Is this an ambush?

Cause this really felt like an ambush.

My platoon of Murder Midgets of the clan Outlaw, AT-2 D/3/504 PIR, Shkin, Afganistan, 2003

Just Another Patrol

It was in Afghanistan in 2003, and it really smelled bad. The dust smelled. The burn pits for trash smelled. Buring our own human waste smelled. The sheep smelled… it just smelled. After four months into a deployment from North Carolina, the smell doesn’t bother me as much, but you know it’s still there.

My platoon started out in Kandahar with the rest of Delta Company, 3d Battalion, 504^th Parachute Infantry Regiment. The mission was to secure the countryside and prevent the insurgents form filtering back in to influence the population from sanctuaries in Pakistan. My 16-man platoon exercised American Diplomacy form point blank range to up to 2000 meters from where I stood. It was honest work, but it was the hardest thing I ever did in my Army Career.

We patrolled the roads, dry streambeds, and small settlements around our firebase, located in Shkin, Afghanistan, about two miles from a border checkpoint and Afghanistan. We were not at the asshole backside of earth yet, but you could smell it from where we were. We had a safe place to sleep, eat, and prep for more patrols and were regularly interrupted by random rocket attacks from Taliban fighters that would set the rockets on timers to go off after they were safe in Pakistan. We had a few dogs too. We could hardly go anywhere without some local trying to give us a puppy. They didn’t want to feed it, and they knew we were softies when it came to dogs.

My platoon of four gun trucks that were augmented with an Avenger weapons system, and used a cargo truckto move a rifle squad with attachments to the border to set up a nighttime ambush on a known infiltration route. The Avenger had one of the best thermal sights in the business and was able to see humans’ miles away from us. Each of my gun trucks had a M2 Browning .50 caliber machinegun or a MK 19 automatic grenade launcher, my trucks bring a lot of firepower to the fight. Just the way to Fore Fathers intended! Once we inserted the squad, we continued our mission by moving north a few kilometers and setting up an overwatch of the border itself and be a quick reaction force for the squad on the ground if thing got sporty. Where we were in Afghanistan, it took 45 minutes for attack aviation to respond if we got in over our heads. Fun times were had by all.

We finished up with our overwatch position and started to move back to pick up the infantry squad around 0330 in the morning. We started moving south to our point to take an eastern turn to go pick up the squad. The cargo truck for the squad was in between the lead sections (two truck element) gun trucks. The Avenger was in between the trail sections gun trucks so the platoon could secure the attached elements. Everything was going to plan, until it wasn’t.

Right was we made the turn to the east; the Avenger had the road collapse under it and got stuck. The whole platoon stopped while the drivers tried to get the Avenger unstuck. Two trucks were facing south, and two trucks were facing east in an “L” arrangement. There was a hill off to our north that rose 500 meters above the local terrain but didn’t block our view to the south or east. This is when life reached up and slapped all of us in the face.

Backstory time: there was a group of five to seven insurgents that had tried twice before to ambush a section of gun trucks and kill Americans. It was a kill or be killed world in Afghanistan and we were playing the part of the Sherrif keeping the peace. Higher command was pissed that after two tries, the hunter/killer team of insurgents got away clean after causing a bit of mayhem, some of the leaders were questioning my platoons will to fight and win. I had a senior NCO try to insult me infront of my platoon and insinuate I was a coward. I remember Bugs Bunny slapping Yosemite Sam with a glove that had a brick in it for less than that. I kept my cool but knew I could never trust that NCO again.

Ok, game time. My lead gun truck was commanded by SSG Parker, with SPC Orion behind the .50 gun, and PFC Reese driving. When they stopped, SSG Parker thought he saw men on the ground running towards his truck. It was hard to see with the scrub brush being five feet tall. He keyed his transmit button to relay the information to the rest of us, and the Platoon Leader was trying to transmit the order to shoot, but Parker couldn’t hear it.

BANG, BANG! The insurgents launched two rocket propelled grenades at Parkers truck. WOOSH, WOOSH! The insurgent aimed too high and missed us, and the RPGs went flying over all our heads. Then all hell broke loose when we returned fire.

Orion opened up with the .50 gun at extreme close range, about 35 meters, on the four insurgents. The staccato burst of the heavy machinegun fire sent mini concussions through the terrain and echoed off the hills around us. Enter extreme slow-motion phase. Through my night vision monocular, I saw one of the insurgents that Orion hit with the machinegun flip forward while flying backward. Instant extreme adrenaline dumps in my Paratroopers blood streams as flight or fight kicked in from our monkey brains, and my murder midgets wanted to fight.

On my truck, SGT Baker was the truck commander, and I sat behind him with radio hand mikes pressed to my ears. SPC Taylor was the gunner with the MK 19 automatic grenade launcher. PFC Hart was the driver. As soon as the action started, Baker through his door open and started firing to the left side of the vehicle to clear the flank. If insurgents were there, they would have shot back revealing their positions so we could kill them. Taylor started firing the MK 19 that had a 48-round box of grenades feeding it. I ordered, “Fire short burst and adjust!” Taylor heard “FIRE” and held the butterfly trigger down and saturated the terrain to our left front with the whole can.

I need to describe what I’m seeing through my right eye as all of this is going on. MK 19 grenades fly around 40 meters before they arm and explode. Each grenade will blast shrapnel and fire over 10 meters and seriously wound or kill anyone within five meters. Taylor just shot 48 of the mini bombs into a concentrated area the size of a football field. The MK 19 was spitting out three or four rounds a second as Taylor held the trigger down and swept the ambushers from right to left and back again. The explosions of the bombs were devastating in the daylight, at night through NVGs, was SPECTACULAR! Each round hit and exploded with a big flash and sparks flying out from it. 48 of them delivered in eight seconds into a small space saturated the killing ground with explosions and fiery thunder, shaking the ground as they went off. The effects of the MK 19 are like chocolate, I can describe it to you all day long, but until you see it, it’s difficult to understand.

The Platoon Leaders section opened at the same time with their 50 Cal and Mk 19. The insurgents, by running to get close to engage us, exposed themselves to heavy machinegun fire along the length and width of their element, sealing their fate. It was 15 seconds of death by heavy metal snu-snu, and those cats got messed up, bad. Our platoon medic even got in on the action, shotting his carbine into the killing ground. Let’s just say my Paratroopers had some pent-up rage to get out of their system, and they were getting their gun on.

Taylor’s 48 round burst emptied the gun, and he needed a reload now. He reached down to open the feed tray cover on the MK and snapped the handle off in his hand. I said adreneline dump, right? “Sergeant, I broke the gun, what do I do now?” Just what you didn’t want to hear in a firefight. SGT Baker leaped into action while I suppressed the kill zone with my carbine. SGT Baker’s dialogue sound like Jay, from Jay and Silent Bob, cursing his luck as he jumped up on the hood, then the roof of the truck and bent over the gun with his ass facing the enemy. He calmly used his Leatherman tool to open the feed tray cover and Taylor put a fresh can of grenades into the ammo holder that Heart hoisted up on the roof of the truck to give him. The empty ammo can went over the side of the truck and Taylor got down to business after SGT Baker jumped off the top of the truck clearing his field of fire.

Orion shot the lead trucks 50 Cal dry and needed a reload. PFC Reese, all 130 pounds of him dripping wet, retrieved the 105-pound ammo can and struggled to press the can over his head and get it to Orion. SSG Parker ran around to the driver’s side of the truck and secured Reese’s carbine with m203 grenade launcher slung under the barrel. With the weapon still slung over Reese’s body, Parker pumped out three 40 mm grenades and helped Reese get the can on top of the truck.

Now, a normal person might be asking about the insurgents about now, did we get them or not? Well, that depends on when you ask. The Platoon Leader called over the radio for a cease fire, and all my paratroopers stopped shooting. Then there was a loud pop from downrange, and the platoon opened fire on the kill zone again. After 15 seconds of fire, the PL once more called for a cease fire, and we all stopped. Again, there was a loud pop from downrange, and we all opened fire again. Realization hit me and I got on the radio with the platoon. We were using armor piercing incendiary rounds in our .50 guns that had a small explosive charge in the tip of the bullet. That was the pop we were hearing. I ordered the Platoon to cease fire and only reengage on command. After five seconds of silence, we all knew no one was out there in any condition to shoot back at us

The platoon leader was on the radio with the fire base while I called the platoon to get an ACE report, the status of ammunition on hand, if any of my paratroopers was injured and needed medical attention, and if all our equipment was functional and accounted for. The Major in command of the fire base had ordered the ground quick reaction force out of the wire to come and back us up. We were to remain in place and get ready to go pick up the dismounted squad as soon as the QRF arrived.

I was proud of my murder midgets that dominated the battlefield that night. Each one of them did their job under fire and lived to tell the tale. Seeing the violent display of aggression my platoon could throw down in a fight, I might have felt sorry for the insurgents for a tick or two, but they reaped what they had sowed after tying to kill us twice before.

Higher headquarters, (the NCO I could never trust again) wanted us to send the bodies back to the rear so they could see them. We had to prove our kills and sending index fingers or ears had gone out of style 40 years ago and was considered a war crime. Never mind what they would do to us if we were captured. Use your wildest horror movie experience and times it by ten, think Texas Chain Saw Massacre with dull knives and sodomy, that was how our enemy treated prisoners.

The ground QRF bagged up the human remains of the insurgents and policed the battlefield of all the enemy weapons and equipment while my platoon went and recovered the dismounted ambush squad. When we linked up with the squad, the squad leader came to my truck and asked, “What the hell happened back there? We heard the RPGs go off and then there was so many weapons shooting, it sounded like a big bear growling.” I had a chuckle at that and fired up a smoke and told the story. We both had a “glad it was them instead of me,” laugh and mounted up to return to Shkin Firebase.