The Outpost: An Untold Story of American Valor (19 page)

At 2:00 a.m. on July 20, 2006, two Chinooks packed with all of Cherokee Company and one platoon from Able Troop dropped down at Landing Zone Warheit. The landing zone sat near the village of Upper Kamdesh, up the mountain to the south of where the Kamdesh outpost would be built. As Apaches hovered nearby to provide additional security, Lieutenant Colonel Howard ran command and control from a Black Hawk in the air; Captain Michael Schmidt led the team on the ground.

The men from Cherokee Company hunkered down for the rest of the night, since there was no need to scare the local Kamdeshis any more than they’d likely already done. (And no need, either, to let them know right away that while landing, the two Chinooks had destroyed an expanse of crops roughly the size of a football field.) They slept on the ground under the stars, though, truth be told, almost no one got much sleep: Landing Zone Warheit was located high up on the mountain and was easily defensible, but nearly everyone was pulling security—all three platoons, some one hundred soldiers—straight through the darkness and on past sunrise.

At daybreak, six gray-bearded elders from Kamdesh appeared. Schmidt introduced himself, and they all squatted, Afghan-style, and chatted. Schmidt told the elders that he and his men were there on a peaceful mission. They were, he explained, headed down the mountain to set up a PRT next to the existing police station, to help the Afghan government provide services and to help the local police force train new recruits. If the elders knew any young men who might be interested in becoming policemen, he added, they should recommend them—it was good work, with steady pay, and recruits’ involvement would aid in bringing greater stability to Kamdesh.

Schmidt apologized for the Chinooks’ destruction of the cornfield, which he termed unavoidable. The United States would pay for the damages, he said. What he didn’t tell them was that he himself had personally picked the location for the insertion landing zone after doing aerial recon of the area: the presence of crops meant there was a low risk of mines.

As a welcoming gesture, the elders offered to have a couple of young men, in their twenties or early thirties, lead the new arrivals down the mountain. Accepting, Schmidt ordered his first sergeant, two platoons, and a medic to remain at Landing Zone Warheit. He also left some mortarmen behind to help protect those descending: if the enemy attacked them, they could call back up the mountain, give the grid coordinates, and have 120-millimeter mortars—the big ones—fired at their attackers from a safe distance. Those coordinates would be an essential piece of information, however, since no one up at LZ Warheit could actually see the future site of the Kamdesh PRT. This lack of a direct sight line was a less than optimal feature, especially considering that Landing Zone Warheit was soon to become the more permanent Observation Post Warheit—but Schmidt had understood that risk from the start and had concluded that having an easily defensible landing zone and firing point for the mortars took priority, in this instance, over having a line of sight.

Schmidt took with him a 60-millimeter-mortar team and Cherokee Company’s 2nd Platoon, led by Sergeant First Class Steven Brock. As they slowly made their way down the steep path, a number of the men found themselves reflecting on the events of the past several weeks. They’d been in Regional Command East for only four months now, and they’d already lost seven men: Fenty, O’Donohoe, Moquin, David Timmons, Monti, Lybert, and Bradbury. Schmidt knew that war meant loss. He had ancestors who’d served as far back as the Revolutionary War. He had always been drawn to the military, for all the usual reasons—the discipline, the idea of serving a cause greater than himself, the notion of leading a life of purpose. Playing with G.I. Joes had given way to Valley Forge Military Academy, followed by Ranger School. He’d joined the 10th Mountain because it was a force that deployed often. He wanted to lead men in battle.

When Schmidt and his men reached the bottom of the mountain, they were greeted by the chief of the local bureau of the Afghan National Police, Abdul Jalil, who seemed happy to see them.

Taking in the reality of the location of the new PRT, Schmidt himself was not so ebullient. You’d have to be out of your mind to stand here, look around at these mountains, and be okay with this, he thought. Making the same comparison as others before and after him, he felt it was like being at the bottom of a fishbowl. Schmidt knew all too well how thin American military resources were spread in Afghanistan—the United States still had only one brigade in all of Regional Command East—and he understood that because of that, the base needed to be close to the road for resupply and transport. While Observation Post Warheit would be in a great location defensively, it would be far from the road, and its siting wouldn’t allow for the monitoring either of insurgents moving into and out of Barg-e-Matal or of those returning from Pakistan. But nothing was perfect in this country. If we want to start connecting with the people in Kamdesh, Schmidt thought, we need to be here. If we want to stop fighters and weapons coming from the north, the only way to do it is to be here. He kept reminding himself why this spot made sense.

There were two platoons up at Landing Zone Warheit: Lieutenant Vic Johnson and the 1st Platoon from Able Troop, which had been loaned, or “attached,” to Cherokee Company; and First Lieutenant Marc Cleveland and the 1st Platoon from Cherokee Company. Men from both units spent much of the day surveying their new neighborhood, clearing out trees for a more permanent observation post, and shoveling dirt into HESCO barriers—the wire-mesh containers with thick fabric liners that troops use as portable, easily erected obstructions.

At last light going into what would be 3-71 Cav’s first full night in Kamdesh District, Vic Johnson was just dozing off near the landing zone when bullets started whizzing overhead, some of them plunking right into those dirt-packed HESCOs. Johnson’s radio operator awoke right away and tried calling for support, only to find that the radio’s battery had died (not an uncommon occurrence). He then dialed up to ask for help on the single-channel TacSat satellite system, reserved for emergencies. Cleveland and his platoon had the high ground to the south, and they now began returning the enemy’s fire. An insurgent RPG landed in a tree without detonating.

Over the TacSat, a soldier at Forward Operating Base Naray asked Johnson if he was taking “effective fire,” a term connoting a clear threat to life. “Not really,” Johnson said, since the enemy rounds weren’t quite hitting their position. But some of his men were feeling pretty rattled by the fire, in particular one first sergeant, huddling in a trench, who prompted a chuckle by contradicting his superior officer’s assessment: “It’s
really
effective, Lieutenant!” he said.

The attack, more harassment than onslaught, lasted for ten minutes. After that, the men up on Landing Zone Warheit spent another hour or so returning fire without eliciting any enemy response. The Americans didn’t stray from their terrain; they didn’t know much about the area and were worried about landmines. But either way, the message couldn’t have been clearer: Welcome to Kamdesh.

Lieutenant Vic Johnson at Landing Zone Warheit, July 2006.
(Photo courtesy of Vic Johnson)

At the bottom of the mountain, Schmidt took a closer look at the plot of land designated for this project. They had a lot of work to do, he thought, to turn this field into an operating PRT.

First off, Cherokee Company had to set up a new landing zone adjacent to the actual site so that birds could start bringing in supplies, including food and water, construction materials for living quarters, and weapons and ammunition, all of which would be too much of a challenge to haul down the mountain from Landing Zone Warheit. The birds would bring in troops, too. Once everything was up and running, Cherokee Company was scheduled to be relieved by the Barbarians.

The site of the future Camp Kamdesh.
(Photo courtesy of Major Thom Sutton)

The landing zone that had originally been sketched out for the site, using aerial recon, had an immense boulder sitting right in the middle of it. They officers doing the planning had known about the boulder, of course, but the engineers thought they could simply blow it up. Now that they were confronted by the reality of this stone monster, however, the troops had second thoughts. Blowing it up might cause collateral damage to the hamlet of Urmul, showering huge chunks of rock on their new neighbors. Instead, Schmidt resolved to find another location for the landing zone.

After considering every possible alternative, he made the decision to locate the landing zone on a small, rocky peninsula to the north of the future PRT. The site wasn’t optimal—it was outside the perimeter of the camp, it essentially sat in the middle of the river, and it was accessible only via a narrow bridge that spanned the waterway—but in Schmidt’s estimation, there was just no other place on the ground that was large enough to accept a single aircraft.

After a few days of work, they had something approaching a landing zone, though it took a lot of coaxing to get helicopter pilots to even try to land there. The pad was uneven, and a menacing fruit tree clutched the eastern edge. Only the smaller Black Hawks, with just one large rotor, would make the attempt—and even then, most of the pilots would hover a few feet above the pad and instruct the soldiers to jump out. Schmidt assigned a soldier to destroy the fruit tree using C-4 explosives and detonating cord. Once it was gone, a chopper brought a Bobcat skid steer in on a sling so the ground could be leveled. After Schmidt’s men spent a few more days getting that huge rock as smooth as they could, Chinook pilots were willing to land there, and with them came supplies and more U.S. troops. Lieutenant Colonel Howard arrived and participated in a shura with elders from villages and settlements throughout the region. He wanted to describe in detail all the good that the Americans could do for them.

Dennis Sugrue had been chosen to escort Fenty’s body back to Fort Drum, New York, in May. The experience had wrung him out like a dishrag. When he returned, he tried to focus on more life-affirming activities. Mike Howard had told him that the Kamdesh PRT would have three priorities: bringing electricity to the villages, bringing them water, and improving the roads. And he said Sugrue, as the commander of Headquarters Troop, would be the guy to make those things happen.

Only 2 percent
²³
of all households in Nuristan had access to safe drinking water, so raising that statistic would be a major focus. Dividing the tasks among engineers and locals, 3-71 Cav would repair or build gravity-fed water-distribution systems in Mandigal, Gawardesh, Urmul, Kamdesh Village, and other local settlements. Clean water would provide undeniable evidence that the Americans were making life better for the Nuristanis. Howard’s men would also help bring online existing but nonfunctioning micro-hydroelectric plants in Urmul and Lower Kamdesh and build similar new plants in Mirdesh and Gawardesh.

Improved roads would be further indisputable proof of an American contribution. Most immediately, the influx of construction wages would mean a substantial increase in local income. The Americans hired locals to work on the road that ran up the southern mountain from the Kamdesh PRT and Urmul, passing through all of the smaller hamlets that made up Kamdesh proper. Afghan workers, licensed by the government to use dynamite, were tasked with literally removing the side of the mountain. They also filled in potholes that at times could seem like small ponds. And of course, 3-71 Cav would use local labor to build up the Kamdesh PRT itself.

From the American point of view, roads would link this backward, remote area to the Afghan government, to commerce, to progress. For many Kamdeshis, however, roads were a disruption. They would bring government officials to tax them, and modernizers from Kabul to instruct them on how to treat their women.