Into the Fire: A Firsthand Account of the Most Extraordinary Battle in the Afghan War (14 page)

At about 0640, the TOC at Joyce forbade any more artillery support, citing garbled communications, incomplete calls for fire procedures,
and a lack of situational awareness on the part of those trapped in the valley.

The enemy fire was holding steady, with occasional mortar rounds and RPGs mixed in with the PKM machine guns and the heavy DSHKA.
The angle of the fire had shifted southeast, indicating to Fabayo that the Command Group was being cut off.

After an hour with no helicopter gunships or artillery response, the villagers joined the winning side. Fabayo sensed that more and
more men were shooting at him from inside the town. Lying behind a dirt mound, he saw flashes coming from a house on a hill to his right. Fabayo blasted the window of the mud house and the fire from that spot ceased.
A woman in a red and purple dress was carrying ammunition from one house to the next. Swenson saw
another woman stacking rocks to make a fighting position; he didn’t shoot at her.

With the villagers spontaneously contributing a base of fire from the shelter of their houses, the hard-core enemy fighters seized the opportunity to sneak behind the terrace walls to cut off the Command Group. Fabayo saw that
the far ambush was becoming a near ambush.

The Command Group had to pull back. Swenson and Fabayo provided covering fire as Maj. Williams and 1st Sgt. Garza fell back, with rounds hitting at their feet. The reporter who was with them chose not to risk the run. He remained on the ground, with his face in the dirt. Williams and Garza were running in the open with machine-gun rounds striking in front of them. Garza sprawled flat just in time
to avoid a burst right over his head. Next,
an RPG exploded near him, throwing him to the ground. Dazed, he struggled up. Williams grabbed Garza and pulled him behind a terrace wall.

Lt. Johnson and Team Monti were still holed up in a house as the Command Group fell back to avoid being surrounded.

As we moved forward for the third time, the TOC had finally
ordered the Army platoon—Dog 3-2—to move forward. They pulled in behind us, with the platoon leader in a Humvee with an anti-tank TOW missile on the roof. The TOW made no sense to me, but the truck was equipped with a 240 machine gun. Behind him were twenty U.S. soldiers in four heavily armored vehicles.

“You rolling with me, Lieutenant?”

I was confirming what I took for granted.

“I’ll scout the route first, before I bring my platoon in. The terrain may be too tough.”

He refused to put his soldiers into the Afghan vehicles. I could understand that.

“Okay. I go first,” I said. “You cover our six. The Afghans will be behind you.”

I waved to the Afghans standing beside their trucks.

“Burayam! Let’s go!” I said.

We headed down the trace, with Valadez giving us directions. It was about 0645. As we bounced forward, I heard Team Monti again come up on the radio.

“We’re under fire,” Lt. Johnson said. “
We’re surrounded!”

* * *

The Command Group had now fallen back into the terraces below North Ganjigal. They were spread out, but close enough to shout back and forth.
Lt. Fabayo saw our Humvee a few hundred meters to the west, well behind his forward position. He urged the Askars huddled around him not to get up and run toward us. He pointed to a dead Askar nearby.

“If you stand up,” he shouted, “that’s going to happen to you.
You got to keep calm.”

Swenson’s interpreter, Shafi, was listening on his handheld when an insurgent leader came up on the border police radio net. The insurgent had either taken the handheld from a dead policeman or had bought it in the market. The police, the Askars, and the Taliban all used cheap, commercial handhelds and often hurled insults at one another.

“The Russians made the same mistake coming here,” the insurgent said in Pashto. “The elders invited you in; I decide if you leave.
You must surrender.”

Shafi yelled the message across to Swenson, who dismissed the taunts as crazy talk. Fabayo was lying nearby behind a small mound of dirt to avoid the grazing fire of a machine gun. He heard some shouts in Pashto, something about giving up. He glanced up to see what he thought were four Askars in Kevlar helmets, their gear askew, coming around the side of a terrace. He yelled at them to get down.

But the soldier in the lead had a beard, a green chest rig, an armored vest, and cream-colored pants. He was no Askar. When the soldier raised an AK, Fabayo shot him in the chest. Low on ammunition, Fabayo then scrambled over to Williams to get more magazines. The three other dushmen hesitated long enough for Swenson to lock eyes with a man wearing a black helmet. Then the enemy slid back around the corner. Swenson reached into his pack, took out a grenade, lobbed it over the terrace wall, and ducked.

I hope I pulled the cap off the grenade
, he thought.
I don’t want some kid to find it intact and blow himself up
.

The grenade detonated and the fighters did not reappear. Rahimula, Major Williams’ interpreter, was then shot and killed. More dushmen were moving in from the terraces to the south to cut them off. Fabayo took a head count before falling farther back.

“
Where’s the reporter?” he yelled. “Where’s the reporter?”

Swenson thought the reporter
was dead. But after about twenty-five minutes, he risked the fire and ran back to the Command Group. Fabayo’s M4 had jammed and
Swenson, who carried five hundred rounds for his M4, was busy providing suppressive fire for the entire command party. Fabayo checked on the three wounded Askars lying a few feet away. One had been shot again in the back and had died. Fabayo was soaked in so much blood that
the notepad in his pocket had crumbled. Off to his left, he saw a bleeding Askar jump down from a higher terrace, screaming for help. Fabayo started to crawl to him when he heard Williams yell, “I’m hit!”

“You okay, Major?” Fabayo shouted.

Williams had been hit in the inside of his left forearm.

“I’m fine,” Williams said. “Keep going!”

Fabayo reached the Askar, who had been shot in the lower stomach. As he applied an H bandage, two other Askars straggled over to him. Both Lt. Rhula and his first sergeant had been shot in their thighs. Fabayo cut away their trousers, wrapped the wounds in gauze, and
handed them anti-infection pills.

Several meters away, Garza and Sgt. 1st Class Westbrook, Swenson’s NCO, were firing steadily.

Fabayo was pinned down by the machine-gun fire when he heard Garza yell, “Sergeant Westbrook’s been hit!”

Garza ran over to Westbrook, who, with blood oozing from his
neck, was struggling to get to his feet. Rounds were zipping past as the dushmen aimed in to finish him.

“Stay down!” Garza said, looking at the wound. “Stop trying to get up.
You’ll get shot.”

The three wounded Askars crawled to the stone wall holding up the edge of the terrace and dropped down to the next terrace, leaving Fabayo alone. Swenson looked back to
see one Askar stand up and take a bullet in the neck.

Garza, out in the wash thirty meters away, yelled for help moving Westbrook out of the line of fire. The reporter rushed out and together they pulled Westbrook back.
Fabayo dropped his first-aid bag and sprinted across to Garza, who was holding Westbrook’s hand and reassuring him. Westbrook was heavy, and it took the reporter, Garza, and Fabayo pulling together to carry him behind a terrace wall.

A bullet had entered Westbrook’s neck near the shoulder blade and ricocheted downward, a dangerous but not fatal wound. Swenson applied Quick Clot powder and a bandage to seal off the bleeding.

The fight had been raging for over ninety minutes and the chain of command throughout Kunar Province was on alert. Procedures for releasing helicopters had been unsnarled, and
two OH-58 Kiowas were en route to the valley. At 0715, they contacted Swenson.

“Highlander, this is Pale Horse,” the PC (pilot in command) radioed. “What do you need?”

“Pale Horse,” Swenson replied, “am under heavy fire from the village and the hills to the east and on both sides. Request immediate suppression while we pull back.”

The Kiowa squadron had been in Kunar for ten months. The pilots knew the terrain and enemy habits. They intended to swoop in low in crisscrossing strafing runs, deliberately swerving and cutting back at odd angles. They didn’t care whether they hit the dushmen;
they wanted to force them to crouch down and cease firing. The aerial tactics would allow the Command Group to pull back westward down the draw under reduced enemy pressure. The reporter and Garza propped up and carried Westbrook and some of his gear.

As Swenson moved,
he called for a medevac. Shadow radioed back that the TOC wanted questions answered before calling for one.

“
Is he Army or Marine?” Shadow said.

Swenson cursed; Maj. Williams was more diplomatic.

“This is Fox 6,” Williams radioed. “It doesn’t matter his service. He’s U.S.”

There was a pause, then Shadow reluctantly radioed, “Repeat, TOC needs to know if he’s Army or Marine. It’s in the regulations.”

Swenson ignored the request. Fabayo and Swenson unfolded their orange air panels in preparation for a medevac by helicopter. When that drew the attention of the enemy machine-gunners, Swenson ordered everyone to pull back west another two hundred meters. As they were falling back, Williams and Garza were carrying the gear of the wounded and returning fire, while Westbrook, barely conscious, was helped by Fabayo and the reporter. At least twice they had to duck for cover as machine-gun bullets and rocket-propelled
grenades impacted behind them and to their right side.

Standing up in the turret, I saw the group of Americans staggering down the wash to our left. Our Humvee was almost clear of the terraces and about to enter the wash when Rod came to a sudden halt. There were big bags of a white powder in the path just ahead. It was the stuff the dushmen use to make roadside bombs. There was no way to go around the bags. We had a cliff wall on our left and a sharp drop-off on the right.

Rod shouted up the turret.

“Looks bad, Homey!”

It was standard procedure for the dushmen to place sacks of ammonium nitrate in shallow holes, insert a blasting cap, and run a wire to a flashlight battery. They’d cut the wire and glue each strand to a piece of wood, with the ends almost touching. When a foot or a tire wheel applied pressure,
boom
.

“I don’t think they had time to wire them up,” I said. I had no way of knowing that for sure, but I wanted to believe it. They might have seen us coming and rigged it in a hurry to cut us off.

“You ready?” Rod said.

He dropped the truck into gear. I hung on to the turret, eyes squeezed shut. I waited to be flung into the sky and wondered if I could do a backflip in the air and land on my feet—not that it would make any difference. I’d be dead, but you have a few funny thoughts in the infinite split seconds of a battle.

We rolled over the bags. There was a slight bump, and we continued driving.

“All right!” Rod yelled.

Ahead of us the trail cut sharply to the left and led down into a gully. Rod hit the accelerator, and we gained speed downhill. I lost sight of Valadez’s orange air panel up on the ridge. Then we popped out on the far side of the gully.

I saw Hafez. He was staggering past us, holding up another Askar.

“Stop!” I yelled to Rod.

I climbed down and grabbed Hafez. He had been nicked in the right arm and another bullet had lodged in the armor plate on his back. He was dirty and tired. He drank some water while I bandaged his arm.

“Very bad in there,” he said. “All confused.”

“Where’s Lieutenant Johnson?”

Hafez shook his head.

“We were in a house, heavy shooting,” he said. “The lieutenant told me to go first. I knew the way. He’d follow.”

He described what happened next: They ran out of the house and across a terrace. They leapt into a trench to catch their breaths before making the next bound. The trench, visible on our photomaps, slashed diagonally, leading uphill toward the schoolhouse occupied by the enemy.

Lt. Johnson said he’d cover Hafez, who helped two wounded Askars hobble downhill. With bullets zinging about him, Hafez ran at a fast clip.
He didn’t see or hear Lt. Johnson after that.

Hafez and the two wounded Askars joined the Command Group scattered in the terraces beside the wash. He had heard an insurgent leader, whose voice he did not recognize, tell his men to stay off their radios and use their cell phones.

Dushmen were pressing in on the Command Group from both sides, yelling in Pashto to the Askars to surrender. A wounded Askar next to Hafez threw down his M16.

“If you give up,” Hafez said, “I’ll shoot you. No one surrenders.”

At one point, Hafez said Maj. Williams was lying next to him, returning fire. Two dushmen in dirty man-dresses peeked over a terrace wall about thirty feet away and gestured to them to surrender.
Hafez clawed at his gear and threw a smoke grenade. They ducked away and didn’t reappear.

Hafez left the Command Group to sort itself out and, helping a wounded Askar, was heading west back to the operational release point when I had stopped him.

“I need you to come back in with me. I can’t find them without you,” I said.

Hafez had recently married. He was wounded and exhausted. He could now go home and have a life.

“If today is my time to die, then I die.”

He climbed into the truck next to Rod. After placing my bulging medical bag and ten boxes of ammo on the rear seats, I strapped a handheld radio to the gun turret so I could listen for Lt. Johnson and we moved out again.

“Can you show us a way in?” I said.

Hafez shook his head.

Wounded Askars were straggling by us. One was holding a bloody cloth to his face, another was hobbling on a shredded leg. The exhausted Askars had stopped where the shallow gully and steep terraces gave them protection from direct fire. Some were stretched out on the ground. The spot would serve as our casualty collection point.

Shortly after we headed again down the valley, we bumped into another group of wounded Askars. Rod recognized their first sergeant, who was dripping blood down the right side of his trousers.
He was waving his arms, begging us to stop. Four Askars hobbled over and threw themselves into the backseats, splashing blood all over the place. We drove them back to the collection point. The first sergeant was blubbering, begging us not to go back in. I was a little rough shoving him out of the truck. I was running out of time and patience. Once we dropped them off, we gunned it back down the track.