Not a Good Day to Die (52 page)

The other two chalks walked quietly up to Butler’s perimeter, and he immediately got the company up and moving. They marched south down a gradual incline for about 1,000 meters until they reached a narrow wadi that carved a ten-foot deep furrow from the northeastern corner of the Whale across the north of the Shahikot. This wadi was the same egress route over which Wiercinski and Rosengard had argued during the planning sessions, and led straight to the pass on which Butler was to establish Blocking Position Amy. But Butler had been unaware of its existence until he stumbled upon it. Now that he’d found it, however, he realized it made a perfect spot to establish his command post and bed some of his men down for the night. Even after a day that began long before dawn and had been spent getting on and off the helicopters in the sun, he wasn’t too tired to see that the wadi offered complete protection from the enemy’s direct fire weapons—recoilless rifles and machine guns—and almost complete protection from his mortars and howitzers. It would take an extremely good, or lucky, mortar crew to land a round inside the wadi, the floor of which was only about five feet wide in places.

A trim officer of average height with short, stubby hair that was already flecked with a steely gray, Butler was relieved to have made it this far without a hitch. The repeated delays in getting his company into the fight had discouraged him, and he had not been able to get a clear picture of the enemy’s disposition from the Rakkasan chain of command. Communications problems and the continued—albeit often inadvertent—compartmentalization of information meant the Mountain and Rakkasan staffs were having a hard time building a comprehensive picture of the enemy, even though the information required existed at various echelons and locations, particularly at the AFO headquarters in Gardez. He ordered the men to assume 50 percent security. In other words, half of his force unrolled their sleeping pads to get a couple of hours sleep while the other half maintained watch along a perimeter about 500 to 1,000 meters from his command post. Tired out as much from the nerve-stretching tension of their day on the Bagram runway as from the high-altitude hike from the LZ, the soldiers soon fell asleep to the sound of AC-130s and fast-movers “rearranging the countour lines” of the Whale and the eastern ridge. It was a lullaby every infantryman in the Shahikot quickly learned to love.

IN
the middle of the night Preysler, the 2-187 Infantry commander, relayed the latest change in plans to Baltazar. Instead of being extracted, Baltazar would instead be reinforced by Kevin Butler and A Company. Nevertheless, the C Company commander and his men still had to move north to secure some high ground east of LZ 15. So in the predawn darkness, Baltazar got his company up and moving.

BUTLER’S
men were out of their sleeping bags before 6 a.m. The first thing they heard as they heated water for coffee and cocoa was the rumble of more air strikes. Convinced by now that the only people in Marzak were Al Qaida guerrillas, Hagenbeck had directed that the village be “leveled.” High overhead a lone B-52 traced lazy contrail arcs in the azure sky. As it passed over Marzak, the village was shaken by a series of explosions so powerful that Butler’s troops 5,000 meters to the north felt the concussions in their chests.

By 8 a.m. Baltazar had linked up with Butler. Preysler also met with Butler and passed on the latest version of the plan: Wiercinski’s reserve, Ron Corkran’s 1-187 Infantry, was to fly in to LZ 15 and then attack south down the eastern ridgeline toward Takur Ghar and the gorge just below it, with Butler’s company following. Baltazar was to divide his company between Blocking Positions Amy and Betty in the northeast of the valley. Butler told his NCOs he expected plenty of “contact” before the day was done, and that their day would consist of walking through the hills and having enemy fighters pop up from behind cover, fire an AK-47 or an RPG at them, and then run away as they returned fire.

ROGER
Crombie and his men were also on the move before first light, covering the final 300 meters that separated them from Luman and Helberg. With a few hours’ rest under their belts, they found the going much easier. They were walking over terrain that was merely rolling, rather than jagged. As the sun rose, Crombie and Helberg used VS-17 panels to signal each other before finally linking up. Helberg’s scouts were to lead Crombie’s men to Butler’s position. That would mean a march of about 7,000 meters, but the scout platoon leader explained to Crombie that they would be covering gently rolling terrain instead of the harsh, rocky slopes he had encountered thus far. Moving through easier terrain with double the men he had had up to that point was a source of great relief to Crombie. Nevertheless, this wasn’t a walk in the park. They still had to rest every 800 to 1,000 meters. In addition to their lack of oxygen and sleep, Crombie’s men were now on their last reserves of stored energy. The decision to dump so many supplies from their rucksacks meant they hadn’t brought any food. By midmorning most of the troops were approaching twenty-four hours without having eaten anything.

As it snaked its way north along the eastern ridge, Crombie’s column was spread out over about 300-400 meters in four separate platoon-size groups, with about seventy-five meters between each element. Every gully forced the troops into single file—always a vulnerable formation in such terrain. By the time the column had marched about 1,400 meters and was marching through a creek bed about 300 meters east of the compound seized the previous day by Preysler and his men, Crombie had become concerned that his troops weren’t pulling security properly. He got on the radio and reminded his platoon leaders of the passage in
We Were Soldiers Once…and Young
(a book about the Battle of the Ia Drang Valley in Vietnam read by every infantry officer), in which a column of U.S. infantry is ambushed and cut to pieces when it doesn’t look to its own defenses. The captain knew his troops were tired and that exhaustion bred complacency. “My concern was we still had a good ways to go, and the guys were only going to get more fatigued,” he said. This was “a leadership issue,” he said. “If you’re a leader, you need to be out there enforcing the standard.” The lead elements of the column—Helberg’s scouts—began following a trail. Crombie cut them loose, not wanting to follow the trail with his own troops, whom he pointed northwest towards his link-up point with 2-187 just south of LZ 15. He was already in contact with Preysler. The 2-187 commander told Crombie to just get to the northern creek bed. Preysler would guide him in from there.

Crombie’s troops pressed on, gasping and sweating as the altitude and the heat of a forced march wearing heavy body armor took its toll. About 1,000 meters from the northern wadi, the column stopped again. A 1
^st
Platoon soldier had collapsed. He had become overheated from his exertions, despite the chill mountain air. As the medics attended to him and the other troops sat down, gasping for breath, they heard mortars landing somewhere to their north.

BALTAZAR
had just left Butler’s command post a few minutes after 9 a.m. to return to his 1
^st
and 2
^nd
Platoons in the high ground when a mortar round exploded with a massive boom not 200 meters from Butler. Another followed within seconds as soldiers dove for cover. From their knoll-top positions on the perimeter, his troops scanned the mountainsides for any sign of the enemies who had taken them under fire. It wasn’t long before the eagle-eyed infantrymen spotted two mortars firing at them: one on the crest of the Whale, about 4,000 meters to Butler’s southwest, the other about 5,100 meters directly to the south. But mortar rounds weren’t the only ordnance being hurled toward the troops in and around the wadi. Someone somewhere was firing a 57mm recoilless rifle at them, as well as a DShK and RPGs set to airburst mode. Those soldiers not manning the perimeter scanning for targets hunkered down in the wadi and listened as the fat DShK rounds zipped harmlessly over their heads.

To Baltazar, who was en route back to his men after visiting Butler’s command post when the mortar attack commenced, the DShK fire was scarier than the mortars, because he couldn’t hear the heavy machine-gun firing, just the bullets as they flew by. He hunkered down for about thirty minutes until a break in the firing gave him an opportunity to run back to his platoons, which were split between a couple of wadis.

As the incoming mortar rounds continued to crash in, making a lot of noise but doing no damage, Butler had one option that hadn’t been available to most of his fellow Rakkasan leaders on D-Day. Alone of the company commanders who air assaulted into the valley on March 2, he had opted to bring his company’s 60mm mortar section in with him. Standing on the Bagram runway the previous morning as news came in of the pounding the first wave was taking from Al Qaida mortars, he was unworried. “We’re taking ours, and I’m willing to bet that our guys are better than their guys,” he’d said. Now his mortarmen had a chance to back up the captain’s boast. “It’s all fun and games until the
other
guy has a mortar, too,” Butler half-chuckled as he strolled down the wadi looking cool and unperturbed checking on his men.

(Butler’s pride in his mortar section was grounded in reality. Specialist Tim Ouditt, one of his mortarmen, had once received a commander’s coin—a prized keepsake in the Army—from Dick Cody, the 101
^st
Airborne commander, for landing a mortar round directly on a truck at a range of 1,500 meters during training at Fort Campbell.)

As Butler’s mortars went to work, with the soldiers on the perimeter calling in adjustments, Baltazar worked the radio to line up some close air support. None of Butler’s soldiers had been wounded, but it appeared only a matter of time before that situation changed for the worse. At 10:15 a.m. a mortar round landed just 100 meters from Butler’s command post. “They’ve got us bracketed,” said Staff Sergeant Chris Harry, the squad leader from Baltazar’s company who was standing nearby. At 10:21 a.m. a series of explosions marked the arrival of the close air support. But continued bursts of automatic weapons fire and more incoming mortar rounds told their own story of how successful the bombing run had been. “If they want the mortar situation sorted out, they’d better have a whole lot of CAS stacked up,” Butler commented. “It was such a nice morning, too,” his first sergeant, Jonathan Blossom, added dryly.

Watching the mortar duel from the top of a hillock about 600 meters to Butler’s south were Specialists Justin Musella and Justin Celano, a sniper team from 2-187’s scout platoon. They could see one of the enemy mortar positions firing at them, but it was 1,500 meters away, almost twice the effective range of their Remington 700 sniper rifle. By noon Al Qaida’s mortarmen apparently had spotted them too. Mortar rounds began landing near the sniper team’s position, kicking up clods of dirt. Each round fell closer than the last. The enemy had their range. As they saw another puff of smoke from the Al Qaida position, Musella and Celano knew they had to move, but decided to wait until the next round landed. This one was going to be close. Pressing themselves to the dirt they heard the shriek as gravity pulled the round down from the cloudless heavens. Then, to their horror, they saw the round’s shadow on the ground beside them, growing larger by the instant. Each realized that in a split second the high-explosive shell was going to land in their midst and there was nothing they could do. They braced themselves for the inevitable.

Then, with heart-stopping drama, it hit a rock just four feet from them with a metallic
ding!
and bounced away. It was a dud. Without pausing to contemplate their immense good fortune, the pair sprinted back to a safer position as another round exploded less than 100 meters away. As soon as they reached the fall-back position, a round hit their old position about a minute after they’d vacated it. This time it exploded. Musella and Celano beat a hasty retreat all the way back to the wadi.

There, Kevin Butler was getting frustrated. The combination of close air support and his own mortars appeared to have silenced one of the enemy mortar positions, but the other continued to fire intermittently at his command post. Butler had had enough and hit upon an off-the-wall plan he thought might work. His spotters had told him that whenever the enemy mortar crew heard the roar of an inbound jet or the thump of one of Butler’s mortar tubes firing, they would disappear into a cave or bunker, only to reemerge after the bomb or mortar round had exploded, waving defiantly at the Americans they knew would be watching. Butler’s fire support officer, 1
^st
Lieutenant Steve Leonhart, told him F-15s were inbound to strike the Al Qaida position. Knowing his mortar rounds had a thirty-two-second flight to the target on the Whale, Butler told his mortar crews to fire several airburst rounds in quick succession when they saw the bomb explode. The crews did exactly as they were told. As before, the enemy mortarmen ducked into their hiding place as soon as they heard the jet, which dropped its bomb close—but not close enough—to the enemy position, while Butler’s mortar section hung round after round. And just as before, the four-man Al Qaida mortar crew reemerged once the dust had cleared, laughing and waving. Only this time, just as Butler had planned, they had been too distracted by the bomb to notice the sound of his mortars firing. As they waved mockingly at the Americans, seven 60mm mortar rounds exploded over their heads, blowing them apart.

Butler was quick to pass the credit to his mortarmen. “That was a phenomenal performance from everybody in that mortar section,” he said shortly afterward. But the episode also validated his decision to bring the mortars in the first place—a choice that cost him seats on the Chinooks for several riflemen—and was an extraordinary example of cool, calculated thinking under fire for a young officer experiencing combat for the first time. The ROTC graduate of Mansfield University in Pennsylvania had spent the entire ride in on the Chinook “war-gaming” how he would act in front of the men and what he would do in the event they came under fire on the LZ. They didn’t, but that only delayed his trial by fire by a matter of hours. When the bullets did start flying, Butler was surprised at how naturally command came to him. “You experience an epiphany out there,” he said. He saw things that needed to be done, ordered people to do them, and everything worked out.