MARGAH, Afghanistan -- With the signature *whoosh *and crack of a rocket-propelled grenade, the local Taliban of northern Bermel district made their feelings perfectly clear. After three years without laying eyes on U.S., Afghan, or allied forces, the insurgents of this mountainous border community were saying, unambiguously, that they were not exactly pleased that the U.S. Army had paid them a visit.
David Axe spent six weeks in Afghanistan, on the war's dangerous and largely forgotten eastern front.
See Also:- Battered Soldiers, Broken Plan: Afghanistan in Video and Photos
- Epic Border Battle a Bad Sign for Afghanistan
- Night-Vision Tech Tangles Troops in Afghanistan
- New Afghanistan Plan: Hole Up in Fortress Districts
- Afghan General: Give Us Engineers and Aircraft, and We'll Take It From Here
- 6th Time's the Charm? NATO Tries, Again, to Train Afghan Militias
- Video: 'I Got Blown to Hell in Afghanistan'
- Troops in Afghanistan Use Shovels, Feet to Stop Bombs
The rocket fell short, exploding in the loose, jagged rocks beneath one of a pair of mountaintops occupied by two platoons from Fox Company, 2nd battalion, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment. The small arms fire missed its mark, too. But it came close enough to piss off Sergeant First Class Michael Espeland, the company's taciturn first sergeant.
"Aside from that, it was a good patrol," Espeland said sarcastically, after a pair of tan-painted CH-47F Chinook helicopters had snatched Fox Company from its rocky redoubts and returned it to the relative safety of Combat Outpost Margah -- a chilly hodgepodge of Hesco barriers and concrete that stands alone along a wide swath of eastern Paktika province.
Until last fall, COP Margah was home to just a platoon of soldiers -- too few to do anything but guard the base. It was like a modern-day Alamo. That left many of eastern Paktika's border districts, including Bermel, essentially unpatrolled by coalition forces. It should come as no surprise, then, that Taliban fighters crossed the Af/Pak border by the hundreds, fueling a strengthening insurgency. When Fox Company finally did show up, in August, the Taliban countered with a mass assault that very nearly overran the base on Oct. 30.
Having survived the worst the Taliban could throw at it, Fox Company settled in for a long, cold winter. Everyone expected the insurgents to strike again once the snows had melted. But Fox Company wasn't just waiting around for another attack. With an aggressive new company commander named Chris Tanner, Fox Company planned to meet the traditional Taliban spring offensive with an offensive of its own.
Air Assault
The 24-hour air assault that began April 4 was the first strike in what Tanner and his bosses at battalion envisioned as a months-long, sustained operation. The goal, he said, was to "deny the enemy sanctuary." That meant deploying troops into villages that had been all but abandoned by the coalition years ago.
"There are a lot of bad dudes kicking around in this area," Tanner told his assembled troops in COP Margah's dusty briefing room on April 3. What's more, the deep valleys and steep mountain slopes worked in the insurgents' favor. The roads were too steep and in terrible condition. On one recent road patrol, Tanner's vehicle had burst all four tires. "The terrain restricts our ability to get into the area," Tanner said.
So the paratroopers would infiltrate via helicopter, straight onto two of the highest peaks in the district. The idea was twofold: to start off with the high-ground advantage, as well as provide Fox Company favorable observation angles on the long-neglected villages below.
The soldiers came prepared for a fight, but they weren't looking for one. This time out, the goal was reconnaissance -- to fill out the many blank pages in NATO's dossier on eastern Paktika. Following that, Fox Company and its attached Afghan troops aimed to make regular visits to northern Bermel, hopefully making the presently easy passage between Afghanistan and Pakistan a bit trickier for insurgent forces.
The biggest unknown was how the residents of northern Bermel might react. That question was answered in no uncertain terms, when men riding in a red pickup truck aimed their weapons at Fox Company, and pulled the triggers.
The Chinooks disgorged their human cargoes in mere seconds -- U.S. and Afghan soldiers, Air Force controllers, interpreters and one reporter running, crouched, from the vibrating darkness of the helicopters' holds out into eastern Afghanistan's rich, early-evening light.
In his brief the day before, Tanner had emphasized safety coming out of the "birds." Just a few days ago, there had nearly been two decapitations-by-helicopters in NATO's Regional Command East. An Army captain and an Afghan interpreter had both walked into low-spinning rotor blades. Incredibly, both lived -- saved by their Kevlar helmets. But the captain, in particular, was "jacked up," Tanner said.
Tanner also stressed looking after the "brand-new" Afghan National Army soldiers attached to Fox Company for the mission. The Afghans were fresh out of basic training, "very green ... and a little scared," said the lean, 28-year-old Alabaman.
As the Chinooks chugged off into the falling light, Fox Company's 2nd and 3rd Platoons scouted out defensive positions on their side-by-side mountaintops. The idea was to create two secure, mutually-supporting bases. From there, the soldiers would push out "reconnaissance and surveillance" patrols, starting before dawn.
1st Lt. Sean McCune -- a thickly-built officer with a shaved head -- dragged elements of his 2nd Platoon, plus a handful of ANA, to scout out tomorrow's observation posts. What he found was both good news and bad.
By pushing all the way to the farthest ridgeline overlooking the area's main valley, McCune and 2nd Platoon could gain a clear view of the sparse farming settlements down below. That was the good news. The bad news, was that the Taliban was likely well aware of this. The ridgeline was dotted with shambling stone buildings -- khalats, they're called -- that could have been goatherders' shelters or Taliban fighting positions. Fresh animal dung proved the buildings had been occupied recently.
The soldiers Fox Company were all by themselves on the ground, in an area that was well-known to the Taliban -- and a complete mystery to U.S. forces.
But the Americans weren't entirely alone. Above them in the darkening sky could be heard the roars, grumbles and whines of a steady succession of NATO aircraft: Apache helicopters, F-15E fighter-bombers and Shadow spy drones. The air cover would continue, with few interruptions, for the next 24 hours.
Artillery support was less reliable. No fewer than three NATO bases, including nearby Forward Operating Base Tillman, had ranged their cannons and mortars on Fox Company's position, ready to rain down steel if the company should get into trouble. In theory. But events on April 5 would prove how tenuous that kind of support can be.
Eyes On
The night was cold and, for soldiers taking turns standing guard with night-vision goggles, exhausting. The sun hadn't shone its first rays on northern Bermel when Fox Company began pushing out its reconnaissance and surveillance patrols.
Lt. McCune (pictured above, left) led around a dozen people downslope to the khalats he had identified the night before. It was a treacherous descent. The loose, flat rocks slid underfoot, sending earth, stones and soldiers cascading downhill.
The lieutenant left several soldiers in the *khalat *with a machine gun, then climbed down the ridgeface with Sgt. Kevin Mahon and Privates Bronson Williams and Bryan Schlund. The soldiers crouched behind boulders and focused gunsights and binoculars on the khalats down below. The sun rose, and the Americans got their first clear view of an area NATO hadn't put eyes on in three years.
At first glance, it appeared to be a typical Afghan farming community. Fields of alfalfa surrounded khalats clustered around a river bed -- a wadi -- in which a thin stream and a rough dirt road wound in parallel.
As the sun rose above a chorus of chortling roosters, the people of north Bermel emerged from their khalats or drove past in their Nissan pickup trucks. Some men in one *khalat *conferred while pointing to 2nd Platoon's observation posts. They knew the Americans were there.
Another group of men arrived in a Nissan and scurried indoors for an apparent meeting. A red pickup truck drove slowly past then disappeared into an adjacent "draw," or small valley.
Then Mahon noticed what appeared to be a cave on a nearby slope. Schlund (pictured above, right) spotted several of the black-and-white flags the Taliban sometimes flies over its territory.
The banners were an intelligence coup. They argued for a strong Taliban presence, and possibly helped pinpoint the khalats where Talibs lived or gathered. "This calls for a celebration," said Schlund, who became a father just three weeks ago. He scooped chewing tobacco with his index finger and packed it in his lip.
Mahon climbed back up the ridgeface to rejoin the soldiers in the khalat overlooking the wadi. The patrol had been in position for several hours, now. For many of the soldiers, the mission had long dissolved in haze of boredom.
Between turns peering out the khalat's tiny window, Mahon and Privates Wesley Floyd and Chris Munoz passed the time throwing camel turds at each other, making fun of Floyd's mom and Munoz's ethnicity, and negotiating for portions of a Snickers bar Munoz had carried in along with the platoon's main radio. "I'm so bored, everything is funny," Floyd said.
Even the attack on the Air Force C-17 was funny. The giant airlifter appeared out of nowhere, a hulking gray shape that looked too big and ungainly to fly. It was low, and deceptively close. Its ramp dropped, and containers spilled out, each unfurling a green parachute as it fell.
It was a resupply mission for FOB Tillman. Freed from its bulky load, the cargo plane climbed and accelerated, easily out of range of any gunfire below. But enemy fighters concealed somewhere in Fox Company's wadi either didn't know that or didn't care. They opened fire on the airlifter with their AK-47s, missing it by miles and drawing chuckles from the 2nd Platoon soldiers killing time in their khalat.
The boredom would not last. On a quick jaunt around the khalat, McCune spotted something he thought was strange: four donkeys wandering all alone among the weeds and bright yellow flowers dotting the hillside. "Four donkeys and no humans," McCune mused, shifting his attention to a lone goatherder and her animals moving between 2nd and 3rd Platoon's positions. In Afghanistan, herders often double as Taliban scouts.
The donkeys and goatherder might have been perfectly innocent "atmospherics," to borrow the Army's term for details of daily life. But they refocused Fox Company's attention on its own vulnerabilities. That focus grew sharper when the rockets began striking FOB Tillman.
Indirect Fire
Soldiers call it "indirect fire" -- that is, rockets, mortars, artillery and any other kind of attack that doesn't entail sighting down the length of a rifle barrel. COP Margah had absorbed scores of indirect attacks since Fox Company arrived last fall, even leaving aside the ton of steel that struck the base during the bloody October assault.
Nobody likes indirect fire. It's so sudden. And loud. And more often than not, the attacker is out of sight, denying you the comfort of shooting back. As rockets continued striking FOB Tillman, the soldiers of 2nd Platoon felt a keen sympathy for their distant comrades.
Around noon, there was another whoosh signifying a rocket launch. This time, the boom of the impact occurred almost instantly, meaning the shooter and the target were both close. Staff Sgt. Jerrod Swaim, accompanying Tanner to 2nd Platoon's khalat, flinched. "Why am I the only who jumped?" the veteran of four Afghanistan deployments demanded of his less-seasoned peers.
It quickly became clear that the latest indirect attack had targeted Fox Company, rather than FOB Tillman. The atmospherics in the *wadi *down below took a foreboding turn. Where before women and children had poked around in the fields, now everyone hurried indoors – a sign that people are expecting a firefight.
McCune, Tanner and their sergeants put their heads together and tried to figure out who had fired the rocket. McCune said he was sure it had been "those guys here in the draw somewhere." Tanner agreed that the men in the red truck were to blame. But the truck was nowhere to be seen. Even when two Apache helicopters appeared overhead, the red Nissan remained hidden.
In a strong indication that God is a Taliban sympathizer, at that moment clouds gathered and the wind picked up. The Apaches, vulnerable to rain and sudden gusts, scurried away. Fox Company's only cover would be the artillery from FOB Tillman and the other bases. Tillman was supposed to provide the bulk of the fire support, but with that base under attack, it was unclear how supportive the soldiers at Tillman could be.
Tanner gathered up 2nd Platoon and led them on a long, steep, uphill trek back to the company's defensive positions. Mahon, recently back from several weeks of fat-inducing home leave, wheezed and cursed the Marlboros he'd smoked earlier in the day. Munoz struggled under the weight of the radio.
"You look like a bag of assholes! Keep moving!" Tanner taunted the soldiers lagging behind. The company commander laughed. "That's character building," he said as an aside. At the top of the slope, a sergeant informed Tanner that there had been two rockets fired at Fox Company, plus some small arms.
Show of Force
The plan was to reconsolidate the company atop its two mountains and see what could be done about the Taliban shooters. Part of the response would be a so-called "show of force." In short order, Tillman and the other bases would drop 30 rounds of artillery onto a nearby, uninhabited plateau. Fox Company's expert mortarman, a swaggering, bespectacled private named Timothy Althamer -- nickname, "Hammer" -- would lob a few 60-millimeter rounds of his own.
The planned kickoff for the show of force came and went ... with no artillery. Tanner and his officers got on their radios to find out why. The response was chilling. For some reason, possibly related to the recent indirect attacks, Tillman's artillerymen were not available for the fire mission.
With dark clouds gathering and the air support grounded, Fox Company had just lost most of its remaining, external support. Tanner frowned. "Find out who our primary fires is," he ordered his fire-support officer.
McCune proposed letting Althamer blow up the plateau on his own, and Tanner approved. "Hammer" hauled up his baseball-bat-size mortar tube; Swaim prepped some of the Coke-bottle-size rounds. With his left hand pointing the tube and his right hand adjusting elevation, Althamer zeroed in on the hilltop, 1,200 meters away. Swaim let a round slide into the tube.
*Thoomp! *In a puff of smoke, the mortar round lanced from the tube. Five or six seconds later on the targeted mountain, there was a puff of smoke and a crack like wood splitting.
Althamer took the opportunity to teach some soldiers how to fire the mortar. They took turns blasting the plateau. Some Afghan soldiers showed up with their brand-new rocket launcher, hoping to get a slice of the action. The Americans scrambled away from the blast-zone of the rocket's lethal exhaust, directly behind the launcher.
The young Afghan took aim, squeezed the trigger and -- click, nothing happened. He tried again. Click. Embarrassed, he turned to another Afghan standing to his right, exposing the huddled Americans to the rocket's blast-zone. When Tanner, McCune and Swaim cried out in alarm, the Afghan turned toward them -- now the rocket's warhead was pointed directly at Fox Company.
"Take. Out. The round," Tanner ordered. The Afghans slouched away. Schlund hurried to catch up and, through an interpreter, explained in no uncertain terms how badly the young soldiers had screwed up.
Exfiltration
The clouds parted for a moment and the Apaches reappeared. Battalion radioed in with a change of plan. Rather than risk Fox Company getting stranded by weather on an isolated hilltop with sporadic air and artillery support as Taliban shooters possibly closed in, the Chinooks would return early and__ exfiltrate __the company well before dark.
All the same, the heavylift choppers took their time, "surfing" the district's patchwork of ridgelines to avoid exposing themselves to enemy fighters down below. They landed in a storm of dust and debris that mixed with the green smoke Fox Company had used to mark its landing zones. Nobody got decapitated climbing into the birds. That, at least, counted as a victory.
"It's what we thought it would be," Tanner said of northern Bermel. After three years without any coalition contact, the area has become an overt Taliban stronghold, even flying the group's black-and-white flag. At great risk to themselves, the soldiers of Fox Company had begun the slow process of returning to northern Bermel and contesting the Taliban's hold.
If and when NATO can pry loose the wadi's Taliban defenders, extremists will have fewer avenues for moving across the Af/Pak border. The fight won't be quick or easy.
The biggest challenge is one of resources. It wasn't until the Obama administration ordered up an extra 30,000 U.S. troops for the war effort that the 101st Airborne Division could afford to send troops into northern Bermel. With local Afghan troops still badly inexperienced and the surge of U.S. troops slated to end this summer, this border could quickly fall back into neglect. Those black-and-white flags could quickly be raised again.
Photos: David Axe
