3
AT THE UNIVERSITY OF LOUISVILLE, BY HIS OWN sober reckoning, Greg Calvert had majored in soccer and beer. By the spring of his freshman year, he was ready to be “recaged,” which for him meant a trip to the Army's local recruiting office. He trained as an infantry medic, then a flight medic. One day while riding as a passenger in a helicopter, he knew he was meant to become a pilot because, from where he was perched on the hard, cold floor, the seats in the cockpit looked cushy. He was smart and restless, and he made the transition from medicine to aviation look almost easy. After flight school, he trained in Black Hawks, Hueys, and Cobras, and then in 1999 he decided that he had the experience, flair, and knowledge to join the 160th Special Operations Regiment (SOAR). He had heard the rumors about SOAR that he found appealing. Depending on who was talking, their pilots were either consummate professionals or consummate cowboys, and Calvert thought of himself as both.
He had a nature that seemed tailored for SOAR, with boyish charm, boundless enthusiasm, and emotional currents that made him special and different. To those who wondered which extreme was true, whether SOAR's pilots were professionals or cowboys, he'd say, “Ones who think the latter don't have the cojones to try out themselves.” Despite the inherent challenge, he was a gentleman, with the bluish blood in his veins of Lord Baltimore—from the line of the dissolute second son, James, whom his father had banished to Canada. With an average build, almost on the thin side, red hair and freckles, and a tenacious will, Calvert was a pilot to be counted on. His sense of humor, irony, and the ridiculous gave him a perspective few men achieve.
In imagining himself in SOAR, he saw Cobras and Black Hawks, especially Direct Action Penetrators (special-ops Black Hawks modified for attack missions, armed infiltrations and such). In short, he imagined glamour and romance. Chinooks, the ugly eggbeaters, did not have a slot in his dreams. Finally accepted as a full member of SOAR, the pinnacle of excitement and derring-do, he was assigned to an eggbeater.
When he reached Uzbekistan in December, he had arrived in his first real war, ready to take it to the enemy. Instead, he flew “fat cows” and named his helo the “Flying J,” after the chain of gas stations. His Chinook hauled 800-gallon rubber Robbie tanks. He flew in, peeled off, landed, got out and set up a one-man defensive perimeter, and waited to pump gas. And when the tank was empty, he rolled up the blivet and flew away. His excitement came by association; for instance, he had “passed gas” in support of quelling the prison uprising at Mazar-i-Sharif to Direct Action Penetrators, the sexy helos. When they flew away into battle, he was still a mobile FARP (forward area refueling point), and it sucked.
Then by chance, someone in somebody's family died, and that somebody was sent home. It was Christmas 2001, and Calvert volunteered to take his place on temporary assignment. He had packed accordingly, and now, weeks later, at the start of Operation Anaconda, he was assigned to fly the quick reaction force for Task Force 11. He was briefed. He met Captain Nate Self and shook his hand, but he did not think that anything glamorous or thrilling would come of the assignment. Nothing ever did. QRF was purely second string. With QRF he was still “waiting for something to happen. You were not the happening itself.”
On the night of March 3, Calvert had pitched in to insert and take out special observation teams in the mountains overlooking the Shah-i-Kot valley. He'd flown to Gardez to flip-flop his Chinook when his friend Al Mack's helo had been declared non-mission-operable. He had ferried the broken helo back to Bagram, catching a nap in the cabin while a maintenance pilot took the controls. About halfway to Bagram, he plugged in a headset and heard “bits and pieces” about the plight of Jason Friel's helo carrying the SEALs back to the peak.
At Bagram, minutes after landing, Calvert was reassigned a healthy Chinook, code-named Razor 01, with “FDNY” and an arrow with a bolt of lightning painted on the hull in muted grays. A ground crew had started to outfit the Chinook with a Robbie tank, but the crew returned to take out the same tank. Calvert was fuming. He wanted to get back over the Shah-i-Kot valley believing that Al Mack and his crew at the crash site needed him to pick them up.
“Let's go!” Calvert was shouting at the ground crew. “We have to move.”
He took off minutes later carrying as customers Nate Self's half of the QRF—Chalk 1, made up of ten Rangers and four Air Force men. The other half of the QRF—Chalk 2—was composed of ten Rangers and left minutes later aboard Razor 02.