I spit in a bamboo viper’s face
And I’d be dead, but by God’s grace.
—Johnny Cash, Vietnam War song “Drive On”
On the morning of November 1, 2010, TJ tells me to prepare for an overnight operation into Nabu Agha. Every time the Marines venture into the deserted town they get into a firefight, and they expect the same again. It’s not a question of whether they will be ambushed, only when. The plan is to infiltrate the village and occupy a designated compound for the night. A team of four Marines will then head out the next morning at sunrise to act as bait and lure the Taliban into an attack. The rest of the Marines will be in position for a counterattack, with air support and artillery, if needed.
I copy the Marines as they “rat-fuck” the ration packs, picking out only the best contents and stuffing them into overnight bags while throwing away the rest. As the squad checks their weapons, I ensure my camera batteries are fully charged, then layer on my kit—a journalist’s version of the hardware the Marines wear, including Kevlar helmet, flak jacket, kneepads, heavy boots, gloves, eye protection, and clothes made from natural fibers that won’t melt onto my skin in case of an explosion.
By midday the sun warms the flak vests strapped to the chests of fifteen Marines. TJ surveys the men as they shoulder their weapons and packs. Each has a flame-resistant uniform and boots, a plate carrier with four armored Kevlar plates, a four-liter CamelBak filled with water, chest pouches stuffed with 180 rounds of 5.56 mm ammunition, two M67 fragmentation grenades, night-vision goggles, and an M4 carbine rifle with an advanced combat optical gun sight and PEQ-16 laser. Their packs are laden with extra batteries, more ammunition, rations, and gear for an overnight bivouac. TJ’s point man, Lance Corporal James Roche, uses a combat metal detector, a broom-sized minesweeper that beeps at the slightest hint of metal buried below the surface. Two Marines each carry a THOR, a frequency jammer with a large antenna poking up to block enemy radio or phone signals used to trigger hidden bombs. The phallic shapes of the antennae earn nicknames—the French Tickler and Black Thunder. TJ also carries maps, five smoke grenades, three colored signal flares, demolition explosives, and a radio. He makes sure all his men are wearing regulation gloves and ballistic eye protection and then does radio check.
“Kunjak, Kunjak, this is Able 3-4 requesting permission to depart friendly lines with one-eight packs.” The reply squawks back, “3-4, this is Kunjak. Permission granted.”
One by one the Marines file past the outpost’s wire gate, each sliding the bolt of his M4 carbine rifle and ramming a green-tipped round into the chamber as he goes. I march in the middle of the column, behind TJ. Apart from the sweat already soaking my shirt and running into my eyes, and the usual twinge of trepidation when heading out on patrol, I feel comfortable as OP Kunjak recedes behind us. The patrol crests a ridge and the outpost disappears from view. Pushing down past the first compounds into Nabu Agha, the streets are empty, as usual. The place is a ghost town. Civilians have fled the frequent fighting. The only Afghans in sight are the four policemen patrolling with us in ragged formation, weapons slung over their shoulders, caps askew. The patrol reaches a crossroads about a mile into town and spreads out to cover each direction, with Roche, the sweeper, securing the left flank. Corporal James Edward Orr, a beefy twenty-year-old from Eufaula, Alabama, pushes to the front of the column, treading on hard-packed dirt to avoid loose stones and soft earth that could conceal an IED.
Orr approaches the corner of an alleyway and calls out, “I see someone!”
“What’s he doing?” TJ asks.
“He’s turkey-peeking,” Orr answers, meaning the figure is poking his head in and out of sight. “What should I do?”
“Does he have a weapon?” TJ shouts back.
“Yeah! He just ran across the road with an AK! Do I shoot?”
“Fuck yeah, shoot the motherfucker!” TJ orders.
Gunfire erupts and the Marines stack up against a wall. TJ directs his men into position; some face rear to make sure they are not outflanked. Staff Sergeant Ysidro Gonzalez Jr., a brash Texan with a scuffed rocket-propelled grenade round strapped to his pack, leans around the corner and lays down suppressing fire as he runs across an alley. Gonzalez is a rank above TJ and the senior Marine at OP Kunjak. Gonzalez is not part of TJ’s squad, but he’s along for the mission. He takes a position behind a mud pillar half the width of his body as incoming rounds smack into it two feet from his face, kicking up tiny puffs of dust.
“Fuck you! You can’t hit me, motherfuckers!” Gonzalez shouts as he fires back, the muzzle flash from his rifle leaving black marks on the pillar. (Gonzalez had previously shown me a bullet hole in his trouser cuff and said it was from a round fired by a Taliban sniper. “Asshole tried to shoot me, but he fuckin’ missed.”)
Gonzalez calls Roche and Lance Corporal John Chun over, and Roche and Gonzalez alternate firing rounds as Chun crouches in the alleyway and aims his rifle-mounted M203 grenade launcher slightly upward. Again the distinct plunk of the grenade lobbed from the barrel is followed moments later by the round’s explosion. Again I snap photographs and catch a frame showing the blurred projectile shooting from Chun’s weapon.
TJ barks into his radio over the noise. “Able COC, this is 3-4. Stand by for contact report.”
“Send it, 3-4.”
“Be advised, we have just taken enemy contact from one military-age male in the vicinity of building forty-three.”
Gonzalez holds his firing position as Brennan orders his men forward up the alley in a tactical column, with each Marine close on the heels of the man in front of him. I follow, snapping pictures on the move. Roche peers around the next corner, stops, and calls TJ forward. An open one-acre field of parched mud lies ahead, too exposed to cross.
Roche and I peek around the corner and scan ahead, looking for a way forward. I weigh my options. I spot a doorway up ahead and decide the compound would make a secure staging point, but we’ll have to blast open an entry point. It’s time for some magic. I pull a doughnut charge from the drop pouch hooked to my belt, attach a blasting cap, and creep forward along the wall into the open field. After ten paces I stop at a blue sheet-metal gate with a green triangle painted in the middle. It’s locked. I pause for a moment, aware my back is exposed to enemy positions across the field. My gloved fingers are thick and awkward as I fumble to cinch the charge onto the padlock. It slips and clanks against the metal door. The sound echoes behind the door and across the field. I wince and look over my shoulder, expecting to be shot at any moment. I grasp the fuse igniter, pull the safety pin, push the plunger deep into the cylinder, turn it ninety degrees, and, with a swift snap, pull back on the plunger. The fuse sizzles. I have eight seconds to get to safety before the charge blows, but it always feels like less. I bolt back to my squad and brace myself against the wall. We open our mouths so the pressure from the blast won’t rupture our eardrums. The explosion sends a shock wave through our chests and we immediately move, using the dust kicked up from the ground to mask our entry into the compound. Magic. The door has vanished. I guard the entrance while others clear the rooms, moving with weapons raised through the garden, past a rusted oil drum, an overturned wheelbarrow, a pair of black rubber boots, a yellow plastic jug, and a rickety wooden ladder leaning against the ten-foot wall.
“Room clear,” my Marines call over and over.
Fin is surveying the compound’s small orchard and the green grass, but I can find little time for horticultural appreciation. Bullets are flying and the Canuck is on a nature walk. I have to put the battlefield puzzle together: Machine gunner goes there, grenadier over there. As my Marines move into position, more gunfire erupts. Rounds kick up dirt along the walls and hiss overhead. Fire is incoming from three directions. We are nearly surrounded. Whether it was intended or not, we’ve been lured into the very attack and counterattack scenario we were hoping to deploy against the Taliban. The puzzle has shifted.
My Marines and the Afghan police lay down a flurry of machine-gun fire toward the muzzle flashes coming from across the field. A woman and child walk out from behind a Taliban position.
“What the fuck? I nearly just shot a woman and a kid!” shouts Corporal Clarkson, who is lying prone on the ground just outside the compound and using a pile of dirt for cover. “They just walked right out from behind that wall. What the hell are they doing?”
It sometimes seems that, after decades of war, Afghans have become inured to the violence swirling around them like dust. I’ve been in firefights and seen farmers plowing their crops in an adjacent field, kids playing soccer nearby, and civilians weaving their motorcycles through crossfire. Combat is almost like a spectator sport here, but the people on the sidelines seem indifferent to the outcome.
I order Roche and Orr to bound ahead to the next alley and they take off under our covering fire. BOOM! The ground shakes. A cloud of dust and smoke rises from Roche and Orr’s position around the corner, just out of sight. The shooting stops and suddenly, there is quiet. Fuck. Despite weeks of intense fighting and the constant threat of IEDs, none of my Marines has been hurt. Now I fear I may have just ordered two of my men to their deaths. My chest tightens as the dread of failure grips me. I stare out the gate into the cloud of smoke and dust, begging for Roche and Orr to emerge. Nothing. Then they stumble back into view. They have their arms and legs. As they stagger closer, I scan them for injuries and blood. None. They collapse into the compound and fall against a wall, blank stares and ashen faces. A Taliban RPG struck the wall beside Roche and Orr and knocked them off their feet. They are concussed, but with the RPG’s lethal blast range of twelve feet, and a much wider radius of flying shrapnel, Roche and Orr are lucky to be alive. RPGs—originally designed as an antitank weapon—were responsible for more than 3,600 deaths and almost 31,000 injuries of U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan between 2001 and 2009 alone.
Doc Howard examines Roche and Orr and finds their response time is slow and they have trouble seeing. I’m pissed. My men have been injured—nearly killed. I study their stunned faces. My squad is flanked by Taliban. Marines are trained never to give up ground. We have to keep pushing forward. If we don’t do that here, we are at risk of being trapped inside the compound. The only way out is for us to fight. Fin snaps pictures of Gonzalez as he calls in to report our casualties. I grab Chun and order another volley of fire downrange as we sprint forward along the wall to the position Roche and Orr abandoned. Chun sweeps left to hold security down the alley. I’m between my men and the enemy. I’ve secured our next position so we can continue maneuvering toward the Taliban fighters. I look back toward my men a few meters behind me. “Set,” I call out—telling them I’m in position and ready for us to maneuver toward the men shooting at us. The CAAT Marines are still loading into their vehicles back at Kunjak to head toward our position. The plan was for them to hit the Taliban once we lured them into attacking, but we were far from the location of our planned operation when they ambushed us. The CAAT team is more than a mile away. My men and I are alone. Thirteen Marines. One Corpsman. One photographer. Three cameras.
I sprint into the alley toward Chun and join him on the corner. He’s only a few feet away, but it’s as if there were miles between us, like I’m enveloped alone in this noise of battle. This is the first sustained heavy combat my squad has seen, and I’m scared of how they’ll react with shit fast going sideways. We’re getting lit up and we’re already at a disadvantage. Two men are wounded. Two more are caring for them. I have nine men left and at least six enemy rifles and a grenadier trailing us. We’ve never been this deep into this town before. With every pull of our triggers, our supply of ammunition is depleting. We have no reinforcements. We have no resupply. The closest Marines would take fifteen minutes by vehicle to get within reach, but we’d still have to fight our way through half a mile of narrow alleyways to get to them. I question my decisions that got us here, but I can’t afford to dwell on that now. I need to get us out of this mess. I can’t afford anyone going “black,” getting that look in their eyes, that look that means they’ve checked out and can no longer function. A mental casualty. This is make-it-or-break-it time, the moment when I find out whether I can trust my Marines. And whether they trust me after all the training and punishment I’ve put them through.
Chun and I check the alley for signs of IEDs. It’s a painstaking process and usually a guess. We scan for any visible anomalies—unusual patterns on the ground, stacked rocks, or wires and plastic protruding from the earth. I notice something sticking out from the ground and carefully probe around it with my knife. It’s the first suspected IED I’ve located under fire. I don’t have Roche to help. I lean around the corner and holler to Gonzalez about what I’ve found.
As I look back, I see the Afghan police commander in charge of the three local policemen accompanying us on the mission. He’s kneeling and holding an RPG launcher just outside the gate of our staging compound and exposed to incoming Taliban fire. The police officer’s aim is too low to shoot the projectile across the field, and when he fires, the weapon’s muzzle is aimed directly at Chun and me. I see the warhead wobbling toward me. I don’t hear the explosion.
My head throbs as I look up from the ground. Smoke and dust float around me, but I don’t know why. Rays of light make the sand floating in the air glimmer and shine. I look around and see a figure running through the cloud toward me, a figure with a weapon. He is wearing gear and camouflage. A Marine. Gonzalez.
“Brennan! Brennan, are you okay?” Gonzalez shouts.
I’m not sure. I struggle to understand where I am or what I’m doing. I remember the grenade and hitting the dirt, then nothing. Where is the warhead? There should have been an explosion. Slowly I realize the blast must have knocked me out. I grab my balls—still there. Hands and feet. Check. Then I remember Chun. I spin around to see him trying to stand and checking himself for injuries.
Gonzalez reaches us. “Brother, I thought you guys were dead. Get up! Let’s go!”
I snap photos of TJ after the RPG hit, trying to run, teeth gritted, toward the compound entrance as his men open fire across the field. At the gate he falls to his knees. Gonzalez grabs him by the elbow and steers him up against a wall inside, where TJ collapses and pukes. He says the scene around him is spinning. He can’t focus, his speech is slurred, and he shields his eyes from the sun’s rays, saying the light feels like needles piercing his brain. I pick up TJ’s sunglasses and hand them to him and move him into the shade. I take a few more photos as he sucks on a cigarette while leaning back against the wall. One of the images shows him leaning back, eyes closed. Once I have what I need, I stop photographing.
Everyone inside the compound initially feared TJ had triggered an IED. We are relieved it was only the RPG, but the blast from such a warhead still forms a ring of death: Anyone inside a twelve-foot radius will likely be torn to bits. Those outside the circle are still vulnerable to flying shrapnel and the invisible force of the blast wave. The power of the explosion decreases almost immediately as it moves away from the epicenter, but at close range the blast wave can crush bone and amputate limbs. Farther away it inflicts less visible damage. Its movement through human tissue is enough to force gas pockets inside the body to contract and to send blood and fluid sloshing into spaces that are normally empty. Organs can be knocked out of place. Most susceptible to such a pummeling are the inner ear, the lungs, and the brain—that three-pound mass of fat and protein that makes us who we are, and that responds most poorly to hard hits. TJ was just far enough away from the explosion to avoid the lethal blast radius, and the shrapnel somehow missed him, but the shock wave from the RPG still ripped through the delicate wiring of his brain like a baseball bat smashing a computer circuit board.
Incoming bullets are snapping overhead. The compound walls offer protection, but the Marines need to move out. With four men down, they are “combat ineffective.” The mission is a dud. They have to evacuate the injured, but there’s no safe landing zone for helicopters. Gonzalez radios for armored vehicles to drive up the wadi to transport TJ, Chun, Roche, and Orr back to OP Kunjak. To rendezvous with the vehicles, the Marines will have to navigate several hundred yards of alleyways. One of the vehicles hits an IED en route. Nobody is injured, but the truck has to limp back to base, delaying the convoy. Eventually, during a lull in the shooting, the Marines abandon the compound, egressing back the way they came. The injured Marines are scattered along the column and walking unevenly. Toward the rear, TJ struggles with each step. I’m behind him and close the gap to make sure he doesn’t stumble off track. He’s delirious and almost dragging his weapon, stopping every few minutes to lean against walls and vomit. I hook my hand under his damp armpit and steer him forward as he mumbles incoherently. As the squad reaches the wadi, the vehicles exchange fire with Taliban gunners shooting from a row of mud compounds on the edge of town. We wait for a lull before moving TJ and the others across a hundred yards of open ground to the convoy.
Once the four injured Marines are loaded into the armored vehicles, I join the remaining members of the squad for the thirty-minute slog back along the edge of the wadi toward OP Kunjak.
Inside the vehicle I remove my helmet and am examined by a Corpsman I don’t know. He keeps asking what happened and if I know where we’re going. The ride back is less than a mile, but the grinding of the diesel engine and the jarring shocks as the MRAP bounces over the stony riverbed make it seem much longer. I try to rest my head on the butt of my downturned rifle, but the Corpsman smacks my face and tells me to stay awake. Despite the rough ride, I float in and out of consciousness. I vomit the remnants of a fruit medley onto the lurching floor. I feel like an asshole and start heaving into my upturned helmet instead.
Our squad rarely works with vehicles, and not having to trudge up the hill to OP Kunjak is a relief. I’m in no shape to do that on my own. As we pull up to the outpost, the back door of the MRAP creaks open and Marines help me climb down the vehicle steps. While waiting for the helicopters to arrive, I walk to my bunk to pack a bag of essentials. I take my iPod, but also crossword puzzles, coffee grounds, and a single dirty sock, choices I will later wonder about. (My wife later jokes that I was just making sure I had my “happy sock” and that, even injured, I was as horny as ever.)
As two Black Hawk helicopters circle overhead, I swing on my body armor. The weight almost knocks me to the ground. Without thinking, I put my helmet on, forgetting I’d thrown up in it. Vomit oozes down my face. I toss the helmet on the ground and wipe the puke away. The helmet rolls downhill and fills with dirt. I pick it up and put it back on. The weight bears down on my skull and makes my eyes feel like they’re about to burst. I shout at Chun to hurry up, then wince from the sharp pain caused by my own yell. At the foot of the hill below OP Kunjak, the rotor wash pelts me with dust and sand. The pulse of the rotors makes me stumble as I stagger through the red signal smoke marking the landing zone. Air Force medics pull me and Chun aboard.
The MEDEVAC units pride themselves on being able to extract the injured—civilian or military, foreign or Afghan, including insurgents—and getting them to a state-of-the-art field hospital within an hour of the initial injury, often less. Their ability to operate under fire while scooping up victims who have lost limbs or suffered other severe injuries from IED blasts, firefights, or motor vehicle accidents accounts for unprecedented battlefield survival rates. When the convoy reaches OP Kunjak, the injured are led from the trucks. Black Hawk helicopters are inbound to evacuate TJ and Chun to a combat hospital at Camp Leatherneck (Roche and Orr are not as seriously concussed and are driven to the Musa Qala District Center for medical observation at a field clinic). TJ’s and Chun’s injuries are deemed not potentially fatal, though, and the MEDEVAC birds respond to more urgent calls first. I arrive back at OP Kunjak with the rest of the squad, exhausted and sweating. TJ is sitting beside the central mud compound, having just been handed a satellite phone.
“Call your family and tell them you’re alive,” Gonzalez says. TJ struggles to remember his wife’s cell phone number. She answers with a cheery “hello” that makes him smile.
“Baby, I’ve got my legs, I’ve got my arms, but I got blown up. They’re taking me to the hospital. I love you and I’ll call again as soon as I can.” The exchange is short and, after hanging up, TJ drops the phone on the ground.
Someone helps TJ remove his equipment and strips him of his serialized gear. His ammunition, weapons, and maps are all accounted for. Even as TJ and the other injured Marines struggle to find their bearings, there is a procedure to follow, an overseeing military machine to be served.
But I’m also here to do a job. I upload photos via satellite to a Reuters feed every night, or more often, and I’m facing a deadline. Military restrictions prohibit me from publishing images of Marines who have been killed or injured without their permission, or before their families have been notified. Without wanting to be callous, I need TJ’s permission to use the photos. I know I might not see him again for days or even weeks, if at all. By then the photos will have little news value. I assume, because he has called Mel, that his family will know what has happened.
It’s late afternoon and the sun is softening.
“You okay with me using the pictures from today, or you want me to wait awhile?”
“Nah, fuck it. Use ’em,” TJ says.
“You sure?”
“Yeah, what’s the difference? Go ahead.”
When the helicopters land at the foot of the hill, I walk down beside TJ. He’s staggering as he walks through the rotor wash and is pulled aboard. I take a few frames of the helicopters spiraling upward, silhouetted against the sinking sun, the feet of the MEDEVAC crew dangling free from the open side doors of the Black Hawk as it banks away. And then they’re gone.
Walking back uphill to OP Kunjak, my body and head ache. My ears are ringing from the gunfire and explosions. I still have to edit, process, caption, and transmit my pictures. I replay the day’s events on my computer screen and feel the familiar twinge of disappointment. The challenge of combat photography is translating the kinetic energy of a firefight into static images. It’s a rare photo that captures the drama of combat—indeed perhaps only a handful in history have managed to do so, which is what makes them so memorable. Robert Capa’s grainy black-and-white images of the D-day landing on the beaches of Normandy are one example.
My images have none of the noise, heat, and fear I felt in the moment, to my eye. During the firefight, my senses were in overdrive—I heard and smelled and saw everything acutely. My mind processed stimuli at warp speed and time seemed to slow down. Pumped full of adrenaline, my mouth was dry and my breathing was fast. My fingers were clumsy on the dials of my camera. I was hyperaware of what was unfolding around me, and yet it seemed like a video game. Only after TJ was hit did the gravity of the situation sink in. I felt odd taking photos of him in pain. I’d photographed injuries before, but this was the first time that the subject was someone I knew. I kept photographing until it didn’t feel right to continue. I drew the line at photographing him vomiting. I focused instead on trying to convey the concern among his squad mates for his well-being. Looking at my computer screen, however, I feel like I’ve failed to capture something important, even though such incidents are just a variation of what happens daily in Afghanistan. But maybe that’s the point: The battle will not change the course of history, nor of the war, but it will change the lives of those who were involved. And if history is made up of the lives of those who live it, then I want to capture not only a record of events but also something more, something lasting. I haven’t succeeded. I hit the “send” button, unaware of the impact my images will soon have on TJ’s mother when she clicks on a link directing her to photos of her injured son.
I shut down my computer and crawl into my sleeping bag. The outpost is quiet. For the first time in two weeks TJ’s cot beside mine is empty.