Eyewitness account of Operation Anaconda

[Khabbi]

Interview of SSgt Kevin Vance 25 March 2002 Bagram, Afghanistan

My name is Kevin Donell Vance. In June, I will have been in the United States Air Force for eight years. I hold the rank of Staff Sergeant. I am currently married with two children, ages four and two. I was born on 3 September
1976 and am currently 25 years old. My SSN is XXX-XX-XXXX

I entered into the USAF eleven days after graduating from high school. I went to open general basic training. I was not sure which career path to take until I was asked to try out to be a tactical air control party [TACP] from a TACP recruiter. I was one of the few who tried out and was chosen.


I went to technical school in Florida for fourteen weeks. My first assignment was at Ft. Polk in Louisiana supporting the 2nd Armored Calvary Regiment[ACR] for three years. I then transferred to support the Joint Readiness Training Center [JRTC] for a year. Next, I was assigned to Camp Casey in Korea for one year. Afterwards, I tried out for and was selected for my present job. I have been with my current unit for two and a half years. I have had basic training, TACP training, Ranger School, Basic Airborne School, Air Assault School, HALO School, and Pathfinder School.

At around 0115z on 4 March 2002, I was told that a military member was on the ground in a hostile area in Afghanistan after falling out of a helicopter.

My team was told that another team was attempting to go in and get him, but if they were not successful, my team would go in. We were waiting to find out if we would go in to try to get to our lost military member. My team was in a helicopter in route and our estimated time of arrival was 0150z. My team consisted of ten people plus three special tactics squadron members [STS] and we were with eight crewmembers, a total of twenty-one personnel.

At 0140z I had noticed we were flying in circles around the mountaintop because I had noticed the same terrain twice. As we were circling about the third time, we were hit with a rocket-propelled grenade [RPG] around 0145z. There were sparks on the right side of the aircraft and we started to shake violently. Then our helicopter just fell out of the sky about 15 feet to the ground. After the first RPG hit us to when the helicopter hit the ground, I do not remember specifics of what happened, it was a blur. No one, to my knowledge, was injured from the initial crash.

Before I could get off the aircraft, another RPG hit the aircraft where the right door gunner was. There was only one military member between the right door gunner and myself. I am not positive how many times our helicopter was shot but I think altogether, four RPGs were shot at us. I was snap linked into the helicopter, a precaution so we do not fall out of the helicopter.


First I was trying to get my snap link/safety line off but the pararescueman [PJ] behind me was pushing me so it pulled tight. I had a little bit of trouble getting it off; it slowed me down about 15 seconds. I then ran off the back of the aircraft.


By the time I was able to get off of the aircraft, three of our team members were already dead. One team member was on the ramp with a hole in his head. There was no mistaking that he was dead. The second team member was at the end of the ramp face down in the snow. His position was such that if there had been life left in him, he would have moved his head out of the snow. I later found out that he had been shot under the arm though his chest and out his above right nipple. The last deceased team member was lying on his back at the end of the ramp not moving. These three deceased members survived the initial crash without injury, but had died from enemy fire. Their names were Marc Anderson, Brad Crose, and Matt Commons.

I knew we had three killed in action [KIA], which left seven of our team, three of which were injured. I had shrapnel in the arm, but did not notice it until later. My platoon leader had shrapnel in his leg, it was a pretty good chunk, and another team member had shrapnel in his lower left calf and moving slow. Our team knew how to fight and how to operate on the ground. The aircrew did not have the same training.

I exited the aircraft and threw my rucksack off but kept it within 20 meters from me. I figured out which way we were being engaged from and I sought cover behind a cut out in the rock face. It was just big enough for four team members to kneel behind it. We set up a perimeter. Two other members were back to my right and three members to my left. I was closest to the enemy. There were two enemies about 50 meters north of us near a tree. There was one enemy behind me and to the right already dead. There were some more enemies to the south coming out. Then we started to engage the enemy.


I was shooting an M4. At first, my priority was to keep engaging the enemy to hold them back and then to seek assistance for close air support [CAS] on the radio. My radio, a PRC 117F, was still in my rucksack. There was a combat controller [CCT] with us named Gabe Brown who was behind me a bit. I turned around and yelled at him to work on getting communications running; he was already was working on it.

I decided that I needed to be on the line fighting, if I had been on the radio, then the combat controller would have been sitting there doing nothing because he doesn't have the assault training.

I decided that he should call in the CAS as I directed him. I told him my rucksack had a radio in it. A member of the crew dragged my rucksack to the CCT so he had my radio.

First, we shot M203 rounds at bunker. A M203 is a grenade launcher that fits on a M4/16. As the squad leader and team leader shot M203s, I stood up and provided covering fire. When he would stand up to fire a grenade at the bunker, I would standup and shoot at the bunker to cover him. I did the same when the crewmembers would run for more ammo.

We tried throwing fragment grenades at the enemy but it they were too far away and the bunker was on the backside of the hill. The enemy threw fragment grenades at us but they landed 5-10 feet in front of me, buried in the snow and blew up.

I believe one of the helicopter pilots was dead and the other was injured severely. The other pilot opened the door to the aircraft and fell out of the aircraft face first. He lay there in the snow securing his area.

There was no power to the aircraft without which we could not operate the mini-guns. One of the team members yelled at a member of the crew to get the power working so we could use those guns. The mini-guns shoot 7.62 ammo and so does our M240. The crew was taking ammo and giving it to our M240 gunner.

When the crewmembers would run back to the aircraft for more ammo, I would standup and shoot at the bunker to cover them. They were also taking M203 rounds and magazines off of the KIA and bringing it to us. The crew pulled off insulation from the aircraft to wrap the casualties in to keep them warm.

Then four of us (myself, the platoon leader, squad leader, and team leader) started to assault the tree area where the enemy was coming from while the M240 gunner suppressed it. The CPT Self, the platoon leader [PL], was in charge.

Once we realized that it was a bunker, a couple of enemy came out from behind a tree and took shots at us. We were moving slow because the snow was up to our knees and we were going uphill.


The platoon leader finally said let's back up and rethink this. We backed up because we could not afford to lose any more guys.

The combat controller yelled that we have F-15s on station. The Platoon Leader was next to me and we discussed it. Then F-15s were overhead and the combat controller was directing them to the enemy according to my instructions. I told the combat controller to have the F-15s to strafe the bunker and have them come in from our right to our left.

The CCT repeated what I said. He was smart enough that I did not have to tell him too much detail of what to say on the radio. We used the position of the helicopter to give clock directions. He had basic knowledge of CAS so I could tell him to have the fighters do gun runs on an area from which direction and he would get on the radio and make it happen.

The first F-15 pass was really close and I was uncomfortable because I could not tell if the guns were pointing at my team or the enemy bunker so I told the CCT to abort it. I told him to have them come in more from behind us, so I could tell they were not pointing at us. I told him to clear them and the rounds hit right by the bunker. I told him to have them do that over and over again.

I think the gun runs were made by both F-15s and F-16s. For the first 10-15 minutes, the CCT thought I was the team leader. He yelled to me: "aren't you the team leader?" when the team leader was sitting next to him.

At this point, the team member who was injured in the leg and could not move easily was facing one way. Sgt Walker and I were pulling security on the bunker. CPT Self and I tried to determine where would be a good landing zone.

The fighters did some more gun runs and the enemy was still jumping up shooting at us. The enemy was moving on us from behind us (we didn't know this at the time) but the majority of enemy were firing at us were on the hill near the bunker area. We killed seven of them.


The last time I saw anyone move in the bunker, I was scanning the hilltop and I saw the upper half of an enemy behind some bushes. I shot three times, got down and stood back up. This was the last I had seen him. I never went over towards that bunker so I cannot confirm if I had killed him.

Then we shot some more bombs in the bunker area. I told CCT to direct them to shoot down the backside of the hill north of us. I thought it was better to have them shoot downhill with the first one so we could walk him in to the target. The first bomb hit the backside of the hill and then I told him to bring it up and hit the tree over the bunker. The second one hit the tree dead on and split it in half. The fire from the bunker area ceased.

We could not see over the hill and did not know what was over there. CCT said we have some 500-pound bombs to use. After discussing with the PL, I said let's drop them on the backside of the hill and walk them up. They were dropping them about 75 to 100 meters away from us. Some of the pilots did not want to drop them without the commander's initials because they were afraid they would kill us.

At that point we were not taking any more fire from the top of the hill so the platoon leader wanted to wait until our reinforcements linked up with us before we tried moving on the top of the hill.

By this time, the second helicopter landed at the bottom of the hill to our northeast and reinforcements were moving towards us. The second aircraft had ten team members on it. They moved uphill to us.


This was about two and a half hours after we had crashed. On the way, they were taking some mortar fire. At one point they had bracketed us with the mortars but then they started shooting mortars down the hill to try and hit the second team members as they were coming up the hill to reinforce us. I do not know where the enemies were shooting the mortars from. Later, I learned they were being shot from a position about 300 meters from us on the backside of the hill.

Finally, our reinforcements linked up with us. Sgt Walker took a couple of rounds in his helmet. When the reinforcements arrived, Sgt Walker came forward and told SSG Wilmoth which direction the enemy was located. Sgt Walker's helmet had holes in the top of the head and the side of the head.

A 500-pound bomb hit just over the backside of the hilltop. It hit at an angle where it blew everything back over the top of us so it was raining debris and metal pieces down around us. That was the only point where we were really concerned with our safety from the friendly bombs. This was the last time we used the 500-pound bombs. Together we started to take the top of the hill.

Once we took the top of the hill we found two more friendly bodies. They included the member who fell out of the helicopter that we were there to find and a member from the team before us that tried to go in to get him. We were sent in because they were not successful. Both members had been shot and killed. We had thirty-three members on the hill (including two deceased we found), sixteen were fighting, and three of those sixteen were wounded. The other half was working on casualties or were casualties themselves.

As we took the top of the hill, we started taking fire from behind us. We had to turn around and fight the other way. Meanwhile, all of our casualties were lying out in the open down the hill. Once taking fire from the other direction, we had to go downhill to get our casualties. The casualties were the first three team members out of the aircraft and the pilot. A PJ, SrA Jason D. Cunningham, and another team member were killed from gunfire as they were going down to get the casualties. Jason Cunningham was injured seriously but did not die immediately.

At this point, I was still on the top of the hill sitting next to the CCT and the PL while talking on the radio. I was reporting back to higher and CCT was talking to the aircraft. We were the command and control [C2] section. I could have taken the radio back from CCT and said that it is my job to call in CAS, but he had been working with them already and understood the landmarks he was talking about. If I had to do it, then it would have been a relearning process so I continued to monitor him and let him call in CAS. The medics kept the PJ alive for about 10 hours (about an hour and half before we got exfiltrated). I reported it to the Controller when he died.

They also dropped 1000 pounders that landed 150 meters away from us. That was a little close and I made sure the CCT had them push those out a bit. It hit the nearside of the hill instead of the far side and shook the team members up. No one was injured. When the bomb hit, some debris on fire flew up into the air about 75 feet over our heads and continued on into the valley where it caught something on fire in the valley.

After being on the ground for about three hours, we had to move the bodies up the mountain before we could be exfiltrated. This would have taken about one half hour.

Controller asked me if the pick-up zone [PZ] was cold and how many guys we were going to lose if we waited to be exfiltrated. I asked the medic: "if we hang out here, how many guys are going to die?" The medic said at least two, maybe three. I reported to Controller it is a cold PZ and we are going to lose three if we wait. Just as I said it was a cold PZ, we were shot at.

However, we could have made it cold by the time they got the helicopters in there. It was just every once and while the enemy would take pop shots at us. If we had CAS on station dropping bombs, we could have gotten out of there at that time. I told CCT to drop bombs down in the valley and on the small hill every now and again.

Every time the plane showed up and you could hear them, we weren't being shot at. Just having the planes nearby kept the enemy away. Continuously dropping bombs discouraged them from coming after us. So every now and again, we would drop bombs on them with B52s, B-1s, those were the last aircraft we had. I cannot remember which one.

I was watching our medic, he was a part of the second team, as he was working on the PJ. I saw him doing CPR on the PJ and I knew it was bad. I then saw the medic stand up, look over at me, and start walking to me. That is when I got on the radio to Controller and told him that we now have seven KIA.

The whole fifteen and one half hours we were on the ground I was fighting, talking on the radio, or telling CCT what to call in. I shot a total of 420 rounds during the fifteen and one half hours. I was on the C2 line the whole time while watching over CCT's shoulder to make sure everything was all right. As the hostile fire started slowing down, I barely had to tell CCT what to do, just drop bombs over here or over there.

I kept telling Controller that we'd lost another one, cold PZ, when are we getting exfiltrated? Controller said to hold on. After asking him three times, PL expressed urgency at getting the team out of there. I continued to tell Controller but he just kept telling me to hold on. After the third time, I handed the hand mike to the PL and asked him to tell Controller the same thing.

For the next thirteen hours, there were sporadic firefights from about 300 meters away. All of the close fighting was done because we had neutralized all close enemies. The mountaintop had three different peaks. We held the two highest ones. About 300 meters to our south, southeast was the third hilltop where the enemy was coming up. At one point Controller told me that the enemy was trying to reinforce with seventy guys. I was not clear if he was talking about seventy friendly or enemy. I then asked if the seventy guys coming up this way were not my friends. He said "Roger". I said I wanted to make sure that was clear. I tried to keep that between the PL and myself because it would have destroyed the other guys' morale. I think the PL let the team know so they could be ready. We never did see the seventy enemies.

I put the PL on the radio and he was being told the exfiltration sequence of events. I was sitting next to him taking notes. Once the exfiltration plan was sorted out, we sat around and waited until the AC-130 checked in. We had them fly around and occasionally shooting. Controller said we had eight enemies moving in to our south. I never did run into them.

CCT was talking to the AC-130 and I was talking to Controller. I gave Controller the approach heading, the land heading and the departure heading. There was a 090 approach heading, 235 land heading, and 270 departure heading. The first aircraft came in on a 090 and then came to a hover. I tried to get him on the radio to tell him to turn around and do a 180. I could not reach him so I called Controller and asked him to get in contact with the second and third helicopters to have them land at 180 degrees from what the first one did.


It was important to have the second one land that way in order to upload the KIAs quickly. He was able to reach them and the second and third helicopters landed according to direction. Because the first one landed heading the wrong direction, the exfiltration was slowed down immensely. We had to drag the casualties all the way around the back of the helicopter and load them up. It was important that the second one landed the way it did.

My entire unit got on the second helicopter while another unit got off to pull security. They then got on the helicopter and left. If they had landed the way the first one did, it would have taken a lot longer than it did. The entire exfiltration process took too long, about 15 minutes for the first two helicopters. It was all quiet when we were being exfiltrated.

It felt really good when I got back and my buddies said they were sitting around the radio listening. They were impressed that I never got emotional and was calm and professional the whole time. I tried to keep a monotone voice. There were times that I tried to throw some words in there to make Controller realize that we have to get out. It became a personal conversation and we kept saying we have to get out of here.

I received a minor wound to my left shoulder. It is a shrapnel puncture wound. I didn't notice it until a day later when I woke up and my shoulder felt like someone punched me. I then looked at the T-shirt I was wearing that night and noticed it was blood stained.

I went through so many different emotions, excited, mad, frustrated, sad, any other emotion you could possibly feel, you feel going through this whole thing. And I felt guilty if I felt anything was funny like Sgt Walker's helmet with the holes in it because we had lost members of our team.

Everyone out there just did his job. I just did my job, everything came natural and my training kicked in. There is nothing I could have changed about that day. Nothing we could have done different or better. I could not ask for a better group of guys to work with. I have trained for eight years to do this and now I had the chance to get to do my job -- that is reward enough. Everybody working together and the good Lord is what got us home.

[2RHPZ]

Khabbi, let me post another article on Op Anaconda to your topic. I don´t want to make another thread:

Afghanistan: Operation Anaconda

Arma virumque cano.
[Of] Arms and the Man I sing.
Audentes fortuna iuvat.
?Fortune favors the brave.?
- Virgil; The Aeneid;

Such are the fortunes of war: in the Operation Anaconda fighting around Gardez and Shahikot, an Al Qaeda mortar round (probably a Soviet model 82mm) struck a rock outcrop four feet from Specialists Justin Musella and Justin Celano, two snipers of the 101st (ex-Airborne) Airmobile Division's "Rikkasans" (explained later below) but failed to detonate, thus sparing the two young soldiers. Yet up in Kabul, three Danish and two German explosive ordnance demolition (EOD) experts died when two surface-to-air missiles they were trying to destroy exploded prematurely.

Operation Anaconda is "a battle in the clouds" fought at an average altitude of 10,000 feet with weather changing rapidly from fair to most foul. After some clear blunders due to bad intelligence on Saturday (March 2) and Monday (March 4) in which 8 Americans lost their lives (more below), the battle has gone well, with casualties but no further fatalities. Friday, the U.S. military said eight American soldiers and seven Afghan troops have died in the battle and there are about 100 wounded in the weeklong fighting, which is already longer in duration than the Desert Storm ground war. On Monday the battle will surpass the duration of the Ia Drang battles of 11-18 November 1965 (featured in the current movie "We Were Soldiers").

In the fighting Saturday through Tuesday, our side was lucky that through individual professionalism at junior levels our losses were not worse. Since Tuesday we see the transition from luck to the fortune that favors the brave who go about their business with professionalism and superior training and equipment.

The operation began last Saturday with a motorized column of some 600 loyalist Afghans, led by a Green Beret detachment approached Shahikot. As they began to dismount, outside the town, they were greeted with Al Qaeda mortar, RPG and machine gun fire: they had moved too close to the enemy's lines and were easily repulsed in their confusion. The AP reported on Friday (Mar 8): "?a local Afghan commander, who goes by the single name Isatullah, said U.S. forces received enemy estimates from an Afghan military leader from a different region who was unfamiliar with the territory.

Said Qasem, an Afghan soldier who has been working with the Americans told the Washington Post (March 8, "Afghans Strengthen U.S. Force" by Peter Baker). "The main mistake was we didn't have enough information about the enemy. We didn't know how many al Qaeda were there, we didn't know about the trenches, about the caves, about any of it,"

The operation was suspended on Sunday and restarted at 0300 local time Monday, when the MH-47s began to insert commando teams. That led to the loss of Petty Officer Roberts and six others, in a fierce gunbattle. That led to the insertion of full battalions of infantry (each about 400-450 men) from the 101st Airmobile and 10th Mountain Divisions on Monday and Tuesday.

The US initially estimated that there were about 150-250 Al Qaeda troops in the area, and keeps raising that estimate even as they report that they have killed at least 400 of Osama bin Laden's zealots. The battle keeps growing as more foreign Al Qaeda and local Taliban hard-core fighters slip into the roughly 60 square mile battle zone. At mid-week, Afghan Taliban commander in the hills, Saif Rahman, issued a call for holy war against coalition forces, saying it was the first responsibility of Muslims. Local mullahs are also exhorting the manhood of three provinces to join the Taliban remnants and I say good: let these fools who yearn to die for their perverse version of Islam come to the field of their death.

The US has also reported that other Al Qaeda and Taliban hardliners are moving back into some twenty bombed out training camps in the region, assembling for further battles, even as Operation Anaconda continues to clean out pockets of resistance in the mountains outside Shahikot. Yet, the battle progresses well enough that General Hagenbeck thinks the US-Afghan force, assisted by special operations commandos from the British and Australian SAS, 20-25 men of Canada's JTF2 (including sniper teams), plus Germans, Danes and Norwegians on the ground. French strike aircraft are aloft. Al Qaeda has been given 48 hours to surrender, a limit set to expire by Sunday.

The 16 French strike aircraft are flying from the newly commissioned nuclear powered aircraft carrier, the Charles DeGaulle, working with the USS John Stennis, one of our fine nuclear powered carriers. This is the DeGaulle's first deployment after an extended and difficult period of engineering to correct design and construction flaws.

About the Intel failure at the beginning of this: we did not know about entrenchments or the Al Qaeda presence in Shahikot, despite all our vaunted aerial reconnaissance capabilities. Nor was any on the ground recon conducted outside Shahikot, indicating that our planning was sloppy and did not take the threat seriously enough. The surprise failure of Saturday seems to have gotten ever leader concerned wakened up to the gravity of war fighting, which is to the good. But as my friend and colleague, the venerable Colonel Carl Bernard (USA-Ret.) often observes that if you want to find the dumbest captain in an infantry battalion, knock on the door of the battalion intelligence shop, the S-2. There you will find the man who the army is "depriving some village of its idiot." The situation is usually only marginally better at the brigade and division level. I say this because there were clear failures to ascertain the basic conditions on the target battlefield.

Leadership: Into the Fray:

In a strong way, the insertion of the first combat elements of our fighting battalions was very like the Landing Zone X-ray fight of LT Col Harold Moore and the men of the 1st Battalion 7th Cavalry as captured in the current film, "We Were Soldiers." This time the fight came with the addition of snowstorms that obstructed landing reinforcements, but against an enemy vastly less effective than the North Vietnamese Regulars.

Add to that, the loss of 6 men and two MH-47 Chinooks in the attempt to rescue Navy Seal, Petty Officer 1st class Neil C. Roberts, who may well have been executed. The attempt to rescue Roberts led to an intense 18-hour gun battle in which 8 other Americans were wounded. As that battle continued, infantry companies began to land in the battlezone, also coming under immediate fire.

This event evokes "Black Hawk Down" and Mogadishu --and again, with snow. But officials at the Pentagon resisted any similarity between these operations and "Black Hawk Down," just making themselves seem silly, caviling over distinctions without difference; events in these fights resemble the movies both in the general and the specific, though the outcomes will be different. The difference this time, is that government is determined to win and our combat leaders can surmount every difficulty and fight to victory, while their commanders are finally -finally- engaging their minds to the scale of the campaign at hand. The generals have committed to waging this war properly. They will soon find the equilibrium point in terms of troops and equipment needed to win.

The biggest problem at Tora Bora last December was that we sent a few good US and British commandos and a lot of under-equipped Pashtun militia into the fight from one direction. This caused tribal chieftain, Malik Osman Khan, to tell the London Telegraph, last month: "When we round up a pack of stray sheep, we send in shepherds from four sides, not just one" (The Telegraph, Feb. 23, 2002: "Blunders that let bin Laden slip away," by Philip Smucker). This time, the US and its local and other allies went in from four directions, though it took about 4-5 days to seal most of the major routes into the district to prevent further reinforcements joining the remnants of this Al Qaeda force.

It is because of the disappointing performance at Tora Bora that the London Spectator reported last month that Donald Rumsfeld is suffering from commando envy and wants to build an SAS regiment within our Special Operations capabilities. See the Spectator article, "Is this how Bin Laden Escaped?" for details: http://www.spectator.co.uk/article.php3?table=old&section=current&issue=2002-02-16&id=1585
In the first troop insertions, the troops went in too light, leaving their 4.2 inch mortars behind, giving Al Qaeda a temporary advantage in that their 82mm mortars outranged the few 60mm mortars taken into battle by our rifle companies. And I should observe that we now have a good picture of how Al Qaeda likes to fight in 5-man fire teams, dispersed in interlocking positions to support each other. The account just below will give the reader a flavor of the difficulties our men are surmounting.

And the fighting has been scary at times; in one rifle company, three of its four medics have been wounded (Wash Post, March 8, Afghans Strengthen U.S. Force). The Army Times' Sean Naylor filed a report "In Combat For The First Time, Mortarmen React Quickly," on the fighting early this week that was syndicated to a number of major newspapers on March 7, capturing the essence of good combat leadership. He focused on Captain Kevin Butler, commander of Alpha Company, 2nd Battalion, 187th Regiment of the 101st Airmobile Division:

As the soldiers emerged from their frost-encrusted sleeping bags to boil water for cocoa, they wondered aloud whether the 200 al-Qaida fighters that U.S. intelligence estimated were hiding in the valley were concentrating all their attention on the troops to their south and east.

The first mortar rounds answered that question conclusively.

"Obviously that was the wrong assessment," said Butler, 30, from Plainfield, N.J.

It took only moments for the Alpha Company troops to spot one of the three positions that had them in its range.

"They're on the snow-covered mountain," shouted the lookouts posted on the low hills around the command post, pointing towards the peak in question.

Soon the soldiers realized they were being attacked from three different positions simultaneously. One al-Qaida mortar was lobbing rounds at them from a position about three miles to the south, while another was shelling them from a peak about 2 miles to the west.

In between the mortar volleys, the enemy was raining fire from a 57 mm recoilless rifle, a 12.7 mm heavy machine gun, rocket propelled grenades and Kalashnikov rifles on Alpha Company from a third position that no one could pinpoint immediately.

As his soldiers scrambled for cover, Butler faced a crucial moment in any young officer's career: his first time under fire, with about 100 soldiers -almost all of whom were equally new to combat - looking to him for leadership.

What they may not have realized at the time was that Butler had already made two decisions that would likely save some of their lives.

One of those was his decision, taken in the bitter cold in the early hours of that morning, to locate his command post, and the bulk of his force, in a deep wadi.

The dried up stream bed was wide enough to allow soldiers to walk through it and sleep in it, but so narrow that it would take an extraordinarily lucky -or skillful - mortarman to land a shell inside its steep, rocky walls.

The other decision that would prove crucial over the next few hours was Butler's determination that bringing his company's own two 60 mm mortars would be worth the hassle of lugging the bulky weapons through the thin mountain air.
[?]
Butler quickly brought his two-mortar section into the fight, and from a protected position in the wadi, they started returning fire on the two enemy positions within their range. Their first shots brought a wry comment from Butler.

"It's all fun and games until the other guy has a mortar too," said Butler, whose radio call sign is "Black Hawk 6."

But even Butler's skilled mortar section needed help. The mortar position to the south was beyond their range. Only air power could destroy it.

Sgt. Corey Daniel, the company's fire support NCO - whose job it is to help coordinate all the mortar, artillery and close air support fires for his unit - called in F-16 and F-15E attack jets.

At 10:21 a.m., a series of loud explosions from the direction of the southern al-Qaida positions announced the arrival of the close air support, and was met with cheers from the Alpha Company troops.

A combination of air strikes and Alpha Company's mortars put paid to the other, closer position where the recoilless rifle lay. But there still remained the mortar on the western ridge.

It was inside of the Alpha mortars' range, but the four al-Qaida troops knew their business.

As soon as they heard the drone of incoming aircraft, or the distinctive bang of the Alpha Company mortars firing, they would run from the ridge to take cover, reappearing after the U.S. ordnance had landed to wave defiantly and send another shell Alpha Company's way.

Knowing that if any of the al-Qaida rounds found their target, he could lose several soldiers, Butler thought quickly.

"I was trying to come up with a way of sneaking the round in quietly," he said. He settled on a novel approach.

The captain ordered Daniel to call in another air strike, and had his mortarmen calculate how long their rounds spent in the air on their way to the ridgeline.

The answer was 32 seconds - long enough for the enemy mortar crew to run for cover, wait for an explosion, and reappear.

Butler directed his mortar crews to fire several rounds at the moment they heard the explosion from the close air support.

"I thought maybe we could mask the sound of the 60 mm mortars firing with the sound of the close air support," he said. As the booms from the Air Force bombing echoed across the valley, Butler's crews went to work.

"The boys were just hanging rounds like nobody's business," he said. Seven rounds flew out of the tubes toward the ridgeline.

Watching through his binoculars, Daniel saw the four al-Qaida troops reappear on the ridge. As they taunted the American troops, all seven rounds came down on them, blowing them off the ridgeline and killing them.

That's leadership. It is the captains and sergeants who are looking out for the corporals, specialists and PFCs.

Flak Jackets -- an Aside

Now it happens that just a week before Operation Anaconda kicked off, Naylor wrote an article in last week's Army Times "Not so Bulletproof" documenting that due to general stupidity in supply and logistics planning at the Pentagon and in the 101st Division and in Centcom, our infantry do not have sufficient sets of $500 ceramic armor plates for their "Interceptor" body armor vests --the latest in flak jackets. These jackets are priced at $450 each and provide protection against shrapnel and pistol bullets up to the 9mm Parabellum, but it takes insertion of the ceramic plates to protect vital organs in the chest from the AK-47's 7.62 rounds.

Naylor notes that soldiers under fire from Taliban snipers at Kandahar have often been engaged in firefights without these plates. As of March 1st, the brigade had 800 complete sets of plates for 1700 men, meaning that if they issued one plate for the chest of each soldier, there would be 100 staff personnel without any. While I agree that rear echelon types do not need these as much as the fighters in the foxholes and perimeter bunkers do, but nobody should be put at unnecessary risk over a trivial $500 cost. But with the prospect of sending two battalions into action in Operation Anaconda, as of late February, the division expected to provide full sets for all combat personnel by the end of March.

Now there are about 1700 combat personnel in each of the Army's 31 active duty infantry and armored brigades. To provide a $450 vest to each trooper costs $765,000 per brigade for a total cost of $23,715,000 for all 31 brigades. To provide a $500 set of ceramic plates will cost $850,000 per brigade, or $26,350,000 total. These amounts are trivial rounding errors in a defense budget of over $300 Billion, and at $950 per man for full protection, less than a month's pay for a PFC.

The Army needs about 52,700 sets to protect our troops in the 31 brigades, not an overwhelming task for industry. But Naylor reports that the manufacturer is only geared up to supply 2500 sets per month, surging to 5000 sets if they add a second shift, which is what the Army has budgeted. The contract is based on keeping the line going for a goodly number of years before the entire Regular Army and National Guard combat forces are equipped, ultimately including drivers, artillerymen and engineers (4-6 years at any rate). And frankly, I've seen a very inexpensive ($20 per pound) coating material developed by the Navy that, if sprayed on a thin plate could help provide even better protection at lower cost. So the ceramic plates are not even at the state of the industry at the time they are trickling into service.

The Battle Continues

Now, as to the situation as it stands, General Franks is committed to an earnest battle on the ground and has kept a flow of reinforcements into the battle zone since Monday. We now have committed to battle at least four infantry battalions of the 10th Mountain Division and the 101st Airmobile's 3rd Brigade's "Rikkasans" (Japanese for a falling umbrella" earned after World War II when the 187th Airborne Regiment would parachute during their term in Douglas MacArthur's occupation force).

Our generals are now taking this campaign seriously and we now know that the campaign has a commander on the ground, Maj. Gen. Franklin L. "Buster" Hagenbeck Commander of the 10th Mountain Division. And we know that Al Qaeda has come very close to killing more of our people, and that Apache assault helicopter pilots are getting wounded too. The Washington Post confirmed today in the article already cited: "A Pentagon official said five of the seven Apache attack helicopters initially committed to the battle last weekend were disabled by machine-gun fire or rocket-propelled grenades. The helicopters were able to fly about 100 miles back to the U.S. base at Bagram, north of Kabul, the official said, but will not be considered flyable until they receive extensive repairs and are recertified as airworthy."

The Al Qaeda fighters are well armed and have plenty of ammunition, by all accounts, including mortars, recoilless rifles, rocket-propelled grenades, shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles, machine guns and AK-47 rifles.

So on Wednesday and Thursday, the US flew those 16 additional AH-64 Apache assault helicopters in to add to the 12 Apaches (5 disabled) already on station, along with 8 AH-1 assault helicopters provided by the Marine Corps. Overhead, the B-52s and B-1s are getting a workout again, for the first time in almost a month. Some 300 additional US troops have been added on the ground to beef up the operation. Another 1000 Afghan loyalist militia men, backed by ten tanks have been sent by the interim government of Hamid Karzai to reinforce its 1000 troops already helping to the avenues of approach and escape from the Shahikot district. This has created a further complication, for though Chairman Karzai is building a national army, this reinforcement is mostly Tajiks from the Northern Alliance and the Pashtuns chiefs of Paktia province, where this fighting is centered remain suspicious of non-Pashtuns.

And with all this, Operation Anaconda has grown to be the biggest and longest infantry tactical operation the US Army has waged since Vietnam. The overall Afghan campaign, Operation Enduring Freedom, only involves about 17,000 US personnel at this writing. But the few real fights in the vastly larger Kuwait campaign, Operation Desert Storm, though highly lethal, never involved more than one to two battalions of US Army troops at a time and ended in a matter hours.


© Copyright 2002 by Benjamin C. Works - SIRIUS www.siri-us.com

[scm77]

Soooo long, but sooo good. woot

[Khabbi]

Hehe yeah , good way to kill afew minutes