The War I Always Wanted (8 page)

To make matters worse, the smooth ground disappeared and we started up an incline. I had been walking for a few minutes, one foot, then the next foot, when I felt a crunch underneath my boot. It wasn't an “oh shit I broke something” crunch. It was another kind of crunch that I recognized—only it took a second for it to register. I looked down and focused my NODs on the ground.

The snow line.

For a brief moment I had a flash of sanity and thought to myself,
What the fuck is a Nintendo-playing suburban kid doing in the
Hindu Kush at nine thousand feet, marching in the snow toward the sound of guns?
I seemed to have forgotten that once in my life I had pined jealously for this opportunity.

Plodding up the slope, I looked back. The moon had risen, giving us very good visibility. Behind me I viewed the latter half of my platoon, stretched out over a hundred yards. The formation had begun to curve around to the right, so I could look over my shoulder and easily see the trailing soldiers. I couldn't make out facial features, but I could identify each soldier's silhouette simply by his height, weight, or gait. I could make out Sergeant Bryce Beville's second gun team. Pfc. Terrence Kamauf was the most recognizable, carrying the M240 machine gun. It was slung over his shoulders and it hung horizontally at his waist. Kamauf was the tallest guy in the platoon and, carrying the longest weapon, he looked like a moving plus sign. Walking beside him was Private Kyle Johnson, the smallest soldier in the platoon. Johnson's ruck weighed more than he did. Kamauf's ammunition bearer, Pfc. John Smerbeck, rounded out the team and walked beside the other two stoically.

Looking forward again, I watched Taylor pacing beside me in silence. All I could hear was labored breathing. Suddenly I heard what had become the unmistakable sound of someone falling. I looked over my shoulder in time to see Johnson flailing on the ground. I saw that two mortar rounds had fallen out of his ruck and were now rolling down the hillside. The eighteen-inch cardboard casings in which the mortars were packed rolled without hesitation to the bottom of the hill. They bounced over loose rocks and snow before disappearing into the darkness. It was as if they had waited patiently for this
moment, and were now making their escape from the interminable march.

My first thought upon losing the rounds was horror. A second later, it turned to, “Ahhh, fuck it.” All anyone could muster was a wistful glance into the darkness of the low ground.

Gasping, I continued walking up the craggy, snow-covered slope. I was thinking about how fortunate I had been to have not yet fallen, when my foot, weighted down and fatigued, failed to clear a rock jutting up from the ground. I pitched forward, the weight of my equipment forcing me face first into the snow. My M4 was flung from my hands, landing several feet away from me. As I fell forward, my rucksack hit my helmet, knocking it off my head. As my face met the snow, my ruck came to rest on the back of my head and shoulder blades—all one hundred and some-odd pounds of it. In that precarious position, I couldn't move. My arms were pinned and I couldn't even push myself up. I managed a muffled, “Help, I can't move.” The two guys nearest me lifted the ruck from off my head, and I crawled to all fours.

After walking for nearly eleven straight hours, we crested a rise in the frozen earth and found ourselves on a field of battle. We were exhausted, filthy, and out of breath. War had come barging into our houses on September the 11. And now, in the early hours of a March morning in 2002, for us at least, it had come full circle.

Before us stood the twelve-thousand-foot peak, Takhur Gar. Now known as Objective Ginger, it had become the site of the fiercest fighting of the battle. It was no longer on TV or in a scale model. It was real. I simply had two initial thoughts on
seeing this mountain that was less than a thousand yards away from where I stood. My first thought was:
That's a big fucking mountain
. My second was:
It's on fire
. There were trees with branches burning all along the north face of Takhur Gar. I'm not sure if Captain K. consciously decided to stop, was ordered to stop, or just did it instinctively, but we did. I took a knee with Taylor at my side. Just then a bomb hit the side of the mountain, lighting up the entire sky.

I had never before seen anything like that. I had never witnessed a shot fired in anger, much less, a bomb fall on people. When the bomb hit, the sound was deafening. It made the air vibrate. For the split second in which the mountainside was alight from the explosion, I could see trees swaying from the shockwave. I could see embers blowing off branches and into the snow. Kneeling, I watched as two more bombs struck the mountain in quick succession, causing the same set of effects. It was then that I noticed Sergeant Collins had moved forward from the back of the column. He was kneeling next to me. When he saw me looking at him through my night vision, he pointed to the mountain. Then he whispered, measuring out each word carefully, “A man's got to know his limitations.” I assumed he was talking about the terrorists. With each impact I ducked my head reflexively.

After a minute or two of watching this lightshow, Taylor handed me the radio. Captain K. was calling me to the front of the formation.

This was our destination. He told me that my platoon was to form the southernmost sector of our perimeter and that I was also responsible for setting up and securing the LZ for the incoming Chinook. At the time we had an hour remaining.

In order to set in the company, Captain K. wanted to conduct a reconnaissance of the area ahead. He picked me to go with him since it was going to be my area. A minute later we set out.

During the march, high ground to our right had prevented us from seeing the Shah-e-Kot Valley. It was on the other side of this high ground from which we had heard the sound of constant thunder as bombs devastated the valley and the villages of Serkhankel, Marzak, and Babulkul within. Captain K. and I walked briskly up a rise, and up ahead I could see an area where it appeared the high ground was tapering off. When we reached the break, I got my first look at the valley I'd come so far to see.

What I saw was fire and brimstone. It was Dante's
Inferno
. Less than eight hundred yards away from me, bombs were raining down on the valley. The sky was falling on those who had brought war to America. Entire payloads of gravity bombs fell and exploded in fantastic bursts of orange, yellow, and white. Two-thousand-pound satellite-guided bombs struck, reverberating throughout the valley. Cluster bombs fell, detonating on contact like a hundred hand grenades. Shrapnel was swirling like confetti. The air became metal. For a moment, Captain K. and I just stood there, taking it all in. On the edge of the abyss, we gazed down into a churning sea of fire. The attack was strangely hypnotic; the fury and intensity—overwhelming.

It was a vulgar display of power. It was unrestrained collective rage. But if anyone, anywhere had ever deserved such punishment, then this was the time, this was the place.

Whether the number of al Qaeda terrorists in the valley was large or small, I would never know. But I do know that the ones caught in the crossfire picked up the tab for the ones who
weren't there. Whether or not they had been involved in the planning for 9/11, whether or not they thought it had been a good idea, they paid. That night, thousands of pounds worth of iron fragmentation and concussion rendered them square with the house.

It was payback. And I was okay with that.

For some reason I seem to remember turning and running even before I saw the brilliant flash. Either way, before the sound and shockwave reached us, we had turned and were running back in the direction of the company. Neither of us had said anything. Our movements were reflexive. The sound was earsplitting and, like in nightmares, I felt I couldn't move rapidly enough. As we ran with bursting lungs, I heard within feet of me, the sound,
fffth
—as searing hot metal sliced into the earth.

This was the edge of the kill zone.

We finished marking the LZ with only minutes to spare. When it was done, Sergeant Collins sat next to me and, shivering together, we watched the deconstruction of Takhur Gar continue. I could no longer see directly into the valley, but I could still see the flashes of light and hear the thunderous booms from within. The planes above pummeled the mountain and valley without respite. Sitting there wide-eyed, I didn't see how anyone on the receiving end of the onslaught could survive.

Slowly starting to freeze, I sat back and watched the show. I thought of the movie
The Big Lebowski
. In it, John Goodman's character, Walter Sobchak, is smashing his nemesis' Corvette with a crowbar.

I hear him yelling at the top of his lungs, “Do you see what happens, Larry? Do you see what happens when you fuck a stranger in the ass?”
He brings the crowbar down over his head and onto the windshield of the pristine car, crushing it. “
This
is what happens, Larry!” He strikes the hood of the car. “This is what happens when you
fuck a stranger in the ass!”
He swings the crowbar squarely into the driver's-side door
.

Yes, Walter, this is what happens. This is what happens. I listened in the cold night air, as bombs, a few football fields away, continually found their marks.

Minutes later I heard the faint thumping of rotors echoing through the mountains. Shortly thereafter, the Chinook landed on our LZ. I sat motionless, with my back to my ruck, watching through my NODs as grainy green figures exited the back of the bird. With the night vision, I could see the two infrared targeting lasers used by the door gunners, as they anxiously scanned the surrounding terrain. The bird remained there, rotors spinning, for less than three minutes, while the last of 3rd Platoon's troops shuffled off the ramp. Once the last man cleared it, the Chinook's rotor blades deepened in tone. At that point, wind, dust, and pebbles were scattered through the air in a blast of wind as the bird rose into the night sky. Seconds later everything was quiet. Even the bombing had stopped.

We still had a little less than an hour before daylight. Curled up and trying to retain warmth in any way possible, I began to doze. For the second night in a row, I lay on the ground with my teeth chattering. I wasn't aware of the existence of any plan past sunrise. All I knew was that I would live for another night, and at dawn, in some form or fashion, we would take the fight to the enemy.

Part II
 

KNOWLEDGE

“That's the attractive thing about war,” said Rosewater. “Absolutely everybody gets a little something.”

—Kurt Vonnegut,
Slaughterhouse-Five

6
 
The Desert

March 2003

I awoke with a start in Kuwait, covered in sweat. I had been napping in the front seat of my humvee. I decided to step out onto the desert floor and stretch my legs. The constriction of my chemical protective suit was bothersome, but I was being forced to wear it anyway. At the time apparently, someone thought Iraq had chemical weapons.