FRIENDS FOR LIFE
American soldiers in battle don’t fight for what some presidents say on TV, they don’t fight for mom, apple pie, the American flag. They fight for one another.
—COLONEL HAL MOORE (7th Cavalry, Vietnam)
The steady crack of bullets overhead, followed by the constant drumming of machine guns returning fire, made thinking impossible. Occasionally, the uniform tapestry of noise was torn by the whoosh of an RPG or the blast of a recoilless rifle punching a hole in a grape hut.
Between bursts, I tried to assess our situation. We had assaulted the defended enemy position twice and held. We now controlled some significant tactical real estate that the Taliban wanted back.
Hodge’s team occupied the Taliban’s previous fighting positions on top of the hill, but the enemy was hammering us from the nearly fifty compounds at its base and from the irrigation ditches, walls, fields, and grape huts that surrounded them.
Bill and Steve stabilized the wounded Afghan soldier with a tourniquet and pressure dressing. They put his detached foot into a black plastic bag, hoping surgeons in Kandahar could reattach it if we could get a medevac helicopter in time. They moved him to the casualty collection point (CCP) near the berm.
I was watching the small Afghan truck pull away with the wounded when Brian noticed movement in the schoolhouse. We needed to know how many Afghans Hodge had left in the school for security, but my call to him was interrupted.
“Captain, Captain, Taliban moving back of school,” Ali called over in Pashto, as I glimpsed a few figures in dark shirts and scarves dart around the back of the school.
“I left six Afghans,” Hodge radioed back, but he reversed himself half a minute later: “Rusty, the six Afghans are up here with me. No one is in the school.”
Shit. Taliban fighters were back in the school. We could see them darting between the windows and climbing up the hill near a graveyard at the back of the building, probing to see if we were still there. If the Taliban held there, they would split our small force.
Hodge, Bill, and the rest were on top of Sperwan Ghar fighting for their lives. Jared, Casey, and Jude were at the casualty collection point defending the growing number of wounded and the medics trying to treat them. The job of clearing the school again fell to us. The Predator that had arrived on station was calling to alert us to the threat moving behind the assault force as I ordered my machine-gun teams to pick up their guns and ammunition and prepare to move.
“All Talon 30 elements: Talon 31 Alpha [commander] is moving to clear the school,” Brian said.
Since we were the support fire team, we had only machine guns—not the best room-clearing weapon, but we’d have to make do. Same plan as before—no sense in getting cute. Plus, the hasty plan would be second nature to everyone. Muscle memory over thinking.
“Dave, Brian,” I barked before I left, “mow those motherfuckers down when they come out the side of the school. I don’t want to deal with these assholes again! Hodge, you have enemy in the school. We are gonna clear it. DO NOT shoot down there!”
Turning to my squad of six Afghans, I put in a fresh magazine and checked the chamber. “You all come with me. Are you ready?” I said in Pashto. They greeted me with a chorus of “Wa sahib”—Yes, sir. Taking a deep breath, I screamed “Hamla!”—Attack!—and we headed over the berm at a full sprint.
Bright red tracers poured from the guns on my truck into the school while multicolored Taliban tracers streaked in front of us. Taliban in a group of compounds only one hundred meters away spotted us and let loose with their machine guns, frantically trying to zero in on us.
“ZA! ZA! ZA!”—GO! GO! GO!—was all I could muster as we cleared the last twenty yards. We made it to the entrance on the far right of the schoolhouse as bullets chipped away the concrete walls around us. I quickly had two Afghan machine gunners set up their weapons. One hammered the compounds that had just fired at us. The other protected our rear in case any Taliban were feeling unusually brave.
I grabbed a grenade, showed it to the four Afghans behind me, flicked off the thumb safety, and pulled the pin. The Afghan soldier next to me turned and fired into the doorway, clearing my path. I stepped out, peered down a long hallway flanked by about four rooms on each side, and threw the grenade as hard and as far down the passage as I could. Rolling back behind the wall, I pulled the Afghan out of the doorway as the building vibrated, dust and razor-sharp shrapnel flying in all directions.
I heard gunfire from my truck on the berm and knew that the enemy must be trying to move away from us. I pointed to the Afghan soldier and motioned for him to fire down the hallway again. Basket-ball-sized flames shot out of the barrel of his PKM machine gun as he fired from the hip down the hallway, accompanied by the clanking of brass casings hitting the concrete floor.
I could feel splintered shards of concrete hitting my neck and equipment; the gunfire from the compounds was getting too close for comfort. I considered my options. We could stay outside and get shot or go inside and get shot. I chose inside. I’d place our skills in a room against theirs any day.
With a quick glance at the long belt of ammunition feeding into the PKM, I grabbed the gunner’s uniform top and pushed him forward. “Fire down the hallway, I’ll shoot into the rooms,” I commanded. “Everyone else behind me.”
Five of us moved inside, leaving one machine gun covering our men. The PKM gunner was first, I was second. The third and fourth men carried AKs, and the last was my other PKM gunner. Yellow and red sparks from our bullets bounced around the hallway. The deafening roar of the machine gun took its toll. As we maneuvered down the hallway the ANA shook their heads, screaming “Tse?”—What?—to my verbal commands, and I realized they were now all deaf. Before long, I was close to deaf myself, despite my Peltor headset.
Shadows moved in the light of a doorway and I readied another grenade. I showed it to the Afghans and pointed out the doorway to the machine gunner. He fired a short burst and then, thunk, nothing—a dead man’s bang. The bolt goes forward into the chamber with no bullet in it. Out of ammunition.
I grabbed his shoulder and jerked him behind me, hurled the grenade into the room, took two steps back, shouldered my rifle, and fired into the entranceway until the grenade exploded. Dust and smoke billowed into the hallway, virtually blinding us. I heard Dave and Brian on the radio and caught something about fire and smoke coming out of the school. I called out our location and told Dave to cease fire. He saw the explosion and could see no one else on his side of the school.
“Brian, get my truck down here at the breach point and suppress the enemy from there.”
I grabbed the machine gunner in the rear of the group and moved him to the front, keeping contact with him as we continued our slow creep forward. I could hear the crunch of glass and rubble beneath our feet and the occasional zing of a bullet passing through a window. We turned a corner and moved through a large, open, empty foyer.
As we entered the second dust-filled hallway, light streamed into the building. I heard Ole Girl’s engine and Dave yelling commands as my truck came flying past the school. Seconds later, the steady rhythm of Dave’s machine gun opened up.
I told the Afghan to stop firing and peered into the last rooms, confident that the Taliban fighters were gone. Inside, there were at least four smoldering fires and dozens of blankets, digging tools, food, chairs, and boxes. I called over the radio that the school was clear and then screamed, “Five friendlies coming out!” We waited a beat before emerging. I didn’t want to come this far only to be shot by one of my own. I stuck my arm out first and slowly peered out, helmet first.
An Afghan soldier was on the berm waving back at me. I turned to my Afghan soldiers and smiled.
“Deersha kar kawi.” Good job. One smiled back and the rest just nodded in agreement. I ordered Smitty to move his truck up between the school and the hill and saw the truck moving over the berm toward me. Now we were getting some real firepower up here. I called Jared next.
“Any word on that CAS?”
“Not yet, I’m working it,” he said.
“Roger, I am going to move the rest of my team and the Afghans to the school and reinforce from there. Bill, did you copy that?”
Bill and his Afghans came half sliding, half running down the washout of the hill. As he reached the bottom, I told him to secure the far side of the hill, including the school, while I cleared the buildings between the berm and the hill. “These jokers are gonna want to take this hill back. Get the Afghans set in a defense and make ’em pay dearly for it if they try.”
Bill moved off and I hollered for Smitty. I told him no one had cleared the buildings between the berm and the hill yet.
“You okay, Captain?” he asked. “You look smoked.”
“Do I look that bad?”
“Well, honestly, it’s hard to tell, because you never really looked that good,” he cracked as we clambered over the small walls on the back of the school and skirted the side of the hill.
I was much more confident clearing rooms this time. Smitty was a natural. I watched him move toward the first building with a singular balance that allowed him to almost flow with his rifle at the ready. He approached the doorway of the squat one-story building and I moved to provide security. He took a knee and tossed a grenade inside. BOOM. As dust and debris billowed, we burst into the room, covering our sectors just as we had dozens of times in training. In a matter of minutes, we cleared three more buildings. Bill came on the radio as we were coming out of the last building, calling for more firepower. All of our positions—on the entire perimeter and on the hill—were under murderous fire. Both of my trucks were firing away into enemy positions near the hill. Smitty called back and said we were on our way.
Smitty and an RPG arrived at his truck at the same moment. The rocket slammed into the hill just above his head, knocking him into the door. Zack and Chris responded with as much fire as their guns could muster, reducing the wall where the rocket had been fired from to rubble.
With the buildings clear, I called up Sean’s truck to help reinforce Bill’s position between the hill and the school. Greg heard my call and gave Jude a thumbs-up as he and Sean started up the hill.
Jude was hunkered down next to Jared’s truck as they continued to receive fire. Casey, in the turret, tried to keep the Taliban fighters’ heads down as they fired rocket-propelled grenades set to air burst directly over his head, showering the truck with molten metal. Jared, on the other side of the truck, continued to plead for air cover.
Greg and Sean approached the berm, careful to drive precisely in the tracks of the other vehicles.
The flash was immense. “Oh GOD” was all I could say.
The bomb exploded under the right rear wheel well, setting off the gas tank and forty gallons of diesel fuel in jerricans in the back. Flames rose thirty feet high. The frame of the truck shot into the air, sending equipment and ammunition everywhere. Greg, in the turret, was blown skyward, twisting in midair and landing horribly mangled across the front bumper, flames and exploding rockets, bullets, and fuel all around him.
The shock wave from the blast sent Jared flying ass over end onto his back and knocked the air out of Casey’s lungs, slamming him down from the turret. As the flames climbed high, Jude, shielded from the blast by Jared’s truck, watched as a huge cloud of dust slowly enveloped everything around him. He could barely see the vehicle, but caught a glimpse of Greg through the flames and thick black smoke streaming out of the GMV.
A huge fireball rocketed out of the smoke cloud, bringing with it a long, heavy mortar tube and a boot. The tube landed with a thunk next to Jared. “I’m dead,” he thought. Seeing the boot, he scrambled for a tourniquet and checked to make sure he had both legs. They were both there.
Shaking off the shock of the blast, Jared sat up in time to see Jude race across a small open field, under direct enemy machine-gun fire and into the flames around the truck, where Greg lay slumped, motionless. Fighting through the black smoke and fire, Jude grabbed Greg and hauled him to the ground.
I was calling for Jared, but he was down, and I was sure the IED had hit his truck too. Screaming for Brian and Dave to hold the school, I sprinted a hundred or so meters across the field, through heavy small-arms fire, the whole time trying to raise Jared on the radio.
No answer.
Riley had just finished bandaging a wounded Afghan soldier when he saw the fireball and the figure flying into the air. Grabbing his aid bag, he ran toward the burning truck, where he could see Jude pulling someone from the wreckage.
I dove headfirst into the depression we’d used for cover during the assault and damn near broke my neck. I frantically radioed for the closest vehicle to provide some suppressive fire. It took me a minute to get to the burning vehicle because I had to maneuver from ditch to ditch. A nearby gun truck finally covered me for the last several meters.
Spent, I clawed my way over the final berm. Coughing and gagging from the dust, I was face to face with absolute carnage. Equipment, rockets for the Carl Gustav, water bottles, and truck parts were scattered around the melting hulk. I saw Jude at what used to be the front bumper dragging Greg’s inert body out of the flames.
Greg’s uniform was on fire. Jude tried to smother the flames, burning his own wrists and gloved hands, but he didn’t stop.
The flames around the truck were horrific, with rounds cooking off at a feverish pace. More than twenty thousand 7.62 rounds, ten thousand 5.56 rounds, numerous rockets, mortars, recoilless rifle rounds, and grenades burned and exploded uncontrollably. The truck quickly became a raging inferno. Realizing they had to get out of there, Jude started to drag Greg toward a ditch.
I tumbled and fell down the berm to get to Jude and Greg. I grabbed what was left of Greg’s body armor and pulled with all my might with Jude toward a shallow irrigation ditch at the edge of the marijuana field about ten meters away from the truck. As we neared it, we realized that it was only eighteen inches deep. With no other choice, we stuffed Greg into it.
“This is as good as it gets, Jude,” I shouted.
Jude tried to pull out Greg’s first aid kit, but everything on him was either burned or melted. He took out his personal first aid kit instead and started to treat Greg’s wounds. As he fumbled with the kit, he looked up at me and nodded toward the marijuana field. “I’ve never smoked this stuff, Captain. Now I’m going to die in this shit,” he said.
“Not today, hoss,” was all I could think to say.
Ammunition continued to cook off, spraying us with hot shrapnel. I removed Greg’s body armor and stuck it sideways next to him as protection while Jude began the head to toe examination, calling out the wounds as he found them. Bill came over the hill and knelt down beside us.
“Bill, find Riley and get him over here fast,” I snapped. “Grab any other medics and bring a trauma bag from one of the other trucks. Then begin linking all the defensive positions together.”
Bill took off like a shot. We started first aid. A pound-and-a-half piece of jagged shrapnel had punched a huge hole in Greg’s hip and shredded his intestines and stomach. We worked feverishly to keep the organs sterile and stuffed inside his abdominal wall.
At first we couldn’t find his leg. We figured it was gone, but we finally realized that what was left of it was folded underneath him. What amazed me was that Greg was not yet in shock and was alert enough to tell us how to treat him. His background as a former medical instructor at the top-flight Special Operations Medical Training Center was in full evidence as he told Jude and I where he was bleeding—or “leaking”—and how to stop it. While Jude packed the large open wound and I tried to secure his neck, Greg continued to spit up blood.
Squatting in the ditch, I could see that the nylon pouches on Jude’s body armor were slick, partially melted from the flames, and his beard was smoking. His hands were obviously swelling and very sensitive after patting out the burning equipment on Greg’s body. But he never quit working on Greg.
Sean, the ETT, was missing; I hadn’t seen him since the explosion. “Where is Sean?” I screamed to Jude over the explosions.
Jude shrugged. “I didn’t see him in the vehicle.”
Taking that as a sign he might still be alive, I went to look for him. I would leave no one out here. I scrambled on all fours out of the ditch, past the front of the truck, and into the smoke on the high side of the vehicle, waving my arm around in front of me, trying to clear the air. The noxious black cloud made my eyes and nose burn, and as soon as I got my first lungful, I threw up.
The smoke smothered me as I focused on searching for Sean. Then, just up the hill on the north side of the vehicle, I saw a dark figure slumped on the side of the berm. It was Sean. The explosion had blown him through the driver’s door into the hill. He had tried to crawl back to the truck to help Greg but never made it. He moved when I grabbed his arm, but his respirations were shallow, probably from breathing in all that toxic smoke.
“Let’s go partner! I gotcha,” I said.
I grabbed the drag handle on his equipment and pulled him out of the noxious cloud, then half carried, half dragged him toward the ditch. He became somewhat responsive in the fresher air and staggered the rest of the way. I placed him head to head with Greg, so we could watch both of them and protect one another. The Taliban fighters were now taking deliberate shots at us, and their rounds sliced through the nearby marijuana plants, which tumbled into our position as they were cut down. My back to the fire, I was sure they’d shoot me in the ass.
Sean was not on this planet. He kept trying to crawl out of the ditch to look for Greg, and I had to hold him down while we assessed his injuries. I ran my hands under his helmet and opened his body armor, rolled him to his side and searched his back. I combed his entire body from head to foot, but found no major trauma—only small cuts and bleeding from his nose and ears.
“You are one blessed SOB,” I told him.
Riley had been with a wounded Afghan when he saw the explosion and headed for it, but it had taken time for him and J.D. to cross over from their position. As soon as he got to us, Riley grabbed me and screamed into my face, “Which one is worse?”
I pointed to Greg, and Riley knelt next to him, ripping open his aid bag. Greg was totally black from head to toe, and Riley didn’t know who he was treating until Greg started talking.
“I think I can move Sean to the CCP,” I shouted.
“Wait a minute,” Riley said.
Jude gave Riley an update on Greg’s injuries. Riley had never seen injuries like Greg’s. Even in the Special Forces medics course he never imagined he’d see someone so damaged. He started cutting off Greg’s charred uniform. Each time he pulled away a piece, he found a new injury. Fractured ankle. Broken tibia. Shrapnel wounds in his knee. Third-degree burns from his waist down.
When Riley got to Greg’s right buttock, he found a hole the size of his fist going straight into Greg’s abdomen, where a huge piece of shrapnel had blown through and lodged deep, exposing the intestines. It was the same devastating wound we had tried to treat.
“How is he?” I screamed over the steady rattle of machine-gun fire.
If Riley shook his head up and down, he thought Greg would make it. But he and Jude both shook their heads no, and my heart sank. Greg’s wounds were way beyond what we could treat.
“His heart rate is low as well as his blood pressure. He needs blood and level-three attention fast,” Riley said. “He’s in the golden hour.”
This meant that we basically had one hour to get Greg to a medical facility before it was too late. Riley continued to treat him, but the irrigation ditch was too dangerous. The Taliban were now focusing their undivided attention on our position. Dirt and debris continued to rain down on us and into Greg’s wounds. I had to get Sean to the casualty collection point. I didn’t want him to be there if Greg died.
Bill sent two Afghan soldiers down to cover us. Another small explosion sent more truck parts and recoilless-rifle rounds shooting past us. Riley, J.D., and Jude instinctively hunched over Greg as I hovered over Sean, trying to protect them from further injury. We had to move.
Jude ran back to Jared’s truck and grabbed a stretcher, got back and unfolded it, only to realize it had been broken in the initial blast. He raced back to get another. I told Sean I was going to move him to a safer spot and managed to lift him to his feet. I slid my arm underneath the back of his shirt and grabbed his collar. Slinging his arm over my neck, I grabbed the front of his belt until he could get his legs moving.
Diving into the marijuana field on the other side of the berm, we staggered our way through the thick stalks, which snapped back to slap us as we shoved past them. I could hear Casey’s .50 cal firing, and we moved toward the sound. We finally made it through the field before both of us collapsed.
“Do you remember what your name is?” I asked.
“Yeah, Sean,” he said.
“Do you know what day it is?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Sean said, and I smiled.
“Well, can you get to your feet? Because I can’t carry your big ass over this berm,” I said.
He shook his head yes. We made it about ten yards from the top of the berm, when he suddenly collapsed on top of me. I grabbed both his arms and with him on my back half dragged, half carried him toward Jared’s vehicle. My legs wobbled like a newborn’s and my back gave out after a few steps. We went down in an exhausted heap. Jared ran over when he saw us fall, looking himself like someone had cleaned his clock in a bar fight. I asked if he was okay. He said yes and took Sean.
I lumbered back to Jude’s position, where Riley was still working on Greg. The enemy fire was increasing. Riley needed everyone to move before someone got shot. I told him the casualty collection point was near Jared’s truck and then moved to link up with Bill, stopping to make sure nobody had left any sensitive items like night-vision goggles in the ditch. Behind me, I watched an Afghan soldier pick up Greg, throw him over his shoulder, and carry him to safety.
The vehicle continued to burn. I looked at the small ditch where we all had just been. The dry wheat-like grass was mashed flat and covered in blood. Used first aid supplies, needle cases, tubing, bits of clothing, and plastic wrappers littered the ground. Then I noticed the bloodstains all over my gloves, sleeves, and pouches.
When I got back to the casualty collection point, Jared grabbed my arm. “We have medevac birds inbound in thirty minutes. CAS will come in with them. Get me a target list pronto!”
Armored gun trucks were circled like wagons around the wounded in the center of the CCP. Men lay sprawled on litters with medics hovering around them. Jude was busy convincing the medics that his burns were not that bad and he could still fire a weapon.
My thoughts circled back to Greg. He had been in a Special Forces unit before and knew the mission could be deadly, but he hadn’t just volunteered, he’d insisted on coming. I second-guessed my decision to let him join us and didn’t know how I’d explain it to his one-year-old son.
At the CCP, Greg was convinced he was going to die. Every time he took a breath, his body wrenched in unimaginable pain. Riley pumped him full of antibiotics and painkillers, hoping to ease his fears. Riley tried to keep him talking: Fishing. Hunting. About the old days in training. Anything to keep his mind off the pain.
“You okay, man?” he asked as he snapped on a tourniquet and wrenched it down. Greg screamed. Grabbing Greg’s penis, Riley moved it out of the way so he could apply another tourniquet higher on his leg.
“Hey, Riley,” Greg said between tortured breaths. “If I die, last thing you’re going to remember about me is that you touched my dick.”
“Fuck you, homo,” Riley said, wrestling to secure the tourniquet to staunch the bleeding from Greg’s mangled right leg.
As the medevac helicopter approached, Greg refused to fly until he talked with Jared and Jude. They ran over and knelt by his side. He told Jared he was proud to serve with our unit and that it wasn’t his fault. He’d volunteered to go on the mission. Greg’s message to Jude was simple.
“You are a friend of mine for life, if you like it or not,” Greg told him.
Jude smiled. “I feel the same way.”