Merry Christmas from the Taliban

Christmas Firefight…

Although I’ve told this story many times, there is an element of it that I’ve kept to myself because I didn’t think it was socially acceptable, but recently i’ve seen enough papers, articles, and posts to realize that I’m not the only one that has felt this, and so, for the first time the whole story:

December 2005 Afghanistan

Captain Teague, our company commander, had apprehensively gone on leave the two weeks prior, and like most of the men of Bravo company, he was eager to return to Afghanistan.  We were getting into firefights on a weekly or bi-weekly basis, so leaving for three weeks or more meant that you were likely to miss one, and none of us wanted to miss one.  Had we been given the option, i’m sure most of the Bravo men would have deferred on leave to be there with their brothers in combat.  Teague got lucky and nothing happened in the three weeks during his absence, and I think it was the day he got back (or the next day) that we got into the largest firefight of the entire deployment.

Camp Tillman was a small base named after the Arizona Cardinals player killed in Afghanistan.  It sat less than two kilometers from Pakistan right along a major supply route for enemy fighters.  We slept in concrete buildings with one metal door, around 30 guys to a room.  I slept right by the door to be easy to find and so I could get up quickly if need be.  I was deep in REM sleep when the metal door violently swung open and SGT Harvey Lewis yelled, “The base is getting attacked!” as he shimmied past my cot towards his gear in the back of the room. I stood up and pushed the door open to see for myself.  I remember thinking that I didn’t hear the familiar sounds of whooshing rockets or mortars, so his words didn’t make sense.  When I pushed the door open I saw, through the bright moon-lit sky, hundreds of tracers and heard the sharp cracks of AK rounds pinging all around the base.

My heart leapt, and this is the part I’ve never told, I was excited for this fight.  Enemy fighters within our lines, inside the base, this is the kind of shit they make movies out of!  I slipped my feet into my boots, pulled the laces tight and tucked them into the sides.  I threw my plate carrier over my head, grabbed my LCE and helmet, snapped my NODs into place and kicked the door open.  I was the first one out of the hooch wearing only shorts and a brown t-shirt under my gear and I didn’t look back, I knew my guys were coming.  I could hear the distinct sound of an AK firing and I was moving towards it quickly.  Those fuckers had breached our wall and I was about to place some controlled pairs center mass to teach all of them a lesson.

My senses were extremely heightened.  The cold night air filled my lungs, I could feel the snow crunching beneath my feet…movement on my periphery!  I spotted something out of the corner of my right eye (I had a monocular night vision) and spun quickly.  The PEQ-2 infared laser stopped right center mass on the target when I noticed it was a friendly and my thumb lightened pressure on the selector switch leaving the weapon on safe.  I continued rapidly moving to the edge of the building towards the sound of the AK.

I reached the corner and could hear my soldiers pouring out of the door behind me and the AK firing on the other side of the wall.  This was it, I was about to come face-to-face with the invading hoard, the adrenaline was coursing violently through my veins and I let out a sharp breath to steady myself as I spun out around the corner.  My thumb pressed tightly against the selector switch and my trigger finger slipped onto the trigger.  With my left hand I squeezed the pressure switch on my gangster grip turning the infrared laser onto the target, and that’s when I realized it wasn’t an invading hoard.

A single solitary Afghan soldier with his back against the HESCO wall had his eyes closed, his AK over his head, and was holding the trigger firing full auto into the darkness.  That man had no idea how close to death he came at my hands.  In a fraction of a second I recognized he wasn’t the enemy and released the pressure on the selector switch once again.

The enemy never did actually breach our perimeter, despite bringing over three hundred men to attack our small outpost of only 120 men.  What they didn’t take into account is that Camp Tillman, although small in numbers, every one of us was either a paratrooper with the 82nd Airborne or a Green Beret, basically some of the baddest motherfuckers on the planet.  We fought them off for several hours, then bombed them with a predator (when it finally showed up), then chased them down and got into another firefight right on the border.  The fight started the night of December 22nd and basically ended in the late afternoon of the 23rd.  Not one US soldier was killed, and we covered the Afghan mountainside with the blood of our enemies.

I tell this story for two reasons, one, because I just celebrated the 10 year anniversary of that fight, and two, because I want my brothers to know that they are not sociopaths for loving what they did.  There were two types of people on September 11th, there were those that were glad they weren’t on the planes, and those that wished they had been on the plane.  The former don’t understand the latter, and on that cold December night in Afghanistan, I was surrounded by the latter.

Most of us in shorts and t-shirts laying in the snow, surging with adrenaline and excitement as we dealt a serious ass-whooping to the enemy.  It may be difficult for civilians to understand, but I actually enjoyed the firefights.  It was fun, it was a challenge, and ten years later, I remember that night and the fight the next day fondly, as do many of my brothers.  That’s one of the reasons getting out was so difficult.  I now understand why guys like Michael Jordan, or Peyton Manning, or Mike Tyson have such a hard time calling it quits, when you’re doing something you love, it’s hard to walk away.