The Silence of War

by Terry McGowan

  On one of the patrols to a village known to be pro-Taliban prior to my arrival, Lance Corporal Dustin “Butters” Housley—one of the CLIC Marines—took a picture of a strange drawing on a wall inside one of the houses. Nobody knew quite what to make of it. It had a circle in the center and spokes radiating out from the circle. I took a long, hard look at it and then up at the parachute we were using for shade over the command post (CP) area. I started pointing out the various positions inside our FOB that were depicted on the sketch. It was a representation of our position, parachute and all, from a position above us. Clearly the enemy had been on Russian Hill and had mapped out our FOB in detail.

  Combined with the intelligence garnered at battalion, I was sure we were in for it. The only question was when.

  That night at midnight, I was assigned to Lance Corporal Jonathan Zequeida’s fire team by Sergeant Holter. The patrol was Bravo Squad, and while I didn’t know it at the time, Bravo Squad’s destiny and mine were about to become one. I still harbored the notion that my stay at FOB Golestan was temporary. I expected to return to Delaram on the next supply convoy, in ten days or two weeks.

  Although I was really fatigued from the trip to the FOB and badly needed sleep, I was energized by the act of leaving the relative safety of the position—in the gloom of night. Even though I had been outside the wire on patrol at Delaram, foot patrols took place in broad daylight. We had also been comfortably within “cavalry to the rescue” distance from Lieutenant “John Wayne.” This patrol was different. We might have run head-on into several hundred Taliban en route to attack the FOB.

  Fortunately, we all had night-vision goggles. They enabled us to see in the dark, albeit in a world incongruently consisting of various shades of green. We moved on foot in staggered column formation, across the wide-open dry riverbed to the north and into the nearby village of Golestan.

  One of the positive changes since my time on active duty—in addition to the night-vision goggles—was the addition of small “cop-like” radios that connected each fire-team leader with the squad leader. During my tenure, we had relied on silent hand and arm signals. I would very much have liked to have had one of those radios. Later I would become Sergeant Holter’s rifle partner, and no radio was necessary, but this was my first time out with the squad. Without a radio, I was merely an old rifleman, despite my personal agenda. All the same, that was strangely satisfying.

  Silently we patrolled the empty dirt streets of Golestan, hushed except for the occasional barking dog. I had to get used to the night-vision goggles. They conveyed no depth perception. Stepping up or down while wearing them was a skill I had to develop—and fast. Sergeant Holter thoughtfully passed the word back to me that the merchants of Golestan, having been victimized by burglary at night, had hired a “security guard” and that that individual carried a shotgun. Good to know. Seeing an Afghan materialize out of nowhere, at night, with a long gun in his hands might have had tragic consequences.

  The night was long and uneventful. It was also instructive. I had wanted to get the feel of the area outside the FOB, and I was getting it. Sometime prior to the coming of American Marines to the area, an Allied force had constructed a nice concrete school for girls surrounded by high solid walls. The Taliban took exception to educating girls and tried to burn it. While concrete doesn’t burn, people got the message. The place was abandoned.

  We positioned ourselves on the roof and watchfully observed the town come awake. As the first gray streaks of dawn lightened the dark sky, a local cleric began to sing his call to prayer. It was as exotic as anything I experienced in Iraq. The singsong melodiousness of the cleric’s voice was entrancing. It was not at all like a Western melody, but it appealed to me in an indescribable way. Perhaps it was the knowledge that theological differences notwithstanding, I was hearing a call to prayer—a call to pray to the same Supreme Being, regardless of what name people called Him—and to whom I prayed as well.

  A girls’ school of sorts was reinitiated near a tribal leader’s personal “fort” by his intrepid daughter-in-law. The man’s son, her husband, had been killed fighting the Taliban. Defying many death threats, she relied on her father-in-law’s influence and Lieutenant Brewster’s dogged determination to protect the school. Not a day passed while Brewster was in command that Marines didn’t show up unexpectedly and at unpredictable times at the “new” girls’ school. The Taliban surely knew that if they were caught by Marines in the narrow alleys and byways of the village, Marine close-quarter battle ethos and firepower would have made short work of them. The new girls’ school stayed open as long as Marines remained in the area.

  At that latitude, the sun rises early in the summer. It was probably about 4:00 a.m. when we no longer needed our night-vision goggles. We remained—unnoticed, we hoped—on the roof of that concrete bastion for sometime more. As I watched the town come alive, the “street cop” in me took it all in. I compared what I saw and heard with the “baseline behavior” I had developed in other parts of Afghanistan. Finally, about five hours after commencing the patrol, Sergeant Holter had us move out back toward the FOB. Still in staggered column formation, and still part of Zequeida’s fire team, I was eager for an up-close look at the people. Among other things, I wanted the opportunity to observe their expressions as they saw us.

  We proceeded straight down “Main Street”—so called not because it remotely resembled anything an American would regard as a street, let alone a “Main Street,” but because it was the busiest dirt avenue in the town. Small shops lined it, and a primitive gas station and “restaurant” were at the far eastern end. As we made our way back through the village, I heard music. It was Afghan music, but it didn’t have the intonation of Islamic religious music; it was obviously for entertainment purposes. I noticed its origin inside one of the shops we passed. It was emanating from a battery-powered cassette player.

  I knew right then that there were no Taliban in the immediate vicinity. The people had wordlessly told me what I had gone on patrol to find out. The Taliban are ultrastrict fundamentalist Muslims. While they tolerate religious music, they will painfully beat anyone caught playing nonreligious music. The Puritans had nothing on the Taliban.

  We still had some time to prepare. It was June 19.

  At Gunny Mendoza’s invitation, I grabbed a cot in the uncrowded staff NCO tent. It also served as a supply dump where stacks of rations were kept. We were adjacent to the command post (CP) with its out-and-out forest of antennae. Lieutenant Brewster set up his cot immediately outside the CP, where he slept—I have no doubt—with one ear open all night long, listening to anything that might come over the radio.

  After our initial challenging discussion, Brewster had promised to walk the perimeter of the FOB with the gunny and me and to listen to what we recommended. There were some points that the gunny and I both felt strongly about, and Brewster heard us out. One issue was the placement of claymores. A claymore is an explosive charge connected to a detonator by wire. When detonated, it sends numerous shotgun-like pellets at an approaching enemy.

  The FOB had only two, and they hadn’t yet been emplaced. Claymores were widely used in Vietnam. “Dummy” claymores were still very much part of the training when Gunny Mendoza and I were on active duty, and we both wished we had more of them at Golestan. They were positioned on the west side, facing the “clinic”—our most vulnerable side. Other suggestions were made, and a general three-way discussion of weak points and tactics ensued that mollified the frustrations of the gunny. He felt he was finally being heard.

  I learned that much of the material needed to strengthen the FOB had only just arrived on the same supply convoy that had brought me—like badly needed sandbags and razor wire, for example. Hence there was much that Brewster couldn’t have done prior to my arrival that contributed to my original impression that he was responsible for the deficient defenses.

  I began to rethink my initial assessm
ent of the lieutenant when he stated that if he ordered his Marines to work on the FOB twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, it would still be vulnerable. I concurred with his opinion. Further, he declared that his defensive plan was to keep the enemy off balance through constant and unpredictable patrolling. Given the totality of the circumstances, I had to agree that his reasoning was sound. I was beginning to see the lieutenant in a more favorable light.

  Gunny Mendoza was given a much more active role in shaping the FOB’s defenses, and the matériel that had just arrived was emplaced with a palpable sense of urgency. The gunny had that effect on people. Things were improving—rapidly. The clinic was still troubling.

  We had an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), which Lance Corporal Housley was able to fly. Think of it as a very large model airplane that was controlled from the ground. It had a TV camera mounted in the nose and could relay the image to Housley and others on the ground in real time. I was very interested in getting that thing up and running. Housley saw to it. Unfortunately, it crashed somewhere north of the village of Golestan. A mounted patrol was sent out to retrieve it, with no luck.

  Bravo Squad and I went to town, looking. I questioned, through an interpreter, a large number of merchants—none of whom knew a thing. I got the same look I used to get in Brooklyn—sort of a “Who, me?”

  Having established baseline behavior for lying by Afghans back at Delaram, I was skeptical. One merchant who looked particularly guilty said, “I have no idea what you’re talking about but I will ask around.”

  I told him I would pay one hundred American dollars in cash if I had it in my hands no later than noon the following day. The currency of Afghanistan is called afghani—and one afghani was worth about two cents. One hundred American dollars was a lot of afghani.

  I no sooner got the words out of my mouth than he said, “I’ll have it here by then.”

  He said he knew who had it. He candidly confessed that he was going to try to sell it for whatever he could get for it. Obviously the prospect of one hundred dollars cash in hand was more attractive than getting what he could from whom he could when and wherever he could.

  At noon the next day, sure enough he had the UAV. And I handed him a hundred bucks out of my own pocket. A lot of Marines thought I should just seize it, since he had lied initially, and it was U.S. government property, but I decided that keeping my word was more important than the money. Lying to the locals was no way to win their hearts and minds. In the end, I was reimbursed—thanks to Lieutenant Kyle Slocum and the U.S. Army’s deep pockets.

  I was interested in the UAV’s recovery for several reasons: I didn’t want it falling into enemy hands; it costs a hell of a lot more than a hundred dollars; and Lieutenant Brewster was ultimately responsible for lost property and could have been punished for its loss. Last but far from least, I had ideas regarding the use of that camera.

  The back side of the troublesome clinic could not be seen from anywhere inside the FOB. It was the logical path of approach for an attacking enemy. I reasoned if we could mount the UAV on the roof of the clinic facing downward, we could monitor that avenue via the TV camera in its nose. We experimented with it at length but were finally forced to abandon the idea. The battery simply would not last long enough. Although additional batteries were requested, if they ever arrived I was not aware of it.

  It’s too bad, because knowing what was behind that clinic would have afforded me immeasurable relief.

  Work continued at a feverish pace for days. That was good because the dogs of war were closing in.

  11

  The Coming Storm

  Late in the day—still on June 19—the FOB was informed that 2nd Platoon had just been in a major engagement with the Taliban outside Bala Baluk. Captain Erik “D-Ring” Terhune had been killed in action (KIA), and Lance Corporal Andrew “Whit” Whitacre had been shot in the head and critically wounded. Whitacre had been medevaced to a British hospital at Bastion by helicopter. Whit was personally known and very well liked by all but the newest Marines in the battalion. The veteran Marines at Golestan had all been in Iraq with Whit, and they were deeply affected by the news.

  I tried to console the sorrowful Marines by reminding them that Whit hadn’t been called in as a KIA. During my twenty years in law enforcement I had known of many individuals who suffered head wounds yet lived. I told them I didn’t want to raise false hopes, but the jury was still out. There was good reason to hope.

  I was wrong.

  A short time later we were informed that he had been pronounced dead at the hospital. As darkness enveloped the FOB, small groups of mournful Marines gathered in out-of-the-way corners and grieved Whit’s loss. In their own way, they were conducting a wake.

  Only this time I felt “survivor’s guilt” too. I had chosen to leave D-Ring and Whit at Bala Baluk, believing the place was totally pacified. I was horribly mistaken. Other Marines didn’t have choices. They went where they were ordered and stayed where they were ordered to stay. But I had made a choice. They had been my friends, and I wondered if I had let them down. Maybe if I had been there things would have been different. Maybe they wouldn’t have been killed. I felt I should have been by their sides and shared their fate. I was racked with guilt and grief at the same time.

  I felt estranged from the others. Unlike them, I could have been there.

  It also bothered me deeply that nobody seemed to be mourning for D-Ring. All they talked about was Whit. That was natural and I understood—consciously. They all knew Whit from the barracks and Iraq. D-Ring was an officer and a Johnny-come-lately to the battalion. They really didn’t know him.

  But I did. He was my friend. And emotionally I felt that I was the only one to grieve for him. That set me apart from the others as well. I left the group and went off by myself.

  I can’t cry in public for some reason. I haven’t been able to since I was a small boy. So I found an out-of-the-way spot between the latrine and the west wall, sat down, buried my face in my hands, and silently sobbed. I believe I sat there—my back against the exterior of the latrine—and cried for hours. An Army reserve officer who was then at the FOB happened to notice me. Possibly I wasn’t as silent as I thought I had been. In the darkness he couldn’t tell it was me. He told a pair of young new Marines that “one of your guys is behind the latrine and he’s not doing very well.”

  It was dark and I’m not sure who they were. They came over and I told them in an emotionless voice that I was okay. I don’t know if they knew it was me, but they seemed relieved to be able to get out of there. Once they left, I cried some more.

  Since that day I wake up every June 19 and cry before my feet hit the floor. This was the fourth consecutive year. I know I’m not the only one.

  During the remainder of the deployment, and even after returning to the States, I pieced together what had happened. A small group of insurgents found themselves in a gun battle with Marines at Bala Baluk and got the worse of it. Several were wounded and tried to get away on foot. Marines followed the bleeding enemy’s blood trail into a shallow valley with high ground and bullet-stopping walls on each side. It was a trap.

  They had walked into a killing box.

  The enemy was secure behind the walls on both sides of the Marines and they opened up with AK-47s and RPKs (machine guns). Since the Taliban were on high ground on both flanks they were shooting down into the Marines. That meant they had no concern about friendly fire—or sending bullets into their own ranks.

  Struggling to seize the initiative from the enemy with suppressive firepower, the Marines fought back. It wasn’t happening. The enemy was too well positioned and there were too many of them. Some Taliban were spotted bringing up extra ammunition to their comrades. That they could resupply during the fight confirmed that this was not Iraq. This was not hit-and-run; it was not a firefight. It was a platoon-versus-platoon battle that lasted for hours. Armored vehicle
s were called up, but the terrain was impassible. They could only fire from long range and with seriously impeded vision.

  Attempting to break the impasse, Captain Terhune made a mad dash forward. He was cut down by a machine-gun bullet in the abdomen almost immediately. The bullet entered below his body armor. As an experienced investigator, I have always been able to get people to tell me things even when they shouldn’t. I was told that the bullet had severed an artery and that D-Ring had died very quickly.

  Knowing Whit as I do, I believe he wanted to get D-Ring from out of the bullet-spattered spot where he still lay. So he left the comparative safety of the wall and rushed to take cover behind a tree, closer to D-Ring. The tree was savaged by incoming fire. As he cautiously glanced out from behind it, a machine-gun bullet struck him in the head. He was mortally wounded, although he still had a pulse—hence the initial report that he was still alive. Whit was dragged to cover by Marines who braved a torrent of incoming fire to get to him. It took much longer to get D-Ring—enemy fire was too intense.

  Whit was evacuated from the battlefield back to the FOB, where his best friend, newly promoted corporal Zack Wolfe, lovingly cradled Whit’s head in his lap while awaiting the medevac chopper. When it arrived, Wolfe helped get Whit on board. Finally, Marines were able to retrieve Captain Terhune’s body. Lance Corporal Kyle Howell helped load his remains on the chopper. At last Marines got the upper hand and the enemy was driven off.

  It will always seem like yesterday.

  June 20 dawned at Golestan bright and clear, with the promise of another blistering desert day. The FOB was blessed with a venerable hand-pumped well such as the Spanish army had at Delaram. Marines “washed” clothing using the familiar “slosh stuff around in a bucket” method. Soap powder was available, but I’m not sure if that was a blessing or a curse, since the “rinse cycle” was the same as the “wash cycle.” The soap was never completely rinsed out of the clothes.