There is little use for the being whose tepid soul knows nothing of great and generous emotion, of the high pride, the stern belief, the lofty enthusiasm, of the men who quell the storm and ride the thunder.
—THEODORE ROOSEVELT
MAY 2009
As America’s sons and daughters fight battles in far-off lands, some battles make the headline news, while others fail even to merit a footnote. The battle at OP Bari Ali received very little press coverage despite its significance. Press is a double-edged sword. Coverage of battles, particularly when the enemy inflicts casualties on American forces, usually means that the military gets criticized for everything it failed to do, but a lack of coverage leaves many soldiers feeling that no one outside the war zone knows how hard they are fighting.
About ten miles south of FOB Bostic the Kunar River Valley grows narrow and deep. It travels almost due north until just before it reaches Ghaziabad District, then makes an S-turn and continues northeast. Near the Nishagam District center, in the midst of that incredibly complex terrain, three valleys converge on the Kunar River: the Helgal, Marin, and Durin. The Nishagam District center is somewhat centrally located at the convergence of the valleys. It sits on the west side of the Kunar River overlooking numerous villages stretched out along the green floors of the valleys.
The road, which follows the Kunar River through the valley, is called the Drosh–Jalalabad Road, but during the war we called it Main Supply Route (MSR) California, and it was the only way to get to FOB Bostic by land. We used a combination of coalition military vehicles and local Jingle trucks to transport supplies from Jalalabad to FOB Bostic in Nari. The Jingle trucks, named for the small pieces of colorful metal that hung from them, sounded like traveling wind chimes as they drove. Once the supplies reached FOB Bostic they were prepared, in packages, to be transported by Chinooks into OPs Fritchie, Keating, Lowell, Mace, and Hatchet. If MSR California was closed, or if the enemy interdicted our supply convoys, it isolated FOB Bostic and prevented us from delivering supplies to all the TF Raider bases in Nuristan.
Enemy leaders were well aware of how important MSR California was for our survival in Nuristan. Furthermore, they knew that we did not have permanent combat outposts stationed along the stretch of road between COP Monti and FOB Bostic. MSR California was extremely vulnerable throughout that stretch of somewhat indefensible terrain. To make matters worse, for the majority of the twenty-mile stretch, MSR California was a single-lane dirt road that plummeted off into the Kunar River on the east side and hugged a sheer cliff that climbed thousands of feet to the west. It provided numerous ideal locations for enemy forces to ambush our logistics convoys.
The Soviets had faced the same problem during their occupation of Afghanistan. As bulky trucks slowly crawled along the raggedy stretch of dirt, bumper to bumper, enemy forces shot vehicles in the front and rear of their convoys with RPGs, thus blocking the road. The only way to continue to move forward was to push the burning vehicles into the river; many of the old Soviet vehicles still remained partially submerged, slowly rusting away in a watery grave, silently screaming a warning to those who would dare to follow.
Removing burning hulks from the road took time, time conveniently exploited by the enemy. While the Soviets had tried to move disabled vehicles out of the way, mujahideen forces worked their way to the middle of their column, attacking the other vehicles trapped in the kill zone. The terrain from COP Monti to FOB Bostic was ideal for these tactics, and the enemy would soon afford us the opportunity to see how well we could deal with the same tactical problem faced by the Soviets two decades prior.
* * *
That spring TF Raider had established an outpost on a spur about halfway up the western mountain overlooking the Nishagam District center. It sat approximately nine miles south of FOB Bostic, which was almost the halfway point between Monti and Bostic. They named the outpost after an Afghan National Army (ANA) soldier who was killed in an IED blast in that area—Bari Ali. The outpost was built to help secure the critical yet vulnerable road, as well as the Nishagam District center, which housed the governor’s office and the police headquarters.
The district governor asked the Afghan National Army Commander to occupy the outpost. Initially, he had assigned the police to occupy the position, but he didn’t like the army performing what he felt should be police functions in the surrounding villages, specifically checkpoint operations. Checkpoints were an oft-used tool for criminal activity such as exploiting the local populace. He felt that policemen should do police functions—checkpoints—and army soldiers should perform security functions in the outpost. The army leadership argued that the police were not patrolling enough, but the governor assured the army commander that if he manned the outpost, the police would actively patrol the villages and perform law enforcement functions throughout the district.
The army commander agreed to put a company of soldiers, about seventy Afghans, on the OP. They would have an eight-to-nine-man U.S. embedded training team with them at all times. Approximately two-thirds of the company would occupy the OP, while the other third continued to conduct checkpoint operations on the road adjacent to the district center itself. Unlike most other outposts in northern Kunar and Nuristan, OP Bari Ali was built on relatively high ground, with a view of the valleys below; however, the only way to reach the outpost was by using the tiny foot trail that wound its way up to the OP, or by air. The Afghan soldiers, four Latvians, and three Americans (Sergeant James Pirtle, Specialist Ryan King, and Sergeant William Vile) manned the OP on the morning of May 1.
First Lieutenant Aaron Nichols and Chief Warrant Officer 2 Mike Downing concluded a maintenance test flight just before dawn on May 1. Clouds hung low, and a light mist fell as they landed the Black Hawk helicopter at FOB Fenty. As they were preparing to shut their helicopter down, Mike and Aaron saw two Apaches take off in the direction of the Kunar River Valley, and Aaron thought he heard the battle captain say, “And there are enemy forces in the wire,” over the radio.
“That’s odd. Did you see anyone around the perimeter when we flew in?” Nichols asked Downing.
“No, sir. I didn’t see anything,” Downing said. “Let’s go to the command post and find out what’s up.”
But before they reached the command post, Chief Warrant Officer 2 Kevin Howey called them on their handheld radio and said, “We’ve gotta go. Bari Ali is under attack.”
Nichols and Downing looked at each other. “Let’s go!” Downing said. Nichols and Downing ran back to the helicopter, cranked it, and made radio contact with the other aircraft to try and figure out what they were expected to do.
“They have reported a bunch of casualties. We may need you to reinforce the OP with more soldiers.” The reply came from a voice Downing didn’t immediately recognize. In nervous anticipation, they flew directly to FOB Bostic as fast as the Black Hawks would carry them.
Before daylight, over one hundred enemy fighters had crept quietly through the rocks near OP Bari Ali. They had set up a machine gun position on the high ground above the OP while other fighters moved up the ridge from below. The enemy had used the poor weather and darkness to their advantage. Once in position they opened fire with the machine gun up the ridge, which naturally drew the attention of the men in the OP to the high ground. Simultaneously, other fighters had opened fire from below the OP with a barrage of RPGs. A small coalition observation point had been established farther up the hill from Bari Ali, called OP East. It was supposed to be manned by eight or nine Afghan Uniformed Police (AUP). Their primary purpose was to watch the southeastern approach to Bari Ali. OP East was supposed to serve as Bari Ali’s early warning system; however, for some reason it was not manned that morning.
Whether coincidence or otherwise we will never know, but the enemy RPGs impacted the HESCO barriers at the precise location where the 84-millimeter Carl Gustav recoil-less rifles were stored. The secondary explosion from those rifles blew a hole in OP Bari Ali’s perimeter, thus opening a door for the enemy to enter.
It was a well-coordinated attack. Within minutes King, Pirtle, Vile, four Afghan soldiers, two Latvians, and an Afghan interpreter were all killed. It’s hard to know exactly how many Afghan soldiers were actually in the OP at the time of the attack, due to the chaos and confusion that ensued immediately following it. Some of them ran down the hill, seeking perceived security at the district center. One soldier was later found and assumed to have been shot execution style. Ultimately, eleven Afghan soldiers and an interpreter were taken prisoner. As soon as the attack had begun the American soldiers at OP Bari Ali reported it to TF Raider’s command post. TF Raider assembled a quick-reaction force to travel south by ground while they simultaneously called our command post requesting that we launch the aerial quick-reaction force and a medevac helicopter.
Despite threatening weather, a team of Apaches was airborne within minutes. Chief Warrant Officer 2 Kevin Clark, an Apache instructor pilot, was the air mission commander in charge of the flight. Kevin was crewed with Chief Warrant Officer 2 Mike Krajnik. They were teamed with Chief Warrant Officer 2 Chris Wright and First Lieutenant David Daniels. The team had no idea what they might find once they arrived in the valley. The entire crew was optimistic that the radio call was wrong, that the OP had been attacked but hadn’t been overrun. We had received reports like that in the past. Eight out of ten times our ground forces could pound the enemy with artillery, and the attack would soon stop. That’s what Chris Wright was thinking when he broke the silence in the helicopters. “I’m sure they’ll have it all under control by the time we get there.”
As they flew past COP Monti they climbed to a slightly higher altitude so they could establish line-of-sight radio communications with the OP.
“OP Bari Ali, this is Weapons 1-5, over,” Chris calmly called, using his tactical call sign.
After a long silent pause, he repeated, “OP Bari Ali, Weapons 1-5, over.”
Nothing. Silence prevailed on the radio. It wasn’t uncommon to have difficulty reaching the OPs in the mountainous terrain, but by May we had flown the valleys so much that we knew exactly at what point we should be able to reach them. Given the situation, the silence concerned the Apache crews.
They were getting close. There was one final hill where the valley made an S-turn and then they would be able to see Bari Ali. Everyone remained quiet in anticipation. They continued to gain altitude, crested the hill, and then they saw it. The OP was burning. A swirling plume of dark, black smoke ascended into a ceiling of gray clouds. It was as if the sky were connected to the OP through a churning tube of smoke—consuming everything in waving red flames, then sucking it, black and burned, into the heavens above.
Chris continued to try and make radio contact with the men on the OP, but it was clear that no one was going to answer. Our Apache pilots had fought in and around OP Bari Ali numerous times in the past. They knew where the enemy liked to hide, so they immediately oriented on the most often used fighting positions in the mountains surrounding the OP and searched for enemy fighters.
“I see some guys down there moving around. I’m moving in closer to take a look. Cover me,” Kevin Clark told Wright and Daniels. He saw several Afghan soldiers on the east side of the OP. “That’s one of the Latvian soldiers. He’s dragging soldiers out of the OP.”
The reality of the moment struck the pilots with disbelief. What they were seeing was not normal, everyday enemy contact. The soldiers on the ground ducked and flinched as ammunition began to explode randomly in the OP due to the fire—distinct pops in the midst of a raging blaze.
Clark made contact with Crazy Horse 6. “Crazy Horse 6, I see several men moving around. I can identify one of the Latvian soldiers but no Americans. The Latvian is moving the dead and wounded out of the OP. We need to establish communications with the OP. If you have a radio I will land and pick it up.”
Crazy Horse 6 found a handheld radio to send up the mountain.
“I have a radio ready. Land to the district center and I’ll give it to you.” Clark landed his Apache at the district center, picked up the radio, and flew it up to the OP. The landing zone at Bari Ali was very small and sat on a thin saddle between the mountain, which continues to climb to the west, and a spur upon which the OP sat.
As the helicopter approached, the Latvian realized that they were trying to get his attention. Kevin brought the Apache to a hover right over him while Mike Krajnik dropped the radio down to him. “Shit. It rolled down the hill. I don’t know if he knows where it went,” Krajnik said. “He just ran back to the OP. He doesn’t get what we’re trying to do.”
“Okay. Let’s get another one and we’ll land in the LZ and hand it to him,” Clark said. Krajnik didn’t respond. The mountain was still crawling with enemy. Bullets were zinging by them. Landing in the middle of the engagement area didn’t sound smart, but Krajnik knew that’s what they needed to do, so he kept his comments to himself.
“Okay, I’m going to land this time and have Krajnik hand him the radio. Cover me going in,” he told Wright and Daniels, whose responsibility it was to protect him as he approached the OP.
“Roger, we’ve got you covered,” Wright replied.
Clark circled around and lined up for the approach to the LZ. He wanted to keep his speed up as long as possible, yet he had to slow down in enough time so as not to overshoot the LZ. Speed was critical to our safety in Afghanistan. In discussions with our pilots, I often used a dove hunting analogy. The faster a dove flies and the more he darts and dives in flight, the more difficult it is to hit him. It was no different in a helicopter. Keeping our speed up and constantly changing direction and altitude would make for a difficult shot.
Clark slowed down significantly as he neared the small LZ. Chris Wright suddenly caught movement out of the corner of his eye.
“RPG! RPG! Break off, break off!” Wright yelled over the radio. Kevin snapped the cyclic left, diving the helicopter away as an RPG passed by the Apache and exploded into the ridge on the other side of the valley. An enemy fighter had stepped out from behind a huge boulder with an RPG as Clark slowed to land. Chris Wright and Dave Daniels were perfectly positioned to cover Clark’s break. As soon as Wright saw the enemy fighter he pointed the nose of the helicopter directly at him. As they dove at the fighter, and the mountain, Daniels asked, “Where is he?”
Wright squeezed the trigger, sending a salvo of rockets at the enemy fighter. Daniels answered his own question. “Right there,” he said in a calm voice, seeing that the enemy fighter had been killed.
Clark circled back around for another approach. Wright and Daniels moved into position to cover him once again. This time Kevin landed at the LZ and Krajnik quickly tossed the Latvian a radio, but he did not appear to know how to use it. It was painfully clear at that point that we had to reinforce the OP with more soldiers, American soldiers, and quickly.
Meanwhile, back at FOB Fenty, our team of planners was busy coordinating reinforcements and additional assets to help in the fight. Jack and I began working with TF Duke, Special Forces, TF Raider, and TF Thunder to ensure we had enough aviation resources to keep Apaches and Kiowas over the OP throughout the day and lift helicopters to move reinforcements around the battlefield. Jack and I determined that we would, once again, need help from TF Eagle Lift, so I called Colonel Ron Lewis. I told him everything we knew about the situation at that point, then I told him I thought we’d need at least one more Chinook, along with a team of Apaches, to help out. He agreed and directed that TF Eagle Lift provide the aircraft and crews to support us.
Jack worked with Major Keith Rautter, the TF Duke chief of operations, to ensure we were operating within Colonel Spiszer’s intent. We wanted to make sure we were handling the situation the way he wanted us to, before we began moving helicopters around RC-East.
Major Tom Sarrouf, the Special Forces advanced operating base (AOB) commander, ran over to our command post to keep abreast of the situation and to think through what his forces might be able to do in response to the attack. He had only one Operational Detachment—Alpha (ODA) at FOB Fenty. This small elite team was responsible for training Afghan commandos. They were truly the only reserve force Colonel John Spiszer had at his disposal. His infantry battalions were spread very thin throughout N2KL. He could use his forces to regain control of Bari Ali, but if he wanted to conduct a follow-on operation to go after those responsible for the attack he’d have to coordinate through the Special Forces command structure to gain approval to employ them. Approval was normally a given, but they were not under his direct control. As it turned out, Lieutenant Colonel Jim Markert had already been pulling what forces he had together to go to Bari Ali. Colonel Spiszer called Lieutenant Colonel Mark O’Donnell and told him to plan to go and assist as well.
I decided to send Captain Steve Souza, one of our planners, and Chief Warrant Officer 3 Gary Parsons, our tactical operations officer and personnel recovery expert, forward to FOB Bostic to work with Jim Markert’s TF Raider. The two men would serve as aviation planners for Jim Markert’s team. Kevin Clark’s Apache team had been on duty throughout the night. They were already committed to the fight, but they were nearing the end of their duty day. We needed to get the next shift of Apache pilots into the fight, but we could not afford for Clark’s team to fly all the way back to FOB Fenty to switch out the crews. That would take Apaches off of Bari Ali for way too long.
Limited resources became the challenge. I needed to get the day crews into the Apaches that were already being flown by Clark and Wright. We simply didn’t have enough Apaches for the day and night crews to each have their own helicopters. As we discussed the situation in the command post, Chief Warrant Officer 2 Fred Taroli, the air mission commander of the Apache team needing to get into the fight, recommended that they fly to FOB Bostic in a Black Hawk and then swap out in the FARP.
“Perfect. That works. Let’s do it,” I said. The pilots strapped themselves into a Black Hawk, along with Captain Souza and Gary Parsons, and they flew with a medevac helicopter up to FOB Bostic.
Chief Warrant Officer 3 Warren Brown and Chief Warrant Officer 2 Ray Andrel flew the Black Hawk. Sergeant Jeremy Arend served as the crew chief and Sergeant Lindsey Andrews served as the door gunner. Warren Brown was the pilot in command of the aircraft. Warren departed FOB Fenty thinking that his team was just going to fly the Apache crews forward to the fight, but they would soon discover that they would play an integral role in moving and resupplying forces throughout northern Kunar all day. Their call sign was Flawless 0-8.
Warren Brown was a freckle-faced, rosy-cheeked Southerner with strawberry blond hair and a thick drawl. He was from Alabama and his full name was Warren H. Brown IV, which sounded quite sophisticated to me. Being from rural north Georgia myself, I had a lot in common with Warren, but I often reminded him that he was not cut from the same wood as I. With a name like that he had to be Southern aristocracy. “My people worked the ground that your people owned,” I kidded him.
Warren was a happy-go-lucky guy in whom I had great confidence. He was an utterly competent and fearless pilot whom I knew I could always count on in a tight spot.
The Apache crews that Warren flew to the fight consisted of Chief Warrant Officer 2 Gary Wingert and Capt. Matthew Kaplan, who would fly in the lead aircraft, while Chief Warrant Officer 2 Jesse Powell and Chief Warrant Officer 3 Fred Taroli flew trail.
Warren, along with the medevac bird, departed FOB Fenty at 9:30 A.M. As they neared COP Monti, Warren called Kevin Clark on the radio. “How do you want us to pass by Bari Ali?” he asked Clark.
It was a tight valley and Warren wanted to stay out of the way as he passed to the north. The low-hanging ceiling, made up of a layer of thick gray clouds, prevented them from climbing up over the mountains. They had to make a run through the narrow valley, which would put them between the burning outpost and the eastern wall of the valley.
When Warren called Kevin on the radio the ground forces at the Nishagam District center and the forces on the OP were still taking machine gun fire from literally every cardinal direction. “Fly fast and keep to the east side of the valley,” Clark told Warren, which he did and made it through the valley unscathed. Once on the ground at FOB Bostic, the battle captain at TF Raider told Warren that he needed him to air-assault an infantry squad to the OP. He said Lieutenant Colonel Jim Markert would be on the aircraft to lead the team.
Not expecting to be used in the actual fight, Warren called back to the Pale Horse command post and asked to speak to me. “Sir, they want us to take a squad, maybe two, up to Bari Ali. I’m not briefed for that. What do you want me to do?” Warren asked.
“There is no telling what you may be asked to do today, Warren. I would rather use you right now, in a single Black Hawk, to get folks in. A Chinook would be slower getting in and out and it’s a bigger target. You’re going to have to make the calls on this. Fly the reinforcements in, but as they ask you to do more, do what you think you can do. You don’t have to call me for approval on everything unless you don’t think you can do what they are asking. If that’s the case, then call me and we’ll find another way to get it done. I trust you to make the calls,” I told him.
“Roger that, sir,” he said and hung up.
Because of the inherent risks associated with aviation operations, each crew received a specified mission. The pilots then conducted a risk assessment for those particular tasks they were to accomplish. If there were deviations, they were required to get approval to amend the plan, particularly when the deviation increased the risk. However, in a situation such as Bari Ali, I liked to speak to the air mission commander and tell him that I trusted him to make the right decisions. I could not, and would not, try and quarterback every move from my command post at FOB Fenty.
We desperately needed to get U.S. soldiers on the OP, but only the guys there, in the fight, knew when the time was right to do it with the least likelihood of getting a helicopter shot down. I was confident that we had the right guys in the right place to make the best on-the-spot decisions.
Warren loaded eleven soldiers in the back of his Black Hawk. Then his copilot, Ray Andrel, called Clark.
“We’ve got a squad on board, and we need to get them into the OP. Can you cover us as we land?” he asked.
Clark told him where he thought the enemy was located, but the situation was still pretty chaotic at that point. Ray acknowledged as they departed FOB Bostic for the OP. Clark’s team of Apaches flew north and met Warren and Ray to escort them into the OP. Ray ran the systems inside the cockpit while Warren concentrated on flying the helicopter, focusing his attention outside. They had to get in as quickly as possible, offload the troops, and get out. They knew that from the time they began slowing to land until they were clear of the OP they would be a target. As they approached the LZ, dust, smoke, and debris flew into the air, swirling around the rotors and enveloping the helicopter. It was difficult to see, but Warren landed safely in the LZ. Bodies lay all around the OP, both wounded and dead. As soon as the wheels touched down, the squad exited the helicopter.
“Clear!” Sergeant Arend announced in back of the aircraft, and Warren pulled in power and took off, circling around and heading back north to FOB Bostic.
TF Raider wanted to continue to reinforce the OP with more soldiers, and they wanted more men at the district center as well. A ground quick-reaction force drove from FOB Bostic south to the Nishagam District center and set up a tactical command post to help control all the soldiers that we planned to move into the area. Due to the terrain, our line-of-sight radios were spotty at best, so the tactical command post was needed to coordinate and give clear direction to all the soldiers in the valley and up on the OP.
Back at FOB Fenty, we called for a Chinook crew and two Kiowa crews to report to the command post. The battle captain instructed them to fly to COP Monti and pick up a third platoon, Charlie Company, TF Chosin. Colonel John Spiszer had decided to commit the entire company to the fight, but we had room in the Chinook to carry only twenty-five soldiers at a time, so it would take multiple turns with the Chinook in order to get them all to Bari Ali. He had told us to fly them to the district center, and from there they would attack up the hill to reestablish the OP.
Lieutenants lead platoons; however, Charlie Company was short one lieutenant, so the platoon sergeant, Sergeant First Class Richard Tacia, led the third platoon. Tacia and most everyone else in Kunar Province had been glued to their radios throughout the morning, trying to gain a better understanding of what was going on at Bari Ali by piecing together random radio calls. When Colonel Spiszer decided to send the third platoon to Bari Ali they were given thirty minutes to prepare themselves and assemble in the pickup zone. They were further instructed to take provisions to sustain themselves for three days. The situation was tense. Their fellow soldiers at Bari Ali were in trouble, and they were going to help, but flying into the middle of a firefight with limited information was always nerve-racking.
Jeff Dorsey and Adam McCullough flew the Chinook. They departed FOB Fenty with a bit of apprehension themselves. Dorsey knew that a significant battle had been raging for hours by that point, and he would potentially be delivering infantrymen into the middle of the shooting. That was enough to make anyone uneasy, particularly in the largest helicopter in the fleet. Jeff had flown to Bari Ali countless times. He knew that he’d have to slow way down to land on the LZ, and in that tight valley he would quickly become the focus for all enemy fire.
The crew remained relatively quiet and focused as they flew up the Kunar Valley. As they approached COP Monti, Dorsey and copilot Adam McCullough could see Sergeant First Class Tacia’s men standing by, waiting to be picked up. Dorsey set the helicopter down in the LZ, and Sergeant First Class Tacia counted his men onto the bird. Within two minutes they were back in the air, headed for the fight.
Sergeant First Class Daniel Glick served as the flight evaluator on the Chinook. He was the senior crew member in charge of everything in the back of the helicopter. Dan operated the ramp on the back of the aircraft, gave instructions to the passengers, and gave direction to the other crew members in the back, which consisted of crew chief Sergeant Antonio Lewis and the door gunner, Specialist Kenneth Williams.
Jeff Dorsey was our Chinook maintenance test pilot. His primary job in the task force was to conduct maintenance test flights after major repairs or services had been completed on the Chinooks. We had put all of our most experienced mission pilots on the night shift to conduct night resupply missions in the Kamdesh. We put Jeff—a very strong mission pilot as well—on the day shift, so he could conduct test flights in order to ensure that the helicopters were ready for the night missions. May 1, 2009, would turn out to be a day Jeff Dorsey and the crew of Flex 6-3 would never forget.
We sent a team of Kiowas up with Jeff. Their job was to escort the Chinook into the valley, then remain there to help the Apaches find and kill enemy forces. Chief Warrant Officer 2 Kris Klusacek and former Navy SEAL Chief Warrant Officer 2 Don Cunningham flew in the lead helicopter. Their trail aircraft was flown by Chief Warrant Officers 2 Jason Aldins and Ray Illman. Kris Klusacek was a gifted Kiowa pilot who seemed to thrive in chaos. He was younger than many of our other air mission commanders, but Kris was a natural cavalryman.
Just as not every athlete has the ability to perform at the professional level, not every pilot is born with the instincts to be a good air mission commander. Air mission commanders are not designated based on rank; instead, and because they represent the unit commander, they are chosen based on their demonstrated maturity, flight proficiency, and, perhaps most important, their ability to make the very best decisions with the information they have on hand. They are problem-solvers, responsible for safely and smartly employing all aerial assets on any given mission. Generally, the most seasoned, senior pilot in the flight serves as the air mission commander; however, the most senior aviator is not always the best choice. In the army we often confuse rank and experience with innate talent. An air force officer once asked me, “Jimmy, do you know what’s wrong with the army?” Not knowing exactly where to begin, he bailed me out by answering his own question: “The army thinks that the smartest captain is just a little bit dumber than the dumbest major.”
Guilty as charged. My observations since that time, with few exceptions, have proved his theory true. Without consideration of talent, we tend to think that an operation is inherently safer and will go more smoothly with a chief warrant officer 4 serving as the air mission commander versus a chief warrant officer 2 or a lieutenant. Certainly, experience makes us wiser and more proficient, but superior instincts seem to be a natural gift that no amount of experience makes up for. Not everyone can play quarterback—see the receivers, feel the blockers, sense the rush, and make the pass under pressure—nor do all pilots have good air sense. Through practice we can certainly improve, but some people are born with a natural knack for managing complexity. It is a leader’s responsibility to identify those who possess those skills and exploit their talents. As author and scholar Jim Collins might say, “Put the right pilot in the right seat on the bus.”
Kris Klusacek was one of those gifted junior air mission commanders who could instinctively visualize the battlefield. Like Michael Jordan on the basketball court, Kris intuitively knew where his teammates were at all times. He could make the pass to a spot blindly because he knew his teammate would be there. He was not the only junior officer with superior air sense. Shane Burkhart, Ryan Neal, Matt Fix, and many others fell into that category. They could see multiple gun target lines—the path that a mortar or artillery round must travel from the gun to the target—in their mind. They were able to remain clear of danger while continuing the fight.
I have personally been the air mission commander in the Watapur Valley when we were shooting 155-mm howitzers from FOB Wright, 120-mm mortars from COP Honaker-Miracle, 105-mm artillery from FOB Blessing, dropping bombs from air force jets, and employing our attack helicopters simultaneously. It is a very complex situation that demands an air mission commander who can visualize all of those gun target lines in order to continue attacking the enemy. In 2009 we placed a tremendous amount of focus on air mission commander training before we deployed, despite hurting the feelings of several senior aviators. I put the right pilot in charge of the right mission without regard for rank, and Kris Klusacek was one of the best.
Rolling vortices, visible in the dust, swirled off the rotor blades as the Chinook lifted up off the ground. Once airborne, Dorsey immediately contacted the tactical command post that was then operational at the district center, just down the hill from Bari Ali. Crazy Horse 6 told Jeff to proceed directly to the OP, “not the district center.” Dorsey passed the word to Sergeant First Class Glick, who in turn told Tacia. “We’re going to land on the OP,” he shouted.
The soldiers passed the information man to man down the row of red nylon seats, screaming to one another over the roar of the turbine engines. As they approached Bari Ali, Sergeant Glick began lowering the ramp in preparation for their exit. As the ramp slowly lowered, everyone stared out the back of the helicopter, trying to get a glimpse of the unknown. Dorsey kept his speed up as long as possible, flared at the bottom to slow the aircraft, then planted it on the LZ. Tacia’s soldiers exploded out of the Chinook, not knowing if they would take immediate fire or if other friendly forces were already there. They immediately laid down behind whatever cover they could find in a 360-degree circle around the OP and scanned the mountains around them for enemy fighters.
With all the air assets in place—fresh Apache and Kiowa teams, a Chinook, a Black Hawk, and a medevac bird—we began reinforcing the OP and evacuating the casualties. Jim Markert controlled the operations on the ground, while our command posts collaboratively planned for the days ahead. While Taroli’s Apache team and Klusacek’s scouts searched for enemy forces still hiding in the boulders, Warren Brown and Jeff Dorsey flew their helicopters back and forth among the outpost, the district center, and FOB Bostic, moving men and supplies into the valley.
As Jim Markert and his men tried to make sense of what had happened at the OP, it became evident that there were some Afghan soldiers missing, along with one of the Latvians.
Taroli called Klusacek: “Hey, they are missing some Afghan soldiers and a Latvian. We need to start looking for them.”
“Roger,” Klusacek replied and the search began.
Within a few hours, intelligence sources indicated that the enemy had indeed captured eleven Afghan soldiers and a Latvian, and that they were moving them into the neighboring Helgal Valley. Within minutes other intel sources confirmed the initial report. We immediately sent Klusacek’s scouts into the Helgal Valley to try and find them.
Warren Brown landed at FOB Bostic to pick up another load of soldiers, but this time they loaded his helicopter with body bags. “We need you to deliver these speedballs to the East OP,” the soldier on the ground told him. The “speedballs” were the black body bags, filled with water bottles, ammunition, grenades, and MREs.
“Roger,” Warren said, and gave him a thumbs-up.
The East OP sat up the hill from Bari Ali on a very steep slope. We needed to supply the post with enough ammunition, water, and MRE-FOOD=FOOD READY TO EAT to last several days. It was uncertain how long the soldiers might be there, and whether the enemy would attack again at dusk, but if they did, we wanted to make sure that the men at that small OP were adequately supplied. Due to the steep slope of the mountain, the Chinook was too large to hover close to the mountain and drop the speedballs to the soldiers below, so Warren had volunteered his crew for that mission.
“Crap. Look at the slope of that thing,” he said as they approached. The East OP was literally built into the side of a vertical ridge. The crew would have to kick the speedballs out the door with extreme precision because they could not hover directly over the OP without their rotor blades striking the side of the mountain. It would be a very tricky maneuver. Warren slowed to a hover off the side of the ridge, then slid the helicopter over as close as possible to the mountain. Sergeant Andrews, the crew chief in the back, told him how close his rotor was to the terrain. “Five feet, four feet, three feet, hold,” Sergeant Andrews relayed.
Warren held the Black Hawk steady and Andrews kicked the first speedball out. It hit the ground and immediately rolled down the mountain. The men on the OP could not believe what they were seeing. They stared in disbelief as Warren hovered dangerously close to the side of the mountain. One of the soldiers on the OP snapped a quick picture. Five years later, when I called to interview him, that was the first thing he mentioned. He still had the picture and later sent it to me.
Sergeant Andrews saw the small trail that the men used to walk from Bari Ali to the East OP. It was a well-worn path with a lip on the downhill side. He thought if he could get the speedball to land on the trail it might hold.
“Come back five,” he told Warren. “Now up ten,” he said. “Hold.” He kicked the next one out. It landed squarely on the trail and stuck. He kicked out several more along the trail and then told Warren “mission complete.” Warren flew away from the mountain and headed back to FOB Bostic.
On Jeff Dorsey’s second turn into OP Bari Ali, nine Heroes (soldiers killed in action) were loaded onto the back of the Chinook. We had decided not to use the medevac aircraft because its only use was to remove the wounded from the battlefield. At each turn the helicopters received machine gun fire, so we needed to maximize the use of the cargo aircraft. Therefore, we used the Chinook to drop off reinforcements and supplies, and removed the dead and wounded on the way out.
After the fifth trip to Bari Ali it was sufficiently secured with a combination of American and Afghan soldiers. With the OP secure and enemy fire becoming more sporadic, our full attention turned to the missing soldiers.
TF Raider sent forces by vehicle to the entrance of the Helgal Valley to prevent the enemy from escaping out of the mouth of the valley with the prisoners. Fred Taroli’s Apaches continued to search for enemy fighters who remained hidden in caves and rocks on the ridges. The enemy knew that if they moved, if they were seen, death was imminent. Once the Apache pilots found them and locked on to their heat signature, running did very little good. Under the thermal sight, running only made them glow brighter.
But the enemy we fought were disciplined. In fact, the biggest difference I had noticed between enemy fighters in Iraq and the enemy we fought in Afghanistan was their disparate levels of discipline. In Iraq, once the enemy fighters knew we had them, they often gave up or threw their weapons down and pretended to be innocent of any wrongdoing. Enemy fighters in Afghanistan, on the other hand, would lie for hours in the cracks between boulders with a wet blanket draped over them to try and dissipate their heat signatures—trick our thermal sights. They’d wait for the perfect shot, the one they thought they could get off undetected, and when the opportunity presented itself they would seize it. There were days that I flew over the same area for five or six hours, not realizing that the enemy were close by, and then suddenly they were there—shooting at me from below. Fred Taroli and his team knew that there were still enemy fighters hiding in the rocks, watching, listening, hoping for a good shot, and Fred was determined to find them.
Knowing that the enemy could not have gone far on foot with a dozen hostages in tow, Klusacek took his team deeper and deeper into the Helgal Valley, looking for them and searching for a landing zone so that we could quickly move forces into the valley to isolate the enemy once we found them. Most villages in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan looked like beehives from the air—houses and terraces were connected by a maze of rock walls—but the Helgal was different. The Helgal Valley, and the soaring ridges surrounding it, was filled with trees and gnarly scrub that seemingly grew out of the rocks—a hard place, both figuratively and literally. The houses were squeezed into the trees with the occasional terrace, which we conveniently used for landing zones when we were able. The Helgal was so deep and narrow that a well-placed cloud could constitute a sky, so deep that only a few hours of sunlight actually reached the valley floor on a cloudless day.
We had to find a place to land the Chinooks near the back of the valley, because if the prisoners were indeed being held there, we would need to trap them. We would do that by occupying the high ground and preventing anyone from leaving or entering the valley. Klusacek eventually found an area that he thought might work for an LZ. He took pictures of it and flew back to FOB Bostic.
“Sir, that’s about the best I can find. There just aren’t many places to land,” Klusacek told Jack Murphy over the phone after sending the jpeg.
“Okay, go back to the valley and keep pressure on the enemy. We are going to put an air assault together. We just need to keep them in the valley. Don’t let them get out,” Jack said.
“Roger, sir.”
Colonel John Spiszer told us to work with Major Tom Sarrouf, the Special Forces AOB 9210 commander. He wanted us to air-assault the Special Forces and their Afghan commando partners into the Helgal. Quiet and unassuming, Tom Sarrouf sported a thick black beard with a hint of gray on either side of his chin. Lean and wiry with a Roman nose, Tom fit the Special Forces stereotype to a tee. He just looked like a warrior. Tom had enlisted in the army in 1988, as an infantryman. He later attended officer candidate school and was commissioned a lieutenant in the infantry. In 1999, he became a Special Forces officer. He’d previously deployed to Kosovo, Bosnia, Algeria, Kuwait, Iraq, and, of course, Afghanistan. Tom was a fine man—a total team player. He was there with genuine intent to help in any way he and his men could.
Jack, Tom, and I pored over the pictures, maps, and imagery in disbelief. There were few if any decent places to land a Chinook in the Helgal Valley. It was going to be very difficult to get Tom’s men in. The best options we identified would allow only a two-wheel landing. On a positive note, once Tom’s men were in the valley the terrain would be helpful in containing the enemy that hid within. Tom’s men would have excellent observation of the entire valley from the ridgeline.
Ultimately we picked two landing zones and decided we’d give them a try and count on the Chinook pilots to get Tom’s men in somehow.
I decided to fly the mission in a Kiowa. I chose Chief Warrant Officer 3 Scott Stradley to fly as my lead. Scott Stradley was a military policeman turned Kiowa Warrior standardization instructor pilot, who seemed to get into a fight almost every time he flew. Scott could make something out of nothing, or maybe he just provoked the possible. Whatever it was, when he flew, the enemy just seemed to be unable to contain themselves. It was like they could sense it was him and had to know, had to find out, if they could take a shot at him and survive. I’d seen other teams fly over a ground force, providing security for them, in a valley for hours and never was a shot fired in anger. Scott would show up to relieve the team on station, and before the relieved team could get to the FARP they’d hear Scott on the radio—in a gunfight. I told him that the enemy usually sought out soft targets to attack, so that should tell him something. He wasn’t amused.
On one end of the spectrum was Mike Woodhouse, whom we called the White Dove because wherever he flew, peace broke out. He was almost never shot at. Scott Stradley was the antithesis of Mike Woodhouse, so everyone who flew with him knew that they’d better be ready for a fight. An emblem of strength to the young pilots in his troop, Scott had been in the unit longer than anyone. In fact, his entire career as a warrant officer was spent in the squadron. He had cut his teeth and gained extensive combat experience in Iraq, but the Iraqi fights paled in comparison to the battles he found himself fighting during our 2009 deployment.
With thin blond hair and a slightly crooked smile that drew a bit further back on the right side of his mouth, Scott was easygoing and fun, somewhat quiet, but prone to laugh out loud. He was the guy everyone loved to see at a party, but for the enemy forces we faced, he was truly a dangerous man, tough as nails in a fight—the one they didn’t want to show up. Once he latched on to them he would not let go. Getting shot at really pissed Scott off. He took it personally.
Once, he flew lead for me on a mission deep in the Watapur Valley. We had been receiving sporadic machine gun fire for quite a while, and with each pass I noticed that Scott’s helicopter crept lower and lower to the ground. Finally, I sarcastically transmitted over the radio, “Scott, are you trying to get shot down?”
“No, sir,” he replied, “but I’ve just about figured out where they are, and when I find ’em I’m gonna kill ’em.”
Scott was precisely the guy I wanted on my team going into the Helgal. If we ended up in a fight I could count on him unleashing hell on the enemy.
We planned to use a team of Apaches to clear the high mountaintops that surrounded the valley while my team of scouts escorted the Chinooks into the landing zones. Captain William Gargone was the Special Forces team leader. His detachment and their Afghan commando partners would serve as the ground force in the Helgal.
Just as the flight crews began to assemble to begin planning, we heard the muffled thump of a Chinook’s rotors in the distance. It was the TF Eagle Lift team from Bagram that we had requested several hours earlier. The pilot in command of the Chinook was Chief Warrant Officer 4 Stacy Owens. Stacy and I had served together previously, flying UH-1 Hueys around Washington, D.C. Stacy was a small, fit, prior infantryman with a Ranger tab and a fire in his belly. A true mission pilot with a can-do attitude, Stacy served as the TF Eagle Lift’s battalion safety officer. Before the rotor blades stopped turning he jogged from his Chinook to our command post and found me.
“Sir, we’re ready to go. What do you need me to do?” he asked.
I briefly described the situation to him. I told him there were very few good landing zones, so we’d have to make do with what we had found. “We’ll get ’em in, sir,” he said matter-of-factly.
I told him to go link up with the other crews and help them finish planning the mission. I turned to walk away, but he stopped me. “Hey, sir, just so you know, at some point between Bagram and here a panel on the aft pylon of the Chinook came off,” he said.
We had to have that Chinook for the air assault. My heart dropped, thinking we would have to try and get another Chinook flown to Fenty. “Is it okay to fly it with the panel missing? Will it safely fly this mission, Stacy?” I asked.
“Absolutely, sir,” he replied. “I just wanted you to know that when you look at the helicopter you are going to see a big panel obviously missing.”
“Okay, then let’s get to planning,” I said.
The Helgal Valley ran east to west. At its eastern terminus the Helgal opened into the Kunar Valley. From there it snaked west for about ten kilometers. It was a narrow valley with ridgelines on either side climbing to altitudes of over ten thousand feet. While the steep, rocky, heavily vegetated terrain was extremely challenging to operate in, in reality it was a huge box, which proved to be beneficial to us. The valley ended in the western end at a wall of a mountain. We clearly saw that if we could control the high ground and keep pressure on the enemy it would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, for them to get the prisoners out of the valley without us seeing them. The valley in which the enemy sought refuge had essentially become their prison.
Back at Bari Ali, Warren Brown conducted the final resupply run to the East OP and returned to FOB Bostic to link up with Jeff Dorsey. We told them to return to FOB Fenty after they were done so they could get a quick briefing, then turn around and fly as part of the air assault into the Helgal.
“Land but do not shut down. We’ll send an ATV to pick you up. You’ll get the briefing and then we’ll drive you back to the helicopter and you can go,” Jack Murphy told Dorsey.
“Roger that, sir.”
It had already been a long, tough day of flying and fighting. I knew Warren’s and Jeff’s crews were tired, but as I spoke to them on the radio it was clear that they were focused and prepared to do whatever was necessary to help the men on the ground. When they arrived we rushed them into the planning room and quickly brought them up to speed. Then, after a back brief to ensure they had a firm understanding of what we were telling them to do, they headed back out to their aircraft to brief the other crew members.
Colonel Spiszer, along with Tom Sarrouf, myself, and Colonel Lewis, spoke with Brigadier General Mark Milley, the deputy commanding general for operations, CJTF-101, and explained our plan. Normally, major operations such as this required a thorough concept of operations (CONOP) briefing for his approval, but considering the situation he took a verbal brief and approved the mission.
I had full confidence in our crews, but I knew that this was going to be an extremely challenging mission. We had pounded the enemy pretty well throughout the day, but I wasn’t sure how many fighters were still hiding in the rocks waiting to take a shot at us. I also knew that it would take a few minutes to get Tom’s men, along with their gear and crates of water and ammunition, off the Chinooks. The offload concerned me most. Stacy and Jeff would have to hold the Chinooks steady at a hover with only two wheels touching the ground while everyone and everything was offloaded—a very vulnerable position during daylight hours. My Kiowa team would fly close, right around the Chinooks, to cover them while the Apaches would scan the high ground in case anyone popped up with a rifle or RPG.
Colonel Lewis called me just before I headed out to my aircraft and asked, “Jimmy, can we get these guys in there?” he asked.
“It’s sporty, but—yes, sir—we can. We’ll figure it out. I think we’ve got the right crews to get it done.”
“Okay, be safe and give me a call when you get back. We’ll talk about what we’re going to need tomorrow.”
“Yes, sir.”
There was never a guarantee that we would not get an aircraft shot down. That was always a possibility, but I felt that we had mitigated every risk we possibly could with every asset available in theater. It was now up to us. The mission had to be executed, and I was confident we’d make it happen, one way or the other.
We lugged our gear out to the helicopters and suited up for the mission. I knew it would be cold in the Helgal, so I added a layer of wool under my flight jacket. I then buckled and Velcroed my body armor on, like an exoskeleton. We carried everything we’d need if we ended up on the ground and had to fight or evade and escape. I wore a bib attached to my body armor with pouches on it. In the pouches I carried a survival kit with a signaling mirror, whistle, first aid kit, tourniquet, medicine, and survival knife. In ammunition pouches I carried six thirty-round magazines of 5.56-mm ammunition for my rifle, and four magazines of 9-mm ammunition for my pistol. I attached a Garmin Foretrex 201 GPS to my bib with all of the locations of U.S. outposts in our area. I zip-tied my 9-mm holster to the center of my chest, and my M4 rifle snapped into the dash of the Kiowa. In a small “go bag” (backpack) I carried water, food, a British Special Forces sleeping bag that was no larger than a volleyball, and several more magazines of ammunition. I weighed 165 pounds at the time, but with all of my gear on I weighed 210.
We flew up the Kunar River Valley in silence. I don’t recall a single radio call other than the check-in calls at each FOB. There was no need for talk. I often wondered what others thought about on those long flights to an objective or to and from a fight. I suppose some experienced fear and anxiety. Others probably rehearsed what they had to do once we got there over and over in their heads. I often thought about my wife and kids. I know that’s what I thought about on the way to the Helgal. I didn’t want the mission to go badly because I had a lot of things I still wanted to do with my wife and kids. That motivated me to get it right.
A biting wind whipped through the doorless Kiowa cockpit. The thin mountain air grew colder the farther north we flew, stinging a little as I drew in a deep breath. The Apaches flew as high as the clouds allowed, which was no more than five hundred feet above the ground.
The Special Forces and Commandos rode along in silence in the back of the Chinooks. Once in place at the LZs we had selected, high on the northern ridgeline, they would set up their sniper teams, and any enemy they observed would be shot. If the enemy were out of range, or if there were a lot of enemy forces moving together, they would either use jets to drop bombs or they would hand the target off to our Apaches to attack.
Back at the airfield, Jack devised a plan for continuous, 24/7 air coverage over the valley.
“They are in that valley,” Jillian had told him. “I’ve got multiple sources of intelligence confirming that they are there.”
“Then all we have to do is keep them from moving them until we can negotiate their release or go in and take them back.”
Once we had them trapped in the valley, Colonel Spiszer and General Milley would work with the provincial governor to demand that the prisoners be turned over. We hoped that they would see that it would be their only option, that there was no other way out alive, so they’d turn them over to us.
The afternoon shadows grew long as the light of day faded. We’ll get them in just before dark, I thought to myself as we rounded the S-turn and saw OP Bari Ali. Then we made a sharp left turn into the valley. The Apaches led with the Chinooks closely behind them. I flanked the Chinooks in my Kiowa. We were conducting the most rapidly planned, briefed, and executed air assault to date, and it was being flown in the most challenging terrain one could imagine. Nevertheless, our crews were focused, confident, and comfortable with our plan. Jeff Dorsey and Stacy Owens identified their LZs right away and flew straight to them. I followed Stradley low over the small village to keep anyone peeking out of their houses focused on us versus the Chinooks.
With the Chinooks in the LZs, soldiers began pouring out of the backs of the helicopters. It was already drizzling rain and promised to be a miserable night, but as I watched insanely fit, bearded men armed to the teeth explode off of the Chinooks, I was confident that they would be just fine. Stacy’s aircraft emptied first, so he called clear of the LZ and headed back toward the Kunar. We flew in beside him and escorted him to the mouth of the valley.
The first man off Jeff’s aircraft was Sergeant Azad “Oz” Ebrahimzadeh. He ran straight up the side of the mountain, about fifty meters from the bird, and stood watch. He scanned the ridges with his rifle at the ready. Everything about him said, I’m ready. If you feel froggy, jump.
While he was Persian, his olive skin, coal black hair, and thick beard reminded me of the Spartan king Leonidas, but it wasn’t just his skin color and beard that held my attention, it was his stature. Standing six-four and weighing 270 pounds, his mere presence was intimidating. He was a Special Forces medic. A Persian lion, I thought to myself the first time I saw him. Tattoos decorated skin that was stretched thinly over massive muscles. His appearance alone sent the message, I mean business!
Oz was born in Iran during the Iranian revolution. His father, a no-nonsense scientist/mathematician/engineer, was abroad when Ayatollah Khomeini closed the Iranian gates to the free world. I guess you could say Oz was born for the military, having accompanied his mother on his first life-and-death escape and evasion mission at the tender age of two.
Born the only girl in a family of seven siblings, Shahla Ebrahimzadeh was a scrapper. She was tough as nails, a trait she would need later in life. She was a nurse when the revolution began. Shahla sold everything their family had, including her wedding ring, to secure enough money to smuggle her two-year-old son out of Iran. By her account, they almost died numerous times along the way. Often the only thing that kept them alive was the kindness of strangers. Ultimately finding her way to West Frankfurt, Germany, she made it to freedom.
Oz’s father, Mohsen Ebrahimzadeh, had desperately tried to return to Iran to help his family escape. “On one of his final attempts soldiers caught him, beat him, and put him on his knees to execute him—the soldiers put a pistol to his head and pulled the trigger. The pistol malfunctioned. The soldier recocked the weapon and again placed it to [his] head—click—again it did not fire. Frustrated, the soldiers beat him nearly to death,”1 Oz told me.
Eventually Mohsen joined Shahla and Azad in Germany. In 1988 they migrated to California.
Oz grew up there and fell in love with the army. He liked guns, grenades, and things that exploded, so as soon as he graduated high school he enlisted as an infantryman in the army. In 2003, he favorably assessed with the Special Forces and became a medic. Oz spoke English, Dari, and Farsi. As intimidating a figure as he was, when clean-shaven and dressed for town he looked like someone you’d see posing on the cover of GQ magazine. Standing tall and lean, with his square jaw and olive skin, his jet black hair slicked back with product—he was a model. Those two contradictions said it all. If you read his palms you’d see it written plainly in ink: on his left hand the medics’ emblem and the words To Give. In the palm of his right hand a sickle and the words To Take.
As I watched Oz standing there, surveying the ridges like a sentinel, I suddenly wished I were there. I desperately wanted to be on the ground with the troops. I felt great pride just being a soldier at that moment, being a part of an amazing operation that most nations could not imagine executing.
With all of the men unloaded, Jeff Dorsey pulled in power and followed us out of the valley. Once we were out of the Helgal, ODA 9212 began setting up positions to observe the valley, particularly the small village where we suspected that the prisoners were being held. Our Apaches remained in the valley to support the ground forces as they set up their positions, beginning a rotation of teams that would cover the ground force day and night until we succeeded in getting the prisoners back.
As darkness fell on May 1, TF Raider and elements of TF Chosin had regained control of OP Bari Ali and the East OP. They had sealed off the mouth of the Helgal Valley and occupied several other positions on the high ground near the entrance to the valley. ODA 9212 and the Afghan commandos had established two positions on the northern ridge of the Helgal. Our Apaches covered the valley from the air, along with continuous close air support (CAS) and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Jaguar 1-3, the Special Forces joint tactical air controller (JTAC), wrapped a poncho around his shoulder, pulled a black balaclava over his head, leaned back against a gnarly tree in the rocks, and prepared for a long wet night. He was responsible for coordinating and sequencing everything flying in support of their mission. He was an air force airman specially trained to call for attacks from close air support, including fighters, bombers, and, of course, our helicopters.
It had been a very busy day for everyone involved. Some of our crews had flown for over ten long, stressful hours. The complexity of the terrain, coupled with heavy fighting and terrible weather, made May 1, 2009, a day that many of our pilots would later say was the most difficult flying they had ever done. The crews had demonstrated tremendous flexibility to meet the needs of both Task Force Duke and our Special Forces brothers.
According to our operating procedures a pilot could fly for eight hours during the day. If some of the time was flown during the day and a portion using night vision goggles, then we were limited to seven hours of flight time. If the entire flight was flown using night vision goggles, then the limit was six hours. Colonel Lewis and I could grant extensions to the flight time if necessary, but only when it was absolutely necessary—on days like May 1, 2009. To put the day into perspective, Jeff Dorsey’s crew flew twelve and a half hours. Warren Brown and his Flawless 0-8 crew flew just over nine hours. Collectively, TF Pale Horse aircraft flew 157 flight hours that day alone, a day that had been supported by a cast of men and women who fueled our helicopters and armed them, soldiers who planned landing zones, coordinated with other units, shared intelligence reports, and did a thousand other things that had to be done to help the team successfully complete the mission.
Colonel Lewis had watched our helicopters on Blue Force Tracker (BFT), a battle tracking system, which enabled us to see the aircraft depicted virtually on a digital map as we executed the mission in real time. He called me that evening.
I saw that it was him on the caller ID. “Sir, it’s Jimmy.”
“Hey, Jimmy. Good job today. Well done.”
“Thanks, sir. It was a busy one but the boys did great,” I said.
“Yes, they did. Tell them I’m proud of them. What now? What do you think?”
“Well, our plan is to keep Apaches and Kiowas over the valley round the clock in order to keep the enemy from moving the prisoners. I didn’t have enough Apaches to cover the Helgal Valley and to be prepared to respond to TICs [troops in contact] in other places. You know we’re going to have a fight somewhere else tomorrow, so I need an additional Apache team every day until we get them out of there,” I said.
“Okay, I’ll talk to Rob Dickerson and tell him to send them your way. Clearly, you guys are the main effort until we get these prisoners back.”
“I appreciate it, sir.”
“Well done today,” he repeated, and we agreed to talk again in the morning to discuss long-term plans.
Back in the Helgal, ODA 9212 settled in for a miserable night. They took shifts pulling security and watching the village for activity. Just after midnight one of our Apaches spotted three men with weapons moving in the rocks on the south ridge, across the Helgal Valley from ODA 9212. The Apache pilots were in the process of reporting what they saw to Jaguar 1-3, who sat leaning against a big tree, when the men across the valley took up fighting positions in the rocks and began shooting across the valley. Our Apache crews immediately shot the men with 30-mm rounds. As the rounds impacted the rocks, ten armed men, previously undetected, suddenly leapt up out of the boulders and began running. The Apache crews killed eight of them. A couple of the fighters dove into crevasses in the rocks and small caves, not to be seen again throughout the night. We were unsure if they were mortally wounded, or if they knew that to move would mean certain death.
In the weeks preceding the May 1 attack on Bari Ali, TF Raider had established a vehicle patrol base (VPB) at the mouth of the Tsunel Valley, just north of OP Bari Ali. Like the Helgal, the Tsunel was an east-west-running valley that emptied into the north-south-running Kunar, but the Tsunel lay a couple of miles to the north of the Helgal. Also, like the Helgal, the Tsunel was a narrow, steep valley. Just across the Kunar River from Tsunel was the Saw Valley. The Saw Valley quickly rose to the high ridge, upon which sat the Pakistan border. We knew this valley was used routinely for cross-border movement into the Nari District; however, a small, steep, rocky road provided the only access to the valley.
TF Raider knew that if the enemy wanted to get the prisoners out of the Helgal they would most likely make a run for Pakistan. It was the best chance, and shortest distance, the enemy had to move the prisoners north of the Helgal, then down through the Tsunel. They could then cross the Kunar River and travel up through the Saw Valley and into Pakistan. Our hope was that the Tsunel VPB would deny the enemy that option.
* * *
The following morning, a fresh team of two Apaches, Weapon 1-6 and Weapon 2-0, relieved the night team at 7:30 A.M. When they arrived in the Helgal, the Apache pilots checked in with Jaguar 1-3 and asked if there was anything he needed them to look at specifically before they began a thorough reconnaissance of the entire valley from west to east. Jaguar 1-3 told them that he had observed a man moving back and forth from a log cabin to a waterfall on the south side of the valley since daylight. He asked them to take a look and see what he was doing.
The pilots took a look and actually saw several men. For over almost two hours the Apache pilots watched from a distance as the men moved nervously in and out of the cabin. From time to time they stole a glance at the helicopter but were careful not to look overly suspicious. They were clearly up to something, but they did not appear to be armed.
After a couple of hours the Apache pilots left the valley to go to FOB Bostic and fuel their helicopters. When they returned from the FARP, Jaguar 1-3 asked them to take a close look at the southeastern end of the village in the bottom of the valley. “See if you can see anyone moving around. Let me know if you see women and children out,” Jaguar 1-3 requested. “I’ll keep an eye on the men at the cabin,” he said, then placed binoculars up to his eyes to look.
As soon as the Apaches began flying east, Jaguar 1-3 saw movement at a cabin just up the trail from the waterfall. A close look through his binoculars revealed three men with weapons. They appeared to be stacking something adjacent to the cabin. He was pretty sure they were moving weapons, perhaps a cache. They’ve got a weapons cache by the cabin, and they are getting weapons out of it right now, he thought to himself.
“Weapon 1-6, Jaguar 1-3,” he called the Apache over the radio.
“Roger, send it,” Weapon 1-6 replied.
“I’ve got three men with weapons and what appears to be a cache.” He gave Weapon 1-6 the grid coordinates to the location. “Request you engage with Hellfire missile.”
“Three men with weapons and a cache. Engage with Hellfire, over,” Weapon 1-6 repeated back to ensure that he had copied the report correctly.
“Affirmative,” Jaguar confirmed.
The missile hit a small shed adjacent to the cabin, between the cabin and the cache. There was an initial explosion closely followed by a much larger, secondary explosion, indicative of a large cache of munitions. Birds exploded from trees, monkeys scattered, and three men ran from the cabin, disappearing into the woods. A UAV, which had also been orbiting overhead searching for the prisoners, spotted the men as they ran but lost them once they hid in the woods. Anticipating the need for big bombs, Jaguar 1-3 coordinated with a jet that had been orbiting overhead to drop a bomb on the cabin. He wanted to make sure that the cache was completely destroyed.
“Weapons, move your team to the north side of the valley. I’m about to drop a bomb on the cache,” Jaguar 1-3 said.
“Roger.” Within minutes an explosion echoed throughout the valley, and a black mushroom cloud rose into the air. The cabin was gone.
Weapon 1-6 took a good long look through its sight before flying across the valley to take a closer look at the cabin. The pilots saw a bunker under the cabin, which had been reinforced with lumber and sandbags. It appeared as though the secondary explosion was generated from whatever they had stored inside the bunker.
“1-6, this is 2-0,” the lead Apache called to his trail aircraft. “I’ve got five males on a trail headed for the waterfall.”
Clearly, the five men had either run from the cabin after the first shot or they had been in the woods hiding all along. Their walk turned into a run once they realized the helicopters were coming closer. They ran into a large cave behind the waterfall, and Weapon 2-0 lost sight of them. A few minutes later one of the men came out of the cave and began walking, running, and randomly hiding behind trees, but he was not armed, so the pilots kept an eye on him and reported what they saw to Jaguar 1-3, who also watched through his binoculars from across the valley. While they knew with relative certainty that he was an enemy fighter, the rules of engagement required that he demonstrate a hostile act or hostile intent before they could shoot him, so the Apache pilots kept an eye on him as he moved along the trail system.
That night the men tried to sleep, but sleep came hard. It rained all night. Most of the men had ponchos, and a few had rain jackets, but “there was no level ground, and we were attempting to sleep in animal feces,”2 Sergeant First Class Russell Klika, the combat cameraman, later told me.
The local farmers grazed their goat herds all along the mountain. The ground was covered with feces. Each man found a spot to lean against a tree, and tried to remain as dry as possible. Every time they would doze off our Apaches would shoot or the air force jets would drop a bomb. It was a tough night with very little rest.
The next morning they built a fire, and everyone gathered around it to try and dry their clothes. They had told the Afghan soldiers to pack enough food for three days, but they ate all of their food the first day and were now hungry. From the time the men had arrived a small goat had taken up with them. It followed them everywhere. It even squeezed in between the men to warm itself at the fire that morning. “My initial thought was that the commandos would have a good meal of goat that first day, but they didn’t kill the goat,”3 Klika said.
But they were certainly hungry and wanted to go in search of food on the mountain.
The Afghan commandos had noticed a family living just up the mountain from their position. They decided to see if the family had any food they could spare, or perhaps they could buy an animal to slaughter.
Oz, Sergeant First Class Russell Klika, a couple of their teammates, interpreters, and a few Afghans walked along a small goat trail to reach the family. Upon seeing the soldiers, a woman who appeared to be the matriarch of the family did not appear frightened at all. “She stood up and put her hands on her hips,”4 Klika said.
Typically, Afghan women covered their faces and ran for the house when we approached, but the Helgal encounter turned out to be quite different. Instead of the husband coming forward and greeting Oz, the woman coldly greeted him. She stared at him through dark brown eyes that sat deep in hollow sockets, eyes that had clearly witnessed hardship and pain. “Are you Russian?” she asked in a strange dialect.
Oz could not understand her. The interpreters later said that she spoke a dialect of Dari that is not officially recognized. The isolated people in that region of Afghanistan had developed their own unique dialect over time.
Caught off guard, Oz responded through the interpreter, “No. We represent your government. We are here to help you.”
She stared off into the distance and considered his response. A black scarf covered her long, straight black hair. Her leathery skin was deep golden brown and her thin face had a line in it for every hard year of life she had lived. She looked to be at least sixty but was certainly no more than forty. A tiny silver stud in the right side of her nose caught sunlight and sparkled. Oz was perhaps the first American to have ever entered the Helgal. “What government?” she asked, still staring out across the valley.
“The Afghan government. We are here at the request of your president, Hamid Karzai,” he answered.
“We have a president?” she asked, casting her eyes back to Oz.
Oz confirmed that President Karzai was leading the Afghan government in Kabul.
Meanwhile, the Afghan soldiers had approached the husband to ask for food. Klika noticed that the old woman kept pulling at a purple rag wrapped around her hand. Flies swarmed her hand as she raised it to her mouth. She used her teeth to hold the end of the material as she wrapped it more tightly around her hand, which was clearly hurting.
Klika turned to Oz. “Do you have any aspirin you can give her?” he asked.
Oz looked back at the old lady. “Can I take a look at your hand? I am a medic,” he said.
“No man has touched me since they killed my sons,” she said.
“Who killed your sons?” Oz asked.
“The Taliban. Are you Taliban?” she asked.
“No,” he replied.
“The Taliban came and told my sons they must fight for them. My sons refused, and they cut their heads off,” she explained with clear mistrust in her voice.
“How many sons?” the interpreter asked.
“Two,” she said sadly.
And then the old woman looked up at Oz and said, “If you are going to kill me, do it fast.”
“We’re not going to kill you,” Oz assured her.
Meanwhile, the Afghan soldiers had convinced the old man to sell them a cow. He led them to a pitiful-looking creature about the size of a Great Dane, except skinnier. He pointed to it and the haggling began. In the end they gave him one hundred dollars for the old bag of bones. They paid him, bid them all farewell, and began dragging the puny animal back down the mountain.5
Seeing they were ready to depart, Oz gave the woman aspirin and told her to swallow the pills.
“It will help with the pain,” he said, then turned and walked away.
While the soldiers had bartered with the husband, Sergeant First Class Klika had noticed an old rusty knife lying beside the man and a sharp stick that he had whittled. As he walked by the man, Klika took his Gerber multitool out and handed it to him. Tears ran down the old man’s face, and in perfect English, he said, “Thank you.”6
The conversation with the old lady confirmed our opinion that progress in the remote mountain regions would be difficult if not impossible in the short term. To those people Kabul may as well have been a different country. Their concerns in life lay within their valley. They argued and fought over grazing and water rights with neighboring clans. They did not see how Kabul could positively influence their lives in a meaningful way, and it would be difficult to convince them otherwise.
As for me, I secretly wondered if we had a right to try and drag them into the future. They lived, by our standards, a difficult but simple existence. They were trapped between radicals that would enslave them and Westerners that wanted to drag them into the future—both would significantly change their way of life. The thought troubled me as I flew into the back of the valley on the second day of our standoff. A cool wind whipped through the cockpit as my eyes focused on crevasses, caves, any potential hiding spots for enemy forces. We circled a small hut where monkeys, the only wild animals I had seen in Afghanistan, leapt from the roof into the nearby trees. I had been told that there were ibex and bears in Afghanistan, but despite covering a lot of ground from the air, I never saw them.
A woman stopped hanging clothes on a line and stared up at us as we flew over. I thought of my own simple north Georgia childhood. In the 1970s I didn’t know much about the world outside of Ranger, Georgia. It wasn’t until I was swept away with the army that I was exposed to other cultures. I thought how strange it would have felt for outsiders to have invaded my way of life.
I saw a young boy sitting on a log high up on the ridge. He was alone and peering out into the valley—a valley that defined his world. I wondered if he knew what life was like outside the Helgal. He knew sheep, goats, his family, his village, and the Helgal Valley. He’d probably been to Nari but not much farther. The tribes of the Hindu Kush had been influenced by outsiders many times throughout history, and I knew that their way of life was being transformed yet again. I also knew that they had very little power to resist it. I clearly recognized the alternative, but I questioned if it was the right thing to do. Did we truly know what was best for them?
Later that evening, just after dark, in a land with a view of a million stars, I climbed up on a deck at FOB Fenty. It was an elevated wooden structure with a worn-out parachute for a roof and a few plastic yard chairs. The soldiers had built it for one purpose—cigars and relaxation. Alone, I sat down and looked out across the airfield toward the Kunar River Valley. Heat lightning flashed cloud to cloud out over the valley. My thoughts returned to the boy I’d seen earlier that day. We represented the establishment of a democratic society that idealistically brought with it freedom, individual rights, and equality.
I wondered where the line between forceful establishment of democracy and freedom to choose democracy lay. For me, there was no questioning the necessity of our mission in Afghanistan. Vividly, I recalled the day that over three thousand people were butchered. I remember how it felt when I found out that people I knew had died in the Pentagon. We would bring justice to those who were responsible for the attacks of September 11, 2001, but I also knew that we could not leave Afghanistan a failed state. What troubled me was how we could convince isolated tribesmen like those in the Helgal to embrace our vision of their future. It must have seemed like such a foreign concept to them, like my grandmother trying to convince me that caster oil was good for me as a child. I figured that it would take longer than the American people were willing to give us.
The reality was that we were in Afghanistan. The Taliban had been removed. A government was in place, and we had an obligation to ensure that the people of Afghanistan were afforded the opportunity to govern their country and to protect their people, many of whom didn’t even know that they had a government. That meant development, both physical infrastructure and systems of government, and the removal of extremist groups that would do harm to Afghanistan and its citizens. I returned to my room, thanked my Heavenly Father for another day alive, and laid down for a few hours of sleep.
We kept continuous pressure on the enemy throughout the next two days and nights with only light contact with them, but during the evening of the third day enemy forces attempted a decisive move. The Tsunel Vehicle Patrol base took machine gun fire throughout midday, but as soon as TF Raider fired 155-mm artillery shells at them the enemy sought cover and stopped shooting. It seemed like normal daily contact to us, but later that evening, at 8:30 P.M., they attacked in force.
It was like someone flipped a switch. Suddenly the VPB was hit with heavy machine gun, RPG, and mortar fire from the high ground to their west. The standard procedure of firing artillery was applied, but this time the enemy kept coming. They were making a significant attempt to overrun the VPB, as well as the OP higher up on the ridge.
Enemy forces quickly closed the gap, sprinting forward between artillery impacts, then diving for cover as the shells rained down from above. Major Matt Fox, my executive officer, was the air mission commander of the Kiowa team that responded. When they arrived the men on the OP could literally see the enemy crawling, trying to get inside the barbwire that surrounded the American position. The soldiers manning the OP had fired all of their weapons, had expended all of their ammunition, and were throwing hand grenades at the enemy when the Kiowas arrived. Matt and his team fired everything they had at very close range to our own men. The team made multiple turns into the FARP at FOB Bostic to get more ammunition and rockets. Each time the team departed to rearm, the enemy resumed the attack.
Finally, after several hours of heavy fighting, the valley suddenly went silent but for the sound of rotors. It was like someone had flipped the switch off, and they were gone. We resupplied the VPB and OP as quickly as possible and prepared for another attack, but it never came. The enemy simply disappeared with their dead and wounded. The only trace of the enemy the following morning was blood on the rocks. In the days that followed they continued sporadic attacks, but nothing significant ever came.
Meanwhile, Jim Markert, Colonel John Spiszer, and Brigadier General Mark Milley worked with local leaders to try and persuade them to facilitate the return of the captives. At FOB Fenty we planned another large air assault, this time to conduct a valley-wide clearing operation. The assault force would be Green Berets from the 3rd Special Forces Group along with their commando partners. As we supported the men in the Helgal we had continued to search for better landing zones. We found two places in the valley floor that were perfect. They were at the very back of the valley, which is where we wanted to put the ground force. Once on the ground, the soldiers would move from the back of the valley to the mouth, clearing every house, building, shed, and barn along the way. Tom Sarrouf’s men, up on the high ground, would cover them as they maneuvered through the valley.
Before dawn on May 6, two Chinooks, escorted by a team of Kiowas and a team of Apaches, inserted the air assault force with no enemy resistance at all. Afghan soldiers, along with Jim Markert’s men, blocked the mouth of the valley. They were there to ensure that no one got out of the valley. Colonel Spiszer told the village elders, the district governor, and the police chief that we were going to attack throughout the valley. If they would facilitate the release of the prisoners then he would call off the attack. If not, we would find them by force.
The commandos led down the valley, and soon thereafter a couple of small pickup trucks came racing out of the valley. Riding in the back of the trucks were twelve weary men. The prisoners were liberated, at least physically. What scars remained, ghosts in their dreams, from six days in captivity I do not know.
There are events in life that never leave us, events that serve as a barometer for future life challenges. For every soldier who has completed Ranger school, it is an experience that we look back on; when things are tough we know that we have endured tougher trials in life. It seems to provide some level of comfort and confidence that “you can do this.” Bari Ali was one of those events for Task Force Pale Horse. Later in the deployment, when the enemy was attacking, the terrain was foreboding, and the weather threatened, we would recall Bari Ali and suddenly things didn’t seem so bad.
* * *
The morning after the operation I received the following emails:
Sir,
On behalf of SOTF-92 [Special Operations Task Force], we would like to thank you and your staff for the planning and remarkable execution of OPN Open Toe. Also, the CCA [Close Combat Attack] coverage could not have been supported any better last night. For these insurgents, they now know Death does ride a Pale Horse, and so do our men on the ground. Thank you.
Very respectfully,
CPT, AVSOTF-92
I wanted to take a minute of your time this morning to thank you all for the commendable performance on OPN Open Toe. Your mission support and dedication to excellence truly set the example for fellow comrades and units on the battlefield. I speak for the entire CJSOTF—A/SOTF-92 [Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force—Afghanistan] Element when I say, without your detailed planning on such a collapsed timeline and actions on the objective in light of such harsh weather and threat, the operation would have surely failed.
Warrant Officer 3rd Special Forces Group (Airborne)
Lieutenant Colonel Jim Markert shared the following sentiments with the families of his squadron in their unit newsletter.
TF Pale Horse pilots have done more to keep our soldiers alive than perhaps anyone else outside the TF and the bravest of them remain the OH-58 pilots who routinely fly into enemy fire to support us during firefights. We will never be able to thank them enough for their excellent support.
James C. Markert
I had told our troopers all along that our measure of success would be the value that our ground brothers placed on our contribution to the fight. These notes were proof that we were on the right track.