Sebastian Junger - War

Rice was sitting down when he got hit and the force of the bullet sent him face-forward down the hill. Moments later he looked up and saw an enemy fighter shoot an RPG at him, which exploded very close and sent shrapnel throughout his body. He kept rolling downhill into some brush and then just lay there trying to figure out what had happened. He put his hand to his stomach and when he took it away it was covered with blood, so he knew he was wounded, but he was far more concerned about his men. He had no idea what had happened to them or whether they were even alive. Vandenberge had been hit in the left arm, and he stumbled off the hilltop away from his gun and into the cover of some rocks. Solowski took cover as well and then circled around the hill and tried to move up the far side. He came face-to-face with an enemy fighter who dropped out of sight off the back side of the hill. The experience left him in such a state of shock, and so pale, that when Raeon saw him a few minutes later he thought Solowski had been hit.

Vandenberge knew he was dying and started calling for a medic even though enemy fighters were only forty or fifty yards away; Cortez and Pemble may well have arrived in time to prevent the enemy from walking down the hill and finishing him off. Rougle probably started running back toward his men when he heard gunfire. His Scouts tried to assault the hill the enemy had just taken because they knew their squad leader was in that area, but the volume of fire was so intense that they were repeatedly pushed back. It’s likely that the enemy simply dropped back off the hilltop once they’d grabbed all the weapons they could carry.

Within an hour or so artillery starts working the far ridgeline where Wildcat thinks they see enemy movement. Kearney lies prone on the hill making marks on his map and calling in artillery strikes along enemy escape routes. He wants helicopters to pick up First Platoon and drop them along the five-nine gridline south of Landigal so that they can block enemy movement into the inaccessible southern end of the valley. Meanwhile, Second Platoon will push down from the north. While Kearney is on the radio Hijar yells that he’s found an enemy blood trail coming off the hilltop. “After we get the KIA out of here I want Gunmetal to search directly to my west,” Kearney shouts to Stichter. “Hijar believes he has a blood trail, it’s likely that where we find this son of a bitch, we’ll find everybody else.”

The Apaches come in and start rocketing the next ridge over and then working it with gun runs. The rounds explode in the treetops with sharp flashes and they come so close together that the detonations sound like one long crackle. The men watch the Apaches do their work and then scrutinize the area through their rifle scopes, looking for enemy fighters trying to flee. Raeon has a suppressed M14 sniper rifle and he sits with his knees up and sweeps it across the ridgelines searching for the men who killed his commander. He is covered in Rougle’s blood from his trouser cuff to his collar as if he rolled in red paint. After a while he puts the rifle down and lights a cigarette.

“He was a good dude, man,” Raeon says. Stichter is kneeling next to him under a pine tree looking west into the draw. His hands are caked in Vandenberge’s blood.

“Sergeant Rougle?”

Raeon nods.

“You want a real cigarette?”

“Yeah.”

Stichter hands him a Marlboro.

“I worry about the rest of the guys,” Raeon says. “Some of them are takin’ it real bad, kind of blamin’ it on themselves because we couldn’t push over the top. But the thing they got to understand is he was dead instantly — there’s just nothin’ you could do right there.”

Raeon lights his cigarette and exhales.

“I go on leave in like two weeks,” he says. “It’s not how I wanted to go, though.”

THAT NIGHT THE MEN SLEEP WITH A HAND GRENADE in one hand and their 9 mil in the other. Instead of one man pulling guard while two men sleep, it’s the other way around, two-and-one. All night long enemy fighters have been observed walking from Yaka Chine to Landigal and then on up the mountain, and Kearney finally requests a bomb drop. The request is denied, and Kearney radios back, ‘The other night we let eight guys get away, and now we have one dead and two wounded. If we don’t drop now, I guarantee more will die.’ Brigade gives permission, and a B-1 comes in and drops a bomb on a house where the fighters have taken shelter. The bomb misses, but Apaches come in to clean up the “squirters” — survivors who are trying to get away.

The next morning everyone wakes up tense and exhausted. Prophet starts picking up radio chatter that the enemy is closing in again, and around midmorning several fighters are spotted moving along a nearby ridge. The entire American line opens up on them: mortars, 240s, LAWs, even First Sergeant Caldwell on his M4. Pemble alone shoots forty grenades out of his 203. The enemy fighters duck over the far side of the ridge and Apaches come in to do gun runs up and down the mountainside trying to catch them as they flee. Radio chatter indicates that fifteen are killed. All day long bombs and 155s crump into the mountainsides and the men sit behind cover on Rougle’s hill waiting for the enemy to come at them again. By midafternoon it’s clear they’re not going to and the men get a little rest and then move out around midnight. Second Platoon works their way down the mountainside toward Landigal on terrain so steep that they take much of it by simply sliding downhill on their asses. Their pants are shredded by the time they get to the bottom.

First Platoon had already returned to the KOP the previous night, and the next day at dusk they head back out with half of Third Platoon. There is intel that the enemy is planning to attack either Phoenix or Restrepo — the bases were left with only a dozen or so American soldiers during the operation — but the valley remains quiet except for the buzz of surveillance drones overhead and the occasional bump and thud of mortars. First Lieutenant Brad Winn leads First Platoon past Phoenix and Aliabad and then across the Korengal River and up a series of terraces to the top of the Gatigal spur. To their north is a pretty little valley with Landigal nestled into it and to their south is the rest of the Korengal — wild, unknown country so thick with fighters that it would take a whole battalion to get in and out of there safely. Winn sets his men up along the Gatigal and overwatches Second Platoon as they clear through the town looking for weapons. Kearney, Caldwell, and the rest of company headquarters are to the north and men at OP Restrepo watch from the west.

Winn and his men spend a long day on the ridgetop overwatching Landigal while Ostlund, a lieutenant colonel from the Afghan National Army, and the governor of Kunar fly in by Black Hawk to talk to the elders. It is the first time that a governor from any government has ever stood in the southern Korengal. One of their primary aims is to recover the weapons that were taken the day before, but the talks don’t progress very far. Around nine o’clock that night, Winn gets word that Second Platoon has moved out of Landigal, and First Platoon gets ready to move out themselves. There’s been radio chatter all day long about an attack on the Americans — one Taliban commander even said, ‘If they’re not leaving by helicopter they’re in trouble’ — but no one pays much attention. Kearney has so many air assets flying around the valley — surveillance drones, two Apaches, a B-1 bomber, and even a Spectre gunship — that an enemy attack would seem to be an act of suicide.

The soldiers walk single file along the crest of the spur spaced ten or fifteen yards apart. The terrain falls off steeply on both sides into holly forests and shale scree. The moon is so bright that they’re not even using night vision gear. Unknown to Winn and his men, three enemy fighters are arrayed across the crest of the ridge below them, waiting with AK-47s. Parallel to the trail are ten more fighters with belt-fed machine guns and RPGs. In the U.S. military, this is known as an “L-shaped ambush.” Correctly done, a handful of men can wipe out an entire platoon. Walking point is Sergeant Josh Brennan, an alpha team leader. He’s followed by a SAW gunner named Eckrode and then Staff Sergeant Erick Gallardo and then Specialist Sal Giunta, bravo team leader. Giunta is from Iowa and joined the Army after hearing a radio commercial while working at a Subway sandwich shop in his hometown.