The Outpost: An Untold Story of American Valor (101 page)
Read The Outpost: An Untold Story of American Valor Online
Authors: Jake Tapper
Tags: #Terrorism, #Political Science, #Azizex666
Romesha, Gregory, Rasmussen, Dulaney, Dannelley, and Jones all talked about the moment when they decided to go out and take the outpost back.
Interviews with Lewallen and Wright informed this chapter, as did an interview with Bundermann.
Information about Apache weapons systems was provided by Boeing.
Romesha, Rasmussen, Dulaney, Dannelley, and Jones all described in interviews their activities to take back the outpost.
In interviews, Hill, Davidson, Rogers, and Gregory reviewed their efforts in the middle of the outpost.
Thomas recalled the Latvians’ coming into the barracks.
Hill and Francis both recounted their conversation in interviews.
Romesha, Jones, Dannelley, Dulaney, and Rasmussen talked about their push to the shura building/entry control point.
In interviews, Carter and Larson detailed their escape from LRAS-2.
In interviews, Harder and Francis described their push to the ANA side of the outpost.
Breeding, Rodriguez, and Barroga covered events at the mortar pit.
Events in the aid station were recounted by Harder, Cordova, Courville, and Bundermann.
Larson and Romesha’s conversation was related by both men in interviews. Romesha, Larson, Rasmussen, and Chappell reviewed the activities in the shura building.
The conversation between Brown and Lewallen at FOB Bostick was recalled by both men.
In interviews, Hill and Francis told the story of Hill’s shooting the sniper.
Information about the transfusions given to Mace came from Cordova, Courville, and Floyd; a more general explanation was provided by a presentation by Captain James R. Rice,
Battlefield Blood Transfusion
(Tactical Combat Medical Care, Fort Sam Houston).
Lewallen, Wright, Bundermann, Harder, Davidson, and Romesha all described the air support.
Carter, Kahn, and Hill recalled Carter’s efforts to chop down the tree.
Brown, Lewallen, and Wright furnished information about the helicopters during interviews.
Information about the QRF was taken from interviews with Brown, Sax, and Miraldi.
Information about the MQ-1 Predator was drawn from the Swan report.
Information about the recovery of fallen soldiers came from interviews with Hill, Bundermann, Romesha, Avalos, Kahn, Rasmussen, Grissette, Stanley, Dulaney, and Courville.
Larson and Romesha both recounted Larson’s actions in interviews.
Chapter 37: The Long Walk Down
Romesha and Bundermann described their conversation over the radio in interviews.
Information about the QRF’s arriving at FOB Bostick, flying in to OP Fritsche, and proceeding down the mountain came from interviews with Brown, Sax, Miraldi, Portis, Bellamy, Salentine, Birchfield, Barnes, and Shrode.
The account of the recovery of Hardt’s body was provided by Hill and Francis in interviews. Hardt’s autopsy results were included in the Swan report.
Salentine, Romesha, Larson, Grissette, Cady, Bundermann, Portis, Jones, and Koppes supplied details about the end of the day.
Information about Mace’s leaving COP Keating was drawn from an interview with Cordova.
Information about Mace’s Saint Christopher medal came from his mother, Vanessa Adelson.
Information about Mace’s arrival at FOB Bostick was provided by Wilson and Zagol. Mace’s autopsy results were included in the Swan report. Hull provided the details about the Saint Christopher’s medal.
Information about the ANA was derived from interviews with Sax, Miraldi, Brown, Lakis, and Dabolins as well as from the Swan report.
Brown, Portis, Salentine, Romesha, Hill, and Larson shared in interviews their recollections of their last days at COP Keating.
Portis’s interactions with Kamdesh elders were recalled by him in an interview. Portis’s journal excerpt was shared by him.
Details about troops’ leaving COP Keating were taken from interviews with Brown, Portis, Burton, Romesha, and Larson. Additional information and photographs came from the Swan report.
Anonymous sources supplied information about the drone strike on Abdul Rahman. Other information came from a memo obtained by the author. Local media reported on his death, including Abdul Moeed Hashmi, “Commander Mustaghni Killed in Kamdesh Air Raid: Badar,” in
Pajhwok Afghan News,
October 10, 2009.
Chapter 39: Two Purple Hearts and Just One Scar
The Swan report; McChrystal’s December 27, 2009, “Memorandum for the Record”; and Brown’s January 2, 2010, letter acknowledging his formal reprimand are here quoted from directly.
Brown’s personal response was described by him in an interview.
The quotes from insurgents were taken from videos of the attack posted on the Internet by enemy forces. Translations were furnished by Javid Nuristani.
The Taliban spokesman was quoted in Todd Pitman, “U.S. forces Leave Isolated Afghan Base after Attack,” Associated Press, October 9, 2009.
Details about the end of Ed Faulkner, Jr.’s time in the Army, and the end of his life, came from interviews with his father (Faulkner, Sr.), sister (Faulkner Minor), Hill, Faulkner’s own Facebook page updates, Brown, Casey, police reports, Kology, Shane Brown, and the North Carolina medical examiner’s autopsy report.
Similar accounts of Hill and Carter’s conversation were shared by both men in interviews.
The author’s visit to FOB Bostick took place in October and November 2011.
Casey told his story and expressed his thoughts in an interview.
The RAND study referenced in the text is Rerri Ranielian and Lisa Jaycox, eds.,
Invisible Wounds of War: Psychological and Cognitive Injuries, Their Consequences, and Services to Assist Recovery
(Santa Monica, California: RAND Corporation, 2008).
Information about Newsom and his Special Forces work came from interviews with him.
Obama’s press conference was held in Chicago on May 21, 2012.
1
A squadron comprises some five hundred to six hundred soldiers.
2
The noted Nuristan linguist and expert Richard Strand suggests that a more accurate spelling of “Urmul” would be “Ümür.” Here as elsewhere, however, for the purposes of narrative ease for the reader, this book will defer to the more popular—if not necessarily the more accurate—Afghan spelling and reference.
3
These words are commonly translated into English as “God is great,” though a more accurate translation might be “God is the greatest” or “God is the most transcendent”—meaning, “God is the most powerful being in the universe.” In the context of military operations in Afghanistan, “Allahu Akbar” might best be rendered as “God is greater than our enemy.”
4
ISAF is the acronym for International Security Assistance Force, the formal name of the coalition fighting the war in Afghanistan. Formed in October 2001 to establish security in Kabul, ISAF in 2003 had its charter extended by the United Nations to cover the entirety of the country. In October 2006, ISAF officially expanded into the region this book is focused on, eastern Afghanistan. The coalition has consisted of personnel from more than forty countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, France, Latvia, Poland, and Australia. This book will generally identify the forces as “U.S.,” since that was overwhelmingly their nationality, except where otherwise noted.
5
Sergeant Kevin “Big Ake” Akins of Burnsville, North Carolina; Sergeant Anton Hiett of Mount Airy, North Carolina; Specialist Joshua Hill of Fairmount, Indiana; and Staff Sergeant Joseph Ray of Asheville, North Carolina.
6
Technically, Able Troop was at this point still “Ares” Troop and would not change its nomenclature to “Able” until a few months later. But for simplicity’s sake, this book will call the company Able Troop.
7
Frank L. Holt,
Into the Land of Bones: Alexander the Great in Afghanistan
(Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2005), pp. 20–21.
8
Pronounced so it rhymes with “fig.”
9
Another Hezb-e-Islami faction, Hezb-e-Islami Khalis, also fought in the 1980s. On November 12, 1987, its leader, Mohammed Yunnus Khalis, in his capacity as chairman of the Islamic Alliance of Afghan Mujahideen (which at the time was fighting the USSR), met in the Oval Office with President Ronald Reagan. According to intelligence officers, Khalis helped bin Laden escape at Tora Bora in 2001. He “died in his sleep” in Pakistan in 2006. A third Hezb-e-Islami faction—named simply Hezb-e-Islami—is a political party whose members sit in Parliament, though they do not act as a cohesive group.
10
Lance Corporal Nicholas Anderson of Sauk City, Wisconsin.
11
Not his real name. In a number of cases in this book, including Snyder’s, the real names of Special Forces troops, military intelligence collectors, and Afghans who worked with the Americans have been withheld, either at their own request or out of concern for their safety.
12
The members of the original SEAL team killed were Lieutenant Michael P. Murphy from Patchogue, New York; STG2 Matthew Axelson from Cupertino, California; and GM2 Danny Dietz from Littleton, Colorado. Lost on the Chinook were FCC Jacques J. Fontan of New Orleans, Louisiana; ITCS Daniel R. Healy from Exeter, New Hampshire; LCDR Erik S. Kristensen from San Diego, California; ET1 Jeffrey A. Lucas of Corbett, Oregon; Lieutenant Michael M. McGreevy, Jr., from Portville, New York; QM2 James E. Suh of Deerfield Beach, Florida; HM1 Jeffrey S. Taylor from Midway, West Virginia; MM2 Shane E. Patton of Boulder City, Nevada; Staff Sergeant Shamus O. Goare from Danville, Ohio; CWO3 Corey J. Goodnature of Clarks Grove, Minnesota; Sergeant Kip A. Jacoby from Pompano Beach, Florida; Sergeant First Class Marcus V. Muralles from Shelbyville, Indiana; Master Sergeant James W. Ponder III from Franklin, Tennessee; Major Stephen C. Reich from Washington Depot, Connecticut; Sergeant First Class Michael L. Russell from Stafford, Virginia; and CWO4 Chris J. Scherkenbach from Jacksonville, Florida. For more on this mission, read Marcus Luttrell with Patrick Robinson,
Lone Survivor: The Eyewitness Account of Operation Redwing and the Lost Heroes of SEAL Team 10
(Boston and New York: Little, Brown, 2009). Luttrell was, as the title of his book indicates, the only member of the original team who survived.
13
Some maps located the Kotya Valley just outside of Nuristan Province, in Kunar Province, the result of a dispute over the Ghaziabad District between the two provinces. The borders on the 2002 map drawn up by the interim Afghan government placed Kotya in Kunar, a designation that many experts considered woefully divorced from reality. Berkoff at one point told the Afghan police chief in Naray, in Kunar Province, that his forces needed to head to Gawardesh—technically in Kunar—only to be informed by the chief that the map was wrong, and Gawardesh was in Nuristan. The Nuristan expert Richard Strand would advise military officers who consulted him on the matter that such errors led to needless jurisdictional disputes and were too often seen by Nuristanis as part of a scheme to steal their land. Joshua Foust, a civilian who worked for the Human Terrain System, would advance a similar argument, maintaining that the bad map-making also caused confusion about which U.S. troops should be in charge where.
14
On this mission to retrieve his goggles, Private First Class Daniel McClenney of Flat Creek, Tennessee, took with him Lance Corporal Juston Thacker of Princeton, West Virginia, and Lance Corporal Brian Molby of Troy, Michigan. Molby was the lone survivor.
15
Technically, this group of infantrymen, Charlie Company, was nicknamed the Gladiators at this point and would become Cherokee only later in the deployment. But for ease and consistency, this book will refer to the unit as “Cherokee” for the duration. A “troop” and a “company” are the same thing—each comprising three to four platoons of anywhere from one hundred to two hundred soldiers—but the first term is used for Cavalry, and the second for Infantry. Thus, while 3-71 Cav was itself a Cavalry unit, Cherokee Company consisted of infantrymen.
16
Literally, “State.”
17
Camel spiders, like spiders, are members of the class Arachnida, but they’re of a different order, Solifugae.
18
The Waygal Valley in Nuristan.
19
From the acronym DShK, for “Degtyaryova Shpagina Krupnokaliberny”—named after its creators, Vasily Alekseyevich Degtyaryov and Georgi Shpagin.
Krupnokaliberny
translates as “large-caliber.”
Dushka
means “sweetie” in Russian.
