Imperial Grunts by Robert D. Kaplan

Author:Robert D. Kaplan
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780307278500
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2006-09-11T16:00:00+00:00

Trained to live off nature’s land,

Trained in combat, hand-to-hand.

Men who fight by night and day,

Courage take from the Green Beret. . . .

There was no playing of “Taps,” no national anthem, only this song—one that, at the moment, only the cynical would view as corny.

“It never gets any easier, that’s why they pay us the big bucks,” one of the warrant officers half joked as we all walked back to the forward operating base. Then everyone got back to cleaning and repairing vehicles. The men of ODA-371 rejected a suggestion from the upper echelons for a longer memorial service the following day. They would all pay their tributes in person to Paulie’s family when they got home. Meanwhile, they told me, the best tribute to their fallen comrade was to return to their firebase.

——

Later, at chow, I was sitting with Maj. Helms, lamenting the postponement of Newark, when an aide walked over to say that the major was wanted immediately in the forward operating base. The aide whispered something else to Helms, who then told me to quickly pack my gear.

There was heavy “green-on-green” fighting—Afghans fighting Afghans—going on in the town of Gereshk, located on the strategic ring road west of Kandahar, in Helmand Province. The fighting was moving closer to the firebase, which was held by only seven Green Berets, because the rest of ODA-371 and -375 had driven to Kandahar with Sweeney’s remains for the ramp ceremony. It would take three or four hours for them to drive back, during which time the base might be overrun. Thus, two Chinooks with Special Forces troops would fly immediately to Gereshk, to secure the base.

We were stacked tightly into the back of a small truck with all our gear and driven to the airfield, where the Chinooks, which had finally been secured for Newark, were now to fly to Gereshk instead.

“Where’s my gun bitch?” someone shouted, looking for the person carrying extra magazines for his squad assault rifle.

When the choppers took off, I was sweating. An hour later, prior to landing, night had descended and I had begun to freeze. Amid the darkness and the loud beating of the rotors, there was the usual frantic fiddling with straps for the web gear, rucksacks, and mounted guns. Night optical devices were adjusted. “Hot landing zone,” we all thought we heard the pilot say, meaning there was gunfire.

The hatch opened and we lumbered into the ruler-flat blackness of the Helmand desert. The light of the half moon briefly caught the rotors of the Chinook as it climbed back into the sky. Actually, it was a “rock landing zone,” full of small boulders. But less than two miles away we saw the tracer bullets and rocket-propelled grenade fire—and heard the explosions—of the battle currently under way in Gereshk between rival Afghan factions.

“I apologize, I shouldn’t have had beans for lunch,” someone shouted after we had heard different noises. “At least I’m calling my own shots.” We hiked the several hundred yards to the gate of the firebase, where Maj.

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