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The Dutch soldier in Afghanistan was the newsperson of the year over here. A weekly news magazine featured a pretty nice article on a unit located on the smaller base in Uruzgan, Deh Rawod.
I scanned the magazine and translated the most interesting part of the text (bit too much to translate all hehe).
Scans:
Story:
UNDER FIRE FOR RECONSTRUCTION
The soldier in Uruzgan is Elseviers person of the year 2006: a portrait of the mechanised infantry platoon of Lieutenant Peter Marx. Alot of them are only 18, 19 years old but they were involved in a tough mission in the Afghan province of Uruzgan. Fighting the Taliban and helping the local population. A reconstruction of their most precarious moments and frail successes. “For the people at home it always feels worse.”
The curvy slope that leads to the Teri Rod river is very dangerous. The Americans speak of Roller Coaster Hill. This name has now been adopted by the Dutch troops in the province of Uruzgan. Lieutenant Peter Marx (25) carefully leads his platoon down the hill, there is only one spot that is shallow enough for the armoured vehicles and jeeps to cross the river. Marx orders a couple of engineers to search this bottleneck for landmines. They also disrupt mobile phone traffic with their jammers because the taliban prefers detonating their IEDs with mobile phones. From the riverbed Marx takes a picture of the last vehicles in the convoy, every vehicle reaches the other side without problems. The jammers are switched off. A moment later: BOOM! A mine detonates but the explosion is too far away to cause any harm to the troops. A spray of small stones flies over the armoured vehicles, it sounds like a mortar attack is taking place. Tak, tak, tak is the sound the stones make when they hit the sides of the tracked vehicle [YPR]. It’s Wednesday the 30th of August. Second Platoon Coyote-company of the 44th mechanised infantry battalion from Havelte has had it’s first taste of Afghanistan. Marx is able to make a picture of the plume of smoke that rises from the riverbed. American intelligence mentions later on that in an intercepted radio message of the taliban the failed attack was reported.
Three days later it ends much worse for the platoon. The soldiers are for the most part men of 18 and 19 years old. They come from the northern provinces [of the Netherlands] and are on their first mission abroad. Shaved heads, not very talkative. They have girlfriends that look like Ilse Delange [Dutch girl-next-door type singer]. Blonde sweethearts of 17 years old. In april, during the open days in Havelte, the girls met and got to know eachother while the boys stood proudly next to their armoured vehicles.
Platoon commander Marx is one of the few that is from the “Randstad” [area surrounding the big cities Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Utrecht]. The men say he has gotten a “Drents” accent. His second in command is Martijn Brian, born in Groningen and now living in Drenthe with his wife and children. With his 32 years of age and previous experiences in Kosovo he is a father figure for most of the young soldiers. They will never say it in as many words but they get drawn to him.
Grenade fire
On that fateful Saturday afternoon, the 2nd of September, the platoon returns from a patrol through Maruch, a town in the Tanqui-valley that is still in the hands of the taliban. A military doctor and three medics helped out the three hundred people that live there. Vaccinations, consults that kind of job. The soldiers hear distant gunfire but those are from American troops that are fighting on the other side of the valley. The atmosphere is relaxed. Near the end of the afternoon the children and women disappear from the streets, never a good sign. They ask themselves if the taliban has warned the people that they have planned an attack. The guys from the infantry battalion have only been in Afghanistan for a short period of time and are not able to place the disappearing of women and children from the streets.
Suddenly the convoy slows to a halt. The eleven vehicles that make up the convoy have to slow down to carefully manoeuvre across a damaged bridge. Exactly on that moment the enemy opens with grenade fire from three different positions. From a deep irrigation channel and behind a wall a few meters high about 40 taliban-fighters take shots at the convoy with Kalashnikov rifles and grenade launchers. “A textbook example of an ambush” says Marx.
The taliban fire 8 RPGs, one of them penetrates the engine compartment of an YPR fighting vehicle. Driver Roy Schoemaker (18) is a good looking boy from Dedemsvaart [town in the north east of the Netherlands] that has been in the army for only twelve months. Because of the explosion his left leg hits the stick that controls the vehicle. The plate that covers the engine slams inward and crushes his right leg. He’s stuck in his vehicle. A second RPG hits the window of a Patria, an armoured vehicle designed for peacekeeping missions, that drives behind the YPR. The windshield shatters but the projectile does not penetrate. The reinforced plating that covers the windows falls shut blinding the driver of the armoured vehicle.
Hero’s Courage
An ambush can only be survived by immediately regaining speed and driving on. Lieutenant Marx orders the first part of the convoy to move on to higher terrain that lies a bit further down the road. He takes up position close to the bridge from where he can still see the entire area. The Patria, with sergeant Martijn Brian, behind the YPR that was hit moves forward and positions itself beside the YPR. Behind the patria is a second YPR with sergeant Iwan Kamminga as commander. “You need to fire with everything you’ve got. The 25 mm cannon, the Minimis and .50 cals. Everything is needed to create superior firepower”, says Kamminga.
Sergeant Brian is in the back of the Patria with a mortar team of which one of the team members is also a YPR driver. His name is private Eric Koek (20) a good natured lanky guy from the a small village near the top of Overijssel [northern province of the Netherlands]. He calls himself the platoon comedian, in the platoon he is called “Koekie” [Cookie in English]. Second in command Brian and private Koek dismount from the Patria and try to reach the YPR with the badly injured driver through a hail of gunfire. The commander of the YPR, Jens van der Sman (21) has alarmed the rest of the convoy and tries to give first aid to his wounded driver. “At that moment you see a mate that has to be moved from the vehicle” explains Brian later on. “You don’t think on anything that could happen to, you have to blindly trust that the cover fire provided by your mates will be enough. It felt like parachuting, before the jump you’re a bit concerned and nervous. But once you’re outside the plane you know what you have to do and you become very calm”.
What sergeant Brian, corporal Van der Swan and a few other members of the patrolgroup did on that Saturday afternoon in a small Afghan riverbed can only be seen as a testament of great courage. Brian climbs on top of the YPR and, with the help of Van der Sman, opens the hatch above Roy Schoemaker to remove him from the vehicle. Brian: “It wasn’t the safest but the fastest way to get him from the vehicle. Roy just had to be removed from the vehicle. In his left leg a hole to size of a fist could be seen and from his right leg only a part of the shinbone and some connective tissue remained.” They pulled Schoemaker from the vehicle and put him in the back of the Patria. First they want to leave the YPR behind and begin to remove the weapons but Koek manages to start up the engine: “I drove the YPR a small distance up the hill, away from the ambush”.
Marx requests air support, but it won’t come. The Americans will provide mortar support on the positions of the taliban, that keep fighting for a long period. In total the ambush lasted for three quarters of an hour. “We used up two palletboxes of ammunition.” reports Marx. Eventually the taliban retreat, dragging their injured and killed with them. Because of the mortar fire a helicopter is not able to get close to the platoon and they have to drive 5 kilometres to get back to their camp at Deh Rawod. There a American helo can land to pick up Schoemaker and transport him to a hospital. His best friends in the platoon are privates Eric Vermeulen and Thijs Huijsman. They drove in the first few vehicles of the convoy and only now realise what happened to Schoemaker. Huijsman, not a very talkative guy from Deventer, sees the helicopter disappearing in the blue sky above the desert. “At that moment it feels like you’ve been punched in the face”, he recollects.
Four days later the group is again fighting with the taliban. This time at the Chutu crossing in the valley of the Helmand river. They were providing security from a strategic position for a foot patrol of lieutenant Yoeri Spelbos and his men from the airmobile brigade. Bullets whistle overhead. Tick, tick, tick. “Who is knocking on my YPR?” says sergeant Kamminga indifferently. They have to wait until Spelbos has pulled out of the valley before opening fire. With his Leica- scope sergeant Brian measures the distance. Between 400-800 meters tens of taliban fire with Kalashnikovs and RPGs. There are also shots being fire from a house. Marx calls in airsupport. “Luckily we have a Whiskey with us today.” A Whiskey stands for the W of Waarnemer [Observer in English]: lieutenant Hadicke of the army who is able to communicate with the pilot of the bomber. 15 minutes later a Canadian F18 [must be American] is flying above the village of Siah Sang. Hadicke transmits the coordinates of the compound and a 500 pound bomb is dropped. The firing ends. “We have probably killed a lot of taliban.” The infantry soldiers say.
What is going on with this platoon? Every time they get hit. It seems as if the taliban have it in for lieutenant Marx and his men. Armoured vehicles give the impression of solid protection, but foot patrols are less dangerous it seems. When walking you can better spot the mines and IEDs. It also seems as if the taliban let the footpatrols be while they consider an YPR a prime target. Intercepted radio communications point out that they refer to the Dutch tracked vehicle the monster.
A week and a half later, September the 19th, a couple of troops from Brian’s platoon are called in to retrieve a broken down YPR in a village called Shingolah. The vehicle stranded because a big role of barbwire got into the tracks. “Children are watching how the soldiers cut the barbwire away. It was a nice atmosphere.” Recalls Huijsman. They arrived in the village with four open Mercedes jeeps and one recovery-YPR. The village is basicly a long dusty road with houses on each side. It’s so small and narrow that when they have done their job they can’t turn and go back They have to drive to the end of the long dusty road of the village then turn and drive back. It all happens suddenly. Around sixty taliban fighters open fire from houses and cornfields. From the small alleyways they fire RPGs.
The platoon hesitates with opening fire because everywhere women and children scramble to get out of the line of fire. “Firing discipline” shouts sergeant Brian, to remember the troops of their firing instructions. The firefight lasts no longer than 20 minutes. Private George Marra, a 20 year old blonde and strongly build Fries [people from Friesland, a Dutch province] tells how he experienced the entire firefight in slow motion. The taliban also try to win the hearts and minds of the local population. They tell the population when and where they will be attacking coalition troops. But they didn’t this time. Taliban might have quickly organised some men when the Dutch troops were working on the vehicle. It’s possible they were out to create a bloodbath among the local population and hope they would have put the blame on the Dutch troops.
Private Marra is a minimi gunner. Standing on the back of the jeep he operates a MG mounted on the vehicle. He has to control the left sector. Huijsman fires on enemies that are in the right sector of the convoy. But who is the enemy? The clouds of dust that have formed obstruct their view. It looks like women and children are fleeing for the cornfields at the last moment. “It’s pretty simple in the end” thinks Marra. “Everyone holding or aiming a weapon at us is a taliban fighter, those without a weapon should not be fired at.”
The convoy speeds up to move out of the ambush. Kamminga is driving the vehicle at the front of the convoy. A bullet goes through both his legs but the sergeant is still able to put down the pedal for a short amount time. The road is a bit wider here Martijn Brian and Eric Koek can drive to front of the convoy. A wounded soldier has the priority at that moment. “We aim to have the wounded on an operating table within the hour.” But the medevac has to come all the way from Kandahar and arrives an hour and a half later. Brian: “We check his heartbeat, oxygen and bloodpressure. Every 5 minutes we register those values and report them. They remain stable.”
Kamminga: “I felt enormously tired for some reason. A medic of the commandos bound my leg with a bandage After a while I lost the feeling in my leg. At that moment you think …” Only in the evening a surgeon is able to remove the bullet from Kamminga’s right leg. The sergeant calls to his birthtown to tell he was wounded in an ambush. “For the people at home it’s always worse. They are scared for you. I was pretty much doped up with painkillers.” Kamminga can go back to the Netherlands but he refuses. He wants to recover in Uruzgan as platoonleader he wants to stay with his guys. “You put all things behind you with the help of eachother”.
The next day the platoon is again engaged in a firefight with the taliban. “Here we go again.” Says Huijsman. In the same week they they come under fire at the spot where Schoemaker lost his right leg. But this time they get away without any casualties. In total they escaped death nine times in less than two months.
Precarious situations in which the platoon of lieutenant Marx was involved:
1) August 30: a mine explodes on roller coaster hill
2) September 2: ambush near Derapet, private Schoemaker is seriously injured
3) September 6: ambush near the village of Siah Sang
4) September 15: rockets fired by taliban hit the camp at Deh rawod
5) September 19: Ambush near the village of Shingolah. Sergeant Kamminga gets shot through both legs.
6) September 20: platoon helps out American troops in the Chutu crossing. Platoon kills five taliban.
7) September 24: firefight near Derapet
8) October 22: firefight near Shingolah
9) October 28: platoon just miss an anti tank mine explosion
Fighting and reconstruction: the facts
Fighting:
• 150 taliban killed (not an official estimate)
• 5 arrests (all been released by now)
• 9 firefights (not counting the commandos)
• 10 rocket attacks with a total number of 25 rockets
• 22 IEDs, 10 defused, 11 exploded near a patrol and 1 near a civilian vehicle
Reconstruction:
• 140 police officers trained
• 170 tons of schoolbooks distributed
• 3 bridges build
• 1 dam under construction
• United Nations return, sign of improved safety
Edit: damn wanted to post it in GD but meh
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Originally Posted by Brabo
