Helo Halo

Luminous halos twirled above a Boeing CH-47 Chinook on a recent night around 11:30 p.m. local time at Forward Operating Base Jackson in Sangin, Helmand Province, Afghanistan, as helicopters ferried casualties and supplies in and out of the base. The photographer was independent journalist Michael Yon, a former U.S. Army Special Forces soldier who has covered Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Philippines with a camera. Helicopter pilots don’t have a name for the effect, but one explained to Yon, “Basically it is a result of static electricity created by friction as…dissimilar material strike against each other. In this case, titanium/nickel blades moving through the air and dust.” Yon says, however, that a researcher studying helicopter brownout emailed him to say that scientists are not 100 percent sure what causes the effect. Depending on the viewing angle, it creates dazzling little galaxies. An even longer exposure reveals stars and another aircraft marked by a string of lights at upper left of center; Yon suspects this aircraft was a Predator or Reaper UAV, which, unlike manned military aircraft, fly with their lights on in the Afghan night to avoid collisions. Yon, who made these shots with a Canon 5D Mark II with a 50 mm lens at an ISO of 800, claims that the night was far darker than his sensitive camera conveys, as evidenced by the green chemlights on the ground to guide the pilots. He was moved to create a name, the Kopp-Etchells Effect, for the rotor phenomenon to honor a pair of fallen soldiers, U.S. Army Corporal Benjamin Kopp and British Army Corporal Joseph Etchells, who died one day apart in July after fierce fighting in Helmand (Kopp had been evacuated to the U.S. before he died). “The tent in the foreground is a medical tent,” says Yon, “so that casualties can be kept in a tent until the last minute. A substantial number of British casualties in Helmand have been lifted off of this exact spot…because this is probably either the most dangerous place in Afghanistan, or nearly the most dangerous.”

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Olaf in Combat.

03 November 2009

British soldiers at war are an incredible group.  Courageous, competent, and committed in very difficult conditions.  An email came today from London, from a BBC correspondent who has been to Afghanistan saying that Staff Sergeant Olaf Schmid had been killed.

To see the article in the BBC was deeply saddening: Soldier Killed While Defusing 65th Bomb.

On a side note, the British soldiers are conservative.  Though this is not very important, it’s difficult to imagine that Olaf had only destroyed 64 bombs before being killed.  Just on this single mission, during which all these photos were taken, and during the surrounding few days, his crew must have destroyed several dozen bombs.  You had to be there.  By the time the mission in these photos happened, the crew was very experienced.

Courage is as common as boots among these soldiers, but Olaf stood out even in that company.  You could tell that Olaf knew his business from mean experience, and that he was ready for battle.  His mind was very quick.

His crew was competent and confident, and worked faster to clear bombs than any I had seen.  If not, the soldiers could never have completed this mission, because there simply were too many bombs.  They say all beekeepers get stung, but these are not bees.  These soldiers were facing an extraordinary number of bombs and booby-traps that are designed to kill the team.

According to the Oxford Mail:

During the course of his tour, he attended 41 tasks, rendered safe 64 IEDs and attended 11 finds of bomb-making equipment.

The married father-of-one lived with his family in Winchester. His wife Christina said: “Oz was a phenomenal husband and loving father who was cruelly murdered on his last day of a relentless five-month tour.”

Olaf was lost on his last mission.  The enemy are blowing up civilians everywhere, and taking a toll on our folks.

According to the BBC:

Lieutenant Colonel Robert Thomson, commanding officer of 2 Rifles Battle Group, said: “Staff Sgt Oz Schmid was simply the bravest and most courageous man I have ever met.”

“No matter how difficult or lethal the task which lay in front of us, he was the man who only saw solutions.”

“He saved lives in 2 Rifles time after time and for that he will retain a very special place in every heart of every rifleman in our extraordinary battle group.”

According to the Oxford Mail,

Lt Col Robert Thomson, the commanding officer of the 2 Rifles Battle Group, said: “Staff Sgt Oz Schmid was simply the bravest and most courageous man I have ever met.”

“Under relentless IED and small arms attacks, he stood taller than the tallest. He opened the Pharmacy Road and 24 hours later, found 31 IEDs in one go on route Sparta. Every single company in 2 Rifles adored working with him.”

They really did.  Everybody liked to see not just Olaf, but his entire great team.  The mission succeeded that day.  For more about the lives, and missions of these excellent soldiers, please read Bad Medicine.

Please give the gift of independent reporting. Your gift goes far and is used for transport, lodging, living expenses, satellite communications and for repairing and replacing gear that fails due to the rigors of the battlefields.  Millions of people, in more than a hundred countries, see these photos and words.  Your generosity goes very far, and is greatly appreciated.

Sangin, Afghanistan

Published: 08 October 2009

“In April this year it became 2 Rifles’ dubious fortune to be sent to Sangin on a six-month tour. By mid-August their battle group, a composite force from various units built around a core of several hundred riflemen and fusiliers, had the worst casualties of any British brigade sent to Helmand, with just over 100 soldiers killed or wounded: a fifth of their total patrol troops. The trend suggested that by the time the battle group’s tour ends this month as many as one in four of these infantrymen will have been slain or injured, a figure that compares with British infantry casualty ratios in Europe during the later stages of the Second World War.” -Anthony Lloyd

Anthony Lloyd, the famed British war correspondent and author has seen much in war.  Years ago, when I read his book My War Gone By, I Miss It So, the idea of taking up the pen and going to war had never been in the question.  After reading Anthony’s book it was definitely out of the question.  War correspondence is a horrible profession.  Taking inventory of battlefields, psyches and body parts is an inevitable, recurring theme.  The horrors are too many to remember or attempt to recount, if there were desire.  And there was Anthony, one of the most experienced war correspondents, and he was going to the same British unit that I was embedded with.  Though Anthony’s journey with British 2 Rifles partially coincided with my own, mostly we were at different bases.  From FOB Inkerman or during missions in the area, I could sometimes hear the fighting over at “his” base on FOB Jackson because, for instance, soldiers at Inkerman would fire the Howitzers in support of combat taking place around Jackson.  Or bombs would drop and noises carry, or sometimes the Apaches would be churning up the enemy with rockets and 30mm cannons.  Modern combat can be loud.

As years roll by and more soldiers have done two, three, four or even five long tours, writing about war has changed.  In the early years most of the soldiers and correspondents were green to war and were on equal footing, but these days only a handful of correspondents remain who keep going back and their numbers are diminishing, while the concentration of highly experienced soldiers is increasing.  The increasing and probably irreversible imbalance means that fewer correspondents will share common experiences with current veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, and very few writers will possess the experience to render so fundamentally accurately what Anthony Lloyd captures in this story from war.

The war is intensifying month by month while support for this mission plummets. Your help is crucial to my staying in the war. 2010 will almost certainly prove to be the bloodiest even as coverage dries up. More troops are coming in. The fighting for those who are here is already as tough as any seen in Iraq. Do you trust the Government to tell the truth? Please donate today.

July 2009, Sangin, Afghanistan.

05 October 2009

In July, British soldiers and I boarded a CH-47 helicopter at Camp Bastion for the flight to FOB Jackson at Sangin where fighting is brutal.  The helicopter was so stuffed with men, gear and supplies that the cargo was not even strapped down.  We steadied the long stack with our hands and prayed that the pilots not begin flying violent evasive maneuvers.  The tail gunner partially lifted the ramp to prevent bundles from tumbling into the skies, and that was it for securing the bundles.  Just a week before, a giant MI-26 helicopter was shot down on final approach to this same landing zone.  All aboard died in flames, as did two children on the ground.

This is, interestingly, the same landing zone where I would make the photos for “The Kopp-Etchells Effect” dispatch, which was published in many languages around the world.  Many readers have weighed in with ideas about the causes of the glow.  Some say the cause is St Elmo’s fire or the triboelectric effect, or perhaps the piezoelectric effect.  The actual cause does not seem to be surely known, according to J. Gordon Leishman, D.Sc.(Eng.), Ph.D., F.R.Ae.S., Minta Martin Professor of Engineering, Department of Aerospace Engineering at the University of Maryland.  I don’t know.  Maybe it’s caused by angels.  It definitely is beautiful.

We landed and British Soldiers from “2 Rifles” swarmed in to help unload cargo.  Since I made this photo, at least two British CH-47s have been lost in combat operations, one of which was just north of here.

We need more gear and more forces now.  We can outfight these enemies and we can win the war, but at this rate a favorable outcome is difficult to imagine.  This war shows signs that it will become more intense than Iraq at its peak.  As with my twelve dispatches from 2006 warning that we were losing this war, the warnings over the past couple of years seem to be falling on incredulous ears.  We will lose the war unless we get more troops and more gear soon.

This weekend we lost eight more soldiers in a firefight.  I learned about it while they were still fighting, but did not report it until just before the media broke the story the next day.  Still unreported, to my knowledge, sources tell me that FOB Keating was destroyed and that troops were under siege for up to 24 hours before Air Force Para-rescue got them out.  (Subject to confirmation.)  The fighting will only intensify.  We can beat these guys, but not under current conditions.

The last two missions I did with British 2 Rifles ended in firefights.  Due to bandwidth difficulties, only a small part of the video was uploaded.  Those two firefights were melded into one short video.  These are just typical hum-drum day-in day-out missions, nothing like what happened this weekend in Nuristan.

Please click Firefights.

The war is intensifying month by month while support for this mission plummets. Your help is crucial to my staying in the war. 2010 will almost certainly prove to be the bloodiest even as coverage dries up. More troops are coming in. The fighting for those who are here is already as tough as any seen in Iraq. Do you trust the Government to tell the truth? Please donate today.

31 August 2009
Helmand Province, Afghanistan

The historical Afghan elections scheduled for 20 August were days away. While the west mostly continued to vote for Afghanistan, the big question was, “Will Afghanistan vote for itself?”

The latest media wave splashed into the main voting centers in places like Kabul, Kandahar, Jalalabad, Herat and Lashkar Gah. The larger cities only account for perhaps 20% of the Afghan population. Whereas the easy and obvious stories are in the cities, a crucial and larger dimension—the other 80%—would unfold in the boonies. Most Afghans would have no chance to vote.

The election was to be run by Afghans. In theory and in practice this would be a recipe for disaster. The strategic thinkers cannot be faulted for this; after nearly eight years of war, if the west were still running the elections, the elections and government would be a failure to begin with. By comparison, the Iraqi elections on 30 January 2005 (less than two years after invasion) were run mostly by Iraqis. In the voting of October and December of that same year, Iraqis had two more runs at the ballots, which were increasingly successful. Afghanistan, however, is different. This would be only the second election in history.

There are no good choices here. Either we run the elections and the central government and in doing so undermine the same central government we are investing in, or we allow that central government to run the elections and probably watch it undermine itself. But who knows?

We need more troops. The leadership tells us that the Taliban and associated groups control only small parts of the country. Yet enemy influence is growing, and so far, despite that we have made progress on some fronts, our own influence is diminishing. For example, an excellent British infantry unit that I embedded with in Iraq and now Afghanistan, the “2 Rifles,” is staked out in the “Green Zone” around the Helmand River. HQ for 2 Rifles is at FOB Jackson near the center of the map above. There are several satellite FOBs and Patrol Bases, each of which is essentially cut off from the outside world other than by helicopter or major ground resupply efforts (which only take place about once a month). The latest ground resupply effort from Camp Bastion resulted in much fighting. The troops up at Kajaki Dam are surrounded by the enemy, which has dug itself into actual “FLETs.” FLET is military-speak for “Forward Line of Enemy Troops.” In other words, the enemy is not hiding, but they are in trenches, bunkers and fighting positions that extend into depth. The enemy owns the terrain.

The British are protecting Kajaki Dam but otherwise it’s just a big fight and no progress is being made. The turbine delivery to the dam, which I wrote about last year, was a tremendous success. Efforts to get the turbine online have been an equally tremendous failure. Bottom line: the project to restore the electrical capacity from Kajaki Dam is failing and likely will require multi-national intervention to bring it online and to push back the enemy.

We need more helicopters. Enemy control of the terrain is so complete in the area between Sangin and Kajaki that when my embed was to switch from FOB Jackson to FOB Inkerman—only seven kilometers (about four miles) away—we could not walk or drive from Jackson to Inkerman. Routes are deemed too dangerous. Helicopter lift was required. The helicopter shortage is causing crippling delays in troop movements. It’s common to see a soldier waiting ten days for a simple flight. When my embed was to move the four miles from Jackson to Inkerman, a scheduled helicopter picked me up at Jackson and flew probably eighty miles to places like Lashkar Gah, and finally set down at Camp Bastion. The helicopter journey from Jackson began on 12 August and ended at Inkerman on the 17th. About five days was spent—along with many thousands of dollars in helicopter time—to travel four miles. Even Generals can have difficulty scheduling flights. Interestingly, when I talk with the folks who reserve helicopter space, they say the Generals are generally easy-going about the lack of a seat, but that Colonels often become irate.

A helicopter finally was heading from Camp Bastion to FOB Inkerman, which is cut off from its own headquarters at FOB Jackson only four miles away. The war and fighting can vary dramatically around Afghanistan. In Sangin, the enemy uses mostly fertilizer bombs, which, along with normal leave schedules, has rapidly attrited the battalion to the point that replacements have been sent. Conversely, four miles away at Inkerman, it’s still mostly a gunfight, though the use of bombs is increasing. Inkerman sits on the desert side of “highway” 611 that goes from Highway 1 (the “Ring Road”) to Kajaki. The 611 marks the border between the deadly Green Zone and the desert. The road is almost completely controlled by the enemy. Only tiny patches of the 611 are under serious NATO/ISAF influence. Some will take issue with this statement; if they claim to be in control, they should readily accept the challenge to drive in an unarmored car in those areas they claim to control.

To help avoid being shot down, the helicopter approaches Inkerman from the desert side. (In fact, two days later on the 19th, a similar helicopter was shot down near here.) The Afghan road system is the human equivalent of ant trails. After thousands of years of living here, the Afghans have not cracked the code on road building. Many people will say that geography has been cruel to the Afghans, and that the mountainous, landlocked terrain is the problem. Yet this does not explain away the success of landlocked, mountainous countries such as Austria and Switzerland, nor does access to the sea guarantee anything more than saltwater. The meek have inherited this plot of earth because the strong don’t want it enough to take it.

Where liquid water can be found, so too can Afghans.

Some people point back to the “good-old days” in Afghanistan, when hippies could smoke hash and swim naked in the streams. The good old days in Afghanistan did not leave much evidence of progress in the form of roads, architecture or written history.

The stories of foreign invaders do not explain away the great walls built around nearly every home and every mind. The problem is not the terrain. The problem is not that Americans and others supported the Mujahadin when they fought the Soviets. The problem is not the artificial boundaries penciled in by the British all over Asia and the Middle East. The people are backwards and many want it that way. You can fly over a compound in the desert, miles from the next compound, and still it will have walls. Afghanistan is the land of a million Alamos.

As the pilot brought the helicopter to the yellow pin called FOB Inkerman, an Afghan man had parked his car just near the front of the base on the 611. He took out a shovel and began digging, hidden by his car, he thought, at a spot where a bomb had recently detonated. A British soldier fired a warning shot and the man drove away. An Apache helicopter eventually attacked the car out in the desert. There he was, just within direct view of Inkerman, digging in a bomb. This is typical of the larger situation.

Helicopter landing site at FOB Inkerman.

Two platoons are stationed at Inkerman; meaning only one platoon at a time can leave the base. Using one platoon to cover this area is like trying to water a football pitch with a drop of water. The enemy fights just outside the base, even planting IEDs in view of the guard towers. On my first morning at Inkerman, one of the platoons was outside the wire in the corn. They came across tripwires and other booby traps. The enemy was so close that soldiers could hear the enemies’ own radios crackling nearby in the corn. A firefight ensued. Machine guns and mortars were fired. The white smoke is a screen launched by the mortars to help the infantry platoon break contact. There are too few troops to fix the enemy and prosecute attacks.

Cleaning the mortar tubes after the fire mission.

Restacking unfired mortar bombs.

The platoon comes back to base. Amazingly, despite the dire situation, British morale is high. My respect for the men and women here only grows by the day.

The soldiers keep streaming in from the mission. The Pentagon and British MoD spin lies (though I have found Secretary Gates talks straight), but veins of pure truth can be found right here with these soldiers. The Pentagon and MoD as a whole cannot be trusted because they are the average of their parts. There are individual officers and NCOs among the U.S. and U.K. who have always been blunt and honest with me. Among the higher ranking, Petraeus and Mellinger come to mind, but for day-to-day realities this is where it’s at. Out here. Nothing coming from Kabul, London, or Washington should be trusted.

A recent controversy was stirred in the U.K. by my photos of British soldiers in the GZ (Green Zone) wearing brown uniforms. There is some truth to the controversy, but in fairness to the British MoD, only part of the battles take place in the GZ. Much of the fighting takes place in the deserts. Even individual missions often alternate between the Green Zone and the Brown Zone, and so neither green nor brown is perfect. The British SAS and American special operations forces are using camouflage that is more suitable for both environments. It would cost very little to outfit these soldiers in better camouflage.

These men and women will never get the credit they deserve.

The women are medics, and they brave the combat just like the infantry soldiers. But again, they will never get the credit they deserve, and so we joked that they should just let people think they spent the entire tour at Camp Bastion. Who would believe that they were out there in the thick of it? On this day, an Afghan man showed one of these medics a rash on his arms, but the medic carried no such medicines out into the fighting. When medic Evans said she had no medicine, a young man picked up a big stone and was preparing to hit her. Rhian instantly pointed the rifle at the man who put down the rock.

Still streaming in.

Another day in the war.

Finally they are all in the gate and nobody is shot or blown up this time, and I say a quiet thank you for bringing them back in one piece.

After each mission soldiers drop gear and go immediately into a debriefing to discuss what has occurred. They discuss things that were done well, things that were done not so well, and there is discussion about how to improve before the next fight. They talk about the performance of the enemy and any good moves or bad tactics used by the enemy. They talk about any gear that may have failed or performed well.

The soldiers knew they were doing well and I knew it because they invited me on more missions than I could possibly go on while still being able to write.

Some things could have been done better—always the case even among the most experienced soldiers—so the soldiers talked it through, and after it was over they headed back to re-issue new ammo, clean weapons, recharge batteries for various gear, and prep for combat on a moment’s notice.

About three hours after the firefight, an Afghan man was brought to FOB Inkerman with the note above. The note was signed with the name Dr. Haji A. Baqi, who the British said is a doctor for the Taliban. (Not necessarily a “Taliban doctor,” but someone who definitely treats Taliban.) The Brits said that Dr. Baqi gets medical supplies from the ICRC. The referral says the patient was “SHOUTED BY GUN,” and judging by the small bullet hole it might well have been a British gun.

Normally, a correspondent would not be permitted to publish photos of a captured enemy (while embedded with British or U.S. forces), but this guy was not captured and he was not being detained. He was not officially deemed the “enemy,” despite that his hands were soft and he likely was hit during that firefight.

The medical team: Nikole Cunningham, Rhian Evans, Jonathan Richards, Daniel Yeoman, all led by Dr. Gabriel Shaya, going to work on the suspected Taliban. His only real problem seems to be the bullet hole (entry and exit) in the abdomen. Luckily for him, he seems to have been hit by the same bullets used in American and British assault rifles (5.56mm), which lack the power to make the definitive hits caused by more powerful weapons. The man was alert throughout.

Dr. Shaya tries to find a vein, but ends up drilling into the guy’s right tibia to deliver fluids. This is Dr. Shaya’s first combat deployment. On August 2nd the monthly convoy was moving up from Camp Bastion to resupply bases that no longer see fresh apples, fresh milk, or fresh anything. The convoy had been harassed along the way and the enemy already knows the expected convoy routine, so they were busy with ambushes. When the convoy passed by FOB Inkerman, Captain Shaya was on QRF (Quick Reaction Force) duty. A nearby IED strike caused a casualty just near the base. Captain Shaya loaded up with only two other soldiers into the Pinzgauer vehicle. Darkness was falling when the total of three soldiers launched out of Inkerman and Dr. Shaya thought it was exciting to be on his first mission, but he also knew the dangers, having worked for three weeks at the Camp Bastion trauma center. Shaya was sitting in the back and realized that if the Pinzgauer got hit with an IED, he might break his neck on the partial ceiling, so he shifted to sit under the open space. He began to ready his gear to accept the casualty, when about five minutes into his first mission, BOOM!, the front of the vehicle apparently hit a pressure plate.

The explosion did not seem loud to Dr. Shaya. Dust and smoke filled the darkening air as the vehicle came to a stop, and part of the truck fell onto Shaya. His arms and legs were still attached but due to a partition he could not see either man in the front. He shouted to them and they both responded and both were wounded. The easiest, quickest way to the front was to crawl out the back and open the driver and passenger doors, but there might be IEDs because the enemy often plants bombs in clusters. Dr. Shaya did not want to walk on the road until it had been cleared. They were alone in the dark. He didn’t even want to turn on his red flashlight. He could climb over the top but did not want to be an obvious target, so he shouted to the front for them to use the radio to call for help. The truck had no radio.

Dr. Shaya climbed over top to the front, but didn’t want to turn on his light. Soon he saw a dim light approaching from down the road and he felt anxious. As the light grew closer and closer the anxiety increased, and it came closer still until he saw it was the company Sergeant Major and some soldiers. The anxiety evaporated into profound relief. The soldiers opened the doors and Dr. Shaya saw that the driver’s lower right leg was gone, while the dashboard had crushed in on the passenger who was in great pain. The driver was trapped by the steering wheel, and while soldiers tried to pull him out, Dr. Shaya, now between the driver and the passenger, tried to lift up the steering wheel and finally they got him out to a stretcher where Dr. Shaya had to screw into his tibia to administer fluids. Dr. Shaya thought the driver was losing his will, and so he gave a pep talk and tried to keep him in the fight. The other patient was screaming as he was pulled from the vehicle. He was a large man and difficult to move, and continued to scream with pain as he was put onto a stretcher and the IV was inserted. Three morphine doses later he was still in great pain due to a severely fractured femur, and as they drove in another vehicle back to base he screamed on the bumpy road. Dr. Shaya was painfully honest with his recounting, saying that during the stress of his first combat, he had forgotten his weapon and medical bag on the damaged vehicle. He was upset with himself that he could not administer more because of that oversight. “The journey back seemed to take an eternity,” he said. The British MERT helicopter was circling in the darkness overhead and when it landed at Inkerman, he ran off, helping with the stretcher, when he should have been preserving his strength for other casualties.

Dr. Shaya told me that when he returned to the medical tent, “When I got back, I was shattered (exhausted) and shaken.” He began to pack another medical kit in case he had to crash out the gate on his second mission, yet now soldiers were arriving for treatment after the initial blast that wounded the first soldier, and only when all of that was done could Dr. Shaya relax, and begin to feel the pain from his own throbbing, bleeding elbow.

Combat is the cruelest teacher. Dr. Shaya, who makes no pretense of being a combat soldier, had been five minutes into his first mission when suddenly he was alone in the dark with two seriously wounded men.

Dr. Shaya treating the suspected Taliban. Maybe this was the guy who blew up the vehicle.

Soldiers examine the referral note, signed with the name Dr. Haji A. Baqi, wherein the suspected doctor of the Taliban describes symptoms.

Backside of the referral note.

Call sign 'Pedro': One of the great untold stories of this war.

The 129th ERQS (Emergency Rescue Squadron), flying a pair of HH-60G Pavehawks, launched from Camp Bastion to retrieve the suspected Taliban who was deemed a “Cat A” casualty. Category A means the patient requires immediate evacuation. Total flight distance (given the route) from Bastion to Inkerman back to Bastion would be about 100 miles.

Among the British combat soldiers in Afghanistan, Pedro is the only thing more popular than mail. When friendly forces are in need, Pedro will come anywhere, anytime, during any weather, and their helicopters have gotten the bulletholes to prove it. The United States Air Force runs the only rescue service that will always be there, no matter what, no matter that there is no moon for flying, or the dust is too heavy for everyone else, or you are in a firefight. American Army helicopters in Afghanistan fly with the red cross on the side. Flying with that symbol makes it illegal for our people to carry weapons. The decision seems ridiculous; the enemy will only use the red cross for an aim point. While the Army flies armed with a red cross, Pedro flies with miniguns. And they bring some of the most highly qualified medics in the entire U.S. military–which is saying a lot. They bring miniguns, and powersaws to cut soldiers out of MRAPs or other twisted hulks, and scuba gear when troops and gear are lost to the water. If our people can manage to get there, Pedro can manage to get them out. Pedro rescues people every single day.

The lead aircraft, Pedro 35, brings two pilots, a gunner, a rescue officer, a flight engineer, and two PJs (elite “rescue specialists”; these men are a story unto themselves).

When Pedro 35 landed at FOB Inkerman, the two PJs along with the rescue officer, Captain Dave Depiazza received the patient while British soldiers brought the suspected Taliban toward Pedro. The PJs like to meet the ground troops outside to make sure the patient is properly categorized, assessed, and loaded. One challenge with some ground troops is that they will rush the helicopter during a “brownout” and start to load the patient feet first (or headfirst), when the PJs might need the patient the other way; the PJs want the head near the lifesaving airway equipment, and since helicopters vary in configuration, the PJs need to take control early to save seconds. They want to spend no more than 30 seconds on a hot landing zone; the aircraft do take hits but they have been lucky so far. (A Pedro from Kandahar Airfield was shot down in July. Luckily all survived and kept doing missions, but the helicopter was ultimately destroyed during a recovery mission that went awry.)

Sometimes Pedro 36 comes in first, but this time Pedro 36 flies top cover while Pedro 35 loads the patient.

Pedro 36 racetracks low watching for ground threats. The door gunners can—and often do—return lethal fire in a couple seconds.

Pedro 36 roars low and then both disappear and head back to Camp Bastion. When the Pedro 35 landed near the Bastion trauma hospital, Senators John McCain and Joe Lieberman happened to be visiting the hospital as the PJs helped unload the suspected Taliban. (Just the day before, when I had spent some hours with the Pedros before heading back out with British infantry, one of these same PJs said he would clean the operations center for a week if he could meet McCain. I said to him, “Fat chance you’ll get to meet with McCain,” and so imagine the PJ’s surprise when he carried the suspected Taliban into the hospital and accidentally ran into Senators McCain and Lieberman, and shook their hands.)

The war is a busy place and far too much happens out there than can possibly be explained. Llater that night, a platoon launched on a mission to raid several compounds. I was invited on the mission on 18 August but did not go due to the usual writing-crunch and impending elections, and so during breaks I sat in the ops center and listened to the radio calls. The raids unfolded, and after half a night the soldiers brought back six suspects, one of whom had run from the soldiers and urinated on his hands to remove explosives residue. The terrain had been rough and the night was dark and so two soldiers busted their ankles.

Major Ian Moodie, commander of B Coy 2 Rifles, guaranteed me that in the morning there would be a gaggle of locals, including elders, who would arrive to demand release of the prisoners. Major Moodie said this problem is exacerbated by the helicopter shortage; if he could get the prisoners extracted as soon as they were captured, he would be able to say that the prisoners had already been moved and there was nothing he could do, but already in the past he had decided to release prisoners to cool tensions.

Later in the day of 19 August, locals arrived to demand release of the six. All were released except for one, who was finally picked up by a helicopter on the evening of the 19th, the day before the latest historical Afghan elections wherein Abdullah Abdullah and Hamid Karzai had reached the showdown to decide who would become the President of one of the most primitive countries on Earth, but one that probably gets more international press and attention than Japan and Germany combined.

As the helicopter lifted off with the prisoner, the JTAC who talked the helicopter in said to me that “Axle” Foley, another JTAC four miles away in Sangin, was about to call in a bomb from a B1. The fighting had begun and it was not even election day. Taliban in the area were threatening people to stay in their compounds and not vote.

On the afternoon of the 19th, before our election-day mission on the 20th, “Snowy” meticulously cleaned every speck of dust off his weapon. He disassembled the magazines, cleaned the springs, and individually cleaned each bullet.

Snowy then counted every last bullet—twice—and I joked that if his weapon failed the next day, cleaning would not be the issue. The weapon was ready, it seemed…. Meanwhile, my BGAN satellite communications gear was malfunctioning on the evening before the election. Hours would be wasted before it was ascertained the satellite gear was officially broken. Murphy’s Law was in effect for all guns and gadgets. I’ve come to a remote base and can report what others are not seeing, and the crucial link was broken at the crucial moment.

At about 2245 a rocket banged and zoomed overhead but missed the base and exploded seconds later somewhere out in the darkness. Orange illumination rounds drifted down nearby and in the far distance, some casting long, flickering shadows. Radio chatter at the ops room said that an SAS (British special forces) helicopter had been shot down north of us and one troop was wounded, and that the enemy was moving toward the crash site which was still occupied by British soldiers. I headed to bed because the mission on election day was likely to include serious fighting. The alarm was set for 0330, but by midnight there had not been time to get a wink. Just after midnight, having seen no less than 10 meteors streak through the darkness above, sleep came. The alarm sounded and I pulled out of the cot, already dressed for the mission, and pulled on the boots in the dark. Sometime around 0400, there was a distant thud as the helicopter that had been shot down was destroyed. (An officer later said that two bombs were used, but I heard only one.)

By 0436, the soldiers were ready to launch on the mission and there was time for a few images on this historic day in the middle of nowhere.

The soldiers had erected a memorial for lost comrades.

Metal detectors and other gear were tested.

It was time.

The mission began.

Suspected bombs were marked along the way. Dozens of them. The metal could be anything from an old bullet to a nail. For years, the enemy has seen us with the metal detectors and so are making bombs with LMC (low metal content).

The soldiers on point with the metal detectors have an incredibly dangerous job. They must watch for all sorts of ambushes, high and low. The enemy uses command wires, pressure pads, trip wires and radio-controlled devices. Some people say the enemy bombs are cowardly, as if we are in a gentlemen’s duel. Others might say IEDs are no more cowardly than our using B-1Bs and A-10s.

Election day begins.

Our mission was to move to an over-watch position to prevent Taliban from harassing voters on their way to Sangin. Most people in Afghanistan would not have a chance to vote even if there were no Taliban. British officers told me that between here and Kajaki, for instance, there were no polling stations.

Fatal funnel: the enemy often plants bombs in walls, or simply throws grenades over top.

Often after ground has been “cleared,” soldiers far down the line get blown to pieces.

Open areas make us less predictable for IED strikes, but now we are extremely vulnerable to machine-gun, RPG fire and other weapons such as B10 rockets. Luckily they are terrible shots with mortars.

If we get ambushed, the only cover is accurate return fire, but the enemy of course tries to hide their firing positions.

Nobody from either side was dead yet. Not here, anyway.

We reached our objective; an occupied compound that British forces had used three times before and this boy was waiting. Afghans often stand with an arm behind their back, or they walk up and down steep mountains in the same fashion.

Nearby compound with a possible IED at the corner.

Several sections occupy different compounds giving us better arcs for mutual fire support.

The opium had already been harvested and the poppy bulbs were hard and dry. How many bulbs does it take to buy one bullet? The drug dealers are getting rich, and so a strong central government is a natural enemy.

As we occupy his home, this Afghan boy plays like he is killing us with a rifle and then wants to see his photo.

The man of the house says he is worried that on our fourth stay, the Taliban will think he is collaborating and will kill him. Asked if he will vote, he says no, and that nobody in this area will vote because the Taliban will kill them.

Climbing around these compounds takes its toll. One can only imagine how many bones are broken. Often, the entrances of the compounds are laced with explosives, so the soldiers blow a “mouse hole” through a wall, or use ladders to scale, and so the enemy now places booby traps atop walls. Again, some people will say it is a “security violation” to say that the enemy places bombs atop walls, as if the enemy doesn’t know that the enemy has placed bombs atop the walls. People will say it’s a security violation to say that we use ladders to climb walls, when every day countless thousands of Afghans see us with ladders. We’ve been fighting this war for nearly eight years. The enemy knows we listen to radios, cell phones, and just about anything else we do. It’s the people at home who do not know. The enemy has learned our tactics and psychology.

Joseph Etchells had been killed nearby almost exactly a month ago, on 19 July. “The Kopp-Etchells Effect” dispatch was written partially in Joe’s memory. Several times, the events of Joseph’s loss were recounted to me, in clear hopes that important details would be told. I said not to worry, it will be told. The missing details were that soldiers had complained about not having enough ladders to scale walls to avoid dangerous compound entrances. During a mission the soldiers needed to get over a wall but were without a ladder, and so Joseph Etchells volunteered to go through the entrance, where he stepped on a pressure plate.

The compound we occupied on election day was littered, partially with batteries. Soldiers do not throw away old batteries, but collect them in boxes because the enemy digs through trash to collect batteries to make bombs, but just as often something like this is benign.

Afghans in this area typically live with their animals.

Many believe that the Pashtun people are one of the lost tribes of Israel. If true, some Taliban might actually be descended from Jews, which would be one of the most severe ironies of humanity. Some branches go off and earn Nobel Prizes and unravel the secrets of the universe while advancing humanity by leaps and bounds, while another turns malignant and doesn’t know how to build a road.

The FST (Fire Support Team) goes into position over-watching a road leading to Sangin. The mission is to prevent any roving bands of Taliban from interrupting voters traveling to Sangin.

The family keeps two myna birds whose wings have been clipped, and the Hazra interpreter tells me the birds can talk. I tell him that birds of similar appearance, also called myna, are sold in America. “What if the bird says, ‘I love Mullah Omar.’” I asked the interpreter. “Then we must shoot it!” he answered.

The heat increases and the soldiers wait.

The first customers arrive. Maybe they are a probe.

The men are searched. If others were planning to come down the road on this day, none do.

A radio call said there was an IED strike nearby, in the area of Patrol Base Wishtan, which would be on or in the area of Pharmacy Road (the subject of the latest dispatch “Bad Medicine.”)

Later we learned that two soldiers were killed at Wishtan: Sergeant Paul McAleese, 29, and Private Jonathan Young, who was 18.

According to the BBC:

They were killed while on a routine foot patrol near the town of Sangin, in Helmand province, on Thursday. Their families have been informed.

Their deaths bring the total number in Afghanistan since 2001 to 206.

Lt Col Nick Richardson, spokesman for Task Force Helmand, said: “It is with deep regret that we report the deaths of two soldiers in Helmand Province.

“Our deepest heartfelt thoughts and sympathies go out to the bereaved family, friends and comrades of these brave soldiers.”

The MoD said the deaths were not connected to Thursday’s presidential elections in Afghanistan.

Every mission here on the 20th was connected to the elections. The idea that the losses were not connected to the elections seems off, not that it would make a difference to the fallen. Yet the slights and spins, often for no apparent reason (even if not the case here), undermines the messengers.

There would be much fighting around Afghanistan this day.

Men were watching us and roving around at a distance of about 900 meters. Sniper Keiran Jones is told to fire a warning shot.

Fighting was kicking up in the distance, and FOB Inkerman was starting to get attacked. Out in Sangin the fighting would last all day.

Rifleman Keiran Jones keeps his eye on the target while rolling the foam earplugs. The man watching us is wearing a white dishdasha and a white turban.

BAM! Keiran Jones launches a bullet from the .338 rifle, which cracks just a few feet away from the “dicker.” (Watcher.)

Another FST member has already recorded coordinates for targets and is ready to start a fire mission using mortars or the 105mm howitzers.

Rifleman Keiran on the scope. The snipers would fire about half a dozen times this day, and not all were warning shots.

Steady…

BAM. Dust fills the air and reflects off the morning sun.

Re-chamber.

Steady…

BAM. More dust.

The snipers are cleared to kill a man, the same one who has been watching us, as he peeks his turbaned head around a corner about 900m away. The shot is difficult because Keiran is in a tough and painful position to shoot from. I joke that they need to do “sniper yoga” and Jones replies with a chuckle, “No shit. It’s a stress position.” Both snipers stayed in positions that were agonizing for their legs and backs. There were no good places to get a relaxed shot.

Keiran Jones aimed for the man’s head and BAM! The supersonic bullet that could kill an elephant raced toward the target.

Keiran was very upset, thinking he may have missed, though others thought he might have hit the man. The shot would have been an easy shot if Kerian were prone, but the muscle stress in the growing heat was adding up.

The snipers stayed for hours up in that sun, sometimes taking alternating breaks, but they were in competition to get the enemy.

Like dueling banjos.

I sat in between them for about 20-30 minutes and all three of us were aching from the positions, though my position was far easier and shaded by one of the snipers.

They stayed at it.

Jones, drenched in sweat, takes a micro-break.

Fighting continued in the distance over in Sangin. We saw bombs drop and the mortars and howitzers were firing dozens and dozens of rounds, while the Apaches were hammering away with their cannons, and launching about 30 rockets through the day.

The compound and our soon-to-be ambush spot.

CPT Ed Addington keeps an eye out. We could hear firefights but other than the snipers peeling off some shots, we were not in contact.

We were not trying to hide. The Brits wanted everyone to know we were there.

A jet drops a bomb in the Green Zone.

Down inside the compound, soldiers began to try to compress themselves into any sliver of shade but the shade kept shrinking. Though we had occupied the compound, soldiers respected the house by staying outside.

The dog looked thirsty but when I tried to give him water, he launched out like the Killer Rabbit on Monthy Python. If not for the rope around his neck, there might have been a death match. The dog seemed completely insane, as if he had been attending al Qaeda seminars. The soldiers couldn’t believe that five minutes later, little Cujo was still viciously growling. I slid the water close enough but by several hours later he still never took a sip.

Medic Nikole Cunningham goes into firefights in the middle of bomb-laced country. Nikole said her family thinks she never goes on missions.

The family was long gone, but two boys came back and fed their grandfather (apparently) who was very old and stayed with us.

The plan was to stay all day, but we were told that by late afternoon, only 245 ballots were cast. And so it was decided that we should head back before dark, which would make it easier for us to avoid IEDs, but more difficult to avoid ambushes from machine guns and RPGs. No matter what you do. . . .

Everybody expected an ambush. The enemy had had most of the day to cook up something.

Off we went, down the middle, taking chances with the machine guns, RPGs and other rockets, but avoiding the more likely IEDs for the first leg.

The Taliban is in complete and uncontested control of the nearby power station. We don’t even have enough soldiers to take and hold the power station, and so the enemy controls the on/off switch, and they charge locals for power. While we generate electricity up at Kajaki, the Taliban makes money off it. It’s no wonder why the Taliban laugh at the idea of negotiating.

The thought went through my head, “If I were the enemy, I would ambush us right. . . . ” ZIP, SNAP, CRACK, CRACK, CRACK!

Their machine-gun fire was accurate and we all dove to the ground.

ZIPT! SNAP SNAP! Some bullets hit between this soldier and me.

There’s Snowy, who had cleaned his weapon with surgical care. He had wiped down every bullet and every millimeter of the magazines. His weapon was working just fine. For now.

Sapper Cameron Baldry starts to get up, and I think, “Why is he getting up?” Bullets were snapping by.

The soldiers often complain that when they hit the dirt, some of the bulky radio frequency gear they carry gets in the way of their helmets. When soldiers are down in the dirt they cannot aim their weapons because their faces are stuck in the ground. So Baldry rolled into a sitting position to return fire.

Meanwhile behind me, Snowy’s weapon began to malfunction.

I was making video when a soldier fired a Javelin missile which impacted close to the nearest compound.

This is where untrained fighters usually crack and run away in a jumble. British soldiers, however, are well-trained. While some provided covering fire, others peeled off in an organized fashion.

At this point another Javelin was launched and can barely be seen in this photo.

Impact: I’d never seen a Javelin explode like that. Usually they are like gigantic hand grenades, but this one looked like a bomb from a jet.

What in the world did he hit?

A fireball gathered and left a mushroom cloud.

None of us knew what had been hit, but of course there was speculation that the Javelin had found ammunition or bomb-making material. Maybe a tractor, I thought.

We went to a nearby compound that was empty and I stayed low near the front thinking this was the real ambush and that a cluster of bombs was about to kill half of us.

A soldier dropped his pants to see where he had been hit. Apparently a bullet had sent a rock into his thigh. The fire truly was accurate. We truly were lucky that several of us did not get hit. Meanwhile, other soldiers were checking ammo levels and doing redistribution as needed. After every firefight, the Brits (and Americans) check for wounds, redistribute ammo, and check critical gear. Two or three British soldiers asked if I was okay. Meanwhile, leaders would consult maps, develop SA and figure out what they wanted to do next. It cannot be stressed enough to check your buddies for wounds. Soldiers have often died because in the adrenaline rush and cascade of survival juices, or sometimes simply because they are still fighting, troops don’t realize they are badly wounded, and so they bleed out and die.

Being just a writer, it’s not my domain to intrude, but after every drama I closely watch their uniforms and hands for blood. All the soldiers are well trained, but some are still just teenagers and so you start to feel responsible for the younger ones, especially.

Sapper Cameron Baldry, a twenty-three-year-old soldier from 2 Troop, 11 Field SQN of the 38 Engineer Regiment, pointed at me exclaiming something like, “Did you see those bullets hitting between us! They were striking right between us!” I chuckled, saying yes, it was close, and those guys are good shots but we got lucky. Baldry’s antenna had been shot off but he didn’t get shot.

We headed back to FOB Inkerman, avoiding many markers for potential IEDs.

Aircraft could still be heard, and there was fighting in the distance.

Marker.

Marker.

Fighting continues to our left, but it’s in the far distance. To our right about a thousand meters away someone is using a signal mirror, probably tracking our movements.

The heat and the weight cause some soldiers to pause, and finally we are back on base and somehow got away with no fatalities or even injuries.

There is no telling how much ammo was fired by 2 Rifles elements in Sangin, Wishtan and elsewhere, but the soldiers from Inkerman fired at least 1,100 rounds of 5.56 (rifle and link), 800x 7.62mm, 3x Javelin, 133x 81mm mortar, 172x 105mm howitzer. The Apaches fired about 500x 30mm, 28x flechette rockets and a Hellfire. Someone dropped 2x 500lb bombs and a British Tornado strafed, while American A-10s and Belgian F-16s also joined up.

Too much was going on to keep up, and in fact the base had been hit while we’d been gone, destroying someone’s sleeping space. Soldiers on base had identified at least one firing point and kept eyes on, and we got back just about the time I saw John Loughday and Simon Wagstaff trying to kill someone with a Javelin as the enemy occupied a firing position with what soldiers identified as a B10 rocket laucher. The first Javelin failed, and so they grabbed another and launched. With six seconds of flight time to that target, the single enemy saw the messenger coming his way. Instead of praying he made a run and I heard the explosion. The men radioed down from the tower, “Hello Two Zero this is crow’s nest. Good strike one enemy dead.”

The day kept going but a man can only record so much. My sat-gear was broken and so there was no way to file a detailed account of the election day, which in this area was a failure.

The next morning, on the 21st, ten men showed up to the FOB to talk about the generator that he said had been hit by the Javelin missle during the ambush yesterday. The soldiers had previously been to his compound and confirmed that he had a nice generator, which now apparently was the victim of a Javelin missile and had gone out as a fiery mushroom cloud. As a heat source, it would have stood out as a nice target to lock the Javelin onto. As a side note, the man said they had gone to Sangin to vote and had voted for Karzai. Yet we had watched his compound all day and nobody had left it to travel to Sangin. Furthermore, three days later, I was present when the same platoon occupied a compound of the man wearing blue (above). On the 24th, he said he had not voted. We occupied his compound on the 24th because British soldiers thought it was being used by the enemy. Yet here he is on base on the 21st, part of the party asking for money for the blown-up generator. On the 24th he said he didn’t know any Taliban and had only been here for a month. He spontaneously said he knows that Barack Obama is the President of the United States, but when asked, did not know who Michael Jackson was. On the 21st he was on base, while on the 24th I sat with him for about an hour while we waited for the enemy to square off for a fight. (And there came another firefight.)

On the 21st, the elder said the generator cost about 70,000 Afghanis, or about $1,400, but the most that could be paid from this base was $300. The inanity of it all is difficult to fathom in one sitting. We were taking machine-gun fire, apparently from his compound or that area, but he had no information about the Taliban. Probably because he is Taliban. We blew up his generator and now he wanted to get paid.

Later the evening of the 21st, soldiers held a ceremony for recently lost comrades and the next day they were right back out there in combat.

On the 22nd there was business as usual. A patrol was out on the road and a man was driving toward them on a motorcycle. The daylight was fading and a warning shot was fired but the man kept coming so a soldier went lethal and shot to kill, grazing the man’s arm. The man didn’t realize at first that he had been shot, or where it had come from.

As with young American soldiers, nobody seems to believe that a man cannot hear a warning shot while he’s riding his motorcyle, or that he can’t see soldiers wearing camouflage during the last rays of daylight. Despite being in countless firefights wherein we often have great difficulty identifying firing positions (such as two days earlier when machine guns were nearly hitting us), many young soldiers think that firing a warning shot is enough. We all know that snipers who are in hiding fire only one shot to avoid conveying their firing position. Warning shots mean nothing to an old man who needs glasses, who is riding a motorcyle at twilight in an area where gunshots are more common than frogs. So a small piece of flesh was stripped from his arm and the man got off light.

The world kept turning and on the 24th “Bad Medicine” was published just after midnight Eastern Standard Time, and that morning before sunrise the soldiers were going on a dangerous mission and I went along. The result was a firefight and much mortar and cannon fire using prox fuses, delay and airbursts into the enemy position. Though we had information that the enemy was trying to get us with IEDs, we escaped getting blown to pieces. When I got back to base, there was a message from British MoD that my embed had been canceled (about one month before we had agreed it would end) without warning. The message and timing were clear enough. “Bad Medicine” was published, and I was out. The soldiers at 2 Rifles were astonished. The MoD gave the reason that it was unfair to the journalists who were clamoring for spots, but my sense was that MoD had created a convenient excuse that was kept in the chamber, and now they had pulled the trigger.

I responded to the MoD:

Thank you for the message.

The precipitous decision by the MoD to cancel my embed after today’s dispatch is unfortunate.

The sudden reversal after today’s dispatch — apparently a publication that did not sit well with the MoD — will cause me significant headaches. As you know, there are many balls in the air, and the MoD has effectively shoved me out of the way.

Please forward to Ltc Richardson that the message was received.

Michael
—-

And so that was it. My last day with the British 2 Rifles had ended the same as it had ended in Iraq. In combat. I’ll miss the British soldiers. They constitute a truly professional force–if dangerously underresourced. It has been my honor to accompany them in combat. In theory I would do so again anytime, but in practice this will be the last time MoD will have a chance to cut me off in mid-flight, wasting much time and resources that should have been devoted to telling the story. Barring a guarantee from a British General Officer that something like this will never happen again, my days of covering British operations are over.

On Sunday morning, 31 August, the United States Air Force “Pedros” took me on three missions. Please stand by. This is very interesting.

I cannot operate in the war without your support. If support does not substantially increase, I will be forced to abandon war reporting in September. There has seldom been much interest in the Afghanistan war. True interest has been starkly reflected in the support for this mission. Each journey into Afghanistan, since 2006, has bled out resources from my operations. Reporting from Afghanistan is not sustainable at this rate.

Nevertheless, I continue to crack on: Please consider signing up for free Twitter updates at Michael_Yon (not Michael Yon without the underscore), for the most timely snippets possible.

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Captain Henry Coltart on Pharmacy Road

24 August 2009
Helmand Province, Afghanistan

The British soldiers of 2 Rifles had a mission: clear and hold Pharmacy Road.

FOB Jackson is currently home to Battlegroup headquarters for 2 Rifles. The area around the river is called the “Green Zone,” but just as appropriately could be called the Opium Zone. During season, the area is covered with colorful poppies, whose 2009 products are probably showing up by now on the streets in Europe. European money flows back here and buys fertilizer in the Sangin Market, which can be used to make bombs, produce more opium, get more money and make more bombs and grow more opium and make more money and bombs and grow more opium. Sangin is at once an ATM and weapons bazaar for the enemy. Nearly all fatalities in this unit have been caused by fertilizer bombs. The decision to mostly ignore the drug dealers has been a strategic blunder.

This mission was about tactical exigencies created by the strategic realities. Though FOB Jackson is small enough to walk from one end to another in a few minutes, it is the main base in Sangin, with smaller patrol bases spread around the Sangin area of operations. Two of those bases are Patrol Base (PB) Tangiers and PB Wishtan. Tangiers is an Afghan National Army (ANA) PB often used by 2 Rifles, while PB Wishtan is manned by C Coy of 2 Rifles. (“Coy” is British for “Company.”)

From Jackson, one can often see or hear fighting related to Tangiers or Wishtan while tracers arc into the night, and illumination rounds cast long, flickering shadows as they float to Earth under parachutes.

Though PB Tangiers seems randomly named, PB Wishtan is named after the local area which the locals call Wishtan. The main resupply route from Jackson to PB Wishtan goes through the Sangin Market, past Tangiers, and west along the approximate 1 kilometer of Pharmacy Road through Wishtan to PB Wishtan.

British soldiers from 2 Rifles said they had sustained approximately twenty fatalities and injuries in the area. (More were killed and wounded in Sangin since this mission.) The situation is reminiscent of so many roads in Iraq, such as Route Irish, previously dubbed the most dangerous road in the world. The short stretch of Route Irish is situated between main bases in Baghdad. Since we never had enough troops in Iraq, the route was difficult to secure despite that it was a short stretch with bustling military traffic nestled between huge bases. A lot of people were killed and maimed on that short stretch—I have little idea of the numbers of casualties on Irish—but the total must have reached at least the hundreds. Irish was eventually made far more secure by allocating substantial Iraqi and Coalition troops along with what must have been many millions of dollars’ worth of physical defenses, all augmented with frequent coverage from the air. Despite that, car bombs, IEDs and small-arms attacks continued to occur on a less frequent basis. I’ve probably driven Irish a hundred times with no dramas, but it was never safe. Despite international infamy and the sharp political desire to secure at least one small stretch of road between main bases in Baghdad, Irish was never completely secured. Pharmacy Road in Wishtan is a small-town redux of Route Irish in Baghdad.

Pharmacy Road was effectively closed by enemy harrasment, including a blockage caused by two blown-up vehicles (a “jingo truck” and a British tractor). Resupply and troop movements were performed by helicopter, despite that a patrol could walk from Jackson to Wishtan in an hour, and straight driving would only take fifteen minutes. A bypass route was made with similar results. Captain Alexander Spry told me that Wishtan is like something from a Freddy Kreuger movie where bombs are planted in broad daylight and the enemy chisels small firing holes through the fifteen-foot walls and launches bullets down the tight spaces and alleyways. The Afghan mud walls are so robust that the 30mm cannons from the air will not penetrate. Dropping a 500lb bomb into the middle of a compound will leave the walls standing. In Wishtan, our snipers are of little use because they can’t see or shoot through the walls, and there is no commanding terrain other than the air. As with Route Irish and probably hundreds (thousands?) of other routes in Iraq and Afghanistan, routes cannot be secured without pinning substantial numbers of troops. Life is far easier for the guerrilla than for the counterguerrilla, just as arson is easier for arsonists than for firefighters.

With the shortage of helicopters in mind (and the fact that an RPG was recently fired at a helicopter as it lifted out of PB Wishtan), closure of Pharmacy Road increased enemy freedom of movement while decreasing our own. Though British forces continued to push into combat around Wishtan, battlegroup commander LtCol Rob Thomson wanted Pharmacy Road open.

Most of us tried to sleep the night before the mission, but there was much to do. At one point, perhaps half a dozen 81mm mortar illumination rounds from another base were shot straight over FOB Jackson. The empty casings, weighing perhaps 2lbs each, swooshed through the darkness, possibly at several hundred miles per hour, and thumped onto Jackson. (Terminal velocity varies from object to object.) One casing was heading toward a sergeant named Marty who runs Flight Ops. Marty hit the dirt and the casing landed just next to him.

The mission began under cover of darkness. Conditions were far too dark to focus and the soldiers were not using lights, so focus was done by trial and error. A sniper team quietly sat beside a dog and its handler. The dog seemed to take interest in the sounds of the camera.

The few who speak only whisper. A soldier checks his night-vision monocular.

Flipping up the night-vision monocular puts it on standby.

The mission will be very dangerous and the soldiers, who mostly could not see me taking photos unless they were using night-vision gear, seemed lost in thought.

The friendly attack dog. A dog handler recently told me he was urinating when an Afghan soldier tried to grab his willy. The handler said the dog bit the Afghan soldier who needed a few stitches.

We set off down the market road. Some folks believe such reports are “security violations,” as if the thousands of people living here do not know exactly where the bases are, or do not know exactly where we came from and went to. Operations take place here every day. Civilians are everywhere.

We made it to FOB Tangiers with no dramas. Some Afghan soldiers were on guard while others seemed comatose.

The commander of 2 Rifles is Lieutenant Colonel Rob Thomson (right), who this morning was constantly studying maps or soaking up information by talking with soldiers whose ears were glued to radios. Most soldiers did the smart thing and immediately began to fall asleep; experienced combat soldiers never miss a chance to fill canteens or sleep. Meanwhile, the Commander’s work has just begun (despite my having seen him work late the night before). LtCol Thomson has chided other officers and NCOs about sleep, saying it’s an advantage of growing older. You just don’t need as much sleep. Plus having children is good training for combat.

Corporal Mark “Axle” Foley (left) is the JTAC who controls air strikes. Axle is a good-spirited soldier and funny to talk with, always cracking jokes though sometimes I have difficulty understanding his accent. When Axle picks up that radio, a magical toggle-switch clicks in his head from “fun” mode to “all business.” While Axle talks business with the pilots, one can only wonder how well the American pilots understand Axle. Yet the pilots work with Axle all the time, and seem to understand him perfectly on the first go, and he understands them. One night, I heard a Southern accent come down from an aircraft, which set the Brits to laughing and trying to immitate the accent. Brits and Europeans often get a big kick out of thick Southern accents but all attempts to imitate the twang seem to fall flat. (Except by country bands in Germany who can perfectly imitate the patois as if they grew up next door to Willie Nelson.)

Axle, who often works with American pilots, says these A-10 and B-1B pilots are probably the best to work with because they come to Sangin so often that they know the terrain, the roads and bases, so they are easy to talk onto targets.

Sitting there in the darkness, Axle works the radio while watching the downlink screen. As the A-10s approach at about 0314, the aircraft are still about 40 miles out, and a pilot starts listing off all the various sorts of weapons they are carrying. They had more spells than Harry Potter. As the A-10s close in on our postion, Axle picks up a downlink and suddenly he can see through the A-10 crosshairs. Whatever the pilot is looking at comes on Axle’s screen. Axle gives the pilot some reference points and each time the crosshairs instantly go to that point, and within maybe thirty seconds, the crosshairs slewed precisely to the spot where we were sitting. Axle told him that’s us, which probably sounded to the A-10 pilot something like, “Ah roga, dat’s us,” and then Axle starts walking the pilot through to all the friendly locations so he can know where our guys are.

An A-10 was transmitting downlink but we were getting interference, maybe from the building or other radios. Axle moved outside where Corporal Henry Sanday from Fiji came in. Henry is a good man whom I got to know in Iraq, and sometimes we have lunch or dinner at FOB Jackson, where he constantly invites me on missions. Henry is battle-proven and very good under fire. When your life is at stake, Henry is a man you want to be with, as you will soon see. This morning, his men were falling asleep, but as a section leader Henry kept working. Major Karl Hickman (right) is the A Coy Commander, and while his men plopped down to sleep, Karl kept working. I’ve never been in combat with Major Hickman, but his men say he’s good and steady under fire. Axle as JTAC is a crucial link to this mission, which explains why when Henry and Major Hickman might be sleeping, they are checking in with Axle to keep their SA (Situation Awareness) updated.

We had the A-10s for only a few minutes when a radio call from a different net came to Axle to release the A-10s for a TIC (troops in contact) somewhere in South Helmand. Axle radioed the pilots to switch freqs, and I recall a pilot apologizing and saying he looked forward to getting back up here. Axle put down the radio and looked straight at me, saying, “That’s such a bummer,” as if his fishing buddy had to go home early, then Axle finished with, “However, the guys that get them will be well happy,” and started shutting down his gear as the sounds of the A-10s faded into the darkness. While Axle worked, I asked about times when he “smashed” the Taliban. British soldiers like to use the word “smashed” when talking about the Taliban. When Axle would finish talking about one fight, I would ask about another. Finally, Axle said, “You Yanks are great. You like to hear stories about us smashin’ the Taliban but people at home want to know how much we miss our families.” We both chuckled, and I asked, “Really? They don’t ask you about smashing the Taliban?” “That’s right,” then Axle said something like, “They only want to hear how sad we are.” Axle and I got along great because I didn’t care if he missed his family and he didn’t care if I missed mine. This part is about smashing people who would help those who smashed the World Trade Centers and blew up people in London and Bali and Jakarta and Israel and Spain and the Philippines and anywhere else they can reach. There is a crucial development and governance aspect to this war, and still a crucial smashing side. Sometimes you’ve got to swap hats for helmets. Mullah Omar is still alive, apparently in Pakistan, and he needs to be killed. Just on 20 August I heard a Taliban singing over a walkie talkie that Mullah Omar “Is our leader,” and they were celebrating shooting down a British helicopter only twelve hours before just some miles from here. There will be time to hug families later. Now is a time for fighting.

We talked some more about smashin’ the Taliban. When the A-10s turned toward some distant battle, nobody here complained. Yes, we need more helicopters, but since I have been in Sangin, we never have been short on attack aircraft. The JTACs are happy. Air cover, since I have been in Sangin, is better than we could honestly hope for. Axle talked about strike aircraft; “The F-15E Strike Eagles are brilliant,” he said. The JTACs, if given a choice of the other fourteen types of piloted aircraft that come on station, seem to vote for F-15E Strike Eagles.

The F-15E package (weapons, electronics, and strike pilots) is particularly lethal for this fight. When strike aircraft come onto station, the pilots declare their weapons load. A typical F-15E declartion sounds like this: An American voice crackles over the radio, “Good morning. I’ve got 4 GBU-12s, 6 GBU-38s, 2 GBU-31s, and 1,000 x 20mm cannon.” [GBU-12: 500lb Laser Guided Bomb is the JTAC favorite here; GBU-38 is a 500lb JDAM and also very good; GBU-31 is a 2,000lb JDAM and too big for use in Sangin but there are many other fights in Afghanistan; 20mm cannon can destroy armored vehicles but bounce off the compound walls here.]

In total, the two F-15Es arrive with a dozen accurate bombs, a thousand rounds of 20mm, incredibly good optics, and a great downlink package so the JTACs can peer through F-15E crosshairs and coordinate with the pilot. Most importantly, the Strike Eagle pilots are specifically trained for this mission. Nobody on the ground complains about this package.

Whereas Strike Eagles are favored in Sangin, there are close runner-ups. B-1Bs are called “Bones” because B-One spells bone. Bones were made for nuclear war with the Soviets and for carrying hydrogen bombs, and so they don’t carry a lot of different tricks for small battles. B-1Bs do come with 12 GBU-38s and 8 GBU-31s, very good optics and Axle says the pilots are easy to talk onto targets. When a B-1B runs low on gas, refuelers can fly to us. One day, Axle could see Bones refueling directly overhead while continuing to track a target.

In all, about fourteen types of aircraft fly topcover, including American, Belgian, British, Dutch and French. JTACs here say the least desirable aircraft of those fourteen are the French M2000D. A package of two jets carries no cannon, no downlink and a total of only 4 GBU 12s. The optics aboard the aircraft are not good, and the trail aircraft spots targets with binoculars like the Red Baron. Also, the French and British have problems understanding each other’s accents. The British who work with French forces refuse to say a bad word. They say the French are good and ready—which can be surprising because the Brits and the French like to slag each other—but the French aircraft simply are primitive in comparison to the American jets. An American unit in Zabul Province last year said that some French pilots probably saved them, or at least made a big difference, and so any words about primitive aircraft should be taken in light of respect for the pilots.

No mention is made of the Apache helicopters because Axle was talking about jets. The Apaches seem to do most of the heavy lifting—for every jet strike I must have seen 5-10 Apache strikes. Apaches are very effective. We are too far out for coverage from Kiowa Warriors. Predators are excellent but Reapers are especially welcome.

The A-10s were gone and so Axle headed to sleep but Corporal Henry Sanday keeps working while all his men are zonked out.

The following account does not pertain to Pharmacy Road, but pertains to Corporal Sanday, his men, Axle and others in these photos. These photos were made on 09 August. On 13 August, a bomb detonated at 0523, wounding Matthew Hatton and two others. Sanday arranged to evacuate the wounded by helicopter but there were IEDs along the routes to the HLS (Helicopter Landing Site).

As Daniel Wild and Mark Hale helped the wounded Matthew Hatton, they were hit by a second bomb, killing all three men. In total there were five casualties, and call-sign “Pedro,” helicopters from the United States Air Force had come in to evacuate the killed and wounded. Henry Sanday was acting Platoon Sergeant and wanted to land Pedro on a roof but the roof was too small. He finally got the casualties loaded out. After suffering three killed and two wounded, the men continued the mission though some of the men were very rattled. Later that evening, when the mission had been completed and the soldiers were moving back to FOB Jacskon, they were hit by a third bomb leaving two casualties. Sanday was setting up another helicopter extraction when a fourth bomb detonated and an interpreter turned into a “white mist” leaving only a leg. The interpreter went MIA. Sanday asked the Apaches to search for the body but they found nothing. I’d seen this happen in Iraq and it took us a long time to find two of the bodies. One missing body was maybe a hundred meters away. The other body was farther. It’s been a long time, but I think it might have taken an hour to find the last body, and we had dozens of people looking. Sanday was down to four unwounded soldiers in his section and in Sangin the IEDs often seem to come in big clusters. No matter which way you go, there is a high probability of more. Two interpreters were killed in the strike and three were wounded.

Some of the men were in shock and did not react to Sanday’s commands. They were seriously battle-affected and refusing orders, though others rose to the occasion and were the glue. I’ve seen this breakdown happen. Soldiers typically bounce back. Two officers described to me their thoughts on Corporal Sanday. “He is an absolute hero,” said one, and the other agreed. Sanday’s name was mentioned with respect all the way back in Iraq. Now in Afghanistan he continues to rise to the occasion, but now with more experience. The next day, Sanday went on a combat mission in Sangin. About 100 meters in front of him an IED detonated on another section. Three soldiers from the Royal Regiment Fussilliers were killed. During extraction to the HLS, a pressure-pad IED caused more casualties. Again, I am told Sanday and others rose to the occasion.

The interpreter who disappeared was found in the Helmand River, about 20 miles south at FOB Price.

But those attacks were still a few days away. Today, Sanday had more dangers to lead his men into, and through, and as they slept, he worked.

Body armor for a pillow. Many soldiers buy those bracelets because they say the profits go to support wounded warriors. Next time I’m in Camp Bastion, I’ll buy a couple.

“Axle” Foley, who was on that horrible mission with Sanday, went to sleep until more aircraft were scheduled to show up. This photo was made at about 0517 and I put down the camera then my head down at 0521, just in time for the first explosion seven minutes later at 0528. The explosion was close and powerful and literally raised some dust. AFTER it exploded, someone said it was EOD for the first controlled detonation. The Bang Boys were out there in the danger zone, cracking away. I said a little prayer for them and put my head back down and that’s when the rooster started crowing—from inside the building! Look at the halls in the photo. A rooster is very loud inside here, as if he were crowing straight into our ears. The ANA keep the rooster for fighting. He was incredibly loud. BOOM at 0540. EOD was back at it, and at 0548, then 0558, then 0610 and 0612 and 0621. The EOD soldiers were into a rhythm. Between the rooster crowing inside the building and EOD blasting away nearby, sleep was hard to come by, so I got up and walked to one of the guard towers. LtCol Rob Thomson seemed to be the last one working, and warned me not to get shot. (During the bad morning on the 13th, LtCol Thomson saw some gloom on a few faces and he jerked those faces back into the fight.)

The British call guard towers “sangers” (a word the Brits picked up during a previous Afghan war). At the bottom of the ladder, I announced my presence to the ANA soldier and he waved me up.

The EOD were blasting just a few hundred meters away, and after every explosion, the ANA soldier would imitate and laugh, “BOOM, BOOM, hahahahah BOOM, BOOM, hahahaha.” He was like a big kid. He begged to have his photo taken and then wanted to stare at his photo and begged for another photo and another. Finally, he got behind the machine gun and acted like he was shooting. He was saying “gugugugugugugugugugugugugugug” like he was firing the machine gun. I walked over to make sure the gun was not aimed at any British EOD soldiers, who were in a different direction off to the left. The ANA soldier kept making the gun rattle, “gugugugugugugugugugugugug,” while laughing like a six-year-old boy, “gugugugugugugugugug.” Where were the 3- to 5-round bursts? He was wasting imaginary ammo. I said “No! It should be gugug…..gugugugug…gugugug. Not gugugugugugugugugugugug.” He wrapped his finger on the trigger and started to pull, but before doing so, a red LED seemed to flash inside his brain. He stopped. And there was a long pause, like on one of those old-timey calculators where you press “2” “+” “2” “=” … and then wait five seconds for the answer “4.” He checked the safety which, predictably, was on FIRE despite that a long belt of ammo was draped from the loaded gun. He clicked the safety on and pulled the trigger and kept going, “gugugugugugugugugugug.” Some men should not touch guns. He made me nervous that he might accidentally shoot someone, especially a British soldier, and so I distracted him with the camera, and started taking notes. Every time the pen hit the paper, he would lean over and stare at the writing, as if he were going to accidentally poke out his eye with the pen.

“Gugugugugugugugugugugugug.”

That’s when his buddy showed up with the dog. In Afghanistan mostly only villagers keep dogs, but the ANA are copying the British and adopted their own guard dog. Sometimes I wish all the readers could just come out here for a single day. Readers would never forget it. Look at that dog. What’s he going to do against Taliban with RPGs? He’s hardly got energy to bark. The gugugugugugugug man insisted that I photograph his friend and the dog, and then Dog Boy sprinted to the base of the sanger, tied the breathless guard dog to the ladder, climbed up breathlessly and stared at his photo and laughed and smiled and started jabbering on and giving the thumbs up, crawled back down, untied the dog and ran away laughing while the dog tried to keep up and they both disappeared around that corner.

The British and American soldiers often like the Afghans they work with; most of the Iraq veterans (British and American) did not make friends in Iraq, but most soldiers who work closely with Afghans seem to like them. The Afghans do some crazy, goofy things, but something about Afghans can be very likeable. Practically none of us want to be here, but nobody seems to have malice for Afghans. It’s difficult to explain.

Mud walls meet cinderblocks. Locals fill the cinderblocks with mud. If the people spent as much time building roads as they do building walls, this place would have more roads than California.

Sangin from the Sanger. The town of Sangin is not exactly Jurassic Park like most of Afghanistan. Despite that the British have been here since 2006, some people just a few miles from town still think the British are Russians, and the more enlightened ones seem to think the British are Americans. Most people seem to know who Michael Jackson is, but few have heard of Canada.

A couple days before this photo, British soldiers on FOB Jackson were firing large .50-caliber machine guns over my head, intermittantly, for about an hour. I thought they must be shooting someone, but this dispatch was a work in progress and so eventually the .50 caliber noise started affecting my concentration while I sweated over the keyboard. Finally, I pulled out the earplugs, walked outside and asked why the heck they keep shooting right over base?! There was no return fire. Turns out they were test-firing the machine guns, but every time the Fire Support Group launched bullets, villagers would see tracers and run toward the beaten zone where dust poofed up and rocks splintered through the air. Each time the soldiers fired the machine guns, the British soldiers would have to wait for the villagers to clear out, then fire again and the villagers would run back to the impact zone. The soldiers and I laughed at the absurdity. Iraq was almost never funny. Afghanistan can be like a war version of Comedy Central.

That man is walking on Pharmacy Road. Most of the the walls are roughly fifteen feet tall, though the walls behind him are shorter. There is no commanding ground—this is about as good as it gets—and the snipers cannot get long shots or observe far. The enemy are aware and use the labyrinth of walls nearly as effectively as if they were tunnels.

Orientation Image #1 (Please Click on the Image for a Larger View)

FOB Jackson sits beside the Helmand River, south of the Kajaki Dam which bottles the lake at the top. Kajaki Dam is currently protected by British soldiers from 2 Rifles. They are completely surrounded by Taliban and fight every day. (Please Click on the Image for a Larger View)

’The Green Zone’ is not made by rain, but by the Helmand River. The Kajaki Dam was built by Americans decades ago. We actually built much of the infrastructure now used to grow poppy. (Please Click on the Image for a Larger View)

FOB Jackson, established in 2006, is the main base in Sangin. (Please Click on the Image for a Larger View)

Scrap in front of PB Tangiers.

The mercury rose with the sun. LtCol Rob Thomson gathered up some men and wanted to go see the EOD soldiers as they were clearing some of the most dangerous ground. Though they had just cleared this stretch, there have been many instances where soldiers got blown to pieces by ground that was just cleared. Cleared is more like “cleared.”

The EOD soldiers said this dog missed a big pressure-activated bomb and led his handler right over it. Luckily the team didn’t step on the device. The dog is better at finding shade than bombs, apparently. Probably should be a drug dog. I’m no expert on search dogs, but it is true that glaring sun can bake away scent. I had the feeling that the soldier felt like he let people down, but nobody said any such thing. Everybody knows it’s tough out here and sometimes you simply miss the bomb.

Viewed from north. (Please Click on the Image for a Larger View)

The “Wishtan 5” were killed on the Wishtan market road on the top left. Those five soldiers were killed in a similar attack wherein soldiers who survived the first attack were killed while rescuing their buddies.

We came into a compound that had been “cleared.” Without EOD, our losses would be far higher in Afghanistan. The EOD soldiers get special respect and earn every ounce of it.

LtCol Thomson checks progress.

(Please Click on the Image for a Larger View)

The imagery from November 2004 does not show the power lines in the photo below. I made the photo below from nearly the same angle as the image above. So, the EOD soldiers on top of the truck are in the corner of the compound overlooking Pharmacy Road. The soldiers are a few meters from where the yellow thumbtack denotes “Blown Vehicles.”

The EOD team is rigging this wall to blow part of it down. On the other side of the wall are the two blown-up vehicles; one of the vehicles is British and the other is the trailer from a “jingo truck.” The area surrounding the trucks is booby-trapped with explosives, and the vehicles also are booby-trapped. So the goal is to blow down the wall and drag the vehicles off the road and into this compound.

These EOD soldiers wear a Rainbow patch and call themselves Team Rainbow, which of course seemed quite curious.

The wall is so thick and strong that Team Rainbow put about 200 pounds of plastic explosive in all the right places, then rolled out the wire. The reader might be surprised to see what 200 pounds of high explosives does to the wall.

Team Rainbow and LtCol Thomson stayed up close, but I got behind the farthest vehicle because I have no pride in my courage. Some people think this is crazy work, but I’m actually a safety fanatic.

When the enemy hears a detonation—which typically occurs many times per day—they wait for helicopters, knowing that if helicopters swoop in and land, they have achieved success. Many of the enemy bombs in Sangin are detonated by command wire, while many others are pressure-activated and are simply improvised land mines. The enemy often uses pressure cookers to make bombs, just as was done by the Maoists in Nepal. In Nepal, the government began confiscating pressure cookers (which angered many people), and the government often shut down cell service (angering many people) because the Maoists used cell phones. The Maoists won the war. We are operating far smarter in Afghanistan. Here it’s the enemy who actually shuts down cell towers—and this angers the people. Also, the enemy bombs around here are killing a lot of innocent people, and this also angers the people. Despite progress made by the Taliban, they alienate many people.

And so that’s all that 200lbs of high explosives, in perfect contact with the target, placed by experts, could do to this wall. When soldiers come back from Afghanistan and say that the compounds are like fortresses, this is what they mean. The electrical wires, which cannot be seen in the Google Earth imagery of 2004, got blown down. The EOD soldiers wanted to avoid the live electrical wires. EOD called the Royal Engineers to come up with a non-destructive solution to the wires. Within minutes they thought of a solution. The vehicle above cut a notch in the top of the far wall with his scooper.

He drove the scooper machine to the front and opened the wall to let a bigger truck inside. The Engineers hooked webbing around the electrical wires, and using the winch on the big truck, pulled the wires up and draped them over the notch the scooper had cut. EOD was back in business clearing Pharmacy Road. In fact, the soldier who is driving the scooper is the same driver who got blown up on Pharmacy Road, and his blown up vehicle is one that they were about to drag into the compound.

It can be very rattling out here. But they keep getting blown up and going, and the enemy is getting it worse.

Preparing plastic explosives in slivers of shade. Iraqis thought our body armor was air conditioners, and thought we have “cold pills” to chill us out. The soldiers carry far more weight than I do, and they work three times harder. This heat is bad even for me, but much worse for them. Often U.S. and British soldiers end up back at the hospital after they collapse, but in nearly all cases they come straight back to the fight. There was a U.S. battalion in the 1st Infantry Division in Baquba, Iraq, who were constantly pumping IVs so they could outlast the enemy.

SSgt Schmid of the Joint Force Explosive Ordnance Disposal (JFOD). Dealing with hidden bombs made by pernicious enemies requires special people. I asked Ssgt Schmid which wire he cuts when dealing with booby-traps—red wire, or the green?—SSgt Schmid just laughed and kept working.

The blown-up vehicles were dragged through the blown-up wall under the blown-down wires.

As the midday sun pounded down, the EOD soldiers continued to work in the heat. LtCol Rob Thomson stayed out in the boiling sun with the men. I retreated with some others to a cooler place that was halfway underground. Most of us soon fell asleep as the EOD soldiers kept blasting, blasting, blasting. They must have made dozens of explosions during the day and they never seemed to take a break. None of them, nor LtCol Thomson, ever took even a minute of shade break with us.

After an afternoon of blasting, LtCol Rob Thomson headed to PB Wishtan, but my gear was back at Tangiers, where some ANA were preparing for a mission.

During the clearance, this soldier fell off a ladder. He was all the way at the top, about fifteen feet high. Luckily he was wearing his helmet because he said he also cracked his head. His spirits were good but he seemed a little embarrassed for falling off, but accidents like this happen a lot. Even when nobody is shooting, there are plentiful ways to get hurt out here. In the background are two improvised cots where I slept the second night. Just on the other side of the barrier, the Hescoes got hit some months ago by an RPG, as seen below.

RPGs are simple but enormously effective.

As the shadows grew longer, the British and ANA began playing volleyball while EOD kept blowing up charges along Pharmacy Road.

When people complain about the British rations, I think of Laxle Kedian Harris, more commonly known as “H.” I offered some weightlifting tips but H laughed and changed the subject. But make no mistake—the rations are . . . to put it kindly, bland.

It’s dangerous to leave a camera unguarded around soldiers. It could have been much worse.

That night, we stayed in the field because the mission was not merely to clear Pharmacy Road, but to build a sanger (guard position) about halfway down—one which would be constantly manned. While we slept, soldiers from 2 Rifles and the engineers worked all night erecting the sanger.

After a long, hot day taking back Pharmacy Road.

Some work while others sleep.

And that was it. Pharmacy Road was cleared and the sanger was built and most of us headed back to FOB Jackson just as the sun was rising on the second day.

Later that afternoon, back on FOB Jackson during the Battle Update Briefing (as Americans would call it), a BOOM shook the room. Word came that a local person was pulling parts from one of the vehicles that were dragged off Pharmacy Road. He encountered a Taliban booby-trap and he was killed. EOD had not cleared the vehicles of booby-traps; the two vehicles had merely been pulled off the road. Next day another local was killed on a parallel road that he thought the British had cleared. It had not been cleared. The Taliban blows up a lot of local people in Sangin.

The mission was an obvious success. It was surprising that we endured no fatalities or serious injuries. The mission was well-executed and since many of the soldiers have substantial combat experience from Iraq and Afghanistan, major dramas were averted. Murphy had smiled upon us. The only injury to my knowledge was the soldier who fell off the ladder. Soldiers who had previously fought on Pharmacy Road said we had sustained about twenty fatalities and injuries in that general area. And though at least one IED has been placed on the road since last week, C Coy and the ANA are now regularly patrolling and the freedom of movement has resumed.

This is a brutal fight. Since that mission, eight more British soldiers and two interpreters have been killed in this area. That’s ten KIA plus the wounded. The soldiers keep going.

Coming up next: the fighting we saw on election day wherein the soldier beside me got his antenna shot off.

I cannot operate in the war without your support. If support does not substantially increase, I will be forced to abandon war reporting in September. There has seldom been much interest in the Afghanistan war. True interest has been starkly reflected in the support for this mission. Each journey into Afghanistan, since 2006, has bled out resources from my operations. Reporting from Afghanistan is not sustainable at this rate.

Nevertheless, I continue to crack on: Please consider signing up for free Twitter updates at Michael_Yon (not Michael Yon without the underscore), for the most timely snippets possible.

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17 August 2009
Sangin, Afghanistan

The roads are so littered with enemy bombs that nearly all transport and resupply to this base occurs by helicopter. The pilots roar through the darkness, swoop into small bases nestled in the saddle of enemy territory, and quickly rumble off into the night.

A witness must spend only a short time in the darkness to know we are at war. Flares arc into the night, or mortar illumination rounds drift and swing under parachutes, orange and eerily in the distance, casting long, flickering but sharply defined shadows. The worst that can happen is that you will be caught in an open field, covered by nothing and concealed only by darkness, when the illumination suddenly bathes you in light. Best is to stay low and freeze and prepare to fire, or in the case of a writer, to stay low and freeze and prepare to watch the firing.

Explosions from unknown causes rumble through the cool nights while above drifts the Milky Way, punctuated by more shooting stars than one can remember. The Afghanistan nights will grant a wish to wish upon a shooting star. And while waiting for the next meteor, the eyes are likely to catch tracer bullets.

A CH-47 helicopter whirls in with a “sling load” of resupplies from Camp Bastion to FOB Jackson in Sangin.

The pilot comes in fast, to the dark landing zone, lighted only by “Cyalumes,” which Americans call “Chemlights.” The sensitive camera and finely engineered glass make the dark landing zone appear far lighter. The apparent brightness of the small Cyalumes provides reference.

A show begins as the helicopter descends under its halo.

The charged helicopter descends into its own dust storm.

Gently releasing the sling load.

The pilot hovers away from the load, pivots and begins to land.

The dust storm ripples and flaps over the medical tents.

Heat causes the engines to glow orange.

Dust begins to clear even before landing. The helicopter, under its own halo, casts a moon shadow.

The halo often disappears when the helicopter ramp touches the ground. Again, the conditions are quite dark, but the excellent camera gear has tiger vision.

The British medical staff treats many wounded Afghans who often show up at the gate. In the photo above, Dr. Rhiannon Dart (right) observes as an Afghan patient is medically evacuated to the trauma center at Camp Bastion. The medics and Dr. Dart are especially respected for the risks they equally share here. The medical staff walks into combat just like the other soldiers—frequently side by side in close combat. Numerous times per week, their battlefield work, often under intense pressure in hot and filthy conditions, is the deciding factor on whether soldiers or civilians survive or die. I asked Dr. Dart if Afghan men have any reservations when being treated by a woman. She answered that when men are seriously wounded—which is about the only time she sees Afghans as patients—they don’t care if she is a man or a woman. During a mission last week, I saw an Afghan soldier walk by with a bandage on his hand. Dr. Dart stopped the soldier, asking him to remove the bandage. Contrary to harboring reservations, the soldier appeared relieved that she wanted—actually sort of politely demanded—to examine his injury.

The ramp lifts in preparation for takeoff and the halo begins to rematerialize before the helicopter lifts into the darkness and disappears. Soldiers call the medevac flights to Camp Bastion, “Nightingales” or “Nightingale flights.” Shortly after sunrise on the morning of 13 August, an element from this unit was ambushed nearby, killing three and wounding two others. Despite the immediate danger, the helicopter came straight onto the battlefield. After the initial ambush, and another successful ambush during the evacuation, the British soldiers did not return to base but continued with the mission. Later that evening they were twice ambushed again, sustaining more fatalities as two interpreters were killed. Soldiers asked me to go on that mission but I was busy assembling this dispatch. One of the killed soldiers, shortly before the mission, had looked over my shoulder as I selected the photos. Captain Mark Hale was killed while aiding a wounded soldier. Mark had particularly liked the next three images:

Night after night, helicopters keep coming. Last month a civilian resupply helicopter had tried to land at this exact spot but was shot down on final approach. Two children on the ground and all persons aboard were killed. The helicopter crews earn much respect.

Sometimes the halos appear like distant galaxies.

In motion, the halos spark, glitter and veritably crackle, but in still photos the halos appear more like intricate orbital bands.

Perhaps like the rings of Saturn.

The halos usually disappear as the rotors change pitch, dust diminishes and the ramp touches the ground. On some nights, on this very same landing zone, no halos form.

Note: By request of the British Army, a handful of these photos were slightly altered to obscure base security measures. The alterations are limited to minimal parts of several photos.

On another night, the helicopters return. The camera is jostled, accidentally creating a double image.

Note: Most photos, such as this one, are unaltered other than normal ‘black room’ processing.

They keep coming.

What is this halo phenomenon called? None of the American or British helicopter pilots seemed to have a name for the effect. They provide only descriptions and circumscriptions. I asked many people, and finally reached out to Command Sergeant Major Jeff Mellinger (one of my “break glass only if” sources whom I ask when other means have failed). Jeff asked pilots, and came back with an excellent description from one pilot:

“Basically it is a result of static electricity created by friction as materials of dissimilar material strike against each other. In this case titanium/nickel blades moving through the air and dust. It occurs on the ground as well, but you don’t usually see it as much unless the aircraft is landing or taking off. The most common time is when fuel is being pumped. When large tankers are being fueled they must be grounded to prevent static electricity from discharging and creating explosions.”

But still no name. How can the helicopter halos, so majestic and indeed dangerous at times, be devoid of a fitting name?

A phenomenon in need of a name. Mark Hale had liked this image and the next.

I spent two weeks searching for a fitting handle but all attempts came to naught.

The halos are different every night. Some nights they are intense, other nights dim, but often there are no halos.

There are explosions and fighting every day and night.

Under the moon.

This time exposure shows where the pilot briefly hovered before dropping in.

Our casualties in this war reached an all-time peak in July 2009 and the heaviest fighting was here in Helmand Province. On 10 July, elsewhere in Helmand, some of America’s finest soldiers were hunting down Taliban.

Members of the U.S. 3rd Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment closed space with the enemy, apparently killing at least ten. Corporal Benjamin Kopp was shot and evacuated to Germany, then back to the United States, where he died just over a week later on 18 July. Benjamin was 21 years old and at the very tip of the spear. If not for such men, we would be at the mercy of every demon.

Benjamin Kopp and his comrades were delivering the latest bad news to the sort of people who harbored the terrorists who attack innocent people around the world every day, and who attacked us at home on 9/11. Ranger Kopp was a veteran with three combat tours. He knew the risks, yet continued to fight.

Benjamin was laid to rest at Arlington National Cemetery. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates quietly attended the funeral, as did my good friend, Colonel Erik Kurilla, the new commander of Ranger Regiment, where Kopp served until America lost one of its finest Sons.

Yet the effect of Corporal Kopp did not end on the battlefields of Afghanistan; he only regrouped and continued to serve. Corporal Kopp had volunteered as an organ donor and his heart was transplanted. Two days after most people would have died, Benjamin Kopp’s heart was transplanted into Judy Meikle. According to the Washington Post, Meikle said, “How can you have a better heart?” said a grateful Judy Meikle, 57, of Winnetka, Ill., who is still recovering from the surgery. “I have the heart of a 21-year-old Army Ranger war hero beating in me.”

Other organs were also donated for other recipients.

Benjamin Kopp’s case is reminiscent of so many others whose names are and faces will forever remain unfamiliar to most of us. The Angels Among Us are nearly always invisible to our eyes until it’s too late to say “thank you,” and “farewell.”

On August 11, I attended a small ceremony for a British soldier from this base in Helmand who was killed in combat the day after Benjamin passed. His name was Joseph Etchells. I was told how Joseph died in a bomb ambush, and that his last request was to be cremated, loaded into a firework, and launched over the park where he used to play as a kid. When Joseph’s last request was explained, I burst out laughing and the British soldier who told me also was laughing. The absurd humor of Joseph’s request was familiar, and it was as though Joseph were standing there with us, laughing away.

Joseph Etchells from 3 Plt, 2 Battalion Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, was attached to 1 Plt, 2 Rifles

Lieutenant Alan Williamson was “Joey’s” platoon commander here in Sangin. LT Williams said that the other soldiers called him “Etch,” or Joey, and that Etch was born in 1987. He joined the army at age 16, though he could not deploy for combat until he was 18. Etch did a tour in Northern Ireland and three tours in Afghanistan, including 2006 in Now Zad where he endured 107 days of straight combat wherein they fought literally every day. In 2007 Etch deployed to Kabul and then performed “Public Duty” by guarding the Queen outside the palaces.

Lt Williams said that Etch was a, “Young and very keen Section Commander. Most Section Commanders like to be a few men back so they can command without being in immediate danger, but “Etch” refused to be that far back, and was always right behind the [“point man.] He was an outstanding runner. He left his fiancé behind. He would have been a very young sergeant. He was an outstanding, outstanding soldier.”

Joseph Etchells and Benjamin Kopp were both Corporals in different armies. Both had served three combat tours. Ben was 21, Etch was 22, and they both fought their last battles in Helmand Province. The names of these British and American warriors are listed consecutively in a roster chronicling our sacrifices in Afghanistan.

Last month there had been a large service here for Etch, but I witnessed a much smaller service where those closer to him came together to pay final respects. This service in Sangin occurred on the same day that a final ceremony was being held back in the United Kingdom. About twenty soldiers attended. The event was quiet and respectful and I wanted to be back in the United Kingdom to salute the rocket launch as it carried away the payload of Joey’s ashes, and exploded over the park. Here in Sangin, the bugler played and his buddies tossed their cap feathers into the Helmand River. The red and white feathers drifted away in the same waters where Etch used to swim after missions, down into the desert. Here they call it the “Dashti Margo,” the Desert of Death.

And so a fitting name had arrived to describe the halo glow we sometimes see in Helmand Province: Kopp-Etchells Effect, for two veteran warriors who died here in Helmand, Ben on the 18th, Joe on the 19th of July in the year 2009. It’s not hard to imagine the two Corporals have already linked up and regrouped, and in sense they have. Knowing combat soldiers, it’s easy to imagine them laughing away at the idea.

The Kopp-Etchells eponym can be seen as a cynosure for the many who have gone before the Corporals, and those who will follow. I had talked to Captain Mark Hale nearly every day for two weeks. Mark liked the name. And then Mark himself was lost on Thursday along with Daniel Wild as they were aiding a wounded Matthew Hatton. I heard very good things about Daniel Wild. They say he was a good and tough soldier. I’d seen Matthew Hatton on the battlefield and felt more confident by his presence. Hatton was a well-respected man. As for Mark Hale, I only knew him for two weeks. Mark will be missed by many people, myself included.

The war goes on and all the fallen soldiers know what we must do. We must keep moving. There will be time in the future to pay proper respects, and to reflect upon their honor. Now is not that time.

While waiting for a helicopter to land, there was activity on the perimeter, and then an unseen hand fired a flare so that we could see who was out there.

The following men and women sacrificed their lives in Afghanistan since the time that Benjamin Kopp and Joseph Etchells passed on. I am told that more names will soon be added to the list:

http://icasualties.org/OEF/Afghanistan.aspx

*Note: some photos were slightly altered to obscure base defenses.

I cannot operate in the war without your support. If support does not substantially increase, I will be forced to abandon war reporting in September. There has seldom been much interest in the Afghanistan war. True interest has been starkly reflected in the support for this mission. Each journey into Afghanistan, since 2006, has bled out resources from my operations. Reporting from Afghanistan is not sustainable at this rate.

Nevertheless, I continue to crack on: Please consider signing up for free Twitter updates at Michael_Yon (not Michael Yon without the underscore), for the most timely snippets possible.

You can help support this mission through paypal, all major credit cards, or e-check.

10 August 2009
Sangin, Afghanistan

Daily dramas unfolded, including the bangs, booms and small-arms fire that punctuated the times. At 1800, I was preparing to go to orders with 1 Platoon, A Company of 2 Rifles, when shots from a large-caliber rifle began cracking low over base. I passed by sniper, Kris Griffith, and said, “Hey Kris, why don’t you grab your rifle and go shoot that guy?” Kris replied that two other sniper teams were on it. “He’s close,” I said, and Kris answered, “About 600 meters.” Then we went our separate ways.

Orders were given and then the soldiers performed final checks on their gear and tried to fall to sleep in the sweltering evening heat. Some nights I would go to sleep using the sleeping bag as a pillow, only to wake up with it drenched in sweat.

The alarm was set for 0213 hours, but at 0211 I sat up and turned it off before it could wake the soldiers who were not going on the mission. I had nineteen minutes to pull on my boots, body armor, and small rucksack, before I had to get to breakfast, engage in final conversations, and then show up for the mission at 0310.

The mission was to begin at 0330; my section was to slip off base at 0345.

The following series of photos were taken during the early morning hours of August 2nd . The conditions were “red illume,” meaning there was less than 10 millilux of ambient light and it was too dark for most helicopters to fly, even while using night vision gear. It was plenty dark.

Soldiers and section leaders did “final check” after “final check” of their gear, and talked quietly among themselves while last-minute updates came over the radio.

In red illume, the soldiers used dim red lights that were harder for the enemy to see. Red light also preserved our night vision. By showing up a half-hour before departure and sitting quietly, our eyes and senses had time to adjust and tune in to the battlefield. The battlefield was a thirty-second walk away.

Some soldiers smoked cigarettes before stepping out into the wild zone. Most were quiet. There was little talking during the last ten minutes.

In Green: Lance Corporal Jamie Nicholls, section commander for 1 Platoon, A Company, 2 Rifles

My section assembled…

…While another section waited.

The first section moved out nine minutes before the mission for my section began.

Six minutes to departure.

Final red lights were out. Our mission started three minutes early.

Despite low ambient light, the market in Sangin was dangerously lighted.

By 0357 hrs, some shops were already open, including this shoe store. The Taliban in this area did not seem to wear running shoes as did some of the enemy groups elsewhere in Afghanistan. Here, the enemy mostly wore sandals or went barefoot. (Many often ran right out of their sandals, especially during combat.)

Shops on this very street sold fertilizer used to make bombs. They might as well have sold dynamite. (The fertilizer also happened to be good for growing opium.) The bombs regularly blow the limbs off troops around Afghanistan. Soldiers may lose their legs, or their legs and an arm and their eyesight, or worse. But what can we do, really? Gasoline, like fertilizer, can be an incredible weapon. Are we to ban gasoline and attack gas shipments while trying to build a country from scratch? We talk about weapons flowing in from Pakistan, while in reality most of the casualties in this area come from bombs made from fertilizer sold in the open markets. We talk about Pakistani Taliban flowing in, while the local ANA Commander, Colonel Wadood, tells me that some of the fighters are Tajiks from places like Ghor Province. Tajiks generally hate the Taliban but they come to make money, he says.

1 Platoon, A Company, 2 Rifles moved silently through darkness cut by bare bulbs.

The sensitive camera and fine lens seemed to amplify low light.

The crux of the mission was a raid, but the task of our section was to provide security and fire support for the raiders. If the enemy were to try to hit our guys during the raid, our job was to kill the enemy, and so our objective was a farmhouse that overlooked the target.

British soldiers moved into an occupied farmhouse as the man willingly opened the gate to let us in. Several cute children were sleeping under the stars. The soldiers were so quiet the kids were not disturbed. I thought to myself, “What would the kids think if they woke up and saw the soldiers?” About fifteen minutes later, one of the children woke up, and his voice could be heard through the silence of the night. The man with the turban stepped over and spoke quietly to the child who immediately zonked out again, as if it were all part of a dream.

After the compound was quietly and respectfully searched, some of the soldiers sat down while others pushed into security positions.

The soldiers were perfectly early: not so early that they risked tipping their hand too soon, but early enough that they had time to collect thoughts and tune-in after the movement and get into good positions while the raiders skulked in on the nearby target, only 150 meters away.

Instead of pushing everyone into position immediately—increasing the chance of compromise—most of the team waited down in the compound until just before first light.

This man seemed unconcerned. The British soldiers respected the locals while the Taliban acted out on a whim, murdering innocents or splashing acid in the faces of schoolgirls. Within hours of the time this photo was taken, we felt the rumble as the Taliban blew up a local bridge and killed two ANA soldiers. In addition to the killing, the bridge was important to the locals. This was not a fight for terrain, but for the sentiments of the people.

As with al Qaeda, the Taliban is our best weapon against themselves. The Taliban issued a code of conduct, which likely was a blunder on their part. Why? Because the Taliban are undisciplined savages, and every time they violate their own code of conduct—which happens every day and night—the good guys have a chance to broadcast the transgression.

Rifleman Robert Welsh

More soldiers moved to the roof at 0442 while the raiders got into final position. At 0500 the raid began, but only two air rifles were found. At 0510 “dickers” (watchers) were spotted on motorcycles and on a roof, as the FST plots potential enemy positions.

Fire Support Team members: Hatton, Wotherspoon, Beale

Though it might seem like a simple raid, it would take many long dispatches for the untrained reader to develop a reasonable understanding of this three-dimensional battlefield and what the soldiers were doing. There was more going on than just “1 Platoon, A Company, 2 Rifles, with guns on a roof in Afghanistan.” 1 Platoon was a small part of a larger package.

Embedded within 1 Platoon was a handful of specialists from 636 (Arcot 1751 Battery), 40 Regiment Royal Artillery, “The Lowland Gunners,” simply called the “Fire Support Team.” Most soldiers just say FST.

The primary function of 1 Platoon was to provide security for the raiders, and to deliver the FST, whose primary function also was to provide security for the raiders.

The FST controls air assets, mortars, cannons, howitzers, and remote rocket systems known as GMLRS, (which Americans pronounce “Gimmlers” while the British say each letter: G-M-L-R-S).

GMLRS (Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System) scares the heck out of the enemy; GMLRS can be launched from dozens of miles away and reliably kill a man—or a lot of men—without warning. GMLRS are like the ultimate sniper rifle, only the bullet is a large explosive warhead. The system is so reliable and accurate that during operation Arrowhead Ripper during the summer of 2007 in Iraq, our people were hitting IEDs from dozens of miles away. Whereas the enemy can see or hear most aircraft, they get no warning with GMLRS. Even with the invisible and silent Predators and Reapers firing the small Hellfire missiles, the enemy has a few seconds warning. Hellfires are like gigantic hand grenades with a homing system. A Hellfire can hit a car and not necessarily kill everyone. But if GMLRS hits a sturdy two-story house, the house is gone. The Taliban hate it.

The FST had an array of tricks up their camouflaged sleeves; the primary weapons of this mission were the devastating 81mm mortars, the even more devastating 105mm howitzers, and the GMLRS many miles away. Overhead were two American A-10s; British Apaches attack helicopter; and a supersonic American B-1B bomber that was designed to deliver hydrogen bombs into the heart of the Soviet Union. The call sign for the B-1B might as well have been “Strangelove” and it’s not difficult to imagine Slim Pickens at the controls. (A message came that a B-1B crew who had covered us on a recent mission, had read the dispatch and sent a message to me. The Brits relayed the message; thank you B-1B! During upcoming missions, I’ll be the one waving up at you in the stratosphere. The enemy has IEDs, but the riflemen are monkey-stomping these guys. Thank you for the top cover.)

FST soldiers plotted all suspected enemy firing points and listed the coordinates while other soldiers were ready near the mortars and howitzers and would fire into the target mere moments after a “FIRE MISSION…” radio call came in. At 0521 a man was spotted in a dark dishdasha moving through a woodline. Sergeant Wotherspoon, a Scottish soldier who sounds very much like the Scotsman on the Simpsons, pulled out his laser range finder, checked the distance and plotted a fire mission. The “dicking screen” seemed to be increasing so the FST stayed busy plotting potential targets. At 0544 the first raid was over and the raiders moved to hit a second compound. Amazingly, some people in the United States believe that the raiders should take time to gather forensic evidence for later court cases. This would spell many death sentences for us, and prove a potent disincentive to soldiers who risk their lives to capture suspects alive. If soldiers at war are held to the same evidence collection standards as law enforcement officers at home, we need to end the war before we sink further into the quicksand. If the judiciary enforces unbearable standards in this ugly war, a fair-minded, informed person likely would say that we need to conclude our attempts to raise up Afghanistan, and we should bring home the troops.

At 0546 there was a large caliber rifle shot that kicked up dust about a hundred meters from us. A minute later there was another shot but we saw no splash. Wotherspoon said, “That’s how it started last time; single shots trying to find us.” (Wotherspoon really does sound like the Scotsman on the Simpsons but I didn’t dare say it.) They had gotten into a serious firefight here before and expected another. I fell asleep when shots woke me up at 0633. There were sounds of motorbikes and sporadic shots being fired as I fell back to sleep. While most soldiers worked some were switching watch and a few slept. An infantryman’s rule of thumb: never miss a chance to fill canteens or sleep.

Modern battlefields bring countless strange sounds. What does a bomb sound like when it slices overhead through the dark to a target? An RPG launch? How about a Javelin or Hellfire or 81 or 105 or 107 or 155 or A-10 or Shadow? Everyone reading this likely knows the sound a train rumbling by, or a car horn, yet out here on the battlefields there are probably hundreds of new sounds to learn. While falling back to sleep, an incident came to mind from my first day or two at FOB Jackson. The mess tent was crowded and we all heard a THUMP, which sounded remarkably like an incoming mortar launch. This base – despite all the combat – does not take mortar and rocket fire (touch wood), so nobody hit the deck. But in the seconds after the THUMP, the loud mess tent went completely silent as all ears strained to hear. And then came a slight whistle and at least fifty people were on the ground in a second or two. But one soldier, Corporal Ryan Hone, just sat there and said “What?” Corporal Hone was temporarily deaf because he had been flat-blasted by an enemy bomb some days back, and so he didn’t hear the whistle. And there was no incoming mortar. I’ve never heard one whistle, anyway. The whistle came from Serjeant Rob Grimes from 2 Platoon!

In addition to plotting potential enemy FPs (Firing Points), any potential enemy group who came within our reach was also immediately plotted. The machine guns, rifles and grenades the soldiers carried were the least things the enemy should have been concerned about. Fine training and attention to detail are crucial in this job. All targets were “danger close” to us, and often to the other elements on the ground.

“Danger close” means that even if everything goes just right, friendly troops are so close to our fires (such as bombs, mortars or the guns), that we might take casualties from our own fires. Any fire missions that the FST would have called from the position we were in would have been danger close, to us and probably to the raiders. Most fire missions in the Green Zone are danger close.

So if one of these soldiers made a mistake—even one digit off—the mistake could have wiped out an innocent family, us, or both. To safeguard, they train constantly, and during missions two FST members plot each target separately then compare answers.

Lance Bombardier Matthew Hatton

FST soldiers must be able to pass the tests during firefights and when bombs are exploding or when people are screaming with horrible injuries. They must reliably call fire missions during all conditions, such as fitful, dark nights when the men are tired, hungry, and in need of rest.

L to R: Corporal Pat Cunningham; Sgt Lee Wotherspoon; Gunner Jake Beale. Many soldiers adapted the camouflage to blend into the local condition. The green shirts help in the Green Zone.

While the soldiers on the roof worked radios on different nets, plotted their own solutions and shared information, the family below offered bread and tea to the soldiers.

From the roof, the FST can call a fire mission from scratch and have rounds landing in — let’s not give the enemy a clue, and just say “very fast.” Since the FST had already plotted all likely enemy positions, the fire mission would be accelerated Time Of Flight (TOF) for the 105mm Howitzer shots would be 22 seconds while the 81mm mortar bombs will fly for about 33 seconds before detonating. All fuses are dialed to “proximity low” to reduce structural damage and increase damage to Taliban fighters.

On the roof, Gunner Jake Beale mentioned that he turned 19 in May, and later Corporal Mark Foley recounted how he saw Gunner Beale shoulder his 40mm grenade launcher and take aim at a Taliban who was about 200m away. Beale launched the grenade, which arced lazily to apogee and fell straight into the Taliban and detonated. While shots were being fired in the distance, the soldiers joked that it takes eight washings to get the smell of Afghanistan out of your gear. Beale said that if you iron your uniform, the smells take you on a tour around Afghanistan with smells from fields, compounds, markets, irrigation ditches and shit.

This A-10 had just popped flares and headed straight over the unfolding ambush. British soldiers love to see a couple of American A-10s on station. It’s like having a backup battalion in the sky. The A-10s are not sexy like F-15s, but they are fantastic platforms operated by capable pilots.

There were various shots as the morning unfolded and at 0743 there were two explosions that we thought were an RPG attack. Actually it was an IED attack with two bombs on the ANA. The sun was rising and the morning was already hot when we heard random scattered shots and a short but brisk firefight. The soldiers were in good spirits. I said, “Those guys out there with guns are not very friendly,” and they laughed and told jokes of their own.

Bones the B-1B had flown over a couple times, and at 0759 the two A-10s flew over and popped flares nearly over our heads. The ANA, some hundreds of meters away, had been ambushed by a bridge and the bridge was destroyed. One soldier was dead and another dying. We could hear bullets flying but could not see the action other than some dust. A British rescue helicopter carrying a MERT (Medical Emergency Response Team) was dispatched from Camp Bastion and headed straight into the danger.

The raids were over and the raiders had pulled back, so we departed the roof. I saw a couple soldiers say goodbye to the turbaned man who was waving his farewell.

As we entered the first funnel between two compounds which ended at an open area, we were in the perfect position to sustain a hit. When we entered the open area we saw a half dozen men watching us from a mud building that had been melting through time. We seemed to have surprised them. No weapons were visible but my danger alarms kicked to red-alert, and the same happened with the soldiers who immediately prepared for combat. It seemed to me that soldiers were clicking rifle selector switches to FIRE, but I am not certain. Some kids were also watching from another position. Everything seemed wrong.

One man, among the group of men in the melting building, pushed a small child in front of him and at least two British soldiers told all the men to “Get out of here right now!” I could sense that British trigger-fingers were a glance away from pulling into action. No shots were fired and we moved on.

Were those men and the children part of something bigger, or just onlookers? A European or American likely would have taken cover if they saw a firefight brewing, but that doesn’t mean these people would. Combat veterans of the Iraq war might remember seeing women and children walking down the streets during the middle of firefights. Hundreds or thousands of bullets might be snapping by, yet some woman with a couple kids would appear and leisurely cross the street like nothing was going on, as if protected by a force field.

Some people say the Taliban are cowardly for planting bombs, but I do not believe this makes them any more cowardly than the A-10s, Apaches, B-1Bs and Reapers make us cowardly. We didn’t come here for a fair fight. We came to win. Some troops even say that if you show up to a battle and find it’s evenly matched, you didn’t plan well. What most of us find cowardly and despicable are the enemies who hide behind children. The bombs they plant for us are fair play. But males who hide behind children are not worthy of respect.

It’s difficult to move unpredictably in tight areas. There are choke points and only so many ways to travel in the limited battle space. And so we were bottlenecked, and the point man detected something suspicious.

Most of the bombs here are command detonated, requiring only that someone push the button or connect the battery. Despite the danger, the point man crawled on his belly to the suspected bomb. If what he saw was a command detonated bomb, he likely would die suddenly and we would be pelted by the blast. If what he saw was a pressure plate, he might save the life or limbs of one or more of those behind him.

A cow was munching green just to my right. The soldiers were quiet, as they scanned the danger areas. Everyone was quiet: If you’ve got nothing to say, now is a good time to not say it. Should the point man have been killed we would likely have been in a firefight right there. By this time the British helicopter is just minutes out from picking up the dying ANA soldier who had been blown up earlier, while his buddies loaded up the dead soldier.

Point man said quietly back, “Barbed wire,” and it was relayed back to me and I said, “barbed wire” to the man behind, who said, “command wire” and the file behind immediately started to pull back. I said, “No, no, barbed wire, not command wire,” and he understood then, so we all moved forward. The point man found no bomb.

We pushed farther into another fatal funnel.

The enemy often plants bombs in the walls, or they can easily dig under a wall and put a bomb under the path without leaving visible disturbance. These are normal tactics. They also shoot through small holes in the walls. At this range, the A-10s and Bones the B-1B could do little more than watch.

The soldiers cleared through the funnels and moved back onto the market street.

The suicide bomber threat was high, and unfortunately we had become an irritant to the people. We could not let motorcycles and cars just roll by or it would be just a matter of time until a bunch of guys would get flattened.

Back in May, a motorcycle rammed a patrol and when soldiers got out to help, he detonated, killing two British soldiers. This happened in nearby Gereshk. One of the soldiers had been a Gurkha. Word came to Brunei where I was training with Gurkhas. The soldiers halted the exercise briefly and held a moment of thought, then returned to training for a return to Afghanistan. That attack had occurred in Gereshk. There had been four suicide attacks in Sangin.

When we stopped traffic the people would become irritated; most of them were just going about their lives. I saw a letter wherein one American officer said that he did not see people irritated when he stopped traffic in Kabul, but he must not have been paying attention. The people do get upset, and so it was important to smile, wave and act as non-threatening as possible. Sometimes there was little else you could do.

Typical transport on the main road in the district capital of Sangin.

There are many tractors in Sangin. Diesel fuel can be mixed with the fertilizer to make bombs (ANFO: Ammonium Nitrate Fuel Oil), but here the bomb-makers had been mixing the fertilizer with fine aluminum powder used in spray paints.

Apparently this ANP is not accustomed to shoes or boots with laces. The golden sacks on the right are fertilizer that can be used in bombs.

We made our way through the market and one motorcycle looked like he would crash the patrol and a soldier immediately shouldered his rifle, aimed at the man and yelled, “STOP!” The man skidded to a stop. I waved and he actually waved back.

Nobody liked doing this, pointing a rifle at someone who was probably in his hometown.

Back where we started: Soldiers clear their weapons, head back to clean their gear and go for a swim in the river. The blonde and bespectacled Jake Beale turned 19 years old in May. Rifleman Matty Meakin (far right).

Some of the soldiers out here might seem young, but there are no young soldiers here. Not even one.

Guarding the body

The British MERT helicopter had landed on the battlefield and picked up the severely wounded Afghan soldier. He was delivered to Camp Bastion where he died that day.

While the helicopter had evacuated the soldier who died shortly thereafter, the Afghan soldiers loaded up the dead soldier, the one who was killed in the initial attack, and brought him to our base despite the fact that he obviously was dead. Maybe they thought the British could do something but he was dead and nothing could be done, so the Afghan soldiers kept guard on the body and for a time at least two of them cried for their comrade. I brought them water. They wanted a British helicopter to come take the body somewhere, but this was not going to happen.

It’s a bad idea to land helicopters here in broad daylight other than for casualty extractions, and the ANA has helicopters; their own commander could request the same. FOB Jackson is a busy little base where Afghan soldiers also live, so most people probably had no idea why the Afghan soldiers were even sitting there—but the medics had told me.

Later that afternoon the two Afghan soldiers were still there, but had lightened up and wanted their photo taken. That day like every day kept unfolding, and ended just as it had begun.

I cannot operate in the war without your support. If support does not substantially increase, I will be forced to abandon war reporting in September. There has seldom been much interest in the Afghanistan war. True interest has been starkly reflected in the support for this mission. Each journey into Afghanistan, since 2006, has bled out resources from my operations. Reporting from Afghanistan is not sustainable at this rate.

Nevertheless, I continue to crack on: Please consider signing up for free Twitter updates at Michael_Yon (not Michael Yon without the underscore), for the most timely snippets possible.

You can help support this mission through paypal, all major credit cards, or e-check.

A helicopter roars into FOB Jackson in Sangin, Afghanistan. Medical tents are just next to the Helicopter Landing Site (HLS) so casualties can be quickly loaded.

05 August 2009

The helicopter pilot wearing night vision goggles roared in so fast it looked as though he were crashing. The four green Cylums (Americans call them Chemlights) mark the HLS. While the helicopter is above the dust cloud, it melts into the dark, but as it approaches the HLS, dust swirls high, setting the stage for an amazing light show. The Chinook descends through the dry dust and the rotors glitter brightly, creating an eerie glow as if sparklers are attached to the rotors, which in reality appeared brighter to the eye than in the photo below. If the helicopter were not so loud, the millions of static discharges might be heard crackling and popping.

Slow shutter speed causes moving helicopter to 'disappear' while the trace and sparks off the descending rotors is clear. Heavy dust makes a sharp focus look blurred. (ISO 1600, 50mm at f1.2, 3.2s.)

Dust begins to clear. (ISO1600, f1.2, 2.5s.)

Air Cooler.

Daylight

While walking across FOB Jackson to find Nepalese Gurkhas, this air cooler caught the lens. After sprinkling water on the straw, evaporation cools the air. Construction of air coolers has been taught in military survival classes, yet like much of those classes, the field craft is just part of daily life around the world. In India, many hotels will advertise they have “air conditioners” when actually the rooms often use various sorts of air coolers which—though better than languishing and sweating through nights of Indian summers—are not the air conditioners that many people expect.

Nepalese Gurkhas took me on a mission in Sangin.

Annual recruitment for the Gurkha regiment is brutal, and I asked about the different “selections” they underwent. One Gurkha said his selection started with 26,000 applicants, though only about 200 were chosen for the Regiment. I have trained with Gurkhas in Brunei, and been to Nepal many times, but this was my first mission with Gurkhas that included real bullets and real enemies.

Gurkhas serving in the British Army have been rotating through Afghanistan. They can converse with many Afghans, at least on a basic level, by speaking Hindi. The Gurkhas also look like many Afghans (especially Hazaras), and in fact many Filipinos, Thais, Nepalese and Hazaras look very similar. As British soldiers, Gurkhas travel the world and see many things and they also live for years in the United Kingdom and Brunei. They travel to Africa, Central America, Europe and often America. Add to this fact that these men tend to come from remote, rugged villages where the terrain will match or possibly even exceed any of the severe difficulties found in Afghanistan, and the insight created from this confluence of experience can be invaluable. Gurkha impressions of Afghanistan are of particular interest to me.

ANP: Afghan National Policeman (ANP).

The young Gurkhas at FOB Jackson are working as part of a PMT, or Police Mentoring Team. When the Afghan policeman in the photo above showed up looking pregnant I asked, “Do you have baby?” and armed man lifted his shirt to show the magazines of ammunition. Just why he was carrying the ammo under his shirt remains a mystery. You never know what these guys will do next. The Gurkhas have good words for the Afghan Army here at FOB Jackson, but are wary of the police, who they say are lazy, inept, and lack initiative and professionalism. The Police Mentoring Team works to the intent of Captain Toby Woodbridge, whose assessment of the ANP introduces context that the ANA here had roughly three years head start on the ANP. According to Captain Woodbridge, the ANP respond favorably to consistent, long-term training. “There is clear evidence that when you provide the ANP with adequate training, you create the conditions for development of a professional, motivated security force. These guys have a hard life and do a difficult, dangerous job.”

The pre-mission briefing, delivered by a Gurkha soldier, was identical to what one would expect from another British soldier, or an American infantryman, only it was delivered with a heavy Nepalese accent. Each important detail of today’s mission had been discussed in advance. So we headed into the Sangin market along with several ANP. There was a fair chance that we would get into some sort of fight.

As we move into a dangerous area, two Gurkhas with a spotless machine gun take a roof to cover our movement forward.

Having trained with Gurkhas for a month on Brunei and reading battle citations from their tours in Afghanistan, I was confident that if there were any dramas, the Gurkhas would hammer the Taliban flat. The Gurkhas all seem to think that the Taliban are poor fighters, but Gurkhas say the home field is a crucial Taliban advantage. Many Gurkhas say the Taliban often are brave, though they perceive Taliban in Sangin as cowards because they mostly only hide and plant bombs. When the Taliban do stand and fight, the British soldiers tend to out-fight the Taliban and kill them.

The actual mission today for the Gurkhas (and a few Afghan police) was to escort other British soldiers who are administering development projects in Sangin.

School bombed by Taliban idiots. Growing up, I was taught not to call people idiots, but as a writer it can be difficult to substitute the perfect word for a euphemism. The Taliban are idiots.

Recently, the same Gurkhas were supposed to have come to this school for some business, yet they were distracted during the patrol and changed course. At just the time the Gurkhas were supposed to be here, the Taliban detonated explosives in the school that the British had been constructing. The hole in the floor by the wire is the seat of at least one blast.

Parked at front of school.

Most bombs around here are made from fertilizer, or what Brits and Americans call “HME”: Homemade Explosives. A clever high school kid would have no problem making these bombs. This is farmland, and weapons-grade fertilizer is sold just off base. This enemy is not smart but the home field advantage is crucial, and as the saying goes, we have watches while they have time. Yet context is crucial: large parts of Afghanistan are not so savage or beset with caveman mentalities. The British like to say that Helmand Province is medieval, but I say the British give Helmand far too much credit. Medieval is space-aged compared to some of these places.

Though again, context is crucial: cities like Jalalabad and Mazar-i-Sharif are good places to visit and far more advanced. There are even—despite the war—pro-American sentiments among many people in Helmand (location is key) due to American development last century. Many Afghans complain that the Kajaki Dam is not supplying massive amounts of power, forgetting the fact that Americans built the dam to begin with. Nevertheless, Americans who helped develop Helmand many decades ago left positive feelings.

The Gurkhas and other British soldiers patrolled through the market in Sangin. These sorts of metal lockboxes are commonly available in Afghanistan.

RPG strike on a guard position. The RPGs are small, cheap and can defeat most vehicles other than our most heavily armored. In the race between armor and bomb, the bomb eventually always wins. This has been true for centuries and shows no signs of changing. In the Sangin area, we are better on foot wearing only body armor. British citizens today are concerned about the same things that Americans were concerned about during the early phases of the Iraq war: armor. Fact is, we can drive down these roads in the best tanks in the world, and be blown upside-down on and set ablaze. The enemy is increasingly good at blowing vehicles into ditches or rivers to drown the occupants. They did this to the Soviets, too. In many places, such as Sangin, the roads can be a death sentence no matter what you drive, and the enemy can seed IEDs far faster than we can clear the routes.

Pharmacy across from checkpoint where RPG struck.

Pharmacy in Sangin. Chinese fans that break easily are luxury. When they work.

Karzai’s picture seems omnipresent.

Typical market and motorcycles.

The scandal! Music and videos hint that Mullah Omar’s influence has waned here.

Haircuts for sale.

More haircuts.

ANP post in Sangin.

The Gurkhas seem polite with the police but they don’t trust the ANP. They say the ANP are corrupt and infiltrated. One Gurkha told a story about an ANP who shot to death seven other police while they were sleeping, and then ran away.

Whatever the truth of this story, it did not happen in Sangin. Nevertheless, U.S. troops have been killed by Afghan security forces. Captain Toby Woodbridge said patrols with ANP create safer conditions for British soldiers. As a third-party observer, I would agree with the assessment; ANP presence ultimately increases our security. One goal, in any case, is that the ANP or ANA do all patrols without us. Nothing here can be considered friendly. However—again—the British give accolades to Afghan soldiers in Sangin, and to the progress of ANP. “The progress in Sangin is genuine,” according to Captain Woodbridge.

There is no roof over our head because, according to the Gurkhas, the ANP stacked too many sandbags on the roof and it collapsed, nearly killing two policemen. “Sandbag mistakes” have occurred among our own troops. Cave-in’s occurred in Iraq, for instance. In one case, an individual stacked sandbags on his roof, which caved in, caused an electrical fire and killed him.

Was this sign was posted for people in Washington, or for people in London? If people like Robert Gates and David Petraeus were not running top-cover, I’d agree that it’s never too late to learn, and that it’s time to go home and let cavemen be cavemen. But people like Secretary Gates and General Petraeus think we create some sort of success here, and I do, too, but only with sincere, strategic intergenerational commitment. Ten years more will not do it. Twenty years will not be enough. A century is more realistic. Knock on wood that Stanley McChrystal can pull a rabbit out of his hat during his command, and buy time for progress.

Corporal Chitra Thapa from Baglung, western Nepal, led the patrol. Chitra is with 1 Royal Gurkha Rifles (1 RGR). For years now, I’ve asked Gurkhas why they don’t join the U.S. military. But the Gurkhas like to keep their own units and so are not apt to split off alone. They respect the U.S. military, but unfortunately will not join. Some people call them “mercenaries,” but Gurkhas don’t fit that definition in my book. If Gurkhas were true mercenaries, they might join any band that would pay. But they regularly join the relatively poorly paid Indian Army and don’t join the U.S. military despite the incredible benefits and their positive views of America. Gurkhas are not “mercenaries” as we use the term, but professional soldiers who don’t seem to like going to war. But when they do…watch out.

Sangin bazaar.

The intelligence section here at FOB Jackson says that since this 2 Rifles tour began in April 2009, tips from locals have been steady with no remarkable increase or decrease in information flow. Information flow from civilians is a crucial indicator and was my first big tip-off during the dangerous summer of the 2007 that the Surge in Iraq was working. Even as our casualties were dramatically increasing during the Surge and up to mid-2007, cooperation from Iraqis also dramatically increased.

Here in Sangin, there are conflicting lines of information that would indicate we are gaining or losing ground. Cooperation from locals—a crucial indicator—would indicate we are treading water.

Some attacks are thwarted by tip-offs, which often, or typically, result from immediate self-interests, such as the case where bombs are planted among a farmer’s crops. Whereas earlier the bombs were planted on obvious channels such as roads, bridges and paths, last week a soldier was severely wounded by an IED in the middle of a field. I watched from base as another three IEDs detonated in the vicinity. Luckily those were without effect. There were many factors that led to the avalanche-like turnaround in Iraq, and one of the key factors was troop strength and constant presence in the neighborhoods. Many Iraqis and Afghans were/are betting on what they perceive to be the winning side—no matter if they like that side or not.

Local cooperation seems based on immediate self-interests, not long-term ideological visions, though, clearly, long-term ideological visions are hallmark for the fundamentalists. We will know that we are winning—definitely winning—when we see a remarkable increase in population-generated information and cooperation.

Sangin Market: tons of fertilizer flows into Sangin. These fertilizers are as good for making bombs as for growing corn and drugs.

Walking through the streets, one sees enough fertilizers to flatten a strong and very large building. The local bomb-makers often use pressure cookers as the Maoists did in Nepal. In fact, the Nepalese government began confiscating pressure cookers, leading even more people to sympathize with Maoists who used them for small bombs. Our forces spent considerable effort intercepting fertilizer coming into Iraq—I was on some of those missions—yet here the bomb-making materials are all available within a couple minutes from the base.

The market. Sangin is massive opium producer but this year’s crop is already in, and the corn and other crops are growing. Tall corn is easy for the enemy to hide in, so the British help farmers closer to base grow short crops, such as beans.

Sangin market.

The “G Factor”: Rfn Manish Archarya, from Dharan in eastern Nepal, steps across the block to keep his boots dry. Some Gurkhas will slog through water or mud, but most use stepping stones or logs. Other British soldiers smile and call such differences “The G Factor.” During tracking school in Brunei, this clue indicated whether we were tracking Gurkhas or someone else. The Gurkhas would parallel a stream looking for a log or other place to cross, while other British soldiers would splash straight through.

It is not well known that the Sultan of Brunei quietly supports our efforts in Afghanistan. And the Sultan so likes the Gurkhas and British Army stationed in Brunei, that he pays the expenses for the British to keep the Gurkhas stationed there. (As I write these words from a hot building on FOB Jackson, an uncouth ANP with radio in hand and pistol on right hip, just spat upon the floor as if we are in the middle of the desert.)

Front L to R: CPL Chris Bannon; Rfn Carl Dresser (facing away); 1LT Mark Cripps; SGT Rob Grimes; Rfn Liam Martin; Rfn Dean. Back L to R: CPL Kenneth Copeland; Rfn Gatting (facing away); CPL Ryan (Ginge) Hone; Rfn Farrah.

The day was 30 July 2009, and the hot mission with the Gurkhas ended and we returned to base, and there was 2 Platoon from A Company, 2 Rifles, prepping for a mission during which they would be hit. Morale of 2 Platoon is strong and they retain their sense of humor despite much fighting. 1LT Mark Cripps and SGT Rob Grimes were inspecting gear and weapons.

During this mission, 2 Platoon would be hit, but none of us knew this yet. After the hot patrol with Gurkhas I trudged down to the river, completely dressed, boots and all, and jumped in.

SSG Justin Fitzsimmons, wearing uniform, who had also been on the Gurkha patrol, beat me to the river. Justin had been out to inspect the school that had been damaged by the bomb, and three ANP checkpoints that need work. Rifleman James Tong also was cooling down.

Lieutenant Hannah Keenan hits the creek.

A bomb detonated and rattled over base. 2 Platoon, who had been inspecting gear and weapons, had rolled onto a mission and gotten hit. There were two big fertilizer (believed) bombs in an open field, and both detonated at once, severely wounding a young soldier. 2 Platoon had been keeping their intervals or it would likely have been far worse. QRF (Quick Reaction Force) was “instant on” and began to assemble within a couple of minutes, and within maybe five minutes they seemed ready to dive into the thick of it. Everyone knew they likely would also be hit. Were it not for such young soldiers, we would be at the mercy of every demon.

And then another bomb detonated and the mushroom rolled away and I wondered how our friends were doing. And then another bomb. And another. Four separate attacks.

I crossed the river and climbed up to the guard post which was bristling with more weapons than one might imagine, and I climbed the homemade ladder to the fourth floor, the top. There, with three British soldiers, all calmly taking in the situation amid terse radio chatter, I peered through the CLU of a Javelin missile. (No Javelin was attached). The CLU, or Command Launch Unit, is an excellent optic, and there about 2kms distant, orange smoke wafted above the trees, as the call came that the British MERT helicopter (Medical Evacuation Response Team) was nearly on scene from Bastion. I asked a British soldier on the radio why they popped orange at the landing zone; was the LZ hot? Why didn’t they pop something else, like green or white? The Chinook roared over the smoke, low and at a high rate of speed, and headed straight for what appeared to be about 5km before it banked right and came back. I tracked the helicopter through the CLU, and on the way back another orange smoke popped, but this time the Chinook took a neck-breaking right U-turn and swooped in with far more agility than one might expect from such a large helicopter. Through the CLU, white smoke could be see wafting above the trees, and the Chinook came down and I could see the ramp was open, and then the MERT roared away with the badly wounded soldier to the trauma center at Camp Bastion. A soldier later mentioned that the wounded man was at the trauma center 53 minutes after the first attack. Every soldier knows that if they can get you on that helicopter alive, you’ll probably survive.

That night and the next night I had dinner with the Gurkhas. They had picked up a goat from the market, and also some Pakistani rice, which they say is better than Nepalese rice but more expensive. Rifleman Santosh Sherestha, from Bhojpur in eastern Nepal, stayed over the fire cooking the goat while Nepalese music played in the background.

The cookhouse reminded me of Nepal.

Rfn Sanjay Limbu Dharan came in to help with the cooking. Sanjay is from eastern Nepal about two days’ walk from Mt. Everest (that would be about 3-4 days walk for normal, fit people). I walked three weeks one time to Everest base camp; the Taliban have nothing on the Gurkhas and their mountains. Adventurous souls who want to know what the terrain is like where many of our people fight in Afghanistan might consider trekking for a month in Nepal. The mountains are not friendly, but the people are. After a month deep in the Himalayas, there will have been time to reflect on why we need either another couple hundred thousand more soldiers, or at least understand why more helicopters are crucial.

Before dinner, Corporal Chitra Thapa disseminates important information, warning for instance that nearby FOB Inkerman got hit with IDF (apparently rocket or mortar). The Gurkha way is usually supportive, not condescending, and Chitra congratulates other Gurkhas for doing some daily tasks such as keeping the combat gear ready, and the weapons spotless. There is more gunfire on the perimeter but it’s so common that nobody thinks much of it, except that we are about a 30-second walk from the gate where “Terry” (the Taliban) might like to come in.

Someone on the perimeter fires a small parachute illumination which drifts down under the moon.

And floats away.

The men want to know about the American soldier who was captured but I know very little and will not write about anything I would know. A Gurkha said that he read that the American prisoner is 27 years old and asked if I think we will get back our soldier, and I say that I pray for him and that we have good people who specialize in such things. Even the stoic Gurkhas want to know how Americans have been able to serve back-to-back combat tours, some as long as 15 months, and I recount the story of a soldier named Jeff who did nearly three years straight in Iraq, and that he was very high-ranking and never had to go to combat but he went to combat constantly. And I say to the Gurkhas that our young soldiers keeping going because old soldiers lead the way.

The war goes on. In the morning I ask LT Cripps, and then later SGT Grimes, the same question. I asked how the men are doing after the latest casualty, and their answers are frank and similar; some of the younger soldiers are shaken, especially the closest buddy of the stricken soldier. But they are absorbing this punch and are ready for the next mission, and I offer to go with them. LT Mark Cripps singles out the medic, Beth Sparks, for special praise, saying she is always there in the mess, and had treated the badly wounded soldier the day before.

And that’s about it for some common scenes and thoughts from a common night and day. There were casualties and firefights again yesterday. 2nd Platoon has been out all night on another combat mission and they are still out, probably giving the local Taliban a big headache. There was a large explosion about twenty minutes ago.

I cannot operate in the war without your support. If support does not substantially increase, I will be forced to abandon war reporting in September. There has seldom been much interest in the Afghanistan war. True interest has been starkly reflected in the support for this mission. Each journey into Afghanistan, since 2006, has bled out resources from my operations. Reporting from Afghanistan is not sustainable at this rate.

Nevertheless, I continue to crack on: Please consider signing up for free Twitter updates at Michael_Yon (not Michael Yon), for the most timely snippets possible.

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Spraying for bugs on FOB Jackson, Sangin.

03 August 2009
Sangin, Afghanistan

The bugs are not bad in this part of Afghanistan. The scorched terrain is biologically boring. Mice and ferret-like creatures dash around in the evenings when sparrows and doves and a few other sorts of birds flutter through the cool air. But even at sunrise, I cannot make out the songs or see in flight more than ten types of birds, one of which is the rooster. There are no wading birds, not here anyway: no kingfishers, no cormorants or ducks. The dominant hue of land and bird is desert brown. Maybe a bird or two with black feathers, but never one with sharp, primary colors: not even a red wing tip or a white tuft. There are no ornamental birds with glorious plumage or fancy dance, only drab designs, though the lucky ones have short golden legs. There is not a single inspiring song among them.

In the dark of night the bats discreetly flutter about, and in most places even the flies and mosquitoes are not too bothersome in July and August. I’ve not seen a moth bounce off a light, and in fact the few brightly lit bare bulbs draw no crowds. In the river at night, where I sometimes swim in the dark, a flashlight will draw hundreds of small fish, and on shore there are a few toads, or at least toad-looking creatures. Seldom does one hear frogs or insects calling out from the grasses or trees. I’ve seen no butterflies coming to drink during the day, and down here, in fact, in Sangin, I have yet to see a butterfly. At night there are the jackals, more often heard than seen, yelping and yapping off in the blackness. Sometimes a housecat can be seen slinking about, neither tame nor feral, but something in between…like the people.

By comparison to Florida, mosquitoes in Sangin during this time are practically nonexistent. Some Afghans will say this is the worst part of Afghanistan, practically lifeless, and inhabited mostly by brutish, uneducated people whose lives are made somewhat relevant only by their violence and drug dealing. In fact, it seems that many Afghans care less for the people of Helmand than do the foreigners who come here.

Word came that a British unit from 2 Rifles was in contact with the enemy, and that nine soldiers had been wounded. Two low-flying A-10s had roared over the base—a sure indicator that soldiers were in trouble. The snarling aircraft are meant to cause the enemy to think twice before continuing, which buys our folks a little time to defend or counterattack. Shortly after they swooped in, the A-10s fired their cannons. During a different firefight last week, one that I could hear from base but was not involved in, an American A-10 swooped in and was cleared hot. The fire support team soldiers explained to me that the A-10 pilot was lined up and preparing to squeeze the trigger when he saw a child emerge from the enemy position and so the pilot flew by with cold barrels.

It was just in this location a few weeks earlier—a little to the right in the photo above—that the Mi-26 helicopter was shot down about 500 meters from the location of the camera. Many soldiers from FOB Jackson responded to the crash and there they found the burning bodies and the two killed Afghan children. “Mr. Flemming,” an Afghan interpreter here, said he thought the helicopter was going to crash on him but got lucky. Mr. Flemming and the British soldiers said the crash looked like slow motion from a movie, and that the pilot had struggled. One soldier, a direct witness, told me the crash had occurred about five seconds after being hit, but Mr. Flemming and other British soldiers who also had witnessed the strike, said the pilot had struggled for about ten seconds and that finally the helicopter flipped tail over cockpit and crashed on its nose then onto its back, where it exploded in flames. Still, the tail rotor which had fallen free had sliced into a house unburned. Each account varied but all agree that it was an RPG strike, and that the charred wreckage, that which was not consumed by flames or carried away by scavengers, is still there.

The enemy has the ground advantage, but Apaches, A-10s and other aircraft are crucial platforms, without which we would be far too outnumbered by man and terrain (mostly terrain) to be effective. UAVs are incredible tools and we need all we can get. We won’t complain about the IEDs, and the Taliban should not complain about the Apaches, A-10s and Predators.

I was up on a watch post with a soldier from Ghana while we waited for soldiers who have been fighting to return to base. The war is serious here; earlier in the day, another soldier from 2 Rifles had been killed upriver at Kajaki. Though morale in the U.K. seems to be slipping, I see no evidence of low morale among the soldiers, though there are increasing grumbles that they don’t get mail from loved ones due to helicopter shortages. Helicopters are one of our great advantages against myriad disadvantages, yet our combat forces are shortchanged by penny-wise, pound-foolish governments. The helicopter shortages are adversely affecting our op tempo.

While the soldier and I talked on the roof, waiting for the wounded to return, something detonated. He said that none of our guys were in that area, but he radioed information about the explosion and wondered if the ANA or ANP had been hit. Turns out, it was just another of a countless string of seemingly random explosions for which we never know the cause. Maybe it was some goofball Taliban accidentally blowing himself up, or maybe a dog hit a tripwire, or maybe a cow stepped on a pressure plate. A British soldier told me yesterday that they had been in a fight a few days back, and apparently some Taliban made a mistake because something exploded – it wasn’t from us – and the soldiers saw a leg or two flying through the air. There have only been four suicide bombers in Sangin, according to the soldiers, but the fad is growing.

A couple minutes after the explosion in the photo above, an Apache flew over to take a look but like so many times, it’s just a mushroom with no known cause. A few days ago, in this area, another RPG was fired at a British helicopter and missed. The area within these photos contains more IEDs than perhaps anywhere else in Afghanistan. The British managed to locate one of the worst places in the country and proceeded to build bases all around.

The cloud drifts away and we forget about it.

Curious Afghans came to the roof. Some people – including Afghans – say that Afghans hate the British, but I don’t see that here. Seems like the people here don’t like anyone in particular, including the British, Americans, and the Afghans from other parts of Afghanistan, and the Pakistanis, and the Iranians. But that’s only in some places. In other parts of Afghanistan, we are warmly welcomed. Other Afghans see this as an extension of previous British wars, apparently having missed the point that we were minding our own business on 9/11. Many of us seem to share with the Afghans an equal empathy: we care for their plight as much as they care about the attacks in the United Kingdom, United States, Indonesia, the Philippines…keep listing. Most combat soldiers are pragmatic. Nobody should carry the burden of illusion about why we are here. Despite that the Afghans can be a very likable lot, this is not a mercy mission. We owe nothing to the Afghans, especially not to those who continue to harbor murderers.

The Operational Military Liaison Team (OMLT) going on tonight’s mission: Major Guy Stone; Lance Sergeant (a Guards’ Corporal) Paul Ratcliffe; Lance Corporal Jason Crabb (back); and Lance Bombardier Grant on the machine gun on the WMIK Land Rover.

Sangin is an active battlefield. To describe missions with other than vague details would present danger to these soldiers and to the next rotation. This is not like the sweep from Kuwait into Iraq, wherein the previous week’s missions were tantamount to ancient history. Here in Sangin it’s a daily brawl over the same terrain and sentiments, morning and night.

The next Afghan elections are scheduled for 20 August 2009, so the Commander’s intent for the mission on 28-29 July:

“Disrupt insurgent activity across Sangin in order to create sufficient security for elections.”

This OMLT consists mostly of short soldiers in 3 Company from the Welsh Guards. They are short because the tall soldiers are sent to the Prince of Wales Company, while the short ones, called “Little Iron Men,” are sent to 3 Company. Tonight, the Little Iron Men would accompany the ANA.

Coalition nations have largely wasted nearly eight years in developing the Afghan Security Forces, and so today we are left outnumbered as much by terrain as by foe. American special operations forces, for instance, spent more than a half-decade on the greatest manhunt in recent memory. Today we have little to show for the Great Manhunt other than bumper crops of opium and an increasingly powerful array of enemies. The press had focused on Iraq while handing out hugs and lollipops on Afghanistan, leaving governments free to operate with practically zero critical outside auditing. Surely it was the war of their dreams. They fumbled it. When I reported with twelve dispatches during 2006 that we were losing the Afghanistan war, the United States government denied my return to Iraq. Today, in mid-2009, there are no Afghan Army forces in Ghor Province to the north of Helmand. Here in the 4-km2 Sangin district of Helmand, 100 ANP are authorized but only about 36 are available. This, after nearly eight years, is typical across the country.

Instead of peace, tonight’s intelligence-driven mission was to unfold in an area of Sangin that the British call Wishtan, a most brutal corner of today’s war. Wishtan is particularly perilous because of the people and their dwellings and the maze of passages and alleys and doglegs and canalizations between the compounds. Routes are predictable and bombs are easy to hide in the walls or in the ground, and the channels created by the walls contain the men and the blasts. During firefights there is little room to maneuver. Wishtan is a big series of fatal funnels, or in the words of British Army Captain Alexander Spry, “Wishtan is like something from a Freddy Krueger movie.” Captain Spry believes that Wishtan is almost certainly the most dangerous place in Afghanistan.

The OMLT was to link up with Afghan soldiers under the command of Colonel Wadood, a Tajik from Kapisa Province, whose goals are simply stated. Colonel Wadood told me all the problems will be solved by killing the Taliban and going home.

Captain Andy White came from the Australian Army into the British Army to fight in Afghanistan.

Jason Crabb will drive the second WMIK Land Rover: the vehicles are mostly unarmored and so avoiding bombs is especially important, though of course we are canalized by the roads and so avoiding bombs is a function of securing the roads, which can only be done in a limited fashion for short distances. Our movement is severely restricted by countless bombs.

Departure is scheduled for1900 hours. Coincidentally, just before we depart, there is a ceremony for a 2 Rifles soldier just killed up at Kajaki, and so the soldiers stood at attention and then we loaded up.

We drove down the bumpy road to Patrol Base Tangiers, which was only about a seven-minute journey through a market where an ANA soldier had been shot in the arm last week, and there were plenty of other dramas of note. We passed by the spot near the gate where a suicide bomber had blown himself up in March, leaving behind only his legs and some scattered parts that were collected and dutifully photographed.

Along the way I could not see out of the WMIK, and so just closed my eyes and hoped that if we hit a bomb it would be big and fast. The final dispatch would not be written by me. BAP!, we hit a bump and my helmet cracked into the turret overhead. A few seconds later, as my heart rate began to approach normality again, we came into FOB Tangiers, where we would wait. Our part of the mission was “relatively” safe: if the British soldiers and ANA conducting raids were to be blown up or got into a serious fight, we would come for the casualties. That would be the dangerous part. Despite the extreme danger, the OMLT soldiers and the ANA exuded confidence and were ready to go within a couple of minutes. The British soldiers praise the courage of their Afghan Army counterparts, and the respect is mutual.

Patrol Base Tangiers, in Sangin.

ANA collect for evening prayers as the cries come from distant loudspeakers and another hot day melts into night.

Patrol Base Tangiers is situated in ramshackle accommodations in a bombed-out compound. ANA use a British 'Mozzie net' as a window.

Major Guy Stone, the OMLT Commander here, disappears into the rubble and emerges with a filthy mattress unfit for a goat, and says to me, you are the guest and this is yours for the night. Major Stone drags the stained mattress through the dust and drops it against the barrier, which radiates heat like an oven that has just been switched off. The British soldiers never seem to complain about discomfort or filth. In fact, Major Stone was serious that as a guest, I was getting special treatment; the OMLT soldiers were going to sleep in the hot dirt on their sleeping pads, and so it would have been embarrassing for me to accept the disgusting mattress. Instead, I asked the ANA Commander, Colonel Wadood, to let me sleep on the tiny patch of grass planted by the ANA. An Afghan soldier took the mattress for his bed.

Darkness has settled, but while I make a satellite phone call, the camera gathers light from the kitchen where Afghans prepare our dinner. Wake-up is scheduled for 0300, though the actual raids should begin at about 0400.

The grass where we enjoy Afghan dinner with Afghan soldiers. Some of us will rest here under the stars while awaiting the mission.

Just before dinner, Colonel Wadood, Commander of 2nd Kandak, 3rd Brigade, 205 Hero Corps, consults a map with Sergeant Satar and Captain Nadari.

Dinner was served to a half dozen Afghan soldiers, five British and the interpreter, Mr. Flemming, who sat to my right while Colonel Wadood was to my left. Major Guy Stone wisely retired for some sleep so that if we had serious combat in the morning, he would be better prepared for quick decisions.

The conversation with Colonel Wadood and the Afghan soldiers ranged over the war in space and time. As with our dinner the night before, Colonel Wadood clarified that his view of success is two-dimensional: kill the Taliban and the war is over. Of course, the Taliban is one of many enemies here. This was my second dinner with Wadood wherein he seemed uninterested in development and related all problems to the Taliban and drug lords. ‘Kill them. There will be peace.’

Colonel Wadood’s 2IC, Maj Zelgai, who recently spent nearly two weeks in the United Kingdom, stayed the night at the home of Major Guy Stone, telling Major Stone’s wife not to worry, as he would take care of her husband. And one might suspect that Colonel Wadood and the ANA mean just that; no British soldier I have spoken with questions the courage and ferocity of Wadood or his men. American soldiers will further confirm that Afghan soldiers are ready to fight. There are exceptions – bad units wherein the Afghans often prefer to smoke dope than to fight – and there are other impressively negative narratives. But again, many of the units, such as Wadood’s, earn praise.

The dinner conversation meandered from one interesting vignette to another, with British soldiers explaining, for instance, how they were “mugged” by mobs of Afghan boys. The boys appear from the market and rush in, stealing anything they can grab, including one soldier’s wallet (why did he carry a wallet?), and a hand grenade pin from a live grenade. Luckily, the soldiers keep the grenade spoons secured, or the soldier would have been killed along with the kids. The soldiers and Mr. Flemming, the interpreter, talked about the Mi-26 that had been shot down and the burning bodies and the heat and how they thought one of the children who had burned to death was not a girl, but a boy as first assumed.

Over dinner, at 2015 hours, there was a distant explosion, sounding like an RPG, which nobody bothered remarking about, because it would be like bringing up something as common as a mosquito or a fly. I said that President Karzai’s brother has a restaurant in America, and the ANA soldiers laughed, saying that President Karzai himself had been a restaurant owner, until we made him President, and they joked not to bring any more restaurant owners to become Presidents. Still, they agreed that Karzai is a good President. Two of the soldiers are from Jalalabad and one had been a Mujahadeen fighter, while Colonel Wadood had fought on the Russian side, and so they laughed that they had been enemies, yet now they fight the Taliban.

At 2115 we heard what sounded like a jet, but I was unsure, and then BOOM!, a large explosion. At 2125, there came word via radio: five Taliban had been killed by a Hellfire launched from a Reaper prowling invisibly in the dark skies. About five minutes later, the Apaches were overhead and then came four thumping bursts from the 30mm turrets. No flame or tracer could be seen, just darkness and thumping and the sounds of the Apaches, also prowling invisibly in the ink above. Four minutes later a pen flare arced just outside our perimeter, and at 2140, there were two very loud explosions approximately one second apart. We were told later that the second explosion was from an enemy bomb that detonated after our bomb had hit it and killed some men. I say in English, “Someone is not happy tonight,” and Colonel Wadood and the Afghan Sergeant Major, who speaks English, both burst into laughter, “Yes, yes…someone not happy tonight.” Seconds later, there were two more bursts from the Apache 30mm. We are later told that the Apaches were chasing squirters. Our radioman called back to the JOC (Joint Operations Center), and they said, “the aircraft are attacking people who are laying IEDs.”

Word comes a little later that the Taliban are saying we bombed people who were eating watermelon in a field. The Afghans responded by telling us this was a lie, because they know how careful the British and Americans are with their fires, and they also knew that Afghans do not sit in fields around here this late at night eating watermelon.

I’ve witnessed too many missions (several in the last week) wherein British or Americans refused to fire because they could not positively spot a weapon, despite it being flagrantly obvious that we were tracking actual enemies. It’s very frustrating for me at times because I want to say to an American or British commander…Take the shot! This is too obvious! But that is not the place of a writer. The strategic wisdom behind the Rules of Engagement can be difficult to contest, though tactically, those same ROE can be fantastically frustrating. Tactically, the restrictive ROE endanger our troops every day, but strategically there is no doubt that strong ROE save the lives of even more.

I needed to place another satellite phone call to a friend regarding replacement of some camera gear that was stolen in Kabul. While we were talking at 2151 hrs, the Apaches began firing again. The attack sounded like nine or so distinct bursts of 30mm, though I was unsure.

There was time for possibly four hours of sleep before heading into hell, just a few minutes away. Sleep would not come, so I watched the big screen of the Milky Way for a couple of hours as it drifted from left to right across the sky. During this interim, I saw nearly twenty meteors slit the vast black screen, like a white-hot torch, sometimes leaving a trace. And I wondered how many people might die in the coming few hours.

As the earth continued to revolve around our tiny star and lie seemingly insignificant within the billions of lights overhead, a rooster crowed at 0215 as a couple of gunshots rang in the distance. Finally, there came sleep. And as if time had slipped by unnoticed, Major Stone woke me at 0400 and I packed immediately, in case there were combat.

As indigo seeped from east to west, with gradient hues of lighter blue, closely followed by yellow, the British soldiers were all ready to go, as were the ANA. We waited as the sun rose over the horizon, and with it the temperature.

Staff Sergeant Ben Worthington waits for a call. If our people get hit, we will be there in minutes.

Time elapsed and nothing happened. The raids turned up very little, and so I walked inside the building to talk with Colonel Wadood and eat breakfast with the ANA.

Boots at Patrol Base Tangiers in Sangin.

Mr. Flemming the interpreter came with me to breakfast with the ANA, as the British soldiers stayed by the vehicles outside, ready to crank and roll. Over a breakfast on the floor of bread, yogurt, jam and tea, the ANA intelligence officer said that he feels the morale of the Taliban in Sangin is slipping. They lost another seven nearby last night, and another five upriver at Kajaki, making twelve enemy killed in a single night and we did not get a scratch. We talked about the world and a little about America, and I asked if they knew that Michael Jackson had died. Four Afghan soldiers said yes, they knew, they saw it on television, and one said “we are sorry to hear this.” Colonel Wadood said somberly that Michael Jackson was “a good artist” and another ANA soldier said “I never know if he was male or female” and everyone laughed. I asked if they liked to watch wrestling, and yes, they love wrestling “competitions,” which they said are televised every night from Kabul.

I asked Colonel Wadood what he thinks about a British idea to negotiate with the Taliban and he said it was a good idea so long as everything is open and nothing is hidden, and he said, “War has exhausted the people of Afghanistan.” (They don’t seem exhausted to me.) And then he launched into something about President Obama, saying the whole world has positive views of Obama and “almost all people of entire world have bad memories of Bush and family.” Later I said to a British officer, just wait until I report the words about Bush and Obama, and watch the daggers come out, and the British officer said something like, “Yes, but you are free not to report it and they will be angry that you did.” As Colonel Wadood spoke of the Taliban and Obama and Bush, a curious coincidence flowed into the dusty room from the shortwave, as Secretary Clinton’s voice could be heard in a sound bite, and she was talking about talking with the Taliban.

I asked Colonel Wadood if the people of Afghanistan understand Democracy and he said yes, but not the people of Helmand, who “understand only Swordocracy,” and everyone laughed. And then spontaneously, Colonel Wadood said, “We have the best Democracy with Islam. Our religion is one of brotherhood and oneness. Our religion is about equality, no status.” He said these things, and more. Colonel Wadood continued, pausing long enough for me to write, “Women have the right to education, to have a job, to be a candidate in elections.” Colonel Wadood paused, and continued, “If we applied these things it is the perfect democracy and perfect religion. Killing people is forbidden. Drug trafficking is forbidden. Cruelty and brutality is forbidden. Attacks that Taliban execute are all against Islam and Sharia. The best Muslim never harms anyone with his eyes, his tongue or with his hands. He should only be useful not harmful. We cannot kill infidels without reason. But if they invade our honor, our religion, our land or our pride, we can kill them. Same condition applies to Muslim too. If he does these things we can kill him.”

After breakfast: Sergeant Mohammed and Captain Nadari stay in the conversation.

Colonel Wadood said that “Muslims in their deed, character and ethics should make the best example, and this does not just apply to Muslims but all humanity.” He said, “people should have fair and good relations with people around the world.”

I asked the Colonel about the Sangin economy, and he answered that first they need a paved road, with actual tarmac, and the road should link to Kajaki, then Musa Qa’lah. But then comes the crux, the crux according to Colonel Wadood: “We cannot build the roads until we destroy the drug lords and drug factories.” The drug lords depend on ignorance and so they do not let girls and boys go to school, and the Taliban, at least in the beginning, were their enforcers. (In fact, on 30 July I went on a mission with Gurkhas in the British Army, and we walked to a school that the Taliban had blown up and which the British were constructing.)

“They need ignorance,” said Colonel Wadood, in reference to both drug lords and the Taliban. “The government failed to provide opportunity, so the drug lords provided their ‘opportunity,’ but they needed security. So they hired the old Taliban to fight while the drug lords carried on with their business. Pakistan noted that this was in their vested interest, so they started to support the Taliban.” Colonel Wadood called this “The second rising of the Taliban,” and I’ll just call it the Resurrection.

We watched the Resurrection blossom with each passing season and, essentially, insofar as tangible outcome is concerned, did nothing at best. At worst, we aided the drug dealers by doing little or nothing while building infrastructure that aided them. I made photos in Urozgan Province in 2006, of road construction paid for by us, and those roads were going straight through fields of poppy. In 2006, poppy was growing within a slingshot range of the Provincial “Reconstruction” Team in Lashkar Gah, and in 2009 it grows abundantly around Sangin. This year’s opium harvest is already on the way to market and the corn that replaced much of the poppy is not yet tall enough to hide in.

I asked Colonel Wadood how many big drug dealers there are currently in Sangin. He said there are 10 or 12, and added that “A month ago, Taliban commanders south of Sangin nearly ran out of ammunition, and so the drug dealer [whose name Wadood gave me but the British asked that I not print] donated almost 5 million Pakistani Rupees to three Taliban commanders to purchase more weapons and supplies. Those Taliban commanders are [M1], [M2], and [M3].”

I asked how long we should stay. Colonel Wadood answered that we should stay until Pakistan interference is cut off, but in the current atmosphere we need to help with engineers, reconstruction and mineral extraction. “After 30 years, we are backwards.” (Before, over two dinners, Wadood talked only of killing Taliban, but over breakfast he talked about development.) “We are hopeful that Pakistan influence will soon be cut because we don’t want to lose Afghans or Coalition because everyone has family.” I asked what the Afghans think of India and Wadood answered by saying the relationship is good, and so I asked about Iran and he said they are the same as Pakistan but Pakistan is the first priority. I asked how long the war will last and Colonel Wadood said he did not know, but that he has been fighting for 30 years and hasn’t been absent a single day.

I cannot operate in the war without your support. If support does not substantially increase, I will be forced to abandon war reporting in September. There has seldom been much interest in the Afghanistan war. True interest has been starkly reflected in the support for this mission. Each journey into Afghanistan, since 2006, has bled out resources from my operations. Reporting from Afghanistan is not sustainable at this rate.

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