Victory Point (2 page)

Victory Point
details this amazing chapter of Marine Corps history—a history clouded by incomplete and inaccurate media reports and overshadowed by the special operations tragedies. The drama that unfolded in Afghanistan’s Sawtalo Sar region in the summer of 2005 includes some of the most dramatic events in the history of warfare: the U.S. Marine Corps, undeniably the military organization best suited for this merciless environment, ensnared and ultimately destroyed a tireless and deadly enemy who was quickly rising in power and prominence. In telling this story,
Victory Point
also sheds light on the Marine Corps ethos and their centuries-honed approach to fighting, on the incredible difficulties of waging a war in the Hindu Kush, and on the challenges of working in a “joint” environment, where Marines must rely on assets of other branches of the U.S. military. But most of all, this book chronicles Marines doing what Marines do best: winning the fight, and winning it their way.

The events of Operations
Red Wings
and
Whalers
represent some of the most harrowing in the history of modern warfare, exemplifying the very limits of human endurance, struggle, and the spirit of survival and triumph in one of the world’s most fearsome environments. Despite the importance of these missions in the Global War on Terror, however, details of most aspects of
Red Wings
and
Whalers
remain shrouded in misreporting and rank nonreporting. With the exception of a few citations (most notably an article in the
Marine Corps Gazette
in December 2006), media reports have not even referenced Operation
Red Wings
as a Marine Corps operation, focusing on the tragic opening phase of the mission. Furthermore, virtually no media reports have even cited the name of the operation correctly. Named in honor of the Detroit
Red Wings
hockey team, I have seen and heard “Operation Redwing,” “Operation Red Wing,” and even “Operation Red Dawn” printed, televised, and broadcast. But this error is just the first in a long list of details incorrectly reported or omitted outright, a list that leaves the public record with just a few small brushstrokes of accuracy while the larger canvas remains mostly blank.

Operation
Whalers
(named for the Hartford/New England Whalers), which had the same objective as
Red Wings,
succeeded. But the details of the success went unreported—as well as overlooked by military historians. Another canvas left virtually blank.

Why the glaring oversights? While a number of reasons contribute to the void of accurate information, a lack of on-site reporters ranks at the top of this list. With the exception of a Marine Corps combat correspondent (Sergeant Robert Storm, one of the best), no photojournalists accompanied forces on the ground during
Red Wings
or
Whalers
. Instead, tidbits of information were fed to reporters far in the rear, at Bagram Airfield; these reports consisted of brief summaries—with few specific details. Erroneous, hearsay-inspired “accounts”—published by outlets spanning from blogs to major magazine and newspaper publications—bloomed to feed the public’s hunger for information, creating a whirlwind of distorted facts and some blatant fiction.

I wrote this book in order to chronicle the amazing events in Afghanistan’s Kunar province during the summer of 2005. While I am not, nor have I ever been, in the Marine Corps, I have written
Victory Point
from a Marine perspective. The Marine Corps planned and executed these operations (with the exception of those aspects tasked to the Naval Special Operations Forces personnel for
Red Wings
)
,
and the Marines undertook the execution of them. I have gone to great lengths to gather information about and interview personnel of non-USMC units who proved vital in the support of these missions, including Army and U.S. Air Force aviation units. An amazing amount of effort and bravery went into these operations by non-Marine Corps units, particularly during the search and recovery phase of
Red Wings
as well as the Air Ambulance and close air support provided during Operation
Whalers
.

I would also like to make note on the spelling of Afghan place-names. The same location, cited on five different maps, will often be spelled five different ways. For example, what I cite as the Korangal Valley, other writers and cartographers have referenced as the “Korengal Valley,” “Karangal Valley,” “Kiringal Valley,” and even the “Giringal Valley.” I chose to use spellings listed on recently published maps, published in English, but developed in Afghanistan. I also use both “standard” and metric measurements—each where most appropriate.

I should also give a quick overview of the genesis of my involvement and interest in this project. As a freelance writer/photographer, I sought to chronicle the training at a little-known Marine Corps base in the late winter of 2005, the Mountain Warfare Training Center, near Bridgeport, California. While at the MWTC, I spent time with the Marines of the Second Battalion of the Third Marine Regiment, who were training for deployment in, and would soon be departing for, Afghanistan. One evening after a training exercise at the base, I asked the battalion’s executive officer, Major Rob Scott, and the operations officer, Major Tom Wood, if I could join the battalion in Afghanistan as an embedded writer/photographer. After consulting with the battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel Andy MacMannis, Majors Scott and Wood informed me that I was welcome to come for as long as I wished.

And so, in late September of 2005, I journeyed to Kabul, Afghanistan, and after credentialing as a media embed, was sent to Camp Blessing, in the village of Nangalam in the country’s eastern Kunar province. Over the course of my one-month embed (exceeding my officially allotted time of just ten days by nearly three weeks), I accompanied the Marines on a number of combat operations—inserting by helicopter, convoy, and by foot throughout the area, spending days in the field with Marines moving through all types of mountainous terrain, and listening to the incredibly candid stories of combat in the heights, often at night as we stood watch for Islamic fighters intent on attacking our positions.

The Marines with whom I spent time, from privates to the battalion commanders, provided me with insight not only into Operations
Red Wings
and
Whalers,
but into the incredible Marine Corps ethos. I am one of the very few lucky civilians to have learned about U.S. Marines not through books, movies, magazines, or newspaper articles, but through the only real way to learn about them—as well as about the incredible mountainous landscape in which they accomplished so much: in the field, during combat operations. This education was the toughest in my life, but I would have it no other way. My involvement with the Second Battalion of the Third Marine Regiment has allowed me to recreate these operations with the accuracy that the general public deserves, as well as to create a work the Marines of the battalion can point to as a record of their historic time in Afghanistan.

 

Ed Darack

Pickel Meadow, California

1

 

 

Y
’all mothafuckas better git ya gear on an’ quit
bowl
-shittin’,” Staff Sergeant Lee Crisp roared at his Marines as the rising sun began its daily pummeling of the rocky Afghan mountainscape. “Put y’all’s gear on. Put it on! Put it on
now
!” the six-foot, two-inch, 225-pound platoon sergeant commanded, neck veins distending and sweat pouring from his forehead.

The Marines, members of Third Platoon, Fox Company (Fox-3) of the Second Battalion of the Third Marine Regiment (⅔) gazed solemnly at Crisp; having slept a total of just six hours in the last three days, they held out for every second of shut-eye they could grasp. Six hours of rest . . .
six hours
. . . three days into a foot mobile operation of unknown duration, bound for an undisclosed destination, moving through what they knew to be a cauldron of hardened Islamic extremist fighters.
Surrounding them?
Maybe.
How many?
Unknown. The Marines knew how well the enemy was able to melt into the truculent world through which Fox-3 was now venturing, that they had mastered the region’s steep and treacherous terrain, that the extremists had the advantage of familiarity here. Most importantly, they knew of the bloodshed this very enemy had wreaked against a U.S. Navy special operations team and those attempting to rescue them only weeks before—just a few miles from Fox-3’s current position. And no matter how well the Marines understood their situation, Crisp knew it even better, and seeing his grunts sprawled out on the bare earth, naked to him without their flak jackets and Kevlar helmets, enraged the staff sergeant to no end.

“Mothafuckas—you don’t neva’ know when shit’s gonna happen!” Not even the most brazen of the Marines could feign sleep with Crisp looming over their sapped bodies. Inspired by the staff sergeant’s abrasive motivational eloquence, the grunts pressed their hands into the gritty earth and reemerged into the brutality of the northeastern Afghan summer. “Put y’all’s mothafuckin’ gear on—NOW!”

Crisp’s watch had just ticked past 9:20 A.M. local, on a date none of the Marines would ever forget: 14 August 2005. Before the sweep hand of the imposing staff sergeant’s timepiece could tick through another full minute, Fox-3 would know well the enemy’s vehemence, mastery of the terrain, and brazen war-fighting tactics . . .

 

 

 

By the time the grunts of Fox-3 took their rest under the penetrating glare of the staff sergeant that August morning, ⅔’s Marines had lived, worked, and fought in the mountainous eastern Afghan provinces of Laghman, Nangarhar, and Kunar for over two full months. Before their arrival in-country, they’d trained hard for the rigors of mountain warfare. They’d diligently studied the cultures and customs of the people who eked out their livelihoods on the slopes and shoulders of these hidden peaks. And once in-country, ⅔’s grunts had built and bulked their “Afghan mountain legs” through all types of projects and missions, often keeping on task for eighteen hours per day—for endless days on end. Their toils habituated them to the terrain, the climate, the ways of the locals, and the tactics of the enemy. They were now tougher, harder, and sharper than they ever could be back in the rear, regardless of training. But nothing could have prepared them for the ordeals they now faced. This was as real as it could get; for many, this was beyond real—something they never could have imagined they’d face. “Af-
fuckin’
- ghanistan,” a lance corporal gasped as he rubbed his numb, bloody feet and pressed his body into a fading sliver of shade. “This is as far away from home as any of us can get.”

“And we’re about to go deeper into this shit,” another in his fire team added.

Their training, acclimatization, and acquired knowledge aside, the grunts of Fox-3 that August morning could only describe the merciless swath of land on which they rested as a chunk of a faraway world, smashed onto the opposite side of the planet from their home at idyllic Kaneohe Bay, occupied by people of another time. Ironically, as the Marines pondered not what they knew of this part of Afghanistan, but how little they actually understood it, they not only stood at the bow of history’s unfolding, they were forging that history.

 

 

 

Few locations puzzle and frustrate historians, geographers, war fighters—anyone with an interest in this crossroads of humanity—more than the mysterious tract of the planet we know as Afghanistan. The country’s tortuous border circumscribes a complex aggregation of land best described as raw, austere, even forbidding and deadly. A part of either Central or South Asia (depending which geographer you consult), Afghanistan abuts land—and only land—on every point of the compass, with Iran defining its western border, Pakistan its southern and eastern boundaries, and the countries of Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and even China hemming the landlocked country on its northern reaches.

As with most regions of the globe defined by extremes, understanding Afghanistan’s multifaceted cultures and complex history requires learning about the land beneath the feet of those who created its history. A river striking through an otherwise parched countryside creates an agricultural corridor in which villages develop; a pass bisecting a redoubt of high mountains defines a trade route; and of course, steep, frigid peaks block passage into and out of a province or even an entire neighboring country. While jagged mountains dominate Afghanistan’s landscape, broad stretches of low, windswept desert define its extreme southern reaches, and the fertile plains of the Amu Darya River (formerly known as the Oxus River), Afghanistan’s lowest point at 846 feet above sea level, mark the country’s northern border with Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.

Afghanistan political map

But who can even mention or just think of
Afghanistan
without picturing soaring, seemingly unscalable mountains? More pointedly, who can muse about this region without envisioning that fabled arc of hidden peaks that rules the country’s northeast, a place that has piqued the imaginations of countless would-be explorers and adventurers for centuries—the Hindu Kush? The northwestern extension of what geographers know as the Greater Himalayan Complex, the mountains of the Hindu Kush pierce the crystalline skies above Afghanistan’s northeastern provinces and adjacent borderlands of Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas and Northwest Frontier Province, casting long, dark shadows onto the valleys over which they loom. Thrust miles above sea level through the same geologic processes as their world-famous cousins to the southeast, the Himalaya proper (capped by the 29,035-foot-high Mount Everest), the highest point of the Hindu Kush, the infamous Tirich Mir, lies just ten miles inside Pakistan’s border from Afghanistan. Second in height to the 25,289-foot-high Tirich Mir, the mountain known as Noshaq lies squarely on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, at 24,580-feet Afghanistan’s highest point and the fifty-second loftiest spot of land on the planet. Although Noshaq stands as one of the world’s highest peaks, the snow- and ice-plastered mountain, like most of the Hindu Kush, remains cloaked in obscurity. Climbing expeditions rarely tread Noshaq’s cold slopes because of logistical difficulties in this extremely remote part of the world, not to mention the problems posed by the “leftovers” of years of warfare, most notably, Soviet land mines that pepper the landscape on the approach routes to the peak.