Into the Fire: A Firsthand Account of the Most Extraordinary Battle in the Afghan War (17 page)

He’d been hit in the face. When I looked at his dull eyes, I lost my concentration and I knelt there for a moment, oblivious. He was a little guy, too small for his body armor. He and I had rigged up two tourniquets to hold the armor close around his chest. I knelt down to untie the tourniquets. I needed them for other guys, and I needed to get the heavy armor off him so I could carry him to the truck.

I felt a tap as something hit my left shoulder. It didn’t register at first. It was like I had been hit with a light stone. I glanced up to see a tough-looking Afghan with a long black beard glaring down at me. He was wearing a dirty gray man-dress, a flak jacket, and an Afghan Army helmet. He was pointing an AK at my head, gesturing for me to stand up. In broken English, he was telling me to drop my rifle.

“Come,” he said, waving the barrel of his AK in my face.

I couldn’t believe that I’d screwed up so badly. All I could think of was that my head would be sawed off and held up on TV.

No way. I’d die right where I was, right now. I had been dead for a few hours anyway. The borrowed time was up, that’s all.

My rifle was resting on my left thigh, pointing in his direction. The stubby grenade launcher was attached to the underside of the barrel.

I raised one arm like I was going to surrender and pulled the trigger of the launcher with my free thumb. The 40-millimeter grenade shot forward the two feet to his armored vest. It didn’t explode. Instead it knocked him back. Stunned and with the breath slammed out of him, he staggered back and fell on his side. For a few seconds, I thought the blow had killed him. No such luck.

As I pushed myself erect, he drew in a big breath and stirred. I kicked at his face, losing my balance and falling on top of him. We were both on the ground, wrestling. Afghan tribesmen have legs like steel from climbing mountains all day, all their lives, so I had to keep his legs off me. I pinned his elbows and blocked his reach for his AK. I was pushing my helmeted head into his chest so he couldn’t gouge my eyes. At any second, I figured, that grenade would explode and the both of us could stop worrying about any of this.

I pawed the ground with my right hand and found a rock the size of a baseball. I clutched it and swung blindly at his face. The blow
stunned him. Before he could recover, I pushed off his chest, lifted the rock high in my right fist, and smashed it down like a hammer, breaking his front teeth. He looked me in the eyes, the fight knocked out of him, his head not moving. We both knew it was over. I drew back my arm and drove the stone down, crushing his left cheekbone. He went limp. I pushed up on my knees and hit him with more force. The blow caved in the left side of his forehead. I smashed his face again and again, driven by pure primal rage.

I turned back to Dodd Ali. I tried to pick up my friend, but he was stiff and I couldn’t get a firm grip. I fumbled with the tourniquets and when I couldn’t untie them, I cut them loose, pulled off the armor, and trudged back toward the truck, dragging Dodd Ali behind me.

When I came around the corner of the terrace, I was back into the fire. Once again I heard the bursts of PKM rounds cracking past. They sounded high, so I paid them no mind and continued pulling Dodd Ali. I was in a semi-trance, emotionally and physically drained. I shut out the world and concentrated on tugging the body. I’d bend over, get a good grip, and haul backward for a few meters. I’d then stand erect and stretch out my cramped muscles before bending over again. I’d got it into my mind that all I had to do was get Dodd Ali to the truck. That was the goal line.
Finish the game
.

I had developed a rhythm to my tugs, so it took a while before I realized that Swenson was yelling at me. I’d forgotten he had been sitting out there, the only target on the battlefield, shifting the truck back and forth, waiting for me.

“We gotta move, man!” he yelled. “Let’s get out of here.”

I was trying to pull Dodd Ali into the back of the Ranger, but I didn’t have the strength. I was beat. I leaned against the pickup.
Swenson hopped out,
picked up Dodd Ali, and rolled his stiff body into the open back. He pushed me into the passenger seat and slid back behind the wheel. He paused for a second, looking at my sagging, sweat-running face.

The Ford Ranger was a shiny tin can bobbing in the middle of the wash, with machine-gun crews competing to perforate us. It was a hot day and the windows were rolled down. I know this sounds ridiculous, but it sounded like one or two bullets zipped through the cab and missed us both. Then Swenson laughed a maniac’s cackle, and I joined in.
We are fucking nuts!

The pickup was now definitely too banged up to continue. If we broke an axle or lost cooling fluid, we’d be quickly finished off. We jounced down the wash and turned left into the shelter of the rough trace.

When we reached the casualty collection point, the Askars rushed over to take the body and
Swenson got out to talk to the Army platoon leader. A second Blackhawk had landed and taken out a half-dozen of the most seriously wounded Askars. At 0930—three hours after Team Monti was cut off from the Command Group in the wash—the TOC at Joyce finally reported up the chain of command that
four Americans were missing. The Afghan battalion had sent in a small quick-reaction force from Joyce. I looked around, but I didn’t see any American commanders or soldiers sent up from Joyce.

I walked over to Maj. Williams and 1st Sgt. Garza, who were sitting off to one side, to be briefed on their plan. It was time for the advisors to take charge and bring out my team.

When I was only a few feet away from him, Garza started yelling loudly.

“We gotta get back in there. I’m ready to go!”

I looked closely at him. His eyes were unfocused and his sentences
came in short rushes. His face was bruised and, although I didn’t see blood trickling out of his ears, I knew he was concussed.

“You better take it easy, First Sergeant,” I said. “You’re not in good shape.”

“Get out of my way. I’m going back in.”

He wasn’t making sense. He couldn’t fight effectively.

“No, First Sergeant, you’re not going back in.”

“Yes, I am!”

“No, you’re getting medevaced out.”

“Who’s going to stop me? You can’t make me.”

Maj. Williams stepped in.

“I can make you, First Sergeant,” he said. “
You’re not going back into the fight.”

I stopped an Afghan truck and told the driver to take Garza back to Camp Joyce. The civilian reporter came up to tell me he’d stay to help.

“No, you’re not staying,” I said, thinking the last thing I needed was to get guys killed searching for a reporter if he got lost or separated again.

“You’re not staying,” Williams said to the reporter.

Garza and the reporter were leaving. That left Maj. Williams. He was sitting down, with his arms wrapped around his drawn-up knees. I looked at the inside of his left forearm. The bleeding had stopped. I waited for him to give orders to organize the search for my team.

“We lost today, Corporal,” he said, rocking back and forth. “We lost today.”

We lost today?
I thought to myself.
I don’t know about you, but my day isn’t over yet
.

Maj. Williams climbed into the truck and
left the battlefield.

I was the only American left at the casualty collection point. Fabayo, Rod, and Swenson had gone back to get a new truck and reinforcements. Hafez had gone with them. Without him to translate, I couldn’t organize the Afghans.

I still had my M4 with the grenade launcher and plenty of ammo. The battery in my handheld radio was holding strong and I had good communications with the Kiowas. I had wasted enough time. I headed back into the fight. It was only half a mile from the casualty collection point to South Ganjigal. The enemy machine-gunners would be looking for the next Humvee to enter the wash. If I cut due east across the terraces, they might not see me, or they might ignore me. I just wasn’t staying here.

As I walked down the track, Silano’s Kiowa swooped down and hovered over my head.

“Fox 3-3, this is Pale Horse, what are you doing?”

“Pale Horse, I’m going to Ganjigal,” I said. “Can you scout ahead?”

“Fox 3-3, that is not a good idea.
Hold where you are. Highlander is on the move to your pos. I will direct him. I repeat, you hold where you are.”

Highlander was the radio call sign for Captain Swenson. He was trying to gather reinforcements. He had pulled aside the lieutenant in charge of the quick-reaction platoon.

“Mount up,” Swenson had told him. “You’re no help back here. We need your firepower.”

“I can’t,” the lieutenant said. “The TOC says we’re to cover the vehicles.”

Swenson grabbed the lieutenant’s 50-watt radio to call Joyce. The TOC told the platoon to
move into the valley. Swenson, Fabayo, Rod, and Hafez then hopped into an undamaged Humvee to drive back in,
but the platoon did not follow. Instead, the platoon leader again called back to Joyce and somehow received permission to remain in the rear, out of the fight.

It was about ten in the morning when Rod drove the Humvee up to where I was waiting. Fabayo was in the turret and Swenson was in the front command seat, working two radios, one to the Kiowas and the other to Shadow on the southern ridge. I climbed into the rear next to Hafez, who was talking in Pashto on his handheld. We started up the wash, with two or three Afghan trucks a few hundred meters behind us.

There was a pall of smoke in the truck from the never-ending machine-gun fire up the turret. All of us were gritty and bloody, but we had plenty of bottles of water in the truck. Swenson was directing the Kiowas in a terrace-by-terrace search. Whenever the pilots saw wounded Askars, they’d radio, “
Spot!” Rod would drive in front of them to act as a shield. Fabayo was shooting. The main gun wasn’t working, so he was using the lighter 240 machine gun.

There were still so many wounded to grab that we were again losing our focus on the lost team, but you can’t let people bleed to death in front of you. I’d jump out to administer aid and pull the wounded out of the line of fire behind our truck. The Askars tended to cluster in groups of two to four, spread out along the terrace walls. As I moved around to different groups of men hunkered down, I’d look for spent cartridges at their feet. If I didn’t see the yellow glint of spent brass, I’d urge them to shoot. There’s easy body language for that.

On a battlefield, you have to be careful for IEDs where you walk. Luckily, unlike down in the south, the dushmen in the mountains didn’t sow mines in the fields, probably because Askars and Americans rarely patrolled out in the middle of nowhere.

I didn’t know whether an Askar lying in a terrace was wounded or dead. I came across two in rigor mortis, and I dragged them by their armpits down to the wash to be picked up. I tried not to look at their faces. The sight of one soldier with both legs blown off got to me for a minute. I wondered what weapon could have done that. There was already that cloying stink to a few of the corpses and those black flies with the green heads—flying slugs—were sucking up the blood and rotting flesh. I don’t know where those flies of death come from, but I wish I could poison or burn them all.

With the wounded, I tried to stop the bleeding. That was all I took time to do. I didn’t strip off their gear or check them for concussion. I just looked for where the blood was squirting out and tried to stop it. I’d started the day with fourteen or sixteen tourniquets, and I used them all. I put four on one guy who had lost his left arm and his left leg below the knee. He survived.

As I mentioned, it was Ramadan. Even when they were wounded and dehydrated, about one out of three Askars wouldn’t drink. Hafez would call forward an Afghan truck for the evacuation, while Fabayo provided suppressive fire. Hafez thought
we pulled out about ten or twelve wounded. One Askar, shot in the neck, sounded like he was slurping through a straw. There was nothing I could do except listen to him strangle to death.

I picked up four or five dead from the gang I’d kidded around with at Monti. I tried to place the wounded on top of the dead in the Afghan trucks, but sometimes I didn’t have time to do it properly—the PKM fire persisted. I was amazed how much ammo the enemy had stored in the hills.

At one point, two F-15s roared low through the valley, opening their afterburners to create a hell of a lion’s roar. The pilots wouldn’t drop any bombs. They were concerned we didn’t know where my
missing team was, and didn’t agree with Swenson’s request that they drop their ordnance near the machine guns up on the ridgelines. ‘Bye.

An air controller with the Army scout-sniper team, Shadow 4, on the south ridge kept two to four Kiowas with Hellfire missiles hovering on standby
waiting their turn to enter the valley. Shadow, angry that
fire missions kept getting denied, also
fended off the endless questions from the TOC at Joyce.

At one point, I heard Swenson let out a sarcastic laugh.

“Shadow 4, ask the TOC,” he radioed, “what will they fucking give me?”

By 1030, the enemy fire from the ridges had slackened considerably. The pilots knew my team wasn’t located in any hillside cave, so they concentrated their rocket and gun runs on the higher elevations. An Apache helicopter, with greater firepower than a Kiowa, came on station for a while. Fabayo tried to direct it, but lacking a GPS, he could only radio that the enemy were “everywhere.” The Apache ran low on fuel before it could acquire targets.