Blackhearts battle in the Taliban heartland

Pashmul, Kandahar- The rows of grape fields are green hedges on both sides of Route Summit.

There are empty compounds, some crudely geometric grape huts and a few mosques, all made of thick packed mud.  Helicopter rotors pass over head, accompanied by Taliban gunshots.  This is what Bravo Company's First and Third Platoo's see and hear daily from their guard towers on Outpost (COP) Fitzpatrick.

(Photo: Ssgt. Reese of 3rd Platoon guards a morning movement to scout Taliban positions.)

Pashmul is situated in the middle of the Arghandab River Valley in Zhari District.  It's the bread basket of the South, pomegranates, grapes and more than a little marijuana is grown among the thick vegetation extending from Helmand Province in the West to the Arghandab Valley, East.  Pashmul was the battlefield of a major offensive dubbed Operation Medusa in 2006, where Canadian and NATO forces killed close to 500 Taliban.  COP Fitzpatrick was named for a fallen Canadian.  The problem is the Canadians didn't have enough troops to hold the area.  Neither did previous U.S. forces. Bravo Co of 1-502nd Infantry came in in May to change things. 

Bravo Co. has earned over 30 Purple Hearts in less than three months of patrolling and battling in grape rows so humid they create their own climate, so hard to climb over, guys have broken legs falling from them, and so often wired with IEDs at least five soldiers have been killed in action.

Pashmul is one of the most dangerous places in Kandahar, which a solid guess, makes it one of the most dangerous in Afghanistan this summer.  Bravo has braved ambushes, 82mm rocket attacks, multiple IED attacks and snipers.  Squads have been so depleted by wounded, Privates have stepped up to become gun team leaders.

(Photo: View from one of the guard towers at COP Fitzpatrick.)

"When we first got here Noorzai (a dusty village just across from their outpost) was completely abandoned.  This place was eerie.  The Taliban kicked them out," said PFC Alex Miller, 19, of Menominie Falls Wisconsin. "Those grape fields are six feet deep.  They can get as close as they want to..."First they hit the COP," Miller recalls, "then the vehicles.  We figured out how to hit them by taking down walls and patrolling into the fields.  Then they put IEDs in the grape fields, now we're concentrating on the villages."

"You pretty much get your CIB (Combat Infantryman Badge for taking and returning fire) your first three days here," said PFC Matthew Hicks, 20, of Detroit. "Before we got in country we were all like, I want my CIB.  I got mine when my buddy got hit in the neck...  It's not how I wanted it."

 

The biggest worry are IEDs.  The Taliban has had years to plant them in the grape fields.  On one patrol in June, such homemade explosives were buried into a ledge along a grape wall. "Maybe they do them in the early morning, like in the hard packed dirt that dries out, so you can't tell.  I was sitting on top of the wall and it didn't go off," Hicks said. "They blew 15 meters apart.  One went off, maybe 30 seconds later another went off."  Both of the IEDs were probably triggered by pressure plates and killed two soldiers that day.

It's almost impossible to imagine what Bravo's gone through unless one has experienced similar combat.

Equally hard, to imagine how young soldiers on their first deployment maintain their morale and nerve to go out on patrols, the normal smoking and joking in the evenings is certain, but also the real alliance they've developed with the small group of Afghan Police (ANP) stationed on Fitzpatrick. 

"We show them respect, they show us respect.  That's what this culture is about," Hicks said. "It helps that they've been with us all the way in battle.  When we had two casualties recently, two ANP ran after the trucks going out to assist the wounded.  Nobody asked them."

(Photo: Sgt. 1st Class Culpepper of 1st Platoon and PFC Hicks lead a squad to recon to find a Talib they might have hit when the platoon fired back from one of the guard towers.)

Leading in this environment takes hardened NCO's (Non-commissioned officers) who care and yet model a certain emotional distance.  The kind that can talk to their guys about the bad things they've seen, but who tell them they won't cry at their memorial service should they be killed, as one sergeant who's done four combat deployments said.  It's a part of keeping the mission first, he said.

"We know the areas they (Taliban) like to fight from," said Ssgt. John Diem, 27, of Michigan. "We go there.  The problem is the initial contact is like Russian Roulette.  You know bullets and rockets are coming.  There's no way to preempt that."  The positions the Taliban can shoot from are just too well-concealed.

(Photo: Pvt. Winterheld, of Belchertown, MA, or "Winterfresh" as he's called, jumps a canal on the way back from a battle damage recon.)

Despite the daily firefights, young soldiers say it like they believe it- the enemy is only an obstacle to reaching the people.  That Counter-insurgency (COIN) is still their main objective.  But it's a matter of reaching the objective through all the bullets and getting to places that might be surrounded by a belt of IEDs like an abandoned school that a patrol tried to visit but was booby trapped with 7 bombs, or a Taliban flag flying from a tall tree not far off, but deemed not worth the risk of trying to take it down.

Many soldiers at Fitzpatrick say after two months, the locals are starting to move back into the area around the COP.  That the people are starting to talk to them when they're out on patrols, even letting them know where some IEDs are planted.   A farmer motions to PFC Miller in the guard tower that he's going out to work his fields so he won't be mistaken for a Taliban, but Miller already knows him by sight.

Some village elders say they're on our (coalition) side, 'but please don't come back for a while', Sgt. 1st Class Culpepper said.  In other words, the Taliban holds the area except when U.S./Afghan patrols are out on their ground.  (Officers say the Taliban may have a 1-1 ratio to U.S. soldiers during this fighting season.)  These odds aren't good, but Bravo maintains that although they have never been able to recover any enemy bodies, they've killed plenty and haven't accidentally killed any civilians, and as a result, are slowly gaining trust whereas the Taliban is losing it by planting IEDs in the grape fields.

"Yes, we're foreigners," Ssgt. Diem said, "but we aren't foreigners who are killing them.  If they don't want to talk to me out of fear, I tell them their safety is more important... It's the Taliban who are slowly becoming criminals."

(Photo: Akbar Jan, a teenage Afghan Policeman, who is much loved for his fierce fighting alongside Bravo and his attempts at learning English.)

The idea is that their sustained presence, careful use of fires and determination to fight the Taliban is showing people the coalition's resolve- causing locals to come off the fence.  Whether Bravo and other elements of 1-502nd Battalion can push further out and hold the most contested green zone just a few hundred meters away, once the fighting season ends, will indicate their ability to hold and transform Pashmul into 2011.