Wandering out of the barracks wearing just his uniform and a pair of flip-flops, Staff Sergeant John Wayne Walding glanced at the sky. It was overcast again and felt like rain. No mission today, he thought. It was going to get pushed back again. He just knew it.
So Walding headed back to the tiny room he shared with Morales and Wurzbach. It was empty and Walding began to get ready. The three had been sharing the closet-size room with two sets of bunk beds since they arrived at Jalalabad. The room was so tight that Walding could sit on the edge of his bed, extend his arm, and touch the wall on the other side.
The tight quarters made it feel like they were teenagers having a sleepover. Sometimes, they would stay up most of the night bullshitting, talking about family, friends, and their lives. Walding was the new guy. This was Morales’s and Wurzbach’s second tour with ODA 3336. But this was Walding’s first deployment with Special Forces—and he fit right in.
He was young and tough and smart. With his high cheekbones, soft but rugged features, soft blue eyes, wavy black hair, and lean runner’s body, he looked like a young Brad Pitt. He had an innocent, boy-next-door look. But when he flashed his infectious wide smile and gritted his white teeth, you could tell he had a playful mischievous side. He was charismatic and handsome enough to be a movie star, or a regular on a television show. But Walding had no interest in acting. He just wanted to do his job, and do it right.
Before heading to the flight lines, Walding began inspecting his gear. He had an M4 carbine, pistol, combat load of magazines in pouches on his body armor, and a tourniquet. He had a survival kit, a knife, and an assault pack with food, water, socks, night vision, and batteries. Ford had pressed them to carry batteries. Just in case. Walding had thought briefly about bringing some music—his iPod—but didn’t want it to get damaged.
Before every mission Walding would pump himself up by listening to some heavy metal. It wasn’t unusual for him to back an SUV up to the flight line about 150 feet from the helicopters and crank up one of his favorite songs—“Die Motherfucker Die” by the group Dope. It would get him ready for the mission:
With helicopter rotors spinning and the flight crew running through their checks, Walding’s head would bounce up and down to the pounding rhythm and screeching guitars. At that moment he was in the zone, primed and ready to go. Songs provided background music for his tour. Sometimes when he was running hard and fast on the base, the song “Indestructible” by the group Disturbed would play on his iPod, and it would give him a boost like an extra shot of Red Bull.
The twenty-seven-year-old would run faster and faster and pump his fist in the air. The tune would amp him up so much that he would begin thinking: Go ahead and shoot me. I’m going to get back up again. I’ve become indestructible. During his tour in Iraq, Walding had a major who loved classic rocker Bob Seger. Every time they had a night mission—when a convoy of Humvees was rolling down some remote pockmarked road—the major would pop a Seger CD into a boom-box and play “Night Moves.” It helped the major relax.
But Walding knew there would be no night move for this mission. This operation would take place in daylight—something that worried him and other members of the team. He hoped they wouldn’t be discovered, because if they were, they would be easy targets.
Walding just wanted to “do something bad to bad people” and come back alive. He wanted to see his wife and children. He thought about them before missions—that he was making their world a safer place. But what kind of life would they have if he was killed in action? He tried not to think about that, although those thoughts did cross his mind.
Walding slipped into his uniform and body armor, and swapped his flip-flops for boots. He took a deep breath and headed to the helicopters. If anything, today would probably be another rehearsal. But if it were up to Walding, his team would go and “get it done.” Hunt down the insurgents.
Walding viewed Commando Wrath as a challenge, and he never backed down from a challenge—a reason he joined the Army in the first place.
Born on the Fourth of July in Victoria, Texas, about two hours southwest of Houston, Walding was a tough kid from the start.
His mother and father were “hippies”—they named him after the iconic actor because his father said if he was born on July 4, he had to have a “cool name”—who were busted for selling marijuana when he was six years old. After they headed to jail, he and his older brother, Mark, went to live with their paternal grandparents in Groesbeck, Texas, about forty miles east of Waco.
His grandfather, Sam Walding, was an oilman, a wildcatter, a disciplinarian who believed that hard work built strong character. And his grandmother, Gracia, was a southern Baptist who taught Sunday school.
Before he lived with his grandparents, there was little discipline or structure in Walding’s life. Once he and his brother arrived, his grandfather made them get up in the morning and work on the farm. He taught the boys to treat people with respect and dignity, and never prejudge anyone. You judge a man by his actions, his character—not by his looks, not by whether he was rich or poor.
After his grandfather retired, he moved to four hundred acres his family owned outside of Groesbeck, a farming and mining town. He had a cattle ranch with two hundred acres of pasture—Walding’s grandparents owned fifty head of cattle—and the rest was woods, where his grandfather would take young Walding hunting. On weekends, he would take his grandson fishing at Lake Limestone, where they would catch bass and catfish.
His grandparents were supportive of everything Walding did. They encouraged him to follow his dreams. They never tried to impose their own on him. Sure, he had to do chores around the ranch, bale hay and feed the animals. That was expected and Walding never complained.
He remembered on his sixteenth birthday, he loaded over eight hundred bales of hay. Dripping with sweat, Walding was tired and just wanted to hang out with his friends. But he stuck with it, and when he was finished, his grandfather handed him four hundred dollars. Walding hadn’t known he was going to get paid. That wasn’t the point. He hauled the hay because his grandfather asked him to, and he always did what his grandfather asked. He respected and loved the old man.
Sam Walding didn’t have more than an eighth-grade education, but he had a strong work ethic. It rubbed off on his grandson. Walding never complained, even when it came to pain. Once, when he was horsing around, he fell out of a second-floor window at the house and broke his arm. He didn’t say a word. Didn’t cry. He had a high tolerance for pain. Real men don’t cry, he thought. That’s not the way he was raised.
In a way, Walding was the quintessential East Texas boy: He played football and baseball—he was on the all-district baseball team—and dated a lot of girls. He had one serious relationship: Lane Neil. They would spend long hours making out in his car or under the bleachers. She had the picture-perfect life. Her father was the president of a local bank. Their house looked like something out of a TV sitcom of the 1950s, and Walding liked to call her family the Brady Bunch. Everyone was happy and cheerful, not a chair or picture out of place in the house.
Walding knew that when he graduated high school he wanted to make money. While he was a good student, he had no plans to go to college right away—not like Lane, who was accepted at Texas A&M in College Station.
So after graduation, he took a job with a company laying cable lines. Walding and his cable crew traveled all over the state, and the company put them up in hotels. It was a great gig. He was pulling down about a thousand dollars a week, and he was spending every penny.
Every once in a while he would visit Lane at Texas A&M, but that wasn’t working out. The turning point in his young life came when he took a trip to Las Vegas with a few buddies. All weekend long, he drank and gambled, and returned home with no money in his pockets. He was broke. He looked at himself in the mirror and was brutally honest with himself: He had to find another job. He had to do something else. He didn’t want to continue with that lifestyle. That’s not the way he was raised.
A day after he returned from Las Vegas, he ran into a friend who had joined the Army. The friend told him about traveling and shooting guns, and Walding thought it would be a good gig. He needed that kind of structure again. Plus, the military was a job where you can “lay down your head at night and be proud of it.” So he told his grandparents his plans.
As usual, they were supportive, and encouraged him to work hard. So Walding enlisted. A month before basic training, he decided to go to Las Vegas for his birthday. He asked his best friend in high school, Jackie Don McKinley who was in the Air Force stationed at Edwards Air Force Base in California, to join him. Jackie said he would, and asked if he could bring along his cousin Amy Stovall, who lived in Waco.
Walding agreed, and Jackie gave him his cousin’s number. Walding had never met Amy, and when he called, they hit it off. They talked every night for a month. They had that same East Texas background and friends and experiences. As they talked, they began to flirt. When he picked her up at her house to take her to the airport, his heart melted. She was pretty and funny. And by the end of the long weekend in Las Vegas, he asked her out. She said yes, even though he was headed to basic training and they didn’t know when they would see each other again.
So on August 16, 2001, Walding began basic training at Fort Sill, Oklahoma. But everything changed less than a month later, on 9/11. That morning, they were learning about hand-to-hand combat when a sergeant interrupted training and marched them back to a classroom. The sergeant sat them down and told them what happened. Then he carried a television into the classroom and they watched the events unfold. Walding couldn’t believe it. How could terrorists do that? And like most of the soldiers in the room that day, he became angry. He wanted to quit training right there and hunt down the people who were responsible.
The next day, the base was the same—but it had changed. Concertina wire surrounded the installation. The entire Army had gone into high alert. Even the focus of the training changed. The Army had a new mission. All the drill sergeants gave the recruits the “we’re going to war” speech. He knew it was every drill instructor’s wet dream to give that speech. It helped the recruits focus. But now they knew it was serious. No bullshit. And the irony wasn’t lost on Walding.
When he joined, there was no war. But less than a month after he started basic training, the United States was on the cusp of a major military action. His mind-set had changed. He thought he would join the Army, maybe get some college in the future, and serve his country. For a moment he wondered if he had made the right move.
After basic training, he learned how to work radar and light maintenance on Patriot missiles, and was sent to Iraq for the invasion in 2003. His unit provided air cover for troops, who were leapfrogging from Iraqi city to city. And by July, the war was over—at least for him. He remembered watching Special Forces soldiers, how they operated, how they always seemed to be in the middle of action, and decided that he wanted to be one of them. He wanted to be the best of the best. He didn’t want to be sitting in the rear again. If he was going to stay in the Army, why not? It made sense. He never took any shortcuts.
When he returned home that summer, he asked Amy to move in with him. She agreed. While he was in Fort Gordon, a recruiter came into the office one day and asked who wanted to join the Green Berets. He jumped at the chance.
Walding brought home a video they had played at the recruiting station to show Amy what he was getting into. He knew it was dangerous. But it would be fulfilling, he thought. He was afraid that if he didn’t try, he would regret it. As he told Amy, he didn’t want to be that guy at sixty years old on the front porch saying, “Man, I wonder if I could have done that.”
He married Amy in August 2004 and they had a son—the first of their three children. After making it through Selection, he headed to the qualification course.
It was grueling, but Walding thrived. And when he joined the 3rd Special Forces Group, it was one of the proudest days of his life. He finally made it. Before he headed to Afghanistan in October 2007, he promised Amy he would be careful. That he would do everything to return home safely.
Walding had fully bought into the concept that Special Forces were force multipliers—a few men training many to become cohesive fighting units. He enjoyed training the Afghan commandos. He knew that it was making the commandos better soldiers. They were more prepared to fight and die for their country. If they were ever going to defend their country, they had to learn to do it themselves.
But he discovered that many commandos didn’t have his work ethic or a sense of urgency. Sometimes in the middle of a training exercise, they would stop for prayer. That was frustrating and sometimes hard to understand. Walding believed that if his people were being waxed by the Taliban, he was going to concentrate more on training than on praying. But he understood that the Afghan commandos didn’t see it that way. They had to pray to Allah. And who was he to say they were wrong? That’s their life. And he made sure he articulated that it was okay to stop training for that purpose.
But there were other problems, including the Afghans’ “intelligence level.” Walding and other team members had to teach them basic math. If you’re telling them to add five plus five, what good is it if they don’t understand what it means. And throw in night vision and lasers and it was just overwhelming. They were never taught life skills that Americans take for granted.
And it was a hard sell to get the commandos to use the high-tech equipment. The Afghans hated using their night vision. They would always use the flood lamps to “see better.” Walding would tell them that they might be able to see better but “you can also be seen better.” He would say they couldn’t be naive to think the Taliban didn’t have night vision. If you just walk around with a flood lamp, it’s just going to give away your position. It took time to get them to understand basic concepts. When you put it all together—the training—it was a long day’s work. And he wasn’t sure they understood everything.
But he couldn’t think about that now. Not when he was standing on the flight lines, wondering if the Shok Valley mission would even take place, and if it did and they hit resistance, how would the commandos react?
He knew that training was one thing, and real combat was another. He had been in battle before and you had to keep your wits. You had to stay calm under fire. It was a lot of pressure and he didn’t know how the commandos would handle it.