War

Korengal Outpost, or KOP, is a US military base in the Korengal Valley, one of the most dangerous areas of the war in Afghanistan in spring 2007. Soldiers take fire from mortars when they arrive for duty and depart months later. Accommodations consist of tents and plywood cabins; the men get one hot meal a day, shower once a week, and pee into plastic pipes hammered into the earth.

O’Byrne’s platoon replaces men of the 10th Mountain Division, whose morale had plummeted when their tour got extended. 10th Mountain soldiers immediately take the newcomers on a lengthy tour of the valley, trying to exhaust them under their 80 pounds of equipment. They take fire from Taliban soldiers on their way up a hill, their first in the field. O’Byrne makes the rookie mistake of standing up to see better, but he doesn’t get hit.

O’Byrne grew up in rural Pennsylvania with a violent father who once shot him with a .22 rifle. O’Byrne got in trouble at school and with drugs. Still, he turned things around with help from some helpful adults, graduated, joined the army, and started training for Special Forces. It requires combat experience, so O’Byrne shifted to Second Platoon, Battle Company, 173rd Airborne and shipped out to its Italian headquarters and then to Afghanistan. His platoon has a reputation for being misfits who are great warriors. One of the wilder soldiers is Juan Restrepo, a hard-drinking, fun-loving reprobate who plays a mean flamenco guitar.

The problem with KOP is that it’s surrounded by hills and tall mountains from which insurgents regularly pepper US forces with live fire. A thousand feet up a steep hill beyond the Afghan army quarters is Outpost 1, a lookout that takes the Americans 45 minutes to reach on foot. There, they protect KOP from attacks launched from the forested heights, but it’s a never-ending cat-and-mouse game. US soldiers rented and fortified a compound in a nearby town and another across the valley as forward bases, but these, too, are below enemy positions, and several troops already have died there and at KOP.

Sergeant Major Isaia Vimoto is at KOP; his son, Timothy, is on his first tour. Timothy’s platoon leaves nearby Phoenix outpost at dusk and hikes into the hills searching for insurgents. The platoon takes enemy fire, and Private Vimoto is shot through the head and killed.

This far from the generals, the men dress informally, sometimes in cutoffs, sleeveless shirts, and flip-flops, but also in body armor. Many sport tattoos; a few have tattoos across their chests that read “Infidel.” Most are in their 20s; they get bored and sometimes fight each other. Second Platoon has an odd tradition of beating up members on their birthdays and when they depart and return from leave. Officers can’t escape this fate.

Author Junger arrives in camp to learn about the men fighting there. He knows the country from previous visits, but he’s unprepared for the level of violence this time out. He meets with Captain Kearney, who tells him the Second Platoon is “the tip of the spear” (26), farthest forward of all platoons. Junger says he wants to be with them.

At dusk, a firefight breaks out as a squad leaves the village of Aliabad. Enemy fire comes from a high ridge. American forces in different places in the valley focus their fire on the ridge, but the squad must hunker down behind a rock wall, the men standing up only long enough to fire back. In total darkness, they hurry away and make the steep climb up through the village of Babiyal and back to Phoenix.

At 2,000 feet per second, bullets arrive at their targets well before the sound of the shot gets there. By the time a soldier sees the tracer bullets and reacts, the rounds have arrived, making a distinct snap, “the sound of a small object breaking the sound barrier inches from your head” (31). A bullet fired from less than 800 yards away leaves no time to duck. The first bullets cause an automatic startle reaction, the person crouching, the face a rictus of fear. Then the body ramps up, the heart beating furiously. It takes training to aim a weapon effectively at a heart rate above 145 beats per minute.

The best soldiers feel extremely confident. They’re relaxed, focused on battle preparations until fired on when they respond with controlled excitement.

Manned by the First Platoon, Firebase Vegas lies a five-hour walk from KOP high on the eastern slopes of the Korengal Valley. Often out of contact, the men suffer marital and relationship losses, get crazed with boredom, and share a motto: “Damn the Valley” (38).

Many of the Second Platoon men got there after scrapes with the law. They’re tough, but the constant stress of battle takes its toll on everyone. A psychiatrist assigned to the team helps, and the men unwind during periodic rests at quieter camps; still, some have taken up smoking just to calm down.

The platoon’s battalion, the Rock, is part of the 173rd Airborne Brigade and has been on the front lines since World War I. It fought at Corregidor in the Second World War and suffered the highest casualty rate of the Vietnam War. Reactivated in 2000, the brigade is known for its toughness, but Afghanistan tests it as hard as any other battle front.

The mountainous region has thwarted invading armies throughout history: Alexander the Great got halted here; Napoleon couldn’t hold it; the Soviets lost most of two divisions trying to conquer it. The recent intense fighting within Afghan mountain corridors against insurgents infiltrating from Pakistan has put half of the Rock battalion on psychiatric medication.

At the US military forward operating base—FOB—at Bagram Airfield, north of the capital, Kabul, personnel rarely see any action. Officers there scold grunts returning from Korengal and nearby mountain valleys because their uniforms are in shreds; the grunts call those officers Fobbits.

Military units must dominate physical regions, but they also must win the battle for “human terrain”—the hearts and minds of civilians. Strategists overlay flow charts of tribal affiliations onto physical maps. If winning a battle causes problems for the locals or kills any of them, the public relations campaign is lost, and locals will gang up on platoons and force them out of the area.

Russian forces ignored this wisdom during their invasion in the 1980s; they shot up everything, killed 7% of the Afghan population, and finally were driven out by a popular uprising. US forces avoid shooting at any place where civilians are located unless they’re fired on; they build infrastructure for villages; they pay compensation if they kill a civilian. Even so, mistakes are common, and backlash is frequent.

Korengal residents make money smuggling timber out of the valley; the complex trade makes for complicated loyalties that can frustrate US military efforts. A recent crackdown on the timber trade left piles of lumber all over the valley that insurgents use for cover.

A Taliban leader arrested three men and accused them of collaborating with the Americans, knowing this would get a response from US forces. A few days later, a US Navy SEAL team arrived but got into a lopsided fight with several hundred enemy fighters. A series of technical problems slowed reinforcements, and a helicopter with 16 relief commandos was shot down with all lives lost. Only one SEAL survived the battle. US forces bombed a local Taliban headquarters, in the process killing 17 civilians, which crippled relations with local citizens.

The US presence in the valley and the insurgent response is as much about settling accounts as it is strategic. There’s bad blood all around.

Summer is hot, 100 degrees day after day. Tarantulas crawl into the sleeping huts just to cool off. Up at Firebase Phoenix, the men go 38 days without a shower. Wolves howl at night. Every day there’s shooting; Korengal is the most violent front of the war. Patrols draw the most fire: “They’d essentially walk until they got hit. Then they’d call in massive firepower and hope to kill as many of the enemy as possible” (56). Enemy gunners do as much damage as they can before US air support arrives, spewing thousands of bullets a minute.

Nearly every American who dies gets hit unexpectedly. Thus, whatever a soldier is doing at any given time may be their last act. When a man is wounded, team members stanch the blood and call for a medic and evacuation, all while firing back at the enemy.

Second Platoon’s medic is Restrepo, who’s very dedicated to his men, fearless under fire, and generous with his time, especially if someone’s ill or depressed. During a patrol on the day before he’s to rotate out of KOP, Restrepo suffers two bullets to the face; by the time the MEDEVAC helicopter can land, it’s too late. O’Byrne says, “Second Platoon fought like animals after that” (60).

Using pickaxes, Third Platoon digs a new firebase to guard KOP and Phoenix. The company names it Restrepo. The men carve it out of solid rock while Taliban troops fire at them, resting only to shoot back alongside Second Platoon backup. They pour the rubble into eight-foot-by-eight-foot baskets called Hescos; they need 30 Hescos for protection and can fill one each day with 25 tons of rock.

After two weeks, Restrepo is loaded with bunkers, gear, and piles of ammunition. The Taliban are willing to pour 100 soldiers into an attack, losing up to half, in an attempt to overrun a firebase. Restrepo is the most likely target of such an assault.

As the third firefight of the day erupts at Restrepo, Private Gutierrez—Guttie—jumps off the Hesco he’s filling and breaks his leg badly. Enemy rounds pour into the firebase from three directions; it takes a high-speed machine gun and a grenade launcher to silence one enemy position.

After the enemy withdraws, the platoon rests. Men read books or magazines, listen to portable music devices, or tell jokes. Jones, the only Black soldier in the platoon, tells Junger his college athletic scholarship fell through, and he resorted to selling drugs, during which he was shot at a lot. He joined the army to escape that life and because he knew he was fine in a shootout.

Junger realizes that if he’s to die in Afghanistan, it’ll likely be in Restrepo. He discusses with Jones how the enemy might overwhelm the encampment. They’d attack at 4:00 a.m., take out the main guard tower’s heavy machine gun, lob rocket grenades into the compound, charge forward in waves until one gets through, fight from hut to hut, and take no prisoners.

He struggles with the never-ending danger and the anxiety it produces. Part of his fear is that he’ll panic and let down the others; he does freeze once but breaks through that terror and does ok.

Despite the range of size and shapes among the men—some scrawny, a few huge—all manage to tote heavy loads up and down the hills. The largest soldier, Vandenberge, weighs 300 pounds and has hands so big they hold sandbags like basketballs. He can lift a 100-pound heavy machine gun to his shoulder and fire it like a rifle.

A 24-hour patrol through the hills, laden with equipment, can be exhausting. If a soldier slows down or stops, the delay can get platoon members killed, so the men must push through the pain and keep going until their muscles refuse to obey: “If you’re not prepared to walk for someone you’re certainly not prepared to die for them” (76-77). In college, Junger ran cross-country, which could be agonizing; no patrols in Afghanistan hurt as much. Still, nothing in college was as significant as the simplest task while on patrol.

Much more lightly equipped are Army Scouts, who also patrol the valley. Their purpose isn’t to fight but to observe; they can travel fast and venture deep into enemy territory. They avoid firefights, but when needed in a sudden emergency, they can show up to help more quickly than an armored Humvee.

Despite being outgunned, the Taliban adapts to American high-tech weaponry. They know how to hide from infrared body-heat detectors; they watch the crows that follow, and thereby reveal, US patrols; they torment military outposts with single snipers.

Junger chats with two officers about a sergeant they know who just died over at Firebase Vegas. Two weeks later, one of those officers also gets killed. The author is unnerved by the idea that anyone can die at any time out here and that he might be next.

With his first assignment complete, Junger ships out of the valley by Apache helicopter and heads home.