 |
| CPT Kovalsky and me in Helmand 2010 |
 |
| A Co 1-17th INF from left CPT Michael Kovalsky (CO), 1SG Gene Hicks and LT Brian Zangenberger (XO) |
Afghanistan Battle
Shows War Rarely Fought to Plan
NATO, Afghan troops plot their assaults each night but
day brings the messy reality of war
By CHRISTOPHER TORCHIA
The Associated Press
BADULA QULP,
Afghanistan
The
intelligence said a Taliban commander planned to dispatch a suicide bomber
against an American patrol base. But where? Would more than one attacker
strike? What day and time? On foot, or in a vehicle that would pack more
explosives?
The attack
didn't happen as predicted last week in a farming area where Army units are
supporting a U.S. Marine offensive against insurgents in Marjah in southern
Afghanistan.
Could it happen
later? Uncertainty is a certainty of war. As generals over the centuries have
noted, no matter how much soldiers plan and try to impose order on the
battlefield, reality rarely matches.
Over the past
week, men belonging to the 5th Stryker Brigade and Afghan forces have swept
through villages and compounds once held by Taliban fighters, advancing with
painstaking caution to avoid casualties from booby traps and harassing fire.
In the
military's innocuous-sounding jargon, the soldiers have cleared
"objectives" and had "contact," which really means vicious
firefights. They "engaged the enemy" and "possibly
destroyed" snipers. The Taliban rarely leave their dead, if they are, in
fact, dead.
At night, U.S.
and Afghan commanders, with Canadian advisers, pore over maps based on
satellite imagery as they plot the next day's assault. The mission has a start
time and an estimated end. There are questions, comments. It has the feel of a
classroom exercise, removed from the shouting, the diving and hugging of cover,
the cacophony of battlefield bullets and machinery.
It's
intellectual, with nothing of the fear, fury and exhilaration of men firing and
taking fire.
A detachment
from Alpha Company of the 1st Battalion, 17th Infantry Regiment got another
taste of these contradictory currents when they moved through fields,
irrigation ditches and mud-walled homes on Friday.
An Afghan
villager told them the Taliban appeared the previous night with picks and
shovels, possibly to hide homemade bombs and other booby traps. A soldier with
a metal detector checked a wall where dirt had been freshly dug. Unfazed, the
platoon bypassed it, following the point man like a trail of ants to avoid
untested terrain.
All quiet,
except for a barking dog.
"What's up
dog? Want to fight?" a soldier said. Another joked about the suicide
bomber report — the attacker could be anywhere, he said, maybe on the Pakistani
border.
Up ahead, an
American Stryker infantry carrier crossed a cord or string, a classic device
used by insurgents for bombs known as Improvised Explosive Devices, or IEDs. A
vehicle or person yanks the line unsuspectingly, and the hidden bomb detonates.
In this case, nothing happened. Soldiers pulled the cord to see where it led.
And pulled and pulled. Hundreds of meters of it, leading nowhere.
Sometimes, said
1st Sgt. Gene Hicks of Tacoma, Wash., insurgents put down line as a decoy to
lure the Americans into another trap, or just to gauge the soldiers' patterns
of behavior.
"Don't get
blown up, PLEEAASE!!" Capt. Michael Kovalsky of Fords, N.J. said in a text
message to Hicks, who was coordinating the operation from a communications
truck in the front line.
"I won't,"
Hicks wrote. A 20-year military veteran, he's sparing with words.
The next set of
compounds looked like trouble. Civilians, including two women in powder-blue,
all-enveloping burqas, hurried from the looming shootout. Another intelligence
report: Insurgents had concealed an anti-aircraft gun in one of the buildings,
and would either use it on the "dismounts" — soldiers on foot — or on
the vehicles as they rolled closer.
Troops on the
ground tried to get a reconnaissance aircraft to take a look, but they couldn't
immediately get through to the controllers. In the end, a false alarm.
Afghan soldiers
approached, with half a dozen Strykers providing cover on their flank.
Coordination between the two militaries slowed movement.
"There's
not a job in the world that could be so exciting at one moment, so boring the
next," drawled Hicks' fair-haired gunner, Staff Sgt. Van Forbes of
Decatur, Ala. He ate sunflower seeds from a bag. Hicks chewed tobacco, spat
into a plastic bottle.
Inevitably,
gunfire began. Bullets bounced off at least one Stryker. Forbes fired bursts on
his 50-caliber machine gun at a wall where two men in black were spotted. He
wore safety glasses and cursed because his gun wasn't working properly. It was
difficult to pinpoint the shooters.
"I can't
see where it's coming from," Forbes said. The Afghan soldiers fired more
freely, but the Americans couldn't identify their target. Then the Afghans,
their Canadian mentors not far behind, moved into the Americans' line of fire.
"Want to
make sure I'm not lighting up the Canucks," Forbes said.
"Frustrating,"
Hicks said.
More waiting.
But sure enough, gunfire started up as scheduled.
The military
vehicles rolled forward in a field, staying off trails in case IEDs were
planted there. Hicks saw what looked like moist earth, a favored place for
hiding bombs because it's easy to dig up the earth. Insurgents also pour water
to break up the soil.
"See those
two soft areas directly in front of us? Let's not run into those," Hicks
said to his driver, Staff Sgt. Jorge Banuelos of Mission, Texas.
Surveillance
from the air and ground, the high-tech and human kinds, yielded more
circumstantial evidence of Taliban movements. A motorcycle moving in the area.
Two vans heading away. A dark spot on the thermal imaging camera of a Stryker.
Was it a person kneeling? Or maybe a flag blowing in the wind? In the bright
sun, Hicks saw something: Is that an insurgent or a tree branch?
"Now look
across the pasture here at those buildings. ... OK, now we're taking fire. ...
Stand by to suppress those buildings," he said, headphones wrapped around
his helmet, a microphone millimeters from his lips.
A plan and a
schedule was made. At 1309 and 30 seconds, the Strykers would fire intensively
to kill or force the insurgents to pull back. At 1310, Afghan troops would
advance. The guns thudded, and Kovalsky gave the go-ahead to fire a light
anti-tank missile at a building. The soldiers were delighted, as though getting
to play with a new toy.
The missile
made a loud noise, but didn't score a direct impact. Later, soldiers found a
blood trail that suggested an insurgent sniper had been injured or killed. Was
he even a sniper? He had a lot of targets, but didn't hit anyone.
"It could
be just a guy who didn't have a Kalashnikov. It could have been an
Enfield," Forbes said. "It could be a guy with a scoped rifle who
doesn't know how to zero it."
Still,
objective cleared.
Copyright
2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be
published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Copyright ©
2010 ABC News Internet Ventures
No comments:
Post a Comment