War

After sleeping on Abas Ghar ridge, Second Platoon moves out in search of hidden enemy camps. The battalion’s mission hinges on the platoon’s success. They walk through forests of fir and spruce and open, logged areas; they find no insurgents. Prophet, the call sign of the team that listens to Taliban radio signals, reports enemy chatter, including some whispering. That night, the men—dirty and sleep-deprived and beginning to see hallucinations in the forest—struggle to rest.

Dawn breaks cold and windy. As the men eat breakfast, bullets begin zipping in, highly accurate shots that pin them down. They return fire, then get reports that another American team is being overrun and a medic is needed where the Scouts are stationed. Second’s Pemble and Cortez run to help. Vandenberge, the large soldier, is shot in the arm through an artery and blood’s everywhere. Pemble tries to stanch the bleeding, but Vandenberge is fading fast.

Staff Sergeant Rice takes a slug to the shoulder that somehow exits out of his gut; he thinks the Taliban has taken a hill from which they can kill any American in range. Soldiers approach the hill, but it’s abandoned. Cortez finds Rougle’s body nearby; he may have been wounded, then executed. The other scouts appear; one, Clinard, sees the body of his leader and walks around, sobbing.

Vandenberge receives an intravenous bag in time and begins to perk up. He and Rice walk down the hill to the landing zone, where a helicopter picks them up. Rougle is carried down in a body bag. From there, Kearney hikes up the ridge, looks at the battle site, learns that the enemy appeared from an unexpected direction, and orders the enemy’s hidden compound to be destroyed. Insurgents also stole several high-tech weapons, night-vision gear, and ammo. Retrieving these items becomes a priority.

The men realize that some of the enemy had hidden beneath a cliff that the Americans assumed was impassable, then climbed it quickly when other insurgents began firing on the US forces. They’d whispered during radio chatter because they were extremely close to the platoons up until the ambush. Their attack was accurate because they were so near; they then stole Vandenberge’s big machine gun and used it on the Americans. Finally, they retreated with stolen weapons.

The new goal is to cut off enemy access to a nearby town, Landigal, before they can hide the stolen gear. Kearney calls in several artillery barrages on enemy escape routes. They also find a blood trail and begin strafing that area.

Platoon members, some covered in blood from efforts to save the wounded and dying, mourn Rougle’s death. They blame themselves for not getting to him in time, but, as one man says, “The thing they got to understand is he was dead instantly—there’s just nothin’ you could do right there” (113-14).

That night, aircraft bomb and strafe a house where enemy fighters were seen. In the morning, they spot enemies walking on a ridge, and soldiers and aircraft open up on them, killing 15. All day, they search and wait, but there are no big firefights. Colonel Ostlund flies in with an Afghan colonel and the provincial governor, and they try to get help from elders at Landigal but make no progress.

That night, walking across a ridge, First Platoon gets ambushed. The enemy is only 15 feet away, too close to First Platoon for Second Platoon or Apache helicopters to engage them. Every member of the lead squad gets hit from the side while more bullets pour in from directly in front of them. It’s an L-shaped ambush, a killing zone. They’re stunned to take fire from an enemy that never gets this close.

Two assailants grab wounded team sergeant Josh Brennan and begin to drag him away. Specialist Sal Giunta leaps after them, killing one; the other escapes. He rushes to Brennan, who’s suffered eight wounds, and pulls him to cover.

Somehow, First Platoon coordinates and fights back. A B-1 drops bombs nearby that stun the attackers, and a C-130 and two Apaches zero in on escaping assailants. The rest of the platoon continues walking back to base.

Giunta does what the army has seen countless times: “Highly trained men in extraordinarily dangerous circumstances are less likely to break down than untrained men in little danger” (123). Those leading the charge have a high sense of control over their fate; studies show that soldiers on the front lines have fewer psychiatric problems than those behind the lines.

One platoon member, medic Hugo Mendoza, loses his life on the ridge; Brennan and five other wounded soldiers are airlifted out. Brennan dies during surgery. It’s been a tough week.

O’Byrne is stateside when Rock Avalanche happens. He’s visiting his sister in the hospital; she’s badly burned and might die. He learns of the fiasco back in Korengal and contacts Junger, who’s also back in the US. Junger meets with O’Byrne and his friends: They’re drinking pretty hard. Junger recites the details, including that US forces killed 50 insurgents. O’Byrne says he has to go back to his platoon: “Those are my boys. Those are the best friends I’ll ever have” (129).

Most journalists in Afghanistan get stuck at military bases where nothing much happens. They also have the feeling the war isn’t going well for the US, they don’t trust the government to tell them the truth any more than it did during Vietnam, and they assume grunts on the front line hate the war.

It’s true that public affairs officers soft-pedal setbacks and generally ask reporters “to participate in a kind of collective wishful thinking” (132), but they’re very careful not to censor journalists. Meanwhile, soldiers are volunteers; they believe in the cause—which is also quite popular back home—and their complaint, if any, is that they’re not getting enough support to win.

Descended from Cherokees, battalion commander Ostlund is extremely fit, works 18 hours a day, has a bone-crushing handshake, feels very optimistic about putting Afghanistan back together, and treats the Taliban as if they’re gentlemen who’ve simply gone off on the wrong track, “as if there were no hard feelings and all this was just an extraordinarily violent lawn sport” (136). He visits the Restrepo outpost and sleeps on the ground in his full armor.

Warfare abandoned fairness to the enemy when the machine gun came out. Today, it’s simply kill or be killed, and a good fight is an ambush that slaughters everyone on the other side. When the Taliban first engaged US soldiers, the visitors often shot back wildly, so locals began pointing out Taliban positions simply to prevent Americans from injuring civilians.

Taliban tactics shifted to roadside bombs, which put fear into men on vehicular patrol, and they didn’t kill locals. This was the closest thing to what soldiers might regard as unfair: “If you were blown up, you’d probably never know it and certainly wouldn’t be able to affect the outcome” (142).

On a resupply convoy into the Korengal Valley, Junger sits in a Humvee that gets struck by a roadside bomb. It detonates under the engine block, which saves the riders’ lives. The convoy begins to shoot back as Junger and the others exit the Humvee and hurry to board other trucks.

That night, Junger dreams that his brother is killing monsters, but more keep coming at him. Junger realizes that, eventually, his brother will run out of ammo.

Junger feels troubled that the roadside bomb was set by someone who simply wanted Americans dead, to erase them and everything they’ve done or will do. He’s haunted by the randomness of war: the luck that detonates the bomb under the motor and not under his legs and the luck that saves one soldier from death because he happened to lie differently on his cot one night when a bullet struck it.

The only relief is to think of the extraordinary firepower of US forces. There’s a guided anti-personnel round, the Javelin, that costs $80,000, more than the shooter makes in a year, and more than the victim earns in a lifetime. The sheer volume of noise during a firefight also is somehow reassuring.

The men can’t get sex with a woman while at an outpost, and they can’t get combat back home; it’s a weird tradeoff. The men resolve it by focusing on their favorite weapons, and when they discuss them, sexual double entendres proliferate. During a firefight, they’ll race each other to a favorite weapon.

One enemy soldier, his leg blown off, crawls around on a hillside for a while; when he stops moving, the men at Restrepo cheer. Asked why, one soldier replies that it’s because “that’s someone we’ll never have to fight again” (154).

The men are mostly in their early 20s. They receive little mentoring from older males; they must figure out on their own how to live through their battle assignments. They get good at making do.

Winter up on the valley slopes is chilly and snowy; fighting slows to a trickle; the men at the Restrepo outpost are dirty, unshaven, and bored. They roll boulders down the hill at the Third Platoon in Outpost Phoenix until an officer tells them to quit.

There’s a strange tradition at Restrepo—upheld nowhere else in the entire US military—that when a soldier ships in or out, the men beat him up. Officers are no exception: Lieutenant Gillespie transfers in from Third Platoon, and the men at Restrepo greet him by grabbing him, pinning him to the floor, and slapping his abdomen with their hands as hard as they can. His greeting is fairly light; one well-liked lieutenant was beaten in the face. O’Byrne says, “The guys I love the most I beat the worst” (159). Though stunned, Gillespie manages to take his welcoming torture in stride.

The tradition is part of a greater awareness that the men need to be tough and thorough to avoid death. Untied shoelaces can cause a stumble during battle and will get a scolding from a fellow grunt. Letting the batteries run out on a night scope might get the entire outpost overrun. Any mistake can kill; when a sergeant punishes an oversight by making an entire squad perform extra duty, the members aren’t mad at him—they’re angry with themselves for letting each other down.

Second Platoon has built small plywood hutches as dorms, each poorly constructed with minimal tools, all shaped oddly and anchored awkwardly to the steep hillside. The boredom begins to etch away at team camaraderie. A rumor about a 100-man enemy assault team preparing to attack Restrepo raises everyone’s spirits.

O’Byrne later tells Junger about how, as a teen, he got drunk, and his alcoholic father hit him, and they fought, and finally, his father shot him in the hip and back. O’Byrne takes the blame to protect his dad, who’s the family breadwinner, and because he believes it’s disrespectful to strike his parent, even if his dad struck first. The boy does a short amount of jail time, and it turns his head around. O’Bryne notes, “It’s a story of going through some hard s**t and making out really good. I know bullets can’t stop me now” (168).

O’Byrne wants to know why teenagers are attacking him and the platoon. He’s really asking why anyone is fighting here; eventually, even the hardened warriors pause to wonder. On the other side, it happens too: insurgent radio chatter includes someone suggesting that Americans shouldn’t be fired on if they are building roads and schools. None have attacked US troops from within the towns, which means locals don’t want that activity near their homes.

Colonel Ostlund favors more development money because Americans win the economic arguments by building stuff. Fresh US and Afghan soldiers will arrive in the spring, along with more armored vehicles; this will let Kearney’s company take on Taliban forces farther south. Plans are afoot to issue ID cards so more villagers can visit KOP for food supplies.

Kearney also wants to start a small bus line to towns outside the valley so that residents stuck in the valley as servants of the elders might break free a little. O’Byrne fantasizes a ski resort with locals teaching skiing and a nice snowboard run from Restrepo to Phoenix. He’d miss the shooting, though.

The boredom eats away at sanity; the men resort to lots and lots of humor, most of it quite raunchy. Girlfriends and wives are off-limits as topics, though, because the men are too anxious about what might be happening back home. Practical jokes are constant: Two soldiers hide pipe cleaners shaped into a tarantula in Junger’s sleeping bag. (Their giggles give it away.) Jones gets some ridicule for his race, but he can live with that: “I don’t need you to like me, but I need you to respect me. I need you to want to go to war with me” (177).

The other major pastime is returning from leave and telling stories about it. On his way to the States, Private Pemble, still wearing his ripped-up, dirty uniform, is given a first-class airline seat by its occupant. At a Hooters restaurant, the waitress wants to know about the war and if he has a girlfriend. He hopes to surprise his parents, but they’re out at work, so he goes next door and has drinks with a Vietnam vet; his folks find him, drunk and asleep, on their couch. The others have similarly odd experiences on leave, but at home, they all “jerked at loud noises and dreamed about combat, and everyone worried about their brothers back in the Korengal” (179).

Second Platoon finally gets a break from the boredom. They hike through pleasant little valleys and snowy draws to Karingal, deep in Taliban territory. The village is completely closed up as they enter. Still, they encounter an older man whose 10-year-old son has a leg wound from a bullet fired months ago. They convince the man to bring his son with them back to KOP so the boy can get proper medical attention.

As they leave, gunfire erupts, and the gun team positioned on a hill near the town opens up on the insurgents’ position with mortar fire. The platoon regroups and heads north for Loy Kalay, where they transfer the man and his son to an armored patrol. On the hike back, through flat country under a dark, starry sky, the only action they get are two sniper rounds that hiss past, just overhead.