I could immediately sense Brad entering my room, even though it was Three in the morning. I never really lose awareness while sleeping on a deployment. It’s different than sleeping at home.
“You Awake?” Brad asked me.
“Only if you have good news,” I answered.
“PTDS has eyes on some dudes setting up an Improvised Rocket Launcher(IRL) and we gotta go now,” Brad said.
I was halfway out to the truck without a shirt on before remembering it was now Christmas Day. It never got super cold in J-bad but it had its moments. I started the truck up before getting dressed to ensure there were no issues. As I opened the double doors to the back of the JERRV I saw Rudy already mounting the 240. I forgot Rudy was standing in for Gabe while he was finishing team leader certs in Bagram. I was happy to see Rudy because not only do I love that dude, but him being a stand-in meant if we were going to dismount I could leave him behind with the truck while I had fun with Brad. Just then Brad threw his bag in the TC seat and pulled his headset on. “So apparently some Apaches have been following these dudes and before we go deal with this IRL, The infantry is going to raid the house they’re holed up in. They want us in the stack in case there’s booby traps.” Brad informed us. I couldn’t contain my excitement. I immediately started pitching names of our future books to the other guys.
We were about 20 minutes out when we got word that the mission was changing. Command decided to leave the terrorists alone. That was infuriating. Even more infuriating, command informed us the bad guys were driving right past us and to hold our fire. Luckily we still had the IRL to take care of. We were briefed by the infantry platoon leader, LT McGraw, that we would dismount and move about a click off the road to the location of the POO(Point of Origin) site. This location was given to the LT by the Apaches who responded when PTDS first saw these guys. Sounds easy enough. I started prepping the dismount gear. My job was to carry the PLT-5, so I prepped that and then grabbed the team dismount bag for Brad. “Yo, take my dismount bag. I got a sweet Eberlestock, you’ll thank me later.” Rudy said. Considering I was using and issued medium ruck for our dismount bag I jumped at the opportunity. Brad loved good gear as much as I do and since Rudy was always prepared, I knew his bag was packed properly. What could go wrong?
We were about 3 clicks into our 1 click movement when LT McGraw called a halt and met with his PSG in the middle of the newly established security posture. I always took these opportunities to move around freely and search for things that could kill us. On this halt, I came across something. Clear as day I found the tail of a fired 2.75-inch rocket. This was fresh too. As I continued to search I found about 5 more. These rockets are American and commonly fired from Apaches, so I had McGraw ask the Apaches if they fired them. “They said those are the rockets they fired when they killed the bad guys.” He answered me. What the fuck? The same bad guys we saw on the road? They came back? Were those not the guys? Now they’re dead? Where are their bodies? There’s no blood anywhere. Brad and I took more pictures than a mom on the first day of kindergarten.
After another 7 clicks of walking around aimlessly, we were now 10 clicks into our 1 click movement. Every old guy in the community warned me about missions like this. This is why we ruck the hills back in the States. The rucking didn’t bother me, though. I was more mad that I wasn’t going to get to do anything cool today. I was promised bloodshed and EOD work.
“Hey, y-you’re EOD right?” a timid PFC asked me. I fought every smart-ass remark back as I took my gaze away from my brassard to answer him. “Well, would you guys need to know if I found a sandbag?” He continued.
“Let’s take A look, dude” I answered him. He led me to the only row of bushes in the area about 20 feet away from where LT McGraw and his PSG were having their 10th meeting of the day. “Wow, Dude. You found 6 sandbags!” I exclaimed. He was stoked that he did something without fucking up. “Did you notice the Rockets precariously placed on top of those sandbags?” I asked him.
Brad and I immediately went to work. We won’t get into too many details here for obvious reasons. I immediately started taking notes and pictures as Brad started moving people around. After we talked about what to do with Brad’s hard drive if this goes wrong, He headed down to take care of these bad boys. Right at the most dangerous part of this whole endeavor, I noticed the bushes about 5 feet behind Brad start shaking. As I looked through my rifle optic and screamed at Brad, He looked up from staring at the head of a mine detector to see Lt McGraw appear from in between the head-high bushes and stand about a foot away from an uncleared IRL. I was surprised and proud at how well Brad kept it together. He calmly informed the LT that he was potentially about to turn both of them into pink mist. He then cleared a path for both of them out of that situation. After all that was done and some other steps were taken, Brad and I consolidated those 6 rockets into a pile to get rid of them. He left me to it as he went to talk to the infantry guys about what we needed from them when we pulled this shot. This could have been done over the radio, but LT McGraw can’t take directions well over the radio. It was at this time that I realized how big of a price I paid for giving Brad that cool Eberlestock bag. Turns out Rudy and I have a different idea of how many blocks of C4 should be inside a dismount bag. I had 3 blocks to make six type 63 107mm rockets go away. This is an issue mainly because the rockets were unfired, and we would need to dispose of the propellant too.
“Let’s get the fuck out of here before our luck runs out,” Brad said to me as giant pieces of frag landed from our disposal shot. It worked. We’ll leave it at that.
As we pulled back up to the EOD compound our leadership was outside waiting on us along with some dude we’d never seen before. When we walked up to the group we realized it was the base commander. Brad, Rudy, and I sat across from the base commander and briefed him on the giant abortion that just took place. We mentioned the raid that turned into letting the bad guys live, how the Apache pilots couldn't give us an accurate grid to save their lives, and how their claim that they killed the terrorists was a lie. He listened to our whole story and then informed us that his main concern was figuring out exactly how many bad guys the Apache pilots killed so he could put it in their award. He seemed to not understand the importance of evidence. He had already been told by the Apache pilots about their heroics, and he seemed content believing that story. “How would it look for a guy in my position to take the opinion of an E-6 over the story of a CW-4 Apache pilot.” He asked us. He also didnt seem to care about the 6 rockets pointed directly at the base that we took care of. Brad wrote the narrative on our report to reflect the truth.
We learned A lot of lessons that day. The big one was giving my Team Leader a bag that I didn’t pack. One of my biggest responsibilities on the team was making sure everything was packed properly. I took my eye off the ball and it almost screwed us badly. The Team Leaders that are reading this might put some blame on Brad for not checking my work or questioning using Rudy’s bag instead of ours. You are right to think that way, and after that mission, it became a regular thing. We also learned a thing or two about stupid proofing our communications with infantry Lieutenants. Even though I ended up being disappointed in the way the mission turned out, I was stoked to spend my Christmas with the homies doing EOD work. After all, some guys spent their Christmas sleeping or opening presents.
-T