking. The most desolate locale in the United States looked good compared to what I was witnessing. Soon enough it was dark again and there was nothing to see but taillights in front and headlights behind.
Then we came upon it. The strangest, most eerie sight I saw the whole time I was in Afghanistan. In total darkness we slowly, carefully, watchfully drove past two large burning trucks by the side of the road. The night was eerily silent. Naturally we suspected an ambush, but none developed. There was no sign of human life. There were bags and bags of rice and other foodstuffs scattered about on the ground. The mutely burning, abandoned trucks are etched into my memory. History repeats itself. It was as if we were a cavalry patrol apprehensively passing burning pioneer wagons in Apache country.
One truck afire might have been a vehicle malfunction, but two? I had to conclude that they had been destroyed by the Taliban. The fact that they left all that food, though, was perplexing. Maybe they just took what little they could carry and left the rest, bags torn open, strewn about—useless. I’ll never know.
I also wondered what had become of the drivers. The convoy didn’t stop to check.
As we continued on into the second night, fatigue really began to set in. I was feeling it and I wasn’t even driving. Becker had been doing all the driving since we left KAF. The stop-and-go stuff was understandable and unavoidable. It was frustrating and fatiguing all the same. The sooner we reached Bastion, the sooner we could get out of these cramped vehicles and get some proper sleep. The inevitable occurred. During one long stop all four of us fell asleep. I came to when the glare of headlights reflected off the driver’s-side mirror right into my face. It was the vehicle behind us coming up to see what was wrong. A look through the windshield told the story: the taillights of the vehicle to our front were a long way off.
I yelled at the top of my lungs, “WAKE UP!” But Becker was out cold. I had to smack him hard on the back of his Kevlar helmet to bring him to—an action he didn’t particularly appreciate at the time
. We caught up and stayed awake for the remainder of the trip. I later heard at Bastion that people falling asleep during the long stops was commonplace.
The sun rose and we were still driving. Finally, we turned off the Ring Road onto an obviously well-traveled sand road surrounded by miles of open, barren desert. That was comforting, as it would be unlikely that anyone in our convoy would trigger an IED. The dirt road led directly to Bastion. As soon as we had parked our vehicles and squared away our gear, we were taken to a large open air-conditioned dome-shaped building loaded with bunk beds. The whole company piled in, oblivious to the Brits already billeted there and whose space we were invading. We all fell into a deep sleep.
—
We weren’t there long. We had maybe a week to enjoy air-conditioned sleeping, showers in a nearby building, and a small PX that sold ice cream a short walk away. Howell found the ice cream; he was good for stuff like that. I have no doubt that had there been beer he would have found it. We had to race the sun to see if we could eat the stuff before it melted. We had to eat fast. All too soon the days of air-conditioning would end.
Before they did, however, the company commander took a detail of armored vehicles and went forward to recon certain positions the company would be occupying. I had been sent to him to be an asset. But to be of use I had to get out from behind the wire, so the fact that he didn’t take me along was exasperating. It wasn’t the first time he had left me in the rear; he had done so at KAF several times. I could have been more useful to the battalion if I had gone with him rather than keeping the Dutch company. I had dropped all the subtle hints at my command, but obviously to no avail. Passive neglect was beginning to get to me.
So much for subtlety; I was incensed. Bastion was a huge base. I walked hours in the dark to find the battalion commander. I knew the long walk would do me good. I needed to calm down. I was extremely angry. I have never liked being someone’s baggage. I didn’t like it on active duty when I had to trot along with nothing real to do, and I didn’t like it any the more in Afghanistan. Given the opportunity I will always find some way to make myself useful.
When I got to the battalion command post, the colonel was in a meeting. Major Helton asked me what the problem was, so I told him. I explained that I simply had to get “eyes on” the country to be of any use to anyone. I let him know that the “check signers” had all of us LEPs sign a memo of understanding that we were going to be in danger of death or serious injury where we were going. We had all accepted that fact. We simply were not VIPs. Now I needed the battalion to stop treating me like one. I used the analogy that I couldn’t solve a bank robbery while sitting at my desk. The first step in the investigation was to get to the bank.
The executive officer seemed to understand and promised to speak with the company commander. He obviously did. The CO never left me behind again for the remainder of the time I was with him.
Since there wasn’t enough room at the CP location, the companies that were pushing out for the hinterland first were assigned billeting closest to the CP. As they left, however, we were relocated. Our new digs were canvas tents with an additional layer of canvas on top to give extra protection from the burning sun. The flooring was made of black plastic interlocking mats. Moreover, every tent was air-conditioned. As had been the case in Iraq, I found I needed to sleep inside my British sleeping bag despite the outside temperature. The temperature inside those tents struck me as freezing. I sorely wished for a personal thermostat. I was certain that standing water would freeze inside the tent, and boil outside of it.
I ended up, coincidentally, in the same tent as Lieutenant Brewster and the staff NCOs who were going with him to Golestan. Looking back on it, our paths crossed so many times both in the States and in the rear in Afghanistan that I shouldn’t have been surprised that I would spend most of my time in country with him. Personally I think Providence provides us with little clues as we make our way through life, if only we are tuned in to Him.
While the enlisted Marines all had cots to sleep on, we “privileged” few slept on the plastic deck. I, at least, used my issue inflatable sleeping pad. It was another prerogative of an old man, I suppose. The evenings were spent standing off away from the discussion and observing Lieutenant Brewster planning his checkpoints at the place he would be occupying. From what I could see of the topographical map, he was really going to be “out there.” I was secretly relieved to discover that veteran gunnery sergeant Manny Mendoza was going with him. The gunny would bring experience to the young lieutenant’s staff.
Several evenings Gunny Mendoza and I would sit outside our tent in lawn chairs drinking nonalcoholic beer and reminiscing about the “old” Marine Corps. He had joined roughly as I got out, so we both had common memories. We understood each other as only contemporaries could, and we spoke of the changes we had seen in the Corps. We also spoke of the Taliban and their tactics and how some of the Iraq veterans were in for a shock. The gunny resolved to shake them out of their comfort zone. Since he was a huge man, well over six feet tall and as wide as I was tall—all muscle—he cut an imposing figure. I had no doubt he could do it. In view of the fact that we later worked closely together, it’s good that we got to know each other at that time. A foundation of mutual respect was laid while drinking those no-octane beers.
Also part of Lieutenant Brewster’s staff, and in the same tent as I, was Staff Sergeant (SSGT) Justin Wells. SSGT Wells was the man on the ground who would guide aircraft onto any targets that might require air support. Since the air wing personnel all have nicknames, pilots had long since christened Wells “Noxious.” I changed that to “Obnoxious.” For his part, he reveled in referring to me as “Tough Guy Terry.” I have no idea why, unless it’s because a guy my age running around with that crowd needed a hard-hitting nickname to survive.
Lieutenant Colonel Hall and the battalion staff established the battalion command post at Bastion. The CP was named “Camp Barber,” in honor of a Korean War captain and member of 2nd Battalion, 7th Marines who—with his Marines—had done the impossible and held off repeated Chinese onslaughts at the “Frozen Chosen.” Captain Barber was awarded the Medal of Honor for his unbelievable feat. My uncle Bill had been just down the road from Captain Barber.
The battalion plan was to strategically place FOBs all over the battalion’s area of operations (AO). Since there hadn’t been much enemy activity in the Golf Company AO, it was determined that platoon-size FOBs would be sufficient. Golf Company, like all Marine infantry companies, had three rifle platoons. Ordinarily that would have meant three FOBs. However, there was a strategically important FOB under construction on the Ring Road just outside a town called Delaram. One of 1st Platoon’s squads was to be sent there along with two antitank mobile units. Therefore, Lieutenant Brewster’s 1st Platoon would be one rifle squad short. This caused grave concern later on—he was really out on a limb.
Undaunted, Brewster took his two rifle squads and attachments from Weapons Company and headed straight for Golestan. There was nothing waiting for him there. He’d have to dig in and deal with conditions as he found them.
Second Platoon drove the Taliban out of a town called Bala Baluk. Their success was so resounding after a short, sharp firefight that personally, upon arrival, I thought the fighting in and around Bala Baluk was over.
Third Platoon was bound for a place called Baqua. It was smack in the middle of opium-growing country and was known to be heavily saturated with IEDs. The company commander was taking 3rd Platoon to Baqua along with heavy equipment and engineers who would build the FOB. I joined his personal security detail (PSD) and went along.
8
Baqua
When we left Bastion I rode with a different crew. Lance Corporal Dave Demanske drove, with Corporal Justin Durham in the front passenger seat. Lance Corporal Brady Christiansen was in the turret. Demanske was a blond-haired, soft-spoken guy who was impossible not to like. Durham was the veh
icle commander and seemed completely relaxed with me; I was glad of that. Christiansen was a zany character who reminded me of myself at his age—not necessarily a good thing.
The main road to Baqua was deemed to be too dangerous due to IEDs, so it was determined that we’d slip in the “back door.” There really was no back door—we were going to make one. We’d use dry riverbeds as roads. We did that quite often throughout the deployment. They were much safer than the roads. It’s hard to figure out where to plant an IED in a dry riverbed.
We approached Baqua in two stages. First, we left Bastion and once again drove on the Ring Road. Although we had some distance to travel, it was daylight and our column was smaller. The paved road made for good traveling time. Nonetheless, it took the better part of a day to get where we were going. We stopped for the night at an unpretentious U.S. Army position that was too small for us to get inside. We probably had twenty or thirty vehicles in our convoy. We pulled the vehicles into some kind of defensive position on another of those large gravel rocky areas that radiated heat back up at us. Then we waited.
The terrain we were going to cover was much too rough to traverse at night. We would leave the following morning. We ate MREs, drank hot water, and passed the time, glad to be out of the cramped Humvees. It was there that I sat on the roof of a Humvee looking down the open machine-gun turret to watch a movie being played by Lance Corporal Mike Trujillo. He played it on his laptop in the middle of the front seat area. Marines were also watching from anywhere they could, inside or outside the vehicle. The film was Charlie Wilson’s War, a movie about U.S. involvement with insurgents when the Russians were in Afghanistan.
It was terribly ironic to be watching it in Afghanistan. I remember near the end of the movie the crowd was shouting Allahu akbar! It was displayed on the screen in English subtitles as “Thank you, America!” My God, I thought, how could the moviemakers be so ignorant? Although it is perfectly acceptable to say Allahu akbar! out of piety, it is often used as a war cry. And it’s likely to be the last thing you will hear on this earth if you find yourself too near a suicide bomber. It means “God is great!” Most definitely not “Thank you, America.”
The Silence of War Page 11
