FORT BRAGG,
N.C. (USASOC News Service, Dec. 15, 2008) -- There are no
roads leading into the Shok Valley. A village which stands
sentinel over the valley is home to one of the fiercest of the
insurgent forces in Afghanistan - the Hezeb Islami al Gulbadin,
or HIG.
On April 6, a daring raid into the stronghold by Afghan
Commandos and their Special Forces counterparts tested the
mettle of the Afghan forces and further forged the bond
between them and their SF brothers.
On Dec. 12, Lt. Gen. John F. Mullholland, commander of the
U.S. Army Special Operations Command, pinned Silver Stars on
the chests of 10 of the men involved in the raid and the
ensuing six-and-a half-hour-firefight that saw more than 150
insurgents killed.
It was the largest ceremony of its kind since the Vietnam era.
But for the members of Team 3336 of the 3rd Special Forces
Group, it was never about the medals.
When you ask them to use one word to describe April 6, their
words pop, much like the gunfire that rained down on them.
"A nightmare."
"Baptism by fire," said Staff Sgt. Daniel Plants, "it was my
first firefight."
"Cliffhanger."
More words followed as the team went back in their minds to
that day.
The Mission
The team was assigned to take out high-value targets within
the HIG. The insurgent group was entrenched in the valley and
was guarded by a number of highly-trained foreign fighters.
The sheer number of weapons and amount of ammo used by the
insurgents led the team to conclude that they had been
stockpiling the weaponry within the fortress-like village
since the Russian invasion of the country during the late
'80s.
Accompanying the team that day was a group of Afghan
Commandos.
"We have such a big rapport with the commandos we've trained,"
said Staff Sgt. Luis Morales, the team's intelligence
sergeant. "They have such a loyalty to us. They try as hard to
protect us as we try to protect ourselves."
"We eat, sleep and train with these commandos," said Capt.
Kyle Walton, the detachment commander. "We die with them, too.
These guys are close friends to us. At the outset of the
attack, I lost my interpreter, and we were as close as
anyone."
The interpreters hold a special place within the team.
"They are just like a member of the team," said Morales. "One
of our interpreters has seen as much combat as any of us. He
has six years of combat experience. He's been with six SF
teams and been in hundreds of firefights - but he doesn't get
the six-month break.
"With our tactical knowledge and their (the commandos)
knowledge of the local populace, terrain and customs, we can
truly become a force multiplier," said Walton. "That's what SF
does. We bring things to the fight that they don't have, such
as close air support and weaponry. But in the end, it's an
Afghan fight, and we are part of it."
The commandos who accompanied the SF team on the mission have
developed something of reputation throughout Afghanistan.
"The Taliban calls them the wolves. When they hear the wolves
are coming, they know they are in trouble. The commandos are
pretty feared. Everywhere we go, they identify us with the
commandos, and the fact that this group of insurgents was
prepared to sit and fight us to the death was indicative of an
enemy force you don't see every day," said Morales.
One Way In
"Eighty percent of the guys on the ground that day had been in
firefights before," said Walton. "We feel fairly comfortable
in a firefight anytime."
But that day was different. The team was going into the
unknown. The Russians, during their 20-year occupation of the
country, never made it into the Shok Valley. To date, no
coalition troops had been there. This was a first. To get into
the valley, the team had to fly.
"I feel comfortable with my feet on a ground," said Morales.
"I don't feel comfortable in the helicopter - we can't control
what happens there. But on the ground, we have a plan, we go
in and do it, and the rest falls into place.
"We knew this was going to be a difficult mission. We expected
there to be a number of insurgents because of the high-value
targets we were after, but we really thought the terrain would
be the greatest difficulty," explained Walton.
That thought proved correct. As the helicopters settled over
the valley, the pilots couldn't set the birds down, so the
Soldiers had to jump about 10 feet off the bird. Many of them
landed waist-deep in an icy river. With temperatures in the
low 30s, the climate immediately began to take its toll.
Then they faced a climb up the mountain.
Walton explained the idea was to go into the village
unannounced, with the plan to take the fight to the insurgents
in the village. "We didn't want to fight uphill," he said,
adding that the village is at an altitude of 10,000 feet.
The team decided to use switchbacks, which were actually
terraced farm plots, as a means to get up to the village. The
team divided up into three maneuver units, with members of the
SF team paired up with about six commandos and their
interpreters.
The village itself is situated on a finger off the mountain.
The team would have to head up a draw to the village.
"The buildings in the village are built one on top of the
other, on top of a slope thousands of feet in the air," said
Walton. "So we started the climb. The insurgents waited until
the lead element was within a couple hundred meters of the
compound before they initiated contact. As soon as the
shooting started, we realized that they had their defensive
positions dug in, and they were occupying buildings 360
degrees all around us."
The Fight
As soon as the opening salvo was fired, the interpreter
standing beside Walton in the command-and-control element was
killed. Moments later, Staff Sgt. Dillon Behr was shot in the
leg. Behr, a communications sergeant stayed in the fight and
sustained another wound before he became unable to continue
the fight.
"We knew we needed to regain the initiative, so we started
initiating danger-close air runs," said Walton.
Staff Sgt. David Sanders was in the lead assault force.
"I had approximately 10 Commandos with me, and we got into the
village before we started receiving fire. We couldn't move any
farther forward," he recalled. "Through the radio traffic, we
heard some of the team had gotten shot, so we started trying
to identify the buildings where the fire was coming from. We
hoped to neutralize the threat."
Walton said Sanders was the first person he thought of who
might be able to identify where the insurgents were.
"I was standing next to the combat controller, and when we got
to a place where we could talk, he called in close air
support, and the F-15s rolled in immediately. I knew my guys
were up there, and I know that when you call in danger close
air, you are probably going to get injured or killed. I called
back to Sanders and asked if he was too close. He said, 'Bring
it anyway.' Bombs started exploding everywhere. When I called
to see if he was still alive, all I could hear him saying was,
'Hit them again.' "
Walton said that it is rare to call in danger-close air even
once during a firefight. Throughout the afternoon, the team
called it 70 times.
"We did take some casualties from the danger-close air," said
Staff Sgt. Seth Howard. "A lot of the commandos got injured
from falling debris. The bombs were throwing full trees and
boulders at them - they were flying hundreds of meters.
At one point in the battle, when it looked as if the C2
element would be overrun, Sanders called for the bombing to
come closer.
"They dropped a 2,000 lb. bomb right on top of our position,"
said Walton. "Because of the elevation, the bomb blew upward
rather than down. It just didn't seem like we had much of a
decision. Our guys were wounded, and we couldn't go back the
way we came."
"We knew we might get hurt, but we really didn't think about
it," said Sanders.
"The insurgents were so dug in so well that even the close air
support wasn't enough. It helped, but it was by no means a
magic wand," said Howard. "You would think when the bombs
start dropping they would stop shooting at you. That's the
thought process, and you know it might kill you or somebody
else, but when there are so many pieces of hot metal flying
all around you constantly, you've got to let it go."
With bombings falling and heavy gunfire coming from every
side, the team returned fire. Team members recall going
through masses of ammo, in addition to the bombs that were
dropped and the rounds the aircraft were firing.
The team's fire was controlled, though, according to Walton.
"Cloud cover was coming in, and there was no certainty that we
would be able to get out that night. So we didn't waste our
ammo. We really didn't fire unless we had a shot or when we
needed to lay suppressive fire to allow people to move."
The insurgents, likewise, were shooting in a controlled
manner. The gunfire was heavy, sustained and accurate. Team
members recall that even if the bullets weren't kicking up
beside them or hitting them, they definitely heard them crack
near them. Snipers were during heavy play in the engagement.
Three-story Implosion
The only break in the battle was when a bomb was dropped on a
three-story building. The building exploded outward. "Good guy
or bad guy, you're going to stop when you see that," said
Morales. "It reminded me of the videos from 9/11 - everything
starts flushing at you, debris starts falling - and everything
gets darker."
"I was totally in the cloud of black smoke. I couldn't see an
inch in front of my face," said Howard.
Plants recalls hearing the call for fire and wanting to see
where the bomb was going.
"I was staring at it and saw the building go up," he said. "I
remember looking up, and then all of this stuff starting
coming down. All I could do was roll up tight and hug the
cliff wall."
Sniper Turns Tide
The battle started to turn when Howard, a trained sniper,
started picking the insurgents off. Howard was not in the lead
element, and he had to fight his way up the mountain to come
to the aid of his team.
The fight was not easy. He and the team of commandos he led up
the mountain were under intense insurgent fire. They were
getting hit with rocket-propelled grenades, small arms and
machine-gun fire.
"We knew some of our guys were hurt and that we had to get to
them," said Howard.
"We were pinned down," said Walton. "When the fire became so
intense, we moved out onto a ledge against the cliff to
protect our wounded. What turned the battle was Seth (Howard)
and his element."
Howard directed the Afghan commandos to fire on insurgent
position so that he could get into place with his sniper rifle
and his recoiless rifle.
"They had been hunting us, and now they were getting hunted,
too," said Walton. "We had been trying to return fire, but we
couldn't find them. They were firing in a very disciplined
manner. They were not hanging out windows or running at us."
As Howard and his element engaged the enemy, Walton knew time
was running out. Reports from the air said more insurgents
were moving in their direction. Everyone on the team had
sustained some sort of injury, four of them critical, and the
commandos had their share of injuries, as well.
"Everyone kept fighting, but there was a window closing on
us," said Walton. "We knew we had to get out."
One Way Out
"Our higher command told us we had to get out of there," said
Walton. "The weather conditions were closing in, and the
window to be on the ground was rapidly closing. Most of the
objective was gone at that point, but our casualties were
mounting - we were in a mass-casualty scenario at that point -
and they became our priority. We never thought of retreating.
That was never an option."
"The weather was deciding factor," continued Howard. "When the
weather rolled in we could be stuck there at least overnight,
possibly for days. They couldn't fly in to get us, and we
would have been stranded in completely hostile territory. That
was not a plan for success, especially with the pilots
observing another 200 insurgents moving in on us."
With their backs literally against a wall, and recognizing
that they couldn't go down the same way they came up - the
switchbacks they had climbed up were the primary focus of the
insurgent fire - they began assessing another route for exfil.
Final Cliff-hanger
"We knew we couldn't go back the way we came, so our only
option was going down the cliff," said Walton.
Had the team been healthy, that would have been a difficult
scenario. But with the number of wounded and the fire raining
down, it seemed impossible. But Walton knew he had to take the
chance.
"We were completely pinned down. There was intense fire all
around us. We couldn't leave the casualties. We were prepared
to sit there and die with them, but we decided we were going
to get them out of there," he said.
Sanders made the first climb down the mountain by himself.
When he climbed back up the sheer face of the cliff, Walton
had one question, "Do you think we can make it down?"
Sanders' reply put the climb in perspective, "Does it matter
if they have broken necks or backs?"
"My question was will they live," said Walton. With Sanders'
assurance that they would live, the team began the treacherous
climb.
Master Sgt. Scott Ford, the team sergeant, set up the medevac
and organized the less seriously wounded to carry the more
critically injured down. While organizing the commandos, Ford
was shot in the chest plate by sniper fire. He immediately got
to his feet and continued to lay down suppressive fire. One of
the insurgent snipers had Ford in his sights, and he shot him
in the upper left arm, nearly severing it. With a tourniquet
around his arm, Ford climbed down the mountain and continued
to organize the medevac.
Morales said that the team made its way down the cliff hanging
onto branches and rocks. Near the bottom of the cliff, most
made a 20-foot drop. I remember seeing John (Walding) carrying
his leg down. (Walding's leg had been amputated by sniper
fire.)"
As the wounded made their way down the cliff, Howard, Walton
and Spec. Michael Carter, a combat cameraman assigned to the
unit, remained behind to lay down suppressive fire and
retrieve equipment.
"There were a lot of guns around where everybody had been
shot," said Howard. "It kind of became an issue that there
were too many guns up there, and we didn't want to leave them
in enemy hands."
Carter ran through a hail of fire to retrieve guns and other
equipment. His own cameras had been shot up during the initial
hours of the battle. He gathered equipment and began throwing
it off the cliff, while Howard continued to pick off enemy
combatants.
"The stars really aligned," said Walton. "Bullets were coming
down from the side and behinds us, and we could hear guys
yelling above us. An element that came to reinforce the team
that was on the ground stepped out into the open and started
firing and gave us the chance to get out. Seth was crazy
enough to stay up there and cover us while we made the climb
down."
Alone, with less than a magazine of ammunition left, Howard
covered his team as they made their way down, and only after
they were safe, did he leave the mountain.
"We didn't go into this mission hoping to make history. For
us, it was just a regular mission - just like the one we had
done the week before. Our goal is never to get into a fight,
we'd rather sit down and drink some chai," said Walton. "We
were hoping this mission would be the same, but we got into a
big fight, and some of us got hit while trying to save each
other. That's what we do."
The team as a whole is looking forward to returning to
Afghanistan to continue its mission with the commandos.
"We think we sent a pretty big message to the insurgents. We
let them know that we could penetrate their comfort zone. We
told them there's nowhere you are safe that we aren't willing
to come in and go after you," concluded Walton. |
