MIANPOSHTEH, AFGHANISTAN – Two months ago, the Marines of Echo company pushed into this farming community, set up a series of outposts, and launched a series of patrols and raids to put the Taliban on their heels. On Thursday, the militants struck back, attacking four different Marine units in seven hours and dealing Echo company its first casualty in more than three weeks. One Marine was shot through the chest and arm, but is expected to make a full recovery.
"I wouldn't call it a 'counter-offensive,' quote-unquote," says Capt. Eric Meador, Echo's company commander. "But this is their biggest push against us since mid-July."
Just last weekend, Meador (pictured) was wondering where the Taliban had gone. After nearly seven weeks of near-constant skirmishes in what has become an epicenter of America's renewed war in Afghanistan, the militants here had suddenly gone quiet. Echo enjoyed a rare 72 hours without a gunfight. Then, the guerrillas ambushed a squad of marines, on patrol to the southeast. Since then, the fighting hasn’t just renewed. It's intensified considerably.
Shortly after 10:00 a.m. on Thursday, an Echo company squad to the northeast came under small-arms fire. At 12:45, the Taliban attacked a second unit in the southwest. At 3:15 PM, a weapons team in the desert on the west side of the Helmand River was hit. Three minutes later, the unit in the southwest was fired on again. A half-hour after that was the final Taliban strike, on a squad patrolling southeast.
As one unit after unit radioed in their attacks – often, with machine gun fire rattling in the background – the mood in the Echo company command post grew more tense. A half-dozen nervous conversations overlapped, as marines peered into surveillance screens, and plotted and re-plotted the locations of enemy and friendly forces. "Damn! These guys won't quit! They're Energizer bunnies," Meador yelled in frustration, rubbing his scalp.
Echo responded to the attacks with grenades, dozens of 60mm and 81mm mortars, and even a pair of $80,000 "Excalibur" satellite-guided 155mm artillery shells. Harrier jets and Cobra attack copters flew overheard, to pinpoint the militants' locations. But the shells had no effect. The mortars didn't dissuade the militants from shooting at the Marines again. And the aircraft never could keep an eye on the Taliban for very long. "Lost 'em in the brush," Meador radioed his superiors.
Meador deliberately provoked some of these firefights. Early Tuesday morning, Meador dispatched a sniper team to a southwestern compound to take out some suspected militants. It was part of an ongoing effort to keep the Taliban tied up around the compounds and the farms to the south – and to give the northern villages a chance to grow their watermelons and corn and marijuana in peace. Meador figured the sniper team's attack would incite a reaction. So Meador also dispatched an infantry squad to hold the area, at least until the fire died down. Three days later, they're still there.
Yesterday, he sent a squad on patrol in an area to a known Taliban hotspot in the southeast. Again, the mission was all-but-guaranteed to draw "contact," the military's euphemism for enemy fire. And it did.
As an infantry squad camped out in a 10-foot drainage ditch, knee-deep with mud, a sniper team entered a nearby adobe building. AK-47 fire erupted from the south. One bullet pierced the left arm of the Cpl. Jack Lowder, and hit him in the rib cage. The Echo company command post went ashen, when the Marines heard the call for a casualty evacuation. The infantry squad nearby sprinted through a corn field to reach Lowder, who was coughing up blood.
But he was alright – walking, talking, even joking as they led him to a makeshift landing zone, when a rescue chopper led Lowder away. Bu the time the infantry squad returned to Echo's headquarters, Lowder was already undergoing exploratory surgery.
Friday morning for Echo company wasn't as manic as Thursday – just some sporadic gunfire and a few rocket-propelled grenades, near the headquarters compound. Meanwhile, Meador waits, to see when and how hard the Taliban will hit next.
[PHOTO: Noah Shachtman]
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