A soldier's life in Afghanistan
By David Buchbinder
| Special to The Christian Science Monitor
The more than 9,000 US troops in Afghanistan are Americans whose lives were changed more than most by Sept. 11. They have been airlifted to a country wracked by war for 30 years, with the weighty responsibility of ensuring it cannot again become a base of operations for radical Islamic terrorists.
But the work is dangerous. Forty American soldiers have died in Afghanistan, and hundreds more have been injured. In recent weeks, US forces have engaged in the fiercest battles in more than a year.
Highly trained Special Operations troops, who can identify themselves by first name only, have borne the brunt of the combat in Afghanistan, displacing many of the conventional foot soldiers. Now, as the Afghanistan campaign approaches the 1-1/2-year mark, the dangers of war persist, but they are buffered by long periods of boredom.
For those whose duties bring them in contact with Afghans, the challenge of developing rapport is complicated by cultural differences that can easily lead to explosive misunderstandings.
A series of snapshots of the American military in Afghanistan, taken at various stages over the past eight months, offers a glimpse into the lives of Americans fighting overseas.
A ride with bones
Kunduz, Afghanistan
A Green Beret A-team operates out of a mud-walled compound in Kunduz, a former Taliban stronghold in northern Afghanistan. With the nearest American base hundreds of miles away, the 12-man Special Forces unit is alone in a dangerous neighborhood.
Staff Sgt. Dick, a barrel-chested Green Beret with a thick mane of curly gray hair, rides horseback through the dusty streets of Kunduz. He has torn the arms off his fatigues to beat the August heat, but still wears a bulky flak jacket. Children run from their homes and shout in English at the rough-riding soldier.
"Thank you," one boy calls out.
"You're welcome, buddy," Dick says. "You're plumb welcome."
"Friend, friend," another child shouts.
"You better believe it," Dick says, and rides on, down the sinuous alleyways of the adobe-walled neighborhood. Dick is a member of the 2nd Battalion of the 19th Special Forces group, an Army National Guard unit based at Kenova, W.Va. Though he doesn't speak Dari, the local language ("my second language is vulgarity," he quips), he makes friends on his rides through town.
"I was out this morning, saw a guy on a great big horse," Dick recalls. "He looked at me, puffed up his chest. I was like, 'Yeah, let's go.' We raced for about a mile, then he reared up his horse on its back legs like Gene Autry."
Dick is known to his cohorts as Bones, a nickname that dates back to when he was growing up skinny in a coal camp in West Virginia. As a teenager he did a tour of duty in Vietnam, and fought in the Tet offensive. Now 54, Bones is the oldest man in his unit, but he keeps fit. He passed the grueling combat diver course when he was 49. In the words of an officer in Bones's unit, "He's as hard as woodpecker lips."
For Bones, a ride through town is much more than a day at the races. Special Forces soldiers try to mesh with local communities, developing relationships, learning customs, and establishing a "ground truth" to pass on to superiors.
Horse patrols may or may not yield useful intelligence, but they remind friend and foe alike of the presence of the US military. Nonetheless, American soldiers have been targets of hit-and-run attacks, and Bones is ready for trouble. He wears a 9-mm pistol strapped to his leg and keeps an M-4 rifle in a holster slung from his saddle. His pockets are stuffed with hand grenades, and he carries 120 rounds of rifle ammunition and 75 bullets for his pistol.
"If somebody hits me, unless they hit me pretty quick, they're going to have a problem," he says.
Bones is yet to be involved in a firefight, but four members of his battalion have been seriously wounded in Afghanistan. Two have died. One man was killed while disposing of a captured rocket. Another, Gene Arden Vance Jr., of Morgantown, W.Va., died in an ambush in eastern Afghanistan. Vance was recently married, and had canceled his honeymoon when his unit was called up.
"If you didn't think this was real, you do when people die," Bones says.
Green Beret A-teams are vulnerable to hosts with superior firepower, but in Afghanistan, alliances with warlords allow them to fight at battalion strength, at least in theory. In practice, however, nothing comes easily, and Afghan militiamen sometimes have divided loyalties. Firefights have reportedly broken out between American units and Afghan soldiers paid to be on their side.
In Kunduz, Green Berets suspect that militiamen loyal to Daud Khan, a commander nominally allied with the US military, are betraying American intentions and foiling operations to capture Taliban and Al Qaeda remnants. One man under Daud Khan's command has admitted to harboring the same Islamic militants the Americans are actively pursuing. Suspicions run so deep that Bones isn't sure whom to trust.
"You don't know who's a good guy and who's a bad guy," Bones says. "But if he's shooting at you, he's definitely a bad guy."
Long days short on action
Bagram, Afghanistan
The 101st Airborne Division is a famed battering ram in the US Army's arsenal. But in an age of surgical strikes, the unit spends much of its time confined to base. Sometimes, however, with little warning, the 101st is called to action.
Headquarters platoon of 3rd Battalion's Alpha Company is housed in a capacious green canvas tent with a blue battle flag flying outside. The company is on Quick Reaction Force status and must be ready to fight at a moment's notice. In one corner of the tent, amid crates of ammunition, a few soldiers watch "Blow," starring Johnny Depp, on a laptop computer. It's 8 in the morning. "Gladiator" already screened at 6:30.
About noon, a soldier with a yellow mail sack plops a box in front of Pfc. Ronald "Doc" Bernier, a 22-year-old from Boston. Just before he left the States, his wife gave birth to a baby boy, who is just now taking his first steps. Private Bernier finds the box stuffed with holiday cards.
"I can't believe you got all that mail," says Pfc. Eric Jarvis, 20, who occupies a cot next to Bernier. "Is it, like, from a class? People you don't know?"
"It's Christmas cards from last year," Bernier says, knifing open an envelope with his finger. "I'm going to be busy today."
It is July 2002, and "Dear Soldier" letters written in the wake of the 9/11 attacks are just now finding their way to forward- deployed troops.
Suddenly, the tent becomes a welter of activity. Soldiers snap magazines into their rifles and pull on body armor. A Special Forces base near the Pakistani border has come under attack, and Alpha Company must be ready to assist. Bernier checks his backpack - morphine sticks, pressure bandages, plastic and gauze pads. Satisfied, he wolfs down the contents of an MRE (Meal Ready to Eat, the ubiquitous American ration packs), then straddles his cot, ready to go.
"I'm kind of pumped," he says. "We'll see what happens." So far, Bernier's experience of combat has been limited to DVDs of Hollywood war movies.
Two hours later, the company is taken off alert. Alpha Company will not be going out. Not today, anyway. In the command tent, "South Park II" screens for the third time in two days. Bernier lies back on his cot. "Always happens," Bernier says. "You're going out and then, oops, you're not."
Two days later, Alpha Company is again on alert. This time, they launch. Massive, two-prop Chinook helicopters ferry the soldiers to Hesarak, a village south of Kabul. In addition to their usual combat gear, the soldiers carry gas masks. Their primary objective is a suspected bioweapons laboratory.
As soon as the Chinooks touch ground, soldiers pour out of the back ramps and fan out in a defensive perimeter. The helicopters, like a fleet of drab green school buses, peel away and lumber up to the safety of higher altitudes. Overhead, Apache attack helicopters are ready to provide close air support. Children from Hesarak perch on mud walls, watching the US troops take up positions in their village.
One child approaches a heavy machine gun crew across an open field. The soldiers vehemently wave him off; he has walked into an interlocking field of fire. But the child continues to advance, in halting steps, with a book in his outstretched hands.
"There's a kid walking toward us," one of the soldiers reports over the radio. "He's making hand signals. He's got a book."
"Well, talk to him," a voice barks back. "But tell your guys not to touch the book."
The child makes his way slowly over to the machine gun crew. A pause, and then another radio transmission.
"He wanted us to know he passed his tests, that he studied hard in school," the machine gunner reports.
Assault teams, meanwhile, sweep the suspected weapons lab. Forensic specialists dust for fingerprints, while intelligence officials remove cassette tapes, documents, and blocks of a paste-like material. (Initial laboratory tests confirmed the presence of ricin, a highly toxic derivative of the castor bean. More accurate tests conducted later in the US came out negative.)
Hours later, Alpha Company collapses its positions. Bernier abandons his casualty collection point in an apple orchard and withdraws to a stubbly wheat field to wait for the helicopters. A soldier nearby mutters, "Another mission where I don't get to shoot anything."
Bernier doesn't seem to mind.
"Fine by me," he says.
Next: At the gate
|
RSS feed
