ts no fun getting mortared. Its no fun getting RPGed
Its no fun getting rocketed.
All of the above has happened to me since I been in Afghanistan. So I'm used to it but usually I'm in an armored Humvee. But its especially NOT fun when you're filling sandbags with no body armor and your weapon is 20 feet away from you.
Hey gang how have you all been. I'M VERY FINE!!!! Sorry I haven't written lately but that's because of 2 reasons:
1) Didn't like that people seem more interested in the "excitement" I had been going through then discuss what I felt was FAR MORE important but the direction of the country and who will be the next President. Sorry, the guy we pick next year will have more impact on me here and you then any thing I do here in Afghanistan. Its a fact. Hell I had one person tell me they are not voting!! I'm like so why the hell am I here fighting!?? So it kinda disheartened me. But several of you really wanted to know what's up so I said what the heck. And started again.
2) I didn't want to bore you with some of the mundane stuff we been doing here. My team needed some critical equipment that we didn't have so I was farmed out to another team for a while. Then was sent to training for over a week. So I been pretty much doing low key stuff. Didn't think you want to hear about going to the main base in our area to pick up mail LOL.
(This is a LOONG email cause a lot happened so bare with me. If you're bored and just want to hear about my firefight. first fuck you you heartless scum <lol> and second scroll down to the paragraph that starts "It was myself")
But A few weeks ago my team got our equipment and personale so we were finally set.
First let me tell you about the leadership of my team. We have the best guys. Personally I think my team is the best of all of them in our FOB and the main reason our the leaders in my team.
We have the Captain. Dude is real kewl. Professional and under command when the time calls for it, but he can shoot the shit and be cool with his men. And a soldier's soldier. The type of leader you would follow through the gates of hell. We all respect him. The cat has a swagger and confidence about him that's infectious. You feel by serving with him you feel as confident as he is.And I can easily say the BEST commander I have ever have the privilege to serve under. Type of man that if my mom met him. She sleep very easy at night.
Then there is the NCOIC (Non-Commission Officer In Charge). One of the best Sgt I ever had period. He treat us all with respect. LOVE TO train the men. About as squared away a soldier you would ever want to know. He's gone to so many Army schools I bet he forgot to count! The dude JUMPED into Iraq AND was in Black Hawk Down..No, not the movie...HE was LITERALLY at Black Hawk DOWN in Somalia! Been to combat numerous times has a star on his CIB (Combat Infantry Badge). I lucked out BIG TIME having him on our team. Plus he and the Capt compliment each other perfectly, probably because they are also best friends. This is not the first time they served together.
My Lieutenant Who is also my Truck Commander. Great kid. Very knowledgeable. EXTREMELY confident a natural leader. (Get to more of that later)
The rest of my team is comprised of guys from my Company, A sgt from another regiment and a couple of other people who's job's are classified.
As you know our mission is to help build up the Afghan police force. We do this by going into the local districts, assessing what the community needs, providing it if possible and help bring stability to the area.
It really is a great but tough mission cause if we can brining stability to more and more areas, the people will have more faith in the Afghan Govt and less faith in the Taliban who ARE getting stronger.
The growth of the Taliban is not due to the lack of effort by the US military here. Hell no!! You would be stunned by what we are able to do with the LIMITED resources we have. If we had additional man power and equipment. We could knock this right out the park. But we don't. fact is the manpower we need is involved in another conflict and its affecting our mission here. That's not my opinion THATS A FACT!
By right this war should be over. We had the Taliban on the run and was about to eradicate them from the face of the earth. When a certain President thought invading a country that HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH 9/11 was more important then finishing the job in Afghanistan who had EVERYTHING TO DO WITH 9/11!!!! But hey I guess he getting the guy who tried to pop a cap in his daddy was a bigger priority then ensuring the safety of the nation.
Make no mistake, if we fail in Afghanistan, America is in DANGER! Me and the Prez don't agree on almost anything but we do agree that if another 9/11 happens it will be planned and launched from here. But this war can be won. Majority of the nation wants peace, problem is they don't care from who. Be it US or be it the Taliban. As long as they get peace. And part of achieving that peace is setting up a national police force that the people can believe in. That's where we come in.
Now in my FOB's AO (Area of Operation) we have multiple districts. BUT not enough team's to man those districts. At the district that we have teams set up. Stability is occurring and the people are starting to have faith in them. At the districts you don't have teams, many of them the Taliban run and the people support the Taliban.
My district happens to be one of them. In fact when they told me where I was going, they said the nick name for the place was "The Wild West".
I got my first taste of the district when I was attached to another team and we had to respond to my team getting HIT at that district!!! (My email about my day off). SO you cats already know in my district the Taliban doesn't play.
In fact the place is so bad that they never attempted to place a US Team into that area. They actually created our team specifically for that area. Which might explain why I have the top notch leadership we have.
Like I said in previous emails I wont give you names or some of details about what we do cause of Operation Security. My email is not secure and the enemy can intercept it. So I keep the names and equipment we use vague.
Well, after weeks of waiting for critical equipment we got it and we started prepping for our first mission as a complete team into the district. After the Capt, the Sgt and the LT were attacked that day, and getting more intelligence about the area. The Capt decided that if he was going to insert his team into the District Center (Police station) he needed more resources. He requested assets from the 101 Division, assets from the Afghan Army, assets from where ever. Most of it was denied. Seems like nobody wants to roll into our district.
But the captain persisted and he was finally able to get the ONE thing he definitely needed. That was a Route Clearance Package. (RCP) In short RCP check's the road for IED's.
The Taliban it seems make sure's that just about every road that leads to our district is IED, and the captain wasn't about to roll his team into that location without it. But you don't just get RCP when you want. So it meant that when we inserted into our district, unlike other teams that go to their districts a day maybe 2 at most. We had to stay there for 10 days. To be honest since it was an initial assessment we were going to stay their a few days any way. But if it was another district we could have gone for 10 days straight an go back to our FOB. But the risk of getting IED is to high so instead we do for 10 days straight.
On the day we left the capt does a brief pep talk, talks about how well we meshed when we were attacked the first time and we hardly knew each other, now that we worked together for awhile. He knew we be even better. Then he said if any of us wanted to pray now was the time. Now the Capt is not a religious man so for him to say that had me go "damn, this joint is that bad. After that we "popped smoke" and we rolled to our district
Since we didn't get the addition afire power we wanted we were able to get a few assets from the Afghan police force. Afghan PD to be honest isn't all that, but hey you take what you can get.
Now what's weird about our district is its actually not that far from our FOB but due to the danger getting there it might as well be a thousand miles away. It took us awhile to get there, the roads their are all dirt roads, and the RCP checked out everything they felt was suspicious. Plus a couple of "Jingle trucks" we took that was loaded with equipment broke down so that didn't help matters, but we got there.
The District Center (DC),to be kind,was a DUMP. Sanitary conditions where non-existent. The police that were there were a joke. We had no sleeping quarters and our toilets were literally two holes in the ground. Bugs every were, and a mangy dog that had a growth on his head. We affectionate called the dog "Tumor" cause that's what that growth looked like.
The Give you an idea of the DC, its in a Kalat. Kalats are all over Afghanistan, they look like small forts. They have high walls made out of mud. In the Kalat they have a courtyard surrounded by small buildings.
As soon as we arrived we immediately set up our defensive positions or Observation Posts....We off loaded are weapons that were mounted on our Humvees. My weapon (Not the SAW. my SAW can kick ass but the weapon I gun on in my truck crew can do damage to the umpteenth degree) was placed in the biggest OP area cause it was a high casualty producing weapon and the area was the largest and most likely susceptible for attack. My op was the huge landscape that had Kalats and a tree line on the one side. Hugh farm land with trenches mixed in front of me and some ruins and farmland that shepherds used to graze sheep. Most of the traffic came from pedestrians, who came around the DC to use a small dirt road that led to the far side of the farm land which's led to another Kalat that was probably a good 1500-2000 meters away from the DC. We also got bicyclists and motor cycles. Once in a blue moon you would see in the distance cars that took the dirt road that was on the far end of the farm land and maybe the car would peel off and go into the series of Kalats that were on the other side. It was a huge area, but we could handle it.
After setting up camp and setting up the schedule for manning the OPs for security watch, we started filling sand bags to re enforce our OPs since they were all elevated on top of the small buildings. The Ops were at most about 2 floors above the ground outside. (Kalats have no roofs). The only area we could dig at was grassless area near our camp which was in the only shaded area in the Kalat which was a smaller section of the courtyard that had trees in it.
Digging sandbags is hard work especially in the blazing Afghan sun. We drank tons of water and Gatorade. After filling about 20 bags we started dealing with an incredible smell. So we switch to another spot and after awhile we started dealing with the same incredible smell. We then discovered that the whole dirt portion of the Kalat was saturated with human waste that was spill over from the crap holes that were located at the far end of the compound! Oh joy! So we were literally living in a shithole. We stopped for that day.
For the next couple days we went about our business assessing the district. You could tell already these people needed alot. but you also notice that they were not like other people we have met in Afghanistan. The kids weren't as friendly and the community gave us a lot of dirty looks on our Ops. But hey its kewl, we knew that coming in. We tried to get some love by giving away the pens and pencils many of you have donated (THANK YOU!). You should see the kids faces light up when we threw them pens from the OP's. I mean these kids REALLY loved pens!! That was the number one thing they asked for. Something I plan on telling my daughter the next time she asked for some high speed expensive video game!
LOL
The Capt had a sit down with the local leaders. After the meeting I asked the Sgt how the meeting went. He said "This is a very pro-Taliban district".
About the 6th day there it was time for resupply and we had choppers coming in. We set up our security and the choppers came in without any problems. Later on we found out that the Taliban was going to attack us if a 3rd chopper had arrived, but to be honest we figured the taliban was gonna hit us when they so the 2nd chopper. One thing about choppers, when you start landing choppers its pretty mush an eff you to the Takliban. It was us telling them. We own this DC and we are here to stay. Choppers is like us going into your house uninvited and kicking up our feet on your coffee table.
During one of my shifts on it started like all other days. Quiet nothing really unusual except we saw a station wagon pull of the road and goin to the kalat area (Which was 300-500 meters from the DC), it was unusual but we had seen it a couple times but I reported it to the captain anyway. And in the Dc a guy started ranting and causing a commotion. He was arrested and taken back to our FOB. I found out that the guy was screaming about hating America and that he didn't want us here. Again nothing really crazy, I mean hey we were in the heart of Taliban country, what did you expect to hear? People talking about their love of George Bush??
At the end of my shift the Sgt told us who had just came off shift that we had to fill sandbags for our OP's. No biggie, since now the dirt we were gonna use was stuff some construction workers with bulldozers had left on the roofs after they fortified the outer walls of the DC with huge HESCO barriers (HESCO are the huge containers filled with dirt, they are their to protect the DC from Car bombs and RPGs).
When we Newton work on the OP we stripped down from our body armor and left our weapons at the base camp or in my case my weapon was about 20 feel away from me since the OP we were working on was mine. The sand bags we were filling was to set up a second Battle position on the OP.
It was myself, LT, SGT and the two other guys who were on the same shift as I. We was about to take a break when:
SHWISHHH!!!!!!!
We all knew what that sound was. It was an RPG and it was heading right for us.
It was like out of a movie the 5 of us scrambling on this roof with an RPG heading our way. The LT screams at us to get down which we all did. The RPG sailed 10 feet over our heads. The 3 other guys bailed off the OP and ran to their battle positions. (Which was what they were supposed to do) I stayed at mine and ran to the fortified position of the original position. The LT and the SGT stayed with me.. I went to the OPs weapon and tried to lock and load. The only problem is...it wouldn't.
The weapon system I man is VERY powerful and can do some serious damage. The only problem is its extremely sensitive. ANY little dirt can fuck it up. Now what's crazy about today was I had Just cleaned the damn thing after I ended my shift and just before we started filling sand bags. But the OP like the rest of the DC is mostly dirt and the wind blows that shit all over and into to weapon. I tried my damndess to get that weapon loaded but couldn't. My sgt told me to step aside and he tried the same. In fact when he pulled the charging handle back he literally pulled the weapon off the fortified position we had set up with the sand bag. So the weapon was down. We tried to get it on;line but between the jam, the fact it was off the bags and oh yeah people shooting at us. It was out of action.
But we still had major fire power. The afghans had their version of a 50 cal which they had set up on a school that was literally next to the DC. They also sent up police Armed with RPG s and AK-47s and they were returning fire like a MOFO.
While struggling to get the weapon online, I looked at my hands. I thought I be shaking like a leaf. But they were steady. My heart was racing, I was scared. But I was calm. I didn't want to run away. I was focused. I could think. I knew were I was. I knew what was going on. Even with all that madness going on around me. I was able to function. I could still do my job. Just knowing that gave me confidence.
My biggest fear was freezing in combat. This was my 3rd firefight. My first one outside of the humvee. Our weapon system was down. But I wasn't panicking. I was in control.
It was at this time my SGt tells me to go grab my gear (Body armor). I get up and run to the ladder that leads down to the ground floor. I can hear the rounds going off all around me. AK-47 has a different sound outside then it does when you are in an armored humvee. The number one difference is THE FUCKING THING IS SCARY!
So I run to our base camp throw on my shit and run right back up to the OP. At this time my LT had gotten his gear and the 3 of us were trying to get the weapon back online. But no luck. The jam was serious and in our position we didn't have the time to be messing round with that damn thing. We were getting more RPG's and small arms fire.
My LT start using his 203 grannies launcher and lobs a few rounds down by the tree line which is were the RPG came from. I grab my SAW and crawl my way to the edge of the defensive position. Set up and pulled the trigger.
Sand. Can mess up any weapon system with the exception of the AK-47. Our battle position was covered in dirt and sand. The wind blows that crap into our weapons. Now the guys on the OP's when theya re done with their shift can take their long arms (M-4 Rifles with them. Since I carry a SAW (Machine gun) it was left at the battle position as a back up just in case the main weapon went down. So there was a good chance the SAW might jam to.
But not this time and not this day. I know the SAW. I'm an expert firing it. Its a weapon that designed to shoot dirty. And finally. I cleaned the damn thing earlier in the morning. SO when I pulled the trigger, my baby sang her tune.
RAT A TAT TAT TAT TAT TAT TAT!!!!!!!
You could see the tracers going down range! I'm pulling the trigger doing my 5-7 round burst like I was trained. the links ejecting from my baby were burning my arm as they cascading down from the ejection port. My baby and I were throwing down some 5.56 Justice!!!
My rounds were lighting up the tree line. I wasn't seeing targets but that's fine. SAW is a suppression weapon. Its main purpose is to keep enemy heads down. When you hear that distinct sound and see that 5.56 tracer ammo bouncing off of objects. If your the enemy you hit the dirt. or you get a piece of hot lead up your ass.
There we were responding in kind to the attack. Lighting up than tree line like it was the 4th of July. The LT was barking orders while communicating with the Capt who was arraigning for artillery to blow the living shitout of that tree line. My Sgt, goes down to camp grabs his gear and grabs the sniper rifle. When he returns he tells the LT that he want to take me to the other battle position since the main one was cramped with us, our Interpreter and the Afghan police. Who LOVE to fight!! So when they hear shooting the cats come out of the wood work carrying AK 47s, RPKs and RPGs...Hey they may not be good at law and order but when they see a fight they want in.
It was right around this time when the first artillery shell hit!. DEAD ON! Lt tells the capt on the radio to fire for affect. All that mean sis. Your on target. Bring the pain.
The Sgt asks again for us to go to the other battle position. the LT agrees. He wants us to look for squirters (people running from the artillery strike) but tells us to wait for the artty rounds to hit so we can have cover. We wait at few moments and then
BOOOOM!!!
That round hits! Kicks up dirt and debrie all over. Sgt tells me "GO!!". With rounds going off alla round us, he and I sprint to the battle position. While I was running I'm step in a hole and almost broke my ankle. it hurt but bullets hurt more so I kept moving.
When we get to the position we lay against the sand bags and catch our breathe. Bullets are still flying over head. And Chaos of battle is in full order, when the Sgt looks at me, smiles and says "Monsanto, do you think its time for a cigarette?". I smile and laugh. The joke, calmness and confidence just makes you feel better.
After he lite up his cig we turned around and engaged the enemy. He with his sniper rifle and I with my SAW who was putting down rounds like it was nobody's business.
Then one of the Afghan cops runs up to our location. His name was Duce and he was wearing a black T-shirt of some fraternity law club. (I doubt he made the law review). He was also carrying an RPG.
When Duce arrives he says hi. Puts the RPG on his shoulder and before Sgt and I could move he fires that damn thing.
The RPG when launched makes the HUGE explosion sound and has a tremendous back blast. The good news is I could hear the enemy shooting anymore. The bad news was I couldn't hear anything any more.
MY ears where ringing and I could feel the heat of the rocket as it took off. His rocket landed dead into the tree line. Nice shot.
Sgt and I looked at each other like "What the fuck is this cat doing". Duce looks down at us grinning like a pimp at the Republican National Convention. Sgt and I keep firing back into the wood line. When Duce comes back up..STANDING mind you, with AK rounds flying at him. Takes another shot with the RPG. I tried to move my legs but it didn't help. This time the boom wasn't that bad, Since I could hear anyway, but the exhaust from the rocket, I swear burnt my pants.
So between the 3 of us and the rest of the guys at OP 1 we were tearing that tree line apart.
I don't know if I hit anybody. To be honest I don't want to know. But what I do know is after the artillery rounds and the SGT and I laying lead down with Duce's Rockets The attack stopped.
I was drenched in sweat and tired. I must have fired close to 200 rounds cause my SAW box ( were my rounds are attached to the SAW) was almost empty. We stayed at our positions until the capt gave us the all clear. My hearing slowly came back but I could still hearing ringing in my ears. don't know how long the fight lasted probably somewhere between 30 mins-1 hour. But we had no casualties. ( we found out later we had one confirmed kill, cause during the he battle someone saw 2 Taliban carry a guy into the ruins that we found out later was were they buried him).
The next day, we continued our mission and that meant rolling out to the local health clinic to assess what they need. We also gave them clothes and shoes, that people donated (THANK YOU ONCE AGAIN) (We must have pissed of the Taliban cause when we got back intelligence told us that if we had stayed 15 min longer they were going to ATTACK the clinic.) We then went to school which was next door to the DC and gave away pens, pencils, notebooks, cookies and clothes. You would think we were giving away free copies of Grand Theft Auto IV the way those kids reacted as we gave away the pens. It was really kewl. And made me feel good about what we were doing there.
Later in the day we needed another resupply (More bullets) and another chopper came. While I was in my truck gunning my weapon pulling security, I was thinking to myself "Damn! I know they must be pissed now. We kicked their as yesterday,rolled out gave out some love and now we are landing choppers in the heart of their turf! Oh well sucks to be them"
On the 8th day we found out the leaders of the Dc were going to slaughter 2 lambs and cooks us a meal. A welcomed relief since all we at for most of the week was snacks and MRE's. While I had my apprehension about eating their food, especially since I saw what they consider sanitary conditions. Fresh home cook meal might be something I was kewl with. But at this point I didn't care. I hadn't had a shower in over 10 days.I was sleeping in a tent with 2 other Joes and I had the 2-4am Shift. I felt grimy and was tired of eating imitation pork ribs MREs. And Oh yeah we heard the Taliban was having a meeting. Planning something against us.
So the last thing on my mind was getting the runs. We were 2 days away from going home and to a bed.
Fighting the good fight,
Spanner Jaxs
