The Outpost An Untold Story Of American Valor Part 21

Lieutenant Colonel Chris Kolenda tells the Hundred-Man Shura that 1-91 Cav will enter into an agreement with them. (Photo courtesy of Bulldog Troop) (Photo courtesy of Bulldog Troop)

After lunch, Kolenda and Hutto changed into Afghan clothing that the elders had given them. When they returned, the elders cheered. A voice in English cried out, "You are a good guest. You are a good guest!"

Kolenda looked up, stunned to hear a Kamdesh elder speaking English. Aktar Mohammed, from Mandigal, now moved closer to Kolenda and, with perfect diction, expressed his appreciation for the respect the Americans showed the Nuristanis, as well as their support of the people. Hutto and Kolenda, he announced, were to be made honorary citizens of Kamdesh. The elders had already given Hutto the name Abdul Wali, meaning "servant of the governor," and now they bestowed upon Kolenda the name Ahmad, "highly praised one".

Kolenda signs the Commitment of Mutual Support. (Photo courtesy of Bulldog Troop) (Photo courtesy of Bulldog Troop)

That evening, in Kamdesh Village, there was a celebration. It was a night that would mark the high point of the Americans' relations.h.i.+p with the people of Kamdesh.

The troops continued to remain vigilant, but the calm meant that they could take some time to enjoy life. They held rib and chili cookoffs. One soldier was put in charge of camp beautification. Flower gardens and a vegetable garden were cultivated. The outpost's roofs were made completely waterproof, and the full-service showers operational. Walls were covered with every color of paint the men could get their hands on. A new gym was constructed, and ground broken for a new, air-conditioned dining hall.

Lieutenant Colonel Kolenda makes his entrance in Afghan garb. (Photo courtesy of Bulldog Troop) (Photo courtesy of Bulldog Troop)

And then the enemy adjusted his tactics.

In May, insurgents in Lower Kamdesh fired a few large-caliber rounds at Combat Outpost Keating-the first attack with a large-caliber weapon in that area since the July 27, 2007, ambush at Saret Koleh, almost a year before. Perhaps the most ominous aspect of the action was the specific weapon used. At first, the men of Bulldog Troop couldn't place it-the explosions were louder than the usual insurgent 7.62-millimeter fire from an AK machine gun, though not as loud as RPG blasts-but then they realized what it was: an immense Dushka machine gun, of the type last seen during the Saret Koleh ambush in the spring of 2007 and, before that, in the Chowkay Valley in 2006. This suggested outside help, likely from Pakistan.

Over the course of a week, there would be one or two Dushka rounds fired, and the shooters seemed to know what they were doing. Bracketing is a process whereby shooters shoot a round over a target, then a round short of it, then keep calibrating back and forth until they have an exact fix on the spot they want to destroy. In this case, the insurgents, over several days, were bracketing the landing zone at Combat Outpost Keating, presumably so they could take out the next chopper that came in.

Shortly after the first Dushka shot, Hutto demanded that the Kamdesh elders come down to Camp Keating. When they arrived a few hours later, he was furious. How could a heavy weapon like a Dushka be in Lower Kamdesh without their knowing about it? It was, he snapped, unacceptable.

Just then, as if to punctuate Hutto's point, a large-caliber round from the Dushka struck a sandbag near the elders.

Abdul Rahman promised he would take care of it.

After the elders returned to the village, the Dushka fire stopped. Rahman later told Hutto that the gun was no longer in Lower Kamdesh. But it soon became clear enough that the Dushka, and the insurgents firing it, were still around and active; they'd just moved out of Kamdesh Village proper. Hutto was not satisfied, and he let Rahman and the other elders know it. A few days later, a soldier at Observation Post Fritsche spotted an insurgent dragging the Dushka up a mountain west of Agasi. After further reconnaissance, Roller radioed it in, and a five-hundred-pound bomb found its way onto the enemy's head. No more Dushka.

But then came the mortars.

CHAPTER 20

"We Will Go to Kamdesh Next"

The mortar round whistled through the air and landed a few hundred yards away from 3rd Platoon. The men had just left Combat Outpost Keating on a patrol. Newsom had been taught in Ranger school that the worst thing to do during a mortar attack was to stay in one place, so they ran and found cover.

"Hey Bulldog-Six, this is Three-Six," he radioed to Hutto. "We're taking mortar fire."

"What?" Hutto asked. He couldn't believe it: the insurgents had now gotten their hands on mortars, which were capable of firing immense rounds from a considerable distance, even out of the line of sight. This was no small thing; in fact, it was a potentially lethal development. After some crater a.n.a.lysis, Newsom's men determined that the mortar had come from the north and was a white-phosphorous smoke round, very accurately fired. Hutto asked. He couldn't believe it: the insurgents had now gotten their hands on mortars, which were capable of firing immense rounds from a considerable distance, even out of the line of sight. This was no small thing; in fact, it was a potentially lethal development. After some crater a.n.a.lysis, Newsom's men determined that the mortar had come from the north and was a white-phosphorous smoke round, very accurately fired.

Hutto reached out to the Hundred-Man Shura, whose members expressed concern as well. They said they didn't know where the mortars were coming from, and they swore the insurgents were not Nuristanis-a claim backed up by the fact that the enemy chatter the Americans had started picking up was in Urdu.

More mortar attacks followed, professional a.s.saults launched from unknown locations but generally consisting of just a few rounds. New intelligence suggested that several mortars were now in the hands of insurgents throughout Nuristan and Kunar Provinces, and that the enemy had brought in a Pakistani mortarman to train the local talent how to use 82-millimeter Soviet-style weapons. Whenever the rounds came in, Hutto and his men would fire back, but the mortars were coming from too far away to let them pinpoint their target, and the enemy fighters were constantly moving around. This was not good at all.

One possible location for the enemy mortar tube, intelligence officers believed, was the mountains to the north, on the way toward Mandigal. But where, exactly?

Since joining 1-91 Cav the previous summer, Lieutenant Kyle Marc.u.m had been frustrated by the limited number of paths the troops used on their patrols from Camp Keating. He was sure there were other routes on the mountains that they hadn't yet discovered. Marc.u.m and Newsom now decided to start blazing a new trail north to Mandigal, figuring that sooner or later they would find an existing path that would allow them to sneak into the area and possibly observe the enemy mortar crew at work.

As a first step, Newsom and 3rd Platoon set up an overwatch while about eight guys from 2nd Platoon bushwhacked until they stumbled-as Marc.u.m had suspected they might-upon a substantial trail running all the way north to Mandigal. Encouraged, Marc.u.m, Newsom, and more than a dozen other troops left Camp Keating on the night of June 14, hiked undetected up the newly discovered path, camped out, and waited for the enemy mortar crew to show itself. They'd been in their position for roughly two hours, camped in the dark mountains, when, around midnight, Newsom spotted something through his night-vision goggles. "Am I crazy," he asked Marc.u.m, "or do you see a light moving way up on the mountain over there?"

Marc.u.m looked in the direction in which Newsom was pointing: someone carrying a flashlight appeared to be darting along on the side of the mountain, scurrying from one spot to another, back and forth. They called in the grid to Hutto, back at the operations center at Camp Keating. Hutto checked: it was a location that intelligence officers had already identified as a possible enemy position.

"But why would this guy be running back and forth?" Marc.u.m and Newsom asked each other. Having fired mortars themselves, they figured the most logical explanation was that an insurgent was resupplying the mortar tube from a hidden cache somewhere in the mountain, stockpiling a supply.

Marc.u.m and Newsom called Observation Post Fritsche and asked 1st Platoon to fire the 120-millimeter mortars, giving them the grids. But it was dark, and this wasn't a matter of firing from one end zone to another; the terrain was jagged. The U.S. mortarmen tried, but their mortars ended up missing their target.

Choppers were seldom where where they were needed they were needed when when they were needed-Combat Outpost Keating was just too remote, and the resources in Afghanistan were spread too thin-but as luck would have it, Marc.u.m was able to pull in an Apache that was on its way to their base for a resupply. He explained the situation to the pilot while Newsom used his infrared laser to point precisely to the insurgent's location. The Apache let loose. Nothing and no one was left standing. they were needed-Combat Outpost Keating was just too remote, and the resources in Afghanistan were spread too thin-but as luck would have it, Marc.u.m was able to pull in an Apache that was on its way to their base for a resupply. He explained the situation to the pilot while Newsom used his infrared laser to point precisely to the insurgent's location. The Apache let loose. Nothing and no one was left standing.

As he settled in for the night-they'd pull out come daybreak-Marc.u.m felt his conscience gnawing at him. He wasn't sure whether they'd sent that Apache to kill an insurgent who was part of a mortar team or just some innocent Afghan out walking with a flashlight. It was an anxious, sickening feeling. The next day he'd know for sure if what he and Newsom had done was right: either the locals would be lined up weeping and complaining, filing financial grievances and perhaps even shredding the Hundred-Man Shura compact, or they would be quiet, and the mortars would stop.

It was a tough night for Kyle Marc.u.m.

The sun rose slowly, and then quickly, and then it began beating down on Marc.u.m, Newsom, and their patrol as they hiked back to Combat Outpost Keating. No villagers ever came to complain about the Americans' having killed an innocent man. In this case, no news really was good news.

The mortar attacks stopped. Just a few more weeks and they could all go home.

"Why aren't they here?" Kolenda asked Abdul Rahman.

It was June 21, and Kolenda had come to Combat Outpost Keating to meet with the Hundred-Man Shura, as he'd been doing every three to four weeks since February. As the elders entered Combat Outpost Keating or Forward Operating Base Naray, Kolenda would check off the villages represented. The absence of a given village's representative would likely have indicated that something was not quite right there, but there had been full attendance-no absences-at all previous meetings. This time, though, the elders from Bazgal and Pitigal were nowhere to be seen, and Kolenda wanted to know why.

"I don't know," Rahman said. He said that he had spoken to both of them just a few days earlier and was expecting them to be there.

Kolenda found that troubling. It might mean that large groups of insurgents from Pakistan or somewhere else had entered those villages and were preventing the elders from attending the shura. Pitigal in particular was easily accessible from Pakistan.

After the meeting, quietly, Lieutenant Colonel Shamsur Rahman, an Afghan Border Police commander from Upper Kamdesh who had very close ties to the villagers, reported that a big Taliban action was scheduled for the next morning. Several hundred insurgents planned to attack the brand-new Afghan Border Police outpost at the Gawardesh Bridge, Camp Kamu, and Combat Outpost Keating-all at once.

At about 2:00 a.m. on June 22, a soldier at a new observation post called Mace,43 located on a mountaintop overlooking the Gawardesh Bridge, was startled to see more than seventy insurgents moving along a ridgeline. Radio chatter confirmed their intentions. These men were speaking languages other than Nuristani, but even without that clue, the Americans would have known they weren't locals by the way they hiked atop the mountain: Nuristani insurgents would never walk in formation along a ridgeline because it would make them too conspicuous. located on a mountaintop overlooking the Gawardesh Bridge, was startled to see more than seventy insurgents moving along a ridgeline. Radio chatter confirmed their intentions. These men were speaking languages other than Nuristani, but even without that clue, the Americans would have known they weren't locals by the way they hiked atop the mountain: Nuristani insurgents would never walk in formation along a ridgeline because it would make them too conspicuous.

Aircraft rolled in-a combination of F-15s, Apaches, A-10 Warthogs, and even the heavily armed AC-130 guns.h.i.+ps. Bombs were dropped, and the large force of insurgents was wiped out. The main attack had been annihilated before the Taliban fired even a single shot.

Their being spotted so early on threw off the insurgents' plan to synchronize their various attacks. They next tried Combat Outpost Kamu-now called Combat Outpost Lowell, after Jacob Lowell-but thanks to Shamsur Rahman's tip, all of the Americans were on high alert, and a patrol got the jump on the attackers. Close air support eliminated a second enemy force spotted south of Kamu.

Kolenda and Hutto were likewise on alert at the operations center at Camp Keating through the early morning, guzzling coffee, radioing troops, and reading Instant Messagelike chat on the mIRC system used for battlefield communications.

Newsom staggered into the operations center at about 5:00 a.m., bleary-eyed and confused as to why Kolenda and Hutto were there. (The lieutenant had been briefed in a general way about the warning, but his platoon was not standing guard that night, so he was less intensely focused on the situation than the others were.) Hutto started to fill him in, but his update was cut short by a call from a guard who'd seen some movement up on the northwest mountain, near the spot nicknamed the Putting Green. Hutto beckoned Marine Lieutenant Chris Briley, the new ANA trainer who'd a.s.sumed Ingbretsen's job a couple of months before, in to the operations center.

"Chris," Hutto said, "we've got a couple of guys we picked up moving around the Putting Green area."

"Really?" Briley asked. "Because I was going to take an Afghan patrol up there." If he were to do that, his team might be ambushed.

"Why don't you go to the opposite side?" Hutto suggested, referring to the Northface. From the northern mountain, Briley and his troops would be able to see what the enemy was up to on the Putting Green.

The night had yet to fully lift, so Briley and his ANA platoon were still under the cover of darkness when they left the wire, walking through and past the landing zone. Just outside the LZ, a loud explosion shook them. At first, Briley thought a U.S. mortar must've accidentally misfired, but then he made out the telltale smoke of an RPG blast: launched from the Putting Green, the grenade had missed them by only about fifty yards. Because it was dark-too dark for the enemy to have seen them from the Putting Green, he thought-Briley became convinced that someone must have alerted the insurgents when the patrol left the outpost, giving them a general area of where to target. Briley and the Afghans ran up to the Northface and began firing their machine guns at the small group of insurgents on the Putting Green. There were fewer than ten enemy fighters there, steadily aiming small arms and RPGs at Combat Outpost Keating. Briley called in the information to Newsom, who relayed it to Kenny Johnson. Seeing where Briley was firing-he was using the same weapon his Afghan soldiers used, a PKM, and every fifth round he fired was a tracer round-Johnson hit the enemy location with mortars. Close air support soon arrived; A-10 Warthogs strafed the enemy, a bomber dropped a two-thousand-pounder, and that attack, too, was over.

The tip from the Afghan Border Police commander almost certainly saved some lives that early morning; for Kolenda, it was further evidence that having friends among the villagers could be of use. And yet counterweighting that, there was also Chris Briley's haunting suspicion that someone had tipped off the insurgents to his departure.

Later that same day, mortars began raining down again. This team-Urdu-speaking, based on the radio chatter-was clearly well trained, able to make skilled adjustments to its fire. The terrain and position of Combat Outpost Keating made it almost impossible for troops there to tell specifically where the explosive volleys were coming from. The men of Bulldog Troop tried different methods-triangulating enemy radio intercepts, translating radio chatter and trying to interpret what the insurgents said they were seeing, crater a.n.a.lysis-but at best, they ended up with educated guesstimates.

Lacking a more specific target, the Americans decided to return fire at what they deemed to be likely enemy locations, using mortars, grenades, unmanned Predator drones, and piloted choppers and planes. Still the enemy mortars continued to fall. The insurgents' skill, their professionalism, unnerved everyone. After Marc.u.m heard translations of some of the insurgents' corrections to previous shots as they bracketed for greater accuracy, he thought to himself, That is literally the exact same correction I would've made. One mortar overshot the outpost by about fifty yards; the next round hit right in the middle of the camp, ripping through the stairs of the morale, welfare, and recreation building; the one after that landed just five yards from the operations center. Newsom was only about five seconds ahead of it and almost got a permanent suntan on his head courtesy of white phosphorous. Indeed, the only reason there were no casualties from the mortars was that the insurgents were firing some kind of smoke round as opposed to a high-explosive round. If it'd been a different kind of mortar, some of the guys from Bulldog Troop would surely have been killed, just days before they were supposed to go home.

A total of sixteen mortars were fired at Combat Outpost Keating that day and into the evening. One blast after another, one escape after another-the barrage left the men both slap-happy and vacant. At one point, Marc.u.m was traipsing around on the hill at the back of the outpost when another mortar almost got him.

"Hey, Kyle, glad you're not dead," Newsom radioed him.

"Yeah, Alex, same," Marc.u.m casually replied.

Eventually the insurgents stopped firing, presumably because they ran out of munitions. By then, many of the troops at Combat Outpost Keating looked like zombies. The next day, another sixteen mortar rounds were fired at them by the enemy, until Bulldog Troop located and killed the spotters who were calling in the grids to the insurgent mortar team. Kolenda was very worried, particularly about the havoc the enemy fighters might be able to wreak if they got their hands on high-explosive rounds.

The mortars took their toll at Observation Post Fritsche as well.

The ANA soldiers had a special affection for one of their Marine trainers, Corporal Adam Laman, a stocky, sweet, and smart guy who'd picked up the local language fairly quickly and well. During the intense mortar attacks of June 22, Laman had accompanied an ANA platoon to a position from which they could better observe and suppress the enemy. The insurgents spotted them and began hitting them with small-arms fire and RPGs, one of which exploded right near Laman, showering shrapnel across his body and partially ripping off his left foot. An ANA leader, Nek Mohammed, ran over to try to help him. "Don't worry about me, take care of your own soldiers!" Laman admonished him.

Laman was medevacked to Forward Operating Base Naray, where Roller-who as Bulldog Troop's XO was often up there-went to see him at the aid station.

The room was thick with the ferric scent of blood. Laman was delirious, on painkillers and in shock, when Roller first approached him. Half of his foot was missing, and what was left looked like a mixture of ground beef and spaghetti. Roller grabbed his hand; the Marine seemed relieved to be able to tell someone what had happened. Under the influence of medication, Laman tried to joke around, but after about fifteen minutes, he closed his eyes and stopped talking.

"You're gonna be okay," Roller told him.

When 3-71 Cav handed over Combat Outpost Keating to 1-91 Cav, the soldiers of Able Troop also bequeathed their dog, Cali, to the men of Bulldog Troop, who likewise came to love her. Cali would come out on patrol with them as often as she was allowed to, and even sometimes when she wasn't. She seemed to know instinctively where the men were headed and always ran in front to clear a path. When they slept out on patrol, she was a vigilant guard, helping to put them at ease. If she ran off in a certain direction with an air of purpose, the troops would call the operations center and have someone ask those standing guard to scan that area with thermal sights.

June didn't bring only bad news; Cali delivered yet another litter of puppies. (Photo courtesy of Bulldog Troop) (Photo courtesy of Bulldog Troop)

Cali's first litter of puppies had been born around the time Pfeifer was shot. Each platoon was given one, and the rest were divvied out to individual soldiers. Newsom's men called their puppy Franklin, which had been Pfeifer's middle name. The dog soon took on the aggressive personality of 3rd Platoon. He was loyal to the men, fought with other dogs for no discernible reason, stole food, and gorged himself to the point of vomiting.

Just ten seconds of petting a dog, a minute or two of playing with Franklin, would provide soldiers with a brief respite from the tension inherent in this place where danger and death hung in the air like a noose. When it got cold at night, the troops would build a fire in the pit and smoke cigars and pet their dogs as if they were on an extended camping trip with the boys. In the winter, they'd let them in to the barracks to sleep with them. (By now the dogs were treated for fleas and wore flea collars, so the men didn't have to.) They were lifesavers in less theoretical ways as well. The puppies began patrolling as their mother did. If the troops tied them up to keep them from accompanying a patrol, they would break free of their restraints and track the men down. On several night patrols, the dogs scurried past the troops and chased away Nuristan vipers. More often, however, they attacked goats and chickens, and the troops would have to pay the local farmers for their losses-but it was no big deal, really, just an annoyance.

Cali didn't like the locals, and the feeling was mutual-Nuristanis didn't think much of feral dogs as pets. Whenever the shura convened at Keating, Bulldog Troop would lock up Cali and her puppies, who shared their mother's animus.

The wild dogs in the area did not enjoy the same affection from Bulldog Troop. Hutto, for one, put out a hit on a nasty three-legged mongrel that was a constant menace; the payoff was three packs of Marlboro Lights for a shot and four packs for a knife kill. Tommy Alford had come back to the troop after recuperating from his July 2007 wound, and he collected: three packs of smokes.

That wasn't the only worthwhile kill of the summer. On July 1, an unmanned Predator drone picked up what officers believed to be the foreign insurgents who had been firing mortars at Camp Keating. The drone's pilots consulted with the men of Bulldog Troop and decided to drop a five-hundred-pound bomb and a two-thousand-pound bomb on the insurgent crew. That was the end of that problem. Shortly thereafter, Abdul Rahman and the Kamdesh shura wrote a letter to a local Taliban leader who was also named Abdul Rahman. (U.S. troops referred to the latter as "Bad" Abdul Rahman to differentiate him from the former.) The letter said that the people of Kamdesh were now "awake," and they wanted him to leave their district for good.

Once the enemy mortarmen had been taken care of, Lieutenant Marc.u.m and 2nd Platoon set out to investigate the attack on Observation Post Fritsche that had ended with Marine Corporal Laman's losing his foot. At first light, Marc.u.m led a patrol to the spot on the hill where Laman had been wounded, about three hundred yards southwest of Fritsche's landing zone. It was a natural fighting position, with a grand view of the valleys and enough cover to get some shots off; it had probably been set up during one of the many KomKushtozi battle periods. Marc.u.m snapped a few pictures.

Lieutenant Kyle Marc.u.m took this photograph right before disaster struck. (Photo courtesy of Kyle Marc.u.m) (Photo courtesy of Kyle Marc.u.m)

Nothing really to see here, we might as well keep moving, Marc.u.m thought to himself. He bent over to pick up his M4 rifle, which he'd leaned up against a rock. As he reached for the gun, he pivoted his foot. There was a blast-not a big blast, but an explosion nonetheless. No one was really sure what had caused it. Intelligence reports had been coming in that the Taliban was using different weapons systems, and for some reason, Marc.u.m initially thought that his position had been fired upon with a recoilless rifle. Then he realized that he'd been hit, and that the explosion had come from underneath him: a landmine. Sometimes mines went off not at the first step but at a change in contact. It must have been when he pivoted his now-bleeding foot, he reasoned.

Two of Marc.u.m's troops from 2nd Platoon ran toward him, but the lieutenant held up his hand to stop them. For all any of them knew, they were in the midst of a minefield. Afghanistan is one of the most heavily landmine-laden countries in the world, with cl.u.s.ter munitions, IEDs, and various other lethal remnants of war buried everywhere throughout the land, dating back to the 1970s. It was only common sense to worry that there might be more mines lurking nearby.

Marc.u.m looked down. The landmine had blown off some of his toes, and his foot was throbbing with pain. A medevac was called, and Marc.u.m was flown out of the Kamdesh Valley, never to return. He would end up losing his leg.

In July, 1-91 Cav held a dedication ceremony to change the name of Forward Operating Base Naray. "He died while saving the lives of his paratroopers against a numerically superior foe," Kolenda said of Tom Bostick. "Let all who enter this base, and all who write or speak the name of it, be reminded that freedom is not free."

And then, at the newly christened Forward Operating Base Bostick, the troopers of the 1-91 Cav began transferring command to the 6th Squadron, 4th Cavalry Regiment of the 3rd Brigade, 1st Infantry Division, also known as 6-4 Cav.

It was a distressing time for a handover. That same month, southwest of Kamdesh, in the Waygal Valley in Nuristan, a new American outpost that was being established by Lieutenant Colonel Ostlund's battalion of the 173rd Airborne was attacked by approximately two hundred insurgents. Ostlund's men ultimately repelled the attack, but with nine U.S. troops killed, it would end up being the deadliest day for the United States in Afghanistan since the ill-fated Operation Redwing, in June 2005.

The men of 2nd Platoon, Chosen Company, had less than two weeks left in their fourteen-month rotation, so they were less than thrilled when the order came for them to set up a new combat outpost.

Theirs had been an eventful and difficult deployment. Soon after effecting the recovery of Ryan Fritsche's body near Saret Koleh in late July of the previous year, Chosen Company had beaten back the August attack on the Ranch House. Ostlund, the unit's commanding officer, had eventually made the decision to abandon that vulnerable and isolated outpost, which was turned over to local elders on October 2, 2007. Predictably, the enemy seized on the Americans' departure, producing a video that showed insurgents "capturing" and occupying the Ranch House-a propaganda victory.

Then, on November 9, 2007, after a shura in Aranas, near the former Ranch House, Chosen Company's 1st Platoon was ambushed on its way back to Combat Outpost Bella in Kunar Province. Six Americans44-including Lieutenant Ferrara, from the Ranch House battle-and two ANA troops were killed, and another eight U.S. and three ANA soldiers were wounded. The significance of the November 9 attack would be disputed, but some experts who have studied what happened to Chosen Company think that day changed everything, with the unit s.h.i.+fting its focus from counterinsurgency to fighting from that point on.

Ostlund was a Nebraskan and former enlisted Ranger who'd earned a master's degree from the Fletcher School at Tufts University with a thesis on the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. He granted that counterinsurgency certainly had its place, but he thought its success in Nuristan was overstated. The lieutenant colonel believed that much of the local populace was deceptive and dishonest, and he felt that for that reason, a more conventional, fighting mindset was more appropriate to the area. But Ostlund was not entirely dismissive of the Waygal Valley,--so he decided to relocate Chosen Company to a new outpost to be built near the hamlet of Wanat.45 The new site made more sense because it was accessible from a decent road that led from Camp Blessing, The new site made more sense because it was accessible from a decent road that led from Camp Blessing,46 in the Pech District of Kunar Province, to Wanat-which, as Waygal's district center, boasted a handful of shops, teahouses, and clinics as well as the district headquarters of the Afghan National Police and a recently completed district administrative building. Wanat had also benefited from more than a million dollars' worth of United Statesfunded construction projects that were in the works nearby. It was in the least hostile sector of Ostlund's entire area of operations. in the Pech District of Kunar Province, to Wanat-which, as Waygal's district center, boasted a handful of shops, teahouses, and clinics as well as the district headquarters of the Afghan National Police and a recently completed district administrative building. Wanat had also benefited from more than a million dollars' worth of United Statesfunded construction projects that were in the works nearby. It was in the least hostile sector of Ostlund's entire area of operations.

Captain Matthew Myer of Chosen Company was told to prepare a platoon to move to-and build-the new camp. He and Ostlund met with some Wanat elders on May 26, 2008. The meeting didn't go well: the start of the shura was delayed by an hour, the elders took an atypical hourlong break in the middle, and the overall conversation was less than friendly. The elders then insisted that Ostlund and Myer stay for lunch-though they refused to actually eat with the Americans. On its way back to Camp Blessing, just about a mile outside of Wanat, Chosen Company was once again ambushed. Two men were seriously wounded. Ostlund and Myer suspected they'd been set up, speculating that the insurgents didn't want the new base to be built and that the villagers had kept quiet about the ambush because they were intimidated.

A little more than a month later, on July 3, insurgents attacked Combat Outpost Bella, launching an a.s.sault that carried into the next day. During that second day, the Americans saw two pickup trucks that they thought were fleeing from the spot from which the insurgents had been firing their mortars. Captain Myer radioed to have two Apaches. .h.i.t the trucks, which they did; the vehicles and most of their seventeen pa.s.sengers were obliterated. Unbeknownst to Myer or the Apache pilots, among the casualties were a number of civilians, some of them children and staff from Bella's medical clinic. Governor Nuristani was enraged by the killings and told the Al Jazeera television network that the dead had included doctors, women, and children-all of whom had, moreover, been trying to get away from the fighting, at the behest of the Americans themselves. "The Americans told people around the base to leave, and they left. About seven hundred meters from the district office, they were bombed," Nuristani said, calling the bombing "inexcusable because [the Americans] knew that these civilians were leaving the area." When the U.S. commanders heard of the governor's accusations, they made their displeasure known to President Karzai, who within a matter of hours fired Nuristani. If Karzai truly wanted to persuade the people of Nuristan Province that he was interested in strengthening the government's relations.h.i.+p with them and bettering their lives, then firing the governor probably wasn't the right move for him to make. And if he wanted to demonstrate to the Afghan people that he wasn't a marionette controlled by the Americans, it was definitely the wrong wrong move. move.

Some Afghans would later claim that the deaths of the innocent civilians and aid workers had further hardened the hearts of locals against the Americans.47 Exacerbating their anger were the initial claims by the United States that those killed had all been insurgents, when that was clearly not the case. Exacerbating their anger were the initial claims by the United States that those killed had all been insurgents, when that was clearly not the case.

After closing the base at Bella, Myer returned to Camp Blessing, where he had to remain for a few days to provide testimony for an investigation into the July 4 incident that had killed those innocent civilians. The task of command at the new outpost therefore fell to First Lieutenant Jonathan Brostrom, the leader of Chosen Company's 2nd Platoon. The lieutenant would be in charge of securing the camp's location before the heavy engineering equipment was brought in to improve the access road and then construct the outpost itself.

Brostrom was worried. Before leaving for Wanat, back at Camp Blessing, he shared his concerns with his best friend, First Lieutenant Brandon Kennedy. The two men preferred talking about what they were going to do in a few weeks, after they got out of Afghanistan; they thought they might get an apartment together in Italy and take a postdeployment cruise on the Mediterranean. But obstructing their view of this vacation was the unsettling a.s.signment: first Brostrom had to get through this mission.

"What do you think about going up to Wanat?" Kennedy asked him.