The DAY AFTER THE rocket attack on Takhteh-Pol, a message came in advising that Echo team’s location had been hit. Three Americans were dead and many others wounded. Two of the dead were members of ODA 574, and a third was from the Special Forces Command and Control Element that had planned to come to Takhteh-Pol, and only recently joined Echo team. Miraculously, no CIA officers from Echo team were killed or injured, but dozens of Hamid Karzai’s fighters were, and Karzai himself was slightly wounded.
The initial report said that it was a car bomb attack. Later, we received clarification that it was a U.S. Air Force 500 lb. J-DAM that was dropped directly on the ODA’S observation post. The deadly mistake was due to a procedural error made by one of the members of the SF CCE who was directing the air strikes.
The news of the deaths and injuries stabbed at my heart. I immediately thought of the ODA members I had gotten to know in Jacobabad when I was with Echo team. Among the wounded were Jason, the team leader, and Mag, the intel sergeant, who received a severe head injury. The two dead from the ODA included a young sergeant referred to as “JD” who I did not have the chance to get to know very well, and Dan, the team sergeant. Dan had joined the team at the last minute, just before it had departed from Jacobabad and the only contact I had with him was to shake his hand when we were introduced upon his arrival.
I pictured the guys on Echo team who had escaped the fate of the ODA but who, nonetheless, had to be living through a nightmare. I remembered the day I last saw them, loading their gear in preparation for their infiltration into Afghanistan, and how intensely proud I had felt. Should I have had an inkling that such an enormous tragedy was going to befall them, I think my heart would have burst.
I also had to consider what would have happened if the CCE had come to Foxtrot’s location instead of joining Echo team. All those men who were killed and wounded would still have been alive and well. But would the same mistake have been made at our observation post, and would some of the living among us now be dead or wounded? These were imponderable questions, but they nagged at me. I was not keeping a diary, but if I had been I would have written: Impersonal and random. These are two things I have learned are true about war.
* * *
Back at home, while preparing to go to work my wife heard the news report of the American deaths and injuries in southern Afghanistan. Believing that there was only one team of Americans in the south, she assumed I was with that team, and she feared I may have been among the casualties. She immediately got in touch with a point of contact at CIA who assured that I was safe and had not been with the team.