The good captain, p.43
The Good Captain, page 43
Early in the fight the enemy gained entry to the COP, driving the defenders into a small foothold on one end called “the Alamo.” In the CJTF-82 operations center, Lieutenant Andrew Bunderman’s voice from Keating could be heard over the TACSAT channel.9 Calmly, the young officer reported, “We are in our final defensive positions. We are being overrun.”
Minutes later, an “aerial weapons team” (two Apache attack helicopters launched from Jalalabad) finally arrived on station. As the COP came into view, the pilots were horrified to see it on fire, with flames and smoke rising high into the air. As hundreds of enemy fighters streamed down the mountainsides, Bunderman spoke directly to the gunships. “We are barely hanging on. Shoot any enemy you see moving inside the COP.” Incredulous, the senior aviator refused. Bunderman persisted. The Apaches opened up with Hellfire missiles and their 30mm chain guns, assisted by Air Force F-15s pounding the high ground. 155mm howitzers from Forward Operating Base Bostick, some 30km away, fired in support but with minimal effect given the extreme range. Braving intense fire from insurgent DShK 12.7mm heavy machine guns, the Apaches killed scores of Taliban until, low on fuel and ammunition and suffering heavy battle damage, they were forced to return to base. Others replaced them.
All day long the defenders fought, supported by small numbers of available helicopters and by Air Force aircraft, which unfortunately could not drop ordnance close to friendly troops. Foot by foot the defenders pushed the attackers back, finally ejecting them from the COP. Ground reinforcements were unable to reach Keating until nightfall. As at Wanat, the price of such heroism was high. Eight Americans were killed and 23 wounded. Although more than 150 attackers were killed, with many more wounded, we had come close to seeing an entire American unit wiped out. Only the courage of the defenders and aircrews had prevented catastrophe. Sixty-six soldiers were later decorated for valor, including nine Silver Stars and one Distinguished Service Cross. Two staff sergeants, Clinton Romesha and Ty Carter, were later awarded the Medal of Honor. Six Apache pilots and one F-15 pilot were awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross.
In Kabul, the decision was made to extract the unit and destroy the COP with air strikes. While a tactical victory, the fight at COP Keating (later dubbed “the battle of Kamdesh” for a nearby village) carried strategic consequences. McChrystal’s tactical directive and unwillingness to close down isolated outposts were criticized again, while opponents of our involvement in Afghanistan trumpeted our losses as proof that we could not prevail. Back at Bagram, the view in the CAG was that the kinetic fight was over, but the battle of narratives was about to begin.
There were two stories in play. One focused on our losses and was sharply critical of the commanders at every level. The other celebrated the heroism of the defenders of COP Keating and their ultimate victory against overwhelming odds. One or the other would win out. My advice to General Scap was to find the most prominent American journalist in country and go “open kimono” to show and explain what had happened in detail, holding nothing back. I urged him to grant quick access to the soldiers themselves, trusting that their innate honesty and authenticity would bring out the real story. Our outstanding public affairs officer, Lieutenant Colonel Clarence Counts, concurred. It was easy for us to proffer advice. As the commanding general, Scap had to decide.
As it happened, prominent NBC broadcast journalist Jim Miklashevsky was in Kabul and the next day he flew to Bagram at General Scap’s invitation. Miklashevsky was a seasoned professional and he would in any case sniff out misdirection or “spin.” His reporting lauded the grit and valor of the soldiers who fought at COP Keating, while highlighting the difficulties in supporting dozens of small outposts across Afghanistan’s vast distances and daunting terrain. Subsequent investigations identified areas for improvement but largely mirrored press reporting. Any battle with loss of life invites criticism, a fact that all commanders must expect. Here, it could have been much worse.
In early autumn, my son Chris, a private fresh out of the Infantry School and airborne training, arrived in Afghanistan. His unit, the 2nd Battalion, 503rd Parachute Infantry, passed through Bagram on its way to its new AOR in Wardak province. (The battalion was commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Matt McFarlane, my old A Company commander in 2 Panther.) I was glad to see him, and we spent a couple of golden hours together before he boarded a Chinook and flew out to his new home.
Early on, I caught a bird to go visit him. His world was a small combat outpost in the Hindu Kush, called “Blackhawk,” at 8,000 feet. His COP was surrounded by high ground on all sides, he washed his uniform in a bucket, and he slept in a timber hooch he and his buddies had made themselves, surrounded by sandbags piled high. The food was the worst I’d ever seen in more than 30 years in the Army. During the day he patrolled the mountains and villages. At night he took his turn in the towers. They gave me an hour alone and at first, I almost didn’t recognize my own child. A strong, good-sized kid, they made him a machine gunner right off the bat. He was proud of that. But the unit was understrength, and there was no assistant gunner. So, he carried the gun, and 700 rounds, and the spare barrel bag, along with all his other kit. His equipment weighed out at well over 100lbs, which he “humped” at 10,000 feet and above, sometimes for hours each day. He had lost 30 pounds in 30 days. He looked at me and said softly, almost in a whisper, “Dad, I’m not sure I can do this.” I hugged him and said, “Don’t worry, it’s the altitude. You’ll get used to it soon. You’ll be fine.”
Over the next weeks and months, I found myself, more and more, stopping by the operations center. When Chris’s unit got into a TIC (a “troops in contact”), I couldn’t help it—a cold shudder ran up my spine. I did my best not to show emotion. When there were casualties, it was worse. I knew someone would call or come see me with bad news, so I never asked. I’d go through the next 12 hours in an agony of suspense. And now I began to see. I thought I understood the anguish of a soldier’s parent. But I didn’t. Not really. Now, I had my own skin in the game.
It was the hardest experience of my life. Occasionally—not too often—I’d check up on Chris. “He’s a good soldier,” his officer said. “He’s tough, doesn’t complain. We had a big fight the other day. He didn’t hesitate. We’re lucky to have him.” On my next visit, he looked better. He’d put on a few pounds, he smiled more, and he was tight with his squad. They were great young Americans—hard, tough, committed, and fiercely caring about each other. The platoon sergeant, on his fourth combat tour, was a quiet, competent professional. The lieutenant, the son of a general, was doing fine. I knew there were no guarantees. But I felt Chris was in good hands.
One night, they came and got me up at 0100. “Sir,” the runner said, “it’s your son’s captain. He says it’s urgent.” It took me a few minutes to get to the secure phone, and I died a little bit with each step. The young captain came on the line. “Sir, I wanted to tell you right away. Your son was involved in a vehicle rollover up in the mountains. He’s a little banged up, but he’s okay. I thought you’d want to know.” At first, I wanted to scream over the phone. But then I realized he was young, trying to command in combat, with the weight of the world on his shoulders. I said, “Thanks son, I sure appreciate the heads up.” Later, when the captain was gravely wounded and flown out of theater, I said a prayer, and asked myself, “Where do we get such men?”
As the year wound on, I’d hear bits and pieces. Chris’s squad went out for 24 hours, but the winter weather moved in and the helos couldn’t fly. Trapped up high, they were out for days, the squad leader went down with frostbite, and they ran out of food. They were lucky not to freeze to death. (That winter, an ISAF patrol working above 10,000 feet found a Taliban unit of 12 men in a cave—all frozen to death. In Afghanistan, even nature was an implacable enemy.) On another operation, Chris was knocked off his feet by a ricochet. His body armor stopped the round, and as he lay there stunned, an NCO grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and ran him out of danger. He held on to his weapon, though. He was proud of that. And I thanked God for that sergeant.
All of this he kept from his mother, and I did too. But she had been doing this for years, and without knowing the details, she knew. She knew her baby boy was fighting for his life, and for his friends. She knew he was in danger. She knew that call could come any day. On Skype, Beverly was invariably upbeat and supportive. At night when she was alone, it was sometimes too much, and the tears would come. And I thanked God for her, too, and for all like her. Chris would serve his year in combat and come home safely, after more narrow escapes. Today, he is an infantry captain, living his own history. I will be forever grateful for the time we served together, and for the great gift of his survival.10
Far more than in Iraq, I conducted “battlefield circulation” via aircraft, sometimes accompanying General Scap but often on my own. This usually involved flying in a Black Hawk, escorted by Apaches. Though I had accumulated many hundreds of hours flying in both Army helicopters and Air Force fixed-wing aircraft, the weather and mountainous terrain in Afghanistan, combined with an active enemy, made flying more hazardous than I’d ever experienced in my career. Just how dangerous was brought home on October 13, 2009, when one of my officers, an Army aviator himself, burst into my office.
“Sir, one of our RC-12s is overdue and missing.”
I knew this meant that a “Guardrail,” an electronic warfare aircraft, had likely crashed or been shot down. For sure, we’d have to figure out how to manage the story. But first, we needed to find the crew and aircraft, with its classified and highly sensitive equipment. Aviation “flight following” had lost the aircraft’s track somewhere in north-eastern Afghanistan, but the precise location was unknown.
Days went by as the search continued, with rapidly diminishing hope that any aircrew had survived. Finally, on October 19, the wreckage was discovered at 17,000 feet in Nuristan province—one of the most inhospitable places on earth. Almost certainly the plane had flown into the mountain. The mission now was recovery, not rescue.
The first attempt involved a Black Hawk with four soldiers plus aircrew, who flew to the site to recover the bodies and sensitive items. Hovering on the steep mountainside at 17,000 feet (dangerously high for a Black Hawk with troops), the pilot experienced a sudden loss of power and the bird went down. No one was killed, but the helo was now unflyable. Now we had two aircraft down, three bodies, and seven live soldiers stranded in Indian country, at altitudes so high that flying required oxygen. So far, we had kept the incident under wraps. But at any moment, the story might break, and the Taliban would be sure to both claim credit for the loss of two coalition aircraft—and begin hunting for the survivors. Now, time was the enemy, along with everything else.
Our aviators hastily scrambled a second attempt, this time with the much larger and more powerful Chinook and another rescue party. This effort successfully recovered all personnel, living and dead, along with the classified equipment from the RC-12. On subsequent flights, as we zipped through mountain passes in the dead of night, buffeted by high winds which threatened to slam our helo against the mountainside, I pondered the fate of these soldiers. There, but for the grace of God, we too might end up.
Later that autumn, I took a call from one of our brigade information operations officers. “What is it with you guys up there?” said the young major. “You’re going about this all wrong.” He was one of those bright young officers that old colonels usually find vaguely annoying—irreverent, bright, full of ideas, and always pressing the envelope. “Slow down,” I said, “and tell me what’s on your mind.”
I was quite proud of what we had accomplished in a short period of time. We had gone to no end of trouble to train our Afghans, provide culturally appropriate program content, ensure full coverage of our vast area of operations, and come up with innovative “public service” messages that communicated our key themes and messages. More than 50 officers and NCOs worked for me, and I thought they were breaking new ground. Now, here was this young upstart who thought he knew better.
I had to admit the kid was unusually gifted. He had left the Army after five years, worked in the private sector, and ended up as a junior White House speechwriter. After 9/11 he came back in, made major and found himself assigned to the new IO career field. His assistant was similarly eccentric. A master sergeant, he had been born and raised in Pakistan, spoke fluent Urdu and Pashto, and wore a flowing beard and local Afghan dress. No one quite knew what to do with these two. Still, they seemed to know what they were about.
The major continued. “You keep sending us this recorded programming. It’s all great, except for one thing. It’s all meant for the men. And Afghan men aren’t sitting around in the home all day listening to our broadcasts. They’re out farming or working or fighting. Our listeners are the women. They have a lot of influence over their young men. And we don’t have a damned thing to say to them.”
I felt foolish. Because we never saw or interacted with Afghan women, we never realized they were there, playing key roles in Afghan tribal society from behind the scenes. The major’s insight was blindingly obvious. How had we missed it?
I knew we had a big problem that we had to fix. “What do you suggest?” He came right back at me. “I spoke with a female engagement team (these were teams composed of female soldiers and officers employed to reach out to Afghan women). The Afghan women want to know about health care. They won’t go to male doctors, and all the female ones have been killed or run off. We need to get a female Afghan physician on the air ASAP, and she needs to talk about pre-natal care. We’re losing a lot of babies and mothers in childbirth. We do that, we’re in business.”
Sometimes—most of the time—you have to get out of the way and let the talent run. “Right,” I said. “You’re in charge. Move out and tell me what you need. We’ll get it for you.” Within a week, the major had female doctors broadcasting for two hours a day, not just in his brigade area but across all of eastern Afghanistan. We found the money, worked the contracts, coordinated with higher, and ran interference.
The results were spectacular. In only six months, the incidence of infant mortality and death in childbirth declined by 50 percent across RC-East. Units became aware that half of Afghan society was out there, unseen, and that it mattered. Local politicians picked up on it. Afghan attitudes changed measurably. Tipline calls to our radio stations shot up. Most important by far was that lives were saved. Lots of lives.
My young major had given me a lot to ponder. Somehow, after all our pre-deployment training, hours of cultural awareness briefings, mission analysis and pre-mission rehearsals, we had missed something vital and important. We’d been wearing blinders without knowing it. Years of experience in Afghanistan hadn’t exposed it, nor had our doctrine, lessons learned systems or transitions with outgoing units. Our commanders at all levels were tough and hardnosed and knew how to fight. But this was a game we had to go back to school on.
On December 1, 2009, President Obama traveled to West Point to speak to the nation. There he announced his decision, after months of internal review, to send another 30,000 troops to Afghanistan—to be withdrawn in only 18 months. I watched the speech from a conference room at Bagram, accompanied by a number of Afghan generals. They were not encouraged. On the contrary, from their perspective the president had just put a date certain on our presence in Afghanistan. All the Taliban had to do now was wait us out.
The speech illuminated the central problem for us. It contained no roadmap, no specific change in strategy beyond more troops. They would certainly be useful, and once on the ground our ability to secure broader areas and kill more enemy would in fact improve. But the Taliban would continue to enjoy sanctuary inside Pakistan, and weak and corrupt governance in Kabul would continue to hamstring our efforts to hand off to the Afghans. Years later, they would still be unable to stand on their own without massive U.S. and international assistance. We could hold our own. But a decisive victory remained out of reach.
The fighting season had now ended, as field operations in the cruel Afghan winter were largely suspended due to the weather. As we neared the middle of our year-long deployment, we began to rotate soldiers home, in staggered waves, for their two-week mid-tour leaves. We hoped for a quiet holiday season, but our relative calm was shattered on December 30. Late in the afternoon, a staff officer pulled me aside. “Hey, sir—Camp Chapman just got blown up. I mean, blown up!”
Chapman was a small CIA base in Khowst province, close to the border with Pakistan and adjacent to Forward Operating Base Salerno where the airborne brigade from Alaska was headquartered. Though located in our battlespace, as a CIA activity Chapman did not fall under CJTF-82. On that day, an Arab intelligence asset, Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, was driven across the border to meet with agency intelligence officers at the CIA base. Supposedly vetted at higher levels, al-Bulawi was in fact a committed jihadist. Waved through three successive checkpoints without search, he was met on arrival by a crowd of U.S. intelligence officers. Upon exiting his vehicle, he detonated a suicide vest, killing Jennifer Lynn Matthews, the chief of base, and eight others. The deputy chief of Kabul Station was also present and was gravely wounded.
I thought back to my experiences in Iraq and wondered how such basic security precautions could be ignored. There, even Iraqi generals escorted by American officers were searched (we searched the U.S. escorts as well to save face for all concerned). Unusually, Matthews was a targeter, not an experienced field operations officer. Overruling the objections of her security chief, she ordered normal security protocols to be relaxed to “build trust.” It was a fatal mistake. Even now, a decade into the Global War on Terror, we could still drop our guard. Chapman represented one of the worst losses of life in CIA history. We grieved with our agency comrades and redoubled our watchfulness.
