The War I Always Wanted (3 page)

I really can't recall what the battalion commander said as we stood in formation that morning, other than the fact that it involved me and an airplane, some guns, and at least one third-world country. I did manage to recognize that my parents' worst nightmare was unfolding in front of me. But rather than being energized by the prospect of hunting down Osama bin Laden and his minions, I felt deflated about having to break the news to Nikki.

I'd been waiting for this moment for six years. I had finally been chosen as one of the few to represent the United States in a war of vengeance, and now, at what could have been my supreme moment, I was hesitant.

Until recently, the idea of sacrifice had never entered my mind, even as I'd entered the Army. Being a soldier had always
been such a good time that I never considered it a sacrifice in any way. Sacrifice was always such a theoretical and distant ideal. But this was something new—something tangible. I was going to
lose
the chance to be with Nikki, and that was something of which I felt desperately in need.

The deployment order wasn't much of a surprise. My unit—the 1st Battalion of the 187th Infantry Regiment (the 3rd Brigade) of the 101st Airborne Division—had been in every major conflict since World War II. It was there, in Japan, that the unit had gotten its nickname. From that point on, the soldiers of the unit were called Rakkasans—Rakkasan being the Japanese word meaning “falling down umbrella.” It was a reference to the parachutes they used in World War II. Why the Japanese had a word for “falling down umbrella” but not for “parachute” was a question often asked in our unit.

After our morning formation I headed upstairs to my office. It was basically a small closet that I shared with my platoon sergeant, Jim Collins. In it were two desks, a wall locker, and two chairs. In contrast to other offices, ours was relatively bare. Most offices had framed photographs of soldiers, posters, awards, and certificates on the walls. Ours simply had two dry erase boards and one small bulletin board.

I found Sergeant Collins standing, facing the bulletin board, looking at a note he had stuck up there earlier. Without turning around, he said quietly, “Looks like we're headed down range to lay some waste.” I took my seat and started fiddling through some stuff in my desk, looking for the instruction manual on “How to Deploy a Rifle Platoon Halfway Around the World.” Sergeant Collins sat down and we started hashing out a plan. A few minutes later the conversation turned to
history and philosophy. We talked about al Qaeda, we talked about the Taliban, and we talked about the Russians in Afghanistan and the United States in Vietnam. Before we left the office to brief the squad leaders, Collins looked me in the eye and said, “These guys are about to find out the hard way that we ain't the Russians . . . and this ain't Vietnam.”

As we walked out, I realized that I was jealous of his enthusiasm.

Collins was known throughout the infantry and special operations communities as “Jimbo” or “Jungle Jim.” I commanded Bravo Company's 1st Platoon to the extent that a green second lieutenant is capable, but if I was Luke Skywalker, Collins was Obi Wan. Collins had served for ten years in the special operations community before leaving to take control of his first platoon in the 101st Airborne. He was about six feet tall, lean and cut. When it came to exercise, he equated moderation with eating greasy cheeseburgers: they were both dangerously bad for you. For Collins, a morning jog was not complete unless he had tried to “pop” his heart. We would lift weights and I would end up standing aside breathlessly as he completed a chest workout of fifteen sets to failure on the bench press.

Collins would say things like, “I wanna jam my bayonet between a guy's ribs and watch his life blood run out.” Or, after choking out some other sergeant in a round of hand-to-hand combat, he'd stand up, dust himself off, and say in a low, slow, and drawn-out Clint Eastwood-as-Dirty Harry-voice, “A man's got to know his limitations.” People who didn't know him well always laughed uncomfortably at the proclamations. But the guys liked it. The ironic thing was that, before the wars, we had always thought he was
joking
.

* * *

For a week we waited for a plane to come and take us away, each day thinking that that would be the day. During that time Collins did his best to keep everyone's minds occupied. We would practice hand and arm signals and covering each other in the open. We practiced working with our radios and we assembled and disassembled our weapons against the clock hundreds of times. When that got old, we did
combatives
.

“Combatives” was army-speak for hand-to-hand combat—something that I liked, but he loved. He was so into combatives that he would walk around the battalion, the post exchange, or the mall, with it on his mind. He would pick out some unassuming guy walking the other way (usually a big guy), and he'd lean over to me and say, “See that guy? I wanna fight him just to see where I stand.”

Specialist James Taylor, my radioman, was standing next to me one afternoon when Collins suggested it. “Aw come on, Sergeant Collins . . . do we have to do that shit again?” the radio-telephone operator pleaded.

“Shut yer yap, Taylor,” came the response. “You don't have a choice.”

It became a full-blown company tournament on the lawn outside the battalion headquarters building. Collins couldn't have been more in his element—men were fighting, locked in matches of physical skill and endurance, testing each other's limits. It was an exercise in yelling, spittle, dust, and sweat. Even Collins, who was only refereeing, had a wild look in his eyes. If we had only had chainsaws and a giant fence on which to climb, it would have been like Thunderdome—with Sergeant Collins playing the part of Tina Turner. I could hear
the chanting in my head:
Two men enter, one man leaves! Two men enter, one man leaves!

As the organizer, Collins paired me with 2nd Platoon's leader, Sam Edwards. Sam was the senior platoon leader in the battalion, and he had a reputation for being one of the most competent, yet unassuming officers in the unit. He was married to his college sweetheart and, according to Sam, she was the only reason he'd made it through school. They had a baby girl who was several months old. I personally thought he was a great guy and I still do. However, none of these facts stopped me from trying to choke him nearly unconscious that afternoon in Collins' submission match.

The final call came at six o'clock on a Sunday morning. Shortly after I arrived on post, about 150 of us filed into the Mann Theater on Fort Campbell for our mission briefing. Sitting in the theater and watching a Powerpoint slideshow, I learned that the mission was taking us to a place called Jacobabad in the Indus River Valley of Pakistan. Adjacent to the city was a Pakistani Air Force Base that was being used by a range of U.S. special operations forces, as well as by a handful of secretive U.S. government organizations.

Our mission, as it stood, was to relieve a group of Marines already there, in order to protect the base from terrorist attacks as U.S. forces operated from within. Any follow-on missions or action we might see in Afghanistan, we were told, would come about once we were in country. For now, they said, just secure the airfield.

The disappointment was palpable and could be read on the face of every soldier in the theater—in their slumped shoulders
and their dejected exhalations. Our secret day-dreamy visions of landing on a hostile runway, offloading, and gloriously seizing an airfield were decimated for the time being. It seemed that we were going to fly halfway around the world just to sit around in Pakistan. Nobody wanted to die in a bloody fire-fight, but nobody wanted to spend time guarding an airfield either. It's the soldier's paradox.

I didn't want to leave Nikki, but I still had enough fervor left inside that allowed me to ride the wave of testosterone that permeated the building. Having been resigned to a long separation, I told myself that it would at least be for a good cause. Might as well make the most of it, I had thought.

With that attitude, we lifted off the ground that morning in an air force C-17 and headed into the unknown. We carried only ourselves, our weapons, and our memories—memories of easier, peaceful times with friends and family.

3
 
Jacobabad, Pakistan

Winter 2002

Sergeant Collins is walking awkwardly with his rifle in his left hand—something I think odd until I see his right arm. He has it crooked slightly at the elbow and I can see dark red blood running down his arm and dripping off his hand as he walks. I can't tell if the blood is coming from his arm or his side. He is looking straight ahead as he walks. His face conveys a mixture of fear and confusion, pain and determination—as if he wants to keep moving despite his injury. He then turns and looks me in the eye. “I can't find a medic,” he says
.

That's when I awoke. I looked over at Collins' cot next to mine. He was snoring softly, curled up in the fetal position and still wearing his boots. The blood was only in my head. After four months of wasting away in Pakistan, wrestling weekly with the constant stress of false alarms, the environment was starting to get to me.

Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's were behind us. Then February 2002 had come and gone, leaving us still closer
to Bombay than Kabul. While the special ops guys handled the war in Afghanistan, our days were spent defending the perimeter of a smoggy airfield. The routine was mind-numbing, the boredom nearly unbearable. Most days the guys in my platoon spent eight hours manning bunkers on the edge of the airfield. They were supposed to be on the lookout for any signs of misplaced extremism, but their disenchantment showed through. After a few months each bunker had an infantryman's Sistine Chapel-like quality to it. I'd stick my head in and read the ceilings and walls. “I hate the Army.” “Soldier A is a fudgepacker.” “Soldier B can suck my nuts.” “Elected leader C is a moron and hypocrite.” Often, detailed drawings accompanied the claims.

We spent four months watching it not rain. Planes would land, planes would take off. Other planes would land, other planes would take off. Like all the people back home, we were watching the war play out on TV. I knew we weren't going to Afghanistan. Despite all the buildup, we'd been relegated to an uninteresting support mission—a long, drawn-out anticlimax with a smattering of false alarms.

As events unfolded around me at the beginning of March 2002, I knew something wasn't right. It had started as just a trickle of disconcerting information. But by that afternoon it had become a torrent of bad news. One soldier was reported killed, several wounded. Vehicles were being abandoned, and the Americans were in retreat. As reports streamed from the television, shock began setting in.

At the time, only one American soldier had been killed at the hands of an armed enemy in nearly a decade. To most of the guys in the unit, the idea of someone
really
dying in
combat was still abstract. We had been rocked gently to sleep every night by the thought that we would never be sent into a situation that wasn't peacekeeping, security, or just something totally lopsided. A battle this size hadn't happened since Vietnam.

Operation Anaconda was a legendary battle two days after it started. By the time it ended, it was already gaining an odd sort of mythical status in Army circles. Even though it was a small operation when compared to everything that happened later in Iraq, the mystique of Anaconda has remained.

It had all the elements of a memorable battle, I guess. Elite American units. An enemy willing to stand his ground. Sweeping landscapes. American troops pinned down. Army Rangers refusing to leave a man behind. Massive bombing. Snipers. Mortars. And most of all, payback for September 11.

It sounded great. It was everything I'd ever wanted as a kid.

The operation was named Anaconda because it was designed to put the squeeze on hundreds al Qaeda fighters found massing in the Shah-e-Kot Valley of eastern Afghanistan. Aiming to capture or kill them all in one place, the Army had devised a plan to encircle the valley with elements of the 101st Airborne and 10th Mountain Divisions. Once the terrorists were trapped, friendly Afghan forces and their U.S. Army Special Forces sponsors would attack into the valley, covered by close air support.

I gazed at the TV screen standing next to Sergeant Collins. Things just didn't sound right.
Abandoning vehicles?
After spending several minutes scrutinizing every word out of the mouth of the newscaster, I began to think that if something had gone so terribly wrong, then it wouldn't stand for long.
Surely someone would be sent in quickly to rectify the situation. Suddenly a thought scrolled across the ticker in my brain. This was an
important
thought.
Someone would be sent . . .
.

I hurried with Sergeant Collins to the TOC. Inside it were computer terminals from which we could email. I quickly tapped out letters to Nikki and my parents. I told them that something was happening and to just watch the news. I didn't know anything else.