Once again, as some things are sensitive in nature, and as some people would not like to have their identities revealed, I've changed the names of all locations and people.
Rude Awakening
I don’t believe that war changes people. It magnifies them.
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There’s a reason that the unofficial motto of the armed forces is hurry up and wait. I’d been sitting at this airbase waiting for a chopper to take me and my gear to FOB K for hours – days actually.
I was moving because my team had been ordered to relocate to FOB K. K was in a somewhat more hostile area than where we were currently based. Don’t get me wrong, it’s no Bakara Market or Korengal Valley, but it was definitely less conducive to source operations than where we’d been stationed. It’s where our source Muhammed Wasir was spotted by the Taliban talking to another HumInt team, where he was tracked down, and where he was brutally murdered by some Taliban thugs. Despite our relaying Muhammed Wasir’s death and explaining to the powers that be that we would have enormous difficulty running operations in the region, we were told to go.
So we went.
I’d already spent a few weeks there with Jake and Pat. Pat hated it there, but he always had a bad attitude. Jake and I were trying to make a more positive experience out of it. We’d gone out on missions every day, had established contact with the police chief, district governor, NDS, and other local officials, and were trying to feel out the best way to gather some intel on insurgent activities in the area. Headway was limited, but we were making some progress. The battalion S-2 (the people directly in charge of us), apparently, was relatively pleased with what we were giving them, because they called down and asked us to make the move permanent.
My team was still back at FOB K. I’d asked them to stay there while I returned to our previous FOB to get our gear. Getting back, getting the gear, and making my way to the region’s main airbase had been easy enough. But for whatever reason, getting from the airbase back to K was proving difficult. Finally, at about 16:00 I was informed that a chopper would be there to make the run that night. I would be able to leave the airbase at about 03:00 the next morning. Lovely. I left the bulk of my stuff at the “airport” and went back to the transient tent to get some shuteye.
At 02:00 I woke up with a start. It was one of those creepy moments when you wake up a couple seconds before your alarm goes off. Just as I looked at my watch it started making noise at me. I grabbed my gear and walked over to the staging area at the side of the runway.
Just as I got there I saw two Chinooks touch down. I was late. I ran up to the shack, grabbed what of my gear I could and got in line along side one of the birds. The person in front of me in line was a starry-eyed private. You could tell by his clean gear and the completely lost look on his face that he’d just arrived in country. I told him to watch my gear while I ran back and got the rest. He kind of stared at me instead of answering. I was traveling heavy and didn’t have time to deal with him, so I ran back and got the last pieces of my gear: a great big wooden crate that weighed about 200 lbs and a couple of duffels. Once I got all the gear to the line by the chopper I had the same private help me load it up. He obliged me as I was in civilian clothes and he probably didn’t have the guts to say no.
There are distinct advantages to being in country as a HumInt guy that wears civilian clothes and grows a beard. Half the soldiers think you’re in Special Forces and stay out of your way, and about a quarter don’t know what to think and stay out of your way. The unfortunate part about being a HumInt guy that wears civilian clothes and grows a beard is that about a quarter of the soldiers around you think you ARE a Special Forces guy and want to ask you about all the guys you’ve killed. Lucky for me, this guy was from the former group. Rather than bombard me with questions, he simply helped get my gear on the chopper.
While we were getting ready to take off, I noticed two Kiowa helicopters that were staging nearby. “What’s that about?” I hollered at the crew chief over the roar of the engines. “Tell you in a second!” He shouted, tapping his headset to tell me he was listening to a radio transmission. After a minute, he got up and shouted at the group in the bird, “Listen up! There’s been a change of plans!”
“There’s been an attack on the police station near FOB K. Instead of hitting the FOBs in the order we have scheduled, we’re going to FOB K first. We’re flying straight into FOB K, dropping you, and getting out. No load or passenger pickup. We might be going in hot, so I want all of you who are going to K to get off this bird the second it touches down. Am I clear?!”
“Hooah!” came the replies.
At first glance, you’d think that Chinooks are great, slow, lumbering beasts. In reality, they are quite the opposite. They are among the fastest helicopter in use by the US military. Their twin turboshaft engines give them more power than most helicopters. It easily could outrun our Kiowa escorts - and nearly did. When we took off, my stomach hit the floor. I’d punched up fast before, but that was REAL fast. We rocketed off to the southwest.
On ordinary supply runs, it takes about 45 minutes to an hour to get from base to base. This time it took all of 20 minutes. We were running nearly full bore. I had a great view of the trip as I was sitting at the back of the bird and could look right out the open hatch. Nighttime in Afghanistan is not the same as night in America. With virtually no electricity and a very sparse population, it truly is dark at night – almost oppressively so. As we circled the FOB before landing, I could see the glow of a large fire to the south of the base. I couldn’t tell what it was at that distance, but it seemed to be in the vicinity of the police station.
As the chopper came down to land I felt adrenaline start to surge. I had a lot of gear and knew that in the coming confusion I wasn’t going to get any help. I put on a duffel and grabbed my crate. I’d landed at the LZ at FOB K a few times and knew that I’d have to run about 75 yards with all that gear, run back, grab my other two duffels and get out of the way before the choppers finished dumping the soldiers so they could take off. As soon as I felt the impact from landing I bolted. The adrenaline helped. I was up and off the ramp and running before anybody else on the chopper was standing. I got to the edge of the LZ and saw Zi, my interpreter, there. “Watch this stuff!” I shouted, then ran back to the bird.
When I got back, I saw that everybody was still sitting down. The crew chief just looked at me and shrugged in frustration. The soldiers on this bird had just arrived in country. They were all a bunch of lower ranking kids who’d never been in a position without somebody to tell them what to do. I wasn’t in charge, but somebody had to do something. “FOB K! Off the bird and over there!” I shouted at the top of my lungs, pointing to the edge of the LZ. That did it. They all sprang to life as if my words had spontaneously animated them. I stood off to one side behind one of the engines, letting its exhaust warm me as the new soldiers poured off the bird. When the last soldier got off I ran up the ramp, grabbed my remaining bags, and ran back. I wasn’t 50 feet away when the bird took off, sandblasting me with sand and gravel.
When I got back to my gear, Jake was there with Zi. They’d managed to commandeer a small 4-wheeler and had loaded my crate and duffel onto it. I shook Jakes hand, dropped another duffel on the now overloaded 4-wheeler, and ran up the hill to our hut. As Zi drove off, I asked Jake what was going on at the police station. “Captain Shank and Sergeant Smith and the ANA (Afghan National Army) are down there right now! The ANP (Afghan National Police) are pinned down in the station. It looks like they were hit by a carbomb at the gate and are taking fire.” That explained the fire I saw as we came in. “Sergeant Kim’s platoon just left the FOB to go assist.”
Captain Shank was the leader of a whopping two man team. He and Sergeant Smith were the embedded training team in charge of training the Afghan National Army that was located at FOB K. The ANA had its own leadership structure, including an Afghan Captain and First Sergeant that were stationed with the ANA troops at FOB K, but as the ANA had only worked with the US military since 2002, they needed some training.
I dropped my bag off then ran up to the TOC (Tactical Operations Center, Hollywood calls it a command center). The room was crowded with all the FOB’s main players. Most people were watching a monitor that had a live feed from a UAV on it. A commo guy was on a radio with the UAV pilot and SFC Johns was on another radio with the Kiowa pilots and the guys on the ground. He was trying to use the UAV feed to help the guys at the station locate and kill any insurgents still in the fight. We spent the next 50 minutes or so watching the screen, scanning the area trying to pick up signs of guys. For the first 10 minutes or so, we didn’t see any movement. The insurgents had dug in deep and were sitting tight. I think they assumed that if they sat long enough, we’d give up looking. Wrong. These guys were going to pay for attacking the police station.
1st platoon arrived at the scene. When they got there, the ANA had already pushed the opposing force back into a valley near the police station. SFC Johns radioed the platoon leader, Sergeant Kim, and instructed him to have his and Captain Shank’s guys spread out and sweep the valley to flush out any guys who were bedded down.
The valley from where the attack originated was about three kilometers long and maybe 600 meters wide. It was really more of a canyon, but we called it a valley because the locals used it as farmland. There was a road that followed the north lip of the canyon. Sergeant Kim had his trucks turn on their lights and follow the road. He had Captain Shank and his ANA soldiers walk the canyon floor and flush out the bad guys. The plan was for the ANA to stay in line, but a few meters behind the trucks up on the canyon rim. This way if anybody popped up, the trucks, the ANA, and the Kiowas could engage them. Shank and the ANA set up quickly. The ANA, albeit a less organized force than the US forces, moved with absolute purpose. They had a good line set up moments after their arrival. Shank set up in the middle of the canyon and positioned each of his two interpreters half-way between himself and either of the canyon walls. He then put Sergeant Smith with one of the interpreters. They could relay his commands to all of the troops. I got the feeling they’d practiced something like this before. Once they were set up, Shank gave word and the group started moving.
It wasn’t a minute later that one of the buildings in the canyon erupted with gunfire. The ANA all hit the dirt and returned fire. With the muzzle flashes coming from the building and the occasional tracer rounds going into it, it took mere seconds for the trucks and the helicopters above to locate the insurgents. It was strange to see the firefight occur from a birds-eye view on our monitor. It was like watching a muted youtube video then hearing the muffled sounds of what was occurring just a mile away a second later. A Kiowa unleashed a rocket on the building and followed it with a blast from its .50 caliber gun. Nothing came from the building afterward. Captain Shank got a status report from all his guys. Nobody was hurt.
The soldiers pushed forward down the canyon toward the east. When the ANA and Captain Shank got to the building, they were amazed by what they found, or didn’t find. Save some still-hot brass, the building was empty. There wasn’t a soul inside. Shank radioed back that there was quite a bit of fresh blood in the building, but that there was nobody inside. An ANA soldier found a blood trail that went out the south side of the building and then turned further east.
They pushed forward for another 15 or 20 minutes. The canyon gradually narrowed and deepened around them. As they approached the narrowest part of the canyon the Kiowa pilot radioed down that he was unable to support them in that area. The canyon was too narrow and too densely forested for him to get a good shot from above the canyon, and the soldiers were getting too close to a village for him to feel comfortable to fire down the canyon. Sergeant Kim radioed in that the trucks were in a similar position. A small road came off the rim down into the canyon not far from where the ANA were staged. Kim ordered the last truck in his group to go down the road and provide what support it could from the canyon floor. Once the truck made its way down to the bottom of the canyon and got in the best position it could, the ANA advanced again.
Almost immediately, an RPG came out the brush and flew past the line of soldiers on the canyon floor and airbursted behind them. The ANA returned fire. Captain Shank ordered his guys to provide covering fire while he, Smith, and a couple of ANA flanked the guys in the brush. Shank’s group circled around to the side of the insurgents’ position. He ordered the main body to cease fire and rushed in with his two men. As they approached, they took fire. Shank and his guys hit the ground to return fire. Then the ground erupted near Shank’s little group.
One of the insurgents had managed to throw a grenade in close proximity to Captain Shank and Sergeant Smith. While the grenade didn’t kill either of them, it blasted them with shrapnel. The two ANA who were with Shank were unhurt. They reacted quickly and rushed the fighting position without the direction of either Shank or Smith. They simply ran in, guns blazing, like something from a Rambo movie. Amazingly it worked. They riddled the two insurgents that were dug in over the berm with bullets. It was overkill, but there was no stopping them.
I don’t believe that war changes people. It magnifies them. Eventually, the big talker is forced to put up or shut up, or there comes a time when the quiet guy in the corner has to show what he’s really made of. With most people, you can predict the outcome, but with others, you’ll be surprised. The next few minutes were excruciating and infuriating to endure. But in that time, I saw absolute courage manifest from the most unlikely of people.
When Captain Shank went down, chaos ensued. Luckily, the two ANA soldiers that were with him managed to take out the insurgents who were close to them. But the fight wasn’t over. Gun shots were coming from further down the valley somewhere. The ANA soldiers didn’t have night vision, nor could they pick out from where the bullets were coming. They scattered and took cover, but nobody returned fire. The ANA didn’t have much ammunition, so they were hesitant to shoot unless they knew exactly what they were shooting at. Neither the trucks at the canyon rim nor the Kiowas above were in a good enough vantage point to see down into the canyon to identify where the shots were coming from.
Shank’s panicked voice came in over the radio. We could barely understand him. He said between gasps and moans that he’d been injured and that he was bleeding a lot from his legs and head. He also said that Smith was alive but not responding. He asked for a medevac and for someone to direct his ANA. There was a medic in the truck behind the ANA in the canyon, so Sergeant Kim ordered them to get as close to Shank as possible and for the medic to go assist them. The truck moved a few meters then stopped. The truck commander radioed in that the ground was too soft for the truck and that they were sinking into the mud.
Shank and Smith would have to be carried about a hundred meters back to the truck.
This whole time, the group in the canyon was being peppered with rounds from the unidentified shooter. Sergeant Kim radioed to the truck in the canyon that the have some team members get out and go get Shank and Smith on foot and bring them back to the truck for medevac. On the monitor I watched the back hatch of the MRAP open up. Two soldiers jumped out. The soldiers put the truck between themselves and the direction from where the shots were originating, knelt down in the mud, and froze. Even with the grainy picture on my monitor I could see what was happening. One soldier was pointing down the canyon and the other was shaking his head. Our medic was either too scared or too confused to function. “DO SOMETHING!” I shouted out loud.
As if I had spoken to him instead, an unlikely hero jumped into action. One of Captain Shank’s interpreters, Massoud, stood up in the middle of the field, exposing himself to fire, and shouted to the ANA soldiers around him. He, apparently, ordered them to continue advancing. Once the ANA were moving, he ran ahead of the group to where Shank was lying. I watched in amazement as this thin framed, undernourished Afghan ran across a field, undoubtedly attracting fire from the still unseen shooter, to Captain Shank. Then this man who couldn’t have weighed much more than 100 pounds picked up the 220 pound Smith as well as all his gear, and, stumbling, carried the near 300 pound load to the truck where our medic still sat frozen. Massoud then set Smith down, opened the back of the truck, picked Smith back up, and put him in the truck. He then turned to the medic, and ordered him to help his friend.
Massoud then turned around and ran the hundred meters right back to where Shank was still lying. He again picked up nearly 300 pounds and stumbled back to the truck. After getting the two men to the truck he took Shank’s radio. The small man ran back to the ANA then radioed in his broken English, “I with ANA commander now. What do we do?” Sergeant Kim answered, “You go get that bastard who’s shooting at you!” he ordered.
Massoud, an unarmed civilian interpreter, not an official member of either Afghan or American forces, joined the ANA as they advanced further down the canyon. They identified that the shots were coming from a building within the village and returned fire on the building. Massoud assisted the group marvelously. He served as translator for the ANA commander, relaying the American’s radio transmissions to the ANA commander and translating the ANA commander’s words for the Americans.
When the ANA got to the shooter’s building, he was nowhere to be found. The ANA commander asked if he should keep looking for the guy, but SFC Johns ordered the group return to base instead.
Shank and Smith were evacuated to Baghram. They both survived, but never returned to FOB K. They were redeployed to Germany to recover from their injuries. I hope to see them again. They are men of the highest caliber.
Massoud continued to interpret for Shank and Smith’s replacement. Jake, Pat and I petitioned that Massoud be transferred to our team. Our request was denied. As a gift for his bravery, we bought a beautiful Makarov pistol and holster from the local police chief, smuggled them onto base, and gave them to Massoud. We told him that if he was going to go running into a firefight again he ought to at least be armed when he did it. Even though he was never officially assigned to us, we brought him with us wherever and whenever we could. They way we saw it, we’d be better off knowing that there was a guy like Massoud around.
